It’s said that nostalgia is remembering the pleasures of sitting in front of a big fireplace – without remembering you had to cut the wood for it… or, in the case of a Taiga lumber traders’ reunion, deleting recollection of wood markets that were not always in upswing mode. Last night though, the reunion at Burnaby Earl’s on Kingsway Lougheed afforded fun reconnections among many distinguished guests, including retired Taiga VP Doug Butterworth and Northeast celebrity Bob Leffler – among the mentors for many of my 18 years ‘cutting wood’ at Taiga.

While many of the original trading floor have dispersed like sawdust in the wind, the convivialities of reunion demonstrated as much about old jokes being mostly dismembered than remembered. More than a few showed at least three signs of being a bit older. First, was their loss of memory about the time when… and, I can’t remember the other two.