CHRISTMAS

Yeh, yeh, yeh, it's been a while since my last post. My business has a large seasonal element to it which means the month or so before Christmas I am editing into the morning hours and dodging the whining calls from my studios on the cell phone.

Christmas also means our travelling season is upon us. Collette gets a couple of weeks off for the Christmas holidays and since our families live in different cities, we usually spend a good percentage of that holiday on the road.

In the 25 years that Collette and I have been together, we have never spent a Christmas by ourselves, in our own house. Look, for me, being as atheist as one can get, the only significance Christmas has is a calendar date to get together with our families so it is something I look forward to. Still, it would be nice to spend at least one Christmas in the city where we actually live .... or some southern resort getting sun burnt and getting some rum-inspired tattoo I just know I will regret later.

The other significance Christmas holds for me, is that it's the anniversary of my mother's death. This is not a sad occasion. Ma has been gone long enough, now, that I can use this time to remember her, the person she was, the major influence she was in my life, and how much I miss her.

Which brings us to this Christmas just past. Collette's father, Nick, has just moved into his new condo and although he has a room mate, Fred, it's his first Christmas without his wife. There was not going to be a big family gathering this year so we wanted to go up and at least cook the old guy Christmas dinner.

So up we go to Parry Sound. This winter our entire country has been inside a giant snow globe of crazy weather but if you want winter, go to the Canadian Shield. I cut a little video (at the bottom of this post) that will give you a brief a glimpse of a true Ontario Christmas ... even if one day was more snow than rain.

There was no room for us at Nick's place but luckily his old house had not closed yet .. but it was empty. So we packed up our double air mattress, one of my small monitors and the Xbox I got for Christmas, loaded up some DVDs, a couple of games, some beer (you knew there would be beer didn't you?) and set ourselves up all comfy.

Collette spent a lot of time with her dad and Miss Hayley and I tramped around town, taking video and playing with the ball and exploring the Fitness Trail. Christmas Day Collette did the chef honours (being back north always brings out her domestic side) and we had a quiet time with Nick.

We didn't get to spend much time with the rest of the family as they live 40 minutes away from Parry Sound and the weather was sketchy. But the purpose of the trip was to spend as much time with Nick as possible, which worked out as his room mate, Fred was away for his own Christmas day.

So, a quiet day, without the usual chaos and clutter, giving something to someone who needed it, even if it was just company, some attention. For a guy who doesn't believe in Christmas, that works for me


Untitled from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

UP NORTH 3: THE WEDDING

Here we are at the event that took Collette and I up north last weekend in the first place. The wedding of her nephew Tim to Kate. Tim is the youngest child of Donna, Collette's older sister.

The day turned out beautiful, but did not begin that way. The wedding was on the Sunday. The two previous days had been marked by rain, sometimes torrential downpours, and cool winds. Sunday morning started as the exception; sunny and warm with a pleasant breeze. The problem was, the ceremony was going to be late in the afternoon ... and outside ... with much potential for disaster. I always see potential for disaster. Collette calls that pessimism. I call it hedging my bets.

Sure enough, as the day progressed, the sky began to darken. The wedding ceremony was being held at the site of an old one room school house in Humphrey (just south of Parry Sound) that had been converted into a museum. Due to the layout of the site, there was very little parking and Tim and Kate had arranged for buses to pick people up, take them to the site, then drive them to the hall in Parry Sound where the reception would take place. One thing about rural weddings: There is an awful lot of driving.

Taking the bus did not work for me. I was doing the video for the kids and I had a good amount of gear to ferry. Plus, I always like to have my own vehicle on a shoot, for purposes of flexibility. And I like to sing when I drive. And no one wants to be subjected to that. My first task of the day was to locate the school house museum in Humprhey. I was beginning to think that this was some kind of secret; Donna, the groom's mother, seemed unclear about the location. Was this a clandestine wedding? A black ops ceremony? I finally got directions from Dave, Tim's dad. They seemed clear ... but "clear" to a guy whose memory pretty much resembles said in a sieve, is a very suspect term.

So yeh, I got loss. Went down one long country road that looked like all the other long country roads and realized, when I hit a dead end defined by some gigantic earth moving equipment, that this was not the wedding site. Though I edited a wedding in Thunder Bay where the bridal party arrived at the church on a bunch of back hoes. But Kate has way too much class for that.

So back I go towards Highway 400, trying to figure out where I made the wrong turn. And turn I did. Three point turns on provincial highway, several times. I was once again south bound on the 400 when a car came blazing up beside me, lights flashing, horn blaring. It was Curtis, Tim's brother in law, with Collette's father in the car. He had seen me and swooped up at 170 kph to catch up with me. After declaring I was just returning to Toronto where we had real streets, Curtis led me to the school house. Ah, our saviour.

So I arrive at the ceremony location and feel the rain the moment I get out of the car. I find John, one of Kate's brothers, who is the man in charge. I say to him "Where is the tent? I heard there was a tent?" John informed me that, yes, there had been a tent but twenty minutes ago it had been cancelled ... by Kate. Cancelled. I was sheltering my camcorder from the rain. We were not allowed inside the schoolhouse museum and really, maybe ten people could have fit in there. They were a tiny people, the Canadian shield pioneers. But the powers of a bride on her wedding day are not to be questioned. By the time Kate arrived, the sun was shining.

The ceremony went on without any major issues. Some of the older people (no, not me, be nice) wondered about the lack of chairs .. and bathrooms. The one thing old people are always worry about .. bathrooms.

The day got nicer and nicer as time went on and we all went down to the Stockley Centre in Parry Sound to take some images. This is a lovely location, right on the water, though in true Parry Sound fashion it also houses the Bobby Orr museum. To see some exteriors of this location you can take a peek here, the shots of the hall at towards the end of the video.

