The West Commences: Friday, August 31, 2012

The red eye flight from Kelowna to Calgary to London, Ontario was harder on my system than the much longer one from Kelowna to Vancouver to Incheon. Jay thinks Koreans wax too eloquent about Korean Air, but I can testify to the fact that they do have a point. When compared with West Jet, their stewardesses are more beautiful and elegantly dressed (which I know that I, as a woman, should not even mention) but more importantly, their seats have more leg room and recline much farther, they serve half decent food with wine and they give you eye masks, blankets and pillows. West Jet has wonderfully, almost excessively, cheery employees, but the seats recline so little it’s hardly worth having the passengers put them in the upright position prior to take off, the drink and tiny package of snacks is not worth opening your eyes for and the blanket which you pay $3.00 for is made of some hyper synthetic material that sheds so much you have most of it on your clothes by the time the flight is over. I’m sure many people were pleased that both in Kelowna and in Calgary we waited for West Jet passengers who had been delayed by lightening in Vancouver, but for the rest of us this only added to the three hours we were already going to lose by heading east. We arrived in London at about 7:30, and I dragged my bags to the Tim Horton’s. The coffee gave me enough of a kick to get me to the ‘Arrivals’ door and outside to wait for Kathy on a bench.

Approaching Walkerton, I began to experience a sensation of hollowness and a constricting in my throat that I now recognize as the first physical manifestations of the sadness I feel when I visit places or do things that remind me of Jim. This happened to me this trip in Ottawa and Wakefield too, more than it did last year when I went east for Blake’s wedding. But being with Cathy was good as usual, and I soon felt fine. The whole area was visibly less lush than usual. Much of the corn was stunted beyond the point of recovery, but some things were slowly returning to green after the rains that had recently fallen. Now it’s the Okanagan’s turn to be hot and dry. I’m glad I’m missing it, but I wonder what’s happening to the cedars. Mo and John checked the house, and she e-mailed that my neighbor was watering the lawn, that’s what interests her, but I wonder if she’s also done the trees.

I’ve enjoyed this trip because I’ve stayed long enough with friends to be able to do everyday things with them. I went with Cathy to watch her unintentionally hilarious niece Nicole try on wedding dresses. I can still see her stumbling out of the change room, mumbling for help, stuck inside a too-small sample dress. She’s gorgeous but quite large, so most of the dresses were too small. On top of that they were uninspiring designs, not at all what she envisioned herself in. Within 20 minutes her cheeks were flushed with heat and laughter, she gave up and we left. I also had time to see more of Mark and David and their families, collect eggs, pick vegetables, eat well as usual and even attend Nicole’s memorial party for her mom, Cathy’s sister Karen. I rode the bike out to the barn with Kathy when she tended David’s pigs, but being in there almost made me gag. Joining her to swim with the grandchildren and eat Hanover pizza on the other hand was easy to swallow.

Micheline picked me up on Monday in her VW Westfalia, and we took our time camping in style on the way to Ottawa. We spent Monday night in a campground on Georgian Bay dining on filet mignon, fresh vegetables from Cathy’s garden and wine and breakfasting on Micheline’s fine coffee and Cathy’s orange and date muffins. Sticking to side roads, we slowly made our way to Port McNicoll where I had landed with my family when we took the Keewatin there from Thunder Bay. It was the summer I was in grade nine, and I still have glowing memories of a dress I wore and a boy I met who was working on the boat and who gave me my first real kiss one night on deck near the smoke stack. There were two passenger boats that traveled that route at the time, the Assiniboia and the Keewatin, and I’m not sure which one we took. I thought the ship was luxurious and remember that the chefs made Boston cream pie especially for a group of Scouts from Boston that was on the boat. The waiters were university students, and one of them tripped coming through a swinging door into the dining room with a full tray. Plates, cake, custard and chocolate flew everywhere. As Miche and I drove to the port, I spotted what turned out to be the Keewatin. What luck! They had just brought it back this June. The Assiniboia burned some years ago. I was surprised to learn that the Keewatin had actually been one of 5 ships built in Scotland and brought to Canada around 1912. The Assiniboia and Keewatin were built to be taken apart when they arrived and separated into two parts to be moved into Lake Superior. The Kewatin was a coal burning ship, so I had my first kiss beside a smokestack that belched coal smoke. Since I also remember a horse-drawn vehicle delivering our bread on Empire Ave. and an icehouse at Loon Lake, I must be old. One of the pamphlets in the museum that is next to the Keewatin states that it is the last of the Edwardian era passenger steamships. We spent our second night camping on the shore of Lake Simcoe and had a leisurely drive to Ottawa the next day.

