UNCLE VICTOR'S FAMILY

The entire batch of uncle Victor's children now operates an engineering company that designs and build sewer and water treatment plants for several small towns across New Brunswick. However, first thing Monday morning, my grandma Clementine would start to whistle again. She would make a stew with the leftovers, often ordering me to 'le caveau' to get a cabbage or a turnip. A trap in the floor concealed by a small carpet was the access to that crawl space with bins on each side. I never heard her complain, but this was the only job she did not care to do, climbing down to that dark and dank earth floor where she also stored potatoes all year. I was mighty proud to be of help to her as I adored my grandma and could not do a lot of really useful work around the house. Just now I was thinking of one song I learned from her. My grand-nephews and grand-nieces have a pretty mighty ancestor. And I wrote this story mostly for them, Strider, Stella, Thomas, Alexander, and others to come...!! She was a solid woman whose short husband Joseph Napoleon had died a few years earlier. And look at the group photo below taken a few years ago. This is just a partial view of some of Clementine's descendants, at a Bernard family reunion in Charlo NB. Just think of how many potatoes and beans it took to create all that human mass!!! (just kidding!) You know the rest of that story living with grandma since I posted it earlier, but you still don’t know about the cap in the photo with VICTOR BERNARD & SONS, the plumber’s apprentice. The next time I met Victor was in 1998 when I drove my fancy girlfriend Constance and two bicycles attached to the trunk of my white Audi. Victor actually lived in grandma’s house I knew well as his family had decided to keep and maintain it as a family legacy for all cousins and descendants to visit. You can imagine how much I loved to see it unchanged, including the barn, forty-six years after that magic “working” vacation with grandma. Uncle Victor was lively and funny, which surprised me, Patricia was a blast and we played keyboards together. until she died a few years ago, she played and sang at the local Veteran Chapter. and at the Charlo Golden Age. My mother had described her brother as taciturn years ago before he met aunt Patricia. He was in his late twenties, wasn’t dating and had everybody worried. Aunt Jacqueline, the cloistered Ursuline nun, started a novena to fix that situation. With seven children born to the exciting Patricia, one could say that our family nun scored big. Patricia was a cocktail singer in the city, charmed by the lonesome farmer turned plumber. Love at first sight..and sound. The entire family was gracious and fun, most of them working with their dad across the street, large and new industrial buildings called VICTOR BERNARD & SONS just like on the cap they gave me, but also DESIGN BUILT MECHANICAL. Years later today, there are branch operations in several towns handling everything from Porta-Potties to large industrial installations for townships, A.C., and treatment plants. On Facebook, it's: VictorBernardFils.

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