Grant supported the arts community

This is Mary Johnson with a few words about Uncle Grant: 

Photo Credit: Screen Shot from Video of Jeni Whiting Brown
"Because I Knew You"

To my Grant Johnson cousins:

While I  sad to hear of your dad’s passing, or Uncle Grant as I, of course, called him, I can say with confidence that he certainly took hold of life and lived it with gusto, appreciating everything going on around him.

One thing that has always made me smile is that Uncle Grant saw many concerts in which my now husband, Leo Brooks, was a percussionist, long before Leo and I were even dating. 

Leo did his Bachelor of Music at the University of Lethbridge and over the course of 4 years participated in the Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra, played in the live bands at Lethbridge summer musical reviews, and of course played in all sort of University concerts on campus. 

I had no clue Uncle Grant was such a great supported of live music in Lethbridge.  I found this out only at my wedding where Grant told me he had seen Leo in many concerts and had even gone to Leo’s final solo Graduation Concert. 

Not a lot of people who aren’t percussionists end up at that kind of specialized concert.

Both Rhiannon and Naomi have been in
musical theatre shows since moving to Lethbridge:
Rhiannon in Alice in Wonderland
and Naomi as the cat in Cat in the Hat.

No doubt Grant would have been there to 
watch shows where his grandnieces were performing.

We moved to Lethbridge just over a year ago so Leo could do his Master’s degree at the University of Lethbridge. 

Last fall and winter (pre-covid shutdown) I spent so many evening with my kids and Leo going to concerts, theatre production and art exhibits. I spent many moments in awe of the very strong arts community in Lethbridge and thought often about how Grant supported and loved this community as well.

Of course, I also felt it was a great blessing to my dad to get be at Seton with Grant, Sharon and Boyce. 

I was living across the country in Quebec during that time, so wasn’t able to spend much time at Seton visiting that great gang of Johnsons. 

I bet there are no other care facilities in Calgary that can boast that kind of family group care.

I will always remember Uncle Grant’s smile and warmth.

Sending you love and hugs,

Mary Johnson

Hunting with Naomi

From Richard Johnson 

Naomi Brooks and I decided to hunt on Friday and Saturday, taking Friday off school and work.

We started hunting about 8 am or 9 am in the morning, went to Colleen Keeler’s land, by the yellow barn full of hay. 

We didn’t see any deer on the Keeler’s property but north, there was a small herd about a mile off the highway.

I shot a deer there last year, so I knew the man that lives there and I knew he was friendly.

We went in and asked him for permission.

Ken Law was his name.

We asked permission while talking to him in his garage, which he leaves open.

He lets the cat live in there.

He offered to let us take one of the 13 kittens. We said no.

Instead of hiking in a mile to get to the herd we noticed two does were bedded under the pivot (the irrigation system) that is closed to the highway.

I could hear Doug Keeler in my mind saying don’t shoot the pivot, but I thought we could get to the placer where even if we missed the deer, we wouldn’t be shooting holes in the pivot.

We trekked for about 200 yards to get closer to the deer. That took 20 minutes.

Then we crawled for the last 200 yards on our hands and knees, Naomi and me together, until we could just see the deer’s ears above the crown of the snow drift between us. I asked her if she wanted to take the shot.

She said, “I think I want more practise first at shooting before I am ready. Can you do it?”

I said sure. I took 2 shots and missed both of them and the deer hadn’t even stood up because it didn’t know where the sound was coming from.

I told Naomi to walk perpendicular to me and not in front of the gun. The dee seeing her allowed the deer to stand up.

I took a third shot and the deer started running away full steam.


I took 2 more shots while they were very far away and still, I didn’t hit them. Five shots total and no deer is dead.

For the rest of the day I decided we would get Mary to make us targets, drive to Lethbridge, get them, and see if the guns were shooting off or if that had been operator error.

We drove back to the barn after collecting out targets and I promptly got stuck in a snow drift above my wheel so we were stuck out on a country road in the middle of nowhere.

I worked around the tires, trying to put car mats under the wheels.

Finally I said, “You hop in Naomi and put it in reverse so I can watch the tires.”

She replied. “I don’t drive.”

So, I put her in the driver’s seat, told her to put it in reverse, and told her to put her foot on the brake.

She said, “Which one is the brake.” While she was in reverse, I said, “Just put it into gentle reverse so I can see where the traction on the wheels is.”

She said, “Which is gentle reverse? At the bottom or at the top.”

Naomi and I had many experiences that day, teaching a girl how to drive a car.

But more of our deer hunting story.

