Showing posts with label 1920s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1920s. Show all posts

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Twisting path of history

My aunt, age 5 and my mom, age 2.

I stumbled across a website dedicated to the tiny grease spot of a town my mom and aunt were born in. Their mother was a bush farmer's wife in southern Ontario in the 1920s.

My grandmother had an affair with a migrant farm worker, my grandfather. It was all very scandalous and to this day my aunt, who is in her nineties, rarely talks about it.

I imagine Canada back then was as empty and gaping as a giant hole. Sort of like rural Nevada, where I grew up. I wonder if geography pushes people to wild excesses of passion or madness?