Françoise: Film Star

Françoise, my birth mother, was both an inspiration and a massive disappointment. I have photographs of her that look like me in drag. We had a very strong resemblance. At her funeral, two women approached me knowing who I was by looking at me, and they hadn’t seen Françoise for sixty years.

I was her second child. She’s had a daughter ten years before at age fifteen, a daughter that she gave up for adoption. She abandoned me because she wanted to go to France to be a film star. The photographs below speak to her success. But she was also a fabulist and when I met her, she would not tell me who my father was. That cost her my love. She was always putting herself ahead of me.

Regardless of her fibs, I was terribly proud to be the son of a francophone and an actor. She had an exciting life. On my second night in Montreal when I went back east to meet her, we had dinner in a spectacularly atmospheric little restaurant with Michel Tremblay, Canada’s greatest playwright. Through her, while I was there, I met the hoi polloi of Quebecois film and television. 

When the social worker who put us together first contacted me to tell me Françoise had been found, she told me a little about her, including that I could see her by renting the film Agnes of God. That’s how I first saw her. When she passed, I inherited a lot of her mementos from her life in the theatre and on screen. Hence the photos below.

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Yesterday quickly became sunny after sunrise. Our morning walk was pleasant because I had the right warm clothes on, and gloves. It was 3°. But as I worked on the loft through the day, the bright light was welcome in the house.

I donated 4 bags of books to the library book sale. Mel came to pick up the bags. I cleaned the induction countertop element that I bought when my stove was broken. I am going to try to sell it on our community Facebook page. And I went through 2 more boxes of mementos and souvenirs and chucked a lot of the stuff into the garbage. The stuff I saved is now stored away in small file boxes.

Best of all, I swept the floor of just under half the loft. Only the hardest place to get to, where the ceiling comes down to meet the floor, is left to be cleared of things for storge or discarding, then I will sweep the rest of the loft floor. It’s been a big job. I find it very satisfying to have taken on the work.

Once the loft is done, I have three closets to go through. I have several pairs of shoes/boots to get rid of, and some coats and old bedding may go. Then, I will go through the shed, which won’t be an onerous job, and after that I will be able to call Gabriola Disposal, and my studio will be cleared of all the accumulated crap.

I’ve put a lot of things together to donate to our GIRO store. GIRO is our recycling centre; the store is where items that are likely to sell go because sales revenue helps pay GIRO staff and expenses. When this job is done, I’ll have contributed to three charities and given work to a great local business (the disposal guy). 

At 14:30, the sunshine called to me, so Sheba and I went to Elder Cedar to walk the circuit. I was satisfied with my progress, and I have lots of time today to finish up and finally get the ladder out of the kitchen. When we got back to Pinecone Park, I did some reading. I find that I must read a little every day or I forget who people are and what has happened in the early part of the books.

Last night … same as always.

Today and tomorrow are predicted to be the last cool days. Things start warming up on Monday, but it’s going to be wet all week it seems. That’s okay with me, I have lots more cleaning and sorting to do, and my taxes and powers of attorney and representation to do. I’m progressing with my pre-death preparations.

The Young Girls of Rochefort. That's Gene Kelly with whom, Françoise says,
she had an affair during the filming. But, as I say, she was a fabulist and so
I'm not capable of believing her.

A Special Day: I'm very proud of Françoise and this film. She co-starred with
Marcello Mastroiani and Sophia Loren, and Marcello plays a gay man. I have a
copy of this film and it's a great story.

The Young Girls of Rochefort: Françoise befriended both Catherine
Deneuve (above) and her sister Françoise Dorléac. I have lots of 
souvenirs of their friendship including this photo.

A Special Day, for which she bore a mustache.

On set of The Young Girls of Rochefort

A Special Day

The Young Girls of Rochefort

The Young Girls of Rochefort: Catherine
Deneuve (right) and her sister Françoise Dorléac.

Agnes of God. I loved Ann Bancroft. I first sw her work in The Miracle
Worker, and I was a fan for life, so I was thrilled to see Françoise working
with her in this film. I worked on the play in Vancouver.

The Young Girls of Rochefort: Françoise and Gene Kelly.

The Young Girls of Rochefort

Agnes of God

My Memory Box is Full of Stories

 Another cold morning, another raging morning fire. I had no Zoom call, no appointment, no need to go into the village yesterday, so I felt wonderfully relaxed from the moment I rose. I looked forward to our morning walk and then getting busy with cleaning the loft and disposing of as much as I could.

Our morning walk was a fairly long one as it wasn’t raining but rain was forecast for the day, and so our afternoon walk had the potential to be short. With absolutely nothing pressing, it was a pleasure to walk a long route and to take it slowly. 

During the Summer when I was four years old, I caught Scarlet Fever. Our house was quarantined and I was kept in bed. My bedroom was at the front of the house, overlooking the front lawn. It was a hot Summer, so Connie opened my bedroom window and drew the thin white curtains that allowed lots of light into my room.

