I Love Pictures #3
Calgary AB

My mum’s side of the family has always been dear to me. As of last week there are now forty cousins with another one due in a few months. Needless to say there was always someone to play with when going back ‘home’ to Ontario.  There was something about the enveloping muggy warmth of southern Ontario and being on a farm.

I remember arriving at my grandparents place, immediately changing into my play clothes and going down to the pond by the creek (said ‘crick’ like the guy who codiscovered the structure of DNA). We’d catch frogs until dusk putting them into our younger cousin’s rain boots. The next morning the older cousin’s (by all of three years so let’s put them at 12) would pull out the riding lawnmower, we’d hook up the wagon, throw some hay and younger cousin’s in there and ride about the farm. My place was on the engine, occasionally ducking my head so the cousin driving could actually navigate.

My grandma was the sweetest little lady you can ever imagine (and my mother is turning into a spitting image of her). She always had President’s Choice variety raspberry jam on the table for breakfast toast, and after a long day of play you know you would find her in the kitchen working hard.  She’s the storybook definition of a ‘grandma’.  I still marvel at how perfect she looked after having six kids, working hard on the family farm for all of those years, and taking care of so many grandchildren.  She passed away suddenly when I was 10. I truly wish I could have known her when I was older. I imagine our conversations would have been so memorable.

My grandma at 16 years of age feeding a cow at her sister and brother-in-law’s farm

Grandma and her first child, my Aunt Joan (1948)

L: My grandparents at their 25th wedding anniversary (1970) | R: The youngest uncle. Gordon Murray Hyde Ferguson at nine months

Doris, my grandfather’s twin sister, with her husband Bill. She is holding my Aunt Joan.

My grandma holding my Uncle Donald, Aunt Joan, Aunt Ann, Uncle Larry and my mother in the front (August 1959)

Erma Rogers Brundage and my grandma after having five children (1961)