Interview With My Uncle
So the Uncle on my Mother's side of the family has been a favorite family member of mine for a long time. He's a graphic designer who I believe to be incredibly talented and gave me a lot of knowledge about the craft when I was first starting to learn it and still to this day gives me lots of input when I ask for it. When he was young he looked a great deal like me, he sent me a mix cd one time with some photos of him as a young man and I was quite startled at how close we resembled each other. I've talked to him here and there about his past but never really gotten to know a lot about it. After spending some time with my Aunt in May and hearing about her past I decided to sit down with Uncle Bernie via instant messenger and ask about his childhood and get a feel for what his childhood was like. He and my mother are close to each others age and had a similar experience growing up so it's not only interesting to hear about how he grew up but also some of the differences in his experiences from how my mother grew up in the same place.
I was mainly curious about my Uncles youth, in particular I wanted to know about his formative years. The way he describes his youth he sees it in 3 distinct periods. When he was young, he lived in Chateauguay, Quebec. He often played by himself, something he still enjoys doing to this day. He told me of small memories, fragments of good days playing, rummaging through a broken glass pane in a cold-frame in the garden and finding a old toy. He promptly broke more glass hoping to find more toys.
He has 3 sisters and 1 brother but rarely played with any of them, or at least he holds no memories of it. They moved to Ottawa when he was about to enter Kindergarten, although the train yards interested him more than school. He was the youngest so he spent alot of time wandering alone. He was very astute and enjoyed watching people work (particularly road crews) and found the idle play of kids his age to be dull. His time in Kindergarten was just as dull. Very structured, with little room for adventure, play in the sandbox at this time, draw pictures at another time. Not a very creative environment for a future artist.
In 1966, when he just turned eleven his parents had to travel to Malaysia because Frank (his father) was part of economic development project there. Because the schools in Malaysia were not very good, oddly enough they were filled with Americans. So instead he was sent to a Quaker boarding school in Yorkshire. Bernie went through a culture shock landing in this new land and in a new school far from his parents although my mother was sent to the same boarding school so their relationship grew during this time.
The Quakers didn't have corporal punishment but instead when students misbehaved they had to go on cross-country runs or clean the school drains or garden. On the flip side they would hold Meetings where people would all sit and meditate together, if someone felt the urge to speak they stood up and said their peace. Bernie spent most of his time in these meetings trying not to look like he was snoring or repressing laughter due to the inanities of others. Bernie was still very much an astute observer and acquired a very open view of the world. By having the culture he had grown up with shaken and replaced by boarding school he came to understand that there are many ways to live in this world.
Several years later he moved back to Canada to finish high school in a small rural town. He unfortunately didn’t have much time to go into the third part of his childhood but it was ok because I think the second part in the boarding school was probably the more influential. The language he used to describe it was very positive even though it was very traumatic at that age. He would bring home an appreciation of Quakerism and ended up going to meetings in Canada. Although he doesn’t associate himself directly with Quakerism today he still appreciates the memories he had involved in meetings, recalling some of the memorable people he met who spoke words of wisdom. He even suggested I check out a meeting myself.
In the next part of my portfolio I am going to explore not only Quakerism but also the other religions that my aunts (my other uncle is an atheist) and my mother and explore how so many different religious beliefs can develop within one generation of a single family.
I was mainly curious about my Uncles youth, in particular I wanted to know about his formative years. The way he describes his youth he sees it in 3 distinct periods. When he was young, he lived in Chateauguay, Quebec. He often played by himself, something he still enjoys doing to this day. He told me of small memories, fragments of good days playing, rummaging through a broken glass pane in a cold-frame in the garden and finding a old toy. He promptly broke more glass hoping to find more toys.
He has 3 sisters and 1 brother but rarely played with any of them, or at least he holds no memories of it. They moved to Ottawa when he was about to enter Kindergarten, although the train yards interested him more than school. He was the youngest so he spent alot of time wandering alone. He was very astute and enjoyed watching people work (particularly road crews) and found the idle play of kids his age to be dull. His time in Kindergarten was just as dull. Very structured, with little room for adventure, play in the sandbox at this time, draw pictures at another time. Not a very creative environment for a future artist.
In 1966, when he just turned eleven his parents had to travel to Malaysia because Frank (his father) was part of economic development project there. Because the schools in Malaysia were not very good, oddly enough they were filled with Americans. So instead he was sent to a Quaker boarding school in Yorkshire. Bernie went through a culture shock landing in this new land and in a new school far from his parents although my mother was sent to the same boarding school so their relationship grew during this time.
The Quakers didn't have corporal punishment but instead when students misbehaved they had to go on cross-country runs or clean the school drains or garden. On the flip side they would hold Meetings where people would all sit and meditate together, if someone felt the urge to speak they stood up and said their peace. Bernie spent most of his time in these meetings trying not to look like he was snoring or repressing laughter due to the inanities of others. Bernie was still very much an astute observer and acquired a very open view of the world. By having the culture he had grown up with shaken and replaced by boarding school he came to understand that there are many ways to live in this world.
Several years later he moved back to Canada to finish high school in a small rural town. He unfortunately didn’t have much time to go into the third part of his childhood but it was ok because I think the second part in the boarding school was probably the more influential. The language he used to describe it was very positive even though it was very traumatic at that age. He would bring home an appreciation of Quakerism and ended up going to meetings in Canada. Although he doesn’t associate himself directly with Quakerism today he still appreciates the memories he had involved in meetings, recalling some of the memorable people he met who spoke words of wisdom. He even suggested I check out a meeting myself.
In the next part of my portfolio I am going to explore not only Quakerism but also the other religions that my aunts (my other uncle is an atheist) and my mother and explore how so many different religious beliefs can develop within one generation of a single family.