The rest of the night went off very well. I took video, Collette took stills, people ate, family members made speeches, lots of really smart people danced really goofily and Tim and Kate looked genuinely happy. And the hall served my brand of my beer. And we all know how I feel about beer.

Hey, who let that hairy old guy into the wedding? Oh well, he has a cool camera, maybe he filmed something nice ...

Kate & Tim's Wedding Video Trailer from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

UP NORTH 2: THE LOST GRAVEYARD

Highway 529 is an old provincial highway that runs from the Parry Sound area (about two hours north of Toronto) to Sudbury. The highway was long ago supplanted by Highway 400 and is basically now used mostly by locals and the odd tourist. The stretch of this highway from Springhaven Lodge to Sudbury is not much of a highway; narrow, unmarked, stretching for kilometer after kilometer of dense bush broken by the Matewan River and the odd side road.

A couple of years ago we were headed along this highway to the small community of Byng Inlet for a Scale family function. Collette's brother Dennis was driving when he suddenly pulled over to the side of the road. There was nothing there. Just bush. And more bush. Turkey vultures circling overhead. Wind in the pines. Dusk creeping in, its crepuscular blush adding a smear of color to this grey and green world. I wondered, in this (to my city eyes) lonely place if this was it ... I had finally pushed Collette's family too far and I was going to be buried in a bog somewhere. Well, I was about to learn about some burying, but not my own.

Dennis wanted to show us an old graveyard, overgrown by the dense bush, dating back to the early or mid teens. We went wading through the mosquito infested thickets and were soon finding a small group of old gravestones and markers a place that had become so much a part of the landscape I would have had no idea that it was there at all.

Last weekend Collette and I decided to return to the graveyard, armed as we were with our "good" cameras for the family wedding. The site has changed in the interim. The area has been cleared back a bit and signs have been erected. You still have to pretty much know what you are looking for, but it was much easier for us to find.

There are about 16 graves in the cemetery, the oldest dating back to 1890, the most recent 1922. Dennis seemed to think that most of the deaths had resulted from a typhoid epidemic but we have been unable to confirm this.

There is a family tomb of some kind here, the family is McCaffery and there is at leas one infant buried here.

There is one soldier buried here, Private Ramesbottom, who "died of wounds received at Cameri" at the age of 26. His is the most recent grave but other members of his family are buried here.

Collette found this toppled stone surround by bits of extremely weathered and aged wood. Her research led her to the fact that this is the grave of a young child, and the wood is the remnants of a cradle that had been built around the marker.

Here is a picture, from a historical website, of what this grave looked like years ago, date uncertain, but the structure of the cradle is more evident.

Apparently there are more graves than we were able to find. This time of year the area is still quite dense with bush and even denser with mosquitoes. The day we went it had been raining for most of the morning and our little blood sucking friends were viewing the three of us (myself, Collette and Miss Hayley) as a movable feast so we were not really willing to push even further back into the bush.

This cemetery was abandoned when the logging industry in Byng Inlet, like many in this part of the province, folded to economic pressure.

Though many of the grave markers were in rough shape, you could still catch a glimpse of the stories, and the past lives that they represented.

There is more to this graveyard and to this story than we have been able to uncover thus far. And there are more "lost" cemeteries in this area. I suppose that is not unusual, especially in areas that have boom and bust economies, like lumber and fishing and even tourism.

So this may become our "off time" project, scouring this region of north central Ontario that is so important to Collette and her family, seeking out these lost and forgotten cemeteries, trying to trace the stories and lives of those who lived and died there so long ago. And, well, my family is from Kingston, an even older community, so we may have our work cut out for us ...

Of course, I made a video. Images are from the Sony PD 170 I brought up to do the wedding. Music is from a famous Hollywood movie.

Byng Inlet Cemetery from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

UP NORTH PART ONE

Collette, Miss Hayley and I have just returned from a few days off in north-central Ontario and pretty jammed packed those days were. First, we got to spend some time at Collette's family lodge at Nares Inlet, something we have not been able to do for more than a year. Then there was our quest for a "lost" graveyard deep in the bush. And, of course, there was a family wedding to attend. Being us, we have pics and videos of everything so I am going to split the adventures into three separate posts.



We will start with Springhaven Lodge. I have written about the lodge before and how important it is to us. This is Collette's home and the home away from home for Miss Hayley and myself. Now that Collette's father has moved into Parry Sound we haven't made the extra hour or so trip up to Nares Inlet but we made a point this past weekend, to visit her family that live there, to reconnect with this special place and, of course, to allow Collette to play with her new boyfriend (that being the Nikon D-80)















One of the things that has changed at the lodge since our last visit is the giant boulder that lives on the beach. When I first came to the lodge over twenty years ago this huge boulder was partially submerged but as the waters of the Georgian Bay have receded, the entire boulder has become exposed. Collette's brother Garry had a local artist do some carving on the boulder, transforming it from something prosaic, to a work of art.

Besides the beauty of the manufactured art, this part of north central Ontario offers a lot of natural beauty as well. The clarity of the water, the sharp barb images of the trees, the moss dappled rock that form the mass of this muscular land ... all of it gives a welcome reprieve to someone who lives in the middle of pervasive urban sprawl.

The weather was on and off the day and night we were there but the sun came out just enough for us to create some images.

This next one Collette took right around dusk, which as you can see is beautiful, but also prime mosquito/fly feeding time. This is called taking the good with the bad, or paying for your bliss. In this case, we paid with blood.

So here is my little video of our lodge visit. For the geeks, this video combines footage from my Samsung palmcorder and the Sony 3 chip camera I brought up for the wedding. The differences should be obvious. The last few shots of the video were taken in Parry Sound itself. Music is Collin James covering Van Morrison.

Springhaven Lodge, June 2008 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.