Post’d: connecting generations & continents from a café

3 #postcards made at stellar lunch in my “private” kissaten café {after hospital checkpoints}

Featuring one made from my grandfather Olaf Olsen’s (spelling change to “Olson” at Canadian Immigration) transit papers leaving Norway to Canada aboard S/S Stavangerfjord.

He headed to prairies, married farmer’s daughter Ruby & died on snowy highway crash when Dad was 11.

I think about what T & wife Hannah thought when letters from son Olaf just stopped?

How did they learn the fate of their son away foreign & far?

Noting Olaf’s swagger with the extra sharp French tuck tie technique / hooray for ascots and cravats!

Gosh there’s so so much we don’t know about his life.

I carry his father’s name Thorvald, as does my son Ichiro Stanley // on my shoulders in a yokai mask.

Bonus: 3 more views of postcard arrays featuring Olaf and his grandson and great-grandson both carrying the name of his father Thorvald

[One of these cards is going a tender penpal in England, another to Virginia Beach to someone on his way to Scandinavia]