I had some duties related to TSA in Calgary so we drove down and while we were there we dropped by our “old house” to see what changes we could see. Besides a double car garage out the rear of the property this is what was sitting out the front.

It appears that the renovation is well underway. What I wouldn’t give to see inside the house and what they are doing?!! We loved this neighbourhood and couldn’t understand the decision to let it go. The neighbourhood is too expensive to ever return to. What a loss.

I like this house a great deal. It wasn’t perfect. The closets were small, the bedrooms weren’t that wonderful. But it had a decent familyroom, although that too could have used some work. The deck was good and the backyard reasonable. Yet, this is where we were together as a family for those last few years. My goodness it passed quickly. Jason trying to launch. Philip making big decisions about his own future and saying goodbye to JR. We loved the corps and our leaders. We loved Calgary and hoped to live in it again one day.

So when we can return, it has a unique feel. It isn’t the same. A testimony to the fact you can’t go back. But it was a lovely two days. The sun shone in Calgary and it was 21C both days. I forgot to get a picture of the mountains which I could see from the street. Snow white capped mountains which I regretted we didn’t have time to visit.

We had supper at the Lemongrass – a place that we enjoyed with Rick and Alison once or twice. Wendy ordered a great meal – I gambled and regretted it.

And we visited the Shaganappi Corps inside the Barbara Mitchell Centre. What a lovely setting and some great, life-changing work, being done there.

This is on the site of the old children’s village. An orphanage, an unwed mother’s home, the site of a program with the board of education in Calgary. Now a thriving community for people who are in recovery and trying to escape abuse, drugs and the chains of one kind of enslavement or another. A remarkable work is being done here.

We were glad to get home, but enjoyed a few hours in the city of my birth.