Mother's Day

On Mother's Day, love gets showered on ladies young and old, who have created, nurtured and sustained life - incredible women who soothe, encourage, scold, support.  I hope you all have a beautiful day. You deserve it.

Uncle Joe, an ardent reader of the Wood Buffalo Update, is probably ready to send out carrier pigeons in search of this post.  Unfortunately, the confluence of circumstance and timing has thwarted my best intentions. With a free and clear Sunday and the arrival of Mother's Day, I finally have the time, inspiration and impetus to sit down and bring you into our world, if only for a few minutes.

This was a week.  The things I've been blessed to do - and not do - in the last seven days make me shake my head in amazement.  As Heather was away for most of it, attending a spirituality retreat in the Canmore/Banff area, and as my calendar was packed every single night, I had to find something to drop to spend at least one full evening with Dylan and Ben, who are graciously independent when we need them to be.  When the least important thing I had to give up were two VIP tickets to see Bill Cosby, you can begin to get an appreciation for the week that has just floated to an end.

A week ago, I had the honour of being in Edmonton for a couple of arts presentations, including Catalyst Theatre's The Soul Collector - which is outstanding by the way, and a panel interview for the Premier's Council on Culture.  This will be a government committee of about 20 individuals that will report directly to the Minister of Culture.  I'll find out in June if I was successful or not, though I feel incredibly good about my chances.

My good friend and MLA Don Scott was treating me to lunch before the grilling, when former Minister of Enterprise and Advanced Education and current MLA Stephen Khan walked into the restaurant.  He came right over, asked what I was doing in town - we had met several times previously and discovered a natural kinship - and pledged to put an encouraging word (or two) in the Minister of Culture's ear.

As I am like to do these days, I spent several hours in preparation for the panel interview, synthesizing the job description and the role of the Council into a series of pictures, arrows, boxes and words - a mind map.  I had two pages in front of me as they peppered me with their standard set of questions.  They couldn't help noticing my reference notes and went off script to ask about them.  It was an excellent experience, and I got the sense that I might have been better prepared than the average candidate they had interviewed to that point.

A Council meeting back home that burned the midnight oil, a two-day think tank called the Nexus North IDEAS lab, the screening of an award-winning documentary film, and a fundraiser for our athletics program with NHL greats like Mark Messier, Theo Fleury and Glenn Anderson rounded out the week.

There were many highlights, but getting to host a panel discussion after the red carpet screening of Oil Sands Karaoke stands out as something special. Filmed in and around Fort McMurray in the summer and fall of 2012, the film follows the lives of five people who work in the oil sands and their off-hours lives as talented karaoke singers.  It might seem like an unlikely premise for a documentary film, but it works.  In fact, it earned the distinction of being the most entertaining entry at the recent Hot Docs festival in Toronto, the preeminent documentary film festival in the world.

 I was joined on stage by Mayor Blake, Iceis Rain - the drag queen alter-ego of Aboriginal entrepreneur Massey Whiteknife, one of the stars of the movie, and Charles Wilkinson - the director of Oil Sands Karaoke.  It was an amazing opportunity to lead a fascinating discussion.  The comments when I was done were encouraging and effusive, a preview of a comment that would blow me away the following morning.

The moment I saw Alex Jadad at the Nexus North gather on Thursday, I felt an uncanny connection, but it was illusory - I couldn't pin it down, though I had a intuitive sense we had met before, whether in this life or another (if you believe in that kind of thing).  It turns out I wasn't alone.  Alex (short for Alejandro, an accomplished innovator from Toronto, originally from Columbia) was intent on seeking me out, as he had a similar sense of connection.  He also wanted to express appreciation for the movie and panel discussion the night before.

"The movie was brilliant," he began, "but your performance was even more so.  It was a thing of beauty to watch how how balanced the discussion. It was wonderful."

It is a little awkward and embarrassed sharing the comment, as it feels rather self-serving, but the way he said it, equally imbued with both sincerity and awe, blew me away.  In a way, it reinforced the feeling I have that I'm in exactly the right place at the right time doing the exact things that I'm meant to be doing.  That's an intoxicating sensation, one worth sharing, despite the discomfort.

