When I was a kid, mononc’ was so damn fun!

Even thirty years and despite his crimes I still remember his good sides: a jolly fat man, not effeminate at all but openly gay in a village on the rugged, conservative and catholic acadian coast of Canada where men are men, drink Alpine beer, ride ATVs, hunt moose and expose the antlers over their garage door.

He always had some kind of present for me: a stuffed grey cat, a blue teddy bear that played music. When he didn’t have any gift, he’d pop in a VHS tape of some kids movie like E.T. or The Neverending Story and all the grown ups would be drinking their beer and watch the movie with little 5 year old me!

That particular christmas party in 1990, I got a little tea set made of real ceramic. He got out his VHS camcorder and filmed the party.

We watched that tape for years after that; Bottles of beer piled up on the table as I saw my parents kiss and dance on folk music, improvise a band with a harmonica, a toy flute, spoons and ol’ uncle’ Ray playing completely random notes on his violin just for fun...

It was not happiness, but it was fun.

Twenty years and a therapy later, before she died, my mother told me that she cried on the way back from those carefree parties. Back home with me and my five siblings, all moody teenagers between 12 and 20, all left traumatized by my mom’s first marriage to their violent and alcoholic father. The man that would raise me and live with mom until her death was that uncle's brother. He had four children of his first marriage.

All those people living together in poverty and trauma...that’s wasn’t much fun. Everyone there was in dire need of human connection to survive and I don’t know what parent or what teenager would not have been manipulated under that.

Then along came Raymond with his booze, his gifts...and his camera.