Remembering Maggie and Maddie

Twenty years ago today, two little border collie puppies were born in Brentwood Bay. Little did they know how much joy and friendship and love and learning they would bring to two Victoria families.

Jamie was ten when we got this little puppy and when we walked to school with Maggie, one of the teachers there mentioned that her daughter-in-law had just got a puppy that looked very similar. And so, we met Linette and her pup Maddie.


It was destined to be an enduring friendship. Maggie and Maddie hit it off right away and so did Linette and I. Next thing we knew we were training our dogs for the game of flyball. And the dogs, both being competitive sheep dogs, loved the game even more than we did.

Here's Maddie at the beach holding her big stick and Maggie at Goldstream Park.

And here's the whole Capital Comets Flyball Team after our first big tournament in 2003. 

The two dogs were star flyballers and we ended up competing in tournaments and meeting lots of wonderful dog people.  Eventually we bought an old motorhome and travelled with our team to competitions in Washington State and BC.


Before we knew it, we each had found another puppy. Sophie joined Linette's family and Geordie joined our family. That's Linette running a race with Sophie on the left, and sitting with Maddie at the table in the motorhome on the right. She's patting Geordie.

The four dogs were friends for life. Here they're all waiting in the snow for a ball to be thrown.

And here, three of the dogs waiting at the beach for a stick to be thrown.

All four dogs lived long and happy lives, although never long enough.

I will never forget those early days when I learned so much about border collies from spending so much time with the two best dogs ever--litter mates Maggie and Maddie.

We still miss you girls.

Booked our flights to Cuba

For decades I've wanted to visit Cuba and just today I made our flight reservations for January.
We'll be going on a nine-day cultural tour with a small group. The plan is to fly in and out of Mexico City and then return to CDMX in February for two weeks, after which we'll do a little bus touring around Mexico before returning home at the end of the month.

It's a good thing I thought to check the flights today because the Aeromexico flights that I had bookmarked back in September are all booked up on the days we needed. Yikes! I've booked with a company called Interjet. I think I've heard of it.

In any case we have the return flights to Cuba and Mexico so all is well.

My friend Jackie is actually in Havana right now. She went with her brother in the spring and liked it so much that she returned this month with her husband. Jackie is a terrific photographer and if you want to see some of her Cuba photos, just go here.  Can you see why we are so stoked?

Something about booking the plane reservations makes the trip become real.  Yay!

Blue paintings

This  summer I accepted and invitation to display my paintings in the main room of a local community centre.  It's not an art gallery by any means but there are some spaces on the walls where paintings can be hung. So it's kind of a one-person show.

In preparation for this I gathered together the larger paintings and was astounded to see that they were all predominantly blue. Oh no! How depressing to have a display of only blue paintings.



So for the past two or three weeks I've been doing a lot of painting, taking down a couple of bigger paintings from my walls and reworking them.

This triptych was the one I did the most work on. It evolved over a week through some larger abstract shapes into something completely different.  It became a Moroccan village.  And although there's some blue here it's a lot more vibrant than the one above.

The one above the bed also came down from the wall and ended up a little less blue, although it still has a kind of bluish cast. It's funny how pressure can push a person into a whole revision phase.

 

Of course I was also framing some smaller works, which will really form most of the display. On Friday afternoon we hung the show and it's going to be up for the months of November and December. I'll be organizing a little reception on the afternoon of December 1st to invite friends to view it. Meanwhile here are a couple photos of the space. It's not ideally lighted to show art work but I'm still pleased to be able hang some work.

If you want to stop by, it's at Fairfield Community Place, 1300 Fairfield Road.  It still looks quite blue to me.