With the passing of my beloved Lee in 2019 and my beloved mother in 2020 (amidst a global pandemic), I knew I had to strategize for preserving any kind of mental health. I returned to my first creative passion – cartooning.

It’s been 5 years since I contributed to this blog. Not that anyone follows it, especially since I stopped drawing anyone’s attention to it years ago. It’s not that there haven’t been lively and fun stories to write about. It’s just that I was too busy enjoying living them with Lee, the love and joy of my life. Then in March 2018 she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. It had already metastasized to other areas. The prognosis was very grim and on January 26, 2019 it took her away. Life as it was, was no more, for us both.

And then in March of this year, 2020, a global pandemic was officially declared, locking down public spaces, medical professionals recommending social distancing and masks.

And in the midst of that, on May 31st, 2020 my mother died of natural causes, just shy of 2 weeks after her 97th birthday.

Since our birthdays are just a couple of weeks apart (and we just felt like “gettin’ outta Dodge” for a weekend), in February Lee and I decided to explore the city across the border, Spokane.  Friends in Nelson had urged us to check it out – specifically the magnificent, historic Davenport Hotel.

For some reason (old Hollywood westerns, maybe?) we’d both held preconceptions of Spokane as some hokey, backwater cowboy town.  We were wrong.

I recently discovered the actor Juliette Binoche’s incredible abstract paintings via a film (a quirky little romantic comedy called “Words and Pictures”) and then was inspired to combine one of her most powerful pieces with a kick-ass quote by Goethe …

This is the story of the amazing wonder dog, Tex, a little black and white Boston terrier who survived 8 days running around Nelson, panicked, confused and alone.  He went missing on Dec. 13th – having run away from the house next door to us. A cousin of that neighbour was visiting from Castlegar when Tex ran out of a door that had been left open.  She put ads on various sites advertising her missing dog – and there had been several “sightings” all week – someone saw him way uphill at the “Rail and Trails” (where all manner of wild life roam), someone else saw him up at the hospital and still others spotted him down at the lake. He was extremely skiddish and shy and avoided capture each time, dodging and running like a fiend everywhere he’d been seen. He was starting to seem like an unreal creature – a Nelson legend – and we were finding it hard to believe that he would still be alive after 8 days outdoors — in December! The next door neighbour was out on her deck every morning, calling plaintively “TE-E-E-EX.. T-E-E-EX.. TE-E-E-EX….” Each morning that week, when we heard the neighbour calling for him, we knew it meant that Tex was still out there somewhere, scared, cold and hungry — but too shy to come to people (which we were beginning to believe would be his undoing).

Well, after a trip to Trail to get Lee’s latest foot x-ray results, we got back to Nelson and took Joey for a walk along the lake. We were just walking along the lakefront when Lee suddenly exclaimed “THERE HE IS!!!” (I knew instantly who she meant by “HE”) And sure enough, running full-bore in our direction was TEX (easily recognizable from the posters and online “lost” sites). But he dodged us and ran full-speed down the trail. I tried to follow but he was already long gone – and we wished we had some food to entice him. Just when we were trying to figure out what to do – his person, Selina, came marching down the trail. Someone else had spotted him before he got to the lake and called her. So she headed way down the trail to the last place we told her we saw him running.

Shortly after that, we saw Tex way off in the distance running BACK in our direction. Desperately trying to form the next Tex-rescue strategy, Lee stopped a group of 4 young guys,  telling them we should form a human wall to stop a little runaway dog. They were just looking at her with amusement until I yelled “TURN AROUND – HE’S COMING!!!” (they’d initially had their backs to the dog, completely unaware of his rapid approach).  They then realized that Lee wasn’t just some eccentric dame and they jumped into action trying to stop Tex. Tex managed to dodge around all of us (though Lee almost got him while down on her hands and knees – but he squirmed out of her grasp).  One of the guys ran like the wind after Tex, still not able to catch up to the panicked dog, but managing to put him in the direction of two women and a dog walking towards us further down the trail.  Seeing them in the distance I  yelled as loud as I could “CATCH THAT DOG, CATCH THAT DOG, CATCH THAT DOG!!!” As luck would have it, they had a little dog that decided to try to play with the running Tex, Tex tripped over the little dog, slowing him down long enough for one of the women to get a good grip on him! The other woman put their dog’s leash on him right away, just to be sure they had him.

So needless to say ALL of us – the two women that caught him, Lee, me and the young guys were absolutely elated. But meanwhile Selina was still calling his name way down the trail (totally unaware of the drama that had just taken place around the bend from her), so I ran down and told her, while pointing to the women — “they caught him”!!! She practically burst into tears when she heard that (she’d been coming into Nelson everyday from Castlegar to look for him for the past 8 days) and there was a tearful reunion – Selina so happy to be holding him, Tex licking her face. She said he feels like he lost 10 lb. since he went missing (all that running and who knows what he’s been living on – garbage, grass, goose-shit and lake water is my guess) — plus his pads were all raw and bloody from all that constant running. The temperature had been dropping dramatically – with subzero temps forecast – so the need to get him back home and indoors was never more urgent. We got her email address and I sent her these pics, taken during the wonderful “reunion”. In a world full of hugely sad stories, this was a small but happy one we got to experience. Thanks Tex, ya little bugger. Liz

After more than 2 months of healing from a broken  bone in her foot (from a fall that happened at Thanksgiving), many trips to the bone specialist in Trail and MANY sighs of relief that bone surgery wouldn’t be needed in the long-term, on Dec. 22nd Lee was given the o.k. to walk again – & without her air cast!  I constantly mused that the cast made me think a stormtrooper had misplaced his boot.. so of course, had to make it the subject of my year-end cartoon.  It’s been a good year for us in Nelson — a lot of hard work mixed with a lot of good times.  We have great friends here and a very happy life in this lovely little mountain town.