Chapter XI 1966,The Later Months.

Eventually the day came when KMart opened, and that huge parking lot across Mountain Road from the end of our street filled up with cars.I don't recall exactly when that was, only that it opened around the same time as the school.It was kind of a big deal because there was very little else in northwest Moncton at the time, as far as shopping facilities were concerned.Usually we would still go downtown to shop, but gradually we started going to KMart more too.

KMart was a lot like the Walmart of it's day.As stores go, it was considered to be a place where you could get good value, so it's being placed in our end of the city was ideal, because we lived in an area that was new,and growing,and was home to a lot of young,middle class families.Right next to the Kmart was a Dominion Store.It really wasn't that big of a store, but it was shiny and new, and very convenient, being only about a ten minute walk away.Beyond that there was a barber shop, a beauty salon,ans a Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.At some point my parents began going to that bank, and later,my mother would work there.Where the bank was,the mall made a turn, and there were a couple more stores, including the American Auto Association.I don't really recall if there was a tavern there back then, but there came to be later.If there was then, I'm certain my parents would not have pointed it out.Kmart,back then was right at the edge of town.Mountain Road went past going north, and there was some development along there, but going east,down Mapleton Road,you were out of the city as soon as you passed Kmart.Beyond there it was still field and bush,and Mapleton Road went down a big hill to the Trans Canada Highway, a mile or so away.

Inside,KMart was unlike anything I'd ever seen.First, it seemed so much bigger than any store I'd ever been in before.In fact, it likely wasn't much bigger than Eatons downtown, because Eatons occupied several floors of an old building.But Kmart was sprawled across the landscape, giving the impression of great size.It really wasn't that big when compared with the stores of today, and it was only one story, but it seemed that you had to walk a long way to get from one part of the store to another.

For us kids, or at least for my sister and I, the Kmart experience began just inside the front door.There was a guard,or loss prevention officer standing at a little booth just inside the door.He wasn't exactly like the Walmart greeters today, but most of them would say hello as you passed by.If you were carrying any other bags with you,he would staple a piece of paper, a different color every day onto those bags.The thought was that if you wanted to slip anything else into your bags, you would need to damage the paper, and would be obvious when leaving.Just past the guard there was what I would call a snack stand,or deli of sorts.They sold things like coils of sausage,popcorn,caramel corn and other snacks.But the very best thing about KMart,or at least it was to my thinking back then,was the doughnut machine. KMart made doughnuts right on site,not in some back corner, so you could actually watch them being made.I don't know if someone mixed the batter, or if it came in a container premixed-I never actually saw anyone mixing it.But there was a sort of a hopper there,and the mix went into the top of the hopper.Once the machine was turned on,the hopper would release batter into some hot oil below.The batter would then be pushed around in a circle,until it had gone all the way around once,the a mechanical arm would flip it over,and it would go around again,cooking the other side.Another arm would then flip the fully cooked and still very hot doughnuts out into a tray,to be collected by the person working behind the counter.In those days I was fascinated with small, animated things,be they ants,or doughnut machines.My sister and I could stand there watching the doughnut machine all the time my parents were shopping.They would never really worry that we would not be there when we returned.Kmart was really big,and there were a lot of places for kids to get lost, and they did all the time-nearly every time we were in there.But I never got lost in there.I'd always be right by the doughnut machine.

Of course, there was a lot more to KMart than just a doughnut machine.Generally,once you entered the store,all the clothing was to your right,while all the things that were not clothes were to your left.At the back there was a sit down cafeteria,where we almost never went, because the food was expensive, and not very good.In the corner of the building there was a pet shop,which we would visit on almost every trip to KMart. There really wasn't a lot to see there.No dogs or cats that I can remember.Mostly it was fish and birds.Goldfish and tetras and guppies.Angelfish too sometimes.Budgies,canaries and finches.Every once in a while they would have gray or pink parrots,who some people said could be taught to talk.But I was never able to get any of the birds I saw in KMart to say as much as a single hello. At times KMart also had little turtles and lizards too.In all, it was a very small pet shop, but we liked to visit there every time we went.

Sometimes the doughnut machine was not working,so we'd have to go along with our parents to look at whatever it was they had gone shopping for.Mostly this bored me to death,so I got the idea to hide among the rows of clothing.I never really got very far away,and usually my parents could still see me.There were also these mirrors on the clothing section that were really a few mirrors lined up around a little semicircle so that when you stepped up to the mirror,you could see all around yourself.Or,more accurately,around yourselves,as the effect of the mirror was to produce reflections of reflections,so that there would appear to a whole bunch of you standing there.We had mirrors at home,but none of them did this, so I thought this to be very exotic.

