Tag Archives: Friends

Leo and connecting

Earlier this week I changed the tagline for my blog to Always looking for connections. When I’ve been asked what I write about on my website, I’ve said it’s about community and family history, a bit of DIY, anything that has caught my interest, really, everything and nothing.

But I realized recently that what I get most from writing here is figuring out how I’m connected to other people, both alive and dead, how the past is connected to the present, how one thought leads to another. Writing this blog helps me find my place in the midst of churn and the passage of time.

News is spreading across, well, the world of the death of Leo Cheverie, a widely-known and hugely loved Islander. I met Leo 7 years ago when I was working on an outdoor theatre show. He had volunteered to help park cars, cheerfully donning a safety vest and capably Tetrising vehicles to make the best use of the space available. We got chatting and quickly we connected the dots: he knew my neighbour’s nephew, perhaps a vague connection, but that’s enough here. I know you. We are connected.

When I asked Leo if he was going to stay to see the show, the only real perk of volunteering for a sold-out show, he said he wished he could, but he had just come from volunteering at another event and had promised to sell 50/50 tickets at a concert later that evening. Three volunteer roles in one day was probably not unusual for Leo, which is how he was known everywhere.

I bumped into Leo a few times since then: at a rally, at a meeting, and on social media. The last time I saw him was in December 2021, when he and I joined a mutual friend who was visiting PEI and staying at a beautiful Summerside inn. The heritage home was decorated for Christmas, and we had a lovely time talking, drinking tea and eating Christmas cookies in the inn’s parlour.

The afternoon slipped away, snow started to fall and I had to start for home. I hugged Leo and made him promise to visit me during his summer solstice trip, when he and a friend would start their day at the East Point lighthouse and drive across the province to end up in North Cape, stopping to visit folks along the way. I’m not sure he was ever able to make that longest-day pilgrimage again as he was diagnosed with cancer in spring 2022.

I can’t claim any deeper connection to Leo than what I’ve written here, but I admired and liked him so much, and his example makes me want to do more, do it cheerfully, do it tirelessly. To nurture old connections and find new.

Barter

One of the ten jillion articles I’ve read in the past week asked if bartering is ready for a comeback. I’m not sure where the writer thought it went, as I believe most of us trade our skills and gifts with others all the time. The transactions are not always immediate and direct in the “I’ll give you these magic beans for that cow, young Jack!” kind of way, but the kindness of friends and neighbours is certainly a form of bartering. It’s the kindness currency.

I had a late-evening call this week from a friend who said her iPad had restarted and now wouldn’t let her Pad. A storm was predicted and she was anxious to reconnect to her Ontario family. I tried to walk her through a recovery over the telephone, but an onsite visit was necessary.

The sanitized iPad was waiting in her porch, along with a container of Lysol wipes. A bit of fiddling got her back online. I headed off into the night with a wave through her window and a homemade gift to thank me. An excellent barter within the kindness economy that raised the Gross National Happiness by one connected person and one protected person.

Never Too Old

Just watched Never Too Old for the second time, a CBC documentary about Olive Bryanton, who studied older women in rural PEI for her PhD thesis. It was a moving viewing experience for me as I have watched my mother and her contemporaries navigate the challenges of growing older in place. Olive is an inspiring person.

As it happens, we had two of the lovely women who were in the documentary here to visit my mother last week, Ruby Cousins and Olive’s aunt, Lois Brown. I was able to ask Ruby if she bought the vehicle she was considering in the documentary (spoiler: she did buy a vehicle, just not that one!). Lois is a veteran of the Second World War, and she and my mother were both members of a “Lady Vets” group that used to meet on PEI. They travelled with author and historian Katherine Dewar, who is collecting stories from women veterans for a book and was following up on an interview she did with my mother last year.

I love many things about this beautiful island, but the way we are all connected to each other is a constant source of delight!

Phillips Brown Cousins Dewar
Vivian Phillips, Lois Brown, Ruby Cousins, Katherine Dewar – August 30, 2019. Rarely does someone leave my mother’s house without a treat; these ladies got a blueberry muffin and a bag of chocolate chip cookies each, and a gumdrop cake to share!