Easing Back In

Mum and I looking simply gorgeous!

Yup – back in Canada.  Have been now for just under a week.  Initially tired but happy to see my family.  Mum, my two brothers, my sister in law, two of my nephews and one nephews girlfriend all went out for dinner on my second night home which was great fun.  The Brocklehurst clan is definitely a loud and raucous one.  Conservative quiet and calm conversation is not part of our mix.  Laughter and sarcasm is definitely more the style.  What can we say, the humour is heavily British influenced.

My buggy from when I owned a hackney pony named Smoky and he pulled this. Judy Winters now has this. It was a thrill to see it.

This weekend Mum and I went up to my brother Mark’s and my sister in law Carol’s cottage on Georgian Bay in Collingwood.  I always love going up there as that is where I spent the bulk of my pre-adult years learning to ski, having our farm and breeding horses, adventures, nature, outdoors.  Everything about it holds good memories.  Of course the area has grown and developed so much from when I was a wee 6 year old.

Mum, Ewan, Opal and Paul at my welcome home dinner

But now that I have travelled a big chunk of Europe and travelled to other equally enticing places in the world, I find myself, even now, drawn to history.  History that I have been aware of but simply not paid too much attention to.

Paul, Carol and Mark - hey Paul, why are you in the picture again!

In addition, today, Mum and I went to visit a lovely couple, Jack and Marg Winters who have been friends from the time we bought the farm back in 1974.  Jack brought us up to date and showed us around the area of our farm filling us in on what has happened to people and families we knew when we lived up there.  It is such beautiful country.  But I digress, and I will post more specifically on some of this interesting development and observation another time.

Karlyle and me

In the meantime, this is really about easing back in.  How does one do that?  I go back to BC in a couple of days to deal with the rest of my stuff and to pack up my car and drive back to Ontario to live with my Mum for a number of months as I plan my move overseas.  It is interesting though, when you don’t have your own home and have been away for so long, and don’t have work lined up, and seeing old friends and places, what goes through your mind and what emotions are stirred.

This is what Mum brings back from a day out with her girlfriends??????

There are still many people I will see once I return to Ontario.  I have not been living here for 15 years (I moved to BC in 1996).  And even though I have some dear friends back in BC, the bulk of people that I know in Canada area still based in Ontario.  Sometimes I am lured by memories and I think, “Ya, I could live here.”  Other times I think, “Oh, it would be great to live here and have this kind of life.”  But then other times I look around and think, “Ah, Canada, North America, so focused on things, big homes, big cars, material goods.  Where is the history, the preservation of time, the consideration of the future.”  They all are equally relevant and all are equally drawing.

Letting art speak for itself

I don’t know where I will be in 5 years.  But I do know that I need to look more closely and more carefully regardless of where I am, at the history and fabric that makes a place a place.  What drives that society.  What brings contentment and happiness in my life.  It may be a question I can never answer completely.  But I will never stop looking.

Letting art speak for itself

In the meantime, this blog has created a situation for me where I do look more closely at where I am, what makes me happy, what makes others happy, what are relationships and what do they mean.  What is life about afterall.  Stay tuned and keep watching.  I only can talk about things the way I see them.  They are not right or wrong.  They just are.