Christine's 50th

I was out for a walk one afternoon plugged into my music when a song by Delbert McClinton (Midnight Communion) came on.  All of a sudden I was a little girl, sitting on a back porch listening to music I've come to call, "Back Porch Music".  It's the kind that just makes you tap your feet and bob your head (while at least that's the effect it had on me).  I can hear an accordion, a steel guitar, my grampa's mouth organ and drums, and a wonderful fiddle.  Every time I hear this kind of music it takes me back to my childhood.  When I think of my Grampa Albert I ALWAYS think of music.  When my Gramma Dot taught at the Hutterite colony, back porch music was a regular thing.  My grampa would pull out his instruments and before you knew it there was a crowd gathered, many having brought their own instruments to play along. And yes, washboards and spoons were really a thing in the day.   While I didn't inherit my Grampa's gift for music I did inherit...

Dad and I started dating in December of 1971.  In December of 1972 we realized we were pregnant.  In looking back it was a surprisingly calm conversation about what to do, and to be honest, it was a conversation that wasn't unfamiliar in those days.  Dad had been away to university and we were really missing each other.  We had talked about moving in together and had already had many conversations about getting married so this wasn't a case of, "I guess we have to. . . "   We took it all in stride and knew we wanted to get married before the baby came.  Fortunately for me I was very fit and the pregnancy did not show so there was no gossip that we knew of. In the spring we planned our wedding for May, three months before the baby was due and six months into the pregnancy. The story everyone now knows began innocently enough.  My parents were never particularly supportive during challenging times, anger was their first reaction to most situations. ...

Many of my childhood memories centered around going up the lake to the cabin.  The first trip I can remember was when all 7 of us went up in a very heavy wooden boat with a 3 horse motor on it.  It was a very slow trip up to the top of the lake to the cabin that Dad had built many years before with 3 or 4 other single guys.  Apparently the rule when they built it was that if any of them got married they were out.  I guess that's why I only remember going there once. Mom and Dad bought the current cabin along with a good sized boat, a larger engine and a boat house for what I remember was $1200.00.  I could be wrong as that was over 60 years ago.  We spent a lot of time every summer up at the cabin, sometimes for a week or two at a time.  I have a lot of good memories from our time there such as building rafts from the logs that were in the area; Brian casting off the rocks; going over to the Cruickshanks River where Dad tried fly fishing; and many days...

                                                          Georgina Victoria Anne Brown (Watson) May 24, 1934 – July 6, 2023   Born May 24, 1934 in the heart of the Great Depression shaped my mom’s life.     Born to Dorathy and Albert Watson in Rimbey, Alberta my mom was an only child.  There was another baby born the following year but did not survive so it was Mom, Gramma Dot and Grampa Albert moving from Hutterite Colonies to First Nations communities where Gramma Dot taught school and Grampa Albert looked after the home front, a rare occurrence in those days.   Music was a big part of my mom’s life growing up.  She played the guitar, piano and accordion and was quite well known around the Calgary Stampede as she played in the barns and on a chuckwagon in the opening parade for many years. ...