By John RC Potter

          “Help! I’m Dead!” Those chilling words rose into the clear blue-sky skies and bounced off the rosy-hued heavens on a farm in southwestern Ontario one early summer’s morning in the mid-60s. At the shrill lament, a screeching flock of birds – I like to think it was a ‘murder of crows’ – rose in the air as one black silhouette from the evergreen tree at the corner of the laneway. It may well have been a bunch of nervous sparrows or a few bedraggled pigeons, for all I can remember, but I want the setting to be perfect for this remembrance of things past.

            The young girl lay sprawled under the evergreen tree, her legs and arms akimbo. She looked like a mannequin that had been cast aside. How had this young gal become a statistic on this unpretentious, homey, little farm in the rolling farmlands south of London (Ontario!) and west of Toronto (the Good!) is the question that you could be asking. Those of us who had been witness to what had come before looked at each other, and then edged closer to the seemingly lifeless body of a valiant young girl who had perhaps left this world far too soon, before her time. Such is the stuff of legends. But before I get ahead of myself (as I am wont to do) please allow me to give a backdrop to this seemingly sad vista. It goes further back in time, past the mid-60s to the early 50s; a gentler time and yet crueler for those who did not have Lady Luck shining down on them.

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I believe in heroes and the role they can play in our lives. My cousin, Kally, is one of my personal and familial heroes due to her stamina, character, and essential goodness as a human being. Kally is older than me by five years, and the same age as my eldest sister, Cheri. Her mother, Cora, is my mother’s elder sister. My mom was always close to Cora, even when her older sister and family moved out West in the early 1970s. That close relationship remained until my mother passed away in 1996 at the age of 64; far too young to leave this world. From my earliest memories of Kally, she was an early hero of mine: I saw first-hand how she overcame a potentially life-changing illness at a very young age. As a baby, Kally was stricken with polio, that devastating illness that cast a pallor over the world in the 1950s. It was a health crisis, and parents lived in fear for their children in case they would become affected.

Kally’s parents married and their first child appeared in due course. There would be four more children during the 50s and into the 60s. When I was young, our family had many get-togethers with Kally’s family, before the family moved out west. This past summer two of my sisters (Laurie and Barb), my mom’s youngest sister, Mary Lou (with whom she had also been very close), and my cousin, Shelley, flew to Alberta to visit Aunt Cora and her children. It was a pilgrimage of sorts for my sisters and me, to visit our adored Aunt Cora (now 93 years of age) and our special cousins, and to travel with another treasured aunt (Mary Lou) and a special cousin, Shelley, who had spent many summers at our home when we were children. Shelley’s mother was one of my mom’s younger sisters; she and Mom had been very close. Like my mother, Aunt Ina also passed away when still quite young, barely 50 years old.

During the visit out west, Aunt Cora told us about the time she discovered that her young baby had polio. After their marriage, Aunt Cora and Uncle Jim lived in Winnipeg. When Kally was a baby, Aunt Cora travelled with her by train to Ontario to visit her parents. Not long after arriving,  Kally began fussing and crying continually. Aunt Cora had put Kally on the table, and Grandma stood beside her to try to find a reason for the baby’s continual crying. She quickly ascertained it was not a normal problem: pointing to Kally, Grandma said to Cora there was something very wrong because as the baby was wailing, she was flailing her limbs repeatedly. However, one leg was not moving at all!

That was the start of a long journey for Kally as a baby inflicted with polio and her later therapy as a child. Eventually, she was able to get about very well, often with a leg brace but as she became older, Kally worked toward not having to use it unless necessary. Kally loved to come to visit our family during the summer holidays when she was young, sometimes with her younger sisters, Corina and Michele, but one memorable time in particular, it was just Kally. More about that visit later. Back to Kally and why she is a hero of mine. When I was a toddler and at family reunions or summer picnics and first set eyes on my cousin, Kally, I was rather mesmerized at the brace on one leg and how adept she was at getting around. Nothing or no one would stand in this young gal’s way, that was obvious even to me even though I was so young. Kally was a go-getter, always playing games with her cousins and participating in whatever was going on, and a bit of a tomboy. Determination was her middle name. It would hold Kally in good stead throughout her life. In time, Kally was adept at walking, often without any brace on the leg affected by polio when she was a baby. By the age of 8 or 9, she no longer needed the brace to walk.