Heather is in a similar place right now, intoxicated with the notion that she is living her passions and finding her voice.  She has recently re-discovered a love of writing that has brought her into the blogosphere. Her level of intuition, spiritual connectivity, and impact on people has never been greater - at least from my perspective.

Watching her soar is a thing of beauty!

She and Dylan went for the final screening of Oil Sands Karaoke last night while Ben and I darted for the bank of the Athabasca River so I could get my hooks in the water for the first time this season.  We had to traverse iceberg-like chunks of ice to get down to the water's edge - a scenario I have never seen before, at least not this late in the spring.  I gingerly climbed down to the bottom, carrying all of my gear, doing my best not to slip and fall into the water.  I placed my tackle box up on an ice shelf, put on my rig, skewered my minnows, and tossed the line out into the water.  Not a minute later, a large chunk of ice, probably 100 pounds, calved off from above and came crashing down, narrowly missing me but propelling my tackle box and all its content into the water and into my chest.  Momentarily stunned at the near miss, I looked down to see multiple spoons and jigs hanging off my shirt.  It was an amusing moment, but a sharp suggestion that I should probably wait until the ice melts away before giving fishing another shot.

As Dylan progresses toward the end of Grade 8, consistently coming home with reports of successful tests and projects, he will soon have to decide where to attend high school in the fall.  His heart seems set on a school that offers the opportunity to get involved in the theatre arts.  My sense is that it will either be Holy Trinity or Westwood, both facilities at the other end of the town with well over 1000 students each.

I am happy to report that I am no longer at a professional crossroads in my life.  The die has been cast, the road chosen, and very soon I will be able to speak publicly about the next step in my career.  An announcement and press conference is set for Wednesday morning, after which I will be able to share the news.  I am very excited about the opportunity that I have accepted and the challenge I have undertaken, as it aligns with my passions and my experiences.  It also addressed a pledge I made to myself in January 2012 as to how I was going to change the world.  Stay tuned!

March of spring

I went to bed last night knowing two things.  First, that the time was going to spring forward at 2 am, robbing us of a full 60 minutes of repose.  I have a psychological remedy for that which seems to work well.  I change the clock in our bedroom as we go to sleep and drift into a state of acceptance that I've just gone to bed later than expected.  The second thing I knew just as surely was that it was probably time to write another Wood Buffalo Update.  As it turned out when I checked this morning, it was exactly one month ago that I touched based, so my instincts were bang on.

Nine performances and 4,300 audience members later, Hometown...The Musical! came to an end two weeks ago tonight.  It took me most of that time to get my wind back; it was both an exhilarating and exhausting ride.  The feedback we received made it more than worthwhile though, as the show inspired a response unlike any other.

We had multiple requests for encore performances, a complete anomaly in my experience.  Unfortunately, we couldn't accommodate the desire for additional shows as the set was struck the day after we closed and the stage manager was on a plane to Hawaii for a much-deserved vacation.

I wrote about the experience, from start to finish - 27 blog posts in total stretching from December 9, 2012 to February 23, 2013.

"As you all know, I've been writing about this incredible journey since we began," I said to the cast before the final performance.  "I wrote my final post last night.  I'm going to leave the last word to you."

Giving the cast, crew and artistic team the opportunity to share their reflections on the process proved to be quite a success.  I had over 40 submissions in the several days that followed, posted in Journey to Hometown, Epilogue.  If you ever doubt that what we do in the arts matters, spend a few minutes reading the authentic perspectives of people who were willing to share what this production meant to them, many of whom had never been on stage before.

Dylan joined us during the technical and production portion of this show, running the follow spot up in the lighting booth.  He survived and thrived on late nights and early mornings on weekends, diligently staying on task and being an integral member of the team.  Being the social character that he is, many new friends were made and he fit right in.  As he first made his presence known in the theatre back when he knocked on the door a full six weeks early in 1999 when I was performing in The Taming of the Shrew, it felt like a homecoming of sorts.

Ben and Heather came to opening night along with a whole bunch of other people - we ended up selling out every public evening performance and one matinee.  Hometown...The Musical! ended up being the 5th most attended production in our 33-year history - quite an achievement for a brand new work that was truly a community collective creation.

