WHAT TO DO WITH MY DNA

In the morning, uncle Victor came to the station with the farm pickup truck. On the way back he stopped for several hours at his brother’s plumbing business where he was a busy apprentice, not really wanting to run the farm after grandpa Joseph Napoleon had died. No one of the 16 kids wanted to be farmers except older uncle Ephrem who already had his own farm. All the others moved to cities and learned other trades, plumbing high on their list, with retail machinery not far behind. Uncle Ludger became a lawyer and later mayor of Dalhousie, yet most of my uncles had to deal with sewerage or greasy machinery. Two of my aunts became nurses, moved and married in Quebec City, Marthe a doctor and Yolande, a traveling salesman. Meanwhile, my mother turned out as a steno-typist for Montreal lawyers, married Albert and had Yvette and me during the war in distant Winnipeg. Dad was a chemical engineer in ammo factories all over Canada. The last one was in a Quebec village suitably ...

THE MAGIC MONTH WITH GRANDMA July 1952, I’m 8 ½ years old and about to ride solo an overnight train to Campbelltown NB from Valleyfield QC. My mother pinned a card on my clothes and gave instructions to the porter. I was so excited that I had not slept for 2-3 days, the prospect of spending a month with my grandma on the farm found better than all the Disneylands in the world. Wait, those had not been created yet, but you get the picture.