Kally loved animals, and for that reason enjoyed coming to stay at our family farm. Kally was an equine lover and was pleased that we had two ponies: Dynamite and Tony (the former, sleek and mercurial, the latter, plump and lazy). In the summer, as children, we would get up early and ride the ponies bareback all over the countryside. We would be gone for hours; our poor mother, how she must have worried! One of Kally’s most memorable visits was a summer in the mid-60s when she came to visit without her sisters. She and my older sisters were up and gone from home practically at the crack of dawn almost every day. I was around seven years old and did not always accompany my sisters, but certainly did when they deigned to allow their little brother to scramble up to sit behind one of them on either Dynamite or Tony. Due to having only two ponies, there were always two or three children on each one; we rode on them bareback but with bridles. We sometimes fought over who rode on which pony, and occasionally someone got left behind due to space limitations (yours truly). To solve the issue of too many riders and not enough ponies, the girls came up with a brilliant idea: what fun it would be to harness one of the ponies to a cart or wagon! That posed a problem because we did not have any such contraptions on our farm. Undaunted, my sisters and Kally agreed to clean our neighbour’s pig barn in exchange for an old cart and harness. When that Herculean task would be completed, the plan was to go into the nearby town of Clinton and buy candy. It never occurred to anyone there could be a risk involved with the plan to hook up one of the ponies to the cart when they had never experienced it before in their peaceful, pony lives.

On that fateful summer’s morning, the cast of characters was ready to leave for another morning’s adventure roaming the hills and dales of Goderich Township after buying candy in town. However, we would travel in style this time in a dilapidated old cart. The girls first attempted to hitch up fat, old Tony but he ran in a tight circle so fast that we all laughed until tears were in our eyes. Jo Ann in particular found it so hilarious that she peed her pants. Somehow, she managed to pee on Cheri and Laurie, so after unhooking Tony from the harness and cart, my three sisters went into the house to get changed. I clambered up on Tony, who was now his normal, placid self. Kally took it upon herself to hook up Dynamite to the cart with the ancient harness. In the driver’s seat, so to speak, Kally sat there waiting for the girls to return, the bailer twine reins in her hands. At that precise moment, the girls came outside and were there to see what happened next. As I sat on Tony the Pony, for some reason he decided to bolt, and I either fell or jumped off him.

          Kally was sitting on the bench in the cart as proudly as if she were the Queen of England in the royal golden carriage. When Tony bolted, it sparked Dynamite (who at the best of times could be an unpredictable pony) into equine action. Without warning, all of a sudden Dynamite headed at breakneck speed down the laneway. I can recall in my mind’s eye a vision that has stayed with me all these years: Kally was sitting in the cart, clutching the reins as best she could, as the aptly named pony, Dynamite, careened to the end of the laneway of the farm. At the last moment, Dynamite veered to the right to head onto the road. However, he raced past the evergreen tree at the edge of the laneway, with the right wheel of the cart catching on the tree trunk. I still have a vision of the cart bouncing in the air, and the hapless gal in it flying upward, still trying to grasp the reins. Dynamite bounded out the laneway, now without anyone at the helm, the cart dragging behind him on the dusty gravel road.

          But where was Kally? The entire world and moment had seemed to go into slow motion. Then from the heavens, my cousin fell to earth with a resounding thud. There was an ominous moment of silence. Was Kally injured, or worse yet, dead? The temporary frightening silence was broken at last by a scream that rose into the air: “Help! I’m dead!” My sisters started screaming for our parents, who were still sleeping at such an early hour on a weekend morning. The lament to the gods from Kally was barely over before to our great surprise we heard the front door of the house open with a terrific bang. It was my dad, running as fast as he could. He was wearing only his underwear and a T-shirt. A vision is forever imprinted in my mind of dear old Dad’s feet churning over as he ran outside. Unfortunately, Father had forgotten that a few years earlier when new siding had been put on the farmhouse, the rotting front verandah had been torn down. A new step had not yet been put in place. The front door had looked strange for those few years, approximately three feet above the ground and no steps leading up to it.

