LETTER FROM VIRGIL

POSTING #135

2012-02-11T06:58:00.000-08:00

Where's Newt?

It was 3.00 PM, on Tuesday, January 24th, and Pat and I were sitting in lawn chairs under a tree in front of the bandstand in Cambier Park, in Naples, Florida.

The temperature was 27C (80F) and there was a pleasant breeze. We settled into our chairs as we waited for a Newt Gingrich rally to start---it was supposed to start at 5 PM.

A rally for Newt Gingrich?

Why, you might ask, would we be using part of our winter holiday to attend a rally for an American politician famous (infamous?) for three marriages and assorted scandals.

Good question.

Part of the answer is that I love all politics but especially the American brand, a love that Pat has come to share, or at least tolerate.

We had been checking the local media to see whether there would any rallies while we were in Florida. We found that most campaigning is now done through television debates and (generally negative) ads.

Finally we found a rally---one for Newt.

Now, as his opponents keep saying, Newt has more baggage than an airline, but he's a colourful, unpredictable character full of ideas. I had heard him speak in Hilton Head a few years ago at a non-political symposium on health care. Newt showed a good understanding of the complexities of health care, and he had what I thought were some sensible ideas, including the necessity of a mandate, a requirement that all persons purchase health insurance. He has since flip-flopped on that idea, but that's politics for you. It would be unfair to hold that against him.

So, there we were, waiting for Newt.

We had no idea how many people would show up but decided to get to the Park two hours early to try to get a good location.

There were about three hundred people already there when we arrived, but we were able to set up our chairs about a hundred feet from the stage. Excellent location!

This was the scene at 3.30---our chairs were just to the right of the tree trunk. If you look really carefully you can see Pat's ankle and shoe at the extreme right of the photo.

We watched as people streamed into the park from all directions. A Newt supporter behind us said with glee that there were now 600 people, while Mitt Romney, who had had a rally earlier that day, had only drawn 300.

And it was only 3.45.

By 4.30, the police, who had been expecting a crowd of no more than 1000 people, had called in reserves to clear passageways in case of an emergency. The growing crowd was clearly much greater than 1000.

On the stage, a Dixieland band replete with straw boaters started playing. Meanwhile a bouncy MC led the audience in chants for Newt and against Romney and Obama. At 5 she told us that the police were now estimating the crowd at 6,000, the largest crowd ever in Cambier Park (that turned out to be an exaggeration---a rock concert a year or so earlier had brought out nearly 7000 people).

She also told us that there had been an accident on the I-75 and that was delaying Newt and his party but he 'would be here soon'. (That was incorrect. We learned later that Newt's organizers had at the last minute fitted in another rally in Fort Myers and at 5 when our rally was scheduled to start he was still speaking in Fort Myers.)

At 5.30, I nipped across to Starbucks on 5th Avenue for some coffee and we tapped into a stash of cheese and biscuits we had brought with us.

Various Gingrich buttons on sale at the rally: "Newt Rocks", "NEWT-ER OBAMA 2012", and "Newt 12". Note the sign across the top: "Annoy a Liberal---work hard, be happy!"

A woman with a hat covered with Republican charms---elephants, flags etc. The pink pin says, "Hot Chicks Vote Republican"

We listened to people around us, many of whom seemed more anti-Obama, than pro-Gingrich. The hatred of Obama was fierce and vicious. He was a socialist, a crook, and Un-American while Michelle was 'disgusting'. They entertained each other with 'fair and balanced' news items from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

Pat and I, who think that Obama has been doing pretty well coping with the financial and economic mess left behind by George Bush, were reminded of a separatist play we saw in Montreal in 1976. The audience cheered the anti-English sentiments of the play so much that at intermission we were afraid to speak English. At the Naples rally we whispered to each other in case the rabid people around us caught an 'eh' or an 'out' that would give us away as godless, socialists from

Canada

The people were mainly seniors, some of them residents of Florida but there were many 'snow birds' who had fled the cold of Chicago, Indianapolis etc to spend a few months in Naples. They were 99.9% white. I saw two African-Americans, one a technician helping set up the sound system, and the other a young man who was running for some state office.

One of the two African-Americans at the rally. This one is a technician, while the other was a candidate for a state office.

There weren't any Latinos in the audience so far as I could tell. But there was a Latino-looking lad of about 10 who, in the disorganization as people waited for Newt, managed to get onto the stage. Holding a "Vote Newt" sign in front of him, he danced to the music of the band. Republicans don't seem to be very musical (witness Romney's painful versions of American the Beautiful) but this kid had rhythm. Moving the sign like a burlesque dancer moves her fan (I have seen that in movies), he captivated the audience.

From time to time, a worried looking geezer would clamber onto the stage, look out at the audience and shout in a pleading voice, "Martha, I'm here." The crowd cheered each time.

At 6, the crowd was getting rambunctious, despite the entertainment provided by the MC, the band, the young dancer and the lost geezer. Instead of following the MC's chants, people started their own chant: "We want Newt, we want Newt, Newt, Newt, Newt". Then from the back of the crowd someone started singing American the Beautiful---in tune, unlike Mitt's renditions! Soon the 6000 were all standing and singing. Relieved, the MC suggested they sing it again, which they did. And then, for good measure, they sang it a third time.

We eavesdropped on two couples behind us who when they weren't condemning Obama were comparing notes on the best marine hotels to stay at when they sailed their boats/yachts back to New Jersey. Sounded to me like members of the 1% club!

Finally, at 6.30, we saw the flashing red lights of police cars as they escorted Newt's campaign bus to the street behind the band shell.

After a few moments of quiet, Newt and his wife Callista strolled onto the stage.

And the crowd went wild, cheering and cheering.

After being introduced by someone---who had the good sense to talk for only 30 seconds---Newt started to speak. Without notes or a teleprompter.

I wondered what we were in for. Would this be one of his interminable, rambling, philosophical discourses?

I remembered a meeting years ago in Ottawa at which Tommy Douglas, the Father of Canadian Medicare, was one of the speakers. He started by saying that the organizers had asked him to keep his remarks to 20 minutes. Tommy who was noted for long speeches protested, "Politicians can't get the dust off their tonsils in twenty minutes".

In fact, Newt spoke for only 18 minutes---I timed him. He began by thanking the young dancer who he understood had helped entertain the crowd. (The lad stayed on the stage next to Newt, listening to the speech until I guess he got bored. Then he started to dance again---until one of the security people hustled him off the stage.)

Newt and Callista, with the young 'Latino' dancer, in a blue shirt and jeans, to the left of Newt---before he was ejected.

The speech was crisp and coherent. There were lots of 'red meat' jibes about Obama and Romney, which the crowd loved. When he finished it was clear the crowd had forgiven him for keeping them waiting.

They were his!

I was so impressed with the speech and the way the crowd received it that I sent a text message to a friend back in Canada who shares our love for American politics, "Romney is toast"

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So much for my skill as a pundit!

As you know, Romney went on to trounce Newt a week later at the Florida primary on Tuesday, January 31st.

Millions of Super Pac dollars in negative ads helped turn the Florida Republican voters against Newt.

And of course, Newt hurt his own cause by a lack-lustre performance in the two Florida debates, and by his promise to set up a moon colony once he became president. The moon colony promise was designed to appeal to laid-off space engineers around Cape Canaveral but Romney quickly labelled it as just another of Newt's' lunatic ideas' (I am not sure whether Mitt intended the pun).

A friend argues that politics is about poetry and plumbing---'poetry' to create a vision the public can believe in, and 'plumbing' to organize your supporters and get the vote out.

Newt is good at poetry but not at plumbing. You shouldn't keep 6000 people waiting for an hour and a half.

At the moment---as I write this Posting---Newt seems to be out of the running for the Republican nomination for President.

But Newt has been written off before.

Like a cat, he may have a few lives left.

Anyway, we are grateful to him (and Callista) for giving us the opportunity to experience American politics unfiltered by television anchors and pundits.

It was great fun!

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See you on February 19, 2012 for Posting #136 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

I am working on Posting # 7 on my The Icewine Guru blog. It should be up in the next week or so, at: http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #134

2011-12-14T05:48:00.000-08:00

Note: Although the weather this fall has been unseasonably mild, the calendar insists that winter is fast approaching. I am feeling strong ancestral urgings to put the tools away in the barn, and push my feet into the oven for at least part of the winter---as I did last year.

This, therefore, will be the last Letter from Virgil Posting until February 12, 2012.

Pat and I wish readers a wonderful holiday season!

See you in February.

Niagara-on-the-Lake and the Bicentennial of the War of 1812-15

This is the official logo for the 1812 Bicentennial that is now appearing on souvenirs of all kinds, everything from hats to key chains.

For the last year or so, I have been working as a volunteer secretary to one of the committees organizing events for Niagara-on-the-Lake's 1812 Bicentennial. We have an excellent website that describes in colourful detail what will happen over the next three years.

But I thought it might be helpful to provide a secretary's distillation of what, in my view, are likely to be the key events, events that you might like to consider attending.

On January 1, 2012, the Ontario Lieutenant Governor, the Honourable David Onley, will hold his New Year's Levee, not in Toronto, but in Fort George, here in NOTL

United States President Madison declared war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812 and instructions were sent to the US military to invade Upper Canada. On the weekend of June 15, 16, and 17, 2012, the Bicentennial gets its official kickoff with grand opening celebrations we are calling the DECLARATION OF WAR!

There will be a Military Ball in honour of General Brock put on by our Museum on the evening of June 16th. There will be a rich assortment of military and other events during Saturday and Sunday.

On July 13, 14, 15, 2012, in the Niagara River below Fort George there will be an event called The Navy of 1812: Sailors on the Lakes with at least 7 tall ships and 20 large bateaux.

Then the fighting starts!

In July, August, and September of 1812, there were some interesting and significant battles in other parts of the Great Lakes (for example, on August 16, 1812, General Brock persuaded the commandant of Fort Detroit, General Hull, to surrender by pretending that he had far more troops than he in fact had) but it was the Battle of Queenston Heights on October 13, 1812 that convinced the residents of Upper Canada that the Americans were not invincible. A recent book makes this point in its title, "12 Hours That Saved a Country"

There will be a re-staging of this battle during the weekend of October 12 and 13, 2012 with over a thousand re-enactors coming from Canada and the US. It may be hard to get a position near the battle because of the tens of thousands of visitors expected but there will be lots to see in NOTL, especially in and around Fort George----and of course there will also be the Shaw!!

There will be a re-enactment of Brock's funeral on October 14th with his 'body' being carried on a horse-drawn wagon from the site of the battle in Queenston to a ceremonial 'burial' in Fort George.

In May 1813, the war turned against Upper Canada. The Americans, returning with stronger forces and better generals, captured Fort George, and occupied what is now Niagara-on-the-Lake.

In June 1813 in Queenston, Laura Secord overheard American officers, who had commandeered her house, planning an attack on the British/Canadian forces near the site of today's Brock University. Her famous walk through the bush and up the escarpment to warn the British/Canadian troops will be celebrated on June 22, 2013 with the Laura Secord Bicentennial Event and Walk.

To mark the Occupation of NOTL, Canadian flags will be taken down in May 2013, and only US flags of the period will be flown. Students dressed as US soldiers will patrol the streets of NOTL giving out leaflets telling the 'occupied' citizens how they must behave (e.g. no union jacks, no subversive toasts to the king etc.). Canadian and American tourists should enjoy this.

In December 1813 the tide of battle turned, as British and Canadian forces fought their way back to NOTL. On December 10th, the US forces, frightened by the advancing troops, abandoned Fort George and fled across the Niagara River to Fort Niagara. Before fleeing, they burned almost all the homes and businesses in NOTL and Queenston, leaving the residents without shelter at the start of a hard winter.

On December 7, 2013, we will be staging a Son et Lumière, "Niagara on Fire", at the NOTL Courthouse with videos depicting the burning of the towns and the hardship caused to the residents.

Both Canadian and American historians agree that the burning of NOTL was a colossal military blunder. It can be argued that if the Battle of Queenston Heights convinced the residents of Upper Canada that the forces of the US were not invincible, then the burning of NOTL and Queenston convinced them that they had no choice but to expel the invaders, and build a separate nation.

The War of 1812 was ended by the signing of the Treaty of Ghent by Britain and the US on December 24th. The treaty was ratified by the US Congress on February 16, 1815.

Although the treaty wasn't ratified until February 1815, peace was effectively restored in the Niagara Peninsula in the summer of 1814. We have decided therefore to commemorate the signing at some point in September 2014 (dates not yet decided) when the weather will be more pleasant. This will be an enormous Bi-National event to celebrate 200 years of peace, with, we hope, the President of the US and the Prime Minister of Canada.

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Niagara-on-the-Lake is not a big town---only 15,000 souls---but it loves its history and it thinks big.

The next three years are going to be exciting!

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If you would like to learn more about the War of 1812, I would suggest checking PBS program listings to see when they will be re-broadcasting their superb video, The War of 1812, first shown in October this year. We decided to buy a copy, to keep (available through PBS or Amazon for about $20).

I would also recommend Cameron Porteous', "12 Hours That Saved a Country", mentioned above---a slim book, illustrated with paintings by Porteous. The author, who has a home in Queenston, has worked hard to get his facts right and to give us a vivid, visual understanding of what happened during those critical 12 hours.

For a definitive (in my opinion) account of the war, I would recommend Professor Alan Taylor's book "The Civil War of 1812". You may wish to check my Posting #96 in which I discussed attending a lecture by Prof. Taylor on his book.

