It is the end of the school year. My son just graduated from Grade 9, and after a summer of adventure will be entering Grade 10 in the Fall. He is going to Mexico for almost 3 weeks, to visit a friend he met who was an exchange student in Banff. We are all then going to Nova Scotia in August for a wedding and some East Coast time.
I remember Canada's 100th Birthday.......I was 13 then. I also remember the excitement of the end of school.....the adventures of summer laid out before us. At the end of Grade 3 I was promised a new bike. I still remember coming home and seeing this bright red bike with streamers coming off the handlebars. It was freedom having a bike. We lived closed to the Glenmore reservoir in Calgary...... there was lots of wilderness, long before the developers took hold. We would pack a lunch in our backpacks, peddle across 14th st. which was gravel, and venture out on the trails. Swimming, hiking, biking, hotdogs over a fire, we did it all. We had no cell phones, no distractions, just lots of time out doors with friends. This was a special time in my life, and it touched my soul deeply.
I now live in the mountains, and as an adult feel very lucky to have this life. Around me are bubbling brooks, towering peaks, lodgepole pine that sway in the wind, trembling aspen leaves and a chorus of bird song that fills the air. I am Canadian, and I appreciate that more and more each day as the challenges of the world get bigger and bigger.
This watercolor sketch was created years ago. I was sitting by a stream, across Slocan lake near New Denver, BC. I was on a watercolor course and we were trying to capture the bubbling stream as it danced and splashed over rocks, trees and branches. The wind was blowing softly, the air was heavy with the heat of the day and there was a booming down the lake. A storm was approaching and we needed to boat back to New Denver before the storm.
As I sit here typing this on a hot, sunny afternoon, there is booming down the valley. An approaching storm, some rain, then the freshness as the earth revels in its shower from the heavens.
Happy Birthday Canada
Robert Krysak
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