          There was Dad, whose superhuman dash out of the house was like a projectile homing in on a target; but too late, he realized he was in mid-air and – like Kally before him – was falling to earth. Dad hit the ground with a thud, on his knees as I recall, and despite his injuries, he was soon at Kally’s side. Mom appeared at that moment in a flowing nightgown, somewhat angel-like, and later Kally mused that perhaps that is the reason she thought she was dead and in heaven.  Mom, who no doubt had seen her husband fall in the line of duty due to the lack of any front steps, made sure she hopped down from the door to the ground. The entire family gathered around poor Kally, who was obviously in a great deal of pain. We had no idea what specific injuries she had, but we could see only too well that Kally was hurt and perhaps significantly. In short order, Kally was taken to the hospital by my parents whilst we others waited impatiently at the farm, heady with all the drama and trauma. As it turned out, Kally had to have her clavicle reset; to add to injury, she later recounted how the doctor who was treating her left the door open for anyone walking by to see the young gal and her blossoming boobies in all their glory! The Potter children waited impatiently for the patient to be brought home from the hospital. Kally came back with the necessary bandages and sling and was now somewhat of a celebrity due to her near brush with ‘Death By Dynamite’. Her visit was cut short due to the injury, and her parents soon took her home. Kally did not want to leave but the disappointment of having to depart was somewhat alleviated when her father let her take home one of our kittens.

          Our family still went to visit Kally’s family in Breslau, a suburb of the city of Kitchener, midway between Clinton and Toronto. My mother and aunt looked very similar. I recall during one visit to Breslau sitting at the dining room table and looking at Mom and then at Aunt Cora and for a moment not sure which one was which. One of my favourite memories is of a visit to our cousins when my sister, Cheri, and Kally came up with the idea to raise some money for candy by selling field corn. For those who are not familiar with field corn, it is what is raised and fed to cattle and other animals. Even boiling it forever could not make it palatable. However, we children went into a nearby farmer’s field and stole some field corn and then went into a nearby subdivision and went house to house trying to peddle the miserable-looking cobs of corn. We must have looked like a passel of down-at-heels brats, what with our sorry cargo of contraband field corn. A few housewives took pity and bought corn from us, the proceeds of which we used at a nearby variety store to purchase candy.

          Years sped by and as mentioned earlier, Kally’s family moved out west in the early 70s, in a station wagon pulling a tent trailer. She recalled the trip west as a challenge at best and at worst, a bit of a nightmare. To put it mildly, Kally’s father was a stern and overbearing man, and without a sense of humour. It was all about him. Fortunately, Kally and her siblings had a kind and caring mother, who made the best of any difficult situation. The meandering drive from Ontario to Alberta was difficult. Kally’s recollections of the two months on the road, in a smoke-filled car that contained her parents as well as the five children and two dogs, as hell on earth. Her dad checked out every remote river and lake so that he could catch fish for the family to have a meal.

          A week before school was to begin, Kally and her family reached Alberta and for a short time lived in a tiny one-bedroom cabin at South Cooking Lake. It did not even have running water. A few weeks later the family was grateful to move to a three-bedroom cabin, but it too was without running water. That Christmas Kally had just turned 16 and was given an opportunity. A neighbour lady with three small children was planning to take the train to Toronto and asked Kally to accompany and help her on the journey. To Kally’s amazement, her parents gave permission; perhaps because they knew how unhappy Kally was at being uprooted from her friends and life in Ontario.

          When Kally arrived, my parents picked her up and brought our special cousin to the farm where she stayed for a week. Kally returned to her family in Alberta. A year later, shortly after turning 17 and perhaps rebelling from an overbearing father, she went to Edmonton with a small suitcase and no money but fortunately had a job as a live-in babysitter. Within a few years, Kally and her friend, Sandy decided they would hitchhike to Ontario because some of their friends had done that previously. Sandy had $20 whilst Kally had $18 and her dog, Sam.

As with many teenagers at the time, Kally embraced flower power and became a bit of a hippie. Around the same time, the annual summer reunion for my mother’s side of the family was scheduled to be at my Aunt Ina’s farmhouse in the hamlet of Newtonville (near Oshawa). As mentioned earlier, her daughter, Shelley, spent many summers at our family’s farm and years later would accompany my sisters and me on our pilgrimage west to visit Aunt Cora and our cousins.

