Leaving France via Hong Kong.

Our three years came to an inevitable end and we packed up our ‘new’ antiques and left our beautiful home with Channel, and the cats, Shatzi and Mitzi. On our way home from France to Ontario, we visited some friends in Hong Kong. Bob had been with the company, Quebecair, but left with his wife Judy and three kids, to pursue a career piloting with Cathay Pacific. We had minded their children for a couple of weeks  in France and they gave Don a t-shirt, as a thank-you, I guess.  They kindly invited us to visit them in Hong Kong . It seemed fitting to take them up on it and so we decide to go on our way home.  

Hong Kong was hot and humid, but it felt good on the bones. Bob and Judy lived on an Island off Hong kong so we ferried back and forth to go to the city to poke around, sight see and shop.  One day we saw massive numbers of containers floating in the harbour.  We bristled as our containers would be transported by ship as well.  You mean, THIS can happen?? Egad.

We decided to invite then out for dinner, with their three kids, to a Chinese restaurant in the city that was actually a huge three story Chinese boat, afloat in the harbour, painted bright red with all the fancy paintings and lights. It was also Judy’s birthday.  Bob had decided we would all meet that evening at 6:00.  He must have ruled over her with an iron fist or something, because I never suspected this ultimatum was a life or death warning.  But it must have been because of what happened that afternoon.  

Judy and I went to the market after lunch. It was a market that spanned several blocks.  I felt I was in a different world with all these fascinating and interesting things.  Judy had an agenda, so we decided she could go ahead and get her things and I would mozey on, on my own, and we would meet at the market entrance at 5:30.  This would give us enough time to drive to the restaurant and meet up with the gang.

I was about 8 minutes late even though I tried my best to get out of there and find the entrance on time.  I stood at the entrance of the market with all my shopping bags, waiting.  I figured she got tied up somewhere… easy enough to do in that place.  As the clock neared six, I started to suspect she wasn’t here.  It was getting dark and I had to make a realization, was she here or not?  I decided she wasn’t.

I was soon to find out that in this part of Hong Kong, no one spoke English. I approached several cab drivers who couldn’t understand me.  I’d go to the next one.  I was getting a little frantic and I even beseeched strangers to help me, but they didn’t speak English either. Finally one driver caught the word ‘water’ and even if he didn’t understand what I meant for sure, I had to take a chance that he knew I meant the harbour.

I was so relieved to see the familiar sight of the water and ferry station, even in the dark. I got out of the cab and started looking for another one, one where the driver spoke English. It wasn’t hard as most of them did. I described the restaurant and the driver knew right away which one I meant.  I guess it was pretty popular.  Sure enough, he got me to the right place, because even though I didn’t know the name, I knew what it looked like and this was it. What luck!

I was greeted at the door by a hostess who was expecting me.  I thought that was a nice welcome.  However, when I arrived at the table, there they were, all sitting around, with an empty chair for me, (how nice of them to remember me), finishing up their dinner. It was like the Twilight Zone.  Don saying, “Oh we knew  you’d find us,” and everyone else acting like this was perfectly normal.  I didn’t know what to feel.  I was bewildered, shocked almost, that Judy left me like that, and now I was in disbelief that my absence didn’t seem to affect them in any way. I had a couple of bites of left overs and that was it.

Now it was time to get home. Don stayed for a few more months to finish his contract and I flew home with the kids to meet up with our furniture. We were fortunate with the sale of the house as we doubled our money in the short time we had it. Twenty years later it was worth 5 times that!  The money gave us a cushion when we came home as Don was out of work for one and a half years.  His company, Quebecair, closed their doors with the end of the contract in France.   

There were a few complications to getting our stuff back.  There was the holding back or our belongings because we had been suspected of using the company for commercial reasons. The company refused to ship the containers until Don relinquished $10,000 of his severance.  The stuff sat in the heat at Le Harvre on the docks,  with 200 bottles of wine, until all this was settled. This caused a lot of stress on Don who was now on his own living in one of the apartments in the house.

Hunting in France

Hunting in France up to the time of the Revolution was just for the elite.  Once the French got the rights to hunt, they weren’t going to give them up easily.  M. Robin, Monsieur le Mayor, landowner and our land lord, used his land to profit from the large hunting fees.  Men paid thousands to hunt.  It was pure forest across from the house. Some of the land belonged to us, but most of it was M. Robin’s.  Martine had stories of lead from bullets soaring through her open shutters and landing on her bed.  

This one day the kids were playing in the woods with some American friends who were visiting.  They came in with stories of bullets flying by their ears.  This caused quite a stir and next thing you know, the game warden, the police and all the neighbours were sitting in our living room discussing the issue of hunting so close to the houses.

They wouldn’t budge.  Nothing could be done to interfere with their right to hunt.  I was livid.  I tried to point out that if a kid had been killed our conversation wouldn't be the same.  They agreed.  But no body was produced, so no change in the rules.  

