A Long Way from Temiscaming

Les girls: Eliane (Mainville) Lamarche, Lise Lefebvre Campbell (seated); Linda O'Rourke, Rita (Charron) Johnson, Catherine Hennessey (Cathy Ryan)

I left my home town of Temiscaming 48 years ago, a month or so after my 17th birthday. I never expected to return and, in fact, after a couple of years, I was only an occasional visitor. I certainly didn't imagine that I would be in touch with anyone from high school a half century down the road.

Time passed and I still wrote to one or two friends of my parents, but after my mother died in 1997, I lost touch with them too. And then Facebook changed everything.

Thanks to my longtime Montreal friend Kathe Lieber, I reluctantly joined Facebook, in 2008, I think. I soon reconnected with friends from my 18 years in Montreal. Nor long after, I idly Googled "Temiscaming" and found a Temiscaming Facebook page. People I'd known as a teenager posted to that site, and after a while many of us "friended" one another.

One thing led to another and I found myself wanting "more" than Facebook "likes" and comments. I attended my first Temiscaming reunion in Gatineau in 2013 and went back the following year. Not only did I renew my friendship with several former acquaintances, but I made new friends too. I blogged about this emotional experience and took some pictures, in both 2013 and 2014.

Two years ago, Beatrice P. and her husband came to visit us here in St. Pete Beach, and last week classmate Linda O. and I had lunch in Gulfport. Today, five of us "girls" (we're still girls in my mind!) met for lunch at Bubba Gump's, John's Pass.  It was a joyful event, and our husbands seemed to enjoy themselves too.

We were a long way from our small hometown, but we chatted as though we were still kids at the Boulevard, the waterfront, the arena, the ski hill, or De La Salle. Technology is a wonderful thing.