Eventually, Cough Dow came along, introduced himself, and drove all away around the snowdrift to the other side, and gave us a few tugs until he pulled us out of the snow drift.

So we made a new friend, which was nice for we may have been stuck there until springtime if he hadn’t come by.

We had 20 more minutes before the sun would go down. We ran behind the yellow barn. Naomi took a couple of shots.

I took a couple of shots. We went to look at what we had done and it was perfect, so it was operator error at the start of the day.

We were back in Lethbridge for the night and watching Netflix with Mary and Rhiannon while we got ready for the next hunting day.

We watched the Mandalorian, Season 1, Episodes 2 and 3. Mary and I were reprimanded for speaking during the TV show.

And all of that aside, Mary and I love watching shows together and are excellent narrators during the movies.

At least we think so.

Day 2 we got up and met my father-in-law at the yellow barn.

We also looked up behind Ken Law’s property.

We looked in a lot of places, but Saturday, a host of hunters had come down to Magrath and it was busy all day.

The deer had been encouraged to run inside the city limits and lay down on land where the owners would never give permission for the hunters to come on. By 2 pm Chris Turnbull had got fed up and told me he was going to go home and in a roundabout way see if he could shoot anything in our typical area near Longview, Alberta.

I finally called the fellow me meet last year named Cam Cook, and he offered to let us hunt in south east of 15-22, or northeast of 11-22.

Hunters were already out east of 15 and next door in southwest of 15, the land is owned by an optometrist in Lethbridge who is anti-hunter.

So all day we could see deer laying in southwest, happy not to be bothered by the hunters.

We drove up to the yellow barn and back which took us to 3:30 pm and by then southeast of 15 was open. As we were hopping out of the truck, I was telling Naomi we are going to walk in, be there an hour and a half, and dress warm for the wind is going to be bad. Get comfortable. We are staying there until sundown. 

She replied by pointing southeast of 15 and saying, hey, those deer are running. And in fact, they were running directly east, to cross over into an area where we could shoot. I told her to lay down beside me just behind the truck and off of the road and we waited for about 30 seconds for the deer to hop the fence and continue on past the grain bins and into the clearing. And again, I asked her if she wanted to shot. 

She said, “You do it.” 

I shot at one, missing it, but the second deer was standing broadside on top of the hill and my second shot was perfect. 

The deer fell over immediately and we had less than 300 yards to walk to the highway.

I got to teach Naommi how to drag a deer, dress a deer, and tag a deer as a licensed firearm holder. 

And then I took photos of her, dragging the deer, photos of the gun pile. 

And that is it. 

Now I have her deer in the back of the truck and am driving back to Calgary. 

I am going to try to skin the animal before I fall asleep. 

I will take all the equipment that is bloody inside to wash it, and our clothing that is dirty and put it into the hunting room for it smells. 

Naomoi says she wants the deer turned into maple sausage.

The night before, Mary and I were talking about our favourite parts of the day. 

Mine was driving into Lethbridge with no deer, and seeing Naomi nodding off and falling asleep in the passenger sleep, because I had been in that chair so often, and I know that feeling of calm and quiet as you have been full of adrenalin all day, hunting, chasing, full of energy, wearing ugly clothing and it is just lovely to close your eyes for a while and the car is rocking and you are ½ hour away from home.

I can’t remember Mary’s favourite part of the day but we had sat at the dinner table for an hour, talking and talking, quite a blessing to have so much nose to nose time with people that you love and trust. 

That experience is more than one blanket. Every minute of that hour, being around the people you love the most in the world, that you don’t have any time with and that you don’t see, and that you can text, but you can never really sounding board each other and really empathize with each other and see each other’s faces.

Quite a blessing to sit around and talk that whole time.

Naomi won’t be here in Lethbridge next year. If I could, I would do this every year with her. 

But I know there is an ending. This isn’t a subscription.

So, the deer will be maple sausage, which can be eaten with a little dish of maple syrup beside her, a little 15 year old Canadian girl with her first Canadian deer. 

 She comes with me to hunt because she is asked to, and she took the hunter’s course to get here.

I did the gutting. 

I had her drag the deer. 

I did use a knife and cut the esophagus. I poked a hole through as a handle. She put her finger through the handle to pull the guts out of the deer while I separated the diaphragm and helped pull the guts away from the tenderloin. That is what she wanted to do. Learn to gut a deer.

Every year I am reminded of how beautiful southern Alberta is. 

You never know unless your tires are spinning. 

You have to get out there to really see how magnificent this land is. That is one of the grand parts about hunting.

