Patrick Kavanagh - A Photographic Memory
by Sally Hansen
As soon as I was seated in front of a cozy fire in Patrick Kavanagh’s home in Lake Park on the edge of Mississippi Lake near Carleton Place, he brought out his family photograph album. In it was one of the most captivating portraits I have ever seen. It looked like a painting by Norman Rockwell for the cover of “Saturday Evening Post,” even though it was black and white. The amazing thing about it was that I knew that the boy in the photo had red hair. It was a candid photograph of Patrick. And yes, he had red hair.
Patrick traces his own interest in photography back to his childhood days in England when his father, the late Patrick Desmond Kavanagh, was taking those family portraits. The family moved to Saskatoon when Patrick was nine, and moved again to Dunrobin in 1970. Patrick has studied marine navigation, journalism and electronics. At the age of 22 he thumbed his way from Ireland to Istanbul, carrying only a knapsack, a tent and a sleeping bag. “Those six months were the best education I ever got. It really taught me common sense. I learned to listen to my gut, trust myself, and to be comfortable in my own skin.” His biggest regret is that he did not have a camera with him.
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