A Week on the Coast of Devon

I have just returned home from a week in Devon, England. I was mostly staying at the Dolphin Hotel, in a little town called Beer, perched on the cliffs, looking out to sea. While my father brought our family to Canada in 1957, his sister Maureen stayed in England. She taught the deaf in Margate, Kent for most of her working life, but then moved to Beer on the Devon coast when she retired, where she lived in one of the fisherman's cottages until her decreasing mobility necessitated a move to a home a few years ago. Sadly she has just died, and that's what took me on this quite unexpected trip. Her

longtime friend, Freda, helped me with all that needed to be done, and then on Friday we said our final goodbyes. It was a little sad to think that now the last of that branch of our family in England is gone. But it was also a wonderful thing to have the opportunity to re-visit a place in which I still feel very much at home, and one of the places in which our roots reside. There are some very fine artists that come from that part of Britain, and I hope that one day I have the opportunity to return, with fabric in hand, do record some of those memories. For now I am happy to be back home.