Easter in the Townships
Growing up, Easter had a really special significance in our family. As a society, we had just stepped beyond families that spent almost all of their time together to families that spent special occasions and celebrating the “holidays” together. As a result, our family usually did everything twice, since we were blessed with not just living grandparents, but grandparents who still managed to rustle up all kinds of food, fun and conversation at every one of those celebrations. Birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter tended to be the thing, usually with something for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day too.
We were a blend of Catholics and Protestants (as our family on both sides has been through the ages), so there were a variety of services and masses, braided palms hung around the house, and my Bampie Quinn mumbling and snoring his way through Hail Marys in the afternoon in his rocking chair (as usual).
On particularly exciting years we had THREE Easter egg hunts. The one at home, another at Gran and Bampie Quinn’s and a third on several occasions over the years with Bampie Chatfield in NDG. There was never any care taken to make sure we had even amounts of candy – it always seemed to balance out, and I don’t recall any of us every feeling that we hadn’t gotten “enough” candy. There was a lot of candy...
Our cousin Lynn, just three months older than me, but a July baby to my October, was a year ahead of me in school. Lynn was a little accountant. She obsessively did most things related to numbers – and perpetuated all of the fun childhood superstitions like holding our breath going past the cemetery, or holding our heads going over railroad tracks, lifting our feet over a bridge. As an adult I’ve long broken myself of these behaviours (I’d better, or I’d never be able to properly drive across a bridge without a foot on the gas), but I think of them just about every time I encounter those situations. Lynn’s little accountant was always in full swing at Easter, and she did what she called “inventory” constantly – counting and re-counting her Easter haul. Jelly beans, those weird bigger eggs with bright pastel slightly hard exteriours and mushy white insides, Easter eggs, chocolate and jelly (and Peeps) animals were sorted, and the perfect of all Easter surprises, Cadbury Easter Creme Eggs were in a nest of their own. We counted before lunch. And after lunch. We counted after coming in from outside. There was no suspicion of thievery, Lynn was just keeping track and reminding herself of what she had. I followed suit because it was so much fun.
Easter of 1984 I was ten years old, in grade four at St. Francis Elementary School in Richmond. Our teacher was Mrs. Elsie Morrill. Although we were a small group; that was one of the few years we were all in one class together. We reviewed the news every morning. I was obsessed with politics.
Our Mum was really good at making sure we got some special thing for the celebrations during the year. I remember a little heart-shaped cardboard box of chocolates with Peter Pan and Tinkerbell on it for a Valentine’s Day one year that went on to other uses, holding small things that needed a place to live. Easter was no exception, and for Easter of 1984 I got my yellow dress (made of that strange netting type fabric with three-dimensional white polka dots on it), and I don’t know if I’ve had a dress since that I’ve loved so much. I felt like springtime itself in it. I also got my ears pierced.
I was so excited by this, after years of begging and being told I was too young, Mum had decided I was ready. Mr. Poirier pierced my ears on Easter weekend of 1984. I had little plain gold studs in for the required amount of time before being able to branch out into other fun little styles, including the pair of gold daisies with tiny pearl centres that Mum bought me that Easter as well. I think I still have one of those somewhere.
We had annual egg decorating contests at school, and a few prizes were won along the way. Mum had the best ideas for us, one year decorating eggs with rice that gave our egg bunnies a neat coat and little wire-rimmed glasses we bent into shape, and another year my Geisha in her lilac and white flowered Kimono was a prize winner. We still have her dress, made around a toilet paper tube of course, but her head suffered irreparable damage (and likely smelled as high as the hills), so the headless Easter Geisha lives on in the china cabinet, with my brother’s rice bunny.
My brothers and I usually made it to church, usually with my Mum, to the United Church in Richmond, where my brothers and I had been baptised, where my brother Chad and I were confirmed, likely around this time of year too, if memory serves me correctly, after a truly fun stint of confirmation classes with Reverend Monteith, who talked about everything from the usual biblical stuff to his Stephen King collection. We watched movies that had great messages; we had fun with our little group of six friends. We were a motley crew, and it was the only time that the six of us would spend time together like that.
I’ve done the walk of the cross through town in Richmond with a collection of the local churches (Catholic, Anglican, Protestant), pushing a baby carriage, and we all enjoyed the community experience, eating soup together in the church basement afterwards. I’ve done that walk at Beauvoir too – something interesting to see, and what a view, with a look through the little chapel with the crutches hung on the wall for those who, the stories go, walked in aided and left without them.
As an adult, my boys were baptized in the spring, my son Angus on Easter Sunday itself. There was something magical about that – his godfather is my cousin Andy, his godmothers my cousin Laura and my boys’ Auntie Marie. Easter and my cousins again - and a special rite of passage.
When we’re children, we don’t really know for sure what we’ll be nostalgic about when we’re adults one day. We’re usually pretty busy being in the moment. But we do know what is good and what we love and makes us feel loved, and Easter was that for us.
Today, I try to make Easter fun for the kids – Easter egg hunts, little gifts, fun visits with family and friends. And Bampie’s Hail Mary rocking chair lives in my boys’ room, sitting vigil at their bedsides as he always did with us. Full of grace.
Pastel colours, eggs, ribbons, Easter grass in baskets, crosses, Auntie Heather’s hot-crossed buns, good clothes, snow melting for good for the year, sap running, stuffed animal bunnies, peeling coloured aluminium foil from chocolate eggs that are perfect to pop in your mouth, and probably onetoo-many Cadbury eggs and no regrets.
Happy Easter, Townshippers! May this time of year be one that feels a little easier on your hearts and minds!