It's official - I am failing in my blogging duties. But never fear, help has appeared! Today's guest blogger is D Magnuson-Ford, the
Dad of Julia (AKA the Crew). By day he masquerades as fundraiser, a fly
fisherman, a motorcycle gang leader and a sometimes blogger. He lives with Chef
Heidi in Port Moody BC. Pictures are courtesy of Digital Echo, unless otherwise noted.
When the Captain and Crew arrived in Vancouver on August 28 on flight AC 105, the party started. They met the first wave of relatives
while bottling 453 bottles of beer in preparation for the wedding. (One hundred guests consumed all but
6 bottles over the course of the 4 day event – roughly 1.1 bottles per guest
per day.)
The next wave of relatives was encountered at the Magnuson family BBQ.
It was also a celebration of birthdays; Julia’s Opa - Dick Magnuson who turned
83 and Julia’s sister - Erika Magnuson-Ford, at twenty something, just to be polite. It was an opportunity to connect
Julia to cousins she had not seen in years and introduce Captain Phil to more family.
The
party continued with motorcycle rides, cooking competitions between Captain
Phil and Chef Heidi and then drifted to Galiano Island on September 5th for
Karen and Pat’s wedding on September 6th. Read on, Mac Duff...
Karen and Patrick |
Wedding rings from three generations |
It was the
Magnuson-Ford/Gordon wedding of the century. Some came early and stayed late. Some
fell in love with the island and got a realtor to show them houses before they
left. Some sojourned from Vancouver the morning of the wedding and were piped
off the early ferry by a Scottish Bag Piper named Daniel Cameron.
He led the
merry band of wedding guests up the street to a wonderful breakfast of "salmon benedict” hosted by Peter and Jackie Gordon, Pat’s parents. One third of the
guests were Karen’s relatives, 1/3 were Pat’s relatives and 1/3 were their
friends. People came from Germany, Spain, and the United States. They traveled
from far and wide including New York, Toronto, Fairbanks, Alaska and Parowan, Utah.
Erika, Karen, Julia and Heidi (Photo credit to Steph.) |
All admired the beautiful
scenery and marveled at the logistics of gathering and feeding the multitude.
Chef Heidi grabbed the limelight cooking the post-wedding brunch on Sunday for
75 early morning risers. There were 8 dozen sausages and 10 dozen eggs, scrambled
and wrapped up in tortillas with cheese, salsa and fresh onions. There were 73
pieces of smoked salmon – caught and smoked by this blogger. Plus each hungry
guest got to sample a huge apple-slaw, 5 kinds of homemade muffins, again made
by Chef Heidi, and trays of dainties made by the aunties.
'Boss Julia' emerged
at the very end, dropping her 'guest' persona to organize the cleaning of the
kitchen. She ordered the Chef out of the kitchen and commandeered Aunt Betsy and
Uncle Jeff to wash some nasty pans. She brow-beat her sister into cleaning one
pan that had foiled “Mr. Clean” himself. Thankfully, 'Bossy Julia' disappeared
after her work was done and hasn't been seen or heard from since.
Readers please note, the kitchen did get cleaned and no friends or family were harmed in the process.
Stay tuned for another installment of the world according to my dad.