Christmas Spirit - Past and Present!

I taught school for 30 years. And for each and everyone of those years the smiling faces of the little children on Christmas Concert night was the one thing bound to awaken in me the Christmas spirit.

For sure there were other festive things that did the same thing - my own children's excitement, Christmas lights, decorating the tree - but Concert night cemented it for me. Their sweet voices some melodic and sweet, others brash and bold singing their songs; the pretty dresses and special hair-dos for the girls and buttoned shirts, ties and slicked back hair for the boys; the smiles and applause of the audience members... Who could be a Grinch or a Scrooge after a night like that!?

I will never forget the feeling of relief when the last strains of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" faded. Neither will I forget some very memorable events like watching a Kindergarten student stuff all of her very voluminous dress into her tights as Mr. King delivered his closing remarks. Hey! Who could blame her, he did have a tendency to be longwinded when he had a captive audience! Oh the memories!

Since my retirement - it has been 8 Christmases since my Kindergarten class sang "Christmas in the Harbour" - finding the Christmas spirit has been a hit or miss each year. My precious babies have grown up and become world travellers. British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, England, France, India, Nepal, China, Ethiopia have all been home for one or the other for Christmas morning.  And to paraphrase Simani, "Christmas is not Christmas if the family's not here!"

Well this year was looking pretty bleak, Ryan and Raisa in Ethiopia, Erin and Liam (and their one day off) in China, Mark and Des in Jamaica, Matthew, Mel, Natalie and Agathy in Alberta. Bleak indeed. Despite the outside lights and the decorating inside I was having a very hard time finding the ho ho, jing, jing jingling, bells on bobtail ring feelings. I even tried baking!  Ate the entire cake... Nothing.
I pinterested the heck into my Christmas decorating... Zilch. I dug out my 34 year old elf and perched him on the mantle... Na-da.  Bleak, bleak, bleak.

Last night we had tickets for Celtic Christmas. And upon arrival in the centre I realized I had bought those damn awful floor seats FF and not row F. Grumble, grumble ( me, not Paul) ... Not a great start to the night. Tight seating and neck strain, not good.  Then something magical happened. One of the first songs of the night was a song Arthur wrote about Christmas at Uncle Joe's. I didn't have the pleasure of meeting my father-in-law but through Paul's stories  and photos and clips of his appearances on "Land and Sea", I feel like I have known him all my life. And that's who the song is about. I have heard it before, own the CD even, but last night it did what our primary school children did for me for so many years. Now as most of you well know, Con and Arthur O'Brien are as far from cherubic school children as anyone can possibly be, but that song oiled the rusty hinges and before the night was over the gates swung wide open. I sat there and listened to Con's magnificent rendition of "Oh Holy Night" and was transported back in time to the Christmas Eve service when 9 year old Erin melted our hearts with her performance of the same. Fred Jorgenson's song of Christmas on the Burin Peninsula, took me back to the very few but precious Christmases I spent with my grandparents before my grandmother's dementia tore our world apart. And then Con sang the song that made me tear up... Yeah I admit it ... I bawled... "Heading Home for Christmas".

And I realized how lucky I am to have these wandering children of mine. How truly fortunate I am that they are happy and healthy even if they are far from home for yet another Christmas. Maybe there will be a year when with babes of their own, they head home for Christmas. After all, isn't that what Christmas is all about? Hope for the future, thankfulness for the past and pure enjoyment of the here and now.

It's here folks! It's here! It will soon be Christmas and the spirit of Christmas is alive and well in my heart! Thank you Con, Arthur, Fred and your sidekicks! Drop by the trailer next summer! I own you one!

Now I think I had better go make another cake... Might even enjoy this one!

Lots of Love From Lethbridge... Drop in for some of that cake before it's all gone!

Sheltie Love

It has been many years since I fell in love with Lassie.  Lassie - the books, the TV show, the movie... the dog. What a beautiful dog. Then 30 or so years later when I met my husband to be he told me that around the very time that a whole generation of kids were begging their parents for a Collie, his dad came home with a beautiful Collie pup. Right at the peak of Trudeau mania,  there was no other choice... the dog was named Trudeau.  I kinda hated Paul for a minute... you know that flash of red hot envy that streaks through you when someone tells you they had something that you had set your heart's desire on? Yeah that was me.

But as dogs often do, Trudeau met an untimely, tragic end ...but I still have my  89 cent hardcover novels from W.W. Young and Sons General Store!

And all Paul has are a few blurry photos and many, many years of wonderful collie dog memories. Take that O'Brien! (Lame, I know.)