Richard Johnson

The Newest Brook's Pet – A Bookworm

From Mary

OK, so this is not actually a new pet -- this is Naomi’s blue tongued skink named Churro. 

Today she was on Leo’s desk and decided to find a nice place to hide. 

We’re not actually sure if she knows how to read.

Signed, 

Mary Johnson

Naomi and Mary Sign Up to a Hunting Course

Naomi will get a mule tag this year because she is a first-time hunter.

And if she goes hunting with a mentor from the association, she gets special privileges – that special privilege will be a mule tag.

If Naomi gets a tag the mentor will take her out hunting at least by Nov 30, but if another adult takes her out before then, and she has already caught one, then she doesn’t need to have that first-time hunter from an association take her out.

There were 3 boys in the class and the teacher will take them out as well.

Mary made friends with some of the other women in the class, some of whom are already experts with hide tanning and were willing to share their knowledge with her.

That was an added bonus to “take-your-daughter-to -learn-how-to-hunt” day.

Tanning a deer hide: part 1 -- acquiring a skin and the right tools

When we moved to Alberta last fall, Naomi was able to start learning about hunting with her Uncle Richard.  She got to go out with him a few times, but you don't skin a deer out in the field.  You only do the "field dressing" which involves taking out all the deer organs.  But once when we were in Calgary already, he was just coming back from a hunt and Naomi got to go help him skin the deer in his garage.  At the time I told Richard I would love to try to tan a skin, so he saved all his deer hides from the hunting season in his freezer for me.

Last weekend while in Calgary, I picked them up to bring back to Lethbridge.  I hadn't guessed how much space they would take up.  Most skins I have seen and worked with have been goat skins.  They have some fur, but not nearly as much as a deer.  Richard's deers had the thickest most beautiful hair.  So while they weren't as heavy as the volume of the bag they were in led me to think they would be, they did not fit in a rubbermaid bin the way I thought them might.  No matter, we just put each one in a large black garbage bag and threw them in the back of my van frozen.

Once in Lethbridge, 3 skins went back into my freezer and 2 were put in bins of water to soak and thaw overnight.  I had to weigh the skins down in the water with big rocks so they wouldn't just float on top of the water and not get fully saturated.

The next day I had to make sure I had all the right tools for the first job: fleshing the skin.  This is where you scrape off any meat, fat and membranes that are stuck to the non-hair side of the skin.

I got out on-line to find a fleshing knife.  The only place I could find in Lethbridge that have one was  Markman Guns and Sports.  But they had one, so off I went to purchase it.

 

You also need a slightly rounded surface to work on.  When Leo used to prepare his own goat skins for his drums, he had made himself a nice fleshing workstation with a piece of old water main pipe.  So off I went to drive around and find a construction site where the might have some scrap pieces hanging around. Not far from my house the City was replacing a underground sprinkler system in a park. I parked and walked over to the workers and asked if they had any old pipe I could take.  And indeed, they did.  What great luck.  It was not a pipe with as big a diameter as I would have liked, but I thought it would do the trick.

Back home I went where Leo sanded the sharp edges, drilled holes into it and fastened it to a 2 by 4 so we could clamp in on his workhorse.  

 

We put some bricks under one sideo the workhorse to tip it at an angle, and we added some large patio paving stones at the bottom of the workhorse to weigh it down, and voila.  I was ready to go.  

The last thing, I needed a bucket to drop all the scrapings off into. And the hose, so I could spray the dogs away when they got too close to my workstation, hoping to help me by chewing on the ends of the deer skin hanging down as I worked.  What torture for them not to get to help. Can you spot the dog below, desperate to chew on the skin?

Mary Johnson

Flip Flop

... pegs are numbered one to nine ...
... the die rolled 5...
... I can flip down 5 or 4+1 or 2+3 ...

Bonnie introduced us to Flip Flop, a game she bought at a fair where people were raising money for some good causes.

The game is beautiful, partly because it has the charm of both wood and fabric in its set-up.

“I think this game will help with math,” Bonnie said, so I roped in Michael.

It wasn’t long before Alice was leaning over my shoulder, since there is plenty of laughter in rolling the die and sorting out which pegs will add up to that number.

The game is easy: flop down the peg when the roll of the die can add up to that number or is that number. And then what is left when you can no longer flip down the markers, that number is the score you get against you.

... all the pegs have been flipped down ...
... and I get 10 points subtracted from my score ...
... what a joy! ...

Now what was fun about the game is that it wasn’t long before Betty was by our side, watching how to do that and even roping me into playing a game with her on her own.

I always see so many hands when I play: three pair weaving over and under each other, reaching for the die or to flip down a peg, or one of their hands policing the hands of the other.

