Backpacking Hamill Creek Trail

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End-of-summer road trip

We flew Erin out of Kelowna to go back to school. Kelowna is less expensive from a flight standpoint -- and much more reliable in the winter, when the Cancelgar airport earns its unendearing nickname -- but it involves eight or nine hours of driving instead of three and unless one is masochistic the necessity of an overnight in a motel. So we've tended to fly her out of Castlegar in the summer, and Kelowna in the winter.

But this time, with a significant shopping list and two growing girls needing new clothes, we decided to drive to Kelowna and make a bit of a road trip out of it. The Delica makes road trips quite lovely with its bright and airy interior, flexible seating and iPod compatible stereo system. So we got up early the night after a spectacular thunderstorm and headed out. We dropped Erin off at the airport and headed into the land of big box stores and malls.

Sophie is wealthy from her summer of restaurant work, and even Fiona has accumulated a nest egg from her various bits of paid work in the community and her allowance. So they were happy to meander the mall with their debit cards in hand, sometimes with me, sometimes together, sometimes on their own. Sophie has a self-described addiction to frugality and such a conservative intuition about her finances that budgeting is sort of beside the point: she'll never spend too much. We first tried releasing Sophie into the wild a couple of years ago on a similar trip and the results were successful beyond my wildest dreams. She spent so little, and bought so much, and what she chose was really neat stuff: appropriate, slightly funky, stylish, and well-balanced to her needs.

With Fiona it's hard to say how she'll do managing all her own purchases; right now she's so limited in choices by her tiny size (girls 8) and relatively sophisticated sense of style that there's a completely justifiable tendency to snap up whatever works. (In our area, the only store selling clothing in girls' 6-14 sizes is the Walmart 90 minutes away. The consignment and thrift stores there rarely seem to have much either, as I suppose there are scores of girls facing exactly the same dilemma who live nearby and can snap up things as they come in, while we can only check every few weeks.)

We spent the night at a nice motel with a pool and waterslide. The next day we meandered around the city, shopping for the various household items on our list. And we checked out the most amazing hole-in-the-wall-of-and-industrial-area diner-type restaurant.
Then we headed north, taking the long way home. Our first stop was in Enderby where we snagged a cheap motel and then went to the drive-in. I had last been to a drive-in in about 1990 with Chuck in our cranky VW Westfalia. We'd found a spot in the back row, popped the top, and watched Dick Tracy from the upper-level mattress, propped up by pillows and frosty beverages from the fridge below. Even then it was a sort of retro experience that we felt lucky to be able experience.

Now, 23 years later, that theatre is closed and the Starlight is one of few remaining drive-ins in Canada, one of only three in BC, and the closest to us by far. It seemed like something the kids should experience at least once. We parked backwards near the back of the theatre, opened the hatch and laid the back seats out flat. We made a trip to the Snack Bar for all the standard fixings. The rear bumper of the Delica made a lovely shelf for drinks, and the popcorn bags fit nicely in nooks to the side of "bed."
It was a pretty awesome experience. The weather was lovely: we were warm with just regular clothes. The audio channel broadcast 1950s and 60s tunes about cars and car culture. The van was comfy as heck. The girls' favourite part of the showing was the 1950s cartoons beforehand, complete with little animated chocolate bars doing tight-rope dances, and reminders every sixty seconds that "the show starts in ____ minutes." We watched Pacific Rim, which was fine. The content of the movie wasn't why we were there, of course. We were super tired, so we didn't stay for the second show.

The last day we drove north again to pick up the TransCanada highway before heading east and then south again to get back home. This brought us alongside the CPR at the site of the completion of the trans-continental railway in 1885, the famous Last Spike locale in Craigellachie, BC. Fiona and I have been reading our way through pieces of Canadian history over the past year or two, and it seemed only right that living so (relatively) close to this site we should stop and visit.

After that we went on to visit the Revelstoke Railway Museum to complete the day. We had driven by it many, many times on our trips to and from Calgary getting Erin to her lessons there, but we'd always been focused on just getting the trip over with and the kids had never wanted to stop and explore. So this time we did and while it wasn't exactly the most mind-blowing museum we'd ever been to, Fiona did get her model-building ambitions extremely excited upon viewing the huge model railway on display, as well as some of the other diorama exhibits.

Then it was a familiar hop-and-skip across the ferry to home. Noah had finished his last couple of shifts in Sandon. Sophie has a weekend of restaurant and baby-sitting work but has Labour Day off. And then the big kids are back to school and the rhythm of life will change and it will truly be fall. It felt lovely to grab a last few footloose days of summer.

40th Anniversary SSSG Trip

This year was the 40th anniversary of the Suzuki program I grew up in. The program back "home," in Ontario, a place I left in 1981, where none of us lived for a while but where my sister and my mom now live again. A few months ago I had been warned that I was expected to attend the celebration at the end of April. As one who tends not to do a good job of maintaining old relationships, I tend to balk at the prospect of school and college reunions. I live more in the here and now. I'm not much of one for nostalgia. But this was different. I wanted to go. 

Fiona, my sister and me puzzling over quartet music

My brothers were both coming. So were the kids who were part of the chamber group I grew up with. Unlike my friends in high school, my relationships with these kids had been an authentic part of who I was then ... a part that had stayed with me even through the years of no contact. Now we were all pushing 50. Wow.

Erin was still in exams in Montreal. Noah and Sophie were off on tour with their choir during the week that overlapped with the beginning of the anniversary celebration. So Fiona and I decided to go just the two of us, leaving Chuck to work and to be the parent after Sophie and Noah returned. We would attend the gala weekend, then drive up to Montreal after Erin's last exam was over and use our rental vehicle to help Erin move from the "mansion" where she's lived the past two years to a tiny bachelor apartment in the student ghetto. And then the three of us would fly home together.