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See you on February 12, 2012 for Posting #135 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

I have just uploaded Posting # 6 on my The Icewine Guru blog. You can read the Guru's year-end thoughts at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #133

2011-12-10T06:58:00.000-08:00

Tours for Foreign Officials---Lighter Moments

As a consultant, I always enjoyed organizing and then leading tours of foreign officials to Canada. Perhaps because I am naturally a little nosey, it was fun to tour schools, colleges, universities, factories, hi-tech firms, government departments and on and on.

It could be challenging, trying to make sure the visitors gathered the information and knowledge they wanted.

But there were lighter moments as well.

Here are a couple.

Slave For a Day

A group of employment experts from Jordan came to Canada in 2005 for a two week tour designed to illustrate how Canada prepares its young people for the world of work.

The Jordanian group on the deck at our Grimsby home with Pat and me in the middle. The photo was taken by the husband of the woman (Samaya) who is seated next to Pat. Thanks,Waleed!

One of the issues the group wanted to study was the career guidance approach used by our secondary schools.

In consultation with some local experts, I chose a medium-sized high school in the Niagara Peninsula that was supposed to do a particularly fine job of preparing students for post-secondary studies or for entry into the labour market. The principal and the head of guidance were both enthusiastic about receiving a group of Jordanians.

When we arrived at the school. the principal welcomed us and made it plain that every thing was open to the visitors. They could go anywhere they wanted, and talk to anyone they wished.

The visit then began with a tour of the school. The visitors knew from their pre-visit briefings that there wouldn't be the strict separation of male and female students that one finds in Jordan. But I could see that they were taken aback by the reality of seeing boys and girls strolling along the halls together chatting, sometimes holding hands, or by the sight of a fellow and a girl having a quiet chat, their heads together, in front of a locker.

We visited a lab where a mixed gender team was building a rocket as part of a project on space exploration. Then on to the media department where another mixed gender team was making a movie in a studio with cameras and sound equipment. And then to a computer lab where girls and fellows were rattling away on keyboards, probably dreaming about developing the next big software program.

I could see that the visitors were impressed by the sophistication of the work being done by the Canadian students.

As the tour went on, the visitors seemed to relax, and to accept the mixing of genders.

At lunch time, the head of the culinary department told us that the students would be preparing and serving our lunch. He made a point of saying that everything we would be eating had been selected and prepared in accordance with Islamic dietary rules. He led us to the dining room, where we enjoyed a delicious lunch of salad, poached salmon and dessert. The student-servers, both male and female, didn't have the aplomb of restaurant staff but they were earnest, charming and friendly---and they got the job done.

After lunch we met with the head of career guidance. She discussed the methods she used to try to help students define their career goals, and how she kept track of them during their years at the school. In the question and answer session, there was a lively discussion about the effectiveness of different tests used in Canada and Jordan to measure things like career preferences and aptitudes.

The visit had gone well.

The visitors were clearly impressed with what they had seen. I was impressed as well, as I thought of the facilities and services offered back in the 1950s in the Arthur District High School. We had some fine, dedicated teachers but teaching aids pretty much started and ended with a blackboard and chalk.

Toward the end of our visit, the head of guidance accompanied us as we made our way down the main hall to our bus. I was feeling good, the event had been even more successful than I had hoped.

Then we saw a girl and a bizarre companion coming towards us.

When we got closer we could see that the companion was a tall, husky young fellow wearing a blouse, short skirt and nylons (with hairy legs showing through) and lots of lipstick. He was carrying a pile of books.

The visitors stopped and stared, their mouths open. The pre-visit studying they had done about gender equality in Canada hadn't prepared them for this.

I leaned over and whispered to the head of guidance, "What's going on?"

She stopped the young couple, explained that these were education officials from the Kingdom of Jordan and she was sure they would like to know why the young fellow was dressed as he was.

The girl explained that as part of the United Way charity fund raising campaign, the students in her class had decided to have a 'buy-a-slave-for-a-day-auction'. She had successfully bid for the young fellow and she had 'ordered' him to wear women's clothes, makeup etc. He was now carrying her books to the school bus.

The head of guidance asked the young fellow whether he had submitted his university applications, and whether, despite his football (I gather he was one of the star players), he was keeping his grades up.

He calmly assured her that everything was under control.

We said goodbye and moved on to our bus, with the visitors chatting amongst themselves in Arabic trying to make sense of what they had just seen.

I imagine that when they think back to that high school visit, the first image that will pop into their minds won't be the labs.

It will be the young fellow with the lipstick and the hairy legs.

Hopefully, their next thoughts will be about the labs and the school's effective program of career guidance.

Hopefully!

A Sleeping Bag for East of Siberia

One of the members of a group of Russian employment officials, for whom I organized a visit in 1996, was a burly fellow from the Russian Far East---beyond Siberia---who wanted to buy a sleeping bag while he was in Canada.

He explained that he was a hunter, and that he liked to camp overnight in the woods in winter waiting for deer or some other game. He needed a sleeping bag that would protect him against the extreme cold of the region. There were sleeping bags in Russia but they were of poor quality and not warm enough for night-time camping. He asked me where he could get a really good bag.

I thought of Canadian Tire but decided that he probably needed a store that specialized in fitting out people for rugged outdoor adventures, a place like Mountain Equipment Co-Op. One of our sons, who lived in Toronto, said he knew the location of one of their stores---on Front Street at the time.

The group was going to be in Toronto after a spell in Ottawa, and, since I had to do something with the rest of the group, I asked our son if he would mind taking the Russian visitor to the store, accompanied by an interpreter.

At the store, the Russian fellow sorted through the selection of sleeping bags and settled on a down-filled mummy-type bag that was wide at the shoulders, narrow at the feet with a zip up hood. As the interpreter translated data about the maximum temperatures for which it was recommended, the man went over the stitching and padding from top to bottom. He nodded that he was happy with the bag. The price, which was substantial, didn't seem to bother him.

Our son thought that his mission was just about over. Just get the man and the bag to the cashier and that would be that. He pointed to the nearest cashier, but the Russian shook his head.

He gestured that he wanted to try the bag.

Then in one of the store's main aisles he placed the bag on the floor. With people walking around him, he proceeded to clamber into the bag. When he was completely inside the bag, he zipped up the hood and lay back. Then he rolled on his side, and then on his stomach.

After a few minutes, he unzipped the hood and emerged, hot and red-faced from the bag. "Is good", he said.

At the cashier's desk he pulled out a wad of Canadian cash and carefully counted out the correct amount. As the cashier was counting the money, the man was engaged in a happy and loud discussion---in Russian---with the interpreter. This distracted the cashier a little and she had to start re-counting the money. Finally, the money was deposited in the cash register and the cashier folded the purchase into a large plastic bag.

Our son pointed to the nearest exit. The Russian fellow grabbed the bag, and continuing his discussion with the interpreter started to leave the store.

As he passed through the security sensors at the door, an alarm went off.

According to our son, a very loud alarm!

The man and the interpreter paid no attention to the alarm. At that time in Russia, store security was handled by tough-looking guards with revolvers on their hips.

But our son paid attention to the alarm.

As did various store employees who started running to the door.

Our son grabbed the man and explained that there was a problem and they would have to return to the cashier. The interpreter explained but the man protested, "I pay!"

Back at the cash register, the cashier searched the sleeping bag and found a plastic sensor that she should have removed. Embarrassed, she detached the sensor, and apologized to the Russian man.

For his part, he took the whole thing stoically, shrugging as much as to say, "These Canadians have crazy customs."

Later on, after the Russian and the interpreter were safely back in their hotel, our son phoned and gave me a blow-by-blow account of the adventure.

I apologized for getting him involved in all that excitement, explaining that I thought it would be a simple purchase.

He laughed and said he had enjoyed every minute of it.

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See you on December 18th for Posting #134 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

Hot off the press!! See the latest Posting (#6) on The Icewine Guru blog: "Year-End Thoughts from The Guru" at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #132

2011-12-02T12:46:00.000-08:00

Arthur's Blind Newspaper Editor

Years ago when we lived in the Glebe in Ottawa, our boys used to shovel snow for homes on our street and on Clemow, the street behind us. One day, when Pat was driving along Clemow with one of the boys, Pat pointed to a house and said, "Celia Franca lives there". (Ms Franca was a famous ballerina and founder of the National Ballet of Canada---and one of Pat's idols when she was studying ballet.)

Our son contradicted her, '"That's not Celia Franca's house, that's Mrs Morton's house. I shovel her driveway."

Of course, Celia Franca and Mrs Morton were one and the same. Our son just didn't know that the woman who paid him for shoveling snow was a celebrity.

I feel a little like our son when I think back to Rixon Rafter, the editor of Arthur's weekly newspaper, "The Enterprise News'. When I was young, I knew that Mr. Rafter was blind. He wore frosted glasses and carried a white cane as he walked along our main street.

I remember marveling at how he seemed to know---to have memorized---the location of curbs, and steps. And how he knew when it was safe to cross intersections.

Rixon Rafter in his office, talking to his clerk. Photo is from "Memories of Arthur and Area" by John Walsh.

But to a young fellow, he was just another interesting person in a village full of fascinating people---a grocer nicknamed 'Jigger' because he was always on the move, a butcher who also played goal for the Arthur Tigers hockey team, Letty who drove his Model T Ford to the cemetery whenever a grave had to be dug, and on and on.

It was when 'outsiders' started making a fuss about this blind editor of a newspaper that I started to realize that Mr. Rafter was someone special. The Toronto radio station, CFRB, featured Rixon Rafter on one of its regional programs with the interviewer (Gordon Sinclair, I believe) marvelling at how a sightless person was able to edit and publish a newspaper. Newspaper articles appeared saying that Arthur had the only blind newspaper editor in all of Canada.

It dawned on me that he was special.

Someone to be proud of.

And he was one of ours.

Rixon Rafter was born on a farm outside of Arthur in 1885, one of 9 children. (For this background information I am indebted to John Walsh, an Arthur pharmacist, who has written two wonderful volumes entitled "Memories of Arthur and Area". Incidentally, John coached hockey and baseball teams that I played on.)

At age 5, Rixon lost the sight of both eyes because of a farm accident. He was enrolled in the Brantford School for the Blind (now the W. Ross MacDonald School for the Blind), "where he excelled in his studies, especially Braille and typing and developed the memory skills that were to be a great assistance in his later career." He was apparently greatly influenced by the story of Helen Keller, who although blind, deaf and unable to speak had graduated from an American university the year Rixon finished his course at Brantford.

He entered Queen's University in 1903 and graduated with a BA in English and History in 1907. The following year he bought the Arthur Enterprise News and operated it until he sold it in 1953.

For most of those years the office consisting of Rixon, a skilled typesetter, and a clerk (one of his sisters was his first clerk). The typesetter and clerk were his 'eyes', reading him articles from newspapers and magazines.

Rixon was the paper's reporter. He would go to council meetings, and in an era before tape recorders, memorize the discussions and decisions. Then he would go to the office and type a report on the meeting (his typewriter is preserved in a local museum).

He was also active in the community, serving for a number of years on the board of the Arthur High School, on the Arthur Board of Trade, and on the Public Utilities Commission.

Beyond Arthur, he was President of the North Wellington Conservative Association, served on the Board of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, and at one time was president of the regional organization for the Boy Scouts.

Rixon Rafter was also a keen, skilled and competitive bridge player, with the players using a Braille deck of cards. His phenomenal memory allowed him to keep track of which cards had been played, and which had not.

And through two world wars and a depression he kept the newspaper afloat, fueled by a very modest annual subscription and advertisements for local businesses, house and auction sales, government announcements and so on.

In 1954, Mr. Rafter was chosen Newspaper Editor of the Year by a group of writers meeting in London Ontario.

One wit has said that in a small town no one reads the weekly paper to find out what is going on---they already know that, thanks to the intricate and highly effective gossip networks that always exist. Instead, they read the paper to find out how (and sometimes, whether) the editor will deal with 'delicate' news. Mr. Rafter was particularly skilled at dealing with accidents, arrests, fights, illness, suicides etc. in ways that protected the affected families from additional stress and pain.

In the fall of 1958, I was working on a BA thesis on the United Farmers of Ontario (UFO), a movement that governed Ontario from 1919 to 1923. One of the founders of the movement was a farmer from south of Arthur, J.J. Morrison. Unfortunately, when I started doing my research I found that little had been written about the movement---several books have been published since---and I had to spend a lot of time doing original research, reading dusty copies of the Globe and Mail, perusing family archives, and talking to people who were involved in the movement.

I thought that Rixon Rafter might be able to offer me some insights so I phoned him during a visit to my parents and asked if we could meet. He agreed to meet the following evening. He was 70 at that time and as I have mentioned above, was retired, having sold the newspaper in 1953. I hadn't really had any conversations with Mr. Rafter up to that point---just brief contacts as I handed over my parents' annual subscription fee, or submitted advertisements from a store where I worked after school.

It was in December and the sun had long since set when I walked over to his substantial brick home. The house was in total darkness and I wondered if he had forgotten about our appointment. I rang the door bell and a few moments later the porch light came on and then a light in the hall.

I can still remember being struck by the realization that he didn't need lights---that he lived in the dark.

Mr. Rafter opened the door, wearing the usual frosted glasses and looking courtly in a suit and tie. He held out his hand and I grasped it.

He invited me in, and led the way to the parlour, turning on lights as he went. He pointed to an upholstered chair and settled himself in a chair beside a table piled high with papers and magazines in Braille.