          The family reunion and picnic was an overnight affair because people had to drive several hours to get there. It was a typical summer family reunion other than entailing an overnight stay. There were dozens of people there, including many cousins, aunts, and uncles, and overseen by the family matriarch, my maternal grandmother. I had always been fond of Grandma, despite her reputation as a rather gruff and no-nonsense woman. I loved and respected Grandma Ruth; she was one of the wisest people I have ever known. At the reunion, much food was consumed, with the adults enjoying their libations, and of course, we children participated in a range of games and activities. At some point in the noisy proceedings, a hush descended upon the entire group of individuals assembled there. Everyone turned as one and stared in stony silence at the apparition at the laneway that led into the farm. A youthful but dark figure wearing hippie-like apparel was slowly walking in the laneway. From the looks of consternation on everyone’s faces, one would have thought that Charles Manson had broken out of prison, and for some ridiculous reason had decided to crash this family reunion! However, it was only my cousin, Kally, coming to represent her family since she lived in Ontario whilst her parents and siblings were living out west in Alberta.

          There was an icy feeling to the proceedings after Kally’s arrival. It seemed that the aunts and uncles did not feel comfortable around Kally due to her hippie appearance, and perhaps did not quite know what to say to her. As I recall, Kally had brought a little tent with her and spent most of her time in it because she did not feel very welcome and was hurt by the cool reception she received from her relatives. In any event, I felt sorry for Kally and went into her little tent. We had a good old chinwag, just like old times, although it had been a few years since I had seen her. Kally treated me like someone her age (she was in her late teens), even though I was so much younger. I knew how much she appreciated having me to chat with for a few hours. If memory serves me, Kally only stayed one night. When all and sundry woke up the following morning and came out of the assorted tents, campers, or from the house, Kally and her little tent were gone.

          I did not see Kally again until the summer of 1974. By then she had moved back out west to be with her family. Kally lived in Ontario for a year or so. Then she received news from her mother that the family had purchased a rustic resort a few hours north of Edmonton. The icing on the cake for Kally was hearing there was a barn and corral for her horse, which had been boarded outside Edmonton for months. Kally jumped at this lifeline and opportunity to return to her family. She and her dog, Sam boarded a train headed west and ended up in Calling Lake where the family now lived. Upon reflection, Kally wondered about that decision: after four years of living on her terms, she was now back under her father’s roof and living according to what she thought of as his ridiculous rules.

          My mother was keen to see her sister, Cora, again. It was decided there would be a family trip to the west to visit our relatives at Calling Lake. Kally’s family had settled into life on Calling Lake and were busy with their resort. It had several cabins where fishermen, hunters, and tourists could stay. Dad had purchased a camper for the back of his pickup truck, and plans were in place for most of the family to make the trek west to visit our relatives in Alberta. For a week before the departure date, I vacillated between going with the family on the trip or staying at home and having the house mostly to myself. I was 16 years old and had my driver’s license. I told my parents that I would go if Dad would let me drive when we got to the Rocky Mountains. What was I thinking, a new driver on those winding, mountainous roads? I was ignorant at best and delusional at worst! Fortunately, my father never let me drive the truck at any point, which no doubt saved lives.

          On the morning we were to leave, I was still of two minds, but I was ready to go. Dad asked everyone to bring their luggage or bags to the back of the truck. He rolled his eyes just a little when he saw that I had two suitcases: one was rather small, and one was quite large. He effortlessly picked up the smaller suitcase and put it in the space designed for luggage. Then Dad attempted to pick up the larger suitcase and almost dropped it on his foot. “What the heck’s in here?” he asked. “Books,” I responded. A bibliophile from an early age, I had packed very few clothes and personal items in the small suitcase, but I had lovingly set a range of hardcover and paperback books in the larger suitcase. Dad shook his head in disbelief as he managed to find a place for the large and heavy suitcase full of my books, muttering under his breath something about who could read so many books on a holiday, or even want to!

          We drove out to Alberta via the USA, which was a bit of a thrill to be in another country. There were two incidents of particular familial fame, that came to be talked about on many occasions in the future. As we were driving through the picturesque countryside of Wisconsin, as I recall, we drove past a farm that had a WWII-era sedan for sale on the front lawn, with an incredibly low price on a large card in the windshield. I pleaded with Dad to stop so we could look at it and although we had already passed the place, he seemed to consider turning around to go back. But then I asked him if we could buy the car. I would pay him back over time (yeah, right); furthermore, I could drive the old sedan and follow my family behind the truck for the remainder of the trip. Jeez Louise, there’s that delusional trait showing again! Dad was at all times a patient man with a good sense of humour. He probably wished I were in the trailer in the back rather than sitting in the front with him when I spotted the old car for sale. Dad commented that we could see if the old sedan was still there on our return trip from the west. I was unaware or had forgotten that the plan was to return via Canada, not the USA. In any case, I soon forgot about the classic old sedan.