The weekend was amazing, from the family time with siblings and raucous restaurant meals to the gala catered dinner, the alumni performance I was part of to the final performance that involved alumni, alumni offspring (i.e. Fiona) and all current students playing together at the big new (to me) performing arts centre.

Me, my two brothers, Fiona, my mom and my sister at the banquet

Afterwards there was more family time, and we spent time at my mom's jamming with some string quartets. Fiona even got to play along for a movement with the big people.

Backstage at the performing arts centre with a veritable flock of Bach Double-ists

And then -- what were we thinking?! -- we drove through Toronto and all the way out past Ottawa to Montreal. We cleaned the heck out of Erin's old place, packed her stuff, drove through traffic-and-construction-clogged downtown Montreal back and forth and back and forth and back and forth with our little compact car, delivering boxes and piles of things. And cleaned more, and slept on the floor, again. And cleaned more and drove more through downtown. And then bashed our way back through rush hours in Canada's two largest cities once more a day and a half after driving east. We escaped without any real mishaps and miraculously no parking tickets. 

We arrived home very tired, two of us with crashing head colds, but delighted to have been able to attend. Reconnecting with family and friends was amazing. Fiona was a wonderful travelling companion; she put up with everything happily and loved meeting everyone, whether she knew who they were or not. And it was lovely to see where Erin is ensconced in Montreal. 

Most of the living room floor at Erin's new place. Did I mention it is small?

Spring Break in Hawai'i

The snorkelling was amazing.

I've been somewhere tropical twice, both times to Baja California. Once by VW bus, once, in an extravagance borne of at deep Northern Ontario winter, by plane. The last time was 22 years ago. Our last attempt at a real family holiday away, in 2008, was an abject failure. So we were excited but also rather cautious about the prospects for a true mid-winter tropical holiday. When Noah broke his foot a week before we left, we hoped that was it for misfortune this time around. As it turned out, this was the case.

Papaya tree off our lanai. Stuff for smoothies!

 We got on our flight without incident. Noah's crutches earned him early boarding, which was a nice bonus! We had a breath of tropical air in Maui before skipping over to the Big Island on a short flight.

We had rented a house about 40 minutes south of Kona in a rural neighbourhood overlooking the Pacific. The house turned out to be perfect: spacious but not grandiose, nicely appointed but without the sort of opulence that would have made us nervous. It had two bedrooms plus a loft with a bed, two bathrooms, a nice open living area and a lovely lanai (deck) running all the way around. There were lovely neon green geckos that inhabited the exterior of the house and the railings.

Kilauea caldera at night

From the deck we could practically touch the papayas and coconuts hanging from trees. There were baby pineapples and avocados on the property as well. Another popular fruit tree was the noni -- but purely for ornamental reasons, as its fruit is known colloquially as the vomit fruit or starvation fruit, as our noses attested upon close inspection.

The neighbours' roosters, some wild turkeys, yellow-billed cardinals and mourning doves filled  the air with lovely sounds, and at quiet times we could hear the waves crashing on the beach below. "Below" meant 2 kilometres along a winding road which led relentlessly and precipitously down to a lonely pebble beach; grades were as high as 22%. It's amazing what is possible with road-building when there is no possibility of snow!

We ate at home, mostly, but also did occasional lunches at various small restaurants along the highway between where we were staying and whatever was the snorkelling or sight-seeing destination of the day. We had about a week in Hawai'i and filled it with a fair bit of chill-time at the house, day trips here and there, and a fair bit of snorkelling.

We took a day at Hawai'i Volcanos National Park. Noah was able to do a couple of short hikes with us: one through a lava tube and another into part of the caldera featuring sulfur crystals and steam vents. We headed to Hilo for dinner and then returned to Kilauea after sunset to see the fiery glow of the crater lighting up the steam and smoke above. Volcanic activity here isn't nearly as impressive as it was 10 years ago, when lava was pouring across roads and into the ocean on a daily basis, but there it is still in evidence throughout the park. Fiona is now busy putting together a science fair project about lava ("The Effect of Agitation During Cooling on Crystal Formation").

The kids definitely enjoyed snorkelling, and the reefs were amazing. Fiona was the most obsessed, spending as much time in the water as she could. The first day presented a bit of a learning curve: fitting one's mask, learning to clear a snorkel, putting fins on at the right moment, and managing to get into the water from rocks with waves breaking across them. The surf was low (relatively speaking) during our visit, but for people who rarely deal with waves of more than a few inches on their home lake, even 1-metre swells were intimidating when they were bashing across rocks and fish and other unknown marine obstacles.

Boogie-boarding at sunset

But when that undersea world opened up, with its incredible variety of friendly, brightly-coloured fish, the tide, so to speak, turned. The first day was fun but challenging. By Day 2, it was nothing but fun. We saw an amazing variety of boxfish, tangs, surgeonfish, iridescent parrotfish, butterfly fish, trumpetfish and moorish idols. We had bought a little aqua-pac so that we could use a point-and-shoot camera underwater. Unfortunately the bright light of the water reflections prevented us from being able to see anything much in the LED view screen so photos were shot pretty much blindly. I had been madly entering GoPro Camera sweepstakes for a month before, but had failed to come up a winner. Here's the video we could have shot at the beach we visited the last two day if we'd had one.

Gecko friends

The weather was lovely. Overcast for at least part of most days, and downright rainy for an occasional morning, about 75 degrees on average, yet with enough sun to risk burns if we weren't careful. I managed to run a couple of times without dying in the heat. We spent time at the pebble beach playing in the surf. We got creative weaving palm leaves. We encouraged geckos to wander up our arms. We floated on the ocean at sunset. Noah discovered that if he could get past the crashing waves safely, once floating his foot was quite happy in the ocean.

