30 -

Wednesday, February 17, 1993 ~ North Shore News

riful adventures

Aff Our Summers Are French, by Paul Oeggan, Estival Press, 160 pp.,

paper.

STILL found it incredible that | should be here in this

medieval hill village in central France, married to a

young French woman, with two golden-haired children,
running an arts centre, working on our latest acquisition,
lancien presbytere, hiving this idyliic life...”

North Vancouver artist and in-
structor Paul Deggan still floats be-
tween this dream fife in Auvergne
and (by comparison) his soggy
Lynn Valley home living the kind
of.sxistence most peaple only
dreem of,

Deggan’s account of how he
came to run a summer arts centre
with his French wife Babette is rich

- with details of the French coun-

tryside and the characters who

eople the village of Montaigut-
‘Te-Blane.- °

The story begins in 1977 with
* Deggan’ s trek to Europe with his
son Mark. It was a journey Deggan
- hoped would restore his battered
sou

Life back in Lions Bay had been
“more than tolerable,” but what

“fay ahead for Deggan was an en-
viable adventure in love, life and

art.

Through ; a felicitous error, Deg-
gan meets up with his future wife
Babette when he invites her, then
‘only an acquaintance, to join him
and his son ona tour of Norman-

ly’. a

An evening walk i in the village of
Honfleur gently unites the two
soulmates.’

‘They are smitten. Babette’s fami-

‘ly thinks she is crazy (taking off

with a man 23 years her senior
whom she barely knows!).

In a highly chivalrous gesture
one would think only possible in a
Chaucer tale, the 44-year-old ;
Deggan writes an earnest letter to
Babette’s parents declaring his
Jove for their 21-year-old daughter.

A year later, the escapades con-
tinue. Babette moves to Lions Bay
and gives birth to a girl, their first
daughter.:

Deggan describes the comical
“atmosphere at the hospital during
the birth: ““...the doctor and
nurses were students of French in

_ Babette’s language classes in
‘. Squamish, and they insisted on

TAIA JUMILLIA. 1988 $10.30
(Spain)

An initial bottle sampled straight
off the rack was urmemorable.
(Other {actors may have interven-
ed.)

Asecond bottle spent a few
months cooling its cork in an
unventilated closet with old
sneakers and hiking boots to
emerge superb; brimming with
complex fruit and spices, finishing
_ smooth as old leather.

While unlikely to spark a revolu-
tion in wine storage, this does il-
lustrate the advisability of buying
wines in advance, rather than
scooping them off the shelf en
route to a dinner party.

Even cheap wines make a better
impression if you let them make
themselves at home for a while in
cool and quiet before introducing
them to society, |

by John Moore

Barbara Black

crreecmnrenyy

BOOK REVIEW

conducting the whole affair, labor
and delivery, in French. Between
contractions Babette corrected
their grammar.”

in a breezy style, bristling with
color and passion, Deggan
describes how the couple search-
ed for a home in France. The pro-
cess was fraught with obstacles.

The French do not hire real
estate agents, nor advertise prop-
erty for sale. They are also

. suspicious of foreigners ogling

their property.

In Montaigut-le-Blanc, in the
Auvergne region, Deggan was
captivated by the countryside. He
writes: “Vineyards, orchards,
deciduous woods and fields of -
wheat, oats and flax speckled with
red poppies formed a richly tex-

tured tapestry ... Painters’ coun-
try.”

With the help of an official-look-
ing relative in a moth-balied suit,
Paul and Babette luck out and end
up purchasing an old presbytery in
the village.

The sellers are a bristly couple
named Malsang (which, he notes
ominously, when the negotiations
are tricky, means ‘bad blood."’)

The property comes complete
with a quirky Frenchman named
(they think, since they can’t quite
understand him) de Sappe, a
round-faced silver-toothed paysan
who lives in a curiously small
cabin behind their home.

De Sappe soon becomes a fa--
iniliar fixture of the Montaigut-le-
Blanc summer. centre for the arts.
His: raison d’etre appears to be
raising and selling leeks.

Through rauch toil the
presbytery is transformed into a
centre for the arts, where Paul
would teach drawing and painting
and Babette would teach French.

Their program, eventually run
through Capilano College's exten-
sion program, would become in-
creasingly popular.

As the beok comes to an end,
the Deggans are dancing on their
lawn in wet Lynn Valley, elated at
the news that their blessed little
village finally did not accept a
proposal to store toxic waste.

It feels as if a journey has come
to an end, People we have met
along the way, and places we have
visited with the help of Deggan’s
keen eye, remain comfortably in
memory. :

All Our Summers Are Frenchis a
pleasant holiday in print.

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You can get more. information and an application form at
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