These are a collage of pictures of Peter’s mother that he posted himself. I know little of her except what Peter told me himself and what the pictures seem to convey. From what I recall she left her husband intermittently, and then completely. Sometimes she brought her children, sometimes she did not. She became a Jehovah’s Witness at some point, and she had Peter go to the door first, and once he had gathered the home owner’s sympathy or interest, she and whoever other adult she was with, would close in for the education, persuasion and conversion. Peter was at the time rather proud of his role.
I do not know much more about his mother, but that she left her husband and family repeatedly when they were young. From the pictures I would surmise she was sometimes a little wild. Perhaps her husband didn’t like that, and that is why she left. Perhaps she found home life too confining and therefore sometimes wanted to leave. Who knows? But whatever she felt it wasn’t a permanent state, she fluctuated and alternated, returned and even sometimes took the children with her. She had religious beliefs. Perhaps they contributed, the clash of the wild versus the religious. But again I don’t know. I suspect, from what I was told happened, she was intermittent in her religious beliefs and convictions, one thing then next another. Very likely the society of the time did not give her a proper outlet for what she felt and thus she was always sort of torn between.
Peter himself had very mixed feelings about his mother, who was French Canadian. He adored her, and yet often had very disdainful and hostile feelings towards French Canadians, and French Canadian culture and tradition. Yet this was bizarre because he lived almost his whole adult life in Quebec with French Canadian friends and French Canadian women. And the last 26 years of his life he lived entirely in Montreal.
I suspect his ambivalent feelings towards Quebec, were actually his ambivalent feelings towards his mother. He loved her, But. Why else would he live most his adult life in Quebec, with French Canadian friends and French Canadian female partners? And why prior to moving to Quebec, and living in Quebec, did he live across the river in Ottawa and have mostly French friends living in Quebec. There is no justifiable reason for this. Many English people live in Ottawa without having any French Canadian friends, never mind occupying most of their social life in Quebec. I believe his friends and his life were in Quebec, as he loved his mother. But he may have also hated her for not consistently being there.
I met Peter’s father once. If his young father was anything at all like his older father when I met him, then it is no wonder Peter’s mother left him. His father was the most boorish, cruel sadistic parent I have ever known.