Ever since I arrived in Rossland, something has been bugging me. There's a poster at the hostel that features a painting of Rossland by an artist named Jenny Baillie. When I saw it I thought "Baillie, that's quite a distinctive spelling."
Then I thought:
"I used to have a year 6 teacher named Jenny Baillie, with that same distinctive spelling."
Then I thought:
"As I recall, she was really into art."
Then I thought:
"You know, the way the artist has signed this painting kindof looks like her handwriting."
But of course, it has been a long time since year 6, so maybe I was wrong about the handwriting, or even the spelling. I mentioned this to Brad, my coworker at the hostel, who also happens to be an artist living and working in Rossland. I get along very well with Brad, he's one of the few people I've met in Canada who are comfortable with the jokes I make, and better yet, can give as good as they get. However, I must admit that at times communicating with Brad can be a little difficult. For example, he once in conversation said I was a bus station. I'm not really taking that out of context. We were just talking about something and then he said I was a bus station. It was all a little unclear.
Anyway, Brad said that Jenny Baillie was from Australia, or maybe New Zealand, or maybe even England, that she might have been a teacher, and that she'd come to Rossland maybe 40 years ago, or 30, or 15. Or something.
It appears that Ms Baillie recently bumped into Brad, and it sounds like he may have narrowed down this range to "Down Under", that she used to be a teacher, and that she arrived more like 15 years ago than 40. This is all looking promising.
So, the latest entry on my list of things to do is to meet the Jenny Baillie of Rossland and see if she's also the Jenny Baillie of Hughes Primary School. If so, it would be a crazy coincidence indeed.
And in other primary school related news, it turns out my best friend from Hughes Primary, Parri, is a few hours drive away at Fernie. It's like I'm prepubescent all over again.
When I was nineteen, on my first overseas trip I was about 10hrs into the flight from Sydney to LA when I was pacing up and down the aisles of the 747 (diligently moving around to avoid DVT as instructed prior to my departure by my overprotective mother). I noticed a man who looked familiar. On further pacing I realised that it was my yr 7 science teacher. After chatting with him for a little while and asking what he was up to it turned out that "all that evolution stuff I was teaching you back in 1992 - that's a bunch of balony ... I'm going to LA to join a Christian rock band."
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