I had sent Mom a picture of what I looked like during the early portion of the run - we ended up dropping this facial prosthetic as it was cumbersome to apply and take off, it also failed to achieve the desired affect.  As Dad refuses to look at the computer, Mom decided to print off this picture and show it to him, without any explanation.

"Is it the Pope?" he asked.

I had a great laugh with Mom over the phone about that one!

While we were focused on getting through the musical, my esteemed Councillor colleague Phil Meagher was preparing for his historic ski from Fort Chipewyan to Fort McMurray, a distance of 280 kilometres.  He took off at first light the morning of our final day of Hometown performances.  When I woke up the following morning, he had traveled several hundred kilometres and was running into some difficulty.  First, the temperature started to flirt with zero, then there was an increasing amount of sand on the road.  The amazing progress he was able to make early on in the trip had given way to almost no progress at all.  At about the 220 km mark he began to experience breathing issues and eventually had to acquiesce to the fact that he needed medical attention.  He was airlifted to the hospital where it was determined that he had come down with a case of pneumonia.

After two weeks of recovery, he successfully finished the final 60 kms on Friday, gliding into Fort McMurray shortly after dinner.  The final leg ended up taking 9 hours, 40 minutes.  Ben and I, along with several supporters from the Centre of Hope, a homeless facility for which he was raising money, were there to welcome him and capture the moment.

"And now you're going to go ref a hockey game?" asked someone.

"Yah, but that's not till 9:15.  No problem there," he said.

It was an incredible feat of human endurance that would have knocked most people to the floor, and this 50+ fellow with an artificial hip was going to go pack up his ski gear and lace on his skates.  Amazing!

It's taken me the better part of two weeks to fully recover from the play.  This has been one of those rare winters when I haven't take holidays or gone on a trip.  Normally, this is the weekend when I'd be traveling to the NCMPR National Conference, this year taking place in Chicago.  However, with my professional focus having been on the arts the past six months, I didn't feel right about going.  We also typically travel to a tropical destination in the first quarter of the year, but this year we did not.  Instead, we sent Heather down to Sedona, AZ for a retreat and to Bellingham, WA for a craniosacral treatment.  With the significant time commitment required for Hometown, it was the right choice to stay close to home.

I did manage to fly out of town this past week, down to Edmonton at the invitation of MLA Don Scott for the Budget announcement at the Legislature.  It was my first time visiting those hallowed halls and seeing the process of provincial governance from up close.  Though in a foreign place, I still felt somewhat at home as so many faces were familiar.  Being in municipal government for almost 30 months now, I've had occasion to meet many of the ministers and members who make up this prestigious body.

It might be somewhat counter intuitive, but we are mired in austere times in the province of Alberta, and Finance Minister Horner delivered a speech that confirmed as much.  And while he did his best to sprinkle the message with flowery phrases, words of optimism and fiscal resolve, buried behind the words are numbers that are coated with the effluent of the so-called bitumen bubble,  the price differential that has decimated our revenue stream from the oil sands sector.

While we wait for the sun to do its work on the remaining snow and usher in long-awaited spring, public sector organizations, nonprofits, and myriad other groups are going to have to make it through a messy melt before we can wrap ourselves in summer's embrace.  I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I can't wait.

Hometown...The Musical!

Dylan and I will be pulling an 11-hour day today as we make our way to rehearsal just after lunch.  He is on the technical crew, volunteering as the follow-spot operator, while I am on stage playing Grandpa George in Hometown...The Musical!, the story our community, and this place we call home.

I have been neck deep in practices since we returned from Christmas holidays which explains the absence of a Wood Buffalo Update.  Time is precious when burning both ends of the candle.

"I'm living my life in 15-minute increments," I said to someone the other day.  Fifteen minutes to get home from work, 15 minutes for a bath, 15 minutes for dinner, and 15 minutes to get back to the theatre.  If I can eek out an extra 15 minutes for a nap - bonus!  It's a grind, but I'm not going through it alone.

When we open the show on Friday, 122 performers - including Mayor Melissa Blake who will be making a cameo appearance - will be featured on the stage, the majority of which will be live and in person.  A small group of about 10 - including our neighbor Norm Sutton - are featured in video vignettes that are played while my character tells stories.