I took out my notebook and scribbled away as he gave me a fund of invaluable information and interpretation about the factors that led to the election of a UFO government and about how it had performed in office---its successes and failures. His memory of names and dates was flawless. He smiled sometimes as he inserted into his account amusing anecdotes about some of the main participants in the UFO.

I tested some theories I was toying with for my thesis about what can happen when social movements decide to get actively involved in politics. He seemed to enjoy discussing those theories.

After an hour or so, I thanked him. He showed me out.

When I got to the sidewalk, I looked back at the house, and found that it was once again in total darkness.

Mr. Rafter, who never married, died in 1963, after a short illness, aged 75.

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What to make of this man who I---and perhaps other people in Arthur---took for granted?

When I tell people about Arthur's blind newspaper editor, they look at me in disbelief. How could someone do that?

And then I say that he did it for over 40 years.

He had a remarkable intelligence and great personal determination, qualities that were obviously recognized by the School for the Blind and by Queen's University.

And he had the example of Helen Keller. She would certainly have been proud of him, and thrilled that she had inspired him to become the first blind newspaper editor in Canada.

But in the end, his success, I think, comes down to one factor.

An unbelievable amount of raw courage.

And that courage meant that although he lived in the dark, he spread light for all those around him.

Postscript

A scholarship has been established in his memory. Here is an extract from a website about the scholarship. Please note the last three words, which I have highlighted. Mr. Rafter would certainly have agreed with that requirement.

"Rixon Rafter Scholarship Fund

Named in honor of a graduate from the Ontario School for the Blind (now the W. Ross School for the Blind), this scholarship is available for Canadian students who are legally blind and who are pursuing post-secondary studies. Candidates should demonstrate strong career aspirations."

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See you on December 11th for Posting #133 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

Have you read the latest Posting on The Icewine Guru blog? You can read "Are Canadian Politics Dull?" at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #131

2011-11-26T06:43:00.000-08:00

Moscow's Izmailovsky Market, and a Mysterious Artist

Tourists love flea markets.

Just watch the crowds in London's Petticoat Lane or Portobello Road, or in Paris' Marché aux Puces, or in the Middle East's souks and bazaars.

When we were working in Moscow in 1995-1997, the city was in the midst of creating its own flea market, Izmailovsky Market.

Now, some 16 years later, the Market is on the agenda of every tourist visiting Moscow. The New York Times describes it this way:

"Izmailovsky Market, near the estate where Peter the Great played war games as a boy, is a sprawling open-air market that evolved out of the first Soviet experiments in capitalism: the flea market. One area has been refashioned into a souvenir paradise, with stalls offering nesting dolls, lacquer boxes, art, antiques, carpets and things you cannot imagine. The market, open weekends from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., is at 73 Izmaylovskoye Shosse, but don't expect to see any sign. Follow the crowds from the Partizanskaya metro station."

One weekend in the autumn of 1995, I decided to visit the Market. I got off the Metro at Partizanskaya station and did what the Times suggested: followed the crowds, which while not as large as they are today, were still substantial.

Inside the Market, everything was a jumble with goods displayed in sheds, or on tables in the open. There was a large section devoted to oriental carpets from the Caucuses, which were lying in piles 10 or 12 deep on the ground or suspended from rough frames.

After wandering through the maze of stalls, I ended up in a section devoted to art: paintings, water colours, collages, carvings, and so on.

Most of the art was clearly designed for quick sale to tourists looking for a Russian souvenir--pretty scenes of onion-domed churches, peasant cottages in Siberia, renderings of Red Square and so on.

In the midst of all this 'commercial' art, was a stand with four or five paintings that were different. They seemed to me to be attempts by the artist to say something that he felt strongly about. They appeared to be painted for him, not for a buyer.

One of them attracted me---of a young woman looking straight ahead with a haunting, questioning look. I stopped and studied it. Then I moved down the row of stalls looking at the other works of art.

Coming back, I stopped again at the painting and tried to understand why I liked it, and what it was saying to me.

A man sitting nearby on a chair watched me.

Although I liked it, I decided that I hadn't come to buy a painting, so I started to wind my way back to the entrance.

Part way there, something told me that I was making a mistake. I turned around and went back to have a third look at the painting.

I asked the man sitting on the chair if he were the artist.

He shook his head and, trying to find English expressions, said, "I sell for my friend. He....funny man." He tapped his forehead, and I thought he meant that the artist was a bit loco, perhaps another Van Gogh.

He seemed to realize that I was getting the wrong impression and he dug into his English vocabulary for some other adjectives.

"Deep, deep, thinks all time...religious."

I asked how much the painting was---rubbing my thumb and forefinger together in that internationally understood gesture.

He took out a scrap of paper and wrote an amount that was more than the 'pretty' paintings were selling for but was not unreasonable.

I had been told that at Izmailovsky Market one was expected to haggle, so I wrote out a lower amount on the man's paper. As I did this, I realized that I had destroyed any bargaining position I might have had by stopping three times to study the painting.

He shook his head and pointed to the price he had quoted.

I nodded that I would buy the painting at that price and started to pull out my billfold. He shook his head and, taking my arm, pulled me behind a nearby bush. There, out of sight of passersby, we completed the transaction. Moscow was a pretty lawless place at the time, and he wasn't taking any chances on being mugged on his way home.

Back at our apartment, I hung the painting.

Notice the three apples on the table in the forefront of the painting. We think the artist included apples because of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and he showed three because of the trinity---but who knows.

For me it came to symbolize the turmoil in Russia. On the right of the painting, the woman's hair is covered with barbed wire, while on the left, her hair is threaded with ribbons and pearls. The woman seems to be trying to discern whether the future of Russia would be repression and fear, or prosperity and love.

I liked it very much. When Pat came over for her regular visits, I found that she liked it as well.

In the summer of 1996, our daughter and two sons came over with their spouses for a two-week visit. They also liked the painting.

Talking about our family's visit, may I be permitted a short digression?

Thanks!

As a family, we 'did' all the main tourist attractions in Moscow and St. Petersburg and between the two cities, but looking back on the trip one of the high-points was our trip to Izmailovsky Market. When we got to the Market, each couple went off in a different direction, the agreement being that we would meet in two hours at the carpet section.

Pat and I were waiting at the carpets in two hours but no kids had appeared. Then one couple showed up. Since the others weren't there yet, they said they would just nip off for a few minutes---but be right back. "This is a great market!"

Then another couple arrived. They too would just nip off for a minute or two---while the others assembled. They would be right back. "Wow, this is really a great market!"

Finally, we had to insist that whoever arrived had to stay put until we were all there.

Loaded down with purchases, we trudged back to the Metro, with many backward glances and some muttering about not having had enough time.

End of digression---thanks for your tolerance!

As my contract with the Russian authorities neared its end---in March 1997---Pat came over to help me shut down the project and pack up our belongings in the apartment.

Looking at the painting one night, we agreed it would be good to meet the artist and see if he had any other works that we might take back to Canada.

Yuri, my office manager (not his real name), located the artist, who said he would be interested in meeting us and showing us his studio.

The artist suggested we meet on a street corner---not an unusual suggestion because house numbering in Moscow can be confusing. Yuri's daughter would act as our guide and interpreter.

When we arrived at the street corner, there were a number of people standing around, some waiting for a bus, others just standing. We tried to identify the artist, someone who looked liked the friend's description of him at Izmailovsky Market: 'funny...deep...religious'.

No one matched that description.

Then a middle-aged man in a traditional Russian fur hat with ear flaps, but wearing a western-looking, bright red jacket, came over and introduced himself.

Our artist.

He didn't look 'artistic'. His dark hair was worn short and neatly trimmed. He had gold-rimmed glasses and a small mustache. He looked like dozens of managers I had met during my time in Russia---it later turned out that his day-job was that of a manager in a hospital.

In his studio, there were a few paintings on easels with others leaning against the walls.

Two of the paintings on easels interested us.

One, obviously in its very early stages, showed a woman in a long white robe, leaning forward with a rope over her shoulder, straining to drag a boat across a desert. The artist explained his symbolism: the woman represented Russian women; the boat represented Russian families; and, the desert stood for the tough economic times the nation was experiencing. The woman represented all the Russian women who were bravely struggling to keep their families together.

The other painting, nearly complete, was more complex than the first picture, containing a rich assortment of religious and other images and symbols. It was intended to convey the artist's view that, in the end, Russia's future depended upon a return to religion.

The artist said he could finish the second picture in a few days, allowing us to take it back with us to Canada. The other would take some weeks to complete.

We agreed quickly on a price and he said he would bring it to my office in a few days.

The picture below shows the artist, Mr. Piganov, with the painting in my Moscow office at the Russian Federal Employment Bureau.


On the coat-tree in the background, one can see Mr. Piganov's Russian hat, and his red, western-style jacket---items he was wearing when we met him on a street corner near his studio.

In preparation for our trip home, we removed the two paintings from their stretchers, rolled the canvases and placed them in cardboard tubes. Back in Ottawa, we found a restorer who worked regularly for the National Gallery repairing their paintings. She commented that the paint in both pictures had been applied very thinly. We wonder whether the artist preferred this approach or whether he was concerned about the high cost of imported oil paints in Russian at that time.

She attached the canvases to stretchers, touched them up a little and placed them under a special kind of Plexiglas to protect the thin paint from damage by ultraviolet rays.

Here is the second painting, over the fireplace, in our Virgil home.

There is so much symbolism here it would take a separate Posting to begin to do justice to it, but notice the young woman rising out of a gilded cage. This symbolizes the artist's admiration for women and his support for their emancipation. (Because the paintings are under Plexiglas, the photos show some room reflections---sorry about that.)

When the paintings had been framed and hung, we began to think of the other painting that we had liked---the one of a woman dragging a boat through the desert. Yuri contacted Mr. Piganov only to learn that the painting had been sold---to an American couple.

We kicked ourselves that we hadn't put a deposit on the painting.

While we were still operating a bed and breakfast, we loved sharing the two paintings with guests. People would stand in front of them, discussing---and sometimes arguing---about what Mr. Piganov meant by this or that symbol.

I have used the Izmailovsky Market painting of the woman at several talks about Russia, and it is amazing how effective it is in conveying the turmoil and uncertainty of the 1990s, as Russia was starting to make its transition from a communist to a market economy.

Now, we simply enjoy them as works of art and for the memories they bring back of our time in Russia and, especially, of our visits to Izmailovsky Market.

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See you on December 4th for Posting #132 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

Have you read the latest Posting on The Icewine Guru blog? You can read "Are Canadian Politics Dull?" at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #130

2011-11-19T07:46:00.000-08:00

A Community Divided by a Surveyor's Boo-Boo

In my first few months at Queen's University---while I was trying to get my head around political science concepts such as 'the state', 'the government', 'the administration'---my yellow-jacketed friends in engineering were out surveying the campus. Taking turns squinting through a level or holding the range pole, they recorded the results in sturdy notebooks.

The tools used by the student surveyors were not too dissimilar from those used by the men who marked out property lines and boundaries during the settlement of Canada and the US.

Pushing through forests, swamps and over and around mountains, fighting off mosquitoes, deer flies and malaria, the unsung heroes---like bush pilots from a later era---did their jobs without fanfare. And made it possible for our ancestors to buy and sell land, confident that their ownership meant something.

Heroes, yes, but sometimes they goofed.

As in trying to follow the 45th parallel in drawing the boundary between Quebec and Vermont.

It was the summer of 1964 and I was having lunch in a restaurant in Rock Island, Quebec, part of a community that would have been totally in Canada except for an error by some 18th century surveyor. I can see him in my mind's eye, swatting at mosquitoes, sweating because of a recurrence of malaria, trying to figure out just where the 45th parallel should lie. He took a stab at it, but his line went a little too far north.

A simple mistake, but a mistake that meant that a single community would be split by an international border and the community would be divided into two towns, Rock Island, Quebec ---known now, thanks to amalgamations, as Stanstead---and Derby Line, Vermont. (The current size of the community is about 3,800 with about 3,000 in Stanstead and 800 in Derby Line.)

In 1964, I had just returned from a posting in the United Kingdom, and was on a cross-Canada re-familiarization tour with three other Foreign Service Officers. The tour was to give us up-to-date information on jobs for potential immigrants and opportunities for entrepreneurs interested in starting businesses in Canada. After the tour we would be returning overseas.

Led by our guide, the Officer-in-Charge of the Rock Island Immigration Office, we had spent the morning talking to the Chamber of Commerce and touring local plants and businesses. As we drove along placid, tree-lined streets to our meetings, our guide would explain that we had just left Canada and were now in the US, then a moment or so later that we were now back in Canada, and on and on as we crossed back and forth over the invisible border.

Note how the US/Canada Border runs into the Haskell Library and Opera Hall in the background

During our morning drive we saw an imposing brick and stone building that seemed to be sitting right on the border. Our guide told us it was a library and opera house, and he promised to tell us its story at lunchtime.

We were satisfied with the economic and business information we had collected, but we were full of questions about how a single, small community functions when it is split by the US-Canada border into two towns.

As we ate lunch, the Officer-in-Charge explained that the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, instead of correcting the 18th century surveyor's mistake, had simply confirmed it. The locals had been living with that decision ever since.