I remember lying in bed, wide awake, and listening to life outside as people and cars passed our house. What I remember most, was the sound of Robins chatting endlessly. I don’t know how long I was in that bed, but the sound of Robin song was burned into my head and my heart. Every year, when they return and I hear their chirping, I am reminded of those days in bed so long ago, and I am thrilled by their song. It is the sound of Spring for me.

Once back home, up went the ladder, and up the ladder went the vacuum and an old man. I had no idea what was on the loft. I hadn’t been up there for a couple of years, but the cats are up there every day, so I was prepared for mouse carcasses, and destroyed bits of cardboard. No one was going to see the clean loft, but my work yesterday was intended to make my moving from here much easier when the day comes.

The work sucked, but the vacuum didn’t. I took it apart and when I put it back together it worked excellently for a minute and then lost its sucking power. So, instead of vacuuming, I began carting the heavy boxes down the ladder. 

When I’m up there, I’m just below the ceiling, so it is the hottest place to be in the house, and there are bits of cardboard everywhere. Either my cats or rats have chewed the large cardboard pieces into tiny little bits. But the worst thing about being up there is that I cannot stand up. I am always either sitting or on my hands and knees, and that causes me to have a lot of cramps.

It’s going to be very slow work. I find it hard to know what to keep and what to jettison. Some finds are extraordinary: I found several original paintings of costumes that were likely done by someone working for Françoise (my birth mother). Françoise founded her own theatre company called L’Egregore; she was its artistic director. I have several programs that I cannot discard—partly because they are hers, partly because I am such a theatre fanatic, that to discard them seems shameful. Photos of the drawings are below.

After my first round of work, it was lunchtime and I valued having a rest. Then, rather than returning to the attic, I went through two large boxes of memorabilia that I inherited from Françoise. (Every time I write that classic French name, it thrills me. Although I am culturally English, I am so, so proud to be the son of a Québecoise woman, and not just a woman, but an actor!)

Thankfully, I had several really nice and empty boxes into which I could put all that I wanted to keep. Anything I didn’t want, went to the studio to join all the rest of the stuff that Gabe Disposal will come to fetch.

Processing all the bazillion letters, postcards, photographs, programs, posters, slides and newspaper articles that filled two enormous boxes, sorting them into the right boxes or the garbage took me 2.5 hours. And I was diligent about the work, but I could not face climbing the ladder again to do anything other than to fetch the vacuum (that I think is dying).

Next to deal with, is a box of photo albums. I hope I feel I can just chuck them because they’ve been in a box in the loft for almost 9 years. Obviously, I don’t need them. But photographs are powerful triggers, good and bad. I found two photos of Aleck, my first and very powerful love. He was a gorgeous white part-Persian cat with yellow eyes. I am so glad to have the photos.

I quit at 15:00. I was done! Her Highness and I went for our afternoon walk—it wasn’t raining—and then I came home to assume the position for the evening. I was dead tired when we got home, but I’m thrilled about my motivation to work and my capacity for work. I can’t say enough good about Tezspire. It has truly renewed my life.

I took photographs of several photos that I found as I was looking through the contents of my boxes, and I sent them to old friends. I sent one photo to my friends Gilbert and Mike. I met them when I was a teacher. 

Our school had an outdoor club that was massively popular, and when I began the first year of my two-year career as a teacher, the club lost its teacher sponsor, and an official club could not exist without one. There were 90 teachers at our school, and not one of them stepped up. Coincidentally, I was in a state of despair because I was contractually obligated to put on plays and conduct all the work outside of work hours. When I put out an announcement for parties interested in acting or crew work to assemble in room 204 to establish a drama club, the attendees depressed me. 

I’ll be blunt. They looked like people from a psychiatric waiting room. There were eight of them. When I heard about the outdoor club problem, I sought out the chairman, Gilbert, to whom I sent the photo yesterday. I made him a deal: If twenty people from the outdoor club would join the drama club, I’d sponsor the outdoor club.

Sidebar: On my first hike with the club, it was straight up a mountain to Singing Pass. When we got there, we were tired and hungry, so everyone set about putting up their tents, and making dinner. When I did a head count while they were eating, we were down one person. I counted twice.

As light faded, I saw him. David Milner had slid down some ice into a rock and broke a vertebra. We didn’t know that till evening the next day in the hospital. It’s an amazing story, but I digress.

That’s how I met Gil and Mike. I quit teaching as soon as I legally could and started working at the Arts Club Theatre. It was the debut season of the company. It was the second-best year of my life. (Living in Nice for a year is number one.) Oh, the people I met. I made family there. 