We made a stop one day at Pu'uhonua O Honaunau, the Place of Refuge. There we saw sea turtles, native carvings and structures, artisans at work and a pretty cool outrigger canoe in the process of restoration. We liked the market in Captain Cook, where we were able to stock up on mangoes, salsa and lilikoi butter. The latter was first discovered in a leftover jar in the fridge of our rental house. It's a glossy bright yellow butter the consistency of smooth peanut butter, made from passion fruit (lilikoi). We came home with one precious 250 ml jar of the stuff. If I ever find passion fruit on sale by the case-lot in Canada, I will certainly be making my own lilikoi butter!

And we kept watching Downton Abbey, a nightly ritual of two episodes, finishing season 3 the night before we left.

The trip home was uneventful. Noah was able to walk on his cast by this point, so we checked his crutches and boarded flights with the masses rather than with the infants and the disabled. We took a different route, stopping at a border town with a "shipping services" business. We had had delivered there a bunch of things that don't ship affordably to Canada, including a big clothes order for Noah which he was thrilled about, and binoculars for Chuck. And more practical things like a replacement motor for the fan in our range hood.

We picked up the dog on the way home. She had been having a holiday of her own, staying in a home-stay type situation down the valley. She'd had some troubles playing nicely with others, as she isn't terribly well socialized to other dogs but seemed happy and healthy. The cat had been subsisting on occasional visits from a friend at home, and was in raptures to see that we had returned. The weather was kind when we returned: we had a couple of days of real spring-like weather and sunshine before we headed back into cooler temperatures and eventually more snow.

Seattle at the MarQueen

 We had chosen to drive to Seattle and fly to Hawai'i from there because we knew not only would it be cheaper, but it would be better not to rely on the small airports closer to home that are subject to up to 30% flight cancellation rates through the winter. But then Chuck's locum booked his flight into Castlegar and it was of course cancelled, so we ended up having to wait around for 8 hours while he flew into an alternate airport, rented a vehicle and drove here.

All of which made for a very late departure, but the kids, Fiona especially, were insistent we leave on Saturday anyway, even if we only got a few miles across the border. Which is about what happened. We got into Washington State, grabbed a very late supper at a really cruddy Chinese place and checked into a room at the nearest chain hotel. All in all things were going really well, though, as no one seemed to be developing appendicitis.

Space Needle reflected in the exterior of the EMP Museum

The next day we had an easy drive to Seattle. Through the Columbia River gorge, past the wind farms, over the Snoqualamie Pass and into urbania. We stayed at a neat hotel in the heart of Seattle Center in a heritage building. The MarQueen was built in 1914 as a training centre and boarding house for Ford metalworkers, most previously working as blacksmiths. The rooms were all suites, so we had a bedroom, sitting room and kitchen all nicely appointed with period decor (and about the same price as a nice hotel room in Castlegar!) and a real feeling of being back in the past. There was room for everyone, with a special bed-sitting area for the gimpy boy who had broken three bones in his foot a week earlier and was on crutches with an air-cast and not wanting to do much walking around and sight-seeing. A hundred years old or not the MarQueen had wifi and that kept him happy.

We spent a day and a half in Seattle. We hit up some neat ethnic restaurants for meals, explored Seattle Centre, spent a day at the EMP Museum viewing the Icons of Science Fiction and History of Video Games exhibits, cruised the monorail, peeked into Pike's Place, did a bit of shopping, and then, pre-bedtime, mainlined Downton Abbey episodes. 

Artisanal day trip

I had to go pick the van up. With our family shrinking, and the monthly trips to Calgary no longer happening, my desire for a more winter-worthy minivan is no longer a pressing need. We decided to put some work into the Sienna. I took it in to get the catalytic converter replaced to fix the "check engine" light but it turned out that there was several thousand dollars of more urgent work that needed doing. Oh dear. They kept it for a week. We enjoyed a light little Corolla loaner. Then it was time to go retrieve the Sienna, and pay the bill. 

Fiona had been wanting to visit the east side of Kootenay Lake to see the artisans. The last time we had been there she was too young to remember. There was a Barefoot Running Clinic in the village to the east of us that morning, so we decided to go a meandering eastern route to Nelson to pick up the van. 

First we stopped for the running clinic. I had heard that the clinician had run more than 6000 barefoot kilometres on trails and was hoping for some tips on sole conditioning, so that I could begin to more effectively marry my two running loves: barefoot, and trails. So far I can only run real distances barefoot on roads. But alas the clinician had run "barefoot" on trails, not actually barefoot. As in, wearing minimalist shoes. To me, running barefoot means, well, like, not wearing shoes. I've begrudgingly accustomed myself to the marketing term "barefoot shoes," but I still think that "barefoot running" (as opposed to "barefoot-shoe running") should refer to skin-to-ground.

Ah well, the clinic was an excellent introduction to minimalist running and barefoot-style form. It seemed to be exactly what the majority of the participants wanted and needed. I didn't get anything much out of it, but it was nice to see so many enthusiastic runners, most of them newbies. 

After that Fiona and I grabbed some lunch and headed down the lake to catch the Osprey 2000. This is the big ferry. We're used to taking small ferries across Arrow Lake, the simple flat-deck ferries that carry a dozen or two vehicles and offer as amenities a couple of garbage cans and a collection of tourism brochures. The M.V. Osprey is a different animal entirely. It carries up to 80 vehicles, takes more than half an hour for the crossing, and has an observation deck, a lounge and a snack bar. Better still, as part of the mainland highway system, it's free!

It's on the way to Cranbrook, where we play in the Symphony, so I've taken the older kids on it several times in the past year or two. But Fiona hadn't been in ages and didn't remember it. She was entranced. The weather was lovely. We visited the snack bar for drinks. We stared out the big windows in the lounge, we let our hair be blown in the wind on the observation deck. 

Then when we got to the other side we drove 5 minutes to Crawford Bay. Here there are a collection of artisans with open workshops, gift shops and displays. The blacksmith wasn't working, but that was no big deal: we have one of those at home. We did spend a fair bit of time watching the lady enamelling glass onto copper, looked at the blown glass, perused the pottery studio, and spent a fair bit of time at the weaver's store and studio. 