In those years,as always,my parents would shop for food using the advertisements placed in the newspaper,the idea being to get the best price on everything by comparing.So,even though we used the new Dominion Store, and the old Mountain Way,just across the street, we still went traipsing all over town on grocery days.And from very early on,my parents were using the bank as well, as there wasn't another bank within miles.I'm not certain what it was that convinced my father to use The Bank of Commerce,rather than the Bank Of Nova Scotia,but once that bank was opened,we would go in from time to time.When I was really young,though, my father used to think that it was the patriotic duty of every Nova Scotian to bank at their homegrown bank.I didn't really understand his thinking at the time, but I came to see it as I grew up, only I sort of understood it in reverse.

Chapter XI,1966,The Later Months,,Continued

My grandfather may well have presented a problem for my mother, and perhaps for my father too.Looking back,it seems as though there might have been some tension between the two of them over his being there and,perhaps differences in family values in a larger way too.Certainly I can look back and see how there were things that brought that world my mother didn't wish to know about, or at least have us know about,that world that I call The World Just Beyond, a bit too close for comfort.As long as my grandfather was out of sight,he was to a certain extent out of mind too.But when he was around, there were things he said and did,perhaps that needed explaining, or that stuck out as being different.That kind of explaining was something my mother often chose to opt out of.

The language that came out of my grandfathers mouth when the pie blew up in the oven was not really typical of him, at least not when he was around us children.He didn't swear a lot, but in looking back I realize he was making a real effort to behave himself in that way.Often he got to the point in a sentence where you knew what was coming next, if you had even a slight knowledge of swear words and their use.And I had been educated in that at our babysitters. But then,my grandfather was quite good at editing out the unwanted words on the fly, and replacing them with some euphemism, so we rarely heard the cussing. I've come to think ,though that it was not his normal way of speaking, but he at least had enough respect for my mother to keep his mouth under control.

As far as being around us kids, he really made an effort too.But I don't think he was necessarily well oriented to small children.He would spend some time with us, and even  stayed with us at times when our parents were out.But he seemed to be caught in the realities of his adult world such as it was.At times he would go out for a walk with me, and at times both he,my father and I would go.All three generations at once.But that was rare.We walked down to the barber school once together, and we both got a haircut.On the way back,we came to Birchmount street, and I decided to take him on a detour,all the way up to where the school was,then down some of the back streets,almost to Killam Drive.He must have known I'd led him astray, but he went along willingly.Then, when we got home,he went down to the basement room and went to sleep.

Although my grandfather was sometimes left to care for us,he may not have been that attentive all of the time.He was after all an elderly man, and he sometimes needed to rest.Maybe he thought that children should go to sleep in the afternoon but we we were really beyond the point of doing so.But sometimes he would slip off into the new room and doze off.This was not necessarily a problem,because I don't recall that either one of us kids was really high maintenance at this point.We could watch television or play by ourselves for longer periods of time, but it did cause me some concern not having an adult right there and awake.One day my grandfather was dozing on the bed in his room-it had by this point been called his room- when I went downstairs and noticed a strange smell.Noticed would actually have been a bit of an understatement, as this odor was sharp enough to make my eyes sting, and it was something I'd never smelled before.My sister was with me in the basement,and started to cry.I wasn't certain that the odor was anything dangerous, but I knew for certain that I didn't like it, that it didn't really belong in our house.So I went into my grandfathers room and tried to wake him up.This took a bit of doing...much longer than I expected.When he came around I mentioned the smell to him.I was wondering if it were some sort of fire,but I couldn't see any flames or smoke."No",he said"It's turpentine." Somehow he had spilled part of a can of turpentine on the basement floor.He said that it wasn't dangerous,and I believed him.But I just knew that it was unpleasant, something I never wanted to smell again.I didn't really know that enough of it in the air could be dangerous if it was anywhere near the furnace, or near someone smoking.My grandfather smoked all the time.

I';m not certain if any of these little incidents contributed to disagreement between my parents, but they may have.My mother preferred keeping a much tighter reign on her children than what my grandfather provided, and so may have viewed these small things as a lapse of sorts.If that went far enough, I'm certain it must have led to some discussions that I was never privy to at the time.

