Thursday, August 30, 2018

Vacations were not for us


My father never took vacations, he took the money.  Our Sunday drives were the closest we got to a vacation my whole childhood.  Some weekends we went all the way to Niagara Falls and had picnics at the beach below the falls.  We also went to Lake Erie and we would visit the forts there (I can’t remember the names, I think one was Fort George and the other was Fort William).  We enjoyed these historical trips and of course anything to do with water sent us to heaven.
When we moved to Calgary and I was working one day Dad took Peter and I on a drive.  I was on a week’s vacation and naturally enough not going anywhere so Dad said “this is your vacation”.  We took a drive out of town through places that are now well known to me, Okotoks Big Rock and through the valley to what was once the Prince of Wales Ranch (that would be Edward VIII in his young days) which years later is the neighbour to my sister’s land!  We ate our lunch there and then drove on talking about the Lost Lemon Mine among other things.  It was a really cool day for us, spending it with our Dad.  I was maybe 25 and Peter would have been 16 or 17.  But we were still “kids” when it came to our Dad and getting that attention. 
It’s one of those days that I just never will forget.  P.S.  This picture was from that day, near Big Rock.

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