DREAM

“Uncle Gillis!” Dad exclaimed as his elderly uncle descended from the train stairs at the Coquitlam Station,” What are you doing with that shot gun?” It was Christmas in the early 1960’s and Uncle Gillis was arriving from Tabor or Fort Mcleod, Alberta, for his annual visit to the West Coast family. Uncle Gillis talked…

I never remember wanting a sister even though my best friend through high school had three sisters and I thought they were mostly great and I spent a lot of time with their family. However, having a sister always seemed to me that you gave up a unique position within your family for questionable benefits….

“Maybe we could get your Aunt Mary to give a lecture on sex education at the high school while she is here,” Dr. Bob suggested to Dad, who appeared to agree. Imagine how I felt! I was a young teen, new to junior high school, having given up riding my bike to school and switched…

Following up on Anne’s theory that many of our “normal relatives” have their own strange stories, I offer some about my family. Our Grandpa Herb could swallow kitchen knives. It was a real performance, where he carefully showed us how there was nothing up his sleeve. Then he would lift it high above his head…

From my previous message “Nor was Martin Luther King, a Baptist minister and the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, ever mentioned in our church.” This brings me to the issue of racism in the church. I can’t say that explicit racism was a steady diet in our church. In fact, we often sang…

Growing up, I thought nothing much happened in Mom’s childhood or family. That was because we were raised on Dad’s dramatic legends of his small town, Drumheller, Alberta, the Fort MacMurray of its day, full of bootleggers, madams and shoot-outs with the police. The town characters, which included some of our own family, would have…

Subtitle: Radiance speaks a language badly (AGAIN) and the intersection of hairspray and candles. Greek Easter was my favorite holiday in Greece, just like Thanksgiving was my favorite when I lived in the US. That doesn’t mean that some of the traditions around it were explicable to a non-Orthodox person. Leading up to Easter, village…

This weekend being Easter, I started to think about Easters Past. I remember spending weeks sewing a turquoise patterned dress, a matching turquoise linen coat with lining that matched my dress and wearing it to church on Easter Sunday – the traditional time for showing off new clothes. I must have been about 14 or…

Since, Ken started the topic of going to church when he was younger, it brought to mind a few memories from my teen years at the Haney United Church. George Musallem owned the big local car dealership, Musallem Motors and Dad owned McDonald Fuels, so they both moved in local business circles. They both attended…

I have no recollection of first attending church.  Presumably I was taken from earliest childhood.I remember the name of the minister, Rev. Orthner, who was there as late as 1952 or 1953, but nothing else.I do remember Rev. Paul Edwardson, who was there as early as 1953.  He played trumpet and was quite tall. The…