Quite aside from these small things,there were some things about my grandfather that would have called for explanations, and were likely somewhat bigger issues of longer standing.First there was the issue of just where he lived.I'd never visited my grandfather up to this point at a place that I knew for certain was his place.I knew he lived in or around Springhill, but that's about it.Then, of course was the issue of where he did not live.Specifically, he did not live with my grandmother, and this all begged certain questions, as my other set of grandparents lived under the same roof.It invited certain questions about my grandmother too, and I suppose in the larger sense about the values of my father's side of the family.

Then there was the fact that my grandfather had once or twice made reference to being in jail.The way it sounded would not give the impression that he attached any real stigma to it.But it's very likely my mother, and perhaps even my father did.He also let it be known that he liked to drink rum from time to time.I didn't know precisely what rum was, but thought likely it was something that children were not supposed to know about.While they were building the room, my father and grandfather drank beer together, and I never though this anything other than completely normal. What my mother thought might well have been a different story.

Whether there was any real division in our home regarding my grandfather or not, I was never aware of it.There was never any fighting or arguing between my parents on that matter or any other.In all it was a peaceful time in our home.Sometime between Halloween and Christmas ,my grandfather left, and returned to whatever living arrangements he had before he'd come.Or perhaps he had no real arrangements. It's a bit hard to know for certain.

  

Chapter XI,1966,The Later Months,Continued

As I recall it,the weather stayed warm and nice a long way into the fall of 1966.My father and my grandfather did a lot of work about the place,building a room in the basemen,then a cold storage room right next to it, where we began to store things like carrots and potatoes. They paved the  driveway as well, and the work seemed to take a long while.Or maybe it was just that my grandfather stayed with us for some time after most of the building had been completed.By Halloween-it was the first Halloween I can remember much about, he was still there.I can recall waiting with him in the front yard,and being anxious to get on with the trick or treating.Then sometime after that he was gone again, and I'm not certain as to where.

My grandfather was a bit of a mystery to me.What I saw was a rather short,square man,who looked old, though not as old and frail as my other grandfather.He dressed out of style by a good thirty to forty years, in a grey Harris Tweed jacket, and a grey tweed hat,of the fashion preferred by British auto racing enthusiasts.His shoes were rather old, but he polished them often,so they were at kind of a dull shine most of the time.That's what he wore, even when he was building.Nobody wore safety boot back then, at least not when they were building in our house.My grandfathers hands were all scarred and he was missing a finger on his right hand, though his hands were not overly calloused or hard, possibly because of his advanced years.At that time he would have been very near to seventy years of age.In all, he was rather well groomed in his appearance.He kept his hair trimmed short, and I went with him, at least twice to the barber school while he was staying with us.

The room that was built was really built so that we would have an extra room, because we still had the same boarder as the year before, plus we'd had one or two other boarders in for shorter periods of time.One was a girl my mother knew from up close to Canterbury.I recall too that we had a girl named Isabelle staying with us for a short time. Then one day this car arrived and picked her up.I was sitting on the curb in front of the house when the car arrived.It had Prince Edward Island plates,and,though it must have been only a year or two old,it was about the ugliest car I'd ever seen.It was all painted in gray primer and was covered in mud and rust,and it rumbled because it's muffler was all rotted out.And it only had a windshield,and drivers side front window that were made of glass.The rest were covered with plastic.And that's the last time we ever saw Isabelle.Still, we had boarders, and my parents wanted to keep boarders for a while,so the new room was badly needed.But, as it turned pout,my grandfather occupied that room for most of that fall.Our one boarder stayed upstairs,in the room on the back corner of the house.

Not only was my grandfather a carpenter- a ship's carpenter,to hear him tell it- but he did a few other things that, though rather ordinary, kind of amazed me too.For one thing, he cooked.Now in our house, my mother did most of the cooking.My father could cook,but he didn't all that often.Once in a while we would have homemade french fries, and it was always my father who made them.He had what seemed to me the peculiar habit of keeping a small fire extinguisher by the stove when he did this. But I don't ever recall my father cooking things like cookies or bread or pie.But my grandfather did.At least he did once.

