A Poet in Big Sky As I mentioned in a previous post, I gave the region a name, The SHVR. The reason being, this part of the world evokes awe and wonderment in me, and I’ve grown quite fond of it. So, I gave it a name. Another area I find evocative, which by extension is part of The SHVR, is Big Sky. It was the second or third weekend after we’d moved to The SHVR, St Lazare more specifically, when my wife and I went for a Sunday afternoon drive. It was a beautiful early July afternoon with hardly a cloud in the sky. We drove west on St Angelique and then turned south on the 201. We had never driven out to this part of The SHVR even though we use to come in from the city once in a while. I pointed out to my wife how beautiful the view of the farmer’s fields in the distance was. The gentle slope looks like it was once an escarpment that has been eroded and smoothed out by receding glaciers. Whether or not that’s the case I don’t know, but it’s a scenario I painted for myself. Maybe I’ll look up the real reason why this hilly area gives way to flatness. I have a vague memory of learning that The St Lawrence River was much wider at some point and the farmer’s fields maybe the ancient St Lawrence’s river bed. Regardless the explanation, for the time being, I’m happy with the geological history I conjured up for myself. Anyway, once we got down the hill, we drove to chemin Ste Marie and turned to head west. That’s when it hit me. Baddabing! Man, the sky here is sooooo big! The sky is unobstructed by hills or tress there the way it is in St Lazare or Hudson. It sprawls out endlessly making me feel huge and small all at the same time. The rows of corn which stood maybe a couple of feet off the ground, looked like they were geometrically standing guard over the sky. Silos poked out here and there and reminded me of the skyscrapers I use to enjoy photographing in the city. The sun shining off the corrugated metal shone like jewels of the horizon. They’re lonely and beautiful beyond their practicality. They are positively ghostly at night as most farmers have them lit. They’re beacons in the vastness of the Big Sky night. They let me know where to make the turn to go to where I’m going. Lone trees in the middle of fields keep an eye on things. Skeletal giant forms in the winter and smoothing cool shadow casters in the summer, they’re unflinching in their perpetual duty. They’re an accent on the beauty of the landscape. As a kid I was bored by farm fields. Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten into photography since but now I see that there is so more when you take a little closer at this minimalistic landscape. To work the farm fields of Big Sky must be hard work. I threw up my hand to way at the farmer driving the tracker in the photo below. Either he, didn’t see me or wondered what the smiley ball capped guy was all about. I feel like an interloper most of the time, and I’m not a brazen paparazzi. I won’t go onto to someone’s property to make an image. One day I’ll work up the nerve to knock on a farmer’s door and ask if I can walk around his or her fields. I imagine I’d fell even more huge and small walking around the fields of Big Sky. In my next entry of the Tales from The SHVR I will be telling you of a very interesting encounter I had with a person that lives in The SHVR. Keep an eye out for that. The farms are that are in an around Ste Marthe are beautiful. They seem a natural and organic part of the landscape, as if they’ve always been there. There’s a quite and stillness to them that is very soothing to a weary soul. I’ll end this by saying that it's not like this city slicker had never driven by corn fields, and I know that the sky in the Canadian prairies or the Eurasian Steppe must be a lot bigger, but this is Big Sky, and it is there, in our back yard, to for us to enjoy, and dare I say discover.
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In the first entry of the Tales from The SHVR, I shared the Facebook post that was the starting point for this blog. For my second entry I thought would elaborate on the sentiment I expressed in the Facebook post I made. As a kid the countryside was intimidating to me. Like any good Italian immigrants my folks, along with my father’s brother, had a little plot of land tucked away at the far end of a farmer’s field in Laval. Just so you know, that farm is now a resting place for cookie cutter houses, and that’s all I’m going to say about that. Every weekend we would go to the farm and tend to the vegetables that my parents would cultivate. Man, did I feel out of place there. Void of swings or monkey bars, no allies to play hide and go seek in, how was I to have any kind of fun. Fields of peas and cabbage was all there was. Soy wasn’t a popular crop back then. Once in a while my uncle would light a fire and I would tend it. What little kid doesn’t like burning just about anything he can get his hands on. Otherwise, I mostly walked around the grass, that stood almost as high as I did, and looked for stuff to play with or have as a temporary pet. My father wasn’t big on pets, so bugs or little critters I caught there were my pets while we were there. I would sometimes catch a toad and have it as a temporary pet. I was heartbroken when one of the temporary pets leaped out of my hand and into the fire. I would never have known that kind of heartbreak in the city. On the way back home, we would sometimes stop at a nearby farm where they sold fresh eggs. That would only delay our return home. Being an anxious kid, I held on tight to my routine. There was comfort in the familiarity in the things I knew and did in the city. The country wasn’t that. The wide-open spaces, stinky barns and no sidewalks weirded me out. I was always very happy to get home to the southernmost part of Ahunstic near Cremazie metro, not too far from Beau Dommage’s fabled 6760, rue Saint-Vallier. which figured in