3 minute read

Emmanuelle Festas-Keogh, Citizen of the World

The Joy of Gardening

Emmanuelle views herself as “a citizen of the world”. She grew up in France, in a small village in the Jura mountains, close to the border with Switzerland. As a child, along with all the other children in her neighbourhood, she was free to roam on the forest trails and swim and fish in the rivers surrounding the village. It was a very happy childhood, which led her to develop a deep love for nature. Emmanuelle was the middle child of six. Her father was the physician for the community and her mother, a nurse, became a homemaker, looking after the family. At seventeen, seeking adventure, Emmanuelle went to university in Lyon, France, where she studied psychology for three years. In the Fall of 1978, she went to pick grapes in the Beaujolais area, "les vendanges", a way for young people in Europe to have fun and make some money. This is where she met her husband, Brendan Keogh, a young Irish man from Dublin. It was “very romantic”.

Emmanuelle then lived in Dublin, Ireland with Brendan for five years. She learned English and worked as a waitress, which she loved because of the people she met, while Brendan studied to be a doctor. They were married in the Jura

By Marcia Perryman

mountains and Jennifer, their daughter, was born in Ireland. The family then moved to Newfoundland for a year and a half, and Emmanuelle loved the people who were the “salt of the earth". Max, their son, was born there. Their next step was Emo, near Fort Frances, in Northwestern Ontario, close to the border with Minnesota. There too Emmanuelle enjoyed the people and their strong sense of community. Their son Sean was born there.

The family settled in Hastings in 1989. Emmanuelle wanted to go to school so she attended Trent University where she discovered that learning as a mature student is a wonderful experience. She studied sociology but took electives of all sorts. It took her seven years to get her degree, but she knew she was a lifelong learner. When the children were adolescents, Emmanuelle started her Masters of Social Work at U of T in Toronto. She stayed in a student basement room and came home on weekends. The teenagers quickly discovered how important she was to the family.

Once graduated, Emmanuelle practiced as a social worker at Trent University Counselling Centre for a number of years; then later worked for the Peterborough Family

What is Your Name?

By Susan Fedorka

Health Team. She found her work very fulfilling: a sense of being of service, supporting people to make positive changes in their lives and being part of their life journey. She also became a practitioner and teacher of mindfulness meditation, an interest that had been sparked when taking an Eastern Studies course at Trent University. Emmanuelle has now retired and is focussing on her grandchildren who, as you may have guessed, are all over the world. She writes for the Tribune and enjoys Hastings as a village with a heart.

That may seem like a strange question, but how many people do you talk to whose name you do not know? Think about it. People at the grocery store (ok, maybe not in our community), the gas station, a restaurant or while standing in line.

There are people who are amazing with other people’s names. Some say it’s a knack, while other people say it’s a learned skilled. Is it important that you know someone’s name? When does it become important? We all know and remember the name of family members, close friends, colleagues and people like our doctors, lawyers and hairdressers.

But how many casual acquaintances do we speak to whose name may allude us? How many names would you remember after a party or a conference?

And why do we start to not remember a person’s name? After COVID many people would see people they “knew” but might have had trouble recalling their name. And, yes, as we age, we tend to forget people’s names. Why?

Neuroscientist Dean Burnett states that because names don't have any other cues attached to them, they often get stored in the brain's short-term memory (that mostly registers things we hear), to be easily replaced by the next piece of information we encounter.

How many times have you recognized someone’s voice but maybe not them because they had changed physically?

If you have ever taken a business course in marketing or public relations, they will tell you to try and associate the person with an object. I have never found this works since you tend to get distracted trying to think of an object to relate the person to.

Other people will repeat your name a couple of times during the initial conversation. It probably works – but I hate hearing my name over and over again. That’s just me.

Recently I have had several people speak to me and admit that they have forgotten my name and asked what it was. That is courageous.

But it comes back to – how important is it that someone remembers your name? If they ask about your grandchild, your gardens or your recent trip, does your name really matter?

See local plants and flowers as you've never seen them before (these are from the Millenium Trail in Warkworth)!