As promised, he told us about the Haskell Free Library and Opera House. Built in 1904, the structure was a gift from a bi-national couple, an American, Carlos Haskell, and his Canadian wife, Martha Stewart Haskell. They insisted that the library and opera house should be built right on the border so that people from both sides could use it freely. Our guide said there was a line on the floor in the library marking the border that patrons went back and forth across as they sought out books. In the Opera House, actors on the stage were in Canada, while most of the audience sat in the US.

Our guide introduced us to some men at the next table who lived on the US side of the border, a few streets from his home. We told the men how much we were enjoying our visit to their community.

Back at our table, we started discussing the latest news from Ottawa. The House of Commons was debating the adoption of a new flag, and the Leader of the Opposition, John Diefenbaker, was threatening to filibuster if necessary to prevent the passage of legislation for the new flag. (The Government of Lester Pearson eventually had to invoke closure, in December 1964, to bring the flag legislation to a vote. The legislation was approved and the Maple Leaf flag was flown for the first time on Parliament Hill on February 15, 1965---and raised on Canada House in London at the same time, one of my proudest moments, but that's another story.)

I eavesdropped on the Americans at the next table, and found they were discussing the Vietnam War and what was happening in Congress. A friend of theirs had received a draft notice and they were soberly discussing what it meant.

I recalled a story a Canadian friend in London had told me just before I had come back to Canada. His son was attending an American high school in London and one of his pals, a young American, received a draft notice when he turned 18. He flew home to the US, joined the army, went to Vietnam and was back at the London school within a year---minus one of his hands that had been left in a Vietnam jungle following a grenade attack.

I thought about how bizarre all this was.

People living a few feet north of an invisible line were looking to Ottawa and a debate going on in Parliament about a new flag, while people living a few feet to the south were looking to Washington and the possibility and danger of being shipped off to a deadly war.

After lunch the Officer-in-Charge took us on a sightseeing tour of the two towns. He explained that there was a volunteer fire department that protected both towns with fire fighters from each side. People from both towns shared churches, sports teams and service clubs. In most senses, it was one community but the line was always there. Living north of the line, you were Canadian, south of the line you were American.

He told us that there was a factory that straddled the line, with goods being manufactured moving back and forth across the border. The local customs and immigration officials had found a modus vivendi that allowed the business to function.

We stopped for a quick tour of the library and the exquisite opera house. (If you have time, I would suggest you come back after reading the Posting and check out these websites, especially the one for the opera house, with its murals and gilded decoration.)

Getting back in the car, our guide said there were a number of homes that were located right on top of the border, with the food being cooked in the US kitchen and served in the Canadian dining room.

As we drove along, he pointed to a modest bungalow on a well-maintained lot that had just been built by a friend, an officer with the US Immigration Service. His friend had looked for a long time to find a lot where he could built the dream house that he and his wife had been designing in their minds.

Being a US Immigration Officer, he wanted to make sure the lot was totally in the US.

He found a lot that he and his wife liked, and then hired a highly recommended surveyor. After careful calculations, the surveyor assured him that the lot was completely in the US.

The house was built and the Immigration Officer and his wife moved in and were delighted with it.

Then a problem emerged to threaten their happiness. A neighbour, who wanted to sell his house, was required by the buyer's bank to have a survey completed of his property.

The survey done for the neighbour showed that although his property was fine, the US Immigration officer's house was right on top of the border, with the living room in Canada and the kitchen in the US.

Repeat surveys confirmed that the Immigration Officer's house was indeed on the border.

I suppose there could be a lot of explanations for the surveyor's error, but I like to think that the ghost of that 18th century surveyor was behind it. He gave a little tilt to the surveyor's level, or pushed the surveyor's fingers into writing down the wrong coordinates. Then the ghost giggled, "That will teach you to make fun of the mistake I made 'way back in the 18th century!"

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I have a long list of things on my 'bucket list'---things I want to do before I kick the bucket---and high on that list is a return visit to Rock Island/Stanstead/Derby Line.

I love libraries and would enjoy spending some time browsing in the Haskell Free Library, while Pat went, perhaps, antiquing.

Then in the evening, Pat and I could go to the Opera House and see a play (I note that all the proceeds for this September 15th performance of a comedy, "Nunsense', were donated to the victims of Hurricane Irene), or listen to the Vermont Symphony Orchestra.

And, I would love to wander around and see how 9/11 has changed life in the two towns.

A news item from around 2007 said that Homeland Security wanted to block off all the streets that crossed the border to prevent terrorists from entering the US. According to the item, officials of the two towns were meeting with Homeland Security to try to come up with ways of accomplishing that goal without destroying the closeness of their community. I haven't heard what happened.

Here is a notice from Haskell Library and Opera website that gives some hints on the modus vivendi that the community and Homeland Security may have arrived at:

"Attention!
First time visitors and old friends of the Haskell Free Library and Opera House must be aware that the border between Canada and the United States that runs through our building is real and it is enforced.

Visitors from Canada must park their cars on the Church Street side of the building or report to US Customs via Cordeau St. and Dufferin/Main St. Visitors from the United States must park in our parking lot, on Caswell Ave. or another Derby Line street.

It is expected that all visitors will return to their country of origin. Law enforcement authorities have recently increased their presence in the vicinity of the Haskell and visitors found to be in violation of border crossing rules are subject to detention and potential fines."

I think I can hear the ghost of that 18th century surveyor chuckling, "I fouled things up real good, didn't I?"

But rules like that won't stop me from going back to Rock Island/Stanstead/Derby Line.

I'm just waiting for that wish to come to the top of my 'bucket list'.

P.S.

On reading the above, Pat was full of questions about how everyday life unfolds in a divided community like Rock Island/Stanstead/Derby Line. For example, she said, what if we lived in a Canadian house, and I was baking something that called for milk but we were out. Could I go across the lawn to our neighbour whose house happened to be in the US and get the milk? If I went into her house, would I be guilty of illegally entering the US? If she gave me the milk (remember, Vermonters are very kind people!), and I brought it into our house, would I be guilty of importing a dairy product into Canada?

The questions are many but we couldn't come up with any answers.

More reason to make an early visit to Rock Island/Stanstead/Derby Line and hopefully find some answers!

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See you on November 27th for Posting #131 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

Have you read the latest Posting on The Icewine Guru blog? You can read "Are Canadian Politics Dull?" at http://theicewineguru.blogspot

POSTING #129

2011-11-12T03:15:00.000-08:00

Fighting City Hall

Converting a house to a bed and breakfast usually involves multiple contacts with the folks at city hall---about things like zoning changes, building permits, signs and parking.

We have found that the secret to getting what you want is to be patient, persistent and creative, and not to protest too much about decisions that seem illogical.

For example, at one bed and breakfast we wanted to put up a sign by the road. We were told that we would have to pay for a permit that would entitle us to pay for another permit that would allow our proposal to be considered. I won't try to explain why two permits were required.

You may be reading this Posting over breakfast and I don't want to upset your digestion.

We knuckled under, kept our muttering to ourselves, bought two permits, and eventually got permission for a sign.

But there was one fight with city hall that ended in a most remarkable---almost 'biblical'---fashion, that I would like to tell you about today. I won't be naming the municipality in order to protect a good Samaritan who came to our aid.

The issue was the installation of a new pipe from the water main at the road to our house.

Our plumber told us that the existing pipe was too small and too corroded to give the volume and pressure of water needed for the extra bathrooms and the 'souped-up' laundry room that we wanted.

Digging a trench, five feet deep, from the house to the road would require a backhoe machine and would cost about $1500 (five feet deep, so the pipe wouldn't freeze in the winter).

So far, so good.

Then, the plumber added that we better talk to City Hall about connecting the new line to the water main. There might be a charge, and there might not be---it would be better if we got the details from the horse's mouth.

The officials told us that there was a charge of $2000 to connect a new line to the water main.

Wow! We said---under our breath.

But---the official continued---if the city workers found that the existing connection was not copper but was instead galvanized steel, there would be no charge. The City had a policy of replacing, without charge, galvanized connections throughout the water system. Our connection would then be considered just a replacement of a galvanized connection, and there would be no charge for it.

Are you still with me?

I told Pat to keep her fingers crossed that the workers would find a galvanized connection.

The big day came, the backhoe arrived and we soon had a five feet deep trench to the road. The plumber and his crew connected the larger copper pipe to the meter in the basement and ran the pipe through the basement wall and out to the water main.

One of the city workers clambered out of the trench, with a big smile. Good news, he told us, the connection is not copper but it's not galvanized either.

It's lead!

Now we know today that lead anywhere in a water system is a really bad thing. The house was old and at the time the water line was installed, people weren't aware of the dangers of lead.

So, the worker, told us, there will obviously be no charge for the connection.

Pat and I did a little dance.

The worker asked if he could use our phone to call his boss, tell him the news, and get a crew out to turn off the water main so the connection could be made.

He wasn't smiling when he came back from the phone call. His boss had agreed that there would be no charge for the connection, given the lead. However, he had decided that a crew could not be dispatched to turn off the water main until sometime the following week. Everyone was busy at the moment.

The worker said he had explained that the backhoe was waiting to back-fill the trench, and if the connection could not be made right away, the machine would have to come back---an additional expense for us.

His boss had been adamant.

We asked the worker if there was anything we could do. Something was obviously going through his mind, and he replied that we should let him think about it.

He went back into the trench and we thought that he might be trying to figure out how to make a temporary connection.

A few minutes later, an explosion of water erupted from the trench---a veritable Yellowstone Old Faithful Geyser that shot through the branches of an overhanging maple and flew into the sky.

The worker, soaked, scrambled out of the ditch.

He said, with a grin, that there had been an accident. A heavy wrench must have fallen on the lead connection and the soft metal had given way.

This is an emergency, he said, and asked if he could use the phone again to call his boss.

He came back to say that a crew was on its way!

It didn't take long for the crew to arrive but it is amazing how much water can flow from a broken water main connection in a very short time. The street, our driveway, our neighbour's driveway and of course the trench were all flooded. Traffic was blocked on the street for nearly half an hour. (You can see why I used the term 'biblical' earlier on.)

The water was finally turned off and the worker went back into the trench. Toiling in the muddy water he attached our new pipe to the water main, using a copper connection. We tried to keep a straight face as we thanked him for the 'accident'. He shrugged off our thanks.

I got the impression that he might have just won a battle in a continuing war with a difficult superior.

The backhoe operator filled in the trench and the plumber was ecstatic with the new water flow and pressure.

I said earlier that creativity is sometimes necessary in fighting city hall.

We found that sometimes that creativity can come from an unexpected source.

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See you on November 20th for Posting #130th with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

Have you read the latest Posting on The Icewine Guru blog? You can read "Are Canadian Politics Dull?" at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #128

2011-11-05T02:34:00.000-07:00

Stories About Vermont

Vermont has always been one of our favourite states, and we have visited it many times.

During breaks in my overseas consulting assignments, we would often visit Vermont to decompress after the stresses of Russia or the Middle East (staying usually at the superbly comfortable and hospitable Palmer House Resort in Manchester). By the time we said goodbye to Vermont, I always felt relaxed and refreshed, ready to do battle once again.

We watched in horror last August as the flooding from Hurricane Irene devastated many Vermont homes, businesses, roads, and bridges (see a dramatic video shot by a friend, Lester Humphreys, which shows part of a large building being torn loose by the flooding waters in Brattleboro).

The 620,000 or so people of Vermont are tough and creative, folks who work cooperatively to tackle challenges. We wish them well as they fight back after Irene.

Meanwhile, here are some stories in honour of Vermont.

"Heat Is Your Friend"

On one visit to Vermont we toured the studio of Lynn Newcomb, a blacksmith/sculptor and printmaker, in the village of Worcester.

Above the forge where she heats steel so she can hammer, twist and pull it into artistic creations I saw a handmade sign, "Heat Is Your Friend". Lynn saw me studying the sign and told us the story behind it.

It was, she said, a reminder of a lesson from the man who had taught her to be a blacksmith.

He was an older man who had trained many men in the art of blacksmithing but teaching a woman was something new for him. Lynn said there might have been some hesitation on his part at first but as soon as he realized she was serious he treated her as just another student.

He watched approvingly one day as she worked at the forge and anvil but soon realized that because she didn't have the upper body strength of the male students, she was having trouble hammering the red-hot steel into the shapes she wanted.

He had her experiment with leaving the steel in the forge longer than the men so the steel got hotter and therefore more malleable before she transferred it to the anvil.

That worked!

Pleased, he said, "Remember, 'heat is your friend'.

She turned the advice into a sign, so she wouldn't forget.

Later on, in my work as a public service manager and as a consultant, I often told the story of Lynn and the sign to make the point that when problems are challenging, the 'heat' given off by them may actually make it easier to find a solution. (It seems to me that the oft-quoted nostrum of President Obama's former Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, that 'one should never waste a crisis' makes the same point.)

Some Laconic Vermonters

Vermonters have the reputation of not talking very much. That's a stereotype, of course, and we have met Vermonters who were as garrulous as drunks in a Dublin pub.

But we have run into a few who give validity to the stereotype.

Pat was getting gas at a rural service station. After some terse questions about what kind of gas she wanted and how much, the attendant---an older man---started to fill the tank.

Noticing the Ontario licence plates, he said, "A long way from home."

Pat replied, "Yes, but I'm not lost".

"Didn't say you was lost, said you was a long way from home."

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A friend who visited a particular rural antique store each time she was in Vermont noticed one year that a piece of furniture that she liked, but thought was a little too expensive, was still unsold. She asked the dealer whether he would take a little less for the piece.

He shook his head, "Nope".

