Father's Day in two pics

I have written before to honour my father, Colin Le Rougetel, so today I want to mark Father's Day with two pictures that, really, tell the tale of the man as I experienced him.

Adoring and admiring husband: Colin and Anne met in London, my father very much taken with her red hair. The tale is that he was struck at once and the love remained all his life. He adored her, even when — the legend goes — she banged a cast iron pan on the table in frustration at something he had said. Their marriage is a template for how to make a good life together, with roots in family if not in location. We moved frequently for his career before settling in Edmonton, Alberta in the mid-70s. The picture of the two of them dates from sometime in the 1960s. 

Loving father: I remember Dad as often absent in my early childhood, because he traveled a lot with his sales & marketing work. But I don’t equate that absence with a lack of love. My memories of Dad include opening stockings far too early on Christmas morning, teaching me how to swim, how to ride a bike, and, maybe most significantly, modelling for me how to pick up stakes and start anew when one venture ended and another began. That is a profound life lesson to learn at one’s father’s knee. 

Happy Father’s Day to one and all. Be a loving adult figure to whichever youngsters you have in your life. Be that loving presence for them that my father was for me. 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.