For me it began on the Labour Day weekend in 1966 when I realized, there was no getting out of this, I was going to go from my life of freedom, playing and hiking around the GCA (Greater Chapleau Area ;-) and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to going to school every day for what seemed to me to be the rest of my life. I remember exactly how I felt that fateful Monday night; I hoped that if I cried loud enough and long enough to my dear Mom, she would possibly allow me to not enter this path of supposed higher learning. I was learning well enough staying at home, thank you very much.

But alas, I was forced into this life of fall and winter imprisonment and the dreaded “Back to School” advertisements that began the end of my seasonal freedom each year. Throughout grade school and into high school, I absolutely hated the idea of returning to school which made the days of the Labour Day weekend very sad indeed. This time of year for me as a young boy was the exact antithesis of the euphoria of the last day of school in the early summer each year when you looked ahead at two whole months of regained freedom.

One of the saddest Labour Days for me, was the at the end of the weekend in 1979 when I packed up my 1973 Super Beetle that later became my brother-in-law Lorne’s, both pictured in the photo below. But on that particular Labour Day Monday, I drove off in my Bug to start a brand new cycle of back to school at Sault College also marking my first real stint away from home.

I remember crying half the way to Sault Ste. Marie, or at least to Flame Lake on Hwy 129, as I headed south and left the warmth and comfort of my Chapleau home for parts and experiences unknown.

During my college years, I met some of my life-long friends like Rick Oliana and Tom Kourkouliotis and eventually didn’t mind the idea of returning to college life but, the melancholy feeling of the loss of summer freedom still haunted me with every "back to school" sign and every Labour Day Monday. Below is a shot of Rick and I sleeping together in one of our cottages during a springtime trip to Prairie Bee Lake (my... I guess we were quite close).

Then as a parent, living in Sault Ste. Marie with my loving wife Loreen, I remember the very sad day that both of us put our tiny and tender 4-year-old daughter Kaitlin on the school bus heading to Junior Kindergarten. This shot, which has remained my mouse-pad for the last 18 years, was a few years later when both Kaitlin and Zack were going back to St. Paul’s Catholic School in the Sault, and Jared was still at home at 2 years old.

While the kids returning to school generally brings a return to normality and a more predictable schedule, it continued with me to create a small heart-ache that really lasted only through to about Wednesday after Labour Day, and then the whole thing was long forgotten.

Well this year was no better; in fact, since Kaitlin has now officially moved out of the house, it was even worse as we packed up Jared and took him back for his third year at UOIT in Oshawa. Later, as Loreen and I sat on our patio on what was perhaps the best evening of this year's Labour Day weekend, and awaited the return of our last stay-at-home-for-the-current-time-child Zack, we were not what I would call sad, but we were also not the happiest. It's nice to start getting personal time back as the kids grow up and leave the nest, but its also a time that we reflect on things past.

And so it was that this year's Labour Day weekend kept up its tradition of bitter-sweetness and melancholy, now straddling close to 3 generations of back-to-school experiences. Maybe, as I complete the 3rd full cycle, when I get to walk my grandchild to his or her first days of school, I will lose the melancholy and start to see the adventure in this wonderful time of year as each new school year begins.

P.S.  This post is not intended to deliver a message of deep-rooted discomfort with the empty nest phase of our lives, only to recognize that life is presented to us in a series of phases, from school's-out to back-to-school and from filling the nest to teaching our young to fly and explore. Each phase comes with its own rewards but also with its changes. Everything has a balance just as Labour Day and back-to-school are balanced by the warm and rich home-comings of Thanksgiving and Christmas.