Chanel our French Bearded Collie

We never were intending to get a dog while in France, but when friends of ours could no longer care for their Bearded Collie, we became the proud owners of Chanel.  She was a french dog, after all, and needed a good french name. She came with instructions on what to feed her.  Fresh vegetables and fruits and certain kinds of meat.  I thought this was really amusing, and bought her dog food.  When dinner time came she met it with total lack of enthusiasm and a look of “Is THIS what you’re giving me for dinner?”  Eventually we fed her table scraps in with the dog food and that was much better. 

She was a quiet, devoted pet and everyone loved her.  While we were living in France, she always looked groomed with her long shiny coat brushed and tidy.  But she did not look like this when we moved back to the farm. The dirt was attracted to her and wouldn’t come off easily.  Brandon brushed her for a while, but then gave up.  It was so much work and it never lasted long.  She was never meant to be a farm dog. She turned from a coquettish little beauty into a ‘swamp thang’. 

Chanel lived for twelve years.  At the end, back at farm and years later, I noticed Boy wouldn’t leave her side.  By the time I got her to the vet, the blood infection had progressed and there wasn’t much the vet could do, so we had to put her down.  It happened while I was busy packing up to move from the farm in 2002, and I felt guilty that I hadn’t noticed it earlier.  It was a very sad time.

Madame le Bar Tender

Behind our house in Boinville on the other side of the little river on the main country road, was a small bar in a courtyard of an old house. It was owned and run by ‘Madame’’. Outside the bar were weather worn tables under the large looming branches of the trees. There were pigeon cages everywhere.  Oh Madame was a picture of the past, with a kerchief around her head and a long apron hanging over her very french working dress. She was a short old lady with a smile you’d want to hang on your wall. She was beautiful!

The bar had been a bar for a hundred years and not changed much over time. It was a place where travellers passing by could come and have a drink and a croissant.  But not just any drink.  We walked over one day to sit at one of the picnic tables in the garden and have lunch. Damon ordered a coke.  She chided that coke wasn’t good for you, have something else. We found that was just too funny.  Don ordered a drink and she reprimanded him that straight alcohol wasn’t good either, so have a beer or some wine.

Ian Visits

My step brother, Ian Roberts, came to visit us at Chèvre Chou.  He was an established artist, even back then, and he talked of one day having workshops in France in a grand chateaux.  I encouraged him and said, why not?  You can do it if you want to. He eventually did hold workshops every spring in Provence and Italy.  This was to play a part in my life later on.

The Berlin Wall

It was November, 1989 and the Berlin wall, constructed in 1963 to separate east and west Berlin, was finally coming down. This would allow families to reunite who had been separated by threat of death, for over 25 years.

Don had queasy feelings about the Germans and hesitated to go.  But by February, he was ready and we piled the kids into the car and went to join the ‘wall peckers’. 

Armed guards who the day before shot anyone venturing into ‘no man’s land’, (the space between the Berlin wall and the smaller wall on the east side), and today were acting as tourist guides.  The look of confusion on their faces did not escape me.  They just couldn’t smile.

We came equipped with our chisels and hammers.  That wall was never meant to come down. It was hard.  We enthusiastically did our bit at chipping away at it to gather our treasured pieces into our own little bags. The strangest phenomenon occurred. People with spray cans would spray the walls and before the paint was dry, men in business suits and attache cases would appear.  They had chisels and tools in their attache cases. They began immediately to chip away at the freshly painted parts of the wall. It all seemed so strange. We deserved the title they gave us, ‘the wall peckers’ as the bits came off in small pieces and we could but chip away at it. We managed to get a few jars of the hard stone as our loot. 

We visited east Berlin and passed through Check Point Charlie.  It was just a little white building, but had quite a history after the war in its special role as a check point between east and west Berlin.  I thought it was a big mistake when they removed it when it really belonged in a museum. I thought it was a mistake too, that the Germans completely removed the wall.  Parts of it could have kept the wall peckers coming for years. But it was removed in its entirity save for a small section very quickly within a few months of the declaration that it was to come down.

At Check Point Charlie, we were given passes to go into east Berlin.  I think we were supposed to hand them back in but I ended up keeping mine.  Back at the farm, I framed it. We went to a restaurant in east Berlin.  It was dreary and poor and hadn’t yet adjusted to the freedoms and plenty of the west.   When we ordered coke, the staff said they had some but it was just for the staff and they wouldn’t sell it to us. This reflected the mentality that they had to live with, hoarding and miserliness.  It was evident that not only was coke not easily acquired, but they didn’t realize yet that they could get all the coke they wanted. 

The 2Wing RCAF Sign Caper

Don and I had decided to take the kids to my old stomping grounds at 2Wing Grotenquin.  I had heard the French took over the base after it was closed in 1963.  I was curious to see it and to visit the PMQ’S, the apartments where we lived which were located 17 kilometres from the base. I wondered if the farm would still be there with the chickens and rabbits. It was still vivid in my memory.

We found the base and it looked so different.  Trees had grown up everywhere and no longer could the relentless sun burn the sidewalks and roads.  The guard house was still there; and, much to my surprise, there was a guard in it.  I wondered what he was guarding as the base looked completely deserted and dilapidated.  Apparently the French had assumed the runway and the rest of the base was left to rot. I tried to convince the guard to let me go onto the base to have a look. But his job was to ‘protect’ the base and I could not soften his resolve.  We had to be content to see it from the fence that bordered it and gaze over the barrier that blocked me from my past.  

