My Hometown…

What in the world do you suppose we are doing in North Battleford. Well… it goes like this.

I haven’t been here since my Poppa (dad’s dad) passed away almost 3 years ago. Our bricks never showed up this morning as they were supposed to, so it left me with nothing to do on the jobsite. Well, off we go, let’s hit the road. I figure we will get all the way to Saskatoon today with an earlier start today, but we don’t have a reservation there and we really have nothing to do there if we show up early. So… I decide we need to go to North Battleford to visit the graves of my Granni and Poppa. We are camped at David Laird Campground in N.B. Although we pulled in in the dark of night, I do know that it is a pretty nice place. My Mom, aka Nan, worked for a company that looked after this place back in the late 80’s… yeesh… 80’s seem so long ago.

Anyhoo, it’s a nice place to stop for a night or a weekend and it is actually about 500 meters from the cemetery we will be visiting in the morning.  This visit to the cemetery is for me, but I am going to take some nice photos so my Dad, aka Poppop, can see the site.

You see, while this was my home town, I never came back once I left in 1992. It was where I did my primary and secondary schooling, played hockey and generally grew up, but I never seemed to attach myself to this place. Traci asked me on the way here if I liked growing up here. It was a funny question because I had been thinking about that for the past couple hours. My quick response was ‘Yes’. I never lacked anything, including friends, or things to do. The sport scene here was really good, the social scene was good. The big city of Saskatoon was just an hour away and we had MANY lakes, parks and other outdoor opportunities just minutes from town. I am the person I am now today partly because I grew up here. SO it can’t be too bad to be from here.

So why did I never have any desire to come back? I don’t have a good answer for that. Granni and Poppa were here, and that was the only reason anyone in my family would come back here, and that was fine. They really were the binding agent to our extended family. My close relatives in Saskatoon have never actually met Andrew. These were people I grew up with for the first 15 years of  my life. I can remember Auntie Carol (who Andrew will meet tomorrow probably) always fielding phone calls from my sister, ratting me and my cousin Doug out for, the little ‘no goods’ that we were up to. Auntie Carol, Poppa and Granni were just as much disciplinarians as my parents were at times.  I digress. North Battleford has definitely changed since I was here, but I am sure if I had not had the adventurous spirit after graduation, I would never have left, and I am sure that it would have been fine to live here. I don’t feel disdain for the place, it’s just not home anymore. Home for me is where Traci and Andrew are… it is that simple for me.

Our journey here was pretty interesting. We ended up coming all the way here, even though it was about 2 hours longer than we wanted to drive today, and I will tell that story tomorrow in a picture blog.  AND, sorry to Poppop, we tried really hard to find the Muenster Sausage place outside of Camrose, but were not successful, as we were going to pick up a couple chubs for you…

check back tomorrow for some ‘Griswald’ type stuff from our 7 hour journey today… it was definitely an adventure… Note for my parents -  Our equipment is fine and we are happy and healthy, it was just some travel stuff we will look back on and chalk up to experience…

Goodnight now…