Goose Bay Summer '65

Goose Bay Summer ’65

This summer, I was 17.  This time my trip to Goose Bay left from Montreal.

My father drove me from Ottawa, where I was living with Pat and Shaun, to Montreal to catch the scheduled military flight to Goose Bay. The only trouble with the plan was that we went a day early, which gave him lots of time to catch up with his drinking buddies, his cousins, whom he visited often, in Westmount.

The night before, I had gone to bed early, having total confidence that my father would set his alarm and wake me up to get to the flight at six a.m. This was pretty important to me, so when I woke up in the mid-morning light to find him sleeping in the living room in an arm chair still in his suit, I was livid.

Not thinking of the outcome of my actions, as if by reflex, I got a glass of ice water and pitched it at him.  Needless to say, he woke up. Looking at his face with that shocked expression, I wasn’t sure what would happen next.  Was he going to ‘knock me into next week?’ as he so often promised, or would it just be, ‘I’ll knock your block off’?

It was a great reprieve for me that he did neither.  He felt quite guilty about sleeping in  actually.  My Uncle Jeff ameliorated the situation by taking me with him that day on a business trip to New York City.  That’s a trip I’ll never forget, as we went on every means of transportation available at the time: an airplane, a hydrofoil, a helicopter, a train, a subway, a taxi.  Whoosh!  

That evening when we got back, my heels had cooled considerably and my father had booked another flight to Goose Bay for the next day. He was redeemed.

The summer was to solidify my ties with Deirdre which would softened up over the years.