The Eastern Family

Hamilton
Prior to leaving Victoria we arranged with Dick Paterson (a GMC specialist in his field) for a rebuilt engine and for Frank Gorrman to install it in his shop near Hanover, Ontario. We dropped the Motor home off at Frank’s to have its “heart transplant” and drove to Hamilton in his car. Good to have a smaller vehicle to drive around the city!

We arrived at Lorne’s dad’s in plenty of time for dinner and Sandy (Lorne’s sister in law) and husband Steve joined us at the Mandarin, a Chinese buffet restaurant with an amazing amount of choices. Lots of things I didn’t need to eat but had to taste anyway… Art really enjoys this restaurant; it is a welcome change from the institutional food he receives at Shalom Village. Art lives in a small apartment in Shalom Village, which is a remarkably nice facility. A bedroom, living room and small kitchen plus bath constitute his apartment. It is a small apartment but very comfortable and the furnishings are his own. The caregivers are excellent and provide good care for him. Lorne and I stayed at Shalom in a guest room they have downstairs and spent the days with Art in his apartment. Art is doing amazingly well physically and mentally for 96, unfortunately he is not a cheerful man.

The next day I had a great swim in Sandy and Steve’s pool with the great nieces and nephew, Raina (5), Daisy (3) (Geoff and Simona’s girls), and Barry (4) (Jordan and Marnie’s son). Such sweethearts they all are. Little Daisy smiles with her entire body! It was great to make a connection with these children; a difficult thing to do when we live so far away and don’t get to visit often. Dinner was at Sandy and Steve’s and Art had a bad fall off his chair – he bent over to pick up a pill he dropped – as if he could see it! He has macular degeneration, and is quite blind. We had to call 911 as he was bleeding quite profusely from wounds to his head, arm and hand (being on blood thinners certainly contributed to this bleeding). An ambulance brought him into Emergency where he was kept from 8pm – 2am before they finally treated him; by merely changing the bandages applied by the ambulance attendants! In my opinion it was quite cruel to leave a 96 year old man on a gurney for so long. It also seems very inefficient to keep 3 ambulance attendants and their ambulance out of commission for such a long time – the policy is that they can’t leave until their patient is treated.

Toronto
Lorne, Sandy and Steve and I drove to Toronto to have dinner with Karen. Lorne returned to Hamilton with Sandy and Steve to continue his visit with his dad. I stayed in Toronto with Karen for three nights. Karen’s kids Jordan and Marla came by for a visit; it was just so great to see them! Marla is expecting her first baby in March – this is such good news and absolutely thrilling for Karen who has needed some happiness in her life for some time. Karen continues her struggle with ovarian cancer; she has had a multitude of surgeries, two chemo sessions and now is on her second session of tamoxifin. The doctor says if she doesn’t respond to this she will have to have another session of chemo. As if this wasn’t bad enough she is in the midst of divorce proceedings and needless to say a generous settlement is not on the table. All of this is entirely too much stress! Karen continues to present her cheerful capable self in spite of it all; I don’t know how she does it. It is very fortunate she has a supportive family and many friends who love her.

The County
I took the train up to Bellville on Sunday, my niece Lorren picked me up at the train and we went back to her and Jamie’s for dinner with their sons Nile and Jackson. Jody, Caelan and Maya joined us for dinner too. I went back to Jody’s to stay overnight as Lorren was leaving early Monday for Toronto to help Micha move from one apartment to another in Toronto. I returned to Lorren’s Monday in the late afternoon as the plan was for Lorne to pick up the repaired motor home and drive to Lorren’s. Unfortunately the motor home had a few more problems than we anticipated (so what else would we expect?) so Lorne didn’t arrive until Tuesday night. Lorne was held up on the 401 for about 2 hours due to a homicide. Apparently a man was shot in a Lexus and tossed out of the moving vehicle onto the highway while he was still alive! Needless to say emergency crews were out in full force and traffic was backed up for miles!

Lorren and Jamie’s farm is developing nicely. They now have pigs, cows, chickens, huge vegetable garden, plums and apples, and pinot grapes. They have participated in a work program with Mexico and have two male farm workers working for them and staying on the property until the middle of October. They have accomplished a great deal with the help of Louis and Andres. Still in the planning stages are a pub and restaurant and another house. Jamie clearly loves the farming life which also supports his whole animal and sustainable and seasonal food ideology. Needless to say we ate very well.

Jody has done an amazing amount of work renovating her farm and farmhouse. She has such vision! Maya and Caelan are doing very well. Maya is such a bright little character! Caelan is a very pretty teen and is doing very well at school and sports. Mark is working at a top restaurant in Picton for some very nice people and really enjoys that. He is also helping Jody with the farm.

Brockville
We left Thursday morning for Brockville to enjoy a few days with Duane and Marg. We drove over to the US for a visit to the Remington museum and gallery. Such an amazing artist he was. We left Saturday morning with a plan to stop in Toronto for a quick visit over dinner with Karen, her mother Auntie Bunnie, Marla and her partner Shawn, and Karen’s friend Pam. I was also able to pick up the beautiful jewellery I had ordered from Karen through her website: anoccasionalpiece.com We continued on for a few hours after dinner, stopping in the pouring rain at a nice campground near Milton, west of Toronto. We seem to be hitting the tail end of hurricane Ike.

It has been all too short of a visit everywhere we have gone; wish we could stay much longer everywhere along the way. We are so fortunate as to have such a wonderful caring family and many friends, unfortunately they don’t live close to us, dang.