Illona, Kenny and I traveled to Ottawa over the US Thanksgiving break so Kenny could attend a fencing clinic on Friday evening and participate in an under 11 tournament the next day. It was our first visit to Canada as a family in about 6 or 7 years and we enjoyed ourselves enormously. The Excalibur club’s 'salle' is located at the University of Ottawa so after Kenny passed his yellow armband test on Friday night, we joined Terry Russell and Michel Girodo at the aptly named Cafe Nostalgica on the U of O campus and shared some reminiscences. In the midst of our get together, the house band did their sound check by playing "Those were the days, my friend". I’d like to think that it was in recognition of our group, but I guess an alternative interpretation was that it was an homage to the name of the establishment. No matter, it struck me as appropriate in either case.

Somewhat contrary to a strongly and oft voiced opinion, there was no odour of brimstone, nor did the earth open and swallow Terry. As with Carmen and Mike’s encounter with Rick Ward, it was a pleasant visit between three former schoolmates of slightly different, but overlapping eras who spent an enjoyable and comfortable hour and a half sharing memories of who did what and where are they now. Michel brought his collection of L’Echos and Terry and I spent some time looking up old classmates. Illona was particularly amused by a photo of the junior boys basketball team circa 1961, which featured a much younger, more slender version of me (with considerably more hair) as one of the players and was delighted to have an opportunity to show Kenny a picture of his grandfather. He even stopped playing his new DS game for a few seconds to look at the picture with mild interest. Kenny eloquently summed up the meeting as we were walking back to our car by observing how great it had been to see me having so much fun telling stories and laughing with my friends.

Sorry for the low res cell phone image. Someone had a senior moment and left the digital camera back at the hotel.

As requested by Terry and Michel, I provide some photos from the action and the information that Kenny finished fifth overall in the Saturday tournament, despite fencing only a handful of times since last May. I suspect that the fencers he lost to were more experienced and older. He has another year in this age group, so maybe next time he'll make the podium, if he can manage to get used to the weird "canadian" instructions (en garde, pret, alle) at the beginning of each engagement.


a 3-2 loss in preliminaries to the eventual winner (Kenny at right)

A 3-0 drubbing of the biggest fencer in the competition

the yellow armband, which turns out to be a patch (ignore that it's upside down)