Don drove his bike to Ottawa from Pointe Claire. On his return trip, he took the back roads and ended up in Glengarry. He fell in love with it. He was looking for a place to stay for the night, but everything was full. Man, he thought, how can such a small town as Alexandria, be full? He learned it was the Highland Games weekend and there wasn’t a bed in town. He went to the local hospital and asked if he could sleep in the waiting room. They said no, he couldn’t. He said, Okay, I’ll sleep in the ditch and come back in the morning with pneumonia. They conceded he could sleep on a couch provided he was out by 5 a.m.
Don had a pilot friend, Rod Poitras, who lived in Glengarry too. We went to see him and subsequently, we visited many country homes and farms, but none was to capture our hearts like ‘Mondesire’. Two hundred acres, farmland, forest, a river, a lake, a sugar bush and miles of trails. The house was renovated by Mr. John Patton, an engineer, who was the director of Petro-Fina. We were confident that his work needn’t be questioned.
The house was a rambling, 4500 sq. ft domain. Five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a mud room as big as a large kitchen, a very big upstairs outdoor patio and two living rooms. The gardens surrounding the house were beautiful as were the magnificent mature trees. There was a large old barn-board barn and a chicken coup with a solarium. Oh, it was gorgeous. Don and I knew right away that this was it. So we bought it for the following year.
Everything worked out perfectly. We sold our home in Pointe Claire, Quebec, and moved to the country in Ontario in 1988. This was home. It was another new start, another chance to make things work.
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