Victoria Day doesn’t mean a whole lot to me other than the first long weekend of the summer. I’m not a monarchist, far from it to be honest.
The 2021 holiday, however, will go down in my book of history as one of the best 24 hours I ever spent with my son, Dylan.
It could have gone very badly. It started off in the morning with the bad news that I was pulling the plug on a COVID-escape fishing trip. I was too afraid of getting fined for disobeying the provincial ‘stay at home order’ and other picky little pandemic protocols. Ask me privately about the details and circumstances and rationale for even considering such a thing. Suffice to say, I think we could have done it safely and people should have been allowed to legally get out of their circumstances and into the bush without facing potential financial setback.
What matters is that Dylan, soon to be 23 years old, took his disappointment and disdain for my chicken-shitness in fairly good stride. We shared an evening by a bonfire throwing a football (his Laurier pigskin memento) and then playing catch with the baseball in the driveway. The evening was capped off with some quality time in the gazebo and in the morning, we played nine holes at Clear Springs with the entire golf course pretty well to ourselves. He may have won by a stroke and I demand a rematch.
This might not seem like a big deal or just another 24-hours of father-son engagement. But it’s a rare moment in sport that Dylan and I can share that much time together without one or both of us getting huffy about something.
It’s been a tough year for everybody. The COVID-19 rollercoaster has taken its toll on each and all in different ways. I’m particularly worried about people in Dylan’s demographic, though, as they struggle to get careers underway with so little hope available as economic projections become harder to make with any sense of certainty.
While I appreciated the positive memories I was most impressed with the maturity he displayed. It’s definitely something that he’ll need going forward.
BELOW: Second Dose of Positivity with June 10. 2021 Review
Writer, photographer and proud father. My mom’s family is from the Soo with its Algoma Highlands, dad hailed from Cobden in the Ottawa Valley and I spent my teen years in Capreol. Summers were at the beach on the Vermillion River and winters at ‘The Rink.’ Born in East York but Toronto never was my thing. Ever since a kid looking out the window on long trips, I imagined living on the highway in a little house with a big yard and trees growing all around me.
