October 10, 2014

In 1964 when I was 14, Barbara Draimin was my counsellor at camp

I was a not very confident kid, recently (and badly) divorced parents. I needed a boost. Every morning at 6, she jumped on my bed and said: “Katesy get up.” And insisted. She kept two canoes in Curve Bay, and every morning before breakfast we paddled together. She drilled me on my standing pry just like I drill kids today. I thought she was teaching me canoeing, but out of that summer, by the alchemy of her deep caring and positive regard for me, tempered with her requirement that I work hard, came a confident young woman – me!

She still canoes (as do I), and she wrote the piece below about her favourite canoe, on the eve of her 70th birthday:

I bought an old canoe in 1987. It was a deep green old town made in Maine by a craftsman who used cane for the seats and beautiful wood and canvas for the rest. It was like buying a 50 year old MG. It had extraordinary beauty and style and absolutely no practicality. I used it for 10 years and then it started to leak. And it was heavy and I was getting older and could not lift it onto the rack.

This old canoe has been sitting in the crawl space under the house for seventeen years…..aging alone with the spiders and crickets. And I have been feeling badly about it for years. This canoe that I loved the moment I saw it and then it aged without help or grace. Today I hired someone to put insulation in the crawl space. Finally, the canoe will come out from under the house. And I will have to decide whether it will go to the dump or become a vessel for some flowers in the summer.   In so many ways, this old canoe reminds me of my aging – a bit leaky, once classy, and needing to find new functions.

I can see the end of the canoe’s life and I can also imagine the end to mine. I don’t know how long it will take nor what it will look like. Just that the canoe and I can’t stay under the house.

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