She pointed out that she had seen the same piece for several years and that was why she wondered whether he might be prepared to lower the price a little.

He shook his head again, "It don't eat nothing".

Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream

In the 1980s we heard from a son at McGill that there was a fantastic home-made ice cream store run by a couple of hippies in a converted garage in Burlington Vermont. He told us that McGill students regularly drove the 155 kms to Burlington to sample what they claimed was the richest and most imaginative ice cream they had ever tasted.

We began to hear and follow stories about the hippies, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield.

Astonished by the success of their ice cream, they launched some scoop stores that they supplied from the Burlington garage. Then they built a plant in Waterbury to produce pints of their unique flavours that could be sold far and wide (we were able to buy Ben and Jerry's in Amman, Jordan!).

Then we heard that the two young men were feeling guilty about their success. " We worried we were becoming a cog in the economic machine, whose values we had detested all our lives,' Ben remembers. Jerry Greenfield left the business and moved to Arizona.

Then Ben invented a new business philosophy he called 'Caring Capitalism' in which the company could 'do good while doing well'. Jerry rejoined the company.

In the early 1990s, we visited the plant. It was fun for me because it gave me a chance to compare experiences from the two high school summers I had spent making ice cream at the Royal Dairy in Guelph.

The plant was operating-room clean and the output was delicious.

As we toured the plant, the guide explained that under the Caring Capitalism philosophy Ben and Jerry had stipulated that their salaries should not be more than 7 times that of the lowest paid person in the plant.

I was impressed because my favourite management Guru, Peter Drucker, was arguing (and is still arguing) that the ideal ratio should be no more than 20 to 1, this at a time when the differential was much more than that---often 80 to 1. (Of course, today the ratio is in the stratosphere---often many thousands to one.)

Unfortunately, the company that had been profitable initially, lost money in 1994 and Ben and Jerry decided that they needed to bring in a professional manager. It appears that they had to pay the successful candidate substantially more than 7 times the lowest wage, but I haven't been able to find the exact salary of the new CEO.

In 2000, the company was sold to Unilever, a British-Dutch multinational food giant. I understand that although Ben and Jerry have no Board or management position, and are not involved in day-to-day management, they do influence the behaviour of the company. For example, the company has come out in support of controversial social, environmental and other causes. The current website of the company proclaims that "We stand with the 99".

The company has also named ice cream flavours in honour of causes the two men support. For example, there was 'Yes, Pecan' that recognized Obama's 2008 victory. And in 2009, the company renamed 'Chubby Hubby' to 'Hubby Hubby', to celebrate Vermont's passage of legislation legalizing same sex marriage.

Not every new flavour is tied to some 'good cause'. In September this year, the company introduced a flavour called, 'Schweddy Balls'---in homage of a Saturday Night Live skit. In a press release announcing the new flavour, the company said it consisted of, "Fair Trade vanilla ice cream with a hint of rum and is loaded with fudge covered rum and milk chocolate malt balls".

Apparently some super market chains have found the title to be a little over the line, and aren't stocking it.

It seems that the two men who had fun concocting exotic and shocking flavours in that Burlington garage are still enjoying themselves.

Health Care

I have been impressed with the effort that Vermont is making in the field of health care. It has had free or low cost coverage for children under 18 and pregnant women for some time and is now in the midst of introducing a single payer health insurance program for everyone---taking advantage of some exemption provisions of the Obama health plan.

Its former governor, Howard Dean, while happy with the introduction of a single payer system, is hoping that the state will also tackle the method of payment to health professionals and hospitals. Rather than the fee-for-service basis, which studies indicate leads to unnecessary expenditures, Dean would like to see some system of flat rates based on the nature of the illness. This is a complex and controversial issue, one which we Canadians have not been able to resolve.

In Canada in the 1960s, Saskatchewan, with a population (925,000) not much larger than Vermont's today, pioneered health care changes that led to our national Medicare program. I am hoping that Vermont will develop and test a new payment method that other states can adopt---and that we can 'steal'.

Perhaps that is asking too much at a time when the state is trying to rebuild itself after Irene, but the people of the Green Mountain State are tough and resourceful. I think Vermont might just be able to do both things.

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See you on November 13th for Posting #129th with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

Have you read the latest Posting on The Icewine Guru blog? You can read "Are Canadian Politics Dull?" at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #127

2011-10-29T08:13:00.000-07:00

Mother Russia

A friend who knows that I worked in Russia from 1995 to 1997 asked me what I thought about the latest news out of that country. He mentioned the game of 'musical chairs' apparently being played by Mr. Putin who, when the constitution wouldn't allow him to run for another term as President, opted for the position of Prime Minister. Having spent 4 years 'in the wilderness' as the Prime Minister---while Mr. Medvedev kept the president's seat warm for him---he can now run again for the presidency.

And it appears that that is exactly what he intends to do.

Because we didn't have much time, I gave my friend a brief response, which essentially paraphrased the old French proverb, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"—"the more things change, the more they stay the same."

And then I threw in my version of the 'Russian shrug', that gesture that foreigners can imitate but never duplicate, a single gesture that combines a complex basket of messages from 'who knows?', to 'what else would you expect?', to 'I have better things to do with my time than worry about idiots'.

I kept thinking about his question, trying to come up with a better response.

Russia is an immensely important country, not because it poses a nuclear threat to us nowadays but because it is going to play an increasingly important role in international economics, politics and diplomacy.

Here are a few anecdotes, observations and insights (some of which have appeared in earlier Postings) that I would have offered my friend, if I had had the time.

000

Political scientists argue that the absolutely essential role of government is to maintain order. Without order---as Hobbes said---life would be " solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

During my stay in Russia there was too little order. In many respects, the country resembled the wild west.

Some of the state governors openly disobeyed instructions from the federal government and ran corrupt administrations. One such governor hearing that the Kremlin was sending out a group of officials to 'take him to the woodshed', blocked the airport runway with construction equipment, forcing the officials to return to Moscow.

The Federal Government had no better luck with mafia gangs that were constantly battling with each other for control of this or that illegal activity. I was told that when leaving a posh restaurant, I should look up at the skyline of the buildings across the street to make sure there wasn't a sniper waiting to 'bump off' the leader of a rival gang as he came out of the restaurant.

There is now much more order. State governors do what they are told. And mafia gangs, to the extent that they still exist, restrain their activities because they know the Kremlin could wipe them out.

But as always, order comes at a price---in terms of individual rights. The price in Russia has been high, with the banning of media that displease the Kremlin, and the jailing (or worse) of dissidents or of business people who dare to cross the Kremlin.

000

Democracy, as we know it in the west, will take a long time to take root in Russia.

First, there has been no tradition of democracy with free elections. The Czars and the Communist Party had absolute power, which was enforced by their respective secret police and their gulags.

Furthermore, neither allowed the existence of private associations and organizations that political scientists like Harvard's Robert Putnam argue are essential training grounds for democracy. The camera and bowling clubs with their constitutions, rules of order, annual general meetings, elections couldn't exist. There was just the Communist Party and the Young Communists.

And the civic culture as it has evolved over the centuries doesn't lend itself to democracy.

I like the story attributed to Nikolay Karamzin (1 December 1766-3 June 1826), Russia's greatest historian. After he had finished a 12 volume "History of the Russian State", someone asked if he could summarize everything into one sentence. He thought for a moment and said he could do better that that, he could summarize the 12 tomes into one word.

`Stealing`.

The Czars, the landowners, the surfs all stole from each other. That was the history of Russia.

It was the same under the Soviets.

000

There is a story about a famous Russian actor who fled from the country during Czarist times and who became successful in Europe. After the 1917 revolution, the new Soviet Regime asked him to come back to see the changes they had made.

He arrived by train, set his bags down, and looked around at the imposing new railway station.

"Mother Russia', he said, "I didn't recognize you!"

He looked down for his bags, only to find that a thief had stolen them.

"Now, Mother Russia", he said, "I recognize you!"

000

A person I worked with in the federal government had a distant relative who had been brought in from Germany by the Czar of the time to help modernize Russia The Czar appointed him as mayor of a major city in the Far East of Russia. After a few months on the job, the mayor sent a message to the Czar complaining about the corruption he had discovered among the city's officials and asking for authority to take action against the guilty officials.

Instead of sending him a message of congratulations on having detected corruption, the Czar had him committed to an insane asylum. The Czar explained that any sane person would have known that there was corruption. The fact that he was surprised by corruption meant he must be insane.

000

A Communist Party official who was responsible for the administration of a part of Moscow was called in by his boss, who told him that there had been complaints that he was taking bribes. "But everyone takes bribes!", the man protested.

"Yes, but you", his boss said, pointing his finger at him, "are just too greedy."

(As a digression, I suppose the same reply could be applied to Wall Street's bankers, financiers, and hedge fund managers, couldn't it.)

000

During a winter visit to Siberian, a Russian friend and I went into a Russian Orthodox Church to study the art and the architecture. But our attention was caught by the people---frail, elderly, with thin, worn coats who were praying, lighting candles and collecting holy water in bottles and cans.

My friend explained that the government had cut pensions and the elderly didn't have money for clothes, food or heat. The Soviet system of medical care had been decimated so that care was either not available or was too expensive to afford. The people were taking holy water home so they could take a spoonful if they felt ill.

I felt sad and helpless as I watched these wretched people trying to find some support and solace.

As we left the church, my friend, with anger in his voice, said, "You Westerners say that people get the government they deserve. These people don't deserve this!"

All I could do was nod.

000

Friends in Russia, and people who have visited Russia recently tell me that things are getting better.

The high international price of oil and gas---of which Russia has abundant supplies---has provided the government with revenues that has allowed it to improve programs for the poor.

However, if the price for petroleum products should fall sharply, the recent improvements would be in jeopardy.

000

I grew to love the Russian people.

I just hope they will eventually get the kind of government they deserve.

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See you on November 6th for Posting #128th with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

I have just uploaded a new Posting on The Icewine Guru blog: "Are Canadian Politics Dull?" You can read it at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #126

2011-10-22T03:12:00.000-07:00

Hankerings

Anyone who has lived abroad knows about 'hankerings', those powerful urges for something from home. This week as I watched apples being picked in local orchards I remembered a hankering I had in England---one that landed me in the dog house.

After I wrote the title and the first paragraph, I began to wonder whether 'hankering' was a generally accepted word or was it yet another rural-Ontario expression that I grew up with and have been using uncritically ever since.

In other words, I wondered whether using 'hankering' was labeling me as a hick.

I checked the Internet and found that the Word Detective has this to say about hankering:

"But even if you find yourself unable to break your "hankering" habit, you can take comfort in the fact that "hanker" does not automatically brand you as either a rube or a wannabe cowboy (goodie!). The first appearance of "hanker" dates back to about 1600 in England, and such literary luminaries as Milton and Thackeray used the word without being mistaken for Jed Clampett.

"The origin of "hanker" is a bit obscure, but most authorities have come to the conclusion that it arose as a form of the verb "to hang" used in a "frequentative" or "repetitive" sense, and originally meant "to hang around, to loiter with expectation or longing." Thus, in this original sense, a lovesick swain might "hanker" in the vicinity of his beloved, hoping for an encounter (as in Thomas Hughes, 1859: "I used to hanker round the kitchen, or still-room, or wherever she might happen to be"). By the late 17th century, "hanker" had lost its "loitering" connotation and had settled on its modern meaning of "to long for or crave something." "

I find that interesting---and reassuring!

Now, overseas hankerings can take all forms.

A British colleague in Moscow pined after Heinz baked beans with tomato sauce---not pork and beans, just beans in tomato sauce! He was ecstatic when a local store started importing them.

A few years ago I was in the Rideau Bakery in Ottawa and watched as a woman who said she had moved to Florida was stowing loaves of freshly-baked rye bread into a couple of carry-on bags. Smiling, she said she was on the way to the airport, "Tonight, ex-Ottawa people all over Miami are going to have a treat".

I have known Canadians overseas who would have given anything for a box of Timbits ("lots of chocolate ones, please").

One of my hankerings while living in England (the one that got me into trouble), was for---don't laugh---apple butter.

Now, I asked you not to laugh.

I think I can hear some ask, "Apple, what".

Wikipedia to the rescue. "Apple butter is a highly concentrated form of apple sauce, produced by long, slow cooking of apples with cider or water to a point where the sugar in the apples caramelizes, turning the apple butter a deep brown. The concentration of sugar gives apple butter a much longer shelf life as a preserve than apple sauce. Apple butter was a popular way of using apples in colonial America, and well into the 19th century. There is no dairy butter involved in the product; the term butter refers only to the thick, soft consistency, and apple butter's use as a spread for breads."

When I was growing up, we would drive in the autumn to Elmira to an apple mill run by a Mennonite farmer, a Mr. Martin. Farmers brought trailer loads of 'wind-fall' apples that he would, for a small charge, crush and turn into delicious cider. We had no apples, we were just there to get a few gallons of cider and some containers of apple butter.

There was nothing nicer after playing in the snow to come in and have some of Mom's home-made bread covered with 'real' butter and then slathered on top with apple butter!

Finally, (and not a minute to soon, I can hear you saying) we have come to the story about how I ended up in the dog house.

The home we rented in the Golders Green area of London had a prolific apple tree in the backyard. The apples looked good---large with a shiny green colour--but they were really sour. We didn't eat them, that is, except for one of our boys. On one occasion, our family doctor who lived next door phoned to say that our two-year old son was in the backyard eating apples off the ground. "I just thought I would call to save myself a trip later on."