All of us are tired as we head into the final stretch, many struggling with this lingering cold that has punctuated the winter of 2013.  I am on Week 6 of dealing with massive congestion.  The 30  GDS (Generation Dance Studio) dancers, ranging in age from 8 to 17, have not only been pulling down a grueling rehearsal schedule for the musical, they were also spending all their days off from Hometown preparing for a dance showcase.  Almost to a girl, they excel at school, carving out time to complete their homework while being shuttled back and forth by their parents and during breaks at school.  They have been a delight to work with as have dozens of newcomers to the acting process.  This has really been a community endeavor.

My brother Greg, who is very active in community theatre back in Kamsack, will fully appreciate how frenetic things are on stage and off, as over 100 bodies come and go.  If you thought Fort McMurray traffic was bad, imagine what happens backstage when this energized group tries to move about in the dark.  Fun times!

For Dylan, this experience is super important, as he gets to work with a team mixed with professionals and volunteers.  From my vantage point on the stage, waiting to move forward in the cue-to-cue process, I can see him in the lighting booth at the back of the 600-seat theatre, perched on a stool watching carefully and listening for his next cue in the headphones he wears to keep connected to what's happening down below.

Claude, Tiffany and Madeleine have been here for several weeks, guests in our home while Hometown comes together, but so familiar and comfortable that they are like members of our family.  Claude is co-directing the show, Tiffany is doing the costumes, and Madeleine is making her youthful stage debut as an actual bundle of joy in a flashback sequence.

With Heather and Ben's support and indulgence we pull through, basking in the rare hours when nothing is on the schedule, catching up on household tasks and rest.

Last week, we were Heather-less as she traveled to Bellingham, Washington for a special craniosacral treatment from one of the leaders in the field.  She was inspired, excited and re-energized by the sessions and came home in excellent spirits.

While we've been rehearsing, the snow has been falling.  Long-time residents say they don't recall having had this much snow in decades.  We don't mind, as it seems to diffuse the doldrums that are inherent with the long nights and short days. It also means that the risk of forest fires in the spring will be somewhat dampened as all this white stuff melts away and settles into the muskeg.

I will be submitting my application to serve on the Premier's Council on Culture in the coming days.  As part of the process, I asked for letters of support from Mayor Blake, David Whitelock - Executive Director of Events Wood Buffalo, and Cindy Amerongen - my awesome boss at the college.  Reading the personal perspectives of three respected colleagues and friends about the role that I have played in the area of arts and culture in this community was both humbling and uplifting.  Cross your fingers for me, as this is outstanding opportunity.

In my professional life, it feels like progress is being made, energy and enthusiasm are building around the arts, and the future is incredibly bright.

If you're interested in a behind-the-scenes account of Hometown...The Musical!, I've written 19 articles (so far) about the process at www.middleagebulge.com.

Have a terrific day!

Holiday Hello 2012

Happy Holidays to one and all.  One of our favourite traditions is putting together our annual Holiday Hello, a picture-laden newsletter.  It is one of the ways we are able to keep in touch with family and friends from Trenton to Nanaimo, from New York City to the Crowsnest Pass.

When you click on the picture below, it will take you the 2012 edition.  We hope you enjoy it.

December Descending

I started trying to write one of my regular blogs this morning, but something made me stop.  The words weren't coming, the inspiration just not there.  After a couple of cups of coffee it hit me as to why. It was time to do another Wood Buffalo Update, time to gather up the dust bunnies of memory and share them before they are gone.

The final week of November proved that Winter has a mighty grip on us, dishing up temperatures that flirted with -30.  I was in Fort Chipewyan on Wednesday evening, an hour flight north of Fort McMurray, attending a community engagement event.  The municipality had chartered a plane to take a group of us up there as it is more cost effective than flying commercial.

I had a wonderful time connecting with old friends and making some new ones.  It was especially great to have a visit with Nadia's Auntie Rachel who I hadn't seen in a number of years.  An old-time country band warmed up the hall filled with about 200 residents and made the evening merry.

While we enjoyed the event, the pilots caught up on their emails and reading in the small airport terminal while the plane sat on the tarmac.

"It's going to be rather cold when we first get in the plane," the pilot warned as we prepared to head back home.  "We'll do our best to get it warmed up as fast as we can."

