The long drive to Sarnia (no, not Narnia)

Somehow, we all managed to get ourselves packed and ready for the long car journey to Sarnia. Mrs Ottawacker’s sister Mary, pronounced à l’anglaise and not à la danoise, lives in Camlachie, which is just outside Sarnia. Packed, washed and out of the house by 8:23 (don’t ask me how I know this, it is too painful), we were just in time to hit the tail end of the Ottawa traffic. But it had cleared by the time we hit Highway 7. We stopped at Perth to get some food, then again near Bancroft for fuel, and then paid the extravagant highway toll to use the 407 and thus avoid the mayhem that is Toronto.
 
We eventually arrived some seven hours after we left, and after a quick bite to eat, headed straight out to see Vagn at the hospice. What a nice place it is. I’d only (thankfully) very limited experiences of these places, but this one was small and extremely homely. None of the sterile hospital-style places I remembered. All in single rooms, and all of the rooms were sponsored by various organizations. Vagn is in a room sponsored by the Township of St. Clair, for example. What an impressive way to fund and maintain private places. I’m completely against the privatization of any form of medical interactions, but this is a non-profit and is private only insofar as it is not linked to any of the official Ontario medical institutions.
 
Anyway, we arrived to find Vagn has made something of a comeback, and he was soon sitting up in bed eating. He is still incredibly frail, of course, at 98 it is to be expected, but he’s hanging in there. Evening drive around Sarnia seeing some beautiful houses and Canatara Park, which gave us a nice view of Lake Huron.