          The other incident on the drive west was memorable but disturbing. It could have turned into a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dad pulled into a parking lot of a shopping mall. There were very few vehicles parked there, but Father Bear decided to pull up beside a car that had four or five young guys standing near the open trunk of our car. Laurie, Barb, and I were lying on the mattress that was directly above the cab of the truck. It had a bird’s eye view from a large window when we were on the road. We knew that our father had probably parked beside the young guys because they had short buzz cuts and looked the antithesis of hippies. However, from the vantage point where my sisters and I were perched, we could see that the young guys had chains and pipes and what looked to be knives in their open trunk. The three of us in the nest above the truck’s cab were discombobulating. We could see the muscular young guys staring at the truck and camper. For a heart-stopping moment, my sisters and I wondered what would happen next. Fortunately, the young guys closed the trunk, started their car, and exited the parking lot. When our father came to the back of the truck to open the camper door, my sisters and I related to our parents what we had seen. Dad did not seem perturbed, saying they had looked like a bunch of nice young boys.

          Eventually, we ended up at Calling Lake. Mom was pleased to see her dear older sister, Cora again after several years. We enjoyed seeing our cousins again, including the two boys who were born in the 1960s, Jamie and Michael; I had barely known them before the family moved out west. A particularly enjoyable memory of that visit was when our two families were gathered for dinner in the frame house overlooking picturesque Calling Lake. Kally had suggested to my sister, Laurie, that they go into Athabasca (an hour’s drive away) to a bar and have a few drinks. Then the girls tried to persuade their mothers to come along too. Mom appeared to be leaning toward the idea and tried to convince Aunt Cora who stated something along this line: “The last thing I want to do is to be in a place that is so thick with smoke you can’t see, with music so loud you can’t hear, and with people who have had so much to drink they can’t talk properly.” There was a moment of silence as everyone took this in. Then, ever the family joker, I piped up, “That sounds like our house on a Saturday night!” My wisecrack got a great deal of laughter and was often repeated over the years.

          Over the ensuing years, Aunt Cora and her daughters often came to visit their relatives in Ontario, but I did not always see them due to living in the city (London, Ontario), and then later when I moved overseas as an international educator. In the summer of 2005, my three older sisters – Cheri, Laurie, Jo Ann – and my younger sister, Barb, and I flew out west for a family reunion with Aunt Cora’s family. It was wonderful to be back with them on Calling Lake. Memories were shared, much fun was had, and a great deal of laughter was the hallmark of the visit. Coming full circle from earlier in this recollection, it would be almost twenty years before we would make another trip to visit our Western relatives.

I returned from Istanbul in the summer of 2024, where I have lived for many years, for this special reunion to visit Aunt Cora and our cousins. There were still five on the flight to Alberta, but only three of the original group. In the ensuing years my sisters, Cheri, and Jo Ann, departed Dodge before their time, for new adventures in another realm. As I had acknowledged earlier, on the trip Laurie, Barb, and I were pleased to be joined by our Aunt Mary Lou and cousin, Shelley. No doubt Cheri and Jo Ann were there in spirit, joining along in the hilarity and reminiscing. The day the five of us were leaving Calling Lake to drive to Edmonton for our flight the next day to Toronto, Aunt Cora, and her family gave us a heartfelt farewell. When I hugged Kally goodbye, she said, “I haven’t laughed so much since the last time I was with family in Ontario!” Then, tears coming into her eyes, she said, “This is the part I don’t like – saying goodbye.” I was reminded of the Turkish saying, “görüşmek üzere” which means “see you” or “see you soon” and those words are a fitting end to this story. “See you soon, Kally.”

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John RC Potter is an international educator from Canada, living in Istanbul. He has experienced a revolution (Indonesia), air strikes (Israel), earthquakes (Turkey), boredom (UAE), and blinding snow blizzards (Canada), the last being the subject of his story, “Snowbound in the House of God” (Memoirist). His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have been published in a range of magazines and journals. Recent prose publications include “Letter from Istanbul” (The Montreal Review) & “A Day in May 1965” (Erato Magazine); recent poetry publications include “From Vaisler Brothers to Tel Aviv” (New English Review”) & “Chiaroscuro” (Strangers and Karma Magazine). The author’s story, “Ruth’s World” (Fiction on the Web) was a Pushcart Prize nominee. His gay-themed children’s picture book, The First Adventures of Walli and Magoo, is scheduled for publication.