We sat in our seats, left for about four hours to absorb the bitter cold that had descended on Alberta's oldest continuously inhabited settlement, bundled up in our toques, mittens and parkas.  At that point, it was -34 with a windchill.  We shivered, our exhalations clearly visible in the cabin as the crew turned the ignition to begin the warming up process.

There is something romantic, in a northern adventure kind of way, of being able to experience this frontier-like mode of transportation.  I don't get up to Fort Chipewyan often, but when I do, it reminds me of the vastness of our region, and the importance of our rural communities.

It's not quite that cold this morning, only -20 according to the Weather Channel.  We had more snow last night, so it will mean another round of shoveling for me, which will make Ben enormously happy.  He's been building a fort at the end of our driveway, in the spot that always ends up being the biggest pile in the yard.

I came home from work one day and saw this beautiful tunnel burrowed out, thinking immediately that Heather had been out doing the work.  It turns out that the tunneling was all Ben, demonstrating an acuity passed down from his Uncle Keith.

In my new role (since the summer) of focusing on the arts at Keyano, we have ended up spending a lot more time attending  special events at the Theatre & Arts Centre.  Mom gifted us a couple of tickets to see Stuart McLean when he was in town in October.  We brought Neil, Susan, Dylan and Ben with us and enjoyed an amazing evening of stories and music.  Thanks Mom!

"We've been coming here a lot lately," said Dylan, as we crossed the snowy parking lot to go watch a short one-act play a few weeks ago.  "I like it."

Most recently, we all went to the opening night of Calendar Girls, a play about a group of Yorkshire women who decide to do a tastefully nude calendar to raise money to buy a new sofa for the cancer ward at their local hospital.  They chose to overcome significant body image issues and in so doing become global sensations.

Our local ladies became sensations of their own, doffing it all on stage, with strategically placed objects to hide their bits and pieces.  They were brilliant, and the audience response was stunning.

I did the pre-show speech for the final two performances, encouraging patrons to purchase one of the fundraising calendars that had been done featuring the ladies.  Some of you might find one under your tree come Christmas morning, so be prepared!

Dylan and Ben both came home with very positive report cards, Dylan crossing the finish line with an impressive 80 average for the first time.  We were both very proud of their efforts and Heather reported that all the teachers had lovely things to say.

Speaking of Heather, her health has been a little up and down in recent months, as she continues to work with a variety of practitioners to figure out what's happening.  She has radically adjusted her workload, listening very closely to what her body is telling her.   Some days she is full of vim and vigor, other days, less so.

We haven't been terribly specific about our Christmas plans, as we haven't firmed anything up yet.  At this point, we're thinking of maybe traveling down to Edmonton at some point.  We'll see what happens.  After the spate of accidents we've heard about this winter, the less time we spend on the roads, the better.

Have a great week.

Winter's rush

In my mind, winter has arrived early.  We are still a few days away from Halloween, but based on the cold temperatures and decidedly white landscape, a miraculous late fall melt is highly unlikely.  I'm not complaining, as the colder weather facilitates better sleeps (for me) and encourages us to spark up the fireplace in the evenings when we're spending time together as a family.

Speaking of which, our household population has risen by one in recent months with the arrival of Junior the hedgehog.  What started out as a rather prickly relationship has grown into one of trust and curiosity.  Each evening, Junior comes out of his lair to hang out with the family and indulge in his daily devouring of a couple of big fat meal worms.

I'm sure it's the same in your house, but September comes along and the calm serene of summer gets blown to smithereens by overflowing commitments, committees and daily concerns.  When school starts, it's like the gun going off at the beginning of the race to Christmas.  In what seems like the blink of an eye, we are halfway there.

Dylan is in his final year at Dr. Clark School, the place where he began his educational adventures 9 years ago.  He has gone from being the smallest kid in the school to being among the tallest.  I was thrilled to be able to slip in to watch the election speeches this year.  Dylan was running for Prime Minister of the student council against one other fellow.  He was the last to speak, and while I'm certain I have a biased perspective, I think he knocked it out of the park.

What was the first thing he did when he was done? He walked over to his competitor and shook his hand. I thought that showed a lot of class.