It was late afternoon, and the room downstairs was all finished. Outside it was just a glorious sunny fall day,and my sister and I were playing on the back steps.My grandfather was cooking a pie.Or,rather, he was putting a pie that my mother had made into the oven, where it was to cook for about an hour.So, at the back step, I could smell the aroma of fresh apple pie as it cooked in the oven.Neither my mother nor father were home at the time, but I'd gotten more or less comfortable with the idea of my grandfather running the kitchen.In all,he seemed competent and I've wondered if he didn't have some experience working at a mining or lumber camp as a cook.

But then, as I was sitting on the step, thinking about going out to the anthill to check on the ants, I heard a sort of a muffled pop. And, before I knew it, there was a big cloud of smoke coming pout the back door.Nobody ever really said to me that you were not supposed to run back into a burning house, so, that's what I did. Inside the stove, there was what looked to me like a huge fire, though in fact it couldn't have been that big.There was a lot of smoke though.It only took a few seconds for my grandfather to emerge from the hallway, and when he did, he was saying words that were more or less forbidden in our house.And he was saying a lot of them.He opened up the oven, found a coffee cup,and started firing cup after cup of water into the oven,where it hissed and steamed, and started to smelling bad.

Finally, I thought, I'd get to see the fire trucks come to our place. So I started out the back door, in the general direction of the alarm box up the street.Then I remembered that I wasn't supposed to go there by myself.On the way, I met our neighbor, the one that lived out back, along Crandall Street.He was just coming home from work, so I went right up to him and asked if he was a fireman, saying we had a big fire in the kitchen."No.",he said, "I'm not a fireman." I suppose that by this time it was evident to him that there had been a fire, because there was a ton of smoke.The neighbor asked if we were alright, and by this time, my grandfather had appeared at the door, with a partially burned towel of some sort, using it to fan smoke out the door.Inside, the fire was out, but the whole house stunk.

Sometime just about five O'Clock my mother arrived home, to a house full of smoke.The pie, now out of the oven and sitting in the kitchen sink was obviously ruined.It was just a black mess that didn't look anything like a pie at all.The insides of it were still all over the inside of the oven,in big tar like chunks,that were still boiling, along with all the water that had been tossed in.As it turned out, what had caused the fire was the fact that my grandfather had not poked any holes in the top of the pie, and had likely let it get way too hot as well.So it just expanded like a balloon until it popped, spraying apple pie filling all over the oven.Really, it wasn't all that much pie filling but it sure made an impressive amount of smoke.

My mother took things as they came, not getting too upset about the fire.But I was beginning to sense that she likely had some concerns about my grandfather.What, exactly those concerns were, I never really found out, because she would never say things like that in front of her children, or to my fathers father, out of what she believed was civility. But nonetheless, I'm certain the concerns were there, and they would become a little more obvious in the years to come.

Authors note to readers,part II.

Okay,just indulge me a bit here. I've been working on this memoir for about a year now.I started out with a time that predates myself,just to set context, and so far I haven't quite gotten myself to the schoolhouse door. But I promise, we're almost there.I'll resume the narrative soon.Just a few more entries at most to get us out of 1966,which has seemed intolerably long in terms of memory and writing.But I'm still having fun, still believing that this story is important, and still hoping that all of my readers are keeping up.It's not that I really see myself as being all that important, but I've come to believe that everyone should write a memoir.

I believe I've mentioned that I took up memoir writing about seven years ago while living here in Toronto for the first time.I'd had a fairly clear idea as to why I wanted to do that,and perhaps we'll revisit that at some length in some future notes to my readers.But I really want to take you into what happens when I meet with others from my writers group,each Monday that the library is opened.A little more than just a casual mention has long been in order.

So,when we meet,we select topics to write about.It kind of puts us on the spot a bit,requires us to improvise, but for the most part we are all experienced writers and up to the task. We are all contributors to the topic base, and, as of Monday, there were enough topics to fill up a small cookie can. What we do is draw a card out at random,and proceed to write on that topic, if we find it agreeable, or at least manageable, for fifteen minutes.We then read to each other. That is usually done twice in a two hour period, but sometimes three times. One of the traditions of this particular group is that we tend not to be critical of each others work.This is all about memory for most of us, the story telling is at least as much fun as the writing. I've come to describe it as a kind of hunter/gatherer activity,in which I gather together many of the materials for my memoir.Because, even though I think I know the story well, I'm always amazed how much I glean from listening to the memoirs,and memories of others. Toronto is a very diverse city, and our group tends to reflect that fact.So I've come to hear the stories of lives from all over the world. This group has been, over the years a fertile mine from which to gather the natural resources of memoir writing. Over the years we have written on topics as diverse as the police,bees,teachers,dogs,horses,puns,church,clocks, and the list goes on endlessly. Some of the topics really challenge me at first, but almost without exception, there is something in each topic that relates to my life.Moreover, it's the rare time that I can sit through a session and not be enlightened by the others who write on the same topic, thinking "I forgot about this,or I forgot about that." In all,knowing these colleagues has always been very much akin to being a kid in a candy store.

