1C and frost on the roof of the shed.
Bowlwd yesterday, helped set up the clubhouse for tonight. And then the day was done.
Busy this morning doing the Port Hardy Breakfast, I'll post a thing I wrote after the first one I attended, it may explain what thats a bout. There will be several more missing this year, but I hear a couple of younger ones may be coming.

LINKS in TIME

Following one of the “get together” breakfasts of a small group known to themselves as the “Port Hardy  Bunch”, I got to thinking about how inspite of time, distance and sometimes only fleeting contact our lives are still connected.   Some are connected because they have known each other for all their respective lifetimes, some because of only a brief contact of a few years and some through other people in their lives.  I wrestled with the concept that perhaps we were like the links of a chain or perhaps because we came together we completed a circle.  Neither example fully explains the feelings that were forming.

Each of us in a sense is like a ship,  a ship that tied up with others for many years or for just a few.   Whether for many or just a few years, our perceptions of each other vary, as does what we perceive on a bright sunny day as opposed to a day wreathed in fog.

Some of the people we all knew stayed on near the waters of Hardy Bay, the rest of us sailed off, we sailed on many rivers and many oceans and we sometimes encountered each other in our travels.  And now all these many years later we gathered together.  Many of us are still firmly connected, perhaps due only to brief interludes away from each other, perhaps due to family alliances or perhaps due to those other people that were in our lives.

I lived at Port Hardy (tied up if you like) for only a few years(1946 - 1951) and my memory of those that were there is different in many respects from those that had many years along those shores.  At this gathering it was interesting for me that even though I, for some, had slipped from memory, that through reminiscing and remembering others a connection could be re-established.  And so the links between past and present were added to and a circle of time became complete.  So, unexplained above, perhaps an encircled chain, a chain that starts and ends on the shores of Hardy bay, best describes the feelings that were invoked that morning. 

If a chain is the main ingredient then what materials were used to forge each of those links?  What histories and experiences have been compounded and caused each of us to be a link in that circle?  Is it possible to share our individual stories and perhaps strengthen that chain and therefore the connection to the past as well as the future?   Perhaps not, but  think about what we talked about, what questions we had, the curiosity that was aroused by the reminiscing of 20, 40, 60 years of memories.  Perhaps opportunities will  arise that will permit filling the gaps created by time and perhaps they will not.  Perhaps it is enough that we come together on occasion and re-tell what we have told before, re-visit what we have visited before and, perhaps it is not.  Perhaps.

John Little

January, 2007