I often bend the rules when someone young is beside me. In this game it is not so much the score, but the fun of combinations of numbers.

I am sure there must be other math games like this one, but this is the first time I have learned to love the combinations of numbers up to twelve.

I am a late-to-the-joys-of-math grandmother.

Arta

The Slug Stroll

Photo Credit: Xavier Brooks

Shaena Jakob's Midnight Slug Collection

Today Leo left for Lethbridge with his precious cargo of teens: Xavier, Naomi, Shaena Jakob, Mikaela and Cyra.

I love to hear what kids have enjoyed most as they leave the property.

Naomi said that laying in one of the floating tube on the water was pretty high on her list, as were the hammocks, though not the three-sided hammock.

She finds the regular hammocks easier to hang out in and easier to slip out of.

Shaena Jakob is Xavier’s friend who flew to Lethbridge from Ottawa this summer. She is the woman who collected slugs one midnight, slug by slug. First one, then another. Soon she had 17 in her hand, charmed that they would take to her, as she did to them.

“Wasn’t it hard getting all of the slug slime off?” That is the question most of midnight-travelling friends asked as well.

I was more interested in why she collected them. She said slugs are just so interesting.  I thought to myself, while in the past, others may have collected slugs to pour salt on them (a past practise I remember of others, not me), she carefully studied them, and then let them go.

“How long did it take for them to leave?” I asked.

 “About an hour, maybe 45 minutes. Forty-five minutes for the fast ones. I just said, ‘Ya! You go. And then I watched them travel away,” she said.

The above experience was report to me by Shaena, not experienced by me.

Arta

Lake Projects

From Mary:

Naomi found these rollerblades in the shoe section of Churches Thrift Shop in Salmon Arm. 

The sign say all shoes : $1.

We was disappointed to get to cash and find out they were $3 but decided it was still a good deal.

She brought them back to the cottage and sanded them so they would take spray paint.

Next, back to town to buy some spray paint.

 Now she is cutting out stencils of roses to add some detail with another colour of spray paint.

(Posted for Mary by Arta)

Wanting a goat for a pet

From Mary

Naomi has wanted a pet goat and she did a lot of research about how to get one. She found out who the person in Lethbridge is who is responsible for goats that come in and eat the weeds. Naomi sent them an email and never heard anything back. Now a few weeks ago, Leo discovered he has a a friend whose brother is goat herder doing this targeting weeding, so the brother connected the two of them.

Right now, the goats are just outside of Lethbridge in a preserve. We got to go to that park but when we got there it was afternoon resting time for the goats who were in the paddock. We climbed in to play with them, and then we got to go to the park and help get the goats get to places they haven’t grazed yet.

Two kid goats fell behind, so Trent, the goat herder, caught them, and then told the girls to run through the fields with these goats in their arms to catch them up to the herds.












There was a goat that would not leave me alone.  It got so in my face I could take the following photo of its eyeball.

I sent a note telling my good friend in Ottawa that Naomi has been wanting to do this for a long time. She replied with a note saying, only you and your family would randomly meet a goat herder and go out to help them. I thought, yes, what seems perfectly normal to me doesn’t happen to other people. We don’t have normal experiences, but we have great ones.

To Nimony

Mary says of this picture:

"to nimony from Alice"

That was the cutest note ever on the table from Alice to Naomi. 

Alice had coloured a dragon picture and then given it to Naomi.

I love how much she loves writing.

She doesn't care about making mistakes.  I am not even sure she knows there are mistakes.  She just loves sending notes to people.

And recipe she wrote for pancakes… priceless. 

2 kinds of flour. 3 cups each. 

First walk in the forest

Naomi, Betty, Michael and I decided to go check out the beautiful path through the forest that David Pilling and Greg Bates have been maintaining.

Here we are setting off from Arta's house.

Along the way, we said hello to Greg, Wyona and Zoe who were all out Gardening.  Piper and Landon were on the bikes, so we got to say hi to them as well. We passed David and Shauna's house and then... into the woods.

This "going up the hill" looks like we are going "down the hill".
We rarely see this stream so full of water!
Don't  you just want to bend over, cup your hand in and take a drink?
So refreshing, and a frozen hand!
An ache right up to the elbow.

Michael decided we should go up the hill at the stream, so when the path ended -- a quick photo shoot.

Then we followed as Betty skipped down the hill.

Betty -- 4 years old -- her socks are matching.
Hard to believe since I know she choose them herself!

In the forest we found some great mushroom and fungus growing.

Can't wait for our next adventure in the woods.

Mary