One fall as I was preparing to rake up the apples, I suddenly had an idea. Why not turn some of them into apple butter? No one in England at that time sold apple butter, not even Harrod's Food Hall. Remembering Mom's bread slathered with apple butter, I developed a plan to turn the windfalls into a delectable spread.

Early the next Saturday morning, I collected some bags of apples, got out a large, antique brass jam pan (see picture), and filled it with peeled, cored and quartered apples along with some sugar, vinegar and seasonings. Soon the gas stove had the apples simmering and well before noon they had broken down into apple sauce. I turned the gas down a bit to a medium heat that would turn the sauce into the thick, brown apple butter I loved.

I was sure that the apple butter would be finished well before our dinner party guests arrived.

Oh, I didn't mention about the dinner party?

Just slipped my mind, I guess.

The afternoon went on and the apple mixture started to turn a little brown but it was still too thin. I was afraid of turning the gas up too high for fear of scorching the mixture.

Meanwhile, Pat was trying to prepare a special meal for our guests---with one of the gas elements taken up with the jam pan---and feed the children. Around 5 PM (the guests were coming at 6), the apple mixture was finally approaching apple butter colour and thickness.

Just then, Pat asked if I had got the wine for dinner. Nope, had slipped my mind. No problem, I would just slip down to the local wine store and be back in a jiffy.

I asked Pat if she would give the mixture a stir from time-to-time and took off for the wine store.

Something I learned about apple butter, was that when it approaches that critical point of thickness---critical mass, as it were---things start to happen very quickly. It bubbles and begins to spit and splatter. Some splatter can reach as high as a kitchen ceiling!

Amazing!

When I arrived back with the wine, the guests had arrived, the apple butter was sitting on the back of the stove with the gas turned off, and Pat was very unhappy.

Fortunately, Pat hadn't been burned by the spitting apple butter.

The dinner party was a little strained but it went all right, I guess.

The next morning, I reheated the apple butter and bottled it.

It was all a waste of effort. We never ate any of the apple butter. It looked fine but didn't have the tang or flavour of the Elmira stuff. I learned later that good apple butter is made with a mix of different varieties of apples, some tart and some sweet.

At the end of our London stint, we had to clean the house to give it back to the owner. Part of the cleaning involved removing apple butter splatter from a huge area of the kitchen ceiling, splatter that we had lived with for over a year.

I like to experiment with making-my-own things, but never again with apple butter!

Great Ontario apple butter (for example, the Wellesley brand made by the Jantzi family in Wellesley Ontario) is available everywhere, thanks to globalization.

In doing research for this Posting I found that there is a Wellesley Apple Butter and Cheese Festival on the last Saturday in September that features Wellesley apple products as well as cheese from the J.M. Schneider Cheese Factory. The festival sounds like a lot of fun

I think I may go next year, but I will probably have to go alone.

Some scars take longer to heal than others.

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See you on October 30th for Posting #127th with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

I have now uploaded four Postings on The Icewine Guru blog: one about the dangers of the US income gap; one about a possible lesson the US could learn from Canada about how to deal with its unemployment crisis: one about whether 'Western' countries should ban the wearing of face coverings by Muslim women; and, one which asks the question, 'Is Obama a Wimp?'. The topics are serious but I have tried to give them an entertaining treatment. If you haven't tried the Guru blog yet, you might like to browse these Postings by clicking on the link below. The next Guru Posting will appear when I feel I have something to say about an important public issue---at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #125

2011-10-15T07:18:00.000-07:00

"No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" (Quotation attributed to Clare Boothe Luce)

In last week's Posting (#124), I told a family story about the province-wide Prohibition in Ontario from 1916 to 1927, and about Port Credit fishing boats that supposedly carried booze to Cuba.

In this Posting, I would like to tell another family story, this one from the 1880s, when my great-grandfather, Thomas Lush, got enmeshed in an attempt by governments of the time to deal with the problem of alcohol abuse by allowing local communities to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages.

First a tiny bit of history. (I am indebted to Jim Dills, a former editor of the Canadian Champion, Milton's weekly paper, who went through reels of microfilm of old editions of the Champion at the Milton Public Library searching for references to Thomas Lush. Jim provided his notes to my brother, also a 'Jim', who kindly let me have a copy. Thanks to both of you!)

Thomas Lush was born in 1844, in the US, probably near Joliet, Illinois, and at the age of 3 moved with his family to Eramosa Township in Ontario. He married Margaret Jane Howson in 1867. They had 13 children, the eldest of whom we met briefly in Posting #124, Reuben Lush, the Justice of the Peace in Clarkson, Ontario during Prohibition.

Thomas began a successful butcher shop in a brick building on Main St. in Milton, Ontario. He was noted for his entrepreneurial innovation and energy. For example, The Champion said in 1885 that he had installed a refrigerator, "that was capable of holding the carcasses of two or three animals at one time and it will keep the meat fresh for weeks without the least taint". In an advertisement in another edition of the paper, Thomas said that he had managed to make arrangements so that, "White fish, Salmon &c caught in the morning at Collingwood (...will be) delivered at Milton by eleven o'clock of same day".

He served as a councilor in Milton, was active in his church (Methodist, I believe), and was a teetotaler who had campaigned for the Canada Temperance Act (CTA), a law sometimes called 'the Scott Act', a reference to its sponsor, Sir Richard William Scott. The Act, which was passed by the Canadian Parliament in 1878, allowed communities to prohibit the sale of alcohol, if a majority of voters agreed.

A vote was held and Milton became a 'dry' community.

I am sure that my great-grandfather rejoiced when the Milton prohibition was approved. Little did he know that the Canada Temperance Act would soon create enormous problems for him.

It happened like this.

Innkeepers and hoteliers were adamantly opposed to the CTA, arguing that they couldn't stay in business with just the revenue from meals and room rentals. They claimed that they needed the income from selling alcoholic beverages to run a viable business. But there existed in Ontario at that time some apparently successful 'Temperance Hotels', which offered rooms and meals, but no liquor.

In the 1870s in Milton there was a hotel, the Thompson House, which served alcohol. Enthused with the 1878 victory on the CTA, some prominent prohibitionists in Milton, including Thomas Lush, formed a syndicate to lease the Thompson House for a period of 5 years at $500 per annum and turn it into a temperance hotel, the Milton Temperance Hotel.

In this undated (but judging from the cars, about 1920) copy of a post card entitled "The New Royal Hotel", the men are standing in front of what was the old Thompson House---the part to the left was added later on. Today, the building at 165 Main Street East, Milton, houses on the ground floor a popular restaurant, La Toscana. The original of the post card belongs to John Duignan. This copy was kindly provided to me by Jim Dills.

The syndicate members worked hard to make the hotel profitable, but after three years the hotel had lost nearly $2000 and they felt they could no longer continue supporting it. According to a story in the Champion of May 24th, 1883, the other syndicate members turned to my great-grandfather and asked him, as a successful entrepreneur, to take over the hotel for the remaining two years of the lease.

Great-grandfather agreed and after some financial matters had been sorted out he took over responsibility for the hotel.

Thomas's move was kind and generous---truly a good deed.

At this point it is perhaps appropriate to remember Clare Boothe Luce's quotation which I have used as the title of this Posting: 'No Good Deed Goes Unpunished'.

Scarcely a month after he took over ownership of the Hotel, a Canada Temperance Act inspector accompanied by a constable searched the hotel on the basis of a warrant issued against Thomas Lush by the Milton police magistrate.

An August 30, 1883 Champion article states that two charges were filed against Thomas Lush for permitting the sale of intoxicating liquor. The police magistrate found him guilty and sentenced him to two months in jail. The article then says, "As the ex-member of the syndicate is at present in Uncle Sam's dominions and will probably stay there, it is not likely that the sentence will ever be carried out".

Great-grandfather had taken off for the States!

But then he came back---sort of.

A report in the Champion on November 29th, 1883 reminded its readers that Thomas Lush had been convicted of CTA offenses but had absconded to the US. The article went on, "He, however, had paid his family a clandestine visit last week, which was discovered by Constable Dent, who captured him on the road near his house on Thursday morning, and lodged him in jail where he will probably be compelled to remain four months".

The Champion for December 6, 1883 said it had received a letter from Thomas Lush and reported on the letter in this manner: "Writes from jail. His perspective on the temperance question and being fined for selling ginger wine which he thought was a temperance drink."

On December 13, 1883, the Champion reported that Thomas Lush had been released from jail the day before on paying a fine of $100. The paper said, "Scarcity of funds for the enforcement of the Act probably had something to do with the compromise in this case. Perhaps the fact that Mr. Lush is an old-time temperance man was remembered by our worthy Police Magistrate when he exercised his clemency in favor of his whilom associate." (I had to do a dictionary check on 'whilom', and found that as an adjective it means 'former; sometime, late'. It would appear that Thomas and the Magistrate had had some prior relationship, probably in the temperance movement.)

Poor great-grandfather's problems with the Milton Temperance Hotel were not over.

It appears that at some point during the judicial proceedings, he sold the Hotel to a William Murray. But Murray decided after a few months that he could not make a go of the hotel and moved out.

The Syndicate then sued Thomas Lush for $200 for rent and 'installment on furniture'. The case went to a jury, which rejected the claimants' arguments and found for Thomas.

The indefatigable Jim Dills has found more references to Thomas Lush in the microfilm record of the Champion, references that sketch out his life after the brush with the CTA.

In 1887, the Champion reported: "Mr. Thomas Lush has exchanged his brick store and dwelling on Main St. with Mr. McFerran for the 'Walker Farm' at the foot of the mountain in Nelson. Mr. Lush paying a difference of $3,500."

In December 1888, Thomas brought a rock from his farm into the Champion's office that he thought might contain silver. An assay showed that it did not contain any silver.

(May I add a note from family lore. During this farming period, Thomas used to travel to England to bring back breeding stock for his farm. Reuben Lush, who accompanied his father, told his children that on one return from Britain their ship was wrecked on Anticosti Island!)

In 1890, Thomas offered his farm for sale by auction.

He died in 1909 at Huntsville in his 66th year, while he was living, I believe, with one of his children.

000

Our family is deeply grateful for the information that Jim Dills has collected about our ancestor. It adds important dimensions to him, and helps to bring him alive. He was obviously a remarkable man, and the eleven children who survived infancy made important contributions to the community, each in his or her own way. One of them, Clifford, is supposed to have invented an endless-belt oven for Weston's Bakery, so that loaves of risen bread went in at one end and came out at the other fully baked.

It would be good to have a biography of Thomas and his family---perhaps some history buff in the family will take up the challenge.

I think before leaving the story we should try to deal with an issue that may be in the minds of some readers: is it credible to think that Thomas Lush really believed that ginger wine was non-alcoholic?

Perhaps I am biased because of my familial links to him, but I think it may well be that Thomas, who I am sure never had a drink in his life, did indeed believe that ginger wine was non-alcoholic.

However, this being a democratic blog, I will let the reader decide what s/he thinks.

Note:

I have condensed somewhat the story of the temperance hotel incident, leaving out details that would have been necessary for a scholarly historical article but did not seem important to the story I was trying to tell. Mr. Dills is a serious historian of Milton and Halton County and I will be pleased to amend the Posting if he feels that I have done violence to key facts.By the way, I searched without success for photos of Thomas Lush and of the Thompson House. I would love to include one or both, if anyone can help me.

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See you on October 23rd for Posting #126th with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

POSTING #124

2011-10-08T06:39:00.000-07:00

Prohibition

This week, PBS has been running a series on prohibition in the US. The blurb for the program says:

"PROHIBITION is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed."

Watching the superb documentary (when was Ken Burns ever involved in any project that was less than superb?) I recalled a family story about Ontario's experiment with prohibition.

Fishing for Midnight Herring in Lake Ontario

When I was growing up I loved to hear my father and his brother---my Uncle Syd---tell stories about their time as traffic officers on the Toronto to Hamilton highway. (The highway, built by the Toronto-Hamilton Highway Commission---a body of the Ontario Government---was finished in 1917. The highway, the first concrete one in Canada, had its own traffic officers who tried to enforce the 'sensible and sane' speed limit of 30 miles an hour. Later on, the highway was absorbed into the growing network of Ontario highways---as Highway 2---and the traffic officers were taken into the Ontario Provincial Police.)

One of their favourite stories was about the fishing boats from Port Credit that carried Canadian rye whisky to Cuba.

Sounds implausible?

You're right.

Let me back up a bit and set the stage.

But first, I should deal with the spelling of whisky. There is a dispute about which spelling is correct: whisky or whiskey. The Scots clearly favour 'whisky' but in North America we seem to vacillate between the two spellings. I'm going with the Scots, and if you don't mind, I would really prefer not to have an argument about that.

During prohibition in Ontario---from 1916 to 1927---the sale of alcoholic beverages was banned.

There were however some exceptions. The Canadian Encyclopedia reports on one exception:

"One way to drink legally was to be 'ill', for doctors could give prescriptions to be filled at drugstores. Scandalous abuse of this system resulted, with veritable epidemics and long line-ups occurring during the Christmas holiday season."

Although the legal consumption of alcohol was banned (for the drinker, there were however a few oases---so called 'speakeasies' and 'blind pigs'---where illegal hooch could be consumed) there was no ban on the production of alcoholic beverages so long as it was for export. The politicians in Queen's Park presumably concluded that it would be wrong to punish the farmers who grew the grain for whisky, the workers who distilled the product, or the owners of the distilleries who were good loyal Canadians, and probably political campaign contributors.