Well my love of Collies stayed with me, through a dogless childhood, into the ownership of a cute little Beagle, a Blue Belton Setter, and two miniature Schnauzers.  All loved. All cute. But not a Collie. Then somewhere during my early adult years I met a Sheltie. He was a sweet little thing, tiny and just a little bit yappy and just so pretty. And I knew then that I would never own a Collie. I would  someday own a Sheltie. Or what's probably more accurate, a Sheltie would one day own me. And I grimace just a little when someone calls a Sheltie, a Miniature Collie... because seriously? They aren't!

Fast forward to 2005. My 47th birthday and I "just happened" to wander into Pet City and into the dog section ( Thankfully pet stores no longer sell puppies and I agree wholeheartedly with this decision).  In one of their glass fronted kennels I came face to face with the dog. Gangly, 4 month old mahogany sable Sheltie. I smiled and walked away. Then walked back. He was lying on his side, long legs extended and his eyes staring off into space. I shook my head, told myself that he was too old and too set in his ways, too broken  AND we already had two dogs at home. Then the back door of the kennel opened and they put a little Jack Russell terrier in with him and he came ALIVE! He was a different dog! Playful and happy and curious.  I looked at Erin. Erin looked at me and I took out my cell phone and called Paul. And the rest they say is history. Insanity's finest hour

And what a history it was. He was year old before he could jump up on a sofa. He barely mastered the three steps between the two levels of the house. Sometimes it took him five or six tries to get up the steps into the trailer. He was a BIG Sheltie standing almost 20 inches at his withers and weighing close to 40lbs.. ( anything over 16" for a Sheltie is oversized). The other two dogs barely tolerated him despite his best efforts to be included.  And he was a timid dog. SO timid. 

Yet he had SO many good points that he left a mark on our hearts that will be there forever. He loved kids and kids loved him. If he got out through the gate of the yard, you only had to look at the front door of the house to find him, lying there waiting to get in.

He scared away every crow that flew in the sky, every squirrel that dared climb a tree and his efforts to keep the driveway next door free of cars could only be described as heroic. He chased each and every car up and down that driveway and I tell ya, if that fence hadn't separated him from the drivers, he would have licked them to death!  When someone tells you that a Sheltie can be territorial, believe them!  Finn took his territory very seriously, A very meek and mild Sheltie would be let in through the front door and he would go directly to the back door to be let out. And then he would put on a show - racing from one corner to the other, his tail a flag blowing in the wind. His head held high as surveyed  the sky searching for any bird that dared invade his airspace. King Finnigan!

He loved his hikes on the East Coast Trail and went for miles dragging his leash behind him, constantly looking behind him to see if we were keeping up and circling back to round us up in good Sheltie style before heading on down the path always a few steps ahead of us.

Finnigan  (and Gus) outlived Brady, the apricot poodle-terrier mix  that came to live with us when my ex-husband got sick. And then Finn outlived Gus, the schnauzer who had cancer and crossed Rainbow Bridge  15 months before Finnigan did. Finn was 7 when his seizures of two years became unmanageable and began to cause damage to his sight, his balance and his hearing. The charts that I was keeping showed more frequent, longer and more violent seizures. I was a nervous wreck, listening through the night for the telltale noises of yet another bout of seizures that would sometimes come in threes and fours and leave him exhausted and disoriented for hours.  And we asked ourselves if we were being cruel to keep him with us.  I read everything I could on seizures in dogs. I joined internet groups devoted to seizuring dogs, kept every vet appointment and advocated for drug changes and cooked good wholesome food for him.  And then I found this:

"When our pets are suffering, they don’t reflect on all the great days they have had before, or ponder what the future will bring. All they know is how they feel today. By considering this perspective, we can see the world more clearly through their eyes. And their eyes are what matter."  

Well, Finn's eyes were clouded that Sunday morning when I called the vet. He growled at me as I approached him on the deck but then he recognized my voice and  as I sat down at his level he nuzzled my face and licked my cheek just as he had done a million times before. 

After a pet dies, one of three things is likely to happen.  You get another pet immediately. You swear off pets forever. Or you grieve and slowly heal and then consider getting another one. Well I was sure I was sworn off pets forever. Losing Gus and then my beautiful Finn in just 15 months was just too much. And I rationalized it so well in my mind. I could wear black again and sit on the sofa without getting covered in dog hair! I didn't have to worry about kennel cough and rabies vaccines and did I de-worm him yet this month? We could just pick up and go anywhere without kennel costs, and people who didn't like dogs could come to our house. The freedom was infinite! And the hole left was immense.

Our time in Inuvik came just 6 months after Finn's passing. I had told Paul that I would go anywhere with him as long as we could drive and take Finn with us. So Inuvik was a long ways away? No problem. He would go ahead and find a pet friendly apartment. He'd fly home and we'd drive up in June when the roads opened up. Easy. But Finn died before then and the next 22 months was a healing time for me. And two weeks after arriving home in June of 2014, I made the call and had a lovely chat with the man behind Windy Meadows and the most beautiful Shelties I have ever seen.

