Recently I took a road trip across Canada. Well, really only from Southwestern Ontario to Prince Edward Island. Im too cheap (or poor, depends how you look at it) to pay for the gas to get to the west coast. Our first main city we stayed at was Ottawa. Beautiful City. Honestly, if I wasn’t so ignorant in french, I might even want to live there. While we were there, hanging with the Queen of England, we thought we would pay a visit to the Civilization Museum. One of the missions we had, for our journey, was to see more of Canada. Seems appropriate to spend time investing in understanding the culture our country has, and where we are coming from.  While visiting, we learned, took many photos, enjoying a morning of exploration. One of my personal favourite finds was a tombstone. I believe it was found in New Foundland dating back to 1676. I could be wrong, but I think it is the oldest engraved tombstone found in Canada. The language on  the front and back of the stone was in Basque language. I need to give a shout out to my friend James Riewald who successfully said Basque is a language with a history in the Spain region. I looked it up to find the region spanned from northeastern Spain to southwestern France. The alphabet used in Basque is Latin. Like the words from the great movie Good Will Hunting, “my friend is wickedly smart!”

Back to what made it my favourite. There was a translation of what the stone said. Take a look and see if you can figure it out…

Im guessing you cant figure it all out because its written on both sides. Let me give you the translation.

“HERE LIES

DEAD…

MAY 1, 1676

I.H.S.

JOHN

DE SALE

CESANA

SON (or heir)

OF THE HOUSE

OF SWEETEST ODOUR”

How awesome is that?! Sweetest Odour?! Now I did find out that  “sweetest odour” refers to ‘the best loved son of the house’. But that is a hilarious way of saying things. Language is amazing sometimes. With the recent funeral I attended in mind, I had been thinking a lot about the end. How to be remembered and what my story will be. But then this photo reminds me to also enjoy the humour in life. An example: even though it was sad to say goodbye to a friend at a funeral, I cant help but keep laughing to myself about how he managed to get a conservative megachurch to play the entire song of Freebird, by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I noticed some heads a nodding, itching to rock out! So any fun ideas for your funeral? Any witty words you want on your tombstone?! I might plagerize John De Sale Cesana and snag sweetest odour, or atleast say I smelled like Old Spice. I would love to have a live band rock out at my funeral, like the movie Elizabethtown, and have the sprinklers go off! Humour is so human. I dont know about you, but I need it.