ABOUT BRIAN ALAN BURHOE:
“A Graduate of the Holland College Culinary Institute of Canada, Brian Alan Burhoe has cooked in Atlantic Coast restaurants and health care institutional kitchens for over 30 years. He holds a Nova Scotia Journeyman Cook’s Certificate. He is a member of the Canadian Culinary Federation, Canada’s largest federally chartered professional chefs’ organization.
“Brian lives with his wife Mary Lee on the ragged Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia.
“Brian Alan Burhoe’s many published articles reflect his interests in food service, Northern culture, Church history & Celtic Christian literature, imaginative fiction, wilderness preservation, animal rescue, service dogs for our Veterans and more. His fiction has been translated into German & Russian.”
SOURCE: Suite 101 – Online Magazine and Writers’ Network.
Well, that sums it up in some ways.
My earliest memory is walking behind our house and staring with awe into a sun-lit and dark-shadowed evergreen forest.
Our home was new and hand built by my father. It overlooked a place my parents called “that’s Glen Falls down there.” I’m told the house stands there still.
And that forest? It was alive with birdsong and insects floating in the golden sunbeams and a red squirrel running up one tree and leaping over to another one, noisily scolding me. I didn’t know why it was so mad at me. Perhaps my unsquirrel-like behavior. And it seemed to me — so small and new and unlearned — that the rich-scented and brown-barked Forest with its bright splashes of green must go on and on. And I wanted to see more…
Family stories: like the time I was caught raiding the pea patch. First one pod, then another. Opening them and pulling out handfuls of sweet-tasting peas. Sure looks like I was enjoying ’em, eh? And then a startling “Brian!” Mum’s voice. Caught! I turned around. But she wasn’t glaring at me in anger. With the bright sun over her shoulder, she was looking down into the viewfinder of her Brownie box camera. Mugshot and booked — in the family album.
Brian Alan Burhoe pea picking
Mum did that a lot.
And there — in those earliest years — despite my precocious pursuit of pea pickin’ piracy — I was learning that if I worked hard and lived honest and loved the soil that gave me life and valued the freedom won for me with blood — I’d have a life lived large.
Beginnings
I was born in the foggy old seaport of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, on what I’m told was a glorious Thanksgiving Day.
Dad (Albert Chester Burhoe, b. South Brookfield, Nova Scotia) had been a soldier in the Algonquin Regiment, Canadian Army in Holland — a farm boy, lumberjack and carpenter before he enlisted.
Mum (Edna Claxton, b. Hull, Yorkshire) grew up on the family canal boat and worked as a bus conductress on the double deckers during the War — arriving in Canada (at the historic Pier 21, Halifax) on January 7, 1946, with 300 other English war brides on the “Reunion Ship” Stavangerfjord.
When I was 4, my parents sold the house and we moved to West Yorkshire, England, for four years.
Although I missed Canada — those deep conifer forests with all the wildlife, those rolling multicoloured hills of the Northern Appalachian Mountains — Yorkshire was a fantastic place for a lad. The wide green fields in summer with swaths of blue everywhere — the bluebells. The calm shining canals (“Don’t fall in the canal, Brian,” Mum would always say. And being a dutiful son, I never did)…
To Read More About My Life, Fiction and Articles, see My Complete Archived Post: THE LIFE AND WORKS OF BRIAN ALAN BURHOE — Click Right Here, Mon Ami!
And — Here are Our Family Posts…
WORKING ON THE HIGHWAY – Memories of an Appalachian Mountains Highways Worker – Brian Alan Burhoe
NOVA SCOTIA FOLK ART FESTIVAL: Outsider Art & Seascapes – Mary Lee Burhoe – ARCHIVED.
BURHOE FAMILY HISTORY: The First Burhoe Lived a Long Long Life
CANADIAN PATRIOTIC VOICES: True North Songs, Poems & Stories
BOY WHO WAS RAISED BY BEARS Native American Myths & Legends – Bear Story by Brian Alan Burhoe
“This is yours now, Brian. He wanted you to have it.”
And my mother handed me an old wooden shaving kit Dad had made some thirty years earlier. The wood smelled of shaving cream (it still does) but now held articles of his soldiering years. It was 1967 and Dad had died from medical problems that had plagued him all the years I knew him. He was only 54, and it took me some time to realize how young that was.
The box held his few military items. His discharge papers, showing that Pte. Albert Chester Burhoe, known to his friends as “Chester”, was demobbed from the Canadian Army (Active) in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Aug 20, 1945. Old Paybooks. Medals, including a France-Germany Campaign Star. Assorted pins such as his Army Active Service badge and his well-worn Legion pin…
See My Complete ARCHIVED Post: OUT OF MY FATHER’S SHAVING BOX: Dad’s War, Algonquin Regiment & Liberation of Holland.