Posts from — September 2021

The really sad news for the month of July and for the year was the passing of our Brother George on July 27th. George had been battling Colon Cancer for 2 1/2 years and he finally lost his battle. We are really going to miss him. Our family got George when he was a couple months old and he immediately became another loved family member by our Mom and everyone else. George reconnected with his native family in the mid 1980’s and so now he was fortunate to have two families to share.

George was extremely artistically talented and easily took up painting pictures, especially landscapes. But his real artistic ability came through in his carvings. They were spectacular, the scale, the size, the depth, the life like depiction; George could bring them to life. His work mates at the City of Surrey Public Works Dept. all expected to see George working on a carving at coffee and lunch breaks; it got to be well known within the department. In fact he was asked and commissioned to make a native carving for Prince Edward of the Royal Family when the Prince visited the City of Surrey.

Below is a picture of George working on a carving when he came for a visit with Chantell and Chris at our trailer on Shuswap Lake. This is such a classic picture of George carving with all the chips in his lap and him always checking for size, scale and content of the carving.

His mother gave him the native name of “Pakli’sh which meant Burnt Hands.

Right after the Covid travel restrictions were removed Brenda and I made a quick trip to the Vancouver area and stopped in to see George, Jennifer, Chantell, Raven and Cyler. It was a great visit and will always be the lasting memory that we have of George. Above is the last picture we had taken with George.
We are all going to miss George he was a big part of our family.
George WiIliam Van Meer – “Rest in Peace Brother”

The biggest news in April is that we finally got our 1st Dose of Pfizer Covid 19 vaccine. YAHOOOO

So, it finally feels like may be starting to get life back to normal or at least a less restrictive new normal. There are lots of months ahead but we can see the light. Having said that these new virus strains are causing health officials a bit more work and worry….. so, we’ll see

In April we had a Zoom call with our Reunion Friends. It was great to see everyone and get caught up.

Zoom exercising for Brenda and Zoom Ukulele for me continues and keeps us in touch with friends.

Brenda started “Outside” “Social Distance” line dancing in April – 3 times per week. Weather permitting.

April and May weather was overall quite nice and I believe we set records for long dry periods. Not a lot of moisture and I hope this doesn’t set us up for an overactive fire season this year.

Kevin turned 45 in May…….. it’s hard to believe we have a child that is that age…… Yikes!

June arrived and we were biking fairly often through out the week. On June 5th we headed out for a bike ride and I suggested to Brenda that we carry our vaccination cards and health cards, since we were riding by MacArthur Island vaccination centre. We stopped in to see if we could make an appointment for later in the day and the security person at the front door said go in right now and they’ll look after you. Well we headed to the vaccination area and within 5 minutes we were vaccinated with our second dose of Phizer. Then we had to sit for the required 15 minutes and we were back on our bikes.

In June the health ministry opened up the travel restriction on the Province and we were able to head down and see George and check in how he was doing with his cancer battle. It was great to see him, but this was the first time that he looked like the cancer was taking a toll on his overall health. We had a good 2 hr. visit with George, Jennifer, Chantell, Raven and Cyler and you could see George was tired and needing to rest.

Keep tuned for July – August -September