The Millers managed to get together several times since the last Christmas message, and we expect to be together again this Christmas in Montreal, where John and Christopher are still based.
After last Christmas in Kingston, we got together with the Moon cousins for Aunt Margaret Moon’s funeral in Port Hope. (Jim’s new GPS guided us there: “Drive straight ahead for 150 km.”) By Aunt Margaret’s request, the funeral was private: Barbara (Moon) Shaw (Grandpa’s “only grand-daughter”) and the three nephews (Doug Moon, and Jim and John Miller) and their families said goodbye to Aunt Margaret, whose 95th birthday we’d celebrated at the Toronto Ladies’ in September. It was a sunny cold day for the funeral, but we all took advantage of the gathering to catch up with each other, reminisce over the memorabilia on display, and afterwards to take the opportunity to wander around Port Hope, admiring the town while we were interested to find so much changed.
 Miller barbecue. [Photo credit: Charlotte Miller] |
Thanks to Margaret (Miller) MacFarlane, all nine Pickering and Brougham Miller first cousins and their families gathered together for the first time in years for a barbecue at her house in Aurora. When we were young, we used to have a New Year’s Day party, so there were several wry comments about the pleasanter summer weather and the satisfaction of not having to head away from the festivities to do the barn chores. It was wonderful to have Aunt Fern, our last remaining aunt, with us, evidently as hale as ever. As spread-apart as we are, it took very little to pick up the conversation, the jokes and the stories where we left off. Only Christopher was missing from the party; he was in London attending the wedding of his best friends Ania and Steve.
The Sarnias came to Montreal during July to help move Christopher from his cemetery-drive high rise apartment with the leaky roof to another apartment in a more trendy (the neighbours are much younger) part of Montreal, a few blocks east of St Denis. Uncle John managed to be busy, and so got out of helping with the actual move, but was able to inspect the apartment and join some of the outings.
Christopher is in the midst of his second year of a PhD in Canadian History at Concordia. Last year he completed the coursework successfully, and is teaching two methodology courses for first year students, and reading for comprehensive exams next spring. He’s lost track of the number of books he’s “read”, and the fact that he is incommunicado for days at a time indicates that he is extremely busy. Next summer his thesis research starts in earnest, though he’s also planning a holiday in Britain to see parts that he missed on his 2007 trip, and to visit friends who are studying there.
Christopher attended various festivals during the summer in his spare time: Stevie Wonder at the Montreal Jazz Festival, galas hosted by John Cleese and Lewis Black at the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival, and became addicted to the fireworks competition in Old Montreal on Saturdays. When he was home for the wedding, he also saw The Importance of Being Earnest at the Stratford Festival, and Green Day in Detroit. Christopher and his Uncle John have also had weekly curry festival celebrations. John has given up trying to introduce Christopher to a variety of restaurants in Montreal. Virtually every week they trundle off to the Curry House for dinner.
One of Christopher’s projects this year is contributing to the programme committee of the Canadian Historical Association, and he’s been helping to vet paper proposals and organize sessions in anticipation of the conference which will be held at Concordia next May-June. Most Canadian academic societies join together for a massive congress/conference held over about three weeks, and so for some time Concordia will be the centre of various scholarly societies. Both Christopher and John attended 2009’s congress in Ottawa, but didn’t manage to bump into each other, other than by cell phone.
As noted last year, Jim and Charlotte have been living under a long shadow of Jim’s impending unemployment. Royal closed and demolished its Sarnia PVC plant in 2009. China bought most of the plant equipment to start manufacturing PVC near the Mongolian border. Jim was among the final employees to be terminated at the end of August. He had worked at the plant 17 years for Imperial Oil, 11 years for Royal. His best financial option was to accept a discounted pension.
So Jim spent the fall contemplating the meaning of Freedom 58, and started tackling Charlotte’s household honey-do list. They also enjoyed the luxury of visiting relatives, seeing more plays at Stratford, watching the Blue Jays start to ruin the Tigers season in Detroit, and attending various farm events, including the Woodstock Farm Show and the Royal Winter Fair. A rare treat was a visit with our Miller cousins in Seaforth: Jane and Gord, Trish and her family, and Ruth, who was visiting from Manitoba.
During the year, Jim co-ordinated a group of co-workers in their legal battle with Imperial Oil over their pensions. In Ontario, they are entitled to their full pension at age 55; Imperial Oil’s lawyers argue that former employees cannot receive their pensions until age 65. The case is expected to be before the courts for years. The group remains optimistic: they are represented by one of the best pension lawyers in the business, and on December 9, the Ontario government introduced legislation that comes into effect in 2012 and settles the law in the employees favour.
John officially decided to fend off retirement for another five years, signing a contract which will carry him (all other things being equal and compos mentis) to 2013. With Jim’s retirement, he’s had doubts about the wisdom of another contract, but still enjoys most of the routine and his colleagues, though not the marking. Most of his non-English Department activities at Concordia involve curriculum in various forms and at various levels: the detail can be tiresomely exacting, but it’s mostly fun to be involved in this form of academic planning. John, accepting that the summer weather for 2009 was going to be nothing other than rotten, decided he might as well spend his summer holidays indoors in the dark, and so headed off for 6 plays in three days at the Stratford Festival. (He missed the Sarnias by one day.) Of course, the weather immediately improved; but he made a point of sneaking down to the river between matinées and evening performances to do a little basking beside the ducks and swans. Part of this excursion to Upper Canada involved several days in Toronto seeing the new Art Gallery of Ontario and meeting several former students who’ve more or less happily made the adjustment from Montreal to graduate school at the University of Toronto. Oh, and this is where the Miller barbecue fits in.
 Thistle Ha’ in April. |
Nothing much has changed at Thistle Ha’. The Tapscotts still cash-crop the land: Dad was always very content that his farm was being so well looked after by neighbours who’d proved themselves such good and loyal friends. David Newman is still occupying the house, and again we’re pleased that he seems happy living there. His mother, Cathy, keeps an eye on the management of the farm for us, allowing Jim and John to sleep with reasonable assurance that everything is in order. This year’s project was to repair two chimneys, but the job ran into snags which have foiled us temporarily. But it’s only one item at the top of a very long list, as we’re sure you’ll understand.
Years ago, at this time we hiked off to Pilkey’s farm to steal our Christmas tree. Mom had started her preparations weeks earlier with the Christmas baking. We discovered which tree ornaments had survived the year, and wasted what seemed like hours tracing the burnt-out bulbs in the strings of lights. We paid attention to the weather forecasts to see if the weather would cooperate with our travel plans. And it is time to wish all those in any way associated with Thistle Ha’ our very warmest Christmas greetings and best wishes for the coming year.
