A Family Affair

Honouring a summer tradition more than five decades in the making.

- Elizabeth Adam

More 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 little 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 quickly 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.