their song Tous les palmiers. Much like the guy in that song I was glad to be going home. I figured the tomatoes would grow even if I wasn’t there, and didn’t care if they did. The playgrounds and alleys of Ahunstic and Villery were where I felt comfortable. Fast forward to my early twenties to when I met a beautiful girl in university. I was reacquainted with the country through her. She was from Magog, so we would go over to her folk’s place and spend weekends there. Her dad took it upon himself to take the Italian kid from the city and show him around. He would take me for car rides, and he’d tell me about the region. The first drive was on a summer evening on route 247 heading towards Georgeville, the sun was setting as we drove past a pasture where cows were grazing, and the mighty Lake Memphremagog lay quietly in the distance. Neither was bothered or even noticed us passing by, but I noticed them, and my eyes and heart were open to the beauty of the country. I married the pretty girl from Magog, and we made a life for ourselves in the city. We had talked about moving out of the city when we retired. The pandemic sped up our plans. It brought out the worst aspects of living in a condo in the city. Space takes on very different proportions. When the lock-downs let up, we started looking for a new home outside the city. Having come to The SHVR often for lazy weekend drives, or to go to Finnegan’s Market or just hang out in the town of Hudson, we decided that this is where we’d make our home. Now you may be wondering why I called this blog “Tales from the SHVR”. You see, this part of the world has come to mean so much to me that I gave it a name, much like one would give a name to a homestead. The SHVR, pronounced “shiver”, is the acronym for… St-Lazare, where we make our home, Hudson, Vaudreuil and Rigaud. I’ll be referring to the area as The SHVR from now on. You know I was tempted to say that I was going to refer to the area as the SHVR “going forward” but I stopped myself because that’s a corporate world expression, and I don’t want to corporatize the area, nor the feelings I have for it and the people in it. Although I’m new to the area, I already feel like its fabric is weaving itself into me, and me into it. This fabric is one woven by the people that live in The SHVR. A fabric that has a similar sense of community that I knew as a kid over there in Ahuntsic. Maybe because back then our family and the people that lived there were of modest means. We would pull together and help one another. If we needed a ladder M. Lacombe would be happy to lend his, the Portuguese, I never did learn his name because my father always referred to him as the Portuguese, would lend us is hibachi when we went on family picnics, and Nicole and Carole taught me not to be afraid of thunderstorms as they held my little hand, and we watched the spectacle. I saw that sense of community wither away in the city. Maybe because of the increasingly fast pace of life. Maybe because of the rise of social media induced narcissism. The pandemic certainly precipitated the demise of the sense of community. Whatever the reason, it had gone and left me with a decreased sense of belonging. The SHVR has a strong sense of community. Not one that is built from necessity as in my childhood, but rather one that exists because it’s the way to be. People here in The SHVR have been very friendly and welcoming. The responses I’ve gotten to the photos I post on Facebook are humbling. I had started a Facebook group for our neighbourhood in the city and it was greeted with indifference. Here however, the Facebook groups, and there are more than one, for The SHVR, are alive, vibrant, and a great resource for finding out about the community. If I want to know who to hire for some work I need done, I post the question, and answers come flooding in, a good place for fish and chips, I ask, and my belly is happy. I have to say although there are some snarky answers, they are few and far between, in general I find people kind and respectful, more so than in the city. My wife, who’s from a smaller town, attributes it to the fact that when living in a small community, you have to be respectful and kind to the people you meet because you’ll be meeting them pretty regularly. I think that’s partly it; I also think that the slower pace of life has something to do with it. When one slows down, one appreciates the people they interact with and the beauty of where they live a lot more. Anyway, this is what I found living here. If my introduction to The SHVR’s sense of community came through my interactions with people on Facebook, the in-person experiences I’ve been having with the people of The SHVR have further proved to me that the community here is special, and furthermore, I feel like I am welcome and that I belong. For the first time in many years, I know almost all my immediate neighbours, we talk and catch up with one another regularly. I nearly fell on my ass when, Rejean, my backyard neighbour asked me if his music was too loud when he was doing some yard work. That had never happened in the city. People went about their business, regardless of the volume, with little regard for others. We have a gazebo, and during our first winter here it snowed quite a bit, and Simon, another backyard neighbour of ours, saw me trying to shovel snow off it with a regular shovel. He came to the fence and asked me if I wanted to borrow his roof rake. He leaned it on the fence and left it there so I can have access to it whenever I need it. Last fall he leaned it up against the fence again without me asking, and it's been there all winter. In turn, when Richard, a gentleman in his 70s living with pulmonary issues, needs to have errands run, he texts me and I gladly will pick up what he needs as we run our errands. He’ll remember details of things I tell him about my wife and about me, and he’ll ask “Hey, how’s