It was in the hot and sultry summer of 1968 on the shores of Shuswap Lake that we were running for our lives. My brother had picked up a big stick down the creek where we were fishing for brook trout, and we came upon a monster-size beehive. He poked it, and the bee swarm was about to teach us a lesson. Of course, you know my grandpa sat us down and laid out what we could have done better: Was it right to disturb those bees? Should we have just kept fishing, instead? We listened.
My grandparents had packed the car and me and my three siblings, and we left to spend a week at the cabins on Shuswap Lake in Salmon Arm, British Columbia, in Canada. The drive was long, and if you asked how much farther, the answer was always 105 miles. This is the town where my father was born.