The day before I had had a chance to visit with former Prime Minister Paul Martin and talked to him about Dylan.  He was in town launching an Aboriginal Entrepreneurship initiative.  I described how Dylan has overcome his challenges and is successfully straddling two cultures, both of which add tremendous value to his life.  I also shared that he was running for prime minister of his school.  "Dylan sounds like he's a courageous young man," said Mr. Martin.  "I hope he wins."

I called home at 4 pm that afternoon to find out the results.

"Oh yes, I won," hurried Dylan.  "But Ben is not doing too well."

Following an end-of-school tumble that found Ben doing a face-plant on the concrete, Dylan was more concerned about his little brother - face covered in blood with a bag full of ice on his nose - than basking  in the glow of his election victory.

We are very proud of Dylan, apart from his political success, as he's really buckled down with the school work.  I have to give Heather so much credit, as she is here encouraging him when I am hither and thither in my multiple roles at work, in the community and with regional council.  He spent a lot of time on an incredible story about time travel which earned him an almost perfect mark.  Part of the assignment was to weave in elements of some of his core subjects.  He was not sure how to bring math into the narrative.

A story about a boy and girl who use a time machine to go back to 1911 just before a thief steals the Mona Lisa painting from the Louvre, I suggested that he might want to express the change of value of the painting from then to now as a percentage increase.  He did a google search and found out that it was worth $1.5 million in 1911 and about $700 million today.  We had a 45-minute debate as a family trying to reach consensus on the answer before putting the question out to the Facebook world.  Within minutes, people in multiple provinces were arguing about what the answer was to the question.

Ben has taken his musical passions to the next level, going to guitar lessons with an accomplished artist named Simon Budd.  His interest has not waned at all, which is awesome.  The things he is curious about continues to amaze me.  The other night he was nose-deep in a book in bed.

"What are you reading?" I asked.

"The Secret Life of Money," he said.

"What have you learned about so far?"

"Interest," he said.  "And stock markets."

I was a little gobsmacked to be honest, but delighted that he was reading a book with such valuable information.  It turns out he noticed the book being advertised in his Owl magazine and sought it out at the library last weekend.

Heather felt a weight lifted off her shoulders as she shared with her community of clients and colleagues her intention to scale back her offerings for personal health reasons.  Some of the things her body is going through has made it difficult to manage a daunting number of classes and personal appointments.  She realized that she needed to take more time for herself and took action.  Almost immediately, she began to feel better, relieved that she had paid attention to her body.

She was high as a kite (figuratively) yesterday, as she successfully delivered a keynote presentation to almost two hundred EAs and teachers in the Catholic School District.  It was such a success that they have asked her to come back and deliver a full-day workshop in 2013.

I won't go on and on about my life the past two months, as you could get a good sense of that from my public blog (www.middleagebulge.com), but I will share that two of the highlights of the fall were visits in both Guelph and Vancouver.

It was wonderful to spend a couple of days between work commitments visiting with Pierre & Robbie, Marcel & Kathy, Uncle Joe & Aunt Betty, Lisanne and Alex, Joseph Patrick & Mary Ann, and baby Nadine.  Thanks so much for making me feel so welcome and carving out some time with so little notice.

From Toronto I flew to Vancouver to join Heather and the boys for a wee weekend holiday in celebration of our 10th wedding anniversary.  It was great to see Claude, Tiffany and Madeleine in their West Vancouver home and spend time together, including a scrumptious Thanksgiving dinner.  I'm convinced I landed in Fort McMurray the next day 10 pounds heavier than when I left.  That was some good eating!

Hello September

I woke up on the first morning in September and glanced over my right shoulder to see hues of deep orange and purple as the sun poked its face over the distant hills.  I grabbed my camera - which has been largely supplanted by the versatile iPhone as the photography device of choice - as I knew it was most capable of catching the beauty of the moment with the lack of available light.

Ben and I enjoyed an equally striking scene the night before as the bright moon lit up the street.  We are blessed with regular Mother Nature masterpieces, and I do my best to capture as many of them as I can.

