Posted by John Lambert on July 25, 2009 at 20:00:47 user John.
In Reply to: Re: Thoughts on posted by Mike Dennis on July 25, 2009 at 07:48:20:
A couple of people have indicated they wondered what happened after the wind blew off my cap in mid-Atlantic. With much trepidation, because I don't want to bore anyone, what happened was this. The year after my mother and I arrived in Vancouver, a distant relative of my brother-in-law invited us to the east coast of Vancouver Island for a week's holiday. My mother was there, and four or five other grown-ups and for the first otime in my life no one warned me or scolded me. "He'll come to no harm," my mother was told. We lived in a little cabin on the beach with pump water and an outside toilet. There was also a high sandy cliff with heaps of sand at the bottom. Along with three or four other children, I spent most of our days leaping from the cliff and landing in the soft sand at the bottom. When we weren't being weightless for a few seconds, we were swimming in the ocean warmed by rippling over what seemed miles of sun-warmed brown sand. It was here that a friendly gowwn-up taught me how to swim.
I was allowed to sleep outside on the sun porch within sight of the sea. I was awakened by a friendly Irish setter who would poke her nose into my face and show her teeth in a wide happy grin. "Get up lazybones", she would say.
At night we would all sit around a log fie on the beach and watch the sparks fly upwards and lose themselves among the silver-studded night sky. One of the ladies produced a guitar and sang me Canadian folk songs, while I sat close against her side. From time to time, pink, blue and green curtains shimmered across the northern sky. "Northern lights," she told me. Sometimes we would take a rowing boat out over the dark face of the sea and watch the phosphorescence drip in yellow and green sparkles from the oars. During this magic time of long, lazy golden days and silver nights everyone was kind, gentle and patients I didn't know adults could be like that. I was Captain John, Roger, Susan and Titty, venturing into this incredible new land - Canada.