Janet, the primary weaver, was out of the studio, which was too bad, because she's the elder sister of a very good friend I grew up with in Ontario. I've met her a few times and she's lovely. But the best part is that I have this memory of the mysterious Janet coming to visit my city in Ontario when I was maybe 13 or 14. She was living in the mountains of BC; she had a bunch of children, they gardened, they homeschooled, they lived in a log house off the beaten path, far from highways and airports, they lived in the forest, they baked their own bread, they hardly knew what TV was. It seemed so exotic! And now, except for the TV part, I'm living more or less the same life a mere 60 miles as the crow flies from her. 

Anyway, we stopped in at the broom-maker's before heading back to the ferry. Broom-making is such a quirky craft: definitely not something you see at every historic village or craft fair. We own a couple of their brooms already. I love watching the weaving and finishing process. 

We had time for ice cream and beach-combing before heading back. The pebble beach featured some lovely shades of weathered quartz that we don't see much on our stretch of lake. Naturally we brought a few pocketfuls of special stones back with us.

We made it to Nelson in the nick of time to retrieve the (expensive!) van. It was a great way to spend a day. As is typical, we don't often make the effort to be tourists in our own neck of the woods. Every summer we vow to delve more deeply into what our area has to offer: there is so much to see and do right out our back door. This day was a good start.

March Break for Fiona

March Break, the one- or two-week spring schools holiday, has never had much to do with us, other than loosening up our out-of-home activities schedule. But with Sophie in school full-time, and Noah part-time, it's gained relevance this year. Those two headed off to Montreal to visit their big sister. And that has made Fiona an only child for a week. With siblings gone and activities on hold, we felt we needed something nice to fill things up.

We had to drive to Calgary to get the middle two on their flight. So Fiona and I made a excursion out of it. We spent a half day at the new Calgary Science Centre (better than the old one, but still not in our top three, and over-run by busloads of Alberta schoolkids who are not on their March Break for another week or so). We went shopping for summer things. Fiona is a great shopper. She likes clothes, but has an eye for bargains and a healthy skepticism for brand names. She was very excited to buy a tank top for gymnastics. After holding our breaths all year, we were finally able to get her registered for gymnastics beginning in April. So buying a gym tank was a major highlight. Then we picked up a couple of small items other people had asked us to buy for them, and in the process wandered past a place that offered ear piercing. Fiona had decided a couple of years ago that she would pierce her ears when she was 9, and then a couple of weeks ago had decided the time was finally right. So she marched in and asked the person at the sales desk and within ten minutes had some lovely little studs in her lobes.

The next notable excursion was to the zoo. We took the C-Train rapid transit system there, which was an exciting adventure all in itself. We enjoyed the penguins, and assorted other wacky animals. It's a relatively small zoo, with enclosures that aren't nearly as spacious and natural-looking as those in Toronto.  We talked a bit about the ethics of zoos.

While Montreal was enjoying summer-like temperatures, we were having a blustery cold day, so we mostly stuck with the indoor exhibits. New to us was the plant and butterfly Conservatory which had opened a little over 2 years ago. Fiona was absolutely entranced. It was quiet, and warm and practically creaking and squeaking with the sounds of growing plants. We spent almost half our zoo time with the plants.

The next day we got up super early and headed to Lake Louise ski area. We put in a few huge runs. It was cold, though the sun did its best to warm things up a little. Fiona got to experience her first rides in a gondola, and on various chair lifts. She was amazed by the length of the lifts and the runs. 

We had a lot of hours of driving ahead of us, so we didn't stay beyond lunch-time, but it was a lovely morning. 

Now we're home, and poking around for a few special things to do here too. Today Fiona cooked dinner for her parents and her grandma. We had Tuscan Bean Soup, fresh-baked herb buns, and tapioca pudding for dessert. She had a little help along the way with the main course, but mostly it was her cooking that brought it all to fruition. 

Noah's path

Erin and Sophie look like the ones making the big moves this year, but Noah is on a new path of his own that represents at least as big a shift.

He stopped computer-gaming. He went through a phase early in the summer of watching movies (dozens of them -- classics from the past five decades or so). And then that tapered off and he started writing. In on-line discussion forums devoted to Big Ideas (and some small ones too). To friends far and wide via immensely verbose chats. And on a blog somewhere in his own private corner of the webiverse.

He matter-of-factly decided, sometime over the course of the summer, that he was ready to go to school part-time. Maybe a course or two. Maybe a bit more. And he'd like some new clothes, a few of them, that actually fit and looked nice. And a haircut, please.

He started practicing his viola. A lot. He was suddenly in love with the entire Schubert Arpgeggione Sonata and the Rapsodie from the Bloch Suite Hébraique. His playing started to really soar.

And so it goes. We're now two weeks into the school year. He's at school a little more than half-time, taking Social Studies (i.e. Canadian History), English, Math and Writing. He seems to be opting for the high school diploma route and is well-situated, being a couple of credits "ahead" based on the work he did through the DL program last year. As a home-based learner he'll also be earning credits this year in Choral Music, Science, Digital Media, PE and possibly also Physics. He's going to be busy with Summit Strings, a number of gigs with the Symphony of the Kootenays, and of course the Corazón Vocal Ensemble.

And the travel! He's not only willing, but almost enthusiastic about travelling away from home and family. September includes a week-long cross-curricular out-trip through the BC interior and Alberta. October is a three-day trip to Banff for WordFest with his writing class. November he'll be off to Edmonton for a Youth Choir Festival. March will likely see him travelling to Montreal to visit Erin. At the end of April he'll be going to Cuba with Corazón for ten days of performing, workshopping and touring about.

He seems really happy and energized. I'm so happy for him!

Erin's move

Well, there she is. In Montréal.

