Family Reunion

25th May 2006

Picking us up from the airport was going to be Joel, a complete stranger to me and Gav. He was then going to take us back to his house, introduce us to his wife, Leslie, also a stranger, and let us stay in their house for two days. They were also lending us their car for a day so that we could drive to Niagara. Very nice, these strangers. Very accommodating. How did we blag that one, I hear you ask? Well, long long ago (about 1952, I believe) a young man named Allan Frazer Brigstocke decided to emigrate to Canada with his family, leaving behind him in England his sister Joan. Joan married Bob, had three kids, one of whom was my mum, so the Canada Brigstocke's are my mum's cousins. Quite what relation they are to me, we weren't able to figure out, but we had fun trying. I think most of us plumped for first cousins once removed. My mum last saw her cousin Leslie when she was eight, so it's been a while since the two families last met! But Leslie and her husband Joel very kindly agreed to put us up for a couple of nights and very grateful we were too.

Turned out to be a bit of a bargain, cos having ferried us home and let us freshen up in our own private bathroom in their beautiful (read massive) house, Joel and Leslie then took us round to their daugher's house around the corner where they'd organised a barbeque for us and dragged along a couple more family members too. If you don't belong to the Sullivan/Clark family, you may want to skip to the next paragraph! Uncle Frazer's son John was there with his wife Diane (pictured with Joel below), and their son David popped in to meet us, too. Leslie's daugher, Pam, our host was (obviously) there with her husband Jason and their two daughters Dylan (pictured above, eating an ice cream the size of Alaska) and Taylor. Leslie's son Darren also popped in. His wife Charlene couldn't make it as she's heavily pregnant and their other son Ryan is a bartender and therefore at work. We didn't meet Uncle Frazer or Ruth, as unfortunately Uncle Frazer has been in hospital after a stroke since January. But a barbeque of 10 family members you've never met is plenty to be getting on with!

One of the first things I noticed was how big people's houses are. Joel and Leslie (and Pam) live in a "subdivision" (that's estate, to you and me) in Georgetown, a little way out of Toronto. All the houses are slightly different from one another, have nice front and back gardens and double garages. They're built in an open-plan way, so they feel even bigger. And Canadians have MASSIVE televisions. (Not that I'm generalising or anything...) I've never seen such ginormous screens in someone's living room. Odd, because Canadian TV is not the best. We ended up just watching BBC News!

Anyway, back to the family - the barbeque was lovely because the weather had turned unexpectedly lovely. We sat on the decking that Jay and Joel had recently built together, ate loads of food, drank loads of booze and did lots of catching up. Pam and Jay also have a very snazzy hot tub, with an integrated CD system, speakers and lights, no less! We hadn't brought our swimmies though, and whilst we were all getting on famously, it was probably a little premature to go skinny dipping!

The whole family were all so lovely. Everybody was giving us advice on where to go, where to stay, what to see and you can see the results of that in the other postings! Just to top things off, Leslie's son Darren has a basement flat underneath his house in Toronto and invited us to stay there rather than go to a hotel! Never ones to refuse free accommodation, we undertook to cancel our hotel reservation forthwith and go sponge off some more of the family. Pretty good first day, don't you think?

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