Everything About Me #17

Greetings and salutations!

I'm going to offer you something a little special for today's entry from the list. It's to be an art piece (drawing, sculpture, painting, etc). I hemmed and hawed for quite a while over this one and then I realized, there is only one piece of art that I've truly loved recently and it's one that most of you will have never seen.

This is a work of art from a lady by the name of Teri Derome. You can see some of Teri's work on the Boxer Art website and I've liberated this little snippet about her from there: "Teri DeRome is a very talented artist and Boxer Rescue volunteer who specializes in watercolor paintings of dogs--namely Boxers."

A while back Teri did a particularly special painting for a mutual friend of ours. You see Teri is what I call an imaginary friend, someone I know via the internet but have never been privileged enough to meet in person. We met thanks to a wonderful creation called the Boxer Mailing List. The following painting is one that she did for one of list admins, Dale and his wife Diane, who aren't imaginary friends. I have been a guest in their home and enjoyed myself very much including waking up in the morning to discover Louis had joined me during the night.

I present you, Emily and Louis.

The First Brindle

For those of you that don't know, The Brindle was not the first. The first brindle was a lovely wee girl by the name of Kate. She came into my life in November of 1998 when she was a wee girl of 8 weeks. It was she that introduced me to the Boxer breed and all of the comedy, action, joy, and sorrow, that goes along with it.

She was often a serious lady. She ruled all she surveyed and took her duties seriously often giving me a long suffering look as if to say "could you DO something about these boys?".

But tiny Kate, when she was a lone dog was a little less so. She learned early on, thanks to stops after puppy kindergarten, that a drive thru window might provide her with Timbits. She developed a liking for beer from knocking over bottles meaning they were never safe from her. She lived to chase balls, especially snowballs and would go for hours. And I don't think there has ever been anything as beautiful as Kate in a full out run, butt tucked, ears flying, that girl could move.

As she aged she did so with dignity. Her face got grey, you could see her bones ached but she was happiest with her friends be they human, canine or some other species. She was a sweet old gal who lived to a grand age for a Boxer and loved by everyone who met her.

Run free sweet princess and give our love to Spencer.

Woefully Behind

I have fallen off the wagon, it's been weeks since I blogged and I guess I need to change the name of my list  to simply 30 Things About Me. I have to admit though that last week was a little busy for me and so I'm going to stray from that list for today.

November 11th is Remembrance Day for Canadians and being here in the heart of the WWI battlefields there was a lot going on. I participated in services at Beaumont-Hamel, France and Ypres, Belgium. Beaumont-Hamel was a significant battle for the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. Newfoundland was not yet part of Canada and that battle more than any other is what the people from that province commemorate on November 11th. Ypres is where you will find the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing dedicated to Commonwealth soldiers of WWI who have no known grave.

The events last week had me ruminating on my grandpa who was a soldier in WWII. Not a bad looking guy and I always thought he was the oddball of the four brothers. Born out by this photo that I have shamelessly stolen from my dad's cousin:

Grandpa's the one doing the Rockette move, no idea why. He's been gone now for over 35 years. I was his fourth grandchild of a total of 18 and I'm the youngest one to remember him.

So while my thoughts were drifting I found myself on the website for Canada's Library and Archives. I had very little information to go on and I tell you so if you decide to try this you realize you don't need to know much. I knew my where my great grandfather was born and I knew he came to Canada before his wife and sons. I knew the year my grandfather was born and the year my great grandfather passed away so that narrowed my window. Somehow I found this page which led me to ocean arrival records for 1919-1924, that was within my window. The next part seems sort of fateful. I was able to figure out what reel I needed, there were 5024 records on that reel so I decided to see where record 2500 took me. It was close so I started clicking record by record, grandpa was record 2507. From there I also found his parents and one of his brothers and I now have those immigration records in my hands.

Family history is important to some people, me being one of them. It's interesting to discover where the family originates from and what they were about. My next goal is get my hands on my grandfather's war service record which is going to be a little more work but once I have it I can go and see the places that were very much a part of the man he was.