We delivered her to the airport in Calgary two days ago. She arrived safe and sound at the rambling old empty house belonging to a friend of a friend, where she is renting part of the upper floor as an apartment. She arrived with her violin, the backpack containing her laptop and various arm's-reach essentials, and two huge suitcases containing her chemistry textbooks and as many of her worldly possessions as would fit within the 50+50 lb. weight allowance.

My brother, who lives within easy distance of Montreal, suitable for a quick overnight visit via train, was able to take a bag of winter bedding and clothing with him when he left after the reunion, so she has some more accoutrements available to her there. And the house is furnished, thankfully.

In the past couple of days she's managed to figure out the ancient gas oven downstairs well enough to successfully bake cookies, has bought herself a printer for her laptop, has made several trips downtown for groceries and kitchenware, contacted her teacher, cooked for herself and got in touch with her landlord to deal with some small issues pertaining to appliances and utilities. She's found a grocery store that delivers, and is going to head out bike-shopping in the next couple of days.

All in all, it seems to have gone smoothly so far.

Cessna over the Slocan

Chuck and Noah were invited by a friend to take a trip in his Cessna. Can you imagine a more amazing place to tour the local scenery? They've both decided we need a plane of our own. That would certainly make it easier to get to Calgary! What an amazing experience for both of them.

A tale of two provinces

Where would you rather be tomorrow? With us in BC, freezing our butts in the rain at the Friday Market, or with Erin in Ontario, dripping with sweat while trying to rehearse with the symphony?

It's been like this for almost a week, and tomorrow isn't even the worst of it. It's been 10 - 12 ºC a couple of times this week when I've got up, and temperatures where Erin is have got as high at 38 ºC. Today with the humidex it was equivalent to 45.

By the way, if you're in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia or New Hampshire and you're interested in hearing a great symphony performance, you might be able to catch Erin as the National Youth Orchestra tours these areas over the next three weeks.

Her summer

This is where Erin is living right now. Curiously enough it's the same university residence system I lived in when I first left home. Almost, but not quite, the same building.

I dropped her off at the airport a couple of weeks ago. The day before we'd arrived in Kelowna in time to do some shopping. She bought herself an iPhone 4. Three and a half years ago we bought a family cellphone that was a low-end dinosaur even then. Erin has used it during her various travels so far, but it was time to move on. She needs a phone of her own, something with more functionality. She won't have a land line next year, so the cellphone will be it. She needed a few gizmos to take with her for the summer and the fall: an iPod for listening to repertoire (hers had died a couple of months earlier), a metronome, a GPS device to keep her found when running and managing public transit, a camera, an alarm clock. The iPhone is all those things, and more. She subscribed with a Montreal number, so she's all set.

For the summer she's in Ontario, on the UWO campus. She arrived without any difficulty. NYO staff picked her up at the airport. Sweet! She's sharing a room with nice violist whom she really likes. She has 6-10 hours of music programming a day. She's trying to practice 3 hours and run 5k each day in addition to that. Within three days of heady music immersion she was saying that it felt like she'd been there her whole life already. She's lost her sense of time. Days seem like weeks. The intensity of the musical and social experience is playing tricks on her mind like that. She's found friends to run with. She performed the complete Haydn Sunrise Quartet today, and loves her quartet-mates. Everyone is awesome -- they're so musically capable, so motivated, so friendly and unassuming. There are occasional swing dance sessions for recreation. Meals are veggie-friendly and delicious if you stay with the salad bar.

The schedule shifts from mostly strings / mostly chamber music to a full symphonic focus in the next couple of days.

In short, she's thrilled. She's in her element, with young people just like her. If you're in Ontario, Quebec or the Maritimes (or even New Hampshire) you may be able to catch the NYO in performance somewhere on their tour schedule.

Montreal visit

Random wrought-iron work

Erin and I went to Montreal together this past week. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, how it was that she went last fall to "check out the University and get some lessons" and came back saying that she needed to move there now.

Well, not really. I already understand where her cravings for the move come from. I understood the allure of independent living. And I understood the lack of appropriate musical opportunities she's been dealing with in our hometown for the last three or four years. We made this trip to try to develop some understanding of how the logistics of such a move might work. Still, I was genuinely curious to see the city and its musical opportunities through Erin's eyes.

Day One in Montreal was the most telling. We walked around in the morning to check out some apartment possibilities. Oh my! Even on a frigid late-March day, with the accumulated trash of an entire winter revealing itself in the remnants of dirty frozen slush on the sidewalks, the heritage and character of this city revealed itself. People live in apartments above restaurants, boutiques and cafés. They live in row houses with astonishing turrets, wrought-iron spiral and straight staircases, colours and stonework and huge high ceilings. And dumps and dives and rickety fire escapes and tiny one-room studios with sloping floors. But character is everywhere!

Row houses near Carré St-Louis

Erin had a lesson scheduled that first afternoon with one of the teachers she had worked with last fall. We walked from our cute little B&B near the university to the teacher's home on the Plateau. I sat in on the lesson. The working relationship the two of them had was amazing. They clearly like each other a lot, and Erin responded so well, and with such good humour, respect and focus, to everything she was asked to do. She played her new repertoire (Wieniawski Concerto #2 and the Bach g minor Sonata) and there was an excellent mix of repertoire-specific musical polishing, technical development suggestions and instruction about practicing technique. So much to leave with after just an hour! I kept imagining "What if Erin could get this kind of lesson every week? Would she ever go places!" That was when I really understood why Erin came home from her Montreal visit last fall telling me that she needed to move now.

Possibly Erin's future home?

At the end the teacher told me that Erin is a very special student with incredible promise, and that I needed to make sure that she had a very good teacher for next year, her last pre-university year. I reminded her about our remote location and the unavailability of regular lessons and ensemble experience, and told her about Erin's hope to live and study in Montreal next year. Erin had alluded to this in her e-mail but hadn't been very specific about it. Would she consider taking Erin as a private student, outside of her McGill teaching? She said that doesn't really teach a private studio (she has one private student), and is very busy and doesn't yet know her schedule for next year, so she wasn't able to promise, but she said she would very much like to. Very much. By the end it sounded like an almost-for-sure to me.

