M
ore than 50 years
ago, my future
uncle from Iowa,
a bachelor at the
time, came up to Canada to try
his hand at fishing. He caught
more than just fish! My aunt,
who was training to be a teacher,
had landed a summer job as a
housekeeper at the resort where
my uncle was staying. I am a lit-
tle fuzzy on the details of exactly
how they got together, since this
happened before I was born, but
I do know they got married the
following summer, in 1964, and
my aunt “went south.”
This cross-border union
fostered a new family tradition
of gathering together every
summer near where my aunt and
uncle first met, “the scene of the
time” as my uncle termed the
spot. The Iowa contingent quick-
ly came to include two sons and
a daughter. Every summer they
would drive due-north a couple
of states in an old car trailing
an even older boat, crossing the
Canadian border, exhausted
and excited.
Now that I am a mother, I
realize that must have been a
long trip with three wriggling
kids and a whole lot of groceries
packed in the back. Back then,
all I cared about was seeing
my cousins and playing on
the beach.
Our family tends to be a little
loud and I would guess that we
were probably not the campowners’ favourite guests but we
can at least say we have been
very steady customers. To date,
our motley crew has been mak-
ing an appearance every year
for 53 years!
These annual appearances
have included two generations
of rather rowdy children, quite
a number of boat breakdowns,
and chronically snagged or
tangled fishing lines. We also
put on a pretty interesting
water-skiing show for the other
guests, whether they wanted to
watch or not. One year featured
my husband’s brother skiing
straight into the dock, which
involved some blood and gluing
a foot wound back together. For
a number of years, we tended to
squabble over card game rules,
what was for dinner and who
should be setting the table.
A highlight of these
weekends, for the
family but cer-
tainly not for
the ice cream
store staff, is
going for ice
cream every
night. For
many families,
going for ice
cream is a simple
affair, but with ours
being a large and
difficult-to-herd
gang, it gets compli-
cated. Somewhere
along the line some-one had the bright idea to
order a half scoop of something
and then a half scoop of some-
thing else which has become
another family tradition that the
ice cream people do not really
appreciate about us.
A recent summer turned out
to be my mom’s last time with
us. She was in the final, gruel-
ling stretch of a long battle with
Alzheimer’s disease. Mom had
stopped eating for a number
of days and we were wonder-
ing what we could possibly do.
When we went for ice cream, she
sat quietly and happily, ever so
slowly eating a whole cup of ice
cream. Ice cream then became
our go-to trick whenever Mom
went on an eating strike.
As these gatherings began
before I was born, and we seem
to have a hard time breaking
with tradition, I have been
going every August for
my entire life. The
only exception being
the year my husband
and I were on our
honeymoon 27
years ago. We’ve
done our part
in keeping things
going by adding two
sons to the tribe, both
of whom love our long
weekends together. We
hope they will bring their
future families along on
these long weekends even
after we are gone. ■A Family Affair
Honouring a summer tradition more than five
decades in the making by Elizabeth Adam, Winnipeg
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40 More of Our Canada SEPTEMBER 2019