Directions: From Ottawa southerly on Hwy#416 past Kemptville, Oxford Mills and Spencerville to the St. Lawrence River then westerly along the Ivy Lea Parkway through Johnstown and Wexford to “Katarina’s Coffee Shop” in Prescott on Kellys Bay (almost directly across the river from Ogdensburg in upstate New York) east of Blue Church, Maitland, Brockville, Butternut Bay, Mallorytown, Gananoque and the Thousand Islands (directly north of Interstate 81 to Watertown and Syracuse, NY).

Interstate 81 (I-81) is a part of the Interstate Highway System that runs from I-40 at Dandridge, Tennessee to the Thousand Islands Bridge at Wellesley Island in New York beyond which the short 2.7-mile (4.3 km) Ontario Highway 137 (Highway 137) links to Highway 401.

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We’re on a path which though indefinable and unpredictable is nonetheless certain. Before that eventuality called certainty arrives, reality assumes many different characteristics and textures some of which are frightening, others of which are entrancing. Whatever the axes or descriptions by which reality is figured it is once again certain to be or become wondrous and possibly filled with delight or maybe even remorse. Yet all this certainty is expressive largely of external and exterior forces, external because they transpire without our control, exterior because they are beyond our control.  What then if anything is capable either within or because of our control?  Is reality merely as changeable as the weather and just as endurable or otherwise?  Or have we a way to manipulate or manifest reality to our liking? I think we do.

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Many years ago when I began practicing law I was unwittingly introduced to what I have since learned is a “bespoke” product. I was informed of this through a client named Jeremy Godfrey who, although of British descent was not to my knowledge of princely lineage.  Nonetheless he had a distinguishable familiarity with worthy products. In particular he familiarized me with Asprey’s with whom I ended doing business of two occasions, both very satisfactorily.

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Today we visited my sister and her husband at a cottage south of Thrashers Bay on the Madawaska River near Combermere. Time spent with family is always assured to be enlivening. This was particularly so today because the weather was superlative.  From the moment we awakened early this morning until the time we returned home in the setting sun this evening the sky was perfectly cloudless. In addition the temperature was ideal for a summer day in late July and there was a pleasant breeze throughout the day.

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The date or event is uncertain in my memory regarding the moment I awakened to the inexpressible allure of art. The magnetism has since evolved to a ravenous appetite, an insatiable charisma, as much a charm as an enticement. It was fortuitous that my first house was so small that I had limited space to hang art.  I did however commission a local artist from the Village of Clayton to create a multi-coloured square pane to replace a small glass porthole window in the drawing room.

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My partner Denis and I have been together almost thirty years. When we first hooked up and were both still working, we were accustomed to short holidays mostly in the winter months. It was a time of year when my sole practitioner’s law practice was less busy. Denis (a longtime employee of the federal government) retired at age 51; I retired at age 66. Since our conjoined retirement one decade ago we have predominantly wintered in Florida for six months and spent the others at home in Canada. Although during that decade for familial and collegial reasons/purposes we have taken what might be called summer vacation to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island; and, although we took a brief trip to Newfoundland, predominantly we have remained in situ during the summer months.

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In 1968 when I flew home to Stockholm, Sweden from boarding school at St. Andrew’s College in Aurora, Ontario for summer holidays my father bought me an Agfa Silette LK 35 mm camera. I took it with me on our road trip to the Arctic circle then back through the Norwegian fjords.  My introductory use of the camera was a failure.  I somehow broke the film from the internal winding mechanism.  However it didn’t stop me from taking photographs on our trip.  Until at last I clued in that something was very wrong, that I had taken far more photos than the possible capacity of the film.  My photographic misadventure was probably conducted in relative privacy (read: ignorance) while my father fished or did anything else but supervise my initiation to photography. But this wasn’t the worst of it.  Subsequently in Hamburg, Germany nearby a river or lake, while attempting to walk along a pipe which was used as a sidewalk fencing, and while carrying my new Agfa Silette LK on my shoulder with a strap, I fell from the pipe, swung the strap and camera in an arch to the ground and broke the case and seriously damaged the camera.

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Curiously the thing about living by a river is that from only a middling distance it is impossible to know precisely in what direction the river flows merely from observing the surface of the water. The surface is complicated by a collection of swirls and curls and plateaus of mirrors which indiscriminately and very effectively obfuscate what is going on beneath the surface. Meanwhile as I say the superficial activity is enhanced in an often exceedingly picturesque manner by descriptions of alternating patterns and sudden and unexpected orbs of tranquility. The inexactitude of the hidden flow beneath is a metaphor for the desirability of ambivalence; the urging to nonchalantly engage in a situation without trying to change it or assert control over it.

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Though it requires very little to set my course right, the providence of it always gratifies me. Today for example was the perfect storm.  It was an occasion on which all the critical elements of my being were justified, quenched, accommodated and fulfilled. And no doubt favoured and humoured. It began naturally with an early morning rising though an ascent not to the Stoic extent. The recovery of perception started shortly before nine o’clock, representing what had been a full eight-hours of recommended sleep, one which had only been irregularly interrupted by necessity and anxiety if at all.

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Like any child I grew up acquainted with the need to conform to behaviour. Parents and teachers primarily were to be reckoned with. My father was at heart a military man with the stiff, shoulders back approach (verbal reprimand); my mother was more refined as a diplomatic censure (polite ritual conduct). At school I remember once hearing of a child who had been administered the strap for misconduct. It was not a delivery which sat particularly well with me then (nor has it ever since).  To my thinking it bordered upon brutality or bullying at a minimum.  I certainly never considered it a clever routine for instilling cooperation or agreement; though I acknowledge that may also speak to my misunderstanding of the theoretical basics of discipline.

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