It had been over ten years since leaving home the last time. Over a decade since walking the length of sweeping beach I'€™d grown up along. Yet, as much as I yearned for the roar of the ever shifting sea which beat upon my childhood home’s shoreline, I was terrified to return. So much had changed. I'€™d become a woman since my final Chevery, Quebec departure, a wife, and a mother - and my accent had changed. The question, then a constant echo throughout my mind, was "am I still a Lower North Shore East Coaster?" Years before the set date for Chevery'€™s Come Home Celebration I'€™d caught wind of the event and remember experiencing a mix of both excitement and dread. When the invitation later arrived, I felt as one might prior to an anxiety roused High School Reunion. On the other hand, the celebration would allow me to rediscover the beauty of those emotionally sacred spaces of my childhood - the serene basin and its accented waterfall, those rock islands off the mainland where a feed on the rocks is one fit for royalty - and above all, I'€™d be granted the opportunity to share them with my children. There was also the point of seeing again the many family members and friends I'd missed and, in some cases, lost contact with. Might this be the opportunity to rekindle affections and catch up on lost time? Or would the years between us inevitably create awkward communication? Something happened which would force my hand. I came upon a black and white photograph, one my mother had given me ages ago. It was a snap of her and my aunt as children, standing in snowsuits before a line of evergreens in Aylmer Sound, Quebec. Their young smiles triggered my imagination, my memory, and with the looming pressure of making a decision over the Come Home Celebration, the gentle bliss of childhood nostalgia, a head filled with tales shared by my authorities, and a desire to share a unique past with my children growing up outside those roots, I realized I had an important story I wanted to tell. The novel became a private tribute to those before my time whose innovation, dedication, and determination was what made growing up along the Lower North Shore a valuable, joyful allowance. It became a simple glimpse into the past which I hoped would inspire questions from young readers, as well as offer their parents opportunity to share memories and histories. Was it fate which would have the novel so quickly acquired and set to release just weeks before the Come Home? Whatever it was, I will be forever grateful, as this come-about brought me face to face with an age-old truth; the ties of blood and community are ever withstanding. The flood of support I received over the then soon-to-release Middle Grade, Canadian Historical Fiction, the Wishing Stone and Other Myths: Learned on Gull Cliff Island, closed the space of time and distance between my now Alberta home and the Lower North Shore coastline of my youth. Like a smack in the face I acknowledged the truth that these things can never erase what defines an individual, they cannot cloud the fact that ties were made, had strengthened, and held. As rock is made smooth by the ocean's caress, a community is forged by the swell of support its people will produce. And the people of Canada'€™s East Coast have produced over time, a tremendous swell of comfort and heart which spreads far and wide, to reach any with the will to embrace it. Returning to Chevery was therapeutic. I'€™d not realized how badly I'€™d needed to do so. It was exhilarating rekindling old friendships, and witnessing the fact that not so much, after all, had changed. We'€™d all moved forward in the same ways. We'€™d all grown, created new lives and ties, yet our values had not changed but rather matured and defined. We were passing them on to our children, and it showed. Their being raised by prairie or shoreline didn'€™t matter as they played happily together, because the spirit of the sea lived within each. If you find yourself holding back because time has slipped you by - face it head on. Time is only a barrier if you build it into one. Revisit your East Coast roots, and be welcomed. Take the road back home. To find out more about author J.M. Lavallee and her bestselling novel, the Wishing Stone and Other Myths: Learned on Gull Cliff Island, visit Facebook.com/authorJMLavallee, or morningrainpublishing.com.   Submitted By: Jessica Lavallee