Re-storying Place

All these people are dead.

Of course they are. Rather, although they died long ago, they also died prematurely.

Maybe it was just bad luck or familial genetics. But just possibly it was the land they lived on, the farm they called home, which contributed to their demise. Yet, they loved this broader place, Southern Alberta, with its huge skies, often a deep almost indigo hue of blue, and the endless view from south to north of the foothills and the snow capped Rocky Mountains beyond.

These family members of mine are mostly forgotten to all except the few living who take time to look and reminisce about each. We would know them as unique, vibrant, loving, and beloved persons, people who enjoyed telling “tall tales”, and then laugh from the belly. And we would know what role, and its significance, each played in the life of the observant viewer.

In my mind they occupy a formative space, and, in different ways, each has had an impact on my life’s journey. I was even present that day, although I doubt if my mother knew she was pregnant.

The pretty fair-haired girl, in the buck-skin jacket and the centre of the photographer’s attention is Beverly. I remember eight years later, when she should be thinking about sweet sixteen dances, her patiently explaining to a seven year old the bandages on her arm were for the IV needles marks, about a defective heart, and about the need for heart surgery.

Born with a congenital heart condition, she died at age seventeen during surgery at the University Hospital in Edmonton. I imagine Anguish during the five hour drive from Southern Alberta to the capital, with everyone present knowing the stakes and the low probability of a successful operation. And the drive home being one of Quiet Sorrow.

Her mother Marian, in the checked jacket, died from liver cancer a few years after Bev. Her father Edward, his back turned from the camera, a cigarette between his lips was the consummate jokester, and the brother of my grandmother Ada. Edward became a diabetic around that time of his wife’s death, then having his left leg amputated a little later. A few years after that he too died from complications.

Prominent in the centre of the second photo is Ada, my grandmother and the eldest of five. When her mother died, Ada’s father moved back to England. Everyone called him Pop, his children and grandchildren and by accounts be was bigger than life.

Yet he left, leaving Ada to anchor his family and to keep everyone together. And she did, very successfully. She would host every family gathering afterwards, all must attend events. As the eldest grandchild, I often spent weeks at a time in the summer staying at my grandparents’ home in High River. There was a steady flow of guests, from distant relatives, old friends from their farm days, and even real cowboys who owned ranches in the foothills west of Longview.

Ada and Edward’s youngest sister, Grace (not present), married a New Zealander, one of thousands of commonwealth airmen that came to Southern Alberta during the Second World War. She spent the rest of her life in Auckland, but returned to Canada in 1967 and I remember her telling about Christmas at the beach. I remember her showing me her stainless steel syringe which she used to give herself insulin injections. As an eight year old I only thought nurses and doctors were qualified to inject drugs.

I don’t know the reasons for Grace’s visit. Maybe it was Canada’s centenary or a near twenty year absence from family, or Bev’s condition, or her own diabetes. She died a few years later, in her forties. There are parts of New Zealand’s North Island that resemble places in Southern Alberta, like the foothills around Longview or the Bar-U Ranch, which we often visited. I’ve wondered many times if she ever felt a pang of homesickness when remembering other family picnics from her Canadian youth with her Alberta family in those places thousands of miles from Canada.

The other two people in the photographs are Betty (on the right) and my grandfather Irvin in the background (of the first photo) wearing the white cowboy hat, cigarette in his mouth. Betty was a teacher and I loved listening to her speak. The voice was deep yet feminine its the tone soft and reassuring. She married Ronnie, Ada’s brother. She lived a long and fruitful life.

My grandfather did too. He was over twenty-five years older than my grandmother. He was active his entire life, yet he also physically suffered from this place. While in hospital a few days before his death he began coughing up from his lungs hard black lumps. When examined the technicians determined they were made of dirt and dust, the remnants of many years of managing a grain elevator, a once common sight on the Southern Alberta prairie.

My grandmother suffered for at least a decade with thyroid cancer and I remember at least three trips to the hospital to pick her up after a throat surgery. She had radioactive iodine treatments and on her last surgery, her right vocal chord was damage so she spoke softly and not as often as she once had.

During grade 12, I drove down from Calgary with a girlfriend and Grandma commented that her grandchildren were starting to become young adults. Of how it was wonderful that I would bring a date to visit his grandparents. But it made total sense to do so if you knew her hospitality.

The day after classes ended I left for the Arctic to work with the helicopters and she remarked that my journey was similar to her son-in-law Bob, who was an actual helicopter pilot (and greatly liked and respected by many of my future colleagues.) On my return in the late summer, I was attending a church event with my parents. To my grandparents my father was Jamie and I was Jamie Jr., but to everyone at his church he was Jim. So when there was a phone call for Jamie, and I just happen to be in the foyer, I was handed the phone. It was my grandfather telling me Ada had died. He thought he was speaking to my father. I could tell he was in shock, his voice’s tone and cadence unusually soft and slow. I said I would let everyone else know the tragic news.

So I did my best to keep my composure, to find my parents, and to let them know the unexpected passing of my beloved grandmother. She was 64 years old. I knew her death meant change and family gatherings would still be wonderful but her death cast a shadow upon our happiness.

Was it just bad luck, or familial genetics, or this place which contributed to their demise? This area of the prairies is well documented today for having high concentrations of radon. Or was lead a culprit, or the other chemicals Pop would sell in his store like the poison farmers would put out to control the gophers? Did any of these, or something else in the environment contaminate the ground water, which in turn, contaminated the well water?

In any case, I am proud to have known these people, to call them family, and I am thankful and grateful for the time I had with them. I am thankful for the memories of laughter, and good foods, of picking saskatoons, of great rhubarb or Saskatoon pie topped with whip cream, picnics of fried chicken, among sunshine and deep indigo skies, the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, and wonderful people.

I am thankful for them and their contribution to my life with its joys and its sorrows. I cherish these photographs for their connection to my past. I’m reminded of the Susan Sontag quote: “All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”

Photobiography