I witnessed a powerful act of family on the
weekend. Most families are made up of a diverse collection of genetic and
non-genetic relationships and our Westwood/Smith family reunion on the weekend
was a great example of this. The glue that holds this family together is the
patriarch Albert Edward Westwood who was my grandmother’s father. My
grandmother, Bertha Smith (nee Westwood) had a brother, William, who had five
children: Ralph, Eva, Marvin, Gordon, and Barry. My grandmother died in 2010
and her children and grandchildren carry on the tradition of getting together
with the Westwood clan for a sometimes annual reunion. My cousin, Dan Smith,
and his wife Linda, are truly gifted in hospitality and bless many people by
opening their home to family and friends. They shared their acreage near Three
Hills with the more than 50 people who gathered, ranging in age from 2 months
to 79 years.
Beyond the glue of genetic relationships,
there are bonds of marriage, friendship, adoption, spiritual resemblance,
spiritual difference, love, care, concern, debate, music, and comradery. As we
all took time out of our busy schedules and got reacquainted, there was a sense
of awe as we considered how this family came together through many
circumstances. We spoke of the randomness with which our ancestors came to
reside in Central Alberta. My father’s father came to Canada from Ireland at 14
years of age because some relatives of his had relocated to the prairies. My
mother’s father arrived from England at 17 and added "Maclaren" as a
middle name, playing up his Scottish heritage, so that he could get work in the
West where there was a prejudice against privileged English boys. He too had
followed relatives to Canada after considering moving to New Zealand. We
considered the coincidences of people meeting and marrying, adopting because of
care for another portion of the family, or adopting from outside of the family
for medical reasons. We realized how fortunate or blessed we were to know this
diverse crowd of people and call them family.
Coaxed by his aunt and his distant cousin,
young Liam, lived up to his Celtic name, and quieted the crowd as he sang Gordon
Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” He sang a capella as he read
the lyrics from another distant cousin’s smart-phone and brought down the
house. Liam was later seen playing along on the cajón, keeping rhythm while
others sang.