Granddad's Uncanny Valley

Restoring art, restoring photos, restoring buildings or furniture or people; no matter how skilled the technique, the original remains well and truly gone. I asked Gemini to fix an out-of-focus and damaged photo of Mom's dad, and it gave me this. It's not bad, I suppose; the image looks something like Granddad, and the book looks plausibly close to the one he was reading in the original photo. 

But it's not a true window into the past. Neither is a photograph, of course, but it's much closer than this. 

Maybe one day we'll invent a time window that allows us to look into the past as it truly was, as in Clarke's The Light of Other Days. Wouldn't that be something...if we had the wisdom to allow our ancestors their privacy, perhaps restricting the use of time windows to only public events, or ones without people. Alas, unlikely on both scientific and societal grounds. 

 

The Memory Pool

As Sean and I continue to manage Mom's estate, we inevitably come upon connections to our family's past. I took this framed certificate down from the rec room wall today, and I don't know what to do with it. As a senior member of Manitoba Pool, Mom's dad would have been involved in governing the cooperative. I wonder what issues he might have voted on or advocated for. I don't remember Mom ever mentioning it. And unfortunately, I barely remember Granddad; he died not longer after this certificate was issued, and because we lived in northern Manitoba and Mom's parents in southern Manitoba, I probably only interacted with the man five or six times over the course of my life. 

I don't want to recycle it. But on the other hand, I have no heirs, so when I'm gone, whatever poor soul has to dispense with my estate will have to deal with it (along with all my other stuff). So keeping this only delays the inevitable. And creates more work for someone in the future. 

Sean and I have had to make some hard choices when it comes to Mom and Dad's stuff. We're trying to find good homes for anything useful. But for things like this, that only had meaning for Mom or Dad or maybe tangentially to Sean or me . . . I feel such guilt. On the other hand, I like to think that somehow our ancestors understand, and that they've moved beyond concerns like this. 




 

Thomas Earl Etsell and the Mystery Machine

Here's another photo of Granddad from 1918. I'm not sure what contraption he's operating, but  it's a farming tool of  some kind. 

Tractor and Pitchfork

Here's a photo from 1918! It's granddad on a tractor. Note the pitchfork leaning against the wheel. 

Thomas Earl Etsell Reads a Book

Here's a badly damaged print of my maternal grandfather reading a book.

Here's my attempt to repair the image - a little clumsy in some spots, but an improvement, I think.

I wish I could make out what Granddad is reading. It looks like the title might be The Prime Minster - 1961, but obviously I'm extrapolating that from the visible text "PRIME," "STER," and "1961" (or perhaps it's "1962"). A search failed to turn up a match. John Diefenbaker was Prime Minister in 1961, but the image on the back cover doesn't really look like him...of course, that could be an author photo. 

Reflection of Grandfather

Photograph, 1972. Shot by Aunt Jean or Uncle John somewhere in Manitoba. 

The Magpie and the Chicken

Mom retold an amusing family story for Mother's Day. 

Topsy, Blackie, and Earl

Here's my maternal grandfather, Thomas Earl Etsell, directing horses Topsy (left) and her son Blackie (right) to haul a load of manure from the barn for spreading into the fields. This photo was taken (presumably by my grandmother, Mom, or one of her sisters) in 1958.

According to Mom, "Blackie was black when he was born! But as he aged, he turned into a dappled grey, and then as he became older, he became whiter."

Aunt Jean sent the photo along. Thanks, Aunt Jean! 

They're Not Biting

Once again I've used Photoshop to transform an old photograph from the family archives into a faux painting. This time around I was a little more ambitious, applying multiple artistic filters to the original image. I'm sure any real artist will decry this as an abomination, but it's kind of pleasing to my eye, except perhaps for the upper right corner. Something seems out of whack there, and I'm not sure what.

The original photo depicts my maternal grandfather and a couple of other people fishing under the bridge over the Churchill River just north of Leaf Rapids, Manitoba, sometime during the early 1970s.

I call this "They're Not Biting." It's meant to apply to the fish in the river and anyone reading this post.

Snowblind

Here's a photo of my grandfather driving in the bitter cold of a Manitoba winter in 1974. The image is a little washed out even after my attempts to clean it up, and I'd have to be a Photoshop master to re-paint the missing side of the car. So instead of fixing the photo, I've transformed it into yet another in my series of film frames:

I cropped the image to give it a widescreen aspect ratio, added the film's title, gave it a gradient to fade the letters (in keeping with the movie's theme), and added grain for a more film-like patina. I think this is a bit more dramatic than the original, although I'm starting to feel that I really need to find a quality font package, if such things exist for a reasonable price.

The (Canine) Candidate

The old Etsell farm lies just a few kilometres away from Virden, Manitoba, in the federal electoral district of Brandon-Souris. The riding has been reliably conservative since it was first contested in 1953. Grandfather Etsell once memorably claimed that "We could run Laddie as a Tory in this riding and he'd win."

Laddie, pictured above at the Etsell farmhouse in 1966, never ran for office, probably figuring that popular Distinguished Flying Cross recipient Walter Dinsdale had the PC nomination well in hand. Indeed, Dinsdale represented the riding for 30 years, right up until his passing. It wasn't until the Liberal wave of 1993 that Brandon-Souris was represented by anyone other than a Tory; Glen McKinnon, a biology teacher from Virden, held the seat for one term before voters returned another Tory to office. The riding has remained blue ever since.

With a record like that, I have to believe that Granddad, though speaking in jest, was probably correct in his analysis.

The Harvest of '66

This is my maternal grandfather, Thomas Earl Etsell, harvesting on the family farm in Virden, Manitoba, in 1966. I've always considered myself pretty lucky that I didn't grow up on a farm, mainly because my numerous allergies would have made life pretty uncomfortable much of the time. But I did enjoy our many visits to the farm, both before and after the deaths of my grandparents. Southern Manitoba is quite beautiful in the summer, with its rolling hills, meandering rivers and gorgeous, pristine lakes. (Wintertime is another matter.) I was too young to do any farm work before the farm was sold, so my vision of the job is somewhat romantic; these photos match my imagination nicely. Of course, Mom told me about some of the more gruesome chores, such as pest control and animal butchery. I don't think I have the stomach for such labour, although perhaps I would have developed the skills had I really needed to. I'm just as happy to write for a living, all things considered.

When Sean and I met up with our parents in Virden in 2009, Mom revealed that her father had donated the land for the one-room schoolhouse, River Valley School, that still stands as a heritage site near Virden today. Here are some photos:

Finally, here's a shot of how the Etsell farm looked in 2009:

Sadly, the old house was burned down by an arsonist last year, but the rest of the buildings remain. The land itself endures, of course, changeless to human eyes, though the land, too, shall shift and move and transform itself as the centuries crawl by. For whatever reason, I've always been keenly aware of the passage of time and the havoc that passage wreaks on human beings. Sometimes I feel as though I cheated myself out of my childhood, always worrying that this or that era of my life would only last so long, and no longer. But I take comfort in these images, because they remind me that even though people come and go, memories remain to inform and educate the generations to come. I barely had a chance to know my mother's father, but the farm and his daughters provide ample evidence that he had something very valuable to contribute to the world - something even more precious than the harvests of the fall.

CORRECTION: It was actually Mom's grandfather, Peter Leask, who donated the land upon which the River Valley School stands. Thanks to Mom and Aunt Jean for the correction.