The answer was to keep on distilling but to make sure that the product was exported.

That's where the Port Credit fishing boats came in.

Dad and Uncle Syd would chuckle as they described how, late in the day, fishing boats would pull up at the Parliament Street dock of Gooderham and Worts distillery in Toronto and, with Customs officials watching, take on a load of metal containers of whisky. until the water was up to the gunnels of the boats.

The Customs officer would then sign and stamp the documents to show that the whisky was being legally exported to Cuba, and the boats would sail slowly into the lake being careful of any waves that might wash over the deck and swamp them. As night descended, the boats would disappear into the darkness.

The next morning the boats would be back in the Port Credit Harbour.

Of course, they hadn't sailed to Cuba---only Santa Claus and his reindeer could have accomplished that.

They actually docked, under the cover of darkness, in the abandoned brick yard in Port Credit and unloaded their valuable cargo.

When I did a Google search to try to verify the story, I found Ron Brown's excellent book, "From Queenston to Kingston: The Hidden Heritage of Lake Ontario's Shoreline".

Brown confirms the story and adds some details. He claims that it was a certain bootlegger, Joe Burke, the owner of the Lakeview Inn in Port Credit, who masterminded this fishing-boat-export-to-Cuba scheme. According to Brown, the exercise was code-named 'midnight herring'---therefore the title of this Posting.

Once ashore the whisky had to be transported to thirsty consumers in Canada and the US.

One of the ways was to use high speed cars on Ontario's improving roads. A number of the cars were destined for the Windsor area, from which the whisky could be carried by boats across the St. Clair River into the US.

The tattered clipping--- from I think the Toronto Telegram---shows that these 'rum runners' sometimes forgot that when one is doing something illegal one should be careful not to break other laws, for example, speed limits. I hope you can read the article---you may have to click to enlarge it.

(The article is from a treasured stash of clippings and memorabilia about our family collected over the years by my mother and stored in a battered but airtight blue metal box. According to the printing on the box, it originally contained 'Moonlight Mellos' made by Patterson Chocolates Ltd of Toronto---"Fluffy Marshmallows That Melt in the Mouth".

The Hunter Family Archive!

My Dad kept photos of the car with the containers of whisky and I have them somewhere. When they are found, I'll add them to this Posting.

I'm afraid I can't tell you much about the rum runners and what happened to them. My recollection from the story told by Dad and Uncle Syd was that they were Americans but I can't swear to that.

Minor traffic offenses in the Clarkson area of the Toronto-Hamilton Highway were presided over by the local justice of the peace, Reuben Lush, who happened to be my mother's father, and my grandfather---sort of, "All in the Family".

I suspect that because it involved far more than just speeding, this case would have been referred for trial to the magistrate in Port Credit.

My father and Uncle Syd had sworn to uphold the law, and they did their duty in arresting the rum runners, but I think it is fair to say that they thought the prohibition legislation was unfair, silly and, ultimately unenforceable.

That's why they found the saga of the Port Credit fishing boats so humorous.

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See you on October 16th for Posting #125th with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

POSTING #123

2011-10-01T03:14:00.000-07:00

A GENTLE NOTE TO MY READERS:

I am going back to my earlier practice of having a weekly Letter from Virgil.

Writing the every-other-week Icewine Guru Postings took more time and effort (especially for research) than I had expected.

But I am not abandoning the Guru blog. The Postings for it will now be sporadic, appearing when I feel steamed up about an important public issue that I don't feel is receiving sufficient attention. But they will be in addition to the weekly Letter from Virgil Postings--- they will not replace them.

I will put a note in this Letter from Virgil blog telling you whenever there is a new Guru Posting, along with the subject of the Posting, and a link to it.

Thank you for your patience and tolerance as I experimented with the idea of alternating Postings!

A Bountiful Harvest

It has been a great summer in the Niagara Peninsula---probably in the whole Province--- for fruit and vegetables, both in quantity and quality. A wet spring created an abundant supply of ground water and a hot summer spurred the growth of just about everything.

A nearby farmer's stall has a sign advertising hampers of peaches for only $10.

All of this brings back memories of the women of my hometown, Arthur, 'canning' fruit for the winter---in quart glass sealers.

Here is a story about that.

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The climate in the Arthur area was fine for apples and pears but not for soft fruit such as peaches. They were brought to Arthur stores by wholesalers like Sam Bondi from Mount Forest, a large man with a large cigar. He would load his red truck early in the morning with fruit and vegetables at wholesale markets in Toronto and then work his way north, dropping off supplies at local grocery stores.

At a certain point, when the fruit was ripest and cheapest, Mom would buy several 12 quart baskets of peaches at the local store. Then she would go to the basement, collect quart sealers emptied over the course of the past winter and wash them carefully (even though they had been washed carefully before being taken to the basement). Then the jars would be sterilized by pouring in some water and putting them in a hot oven in a pan with a little water.

While the jars were sterilizing, Mom would place the whole peaches in boiling water for a few minutes to make them easier to peel. When they were 'blanched', she would put them in a pan of cold water and my brothers and I would juggle the still-hot peaches as we peeled off the skins with paring knives. As Mom was slicing the peeled peaches into generous segments, my brothers and I would crack some of the peach stones on a concrete stoop using an old hammer. We would pass the almond-like pits to my mother, who believed they added flavour to the peaches.

(There are scientific studies now that show that peach pits when raw contain a small amount of hydrocyanic acid---one of the chemicals used in gas chambers!---but that the chemical is rendered non-toxic when cooked. I remember trying one of the raw pits but spitting it out because of its bitterness. I understand that the bitter almond flavour, is extracted from pits of almond-family fruit, such as the peach.)

Mom would take the steaming hot jars from the oven, tip out the water, put a peach pit in each, fill them with the sliced peaches and then add a boiling-hot sugar syrup. Next, she would seal the jars by fitting on a sterilized red rubber ring (this was before Mason Jars), put on a glass lid and then screw everything tight with a zinc top. (During the winter as the jars were emptied, we used the rubber rings to hold catalogues against our shins for hockey games on ice patches in nearby fields---homemade shin pads!)

The contents of the sealed jars were then cooked by placing the jars in the oven in a pan with boiling water (later on, home economists decided that cooking the jars in a hot water bath was a better way of sterilizing the fruit and thereby preventing spoilage and reducing the risk of things like botulism).

When the peaches were cooked the jars were placed on the counter to cool. Then they were tested to make sure there was a 'good seal', wiped clean and taken to the basement to be stored on shelves near the furnace.

How delicious those jars looked---all lined up and full of succulent, golden peach slices!

You may be saying, "Where's the story? Enough already with the detail, get on with it!"

My answer is that to appreciate fully the story---which is coming right up---you need to know the amount of work, not to mention the money, involved in canning peaches.

Besides, if I am to be totally honest, I have to say that I have been enjoying this little trip down memory lane!

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I should start by saying that this story is more than just a story, it is also a test for you, the reader---a test of your ethics or home economics.

I am not sure which.

You'll see in a minute.

One of Mom's friends went through all the peach-canning palaver described above. As she was placing the jars of peaches on the basement shelves she saw a very white, very small and very dead worm floating in one of the jars. I suppose I should make the point for younger readers that all fruit in the period I am talking about---the 1940s and 1950s--- was 'organic'. This meant that although the fruit contained no harmful pesticides, they often contained worms.

After talking about what to do, Mom and her friend came up with three options.

May I suggest that you consider the options and decide which one you would have taken.

Option 1: Throw out the contents of the jar with the worm and keep the rest of the jars.

Option 2: Keep all the jars but turn the jar with the worm to the back of the shelf so no one could see it. When opening the jar in the winter, one would carefully fish out the worm before the family could see it.

Option 3: Throw out the contents of all the jars.

To give you a chance to weigh the options (and to make sure you don't cheat!) I'm going to tell a joke that killed us in Grade 3.

What is worse than finding a worm in an apple?

Give up?

Finding half a worm!

Sorry about that---just a little bit of pre-adolescent Arthur humour.

Back to the quiz. Here is what happened.

Mom's friend chose Option 3 and threw out all the peaches.

My mother would have voted for Option 2. Her view was that the peaches, syrup---and the worm---had all been well sterilized.

As I recall it, Mom was horrified at the waste but respected her friend's decision---that she wouldn't be comfortable serving any of the peaches to her family knowing that the batch had once had a worm in it.

How did you come down?

Personally, I am with Mom, but like Mom I will not object if you came to a different conclusion.

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I would like to end this Posting with another 'harvest' story but this one has been taking place this summer, in Virgil.

I call it the Great Squash Mystery.

When I was young one of my favourite vegetables was the pepper squash---some people call them acorn squashes, but that's OK.

I liked it when Mom cut one of them in half, horizontally, scooped out the seeds, filled the hollow with lots of butter, a little brown sugar, some salt and pepper, and then baked them until they were tender.

Oh, that was good! The flesh of the squash was a deep orange, solid and meaty, sweet and full of flavour.

But as time went on, the pepper squashes available in the stores changed until now we have imitations of the real thing, squashes that have a flesh that is pale-yellow, soft, watery, with an insipid taste. I blame the growers for choosing varieties that ripen early, travel well and 'weigh heavy' (i.e. full of water) since squash are sold by weight.

This year I set aside a small space in our backyard to grow some 'real' pepper squashes. I found a variety in a Stokes Seeds catalogue that promised old-time texture and flavour.

Great!

I set out 6 plants, which caught quickly and soon produced large yellow blossoms. The catalogue said that each plant would produce an average of 8 squash. I did the math and that meant something like 50 squash. There would be enough so I could share them with our children who have grown tired and skeptical about Dad and his stories about the delicious squash of his youth. And the remainder could be stored in our cold room so we could have delicious squash dinners in February and March.

I watched with delight as the bees did their thing and the blossoms turned into little green oval balls and then into softball-sized fruit. Everything was going well.

Then one morning I noticed that the two largest squash had disappeared. As I was scratching my head and muttering, our neighbour who is a retired farmer came over to see what the trouble was. I told him about the missing squash.

I said I was wondering whether a raccoon was responsible.

No, he said, raccoons are messy. If they had eaten the squash, they would have left bits of skin and seeds lying around.

Every few mornings, more squash were missing.

And then early one morning when I was backing out of the driveway, I saw a bulky animal heading down the side of our garage toward the backyard. I rushed around the house but he (or she) had disappeared. There is a wooded area with a pond off to the side behind our house and my hunch was that he (or she) had headed home.

Convinced that we were dealing with a raccoon, I installed---near the squash patch---one of Lee Valley's electronic gadgets that is designed to scare off cats. The gadget has a motion detector and emits a high frequency squeal that cats can't stand. I wasn't sure whether it would work for raccoons, but it seemed worth a try.

The thievery ended.

Now I am left with only 6 or 7 small squash, and I am not sure whether they will mature before the frost hits.

So that's my tale of woe.

But the interesting question is what did the raccoon do with the squash. He (she) didn't eat them on site because there was no mess. Therefore, he (or she) must have taken them home---as a treat, presumably, for the family. ('Yum, yum, more delicious squash from that nice man up there!')

But how?

Did he (she) roll them home? Or did he (she) clutch a squash to his (her) chest and do a three-legged hop back to the pond?

If I had been able to capture the nocturnal activity via a night-vision video camera, it would surely have become a viral hit on YouTube!

Next year, I'm going to put out the anti-cat gadget earlier in the season.

And, given the intelligence of those bandit-eyed critters, I might even back that up with a little electric fence, one that has enough amperage to provide a deterring but non-lethal jolt.

We'll see.

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See you on October 9th for Posting #124th with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

I have now uploaded four Postings to The Icewine Guru blog: one about the dangers of the US income gap; one about a possible lesson the US could learn from Canada about how to deal with its unemployment crisis: one about whether 'Western' countries should ban the wearing of face coverings by Muslim women; and, one which asks the question, 'Is Obama a Wimp?'. The topics are serious but I have tried to give them an entertaining treatment. If you haven't tried the Guru blog yet, you might like to browse these Postings by clicking on the link below. The next Guru Posting will appear when I feel I have something to say about an important public issue--- http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #122

2011-09-17T03:13:00.000-07:00

About Harold Pinter and Tools

Last week we had dinner with old friends, David and Mary, from Ottawa who were in town for their annual theatre swing through Niagara-on-the-Lake and Stratford.

Out of that dinner came the two items in this Posting---my thanks to our very good friends!

About Harold Pinter

Our friends told us that they had tickets for a Stratford play---The Homecoming by Harold Pinter---that they could not use. Would we be interested in seeing the play?

We accepted, with delight.

Last Sunday we drove to Stratford.

The play was powerfully acted and full of the raw emotions, the long pauses and the ambiguity that characterize Pinter's plays. I won't attempt to describe the plot---for that you may wish to read the laudatory New York Times review of the play, a review with which we totally agree.

After the cast had taken their bows, Pat and I looked at each, a look that said that we were totally confused and would spend the two and a half hour drive back to Virgil trying to figure out what the play was about (after 50 years of marriage there is a lot of communication in a single glance!).

As we started down the stone steps from the Avon Theatre to the sunlight of Downie St. I saw something I had never seen before at a theatre.

A well-dressed women, in perhaps her late 40s or early 50s, had planted herself, feet apart, on the bottom step facing the people coming down the steps.

"Does anyone know what this play was about?, she demanded. "Who understands it?"

People smiled, shook their heads, and stepped around her.