On Saturday nights, we did two shows: one at 7:00 and the next at 9:00. That Winter, we had a long Christmas break and our last show closed on a Saturday night. And on that night, after the second show, we struck the set, tidied up, and then I went outside to be picked up by Gil and Mike, another Mike, and Burt in my van. We drove non-stop to Mazatlán, Mexico.

Two years later, when I moved to Nice. Soon after I settled, Mike came for an extended stay. And when I came home, Mikel and I were roommates for at least a year. I became very attached to Mike. I’d had few friends since I was a child because of things at home, Mike was my first experience with a close friendship with another fellow. (I was closeted at the time. This was a platonic friendship.)

Gil and I stayed friends. I don’t see him anymore, but we email now and then. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was one of the six of us who carried David down the mountain the day after his accident, on a makeshift stretcher. We found a ladder on the side of a park staff hut, and we lined it with down sleeping bags. Gil is a very responsible guy, and he was head of the club, so he could have easily been part of our team. (Another teacher came along: the art teacher, also as green as I was about hiking. He stayed with the rest of the club on the mountain.)

I suspect Gil was part of the team because something made us stay friends after I quit teaching. He was one of two lads I “befriended” at the behest of the school counselor. I was only five years older than Gil and Mike, but I was a teacher, and they’d both suffered the death of their father while students at our school. 

Today is, of course it is, cold! It’s 2° and there’s naught but rain and dark skies in the forecast for the coming week. Until the official arrival of Spring, we may be cold and damp. Pooey! I’ve loft work to do today, and we’ll walk with our friends this morning. 

Me Chingachgook

Yesterday began with a notice in my inbox saying that we were to expect dangerously strong winds during the afternoon, so I prepared to lose power. I’m sick of this cold; with strong winds it will feel even colder. I committed myself to keeping the fire roaring all day, but I was equally committed to walking with our friends in the 707 Park in the morning.

Our walk was great. Every walk in the forest is great! I seem to be the only one in our group that easily orients in the forest. I always lead our group. I like being upwind of everyone, and I like being ahead of the noise my friends make. One of them has a dog who barks relentlessly, and another speaks very loudly because the is hard of hearing. When I made one turn, I faced a mutiny.

“We go this way, don’t we?” she asked me.

“No, that leads to the path with enormous puddles.”

“I think we should go this way.”

“Okay, you go that way, and I’ll go the way I like to go. If you go that way, be sure to turn left when you come to the main trail, and you’ll arrive back at our cars. I’ll likely see you at the cars.”

“I think I’ll go with Chris.” Cynthia knows that I know the trails.

Everyone wound up following me, and when we got back to our cars, they all thanked me for leading them on a route that avoided the puddles. Also, Cynthia told them that I always know where I am and which way to go. I’ve always been good at orienting myself on walks. It’s been that way all my life, and it surprises me that my friends still get confused about the route because we’ve been walking the same three trails for eight years!

When we got home, I fetched the clothes I wanted to get rid of. They were all bundled and labeled, and Her Highness and I went first to the offices of People for a Healthy Community, and I was thrilled because they were thrilled with my donation. The same thing happened at the Gabe shop. When I came in with a package of nine pairs of trousers, the woman recognized me as the donor of the shirts that they were so impressed with. It felt very, very good to recycle everything!

When we got back to Pinecone Park, it was lunchtime, so I fed the brood, and then I got the ladder so that I could get up and onto the loft floor. But then I decided not to do the work. I wanted to chill and read, so that’s what I did after I built up the fire. It had started to rain, and I wanted to wrap myself in the electric blanket and enjoy a bottle of Diet Coke and get back into my book. I am loving Kate Atkinson’s series very much. She’s a great writer.

In the late afternoon, we went for our afternoon walk, and then we came home to fall into our regular evening patterns. Last night, I watched one of my favourite movies: Goodbye Christopher Robin.

Today: Rain most likely, loft cleaning, some reading, walking and our regular evening.

Cold!

Yesterday we walked early in the morning, and then I took Her Highness to the groomer just before 9:00. It was cold, but the sky cleared early in the morning, and it became a nice bright day. I came home after dropping her off, and Steve called to chat. We had a long talk, but then I signed off so that I could get back to the SPACE Listening Equity database.

At 10:30, I had to return to the groomers to pick her up, and then we came home for lunch, after which I had a great Zoom call with Aidan and Ezra about SPACE communication planning as we have a board meeting coming up on the weekend. When the call was finished, I completed my work on the database, so I did a bit of reading and then Her Highness and I went for a long afternoon walk.

The evening was the usual.

It’s unmotivating outside this morning. It’s cold and cloudy, but I have no SPACE work to do today, so I will enjoy reading and I’ll also get started on de-junking the loft. However, the most important part of the day will be keeping the fire going so that we stay toasty warm all day after our morning walk with our friends.

Cave pearls form when water is moving too vigorously to form

a stalagmite. A nucleus of matter (a grain of sand) gets coated

in calcite and then the current rolls the tiny orb and it grows.