Miche left me at Don and Mela’s where I stayed for about a week in comfort, with good friends, two very different dogs and a cat. Mela and Don had a party on Saturday night. We sat outside, ate, drank, talked and laughed. I was happily surrounded by many of the old gang. For the first time in ages, I was in a group that consisted mostly of men. Sadly, Tina’s mom had died recently, so she wasn’t there because it was the day of the funeral, and Connie was feeling too ill to come to a party. I missed them. I drove one day to Wakefield and saw Barb and Rod. I had a great kayak with Barb past our old houses and some new ones. Then I swam with Faye and ate lunch with the two women and Rod. That day I also visited the Smiths. We sat on the dock, swam and I saw Heather. The Baughans had me for dinner one night with Danbrook and Geoff and Megan, so I was able to keep in touch with their lives and again eat well and enjoy wine and conversation. We had a gathering of the WWW at Paul’s place in the country. Again some weren’t there, but those of us who were walked, swam, ate well, drank wine, even smoked, laughed a lot and made felt pins for the Grannies to take to the Grannies in Africa. The group is getting increasingly crafty, but fortunately the unskilled job of sewing on pins was not beyond me. Miche introduced the game of ‘Treize’, which had us screaming at the improbability of randomly turning up the card you call. Although, we readily admitted we knew nothing about the laws of probability, it did amaze us how often the number that was called was turned up. This fun kept us up until it was nearly midnight, so we still have a tenuous hold on the adjective ‘wild’. I spent my last days with Caroline and Albert, visiting with them, eating in the garden and having dinner with Mara and Ella and Sadie. We had lunch at Gabe’s restaurant and shopped for an I-pad and stove at Future Shop, so I got a true slice of their life too. That’s what I enjoyed about this trip.

The train ride back to Guelph was fine until we pulled into Union Station in Toronto just as the train for Guelph was leaving. We were herded into Alcove D in the windowless, low-ceilinged basement of Union Station where we stood around, clueless, for about 15 minutes until a woman in an ill kempt uniform finally wandered in. When we complained that some of us had seen our train pull out, she proudly stated that VIA had a new CEO whose policy was that their trains waited for nobody. And I had cursed West Jet for having exactly the opposite policy. Where is the happy mean? She then stated that she would be back in 15 minutes with pizza and that we would be taking a bus to Guelph. Half an hour later she returned with the most thick crusted and tasteless slice of pizza I’ve ever seen and said the bus would be arriving soon. It was another 20 minutes before she returned and told us to follow her. The bus was caught in traffic because there was a festival going on, so we would be walking to where it was parked. Dragging our baggage, we walked in a sad sack line up a wide ramp, out of the basement and into the bright, high-vaulted main station, out the big doors, down the street, across an intersection, past people, mainly young, some dressed in the fashionable gear of urban dwellers and some in outrageous costumes, along the side of The Royal York Hotel, across another intersection and on about two more blocks to where a white bus with nothing written on it awaited us. I was no sooner seated then it became clear to me from the sounds of confusion at the front of the bus that the driver had no clue where the train station was in Guelph. The woman who had led our sad parade was trying to help him program his GPS. Fortunately, a woman in one of the front seats said that she was from Guelph and would guide him in, which she did. By the time we arrived, Brian and Cathy had been waiting for a couple of hours. I will never subject them to such an ill- conceived trip again. They spent hours driving and waiting for me this time.

The last days in Walkerton were eventful. Not only did I see the whole gang again but also a ‘coydog’ invaded the barn. Cathy was almost attacked by it. As she opened the door one morning to feed the pigs, it ran past her and out. I was first aware of it when I opened the screen door to see her entering the garage on the ATV looking pop-eyed and disheveled. She phoned Dana who arrived soon after with the baby and a big gun. She left Alex with us and went out on the ATV to look for the creature. She didn’t see it, so we kept an uneasy eye out for it all the rest of that day and night. The next day she got a shot at it but missed and it ran across the field. It’s not been seen since.

Another flight was delayed on my way home as West Jet waited for customers to arrive, so more Van de Vyveres had to wait. They’re not famous for being in good moods at such times, but they were all admirably understanding this trip. I hope I don’t ask so much of them ever again. This time it was Bert, Rob and Joanna who met me in Kelowna. I said goodbye to Rob and Joanna because they were returning to Dubai the next day. I drove home to Vernon at around midnight local time, around 3:00am Walkerton time, took a Gravol and slept for eight hours. I’m back to new friends, biking and working in the garden. Life goes on.

Brian, David and Mark tasting the soju I brought from Korea for Brian. They liked the soju but not the dried squid that is on the plate in front of Brian.