your belly.” The belly is an issue, but that's for another post maybe. It’s good to be surrounded by people that genuinely care for one another. I also love that I can live my life in both predominant languages in Quebec. I can switch from English to French and back again, in the same day and often in the same conversation. This coming together of the two solitudes rubs off on those that are fortunate enough to live here. I didn’t want to leave the city and move into an area that was predominantly one language or another. I like that I can hear and speak both languages. When we started looking at communities that are relatively accessible to the city the one that has the best mix of French and English is the SHVR. That’s another reason we ended up here, and it’s as good as any. I gained a little insight on the SHVR when I picked up a movie poster, I ordered at the post office. Being the chatty guy I am, I struck up a conversation with the guy at the counter. He told me that when he was a kid, St Lazare was the French town and Hudson was the English town. Now those demarcations are getting blurred, and that’s fine by me. Change is inevitable in a community as in life. However, the community as a whole has to keep in mind that decisions taken today will affect it and its delicate fabric in the future. I’m thinking of the Sandy Beach development issue. Sandy Beach means a lot to me. It was a place where I came to lick my wounds after having been laid off after almost 20 years from a job in the telecom industry. I would drive out of the city, and as soon as I crossed the bridge, I took the first exit and wound my way to the beach by means of chemin de l’Anse which becomes Main. My mood would lift and when I made it to the beach, I’d take off my shoes, bury my feet in the sand, breath in slow and take in the beauty of the beach and Jack Layton Park. With the changes that seem to be coming to Sandy Beach and the surrounding area, one has to wonder, well, at least I wonder, why would anyone sell off that land to a developer and have it change this haven forever. It's unfortunate that Jack Layton Park and Sandy Beach are the only two places where people can go sit by the water and enjoy the breeze coming off the river. There’s Thompson Park but the waterfront isn’t that accessible really, and Park Felix Leclerc where people can go and be by the water besides Sandy Bach and Jack Layton Park. Honestly, there should be more places where the waterfront can be accessible. This fact makes Sandy Beach even more important. I’m going to leave it at that. There’s enough people belly aching on the interwebs. We didn’t move to the SHVR and expect to live like we did in the city. We moved here because of what the SHVR is. I’m not too keen on seeing it change to make it more like the city. Striking the balance between maintaining traditions and heritage and a community's growth is like waking on silk tightrope. All this to say, the anxious little kid is now a desperate old fart that loves small town/country living. This old fart is grateful and feels like he belongs. The SHVR is a special place folks. I’ll endeavour to be mindful to take care of it as best I can. Wow, I really need to stop this now, I’m I might just break out and sing Kumbaya… For this, the first entry of this blog I am reposting a Facebook post I made in the Living in Saint-Lazare, Hudson, Rigaud and Vaudreuil and Loving it!, and in the Hudsonites on March 3rd 2024. I basically wrote of my feelings for the area. The post garnered comments that stayed with me, so much so that I kept thinking, “What’s the next thing I could say in a post.” When I thought about it long enough, I realized that it would be presumptuous me to take up Facebook bandwidth with another wordy post. I got to thinking, “How about a blog… Yeah a blog!”, a blog where I write about my thoughts and impressions about living in The SHVR. So, this is how this blog came to be. I’m aiming to post one entry per month, if there are more, well then so be it, but I’m aiming for at least one per month. Anyway, here’s the post that started it all… An Interloper’s Thoughts
I wanted to take a moment of your time, if you’re reading this, to express how grateful and thankful I am to be living in such a beautiful corner of the world. My wife and I moved to St Lazare almost two years ago now. Our son had moved with us but got his first contract with the military and has moved away. What all three of us appreciated from the jump, was the slower, gentler pace at which life unfolds here. I’m one of those who stops and smells the roses kinda person. That was a difficult mind frame to have in the city, where there’s always some in more of a hurry than you trying to get by. When I’m at the IGA, reading a label on a can of soup, I never feel like I’m going too slow for anyone. By the same token, if someone happens to be reading the expiry dates on the milk jugs, looking for the one that’s furthest out, I give the person the time to do so, understanding that there is an unspoken agreement between us. I like to think that people are just a little more considerate of others here, which is what I was hoping for and expected moving to a smaller community. This is why I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation by simply saying a heartfelt, thank you. Living here I have learned to appreciate the different sites and smells when I drive from town to town in search of images, or just to see the beauty of this little corner of the country. It’s the weathered patina of an old barn, the setting sunset over the Ottawa River or skeletal trees reaching for the sky, the smells of the many wild flowers, pine needles, or that of a freshly fertilized field, that give life texture and make it richer. Again, thank you. |
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The chronicles of a guy from the city now living in The SHVR. ArchivesCategories |