Friday, August 17, 2007: A huge cornocupia of awesomeness

So I'm finally back home, sweet home. Managed to get out of Panama without any further incidents. Late flight in to Montreal, Daddy picked me up at the airport, and the next day I was getting ready for a 4-day hiking trip in my favourite Provincial Park, Frontenac. Had a great trip, plenty of nice walking, and I can certainly say that Frontenac's frog population is healthy -- I've never seen so many in my life! I got lucky and had no one else on any of the campsites any of the nights I was there, despite the park being supposedly full. It was great, I got to swim au naturel whenever I liked.

Forty-eight hours after coming out of the park I was on the road with the fam (Mom, Dad, brother Isaac and 6 year old nephew Darragh) heading off to Cape Breton Island for the big event - my brother Eric's wedding. The two-day drive out was actually pretty painless, thanks largely to a great book and a year's worth of dive magazines that had been piling up for me at home. I highly recommend Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow (and the sequel Children of God). I'm hesitant to describe it cause it sounds like the makings of a bad sci-fi novel, but it's a futuristic story of a Jesuit first-contact mission when life is discovered in another galaxy. See, I told you it'd sound bad. But it's a beautifully written tale full of great characterizations that gently explores the theological questions humans have been asking since the dawn of religion. Just trust me.

Anyway, here are a few photos from the week we spent Out East.

Roadtrippers: us in the minivan, in which we spent more time than I care to think about. Of course, Kermit had to come too. (I swear it had nothing to do with me!)


Dad and Eric doing a bit of pre-wedding bonding over a Scotch.


Wait a minute... I think I've seen that before:


Ah, memories... Anyway, we rented the cottage next to Amanda's family for the week. It was falling apart but it was close to the Burkes and just across the road from the beach:


The Groom, the night of the rehearsal party (held two nights before the wedding itself to make sure no one was too hungover to say their vows):


Having the rehearsal party a day early also meant we were free on Friday night to party with the extended Gillis-Labelle fam at the hotel, too.


Me with my cousins Dominique and Jeremy...


...and matante Marcelle. No family resemblance, right?


The big day! Mom gets her corsage adjusted by her sister Marcelle.


No photos of the actual ceremony, but here's the new Mr. and Mrs. Gillis, ready to ride off into the sunset in their black and red Mustang. (Well, not really theirs. Just temporarily.)


But not before everybody's favourite, the photo shoot. Considering that I had to hang around for the entire thing just to be in one lousy stinking photo with my family... Anyway, here are the parents with the lovely couple. You can see where Amanda gets her height from.


The wedding party, obviously. See if you can figure out which ones are the Gillis boys... (actually, that's not fair unless you've ever met my family. They're the tall ones. I come from the, er, shallow end of the gene pool.)


Bad bad bad bad boys, you make me feel so good...



Our nephew Darragh was the ring bearer. Grace Lynn, the flower girl, couldn't keep her hands off him.




After the wedding and photos, we went back to the hotel for a quick drink or two before heading to the Legion for the party...


...which I have no photos of. But it was a wedding party. With a head table, fancy clothes, lots of toasting, kissing, speech-making, drinking, dancing, bouquet- and garter-tossing... You get the idea. I'm a little concerned about the amount of drinking, actually. Apparently the last two parties held in Amanda's honour at the Legion, they ran dry. I'm ashamed to say that there did not appear to be any shortage of booze when they finally closed the bar on us this night, though it's unclear whether that was due to subpar performances on the Gillis side, the Burke side, or both. We cleaned up on the dance floor, though.

The day before we left the island, we went down to the beach and had a bit of a photo shoot. After all, you're lucky if you get us all together once a year.










(Let me just say here that nobody has a cuter nephew than me. Nobody.)

The night before leaving the Burkes, we had a lobster feed at the cottage, just 30 lbs of fresh lobster, some butter and vinegar and lots of shell-cracking, lip-smacking, finger-licking goodness. We drove the Cabot Trail before leaving the island, spending a night in Sheticamp, where Ashley MacIsaac just happened to be playing at the small-town local pub he got his start in as a kid. He was considerate enough not to start the show until we arrived at the door. So, all in all, I'd say we got the full Maritime experience.

From there we went to Les Iles de la Madelaine -- a five hour ferry ride from P.E.I. -- to visit with a friend of my mom's. She lives with her lobster-fisherman boyfriend and I took lots of great photos of his workshop and all the lobster traps stacked up outside now that the season's over, not to mention the herring smokehouse we visited, the fishing boats on the wharves and the little seaside artisan's shops... but Mom accidentally deleted everything on the camera. (Expletives deleted.) Sigh. Anyway, we stopped off at Green Gables to visit Anne's house and hit the beach for one final stretch on our way back through P.E.I. ... and finally started on the long road home. I love my family dearly, but after sleeping on living room floors, couches and sharing beds with various family members, I don't think I was ever so glad for a road trip to end. (Except maybe for that time I took the bus for, count 'em, 65 hours from Toronto to Vancouver. Never again.)

All up, though, it was a pretty good trip, and a beautiful wedding. So that's one down, three to go.