Category Archives: Nonfiction

by Deborah Blenkhorn

“And whether pigs have wings.”
–Lewis Carroll, “The Walrus and the Carpenter”

“It does so—the sun does so have legs!”

“Does not!”

“Does too!”

This was the subject of debate between cousin Callie and me, ages two-and-a-half and three-and-a-half respectively.  My father and I spent a season with his sister Lila, her husband Mal, and their daughter on Prince Edward Island in the wake of my parents’ break-up back in Ontario.  My father had grown up in the Maritimes (as indeed had my mother—they had been high school sweethearts in the small university-town of Sackville, New Brunswick), so perhaps this was a homecoming of sorts for him, though hardly a joyful one.  I had spent each summer (and would continue to do so until way into my teens) with my grandparents on the New Brunswick side of the Northumberland Strait, so the Maritimes represented stability and comfort to me, too.  Continue reading →