The summer seems a blur, a whirring melange of images, moments and memories.  It felt remarkably full to be perfectly honest, like we crammed as much into two months as is humanely possible.  It was also hot, too hot for this northern Canadian soul who appreciates cool and crisp evenings along with mornings that demand a good sweater and a steaming cup of coffee.  Did I mention how hot it was this summer?

Many evenings - perhaps most evenings - we were going to bed with temperatures in the house ranging from 28 to 31-degrees Celsius.  We had fallen victim to the boiled frog syndrome.  I knew we had arrived in those tepid waters when we had a guest in the house complaining about how incredibly hot it was in the living room.  Heather and I looked at each other somewhat puzzled.  We felt remarkably comfortable.  I walked over to the thermostat to see what the actual temperature was in the room.

"It's twenty-six," I said, with shock in my voice.  We were ready to curl up under a blanket because our bodies had been reprogrammed by the stiflingly hot weather.

Moments before leaving work to begin our summer holidays I was asked if I would be willing to accept a secondment (or a temporary assignment) to work on a project to get an arts council up and running in our region.  A nonprofit entity had been created and an interim board appointed, but it needed some full-time attention to become organized and operational.

"Absolutely," I said without hesitation.

"We'll get that started right away in August," he said, or as soon as I returned to the office after our two week holiday.

I was a little dazed as I packed up my stuff and headed home to start packing for our trip, as surprised as I was delighted that I would soon be spending the bulk of my time focusing on the arts, though there wasn't a lot of detail or direction.  That would come later.

Our summer journey took us from Cold Lake, Alberta to Watrous, Saskatchewan to spend a couple of days with my brother Doug and his family.  From the central part of the province we darted east to spend a short stretch at home in Kamsack before heading down to Winnipeg, Manitoba where we spent some wonderful hours with Heather's grandparents and her Uncle Gary and Aunt Syl's family before returning to Kamsack.  Eventually we ended up at Lac des Isles near Meadow Lake to hang out with Heather's mom, dad and brother and his family.

I could devote hundreds of words to describing every detail of these incredible days, but apparently pictures say a thousand words, so let's do it that way.

Both Dylan and Ben gave some fishing a try on the dock at Cold Lake.  We didn't catch anything, but we sure enjoyed spending time on the water.

Watrous provided lots of great opportunities for family walks and great visits.

Doug was the master fisherman early one morning.

The iPad proved to be popular with the little ones.

Dylan enjoyed some head-to-head time with his Memere.

The iconic Thomas family bus.

It was great to chat with Grandpa Gordon during several visits to their wonderful home  in The Wellington.

Grandma Mary looks absolutely wonderful, belying her 90 years.

Syl and Gary were marvelous hosts as they provided a base of operations for our Winnipeg adventures.

It felt great to work on a project together and a achieve a positive result - a new garbage container at the back of Mom and Dad's yard.  The old one was becoming a hazard after 40 years.

Warren, Sherry and Tori treated us to an outstanding afternoon and evening at Madge Lake, not to mention thrilling rides on the "big comfy couch".

Julia is growing into a wonderful young lady.

The cherry spitting contest was one of the highlights of our Lac des Isles stop on our holiday.

Do you think Dylan is having any fun?

A walk in the forest provided a lovely memory of Heather and her niece Julia.

One of many wonderful sunsets we were treated to this summer. This was on our final evening at Lac des Isles.

Upon our return to Fort McMurray I began moving offices at work while Heather, Dylan and Ben prepared for part two of their summer adventures.  Just a few days later, they departed south, dropping Dylan off at the Take Action Academy near Calgary.  Heather and Ben went on to spend some time in Crowsnest Pass and in the mountains.

The Ben Desk project

I enjoyed a working holiday at home, stripping out the upstairs bathroom, giving it a new coat of paint and installing tile baseboards.  I also built Ben a desk for his room.

A young boy jumps from the lifeguard town at YMCA Geneva Park

My final weekend of the summer was spent at Mindcamp at YMCA Geneva Park near Orillia, Ontario.  It was an amazing couple of days with creative thought leaders from 14 different countries.  It's good to be back in the swing of things - the boys have returned to school (on Wednesday) and Heather is poised to begin a busy fall of yoga teacher training sessions and myriad other activities.

I hope you had a terrific summer, that the sunshine was plentiful, mosquitoes scarce and the good times in abundance.