But we still weren't decided. I wrote the deposit cheque but didn't mail it. And we discussed all summer the pros and cons of putting the deposit down on another puppy. This one from a superb breeder right here in the province. A tiny, perfect puppy with none of Finnigan's issues of being so old when he was adopted. Then Paul decided for us with just five little words, "I miss having a dog." The day after Labour Day we drove to Branch and saw the prospective mommies and the beautiful daddy to be.  And  I left the cheque.  

Sailor was going to be Sailor whether male or female. Sailor Moon if it was a girl and Sailor Boy for the male. A good choice I think.  Sailor Boy has turned out in his three months with us to be a plucky little fellow. When he wanted to come into the house when he was a tiny little fellow, he would anchor his front paws over the doorstep as far as he could reach and scramble with the back ones to get himself inside. Plucky. He mastered the steep basement stairs in just two tries. He has been jumping on the sofa since he was three months old. He was SO easy to housebreak and stopped chewing on precious objects the day he got his last permanent tooth! He loves the car, visitors, cuddles and does tricks like they are going out of style. Rollover, fetch, bring it back, play dead, Sheltie bow, sit, high fives, give paw... a dog genius I am sure!

There are bound to be ups and downs in this dog loving process. And as sad as it will be when the day comes, I hope to outlive this little guy and cry over his passing 10-15 years down the road. Until then? Come visit us and get to know our little fellow. I promise you will leave here covered in dog fur and dog kisses... if you let him! 

And I am happy to say that it was great decision because there's a lot of puppy love... here in Lethbridge!

Inuvik Musings

Wow, it has been awhile.
I REALLY intended to continue my blog while I was in the North. You know, a hardcore assessment of living conditions, working conditions, food situation, and of course a brutally honest "only Lori could say it" commentary on the people I met along the way. I really, really did.

So what happened? A number of things actually...
1. Windows 8 stole my thunder and tried to suck the soul out of me. Nasty, nasty bug, that Windows 8.

2. Coming out of retirement after 5 years was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Just the getting out of bed in the cold, dark mornings and then later trying to sleep through the never-setting sun was really hard on me. Paul whistled as he walked to work. I trudged up that hill by the apartment like I was going to the guillotine. Writing was the last thing I wanted to do.

3. I knew I couldn't do a good job in my blog about Inuvik- the people or the conditions. I was too homesick to be fair.  My perceptions,  too slewed.  And the day I added my first Inuvik friends to Facebook I knew I couldn't ever write what I was feeling. And let me interject here that when I say Inuvik friends I include everyone I met while I was there... the folk from the south, newly arrived or firmly entrenched; the people born there and people who moved in from smaller communities outside of Inuvik - everyone no matter their birth place.  I knew that to them, I would come off as a mean-spirited southerner (everyone not from the Beaufort Delta is a southerner no matter where you come from).  My critiques and observances would be read as being criticism and vilification. And who knows, maybe they would have been correct in their critiques and observances.

4. It was a good point in my life to stop writing. That blasted novel all neatly typed and filed away on CD-Roms, went with me, but I knew it needed to sit for awhile before I could even begin to attempt the final copy. It still sits today. Probably should get back to it before the technology that reads CD-Roms becomes obsolete!

But I am back in the "south" again.  Every morning that there was light I exited our apartment building and looked to the southeast... to home. I think if we had been transported to a beautiful exotic place where all I had to do each day was relax and enjoy the pleasures of life, I would have still missed this rock. Wayne Chaulk says it best, "...this island that we cling to.."  I felt many times that I had to apologize to the people around me for not enjoying my Northern experience any more than I was. Recently I sat with friends who we met in Inuvik and tried to explain that it wasn't so much that I didn't like Inuvik, it was my overwhelming sense of having lost something very special that clouded my perceptions.


I will never forget the sunrises and sunsets of Inuvik and the days when the sky glowed brilliant pinks and reds and oranges from dawn to dusk. The children of East Three Elementary and their gift of laughter and smiles will always be mine to cherish. The friendships forged in Inuvik, through the daycare, the school and the hospital will last a lifetime. Each time CBC runs an item from Inuvik, I scan the faces to see if I can see a familiar elder who I had met or a child who I taught. I scan Facebook looking for stories from my teaching colleagues - those who are still there and the 7 of us who left the Delta last June. My day brightens immensely when Paul tells me that one of them  has asked for me and how I am doing. I still read Inuvik Rant and Rave and enjoy every picture that the school posts on their website. Inuvik touched me and it changed me.

 And I will forever be grateful for orange juice that doesn't cost 4.50 a litre.

So folks, I am home! And sending best wishes to all my Inuvik friends.... from Lethbridge with LOVE!