I mentioned that we sometimes, though not frequently draw a topic out of our cookie can that we may not find agreeable.Very few of these are rejected outright.The reason I mention this is because just such a thing happened this past Monday.And it just happened to be a topic that I had contributed,thinking"this is a great topic." We did proceed with it, though after some discussion.It may be that some thought it an awkward sort of topic.Still, all seemed to work out for the best.

Sometimes I'm inspired by really stupid people, especially those possessed of a really deeply philosophical kind of stupidity.One such person was a woman named Kelly Ann Conway, the woman of "Alternative Facts." notoriety. The phrase just seems ridiculous, like an oxymoron in which one word cancels out the other.But on thinking of it a bit longer, I thought that stupidity doesn't really limit the significance of such a notion.In fact,to get back to the topic of memoir, and in particular, thinking about and reconstructing ones childhood, it seems to me that much of my world was constructed of just that:alternative facts. Or,as another American politician called them,"inconvenient truths." Most likely they are not exactly the same thing,especially in the context of American politics,where a fact  can sometimes turn on what your definition of"is" is, but in normal,everyday,sensible talking and writing, it's rather easy to see how both exist, and how one creates the need of  the other. Thus are the many things of childhood explained, regardless of how inconvenient the need for that explanation might be. Thus, a woman might be described as a "housekeeper" when she lives with a man to whom she is not married, even when the house in question is very small. A child with an eye located on the side of his head might be explained as an "accident." That child's sibling who had six,not five fingers might prove more of a challenge to the fabricators of alternative facts. A person serving a jail sentence might be described, if that sentence is sufficiently short, as being "on vacation". The point being, that encountered "alternative facts" day by day, until I left my parents home.Nobody had really coined that phrase back then, but that's what my whole world was made of, especially when I was small.

Much of the process of putting this memoir together has involved a bit of a mystery to me. I've sorted through it at length,before writing, and for the most part I believe I've put the story together right, or at least in a plausible fashion.I may have some dates and the likes out of order, but my memory is not currently capable of dating things any more accurately, and at any rate, they are truthful,to the best of my recollection regardless of exactly when they occurred.So while that is mysterious,in a sense,It's not really the mystery. That lies in being a child, in viewing things through a child's eyes as they happen, and in having those things explained further to me by the adults around me, then in trying to recreate all of that fifty years later for the sake of memoir.Because the world seemed one way then, and quite different in the writing of it today. Today I tend to view it through the eyes of an adult writer, imposing an order on things that stem from my current understanding of the world. But, in truth, that seems to set the story slightly off kilter in my mind, and I'm not certain that I've got it right.

My parents,and the other adults around me were the true mystery.And it's a mystery that I continue to work through and around, but have never really been able to resolve in my mind.It's not that they were bad people, or,for that matter,good people. They were, I've come to believe just people trying to navigate their way through an often difficult world.In the early days, they were trying to do that without letting on how difficult that world was. Today, it's a very hard thing to pass judgement on, and back then passing judgement was not a thing that concerned me, because adults,in my world seemed omnipotent. Well, perhaps not all adults, but my parents certainly could do anything. In terms of undertaking a writing project like this however, that leaves me in a perplexing sort of a netherworld with a lot of unresolved questions.So how do I know that the thought of them being just people doing the best they could is really true? The short truth of it is that I don't.Not for certain.

By the time 1966 rolls around and finds me still not in school, but sitting in an anthill watching the older kids make their way up to the schoolhouse, my reasoning had improved, or really, just changed,because,of course,reasoning is a developmental process. The first practical implication of that fact is that my parents, and other adults were losing that omnipotence, as that illusion faded away and I began to understand people better.I began to see events as not just happening, but happening because of other events, or people. All of that has some practical implications for moving forward with this memoir in the here and now too. Do I try to speak with the child's voice as that child,me,grows.Do I describe the world I encounter through his eyes, knowing that his eyes are really not exactly the same thing as my eyes? Or do I impose an order on the world that is consistent with any insight I've developed over the years.The short answer again is both.

