Lanterns and Shadows: A Father's Legacy

Please indulge me in sharing this less conventional post, marking my late father’s birthday, and the tenth anniversary of his death tomorrow.

It actually strikes me as fairly fitting, given my father, Alf Foxgord, was an unconventional man, with creative interests all over the place: visual art, sewing (even some clothing design), knitting, macramé, jewellery-making, inventive cooking, music, and various genres of writing.

In his retirement, he pursued his interest in writing through a local seniors group called The Scriveners. He enjoyed the challenge and discipline of writing various pieces for the group to read/listen to and constructively critique; he was also inspired and motivated by the work of other members.

The Scrivener’s first book: "We’ve Got Something to Say" (1989, Orca Book Publishers) became a local bestseller. The group followed this in 1993 with the publication of a new collection of fiction, essays/remembrances, and poetry titled: Lanterns and Shadows.

I’m glad my father found this group. He needed the creative outlet, and his family was only marginally interested in his writing pursuits at the time. In retrospect, I regret this, but at the time I was a young adult with my own interests and challenges, as were my siblings. Even my mother, who was an extremely supportive spouse, was busy with part-time work and other diversions.

In the end, eight of my father’s contributions made it into the published collection. He wrote about things he knew: Trial Island, where his sister and her family lived for a time; men shedding their veneer of toughness; the comfort of a long-term relationship, and the torturous waiting for a phone call that would likely bring life-changing medical findings.

An interesting submission was titled “Selections from Sketches,” which he describes as “brief descriptions, often concerned with a single image or event, that serve to sharply focus one’s attention for a moment.” He wrote lovingly about his children when they were young: a time he seemed to cherish. He also described the impact of the navy in moulding him. And, the sketch that follows seems to describe a side of him—or how he saw himself—that is antithetical to how he often came across. It surprised me:

If I have chosen a quieter way
To walk
Than most,
I am content.
Like Janus,
Looking both ways,
I sense a sameness:
I have known no great moments,
But have been blessed
With a multitude of 
Smaller joys.

His final contribution to the book is a family and friends favourite: “I am a House.” It is essentially the first-person tale of/by our family home: the comfort and shelter it has provided, and the life transitions of the people who've lived there. I won’t transcribe the whole poem here (contact me if you’re interested), but I include several segments to give you a sense of its spirit:

Until my thirty-seventh year
I never heard a youthful voice
More than a day or two.
Suddenly there were two, then three
And in my middle years, I learned
What it was to be a home,
Not just a house.  

With regret, one by one
I saw you leave,
And knew it was both the end
And a beginning.
Whenever you return I bid you welcome,  
My aging face smiling
To greet you,
But there will be a time
When man and his machines will come: 
In a few hours I will be dust,
And what there is of you in me
Will be gone
But what there is of me in you
Will live forever,
If you treasure it,
With love.

In my young adult self-absorption, I failed to fully appreciate the bittersweet timing of the book’s release. Lanterns and Shadows was published very near the time my mother died. In the months leading up to this, the pre-publication process occasionally offered some snippets of lightness and distraction in an otherwise dark family time; but in the aftermath of publication, my father had little capacity to savour this well-earned moment of fruition, given his life-changing loss. Heartbreak and uplifting accomplishment can exist side by side, yet this can be hard to reconcile.

Twenty years later, I was nursing another heartbreak as I created my Alf Foxgord memory box. The centrepiece of that box was (and is) Lanterns and Shadows. I may not have fully realized what a gift it was in 1993, but in 2023 my signed and personally inscribed copy remains poignant and priceless.

NOTE: Lanterns and Shadows can be found at the Greater Victoria Public Library, although it’s held in the non-circulating Heritage Room.