Uninhabited Spaces

We enjoyed a wonderful week in PEI. We were based down east, near the town of Souris, and had the most joyous stay on the island. 

Did you miss these posts? I’m going to sneak in another one, even though I’m technically in my 51st year. Been reading Bono’s outstanding memoir “Surrender”, and there’s a sentence I can’t get out of my head. It goes like this: “…you have the people you need right there beside you if you can see them”. This does not seem overly profound until you pause on the “if”. And there’s the rub. The “if” makes all the difference in the world. Take a moment to reflect on that. Did you miss the “if” in your life so far? Of course you did. We all do. We do it far more than we realize. Bono reflects on those “if”’moments to recognize the people who made a difference in his life. Looking back on my “Yearof50” series I now realize I failed to mention the positive, and very important, intervention of Bjorn T. Ramberg (pictured), who inspired yours truly so much in my 1989/1990 first year Philosophy class at Queen’s, that I switched from my original concentration of Political Studies over to Philosophy.

My family started to annually visit Lake Kipawa in the summer of 1980. A massive water system with 900 km of shoreline, Lake Kipawa is in northern Quebec and is part of the Anishinabek territory of the Kebaowek First Nation and also home to Wolf Lake First Nation. My sister Angela Kelly was born in August 1980 and was on the Lake not long after, a tradition continued when her son Kaelan Kelly arrived in August 2001. My sister Marsha arrived in March 1982, and I am sure she was on the Lake that summer too. I must confess one of my favourite memories of our trips is those Kellog’s mini-packs of cereal. It was the treat of the year to be able to have those sugar bombs for breakfast. Dad loved Lake Kipawa in a way that I can only truly appreciate now. He would spend hours trolling for Kipawa’s famed Lake Trout and Walleye. For this little guy, who just wanted to read a Stephen King novel or play with my Atari or Star Wars action figures, driving a boat for hours was the ultimate in boredo

My parents, especially my mother Jackiline , made sure that Christmas was always extra special for me and my sisters. We had two Christmas trees: one in the main living room and one in the family room. Dad always seemed to love to get the trees, always real ones, each year. Presents from the family were under the living room tree and presents from Santa were delivered by the old red-suited gent to the basement tree. Us kids made the decorations for the tree in the basement, and the main tree was a Victorian beauty done up by Mom. A Québécois family, Christmas Eve was especially important, and we had a traditional meal of smoked meat, tortiere, and plenty of yummy homemade desserts. We also opened up presents from the family. When I was much younger, I would attend midnight mass with my Great Aunt Marion. Christmas morning always began with my sisters barging into my room at some ridiculously early time and jumping on my bed to announce that Santa had come. Foggy, and still asleep, I w