Many years ago when I was 28 years of age, not long after having landed in Almonte, I met a chap here who ran a business (actually, he worked in the business, but he later purchased it). Anyway he was from Almonte and had lived here all his life. He must then have been about 45 years of age and might even have been born in the erstwhile Rosamond Memorial Hospital.  For some reason I asked how often he ventured into the City. He blandly replied, “Never.” Upon further enquiry (I thought he might have misunderstood my question) he reiterated that he had never been to the City. Nor, he added, had he any intention of doing so. He may even have gone further to punctuate his resolve. His endorsement was clear.

The Rosamond Memorial Hospital was built in 1906 on Clinton Street in Almonte. Funded by Bennet Rosamond, it replaced the Cottage Hospital which was too small to serve the town. The new stone building was officially opened by the Governor-General, Earl Grey. This building still stands, and is just across the street from the current Almonte General Hospital opened in 1961.

For us country folk (a much vaunted denomination I am now entitled and anxious to enfold) driving into the City is a contest.  The competition is purely binary. There is no room for indecision. We haven’t mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about the enterprise.

It was this afternoon within this unequivocal atmosphere that I undertook a visit to the City. The fine weather invigorated me; and I adore driving any time. I was nonetheless intent upon visiting my sister near Dow’s Lake to return to her a book I had read last evening. The book was her autobiography privately published by her family.

Not to be tearful or melodramatic, reading the book late into the evening yesterday was a turning point in my life.  After what had practically been a lifetime of ignorance I became acquainted with my sister.  Though it sounds histrionic (and it is not) we were “separated” at an early age, she at 13 to Europe while I remained in Canada at 14½ years of age. Though we were briefly reunited in undergraduate studies in Toronto at Glendon Hall before I moved to Nova Scotia to study law, our distance substantially continued unobstructed when I subsequently transitioned to Almonte and my sister remained in Ottawa. We have since then preserved our distance so to speak, she overruled by family, I by the practice of law.  But last evening whilst reading my sister’s autobiography I acquired intelligence hitherto removed from my sphere of knowledge. Needless to say much of the information was “filling in the gaps” because of course one always absorbs kernels of information over the years.  But it definitely filled a void to complete the circle.

Such is the native necessity and unanticipated nutrition of family.  It is for example easy to excuse or absolve ignorance of others; but when it comes to one’s immediate family (and even to a degree with respect to those of more distant parallel) little competes with the fulfillment derived from alignment. And in the same breath I am anxious to report that the detail, though close, needn’t be critical.  It is the overall picture that is to be completed, just the way it might logically and intuitively survive in a closely knit family.  The measure is not infinite particularity; rather, it is coincidentally what my sister jokingly described as the “family version”.

In old age – that era of cleansing closets, opening the bottom drawer of desks and poring over ancient photographs – anything that completes the circle of life is fortuitous. I won’t go so far as to advance (as it is written in Masonic ritual) that “Nature teaches us how to die” but it certainly feels like preparation for departure.