Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Canoe

                           

2024 was the year of the canoe in these parts.

It began as an idea for a sixteenth birthday gift for number-one-grandson Jack, and idea leapt into action in the middle of the summer, roughly four months before the big day.

Let me just say, right off the bat, that this was all Doug. 

He did insist, (repeatedly), that we would build it together, but from the downing of cedars in our woods, running them through the sawmill, cutting them into strips, routing many many sixteen-foot-long strips, building the strong-back, etc. etc., it was all Doug. 






I suppose I was useful in the conceptual process and the encouragement department. Occasionally I was asked to read a passage from the manual to "see what I thought". And in the later stages, there were a number of times when four hands were needed, (though these are undocumented as I was also official photographer).






I would describe the process as slow and methodical, but also deeply satisfying. 
Meditative. Spiritual.
Repetitive, rhythmic and quiet, working at the edge of the woods with the chickadees and red squirrels, sometimes within arms reach, going about, as they do, the business of surviving.

I thought, more than once, that it was strangely akin to the process of art-making. 
Akin to it, not only creatively but also in timeline, if I'm thinking of one of my large works. 

As most of my works on canvas include canoe imagery, this gave me an odd sensation. 
This canoe was real.
Tangible.

Different, yes, yet oddly similar, even as far as using many of the same materials - wood, cloth, varnish.







On a cold and windy late November morning, we drove a few miles east to the Ouse River, to give her a test run.  She behaved as she should - light, balanced, nice to handle - the icy waters of the Ouse staying firmly, wonderfully, thankfully outside of the canoe.







It is a thing of beauty, this treasure. 
Built with Doug's own two (and occasionally four) hands, it has now been handed on to Jack.

With love.













Anne Renouf














          













Tuesday, December 10, 2024

D'où Viens-tu Bergère

 

"D'où viens-tu bergère?"
Where are you from?  Where are you going?


This lovely old nativity scene came with my parents from the U.K. 
when they immigrated to Canada in 1951,
with my two eldest brothers, 
Andrew, 3 and Simon 1.
It was constructed by the daughter of their dear friends and neighbours Godfrey and Hildegard Koenig,
a young teenager named Hildy.

I don't know enough about how or when the Koenigs arrived in the U.K.
except that they were Austrian, and given the timing, I imagine that they came just before or during the Second World War.

The crèche is comprised of 
paper figures mounted onto wooden shapes cut with a jigsaw. It would have been a lot of fiddly work.
Fiddly work that has held up for some time, at least most of it. A few of the minor characters have been lost along the way. It has moved a fair distance.

I have calculated that it has been assembled by someone in my family for
seventy-five Christmases, 
and has travelled from:

Taplow, England
to 
Toronto, Ontario
to
 Auckland, New Zealand
to
Don Mills, Ontario
to 
Peterborough County, Ontario.


"Where do you come from, shepherdess, where do you come from? 
I come from the stable, I have just been walking there;
I have seen a miracle happen this evening."



D'où Viens-tu Bergère

D’où viens-tu, bergère, d’où viens-tu? (bis)
—Je viens de l’étable, de m’y promener;
J’ai vu un miracle ce soir arriver.
Where do you come from, shepherdess, where do you come from? (twice)
—I come from the stable, I have just been walking there;
I have seen a miracle happen this evening.
Qu’as-tu vu, bergère, qu’as-tu vu? (bis)
—J’ai vu dans la crèche un petit enfant
Sur la paille fraîche mis bien tendrement.
What did you see, shepherdess, what did you see?
—I saw in the manger a little child
Placed very tenderly on the fresh straw.
Rien de plus, bergère, rien de plus? (bis)
—Saint Joseph, son père, Saint Jean, son parrain,
Saint’-Marie sa mère, qui l’aime si bien.
Nothing more, shepherdess, nothing more?
—St Joseph, his father, St John, his godfather,
St Mary his mother, who loves him so well.
Rien de plus, bergère, rien de plus? (bis)
—´Y a le bœuf et l’âne qui sont par devant
Et de leur haleine réchauffent l’enfant.
Nothing more, shepherdess, nothing more?
—There’s the ox and the ass who are in front
And who warm the child with their breath.
Rien de plus, bergère, rien de plus? (bis)
—´Y a trois petits anges descendus du ciel,
Chantant les louanges du Père éternel.

*traditional French Carol
Nothing more, shepherdess, nothing more?
—There are three little angels come down from heaven,
Singing the praises of the eternal Father.






Friday, January 26, 2024

Old Country Church



 The windows were flung open. 

On that particularly warm Spring morning, our old country church in rural Peterborough County was jam-packed, every seat taken, and lined with more folks at the back.  

After three years of Covid, of closures, of minimal attendance, this little church had come back to life, paradoxically while marking the death, the send-off and burial, of someone who has seen our rural community through nearly one hundred years - through depression, war, flood, drought and plague, from the inside and from the outside of those very windows of our old country church.

We gathered in celebration of that long life, that of our eldest member, a person so much a part of our little church that it was hard to imagine the space without him.

The service was beautiful. 

There were of course tears and laughter, stories and memories. I listened to it all, and couldn't help thinking back to when I first attended that church shortly after I moved to Peterborough Ontario more than twenty-five years ago. (Yes, I am a 'newbie', having only attended for a mere quarter-century.) This elder was then in his seventies, and was, I recall, warm and welcoming. I remember his handshake, his big farmer's grip, in spite of being lean and small in stature.

All those years ago, it was a daunting task to try to sort out relationships. It took a month of Sundays to connect the dots - partners, siblings, kids, extended families. But gradually, I began to remember the names of each person in my new church family. 

Twenty-five+ years after I first stepped into that warm loving space, our regular Sunday gatherings are small. Even I, (in my comparatively short time there), have seen the attendance diminish - the Sunday School members have grown up, the young mothers and fathers all working full time, the oldest amongst us have passed on. And perhaps the early service on Sunday morning is more of a draw for the elderly. Yes, elderly.  And a small bunch of us at that. 

Small, but mighty. 

We are, in every sense, a community. On the practical side, we pitch in with upkeep and maintenance - with cleaning, re-painting, refurbishing, recycling. We host fund-raisers and coffee hours, potlucks and pancake breakfasts. We care for those in need, we tackle social justice issues, we mark each other's special events, bring floral offerings from our gardens. We struggle with finances.

And we suffer together through meetings and meetings and meetings. 

We bond through prayer and song. We are called and we answer. We are again and again uplifted and inspired and occasionally we are challenged. Challenged to rethink how something may have always been done, and being open to change. 

Perhaps that 'change' signifies that we are alive.

                                                                                *

It's Winter now, and while no less welcoming, those church windows are tightly closed against the cold. Sunday morning, and voices are raised in song - a rousing hymn, well known, belted out, (or at least as spirited a rendition as not-quite-twenty people can make), perhaps faintly audible outside the window. Here, a chickadee has landed, perched on a branch, still, peering in. A tiny thing of beauty, but no less important in the great scheme of things. Then it flits away, (as chickadees do) - head darting left, then right, a tiny flutter. And gone.

So like us, a small loving community in an old country church. A tiny thing of beauty in this big old world. And no less important in the great scheme of things. 

But not gone. Not just yet.