We also met her husband, a world-renowned violin maker, as she sent us to him for a sound-post adjustment. Erin had spent a lot of time in Calgary over the past several months trying to get some acoustical issues with her violin ironed out, with only partial short-term benefit. A few minutes in this Montreal workshop and everything was perfect! He too was extremely encouraging about Erin's playing after hearing her try out the adjustments he had made. He asked who she studied with. We explained we were from BC and had just been trying to talk his wife into taking Erin on as a student. He promised to try to twist her arm for us!

We met some friends and friends-of-friends here and there, met with my brother and sister-in-law who drove up from Ottawa for the day to meet us, and Erin had another lesson, this time with the concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony. (He was very positive about her ability, and it seems would be willing to teacher her regularly, but the interpersonal chemistry didn't feel like it was there the way it was with the other teacher.) We ate bagels, travelled the metro, wandered around a bunch of different streets and neighbourhoods. And we talked to the conductor of the most advanced Montreal youth orchestra, who agreed that given the logistics of travelling from BC to Montreal to play for 20 minutes at the beginning of May, a DVD audition would be sufficient -- a wonderful option to have procured.

So ... a few leads, a lot of possibilities, and a feeling that we're moving forward with the right contacts towards the kind of experience Erin has been needing for some time.

Update....

email received by Erin this evening:

"It was a pleasure to see you again! I have to tell you that my husband was very impressed by you and your playing ... he came back home encouraging me to take you as a student (usually he wants me to be less busy); that means that if you decide to join my studio next year , I will make sure to keep a place for you."


Woot!

Montreal chat

Erin is in Montreal, checking out the McGill music faculty and falling in love with the city all over again. She was there for a week in 2008 on an exchange trip and loved it then. This time her perspective is different. She's not there for a visit; she's looking to live there, and soon.

Last night we managed to chat for a while on-line. She's had two lessons. Liked both teachers a lot, but loved one of them, and thought she was "adorable." The French accent probably didn't hurt. It sounds like they connected really really well. Both teachers basically told her she'd have no trouble getting into the performance program and that she should focus on trying to win scholarships. She got some input on her recital performance pieces and on general posture and technique and tone stuff. She has one more lesson with another teacher today, as well as the McGill open house to attend. It was lucky good timing for this trip that the open house happens this weekend. Hopefully she'll get some helpful information and impressions from that. Though the real money for her is in the personal and artistic connection she thinks she might be able to forge with a teacher there. So far things are looking very good on that count.

She's dreaming of an apartment. A small funky somewhat scuzzy one in a run-down building within a few miles of the university, near a metro station, that she can paint "blue and purple and chalkboard," and fill with IKEA furniture, tea, an espresso machine and strings of LED lights. She's using whiney "pleeeeeeases" with far to many e's to ask if she can possibly live in Montréal next year, during her last pre-university year, as soon as she finishes her high school coursework. Did I mention she's fallen in love with the city? I was already entertaining thoughts of an arrangement of some sort in Calgary, but Montreal is so darned far away. Soooooooo darned far. (This issue just cries out for strings of repeated vowels.)

Four years ago I wrote about how, in raising our kids, we've tended to compress or entirely skip many of the intermediate stages. We've let the kids stay little and dependent for as long as they'd like, and then let them be independent and autonomous as soon as they're ready. But (gulp!) does this translate into letting my country bumpkin move more than 4000 kilometres away at age 17 to a city of a million and half, completely on her own and without the support of a university environment? I don't know ....

Traveling

We seem to be traveling more than ever lately, and in so many different directions.

Erin was off to Banff last week for WordFest, a writers' festival that the school's writing classes attends each year. She's an old hand at the trip: this is her third year. She enjoys it, both socially and educationally. This year an assistant teacher who had just met her on the trip expressed incredulity that Erin had ever been shy. Uh, yeah ... in fact she's still shy, but she can definitely come across totally differently in the right environment, the writers' festival trip being the right environment. She had fun.

Since that trip put Erin 85% of the way to Calgary, we opted to drive out and meet her at the end of WordFest and drive her on to the east to the big city for a violin lesson, with Noah getting a viola lesson on the same trip. This entailed staying at a new, interesting hotel in Banff, so the younger two decided to come along as well. We drove out on Saturday afternoon arriving mid-evening, left for Calgary at 8 Sunday morning, fit in the two lessons, then turned around and drove the whole distance home, arriving mid-evening. Doing this with the two eldest in a day and a half is one thing. I figured that with all four it would kill me. But actually it wasn't so bad. The kids travel so well now. They nap a lot. They don't whine. They are accommodating with their bathroom and food needs. When they're awake, they are enjoyable. They invented a game called "Rock, Paper, Random." It's a word game that's sort of a cross between Rock, Paper, Scissors and Apples to Apples. You and your opponent yell out in tandem "Rock, paper, ___!" inserting some random noun at the end, and then you table arguments as to why your random word wins over the other person's. The most convincing, or elegant, or witty argument wins the round. For instance Noah's "door" won over Sophie's "tooth" once he reminded us that you can tie a loose tooth to a doorknob and yank it out.

Yesterday Fiona went off to Nakusp for a skating outing at the arena there with a couple of friends. Today Noah, Erin and I head 90 minutes south to Nelson for youth choir and a meeting about the 2012 trip to Cuba.