There was a large metal sign outside the base indicating this was a RCAF base.  It had a CF100 painted on it and ‘RCAF 2Wing’ in big letters on a sky blue background. It measured six feet by twelve.  It graced the grounds just outside of the guard house on the civilian side. It had been there for thirty years and, although we didn’t know it at the time, we were about to steal it away and return it back to Canada.

We left the base to visit the PMQ’s and the old farm.  

The PMQ’s had been updated and looked pretty good.  The hill rolling down to the farm was all built up with homes, all close together, as were my forest and ravine, save for the forest around the water tower. I ran into the woods with great anticipation to see my fantasy palaces, the bunkers.  I searched and searched and finally had to come to the conclusion that they had all been removed. I was crestfallen. 

I was sad to see that the farm had been deserted and it loomed dark and gloomy.  What could express abandonment better that a large, empty, neglected house?  I wondered what had happened to the girls.  We did manage to track down one of them.  We had a wonderful visit catching up on the family news, over a cafe au lait, sitting in the sun at an outdoor cafe in St. Avold.

My curiosity had been assuaged by revisiting my childhood haunts, the base, the PMQ’s, the farm and the forest. I thought things might have been more the same as I remembered them, but they were not.

On our way back home to Boinville, we stopped to visit military friends in Lahr, Germany. We were discussing the fact that all the signs at the Canadian military bases in Europe had disappeared..  Since we had just come from 2Wing, we shared that  this one was still there. Our friend said he’d arrange a posse to steal it, or rescue it, as he preferred to call it. Don said, ‘Give us ten days.”

Instead of going home, we went back to Grotenquin. 

We stopped off at a hardware store to get some tools, like a hammer, a screw driver, a lever and a pair of gloves and headed for the base once again but this time we had a mission. We were going to get that sign away from the French and back into Canadian hands where it belonged. 

When we arrived at the guard house, we did have a little conversation with the guard at the gate to clarify what area the French had jurisdiction over.  Well, it wasn’t outside the base, so we figured the coast was clear.

The looming sign located off side of the guard house. There were tall cypress trees bordering it which helped hide us from the guard’s view as we performed our nefarious deed.  I set up a picnic beside the sign in full view of the guard.  He didn’t leave his little window.   It seemed he was facing us the whole time.  We casually sat and ate our meal, chatting and looking over the rolling fields as if nothing was going on.  But something was going on.  Don was gripped onto the sign like Spider Man, disengaging the screws, one by one, releasing each six by three foot panel and letting them fall to the ground in front of the sign and out of sight of the guard.

Don had to now get the panels into the station wagon without being seen.  My job was to divert the attention of the guard so Don could fulfill his mission. When we had finished eating, I collected the garbage and went into the guard house to ask where we could put our refuse.  The guard obliged and we started to chit chat.  It turned out that he was on the base the day the CFG100’s crashed and landed in the hospital. I was across the street sitting on the church steps and he was working in the building next to the doomed hospital. We established a rapport and I ventured to ask again if I could go on the base.  It was a different guard and a different situation and he acquiesced.  

Just as we were finalizing the deal, Don came into the scene, his white shirt covered in blue chips of paint, looking like the cheshire cat who swallowed the canary.  We were all looking up at the ceiling and whistling in an imaginary way.  Please don’t notice that the blue on his shirt matches the blue on the sign! 

The question became, do we take a chance and take a 45 minute tour of the base, or high tail it before some senior officer drives up and sees the sign is gone?  Well, I had to take a tour of the base.  The old swimming pool was more than deserted, it was in ruins, as was the rest of the base.  There was only a wall and steps remaining of the church and practically nothing of the hospital and PX.  The trees had overgrown everywhere. It looked like a jungle.  

I was anxious to return to the car and get out of there before things got complicated.  The metal panels went from the front of the station wagon to the back and there was no place for the kids to sit except on the floor, sort of.  We drove a few kilometres away and reorganized so we could make the 4 hour trip back home.

Don alerted the authorities at the Canadian Embassy of our treasure.  They arranged for a Hercules transport plane to come and pick it up. One evening after dark, we drove the sign into Paris into the back yard of the Canadian Embassy.  The large security doors opened to let us in.  We felt rather ‘impo’tant’.  The sign was delivered to Trenton, Ontario, where it waits to be put on display at the Trenton Military Museum.

Daniel and Martine were shocked and asked us what kind of example we were setting for our kids.  It was a difficult question to answer since we all thought we’d accomplished a great deed. Their reaction made me feel a bit guilty and I hoped the French army wouldn’t be marching in to arrest us.  

We went back one more time to the base, and this time ran into some French soldiers who were recounting the story of how Canadian soldiers from Germany had come and stolen the sign in the middle of the night.  Actually, they had come and taken the wooden base the sign was on. I didn’t have the nerve to tell him that the sign had actually been taken by my little family in broad daylight.  I thought it better not to find out how he’d react at having been had by a couple and their kids instead of by trained military personnel.