Tag Archives: northern ontario

My Earliest Memory

Posted by on July 12, 2011 No comments

In my earliest memory is of my late stepmother Jocelyne. I was very young at the time, maybe four or five years old. My dad was a sawmill foreman and was working the graveyard shift when one night, I woke from a nightmare and went barreling into the living room of our house on the farm, looking for comfort. My father wasn’t there. My mother wasn’t there. But Jocelyne was.

In my fear and half-asleep upset, it wasn’t my father I was longing for, it was my mother. I remember climbing into Jocelyne’s lap and crying for my mommy. I wept like I’d never see her again. And while I wailed and lamented my loneliness, Jocelyne crooned and rocked another woman’s child until she felt comforted and loved.

This Is Who I Am

Posted by on March 15, 2011 1 comment

I am a single woman in my early 30′s living in the greatest city in Canada. A real multicultural urban civilized fantastic place that’s bustling with millions of people and countless more opportunities. I don’t have a driver’s license because public transit is more eco-conscious. I dress with style, I raise a daughter with pink hair,  I have a very frou-frou professional government job. I go to yoga classes and wine bars and comedy clubs, to television premieres and clothing line launches, to rallies and protests armed with a megaphone and a flag. It’s not because I’m cool or rich, oh no! Only because I’m living in such a great city, with so many opportunities. I enjoy my life so much!

This is who I am now, but it’s not who I was then.

Far to the north in the Great White Wasteland, I was raised with wolves and skidoos and ice fishing and bears. We ate moosemeat and had three channels, two of which were French. Growing up, our babysitter was a great big black Newfoundland dog named Charlie, who barked for my dad if we got too close to the road or the electric cow fence.

Every year my grandpa, who drove snowplow for the township for a living, made a twenty-foot snow mountain in our yard so we could toboggan off the roof into the pasture on the east side of the barn. One year in March when it began to melt, my grandma and my younger brother carved and whittled it into a fifteen-foot penguin ice sculpture, complete with black and yellow spray paint.

We picked blueberries in the summer, and pine cones too, because you could sell them to the Ministry of Natural Resources by the bucketful. They sold the pine cones to companies that either harvested the nuts for food consumption, or shipped them to Japan for something.

Sometimes in the winter it would be a snow day not because it was snowing, but because it was too cold to risk going outside or even starting the school buses. I went to an all-French Catholic school. It’s not as great as it sounds.

I was a baton twirler. Not for parades, but choreographed baton twirling dance/gymnastics routines. I was an assistant coach for a little while too.

I have mucked out barns, collected eggs in chicken coops, watched any number of animals being born and being killed, climbed trees, shot birds, reeled in a big one, gunned the exhaust and slept under the stars.

The people you love most are genuine. You know  them as they really are.

But… you might not know them as they once were.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

Posted by on December 11, 2010 1 comment

When I was a kid, Christmas was always a really big deal. We started decorating early – usually by the first week of December the farm house was all decked out in tacky holiday glory. My dad kept every single bullshit kindergarten painting I did, and up on the walls with masking tape went my blue snowflakes, bonhommes de neige, fat ugly reindeer and mangers.

Yes, mangers. Because I’m Catholic. Well, sort of. I kind of feel like God himself will strike me dead with a lightning bolt every time I tell someone I’m Catholic, because I figure he’s probably pretty pissed that I would dare call myself that. I haven’t stepped foot in a confessional since I was thirteen years old, I had a brief dalliance with paganism inspired by a teenage crush on Neve Campbell, and since my early twenties have laughingly suggested to likeminded thinkers and shocked churchgoers alike that I’d rather believe in Santa than God because I’ve never gotten a My Little Pony doll from the big man upstairs.

But I digress. Where was I? Right, Christmas.

Growing up on the farm in Northern Ontario, Christmas was very much a family affair. Grandma and Grandpa lived next door, and none of the aunts, uncles and cousins were more than a half hour away, so we spent every holiday together. We’d have supper at Grandma’s, then play upstairs with our cousins (more on our naughty shenanigans another day), and around eleven at night, everyone piled into their cars and a convoy of Styleses went to midnight mass.

What was midnight mass like? Don’t ask me, little girls like me were never able to stay awake. I expect it was worse in my church, too… it being French-Canadian and Catholic, there was actually quite a bit of Latin prayer and hymns. Kids who can’t understand what’s going on can’t pay attention. They either misbehave or fall asleep, and since corporal punishment in church wasn’t really unusual, I was one of the latter.

When my dad carried us into the house after mass, we sleepily had a bedtime snack while my parents set out the cookies and milk for Santa, and the carrots and bowl of sugar for the reindeer. Then we went off to bed. For us, there was never any of that can’t-sleep Christmas Eve anticipation.

Hey, parents: want your kids to stop driving you crazy Christmas Eve with their inability and/or unwillingness to shut up and go to sleep already so you can have one goddamn drink to stave off the complete festive bullshit your life has become? Dudes, make them go to church at midnight. For serious.

Christmas is different now. My ex was allergic to tack, so I’ve really had to rein in my wild trailer park decorating ways. Gone are the multicoloured lights, plastic Santa Clauses, snowman candles, red and green doilies, paper chain steamers, pre-lit lawn ornaments, four-foot musical trumpeting angel, and sentinel front door candy canes of my childhood, and heaven help me should anyone catch me listening to Christmas carols on the radio. While our current, grown-up holiday decor is understated, classy and quite beautiful, I do long for the trailer trashy days of yore.

Well, sometimes I long for them. Otherwise I remember how truly tacky and hideous it all looked and am glad for my classy 7′ slim Tuscan pine decorated in a simple and elegant red-and-gold scheme and clear twinkle lights, my beautiful poinsetta arrangements, and my lovely collection of vintage Christmas cocktail napkins from the 60′s.

Still, though, I wonder if I’d still be the only one in the house with an ounce of Christmas spirit if things weren’t just a little… in your face.

I’m On A Train!

Posted by on November 11, 2010 No comments

I’m heading North of the Arctic Watershed this weekend!

Now that's North.

I grew up in Northern Ontario, near the Quebec border. I was thirteen when I left home, moved down south and became the kickass urban diva I am today, but the part of me that ISN’T city bred could be divided into equal parts hayfield, ice fishing, rocky wilderness, blueberry picking and snow. My roots are still firmly and proudly planted in the North!

This weekend, I’m heading home to visit my father’s family. And for the first time in my life, I’m taking the train! Specifically, I’m on the Northlander, operated by Ontario Northland Railway. It’s kind of like VIA Rail’s older, less hip spinster cousin. And I’m having a blast!

If you’d like to follow my northern adventure, come find me on Twitter! I’m live tweeting from everywhere my BlackBerry has service.

http://twitter.com/gwenstyles

#imonatrain