1975: Halloween And A Sad End To Our Christmas Trip

             As a teacher, I always enjoyed priming my students for upcoming holidays, especially things like Halloween which became the subject of many of our art classes. Halloween had never been a part of the First Nation Jack family’s traditions, but Madelaine and Hannah were quick to adopt it.   In our art class we drew spooky pictures, talked about costumes, masks, and trick or treating.  We had the camp fly in some pumpkins and we carved a jack-o-lantern in school.  

    We planned to have a Halloween party at school on Halloween night.  I made arrangements with the camp to borrow a pickup so I could drive down to the Jack family cabin to pick up Madelaine and Hannah, so they could trick or treat in camp.  When I got down to their cabin, I found that no one was at home.  I drove back to camp discouraged, only to discover that the two Jack girls were already in camp with their bags full of treats.

    The winter was soon upon us.  The camp put a crew to work building a lighted outdoor hockey rink.  This was a certainly a welcome site, since there wasn’t much of anything for the kids in camp to do during those cold dark winter nights.

    My wife and I were eagerly awaiting the Christmas vacation.  I had been in camp since school began in September, and was looking forward to getting out into the world again and flying to Indiana to visit family and friends.  The trip however turned sour for us when we went to visit relatives at their house.  While there, Vincent our Pomeranian dog rushed out of an opening door onto a busy street, and was hit by a car and killed.  It left us devastated.

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