I love seeing the world through that long forgotten set of eyes, even though it gets filtered through my adult mind. Taking up that child's voice, reasoning as he reasoned is a wonderful sort of literary device at times.Kind of like presenting my own alternative facts,I suppose. But I really don't want to think in an unrealistic way, or encourage readers to do so either.You see, the truth is that I've viewed my world through many eyes over more than half a century. This is what makes the world mysterious,or perhaps I should say,preserves the mystery that is existentially within the world. But, I want to know, and I want writing to be that conclusive resolution to the mystery that is, rather than just allowing myself the pleasure of letting the mystery be.

Moving forward from the winter of 1966,things are getting progressively more complicated. That is not to say that my parents are comfortable with revealing such reality to their children.My mother in particular seemed to choose to be naive about things, and to encourage us to do likewise.It's not nearly as simple as her trying to preserve a sense of safety in our world, and I'm certain it will play out more and more going ahead.

By the time I'm sitting in that anthill, watching another boy incinerate an ant with a magnifying glass, the real world is starting to intrude on my world, such as it was, to say nothing of The World Just Beyond.That raises an issue of how to deal things in terms of writing about a world in which innocence is lost incrementally. Up until that time, I'd never really witnessed a world that was all that disturbing, aside from some cussing, a car accident, and thunder and lightening.And Hell, of course.Moving into my school years,things are turning.I'm about to learn that some really bad things can and do happen.I'm about to learn that people are not always decent to each other.In fact some people would come into my world whom I found deeply disturbing.I still do, these many years later.The question now, though is how to write about it.

Firstly, I have noticed a tenancy on my part to write about people without mentioning names.That suits me and my purpose fine.The people I present are all very real,though some are gone.Still,they may not be entirely comfortable being presented in someone else's life story, and I've tried to respect that as much as I can, while still telling the story.To the best of my knowledge, I've only presented one person by both a family, and a given name, and then only because the story depended upon a word play that derived from that name.Moving forward,I intend to follow pretty much the same policy, with one or two possible exceptions.Some people will appear who are public figures,and the thought is to present them as is,or at least as they appeared to me.The greater concern that I have is that there my well be people who I present who will find their representation unflattering.They may have family members still living, and with whom I have relationships with, that I value, but find that I must nevertheless tell unpleasant truths.Know that these are subjective truths and I would never want to willfully portray any individual as evil. That determination I'll leave in the hands of God. I've mentioned before that while I believe in telling the truth, not all truth should be told.The thing is to use truth that enlightens, and doesn't seek to damage for it's own sake.But it can be a thin line to walk,between being sufficiently edifying, and hurting someone.I hope that I end up doing that responsibly, and will be as diligent in my efforts to do so as I can.There are some difficult things ahead, moving out into the wider world. 

Authors note to readers.

Well,here it is nearly a year and just over a hundred entries into this blog.Chapters ten and eleven have seemed to drag on a bit more than I'd intended,but it seems an appropriate time to take a little break from the narrative to reflect on this project a bit.Both the number one hundred,and the time of one year tend to lend themselves to that idea,and while Chapter Eleven is still a few entries from being finished, I have reached a point in the story where taking a break seems appropriate.

From it's inception,this blog was always intended to be more than just narrative. I've always wanted to give my audience some insight into what goes in to making my memoir, quite apart from the story.A kind of backstage pass if you will, to all the little notes I make to myself, to the process that takes place in my mind as I write. This particular blog always has been and always will be about doing that, and now is one of those times to take care of that bit of business.

First things first.I want to thank each and every person who has ever read my blog, even if you've only done so once.My blog was always intended primarily for my family, but if you are of the larger family of man, I'm delighted that you've come along for the ride.When I check the readership stats,I notice I have readers from Brazil to Ukraine with many stops in between, and I'm honored that you would take the time to read the memoir of a rather ordinary person from Atlantic Canada.Let me encourage you to read,follow and comment on my blog anytime.

It has always struck me as strange,and a bit unjust that authors typically acknowledge and thank persons in the last few pages of their books.Often when I'm reading, I encounter characters whom I know are derived directly from someone who has inspired that author, without ever really knowing, as a reader,who that person was.Let me say again,if you've ever read what I've written,you have inspired me,and for that I am grateful. I do wish to acknowledge and thank certain people here,by name.