And then tomorrow at 6 a.m. Erin leaves with a couple of friends to Montreal. Last summer Gwen Hoebig recommended the McGill performance program to Erin and suggested that if she could find a way to get lessons with particular members of the violin faculty this would be helpful to her future prospects. So when we found out our friends were heading off to visit another (mutual) friend who is currently a student at McGill, we asked if Erin could come along. She has lessons scheduled with three of the top violin faculty. The lessons are well-timed: with her recitals coming up she can certainly benefit from getting different perspectives on her performance repertoire, and also from the opportunity to just play for lots of different people. And getting herself known to these teachers is definitely a good thing. She'll be back after the weekend, in time to make it to her weekly gig as accompanist for the community choir. And then in the next three and a bit weeks she'll have two or three trips to Kelowna for rehearsals and recital, and one or two trips to Calgary for lessons. Yikes.

The day after tomorrow Chuck, Sophie and Fiona will be heading to SW Ontario for an extended-family get-together. Chuck's mom's 90th birthday is coming up, and there are new great-grandbabies in the family to meet. Chuck is the youngest of his mom's eight children, and Fiona is the youngest of her 20 grandchildren. There will be many more great-grandchildren in the future. Sophie and Fiona have already been recruited as part of the church-basement-decorating committee, and will be playing their violins as part of the musical entertainment. They'll be gone for just four days, two of them spent in travel. Not relaxing, but they're definitely looking forward to it. Fiona hardly remembers meeting most of the extended family ever. She knows some of them via Facebook, but is very excited to meet them in real life.

And Noah and I: we're staying home for six days straight. Yay!

Raptors

While in Duncan we visited a raptor centre a few minutes from the place we were staying. They had a few dozen birds, from baby eagles to falcons, hawks, owls and full-grown bald eagles. We were able to watch the flying demonstration, where they encouraged a few of the birds to fly in the open from perch to perch, handler to handler, off into the forest, back onto the gauntleted arm of a handler for a treat, and then off and about again.

Chinook the red-tailed hawk was hormonal and rather recalcitrant. He flew by a few times but then went and found a perch. He did not want to come back out of the tree and kept us waiting for a good while, but was finally enticed back with a dummy rabbit on a string doing sneaky tricks on the lawn.

Athena the gyrfalcon (left) was more straight-laced and willing to play things according to the script. She did some amazing acrobatics for us, chasing down a dummy bird swung about in the air and catching it mid-dive.

Oliver the barn owl was pretty nifty. He was a little spooked by the wild bald eagle who was in the top of a fir tree overlooking the flying field, just checking things out. But he flew for us, keeping a little closer to the safety of trees and handlers than usual.

The biggest bird we saw up close was this immature bald eagle. She was fully grown, but not feathered out as "bald" yet, a colour change in her plumage which will take her another two or three years. We see bald eagles a lot in the treetops and the skies near home. I remember when we first moved to BC almost two decades ago it was a really special thing to see a bald eagle. The discontinuation of DDT use has caused their numbers to rebound very quickly. Bald eagles around home are so common that we often don't even mention them if we see one while we're driving. But seeing them up close is another matter entirely.

A few years ago a guy in our community rescued a mature bald eagle which seemed blind in one eye and was hopping and walking about the rocky beach. He'd worked with birds before, so whoever found it called him up figuring he was the local expert. He kept the eagle in his garage for a few days, feeding it up on lake trout and kokanee salmon to see if it would get interested in flying and hunting again. It ate heartily but seemed not to see anything on its right side, and had no interest in hunting, so after a few days he moved it out to a raptor rehab centre near Vancouver. We were invited over while it was still in his garage, and got right up near this totally wild magnificent bird. Jim was killed tragically in an accident with a falling tree on his property last spring. I think my older kids will always remember him with that eagle.

Fiona, though, didn't remember meeting Jim and his bird. She was too young at the time. So it was great that she was able to see the partly tame birds at the raptor centre.

Storytelling

My kids pride themselves in their weirdness. The more random, bizarre, eccentric, irreverent and facetious they are the better. While we were on our way to Duncan last week they engaged in some collaborative cartooning and story-telling. This particular drawing started with four small wobbly horizontal lines, and got passed back and forth between Erin, Noah and Sophie as each added features, lines and blobs and tried to make the picture head off in weird directions. As the picture got more and more complicated, explanatory stories grew up to weave together the random elements. Eventually they decided to write down some of the explanations. Two selections follow, with their accompanying cartoons.

"A Little Piece of Heaven. This is an illustration of [your-deity-of-choice] disciplining a demon sloth. As you can see, this sloth is guilty of defecating on disabled children and smoking marijuana. The Lamb of God is assisting by biting the sloth with the Fang of Justice. [ed. note: The Lamb of God bears the Twin Fangs of Justice and Karma] The Lamb of God has a jetpack and lovely eyelashes, and is being motivated by the Carrot of Motivation, forged by Hephaestus who can be seen in the background, forging the Carrot of Depression. The Banana of Judgment is hovering overhead, silently disapproving of the sloth, while Lactose the Intolerant pours chocolate milk on the sloth's head. This illustration is widely believed to be the most accurate representation of Heaven ever created, as many artists fail to realize that Hephaestus is an emo hobo."

Lactose the Intolerant has got to be the funniest demigod name ever. I laughed until I hurt.  And look at little Hephaestus the emo hobo, hard at work at his anvil. He's so cute I'd like to adopt him.

 "Cult Portrait. This illustration captures a touching moment between the Mustachio Cult members after their first ritual slaughter. They are posing in front of their clubhouse with their beloved pets, including a kitten, a snake, an alcoholic chicken and a cross-eyed dog. From left to right their names are Dudley, Frank, Bill, Rufus and Emo George. The child is called Baby Bunting, and the man in the window is Shy Paul. As you can see, they run an egg business on the side to raise funds for buying cloaks and throwing slumber parties."

This one was loosely inspired by a rural home/business/homestead that we spotted while driving with a hand-painted sign that announced:

MINE
TOUR
EGG

We wondered how many years they'd been trying to sell their egg. It was a very old sign.

I like the cross-eyed dog with the mustache.

