It is autumn in the Ottawa Valley, and that is one of my most favourite things. It’s time for sweaters and apple orchards and beautiful colours all around you.
I took notice yesterday because I was out and about – I had to go to the post office, and then I went to Home Hardware. When I parked in the Canada Post parking lot, which is still there even though the actual post office is across the street now, I thought of my grandfather. He used to take us when he went to get the mail, in the late 90s when my grandparents were living in this little town.
It wasn’t just that, though, it was fall colours all around me and crisp air and beautiful sunshine. I went down to the boat launch and stood looking at the water. My grandparents took us there too. There were two men in a row boat, out fishing. Gramps used to take us fishing. I never caught anything. Not once.
I have a deep love and affection for the Ottawa Valley, and that is a result of my upbringing, and my Gramps.
Gramps grew up with his two brothers in Smiths Falls, not far from Ottawa. As a boy, he and his brothers went on adventures, camping and canoeing. I am lucky enough to have a short life story that he wrote. Three boys who all went by their middle names, swimming in the canal, canoeing the Mississippi, trawling through the woods.
My grandfather moved away – first to Kingston to go to Queen’s, then to the war, serving in the Royal Canadian Navy. His brothers choosing army and air force. He met my grandmother, or Tutu as we called her, in Smiths Falls when she was visiting family. After the war they got married in Regina and then off to Vancouver so he could study at UBC.
Eventually, after two kids and several moves, the family landed back in Ottawa. Gramps worked for the federal government, my mother would grow up and go to university here, meet my father. Thus I came to be, Ottawa born and raise. And I love the City of Ottawa. I love the museums and the Parliament buildings and the history that surrounds us.
As I was growing up, though, we used to take little day trips. Smiths Falls, obviously, where my grandfather was a repeat customer at Smiths Falls Hyundai. Almonte, Pakenham, Balderson, Poonamalie, a cabin in White Lake. There is still a Tim Hortons in Carleton Place where we would stop to meet his younger brother, my great uncle, on our way to Smiths Falls.
I didn’t put together that all of these places were so close together until we moved out here and I started driving around. I realized that all of the places we would visit were places he knew growing up.
My grandfather gave me the gift of the Ottawa Valley, where I have deeper family roots that I even realized, and I love it dearly. There is not a place around here that doesn’t offer a memory or two.
When I got home I got out my grandfather sketching pencils. He had great talent, and he taught me when I was a child. I think he was happy to have someone to teach, to pass it all along. I don’t do it enough anymore, but I’m trying to get into the habit. I have been scared to use his pencil, though. They are such a core memory for me, and I don’t want to use them up or even have to sharpen them. He used to do it with a pocket knife that he always had with him. The other day, a friend posted on Instagram that she was using her father’s pencils, and that started me thinking. What would Gramps think if he knew these pencils were going unused, sitting in a box.
I will try to sit in some of the same places he sat and draw. I don’t know if I’ll even reach his level, but I’m going to do it anyway.