Krista is my sister and a longtime resident of Moncton,New Brunswick. We've been many things to each other over the years:friends,sibling rivals,strangers,and perhaps even enemies,but always siblings.I want to say,that through all that,I like who you have become and I'm glad you are my sister.You stand for, and stand up for good things.Thank you for reading and for the occasional comment.

My son Matt was born and raised in Edmonton,Alberta.But in talking to him,I seem to think that he also views himself as sharing some of the Atlantic Canadian identity.Let me thank you for reading this blog.It was intended to give you insight to your identity,and a sense of meaningful history.

Dorian and Katrina are my sisters children.Although I send them copies of each entry as faithfully as memory allows,I'm not certain how much they read.It always seemed to me,when I was young that it was the hear and now that mattered.History was of lesser importance,until one day when it wasn't. I hope you will both come to place where you can enjoy and appreciate all of what history offers, because it is a great place to be.Thank you so much for reading.

Lynn lived right across from our backdoor and she has lived there for a long time.She is a wealth of knowledge in regards to what our neighborhood was like long before I got there.Lynn,I have always found you comments edifying, and it pleases me that you read my writing and offer your insights.

Braunlyn is Lynn's daughter and a close friend of my sister.As such, she has likely spent more time in our house than anyone who didn't actually live there.And,of course she would have looked out her front window and seen the same thing I saw looking out a back window.We are close enough in age too that growing up where and when we did was a bit of a shared experience. Ms.B,I've come to think of you as sort of m,y Alpha Reader, and there are times I find myself writing for you.You read everything carefully and comment frequently,and I've come to know that if I can sustain your interest,I just may be doing a passable job of writing.

Kim is another friend from those childhood days, who lived within sight of our backdoor.Actually we were more acquaintances than friends in those days,as we are four years apart in age,and,to children,that is an eternity.So, in truth,we've become reacquainted through the wonders of social media,in particular Facebook.Not everyone shines in social media,but Kim,you definitely do.I can read your posts and we can chat,and I believe I get a very good view of who you are,and the sorts of good things that you stand for a believer in.All of that makes me proud to be from where I am from and you've become one of my most treasured friends in just the short time we've known each other-again. Thanks for reading,and for your kind and beautiful spirit.That is so uncommon in this world we live in.

Cheryl lives in Northern British Columbia.For reasons of her own she left home and joined me and many others in the diaspora of Atlantic Canadians, yet seems to be deeply rooted in our hometown as well.She is a passionate and well informed person,and though we often disagree on socio-political issues,she presents both belief and and truth with an uncommon grace. If a person were truly interested in learning to live well, they would do well to look to this remarkable woman as a role model.Cheryl,you once said to me,not that long ago, something that stands as one of the most inspiring things I've ever heard as a writer.You said"I hope you have a novel in you." To that end,let me just say that I've recently began a work of creative non fiction that is New Brunswick to it's heart.At the present time it is little more than a stack of research notes and a few written and typed pages.But long journeys are a series of sometimes small steps, the first few of which have now been taken.With God's grace,I look forward to that day, however far off it may be that I can present you with one of the first copies to come off the press,autographed of course.Thank you for reading,and for your encouragement.

I would be remiss if I did not also acknowledge my writing group here in Toronto, with whom I've met,and worked on the trade of memoir writing since 2010.The talented writers who have come and gone,as well as those who have remained with that group are far to numerous to mention,but nearly every one of them has inspired,and taught me something about writing."Iron sharpens iron." I wish to especially acknowledge Ms.Selia,who has grown into that group's facilitator, and without whom things would not work there nearly as well as they do.She has led a truly interesting life and I thank her for sharing some part of that with us. Lately,you have been more of an encouragement than nearly anyone I know.When you tell me that you enjoy my writing,I'm not at all certain that I am worthy of the admiration.It is nonetheless gratifying to be admired by peers,and that admiration runs both ways.

Jennifer is an employee of Toronto Public Libraries,and the facilitator of a writers group that I attend on alternate Saturday afternoons.Our group is rather small at the moment,but it has,thank to Jennifer,and the writers who attend a comfortable,welcome feeling.Thank you Jennifer for your interest,and the innovative ideas you bring to the group.

To anyone,anywhere,throughout the ages who has ever written or read memoir,or,for that matter anything else,you have my undying respect and admiration.We are fellow travelers.