St. Edward's High School  Austin, Texas - 1958

Mac Letcher - 1960

A faded Boy—in sallow Clothes – Emily Dickinson

A faded Boy—in sallow Clothes

Who drove a lonesome Cow

To pastures of Oblivion—

A statesman’s Embryo—

The Boys that whistled are extinct—

The Cows that fed and thanked

Remanded to a Ballad’s Barn

Or Clover’s Retrospect—

What is nostalgia? It was sometime around the year 2000 that I figured out that to have nostalgia for a place you had to not be in that place. I am not too sure how my memories adjust to that.

I was born August 31 1942.

1. Lived in Buenos Aires from 1942 to 1953 – 10 years.

2. Mexico City – 1953 to 1957 – 4 years

3. Nueva Rosita, Coahuila 1958 –1 year

4. Austin, Texas – 1958 to 1962 (while also going to Nueva Rosita) – 4 years

5. Mexico City – 1962 to 1965 – 3 years

6. Buenos Aires – 1965 to 1966 – 2 years

7. Veracruz and Mexico City – 1967 to 1975 (married Rosemary in 1968) – 8 years

8. Vancouver – 1975 to 2025 – 50 years

On any given day when I read Jorge Luís Borges I feel Argentine. When I remember the Brothers of Holy Cross from my four years in Austin I feel Texan. That Rosemary and my granddaughters met my mentor Brother Edwin Reggio before he died in 2013.

When I switch from my Argentine Spanish to my Mexican Spanish (depending whom I am talking to) I feel either Argentine or Mexican. Mexico to me represents life with my mother and grandmother and with the addition of my Rosemary and the birth there of my two daughters.

With all that how can I feel Canadian? I think that I have to be in Venice and run into a Canadian woman whom I would tell, “Can I photograph you now with an umbrella so I can feel my nostalgia for Vancouver?”

Having a complex nostalgia for places I think is a bonus. Today I looked through my old negatives of which I have many and notice these two. The black and white I took with my almost new Pentacon-F SLR in 1960 when Mac Letcher (he is gone) and I had a room for four (after two years in dormitories for grade 9 and 10). We liked to torture our floor prefect Brother Cyriac, C.S.C. (we regretted this many years after he had died when in class reunions we would see his tomb in the school cemetery). One way was to make our room look like a disaster when he made his evening rounds.

The colour negative of the St. Edward’s High School main building (called The Old Main) I took in 1958 when I bought that Pentacon-F. I rather like the way the 67-year-old negative has deteriorated.

There is a beauty in being able to reinforce a nostalgia for a place and in time in one’s memory with a physical image.