My Country by George Canyon

Author:George Canyon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2022-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

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We were living in Bonnyville when my dad called me to say that his cancer had returned for a third time. He’d first been diagnosed a couple of years earlier and had gone into remission. But cancer—as a lot of people unfortunately know—tends to come back. And that’s what happened with Dad. He’d beaten it twice now, and this time, he told me, things weren’t looking good.

As I heard his voice coming distantly through the receiver, it really hit home how far away we were from each other. It was painful to realize I was an entire country away from him, and so were his only grandkids. Jen and I didn’t even really debate what we had to do. We both knew it was time to go back home.

I gave my notice at work, we listed our little cedar shake house for sale, and suddenly we were all headed back to Nova Scotia, with no prospects for our future—only faith that the Lord would provide for us.

Dad had always been such a source of support to me throughout my life, and it was time for me to do the same for him. He was always a reserved guy, so I just did my best to give him some quality time—with me and Jen, but also with his grandkids. But he didn’t have a lot of energy. One time I dropped by to visit, but before I knew it, he apologized and said he needed to take a nap. It was tough to see.

But it was good to reconnect with my family. Nanny was also there, as were a bunch of aunts and uncles, and we all came together to do everything we could to be there for Dad and support him in his time of need. One silver lining was getting to introduce the whole family to Jen and the kids. That was such a special experience, and we shared a lot of fun times and family suppers together.

At first, we stayed with my parents, but we were going to be there for the foreseeable future and eventually needed to find our own place. That place turned out to be a little 125-year-old farmhouse not far from Mom and Dad’s, maybe eight or ten minutes’ drive, in a community called Hopewell. It was a great town, beautiful and quaint, and our house was located right by the railroad tracks. That last part might sound nice, but we learned the reality very quickly when the first train went by and the entire house started to shake. The house in general needed work—which wasn’t a surprise, given its age. None of the floors were quite level, and the living room was so tilted that we used to joke we should polish the hardwood floor and have baby races on it. The first diaper-clad kid to slide down and reach the other corner of the room wins! We spruced up what we could. We stripped all the paint off, and repainted the whole thing with the help of Jen’s parents, who came down from Flin Flon to pitch in.

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