Glengarry

The area fit us like a glove.  I got involved in all sorts of community groups such as The North Glengarry Economic Development Group, The North Glengarry Investment Club, Chair of Property Standards.  My neighbour Alison Wilson, became a best friend.  People I admired and adored included Jean and Blair Williams, Sue and Bill Gilsdorf, Aidi and Annie St. Dennis, Gwen Morris, Flip and Robin Flocton, Nancy Ripley. Nancy passed on in 2014.

Alison and I would cross country ski with a group of girls in the winter and hike in the summer, stopping to have tea at someone’s country home. I was happy.  I had my community of friends. I had come home.

I found so much joy in the kids, my new friends and the beauty of the farm. It was certainly these pleasures that carried me through. Even after all these years together, Don and I, we couldn’t get it right.

The Chickens

What’s a farm without chickens?  We picked up some Arkansas chicks and they laid blue and green eggs.  We mixed them up with a brown rooster and the eggs were then all different colors, pink, brown even sometimes white.  The color of the hen determines the color of the eggs. 

We put the chickens in the solarium, which was at the end of the former chicken coup, where they could be warmed by the heat lamp and could cozy up in the empty flower bed crates.  I thought they’d be safer there than in the chicken coup which was a bit open onto the yard and some fox might get them.  In the remembering of it I realize how ludicrous my request was to my neighbor, Alison. I asked her how to clean the chicken coup floor, because there was linoleum in the solarium and it was getting rather dirty, even though I had covered it with sawdust.  Alison didn’t know what to say because chicken coups had dirt floors and she never cleaned hers.  That’s what you get for living in the country when you come from the city.  

One day Don came in with a dead frozen chicken.  He reminded me of Monty Python who was returning a dead parrot and flopped the stiff corpse on the counter.  He explained the chicken had fallen out of the solarium and had gotten stuck between the wall and some fencing and froze to death.  Poor chicken.

UFO's

UFO’s

When we moved to the farm, I had just read “ The Interrupted Journey”.  It was a story about how a couple had been abducted by a UFO and how they had to be hypnotized to recall what had happened to them. I was fascinated and convinced that they existed. Now it was my turn. We were in the country, isolated, just perfect environment for a connection with aliens.  I mentioned to Don that we could put a message for them to come to us in lights on the roof so they could find us. He said that’d be okay as long as we didn’t tell anybody.

I was intense.  I was receptive and I just had a feeling it would happen.  Well, one night I was driving our full sized van along a dark and secluded country road.  There was a brilliant light  that filled the van which disappeared just as quickly. It came again and again.  As I gripped the steering wheel, I thought victoriously to myself,  “This is it! They’re here!”  My breathing became shallow as I drove slowly along, in anticipation of what might happen next. 

When I got home, much to my disappointment, I realized the back door of the van wasn’t closed properly and it opened and closed on the bumpy road causing the interior lights to go on and off.  Waa!

Oh, but it happened again!  This was the real thing now.  Again I was driving the van on a back road in the country, and the light came back, in a similar way, brilliant light and then blackness.  I was full of expectation!  They found me!  I only hoped they’d be kind.  I drove along for several minutes waiting to see them.  I furtively looked left and right, checking for a space ship.  In my delusional state, it was difficult to see the obvious, that the full moon was low on the horizon and every time the trees dipped, the moon light shone through. The realization was crushing.  Rats.  There were no other episodes and the aliens never did find us.

The Camero

We went shopping for farm vehicles, cars that could get through the snow that we could rely on. The first two purchases were a full sized van and a Camaro. We went to the dealers with the best of intentions.  The van was questionable as a farm vehicle for the family.  It was light weight and fish-tailed on the snow covered roads. However, that was what Don thought we should buy that day at the dealers.  Then he laid eyes on that red Camaro and I knew he was a goner.  A Camaro?  For the farm? This was the beginning of a long series of cheap cars we bought over the years.  I think at one time we had five of them that cost us a fortune.  We’d have been much better off buying a nearly new SUV for all the money we spent.

Back to the Camaro…I could not master this vehicle. In the winter, I found myself spinning off the icy roads, much to my horror.  One time I ended up in the ditch and another, about a hair from some farmers fence. But it was the day I was travelling over the bridge to the States at Cornwall that really did it for me.  I ended up on the other side of the road and back again. I was so shook up, I felt I was on borrowed time that there wasn’t an oncoming truck.   I went into the customs office and asked for a coffee while I demanded an explanation as to why the roads weren’t sanded.  Well, they didn’t work on the weekend, they explained.  I told them flat out there’d be a serious accident this day because of that.  I got back in the car and did my shopping on the American side.  When I returned, there had been a terrible accident on the bridge which they were still cleaning up when I returned.

I went straight to a car dealership in Cornwall. I’d had it. I told them I didn’t care what they had, just give me a car that could stay on the road and take the Camaro for whatever you can give me. They came up with a mid sized car. It was burgundy. I didn’t really care what it was as long as it could stay on the roads. I transferred all my groceries to my new reliable car, and headed back to the farm.  As anticipated, Don was not impressed.  He sent me off the next day to get the Camaro and return my new purchase. I can’t believe we let the boys drive that car in the winter.  Dealers told me subsequently that it was really a summer car in our climate.  Don insisted I didn’t know how to drive.  I was all bottled up; I didn’t know how to deal with him.  That Camaro stayed on the farm for way too long. Today, it sits in some field at a Rod’s farm.

The Beast in the Woods

We were from the city and a bit naive, one could say.  The night was black.  It seemed to start immediately after the definitive line of light created by the back yard lights. I had on my nighty, a long flowing white thing. Don and I were listening to some animal meeting his maker in our back yard, beyond the light, in the darkness.  Well, Joan of Arc here decided to save this poor animal.  It sounded like a baby and I know rabbits can sound like that when they cry. I walked out to that line of light and as soon as I stepped over it, I heard the worst sound I have ever heard. It was loud and guttural, threatening and deadly.  It was so close I must have been nose to nose with the beast, but I could see nothing. I immediately backed up over the line of darkness and bee-lined it to the house.  I made it.  But in retrospect, there were many reasons why I shouldn’t have.That was a really stupid thing to do. If Don were to tell the story, it’d be he that braved the night.  But it wasn’t. It was me.

The Chain Saw Massacre

We were hardly in the door when Don discovered the lawn tractor.  He’d beetle around on the three or so acres.  Some of the branches were a bit low when he was on the mower and we discussed cutting one or two.  I loved the trees in the  back yard so much.  I could see the trees and gardens from all the windows in the back of house, from the dining room, the kitchen, the living room.  The peacefulness of it fed my soul. So the day I came home and saw that Don had cut  all the lower branches off of all of the trees, I was devastated. Now my beautiful gardens looked more like a Bell Telephone pole park.  It seemed all the beauty that I had fallen in love with, was gone. I couldn’t speak.  I could see that a man and a chain saw are a dangerous combination, especially when it is a new experience with lots of temptation around… i.e… branches, trees, etc.

Don zoomed up on the four wheeler and casually asked if I wanted to go for a ride.  Go for a ride? You’re acting like nothing’s happened and you’ve just murdered my trees?? I was speechless.  I can remember some pick up truck driving into the drive way.  I asked the guy if he wanted a couple of chain saws.  I threw them in the back of his truck and he drove off.  When Don found out his chain saws were missing, he was not pleased and suggested I get them back. I made a deal with him that if he wouldn’t cut anything down that we didn’t mutually agree on,  I might consider getting the saws back. I did and he didn’t.

Finding the Farm, '87

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.