'It's too bad that things have changed so much, and yet people today are not as happy as we were then with the little we had. Unfortunately, people today seem to need and want so many things and so many distractions. Perhaps it is time to think about what is really most important in this life. Is it what you have that is important? Or is it more important to be thankful for what we do have, and to remember our beginnings and what it is that helped us become who and what we are today?'
(From the memoir of my great grandfather, Edouard Carignan, written shortly before his death in 1982. Born in 1900, he and his family immigrated from Arthabasca County, Quebec to Notre Dame (
Ponteix), Saskatchewan in 1910. He married my great grandmother, Marie Anna Lallier, and had 16 children between 1923 and 1945. This picture was taken in 1920.)