"What did it mean?", she persisted.

Staring at me, she asked, "Did you understand it?"

I guess the devil was in me, and I said "Yes".

"Can you explain it to me?", she pleaded.

"Sure, how much time do you have?", I said and then laughed to show that I was joking and that I was confused as she was.

"Why are you laughing? Is it because you think I'm stupid that I don't understand it? Or is it because you don't understand it either?', she demanded.

I assured her it was the latter---I wasn't laughing at her, I was just as confused as she was.

We moved on, while she continued trying to find someone who could explain it to her.

Pat and I did discuss the play during the two and a half hour trip home, and then carried on for another two and a half days.

We now think ('think', that is!) we know what the play is about. At least we have an answer that satisfies us.

I wonder if that woman has found an answer that satisfies her.

All of this demonstrates the power of the Nobel-prize-winning Pinter and his wonderful, and wonderfully ambiguous plays.

Tools

At dinner with our friends, Mary told about being at a party a few years ago in Almonte, Ontario. Seeing a man she didn't know, she asked him what his name was and when he said, "Leonard", a light came on. She said, "I didn't recognize you".

He said, "I was hoping you wouldn't."

She had realized that he was Leonard Lee, the 'Lee' in Lee Valley Tools. He went on to say that it got boring explaining how he had left the Canadian Foreign Service and started a tiny company to find or make, and then to sell high quality woodworking tools.

I love Lee Valley Tools and have been meaning for a long time to write about the company.

So, prompted by our friend's story, here goes.

For me, Lee Valley Tools is a case study of how listening to your customers, treating them well and selling only high quality goods can build a multi-million dollar business.

About listening to your customers.....

I have always found it strange that many surgeons apparently love to relax by engaging in woodworking. Strange, because I would have assumed that they would be worried about losing a digit or two when working with a lathe, a router or a band saw. Apparently not.

Surgeon/woodworkers loved Lee Valley's tools, and when some of them complained to the company that they wished it made operating room tools, the company obliged, with a line of medical/surgical instruments.

Gardeners complained about tools that rusted and didn't work. The company moved into gardening supplies.

Cooks complained about the quality of kitchen tools, and the company introduced a number of superb items.

Tailors and quilters complained about things like scissors and seam rippers, and the company responded.

And so on.

And then, about treating your customers right......

An electronic gadget that Lee Valley sells to keep cats away from flower beds stopped working.

I phoned Customer Service, got 'a real person' and explained the problem. He apologized and said he would send a replacement, which arrived by special delivery in a couple of days. A few days later, I received a letter from the head of Customer Service (a real letter with my name and a description of the problem---not a boiler-plate, one-size-fits-all response) apologizing for the problem and hoping that it had been rectified. If it hadn't, I was to call her.

I also like it that the company takes its business seriously, but not itself.

During a visit to the Lee Valley store in Burlington, Ontario, I saw a basket of "April Fool Tape Measures' at the check out. When I picked up one of the regular-looking tape measures, and gave a puzzled look to the clerk he suggested I pull out the tape. I did, and the tape was blank, no numbers or markings at all. He explained that each year the company tries to come up with an April Fool gift they can send as a gift to suppliers and contacts. This year they had a few left over and were selling them to the public. I bought one for a favourite friend who I knew would enjoy showing it to his buddies---and he did!

One of the problems of being a Lee Valley fan is that there is a huge temptation to pester your friends with recommendations about the latest 'really neat tool' you have found.

I'm afraid I'm going to give in to that temptation, and recommend a few tools that we like. (Christmas is coming, and it occurs to me they might make good stocking stuffers.)

Set of Three Eye Loupes

The loupes provide 2X, 5X and 10X magnification and are great for Pat's work checking out artifacts at the museum and for my work cataloging 35 mm slides that I have inherited. They are also good for a great many other occasions when aging eyes need an assist, such as removing slivers. The kit costs $6.50

All Purpose Scissors

The compact 5-1/2 inch scissors are tough fellows that don't need babying. They cut paper and wire and are great for getting into those plastic-bubble-enclosed items that we all hate. We have four sets, stored strategically around the house. Cost is $6.95

Pro Seam Ripper Kit

Pat just loves this kit but says you have to watch---the blades are really sharp. Cost: $18.95

Head Lamp

This is an astoundingly bright LED light with a comfortable head band. Pat uses it in sewing and I use it everywhere, and especially in dark corners of the basement. Cost: $12.50.

Grandpa's Weeder

Now, this is NOT a potential stocking stuffer!

This elegant, but low-tech tool has apparently been around since the early 1900s. Grandpa (or grandma!) steps on a lever, moves the handle to the side, lifts up, and out pops the weed, root and all. It is great for dandelions and plantain. Just what we need as our governments---wisely---restrict the use of chemical weed killers. Cost: $28.50

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I should add that I have no connection with Lee Valley Tools, except as a totally satisfied customer and a fervent booster.

(I am indebted to the Lee Valley website---a site that I find very user-friendly---for the above images.)

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See you on October 2nd for Posting #123 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

I have now uploaded three Postings on The Icewine Guru blog: one about the dangers of the US income gap; one about a possible lesson the US could learn from Canada about how to deal with its unemployment crisis: and another about whether 'Western' countries should ban the wearing of face coverings by Muslim women. The topics are serious but I have tried to give them an entertaining treatment. If you haven't tried the Guru blog yet, you might like to browse these Postings by clicking on the link below. The next Guru Posting will appear on September 25th. http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #121

2011-08-30T05:48:00.000-07:00

NOTE: This Posting is being uploaded a little early because I am tied up for the rest of the week.

A Thief or a Spy, or Both?

I enjoy reading mystery novels, especially ones involving courtroom action.

Recently, while reading the excellent mystery, "The Guilty Plea" by Robert Rotenberg, a prominent Toronto criminal lawyer, I remembered a story told by a solicitor we met while we were living in London in the 1960s.

I have to warn you at the beginning that I don't know how the story ends.

I am going to have to ask you to make up your own ending.

If you decide to stop reading at this point---well---I will understand.

Let me carry on, for those who are still with me.

Our solicitor friend specialized in criminal law and had great stories about 'the old lags' he was defending (translation: a British expression for people who have been in and out of prison frequently). He didn't actually argue cases in court but in accordance with the British system he would brief a barrister (think of Horace Rumpole) who would don a wig and robe and argue the case in the Old Bailey.

He said that the old lags knew the legal system well and if caught by the police they knew what to say ("I'm innocent gov'nor, and I'm not saying anything until I gets my solicitor") and what not to say ("I'm sorry, I'm guilty").

One night at dinner, he told a story about a different kind of case. A bookkeeper with absolutely no criminal record had been arrested for stealing money from his employer.

As soon as he had been assigned the case, the solicitor hurried to the jail to interview his new client. When he was brought into the interview room, the prisoner, a man in his 50s, appeared to be in a state of shock, shoulders down, eyes looking around aimlessly. He looked very vulnerable---not cocky like the old lags.

The solicitor introduced himself, sat the man down, took out a pad of paper and started to talk. He told the man that he wasn't to say anything until he, the solicitor, had finished.

The solicitor told him that as an officer of the court he was required to reveal to the court whatever his client told him about his guilt or innocence.

"If you tell me you did it, then I will have to tell the court that you are pleading guilty."

The man started to say something but the solicitor cut him off. "Remember I told you that you are not to say anything until I have finished."

The accused closed his mouth and sat back in his chair.

"Now, on the other hand", the solicitor continued, "if you tell me you are not guilty and that you have an explanation for what happened then I am duty bound to accept those statements at face value and give you the best defense I possibly can".

The man started to say something, but the solicitor put up his hand, "I am not finished!"

"Now what I would like you to do is spend tonight in your cell thinking about what you want to tell me about what happened. Remember, if you tell me you stole the money we will have to enter a guilty plea, but if you tell me you didn't and have an explanation, then we will plead not guilty and I will defend you. In the meantime, you are not to say anything to the police or other prisoners."

When the solicitor returned the next day, he saw that his client, despite a night in jail, appeared less distressed, more confident.

"Now", the solicitor said, "remembering everything I told you last night, are you ready to tell me what happened?"

The accused nodded and began to talk.

He had worked, he said, for several years as a bookkeeper for an import-export firm owned by the USSR, a firm that organized the shipment of goods to and from the Soviet Union. He was frequently given large sums of cash from the officers in the firm, all of whom were Russians, which he would deposit in the firm's account in a British bank. The firm's officials now claimed that they had discovered that he was not banking all the cash he was being given---that he was stealing some of the firm's money. They had called in the police.

The solicitor looking at the police report about the arrest said, "According to this report, the firm has documentary evidence that you kept some of the money you were given. How do you explain that?"

"Well, what you have to understand is that the firm is not a legitimate import-export company. It's a front for a spying operation."

The solicitor sat up, this was a far more interesting story than any of the ones his old lags came up with. "Go on", he said.

"After I had been working there for a few months, the head of the office asked me to do some spying for them on commercial matters involving other London companies. He explained that in return they would let me keep a portion of the cash depending on how valuable my information was to them. So the money they claim I stole was actually payment for my spying."

The solicitor sat back in his chair, stunned. "So are you admitting that you spied for the Soviet Union?"

"Yes, but I never stole any money from the company. The money I took was payment for the spying I did."

The solicitor looked around the dinner table at us and said, "So now I have to find a barrister who is prepared to argue this defense before a judge and jury at the Old Bailey."

We discussed the case for a while with people around the table offering questions and comments. Someone suggested that the firm may well have been a front for a spying operation---there had been a number of incidents of Soviet spying in Britain in the 1960s---but wondered why the firm would have called attention to itself by asking the police to investigate the alleged theft? Another person wondered whether the accused realized that spying was potentially a more serious offense than stealing?

The solicitor didn't attempt to respond, and when someone asked him whether he thought the bookkeeper was guilty of theft, he just smiled and said, "I leave guilt and innocence to the jury"

Our foreign service tour in the UK ended shortly after the dinner, and we returned to Canada.

Life got very hectic and we lost touch with the solicitor.

So I don't know what happened to the accused bookkeeper.

Did the case go to trial with the spying defense?

If so, was he convicted, or not?

When the Soviet company realized that he was going to talk about spying, did they withdraw the charges?

It's frustrating not to know what happened.

But life's like that sometimes, isn't it.

Too many damnable mysteries that we have to learn to live with.

A Reward

I feel guilty about leaving you high and dry, without a clear conclusion to the above story.

To compensate you in some small measure, I would like to offer a gift---a recipe that you may find useful.

First, some background.

For years I have been experimenting with mixes of various kinds of fiber, trying to find a combination that induced a healthy regularity.

I finally found a mix that works for me and have been using it for some years. Lately, friends and relatives who pooh-poohed my mix (it is hard to avoid double entendres when talking about regularity!) have been trying what they had always laughingly called, "John's Potion".

And finding that it works.

And asking for the recipe.

So, here is the recipe, which must be accompanied by the usual caveats: that I make no medical claims for the mixture or myself and that persons should check with their doctor before trying it.

Add to a large bowl, and then stir until well mixed, equal quantities of the following (for a month's supply, I use one and a half cups of each ingredient):

1. Psyllium husks---I buy it at Bulk Barn. I tried powdered Psyllium husks but prefer the non-powdered husks.

2. Oat bran ---I use Quaker's Oat Bran

3. Ground flax seed---I buy organic flax seed and grind it in a cheap coffee grinder with a rotating blade. Mine is made by Braun. Bulk Barn sells ground flax seed but I prefer to grind it fresh.

4. Ground almonds---I use the blanched type, and pulse them in the above grinder until they are fine.

And that's it!

Perhaps a comment about the choice of the ingredients. Psyllium and oat bran are well-known aids to regularity.

When I was young, I remember farmers using flax seeds whenever a horse was constipated, so I decided to include it in my mix.

Finally, I have added almonds because of their manifold nutritional benefits and because they make the mix more palatable.

I put a heaping tablespoon on my porridge in the morning and another on a small helping of cereal before I go to bed. When I'm travelling, I sometimes mix it with a little juice and spoon it down. Other people have found that one heaping tablespoon a day is enough.

I would suggest starting with a teaspoon or so until you know how your system will react to it.

As with any fiber, it is important to drink plenty of water during the day.

Finally, what to call the mix?

"John's Potion" sounds too medical.

Pat and I had a brain-storming session. I started off with "John's Fiber Booster" but we agreed that was just too pedestrian. After considering a whole slew of ideas, Pat came up with the winner.

"Skip to the Loo".

I like it because it's yet another double entendre---I confess I like double entendres---that combines regularity with memories of the ever-popular Saturday night square dances in the Arthur Town Hall.

If you try the mix and like it, please feel free to pass on the recipe---there is no copyright or patent. I would be grateful, however, if you would use the name, "Skip to the Loo", so we can track its progress.

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See you on September 18th for Posting #122 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

On September 11th, you may like to check out the next Posting of The Icewine Guru. http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #120

2011-08-20T02:40:00.000-07:00

Memories of Prince Edward Island

The recent visit of Will and Kate (aka the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge) to Prince Edward Island brought back memories of trips I have made to that lovely island over the years.

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During the early fall of 1964, we were back in Canada for home leave after a posting in the United Kingdom. Following a holiday, I set out with 3 other foreign service officers on a cross-Canada re-familiarization tour. We arrived in PEI in September just as the province was getting ready for a visit by the Queen and Prince Phillip that would take place in October. The trip was to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the