Musings : 11 October 2021

Had my first kiss at 13 years old.

Late by today’s standards, I’m thinking, and even more so that I was smack in the middle of the 1850s, when by all intensive purposes, I should’ve already been married.

In fact our family was most likely born 140 years too late. My father, Tom, worked as a blacksmith and costumed interpreter at the local historical site, Lower Fort Garry of Parks Canada. My brother would go on to take his place there, cutting his blacksmith teeth as it were, and my sister was a guide in a fetching Parks brown uniform….actually I can hear her voice ringing out ‘it’s Khaki!’ but in any case, luckily she can rock anything she wears.

I was the baker and baked bread to sell to visitors as well as gave a history of the bake house and its ovens. The words, “Is that a real fire” will be forever etched in my memory.