Dear Friends

The Saint Lawrence River seems to be playing a more and more important role in  our lives as time goes by.  Not only have we lived for decades in a city that was founded at the place where the river's rapids made further travel upstream by sailing ship impossible, in recent years our travels, both physical and spiritual, have been along it.

The St. Lawrence at the Lachine Rapids

In addition to many Sunday mornings bird-watching at the Parc des rapides de Lachine, twice we went downstream on mini-adventures.  The first was an escapade in March when we rented an apartment at Lévis just across from Quebec City, using it as a base for an assault on the city's museums. It was break-up time, and for part of the day blocks of ice moved with the current  toward th sea.  But in the evening when we settled down with some wine and a good meal to look at the river, the ice flowed upstream, much to our surprise.  That is because even though Quebec City is a good 500 km. from the Atlantic, the tides still ebb and flow twice a day.

The path across the pack ice is where the ferry passes.

 Then in August we decided to try the north shore of the river, following Quebec Route 138 as far as it goes.  That's some 1,300 km from our house in Montreal, and it was an amazing experience: the wide open spaces, the muskeg, the sandy beaches, the mighty rivers, the Innu culture, the remnants of forest and  fishery industries. To go any farther down the St. Lawrence you have to go by boat, which might be a plan for some other summer.

Supper at Escoumins

All the time I couldn't help thinking about the transformations  that climate change will bring along this stretch of the St. Lawrence estuary.  Dundurn Press will soon publish my Against the Seas: Saving Civilizations from Rising Waters and when I got home the final edits awaiting me.  Nice to work with such a careful team of editors, who had some excellent suggestions and who saved me from some making some stupid mistakes.

We also were able to spend some quality time with the kids and grandkids during the year.  Lukas, Sophie and the boys (Thom, 10, and Louis, 6) live not too far away so we've visited some back and forth.  The most recent time was in late November when Thom played in a hockey tournament in Boisbriand, north of Montreal.  The whole family came and stayed in a hotel (Wow! it was the first time for the boys, and Louis was in seventh heaven.)  They will be here for part of the Christmas holiday, and we should have some good times.

Elin and company will be here too: we see more of them since they are in Montreal, but given the fact that Jeanne is now in the equivalent of Grade Seven, we aren't called on to do as much helping out as when she was younger.  They will soon be moving into the condo Elin and Stuart bought some time ago: construction was supposed to be done last summer, but it has dragged on and they will be very glad to be in their own place.  The neighborhood where they've lived for several years is very nice (Jeanne's school was two blocks away and there is a park across the street) but it's time for some new adventures.

Lee continues to "make sawdust," as he says.  He completed a small occasional table for a young friend this year as well as his homage to Chartres, a piece that brings to mind Gothic cathedrals.  As I write now,  he's working on a chest of drawers for Louis: I hear him chopping mortices which is a comforting sound.  

I've got a project/idea that I'm toying with--a book about how memory, individual and collective, will be important to our survival as civilizations in the future.  Haven't got much farther than doing a lot of reading and I'm worrying a bit about whether I'll be beyond my best-before date by the time such a project could be finished  But since I had some enforced leisure these last few weeks as I recover from a hip replacement (went very well, thanks for asking) it was good to have a project to think about. Maybe it might even be of help as we try to make things work in a world where a lot of the indicators are not positive.

Whatever, best wishes for 2023, in hopes that there are no more new diseases, wars or convoys of the uninformed in it.

Bisous

Mary

May you have days as peaceful as this.