Spring climax

It's that time of year, when so many activities and responsibilities seem to reach their climax. It's the end of our year of reporting with the SelfDesign program, and that involves a mad rush to submit and rectify purchases we've made, and spend the balance, as well as the final "annual report" document to be collaboratively created with our Learning Consultant for each child. There were the final rehearsals and performances for Sophie's women's choir, where Erin and I provided instrumental accompaniment. There are the lengthy and complicated planning sessions and board meetings for the Valhalla Fine Arts summer programs. The regional Suzuki Celebration Concert took place, with ensemble contributions from our local crew. The AGM of the regional Suzuki society happened the same day, meaning mad catching up for me on my Treasurer duties so that I could table a financial report. There was a trip to Calgary for lessons, our first in two months. Erin and Noah went off on their Corazon choir tour, with immensely successful participation in the Rocky Mountain choral Festival. They have a series of three final concerts and two recording sessions for Corazon which will round out their year, all within a two-week window at the beginning of June. We're into the last week of rehearsals for the community orchestra, with a concert next weekend. The bookkeeping and income tax deadline looms large in mid-June as always. Yesterday was Fiona's piano recital. And we have the end of year Suzuki recital coming up at the end of this month.

Then there are the other loose ends. The gardening, the chicken massacre courtesy of a bear, the thousands of dollars worth of work that urgently needs to be done on the van, time-consuming work and inconveniently distant from home, the music library catalogueing I'm trying desperately to get done for the summer school, my clinic work, updates on web content for the various non-profits I volunteer with, meetings with the school about a new homeschooling prospect for next year, and violin teaching to fit in around the edges. And somewhere else the grocery shopping, meal prep and housekeeping. And music practicing with the kids. And ... er, ... homeschooling. And ... er, .... running. Neither of the latter two is happening much.

In the midst of it all, we went off to Vancouver Island for the Provincial Music Festival for a week. Erin and Noah had "won" the Intermediate and Junior Strings divisions respectively at the local level. Erin had been recommended to the Provincials in the past, on piano, but we had opted not to go then due to her lack of interest in the competitive milieu. This year she was happy for the opportunity and while Noah was lukewarm at best, he responded well to a nudge and I supposed figured if he was going anyway with the family it was no big deal to participate. I was very ambivalent about the whole endeavour, as it is a competitive situation. But we knew a few of the other participants, friends from SVI and VSSM, and I was hopeful that the exposure to other hard-working passionate music kids would be good for my two. I just hoped the competitive nature of the festival wouldn't poison the atmosphere.

It didn't at all. The adjudicator was encouraging and insightful. The other students were great. It did not feel like a pressure-cooker. We saw old friends and made some new ones. We saw a couple of well-loved piano teachers whom we've known as guest clinicians in our area. We enjoyed a number of stunning performances by amazing kids. Unfortunately for whatever reason there were no master classes or workshops for the strings kids. Guitar, dance, winds, speech arts, piano and voice all had their workshops, but the string players got nothing. No one seemed to know why. A bit disappointing, but whatever.

Erin and Noah played well. Neither were "outclassed" by their peers, as there was a range of abilities represented. Our province has basically two large urban areas and these have one to three local festivals each, turning out some incredibly highly-trained students. Then there's the rest of the vast province with small local festivals like ours with just a handful of string participants and a few teachers. So there were other "big fish from small ponds" like my two. The quality of performances was very high, the ability level ranging from, oh, Suzuki Book 7-ish for one of the participants in Noah's class to Bach Chaccones and Paganini Caprices in his and Erin's class.

We watched an afternoon of chamber music too, as well as all the solo performances. I was blown away by the musical-ensemble sophistication of these kids, and left feeling very frustrated that I'm not able to give my own children that kind of experience in any way, shape or form. They get good individual teaching, albeit very infrequently (one lesson in March, one in May....). But they do not have a proper youth orchestra or challenging community orchestra to be part of, and neither is part of a string quartet or trio or anything of the sort. Their absolute keenest love is for chamber music, both of them, and there is simply no way they can get the kind of opportunity they crave -- for a well-matched group of local students to meet every week and work hard at challenging standard repertoire like Brahms, Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Schubert. And I see no way to change that.

The kids I think felt similar combinations of inspiration with frustration. The students from cities just take for granted that they'll have regular lessons, orchestras and ensembles that can challenge them at whatever level they need. If they get inspired and work hard, they have a next level of challenge to look forward to. They are so lucky!


Is there anything we can do differently to give Erin and Noah something a little closer to what they need to continue to develop musically? I'm racking my brain, but I can't see how. Given the fact that they don't really want to move, my medical license is no longer portable between provinces, they aren't yet equipped to live away from home alone, nor would a boarding-type arrangement work well for my unschoolers. And a float plane isn't really practical, is it? How about a stargate or star-trek style transporter?

"Vacation" and Appendix Failure

The vacation rental house

Here is the amazing house we rented. Adobe, with opulent tile floors, five bedrooms, three en suite baths and another bathroom for good measure, décor décor décor, over-the-top appliances (a full-height clothes dryer with an  integrated heated drying cabinet above) and a state of the art entertainment centre. The house is a seldom-used secondary residence for some wealthy guy from LA and he rents it out by the week for less than it would have cost us to put our family up in a couple of motel chain double rooms.

Better still, the house was ensconced in an area filled with sandstone boulders just perfect for climbing. This helped salvage a little 'vacation' for the people who weren't at the hospital. We had brought our climbing rope, shoes and some basic equipment, and when the sun came out we were able to saunter down there and scramble around, do a bit of top-roping, look for lizards, admired the vegetation.

The comfort and amenities of the house turned out to be a real blessing when it ended up (a) pouring rain for a day and (b) being the location of a 3-day medical recuperation.

 

Part of one of the bathrooms

 

A bedroom

 

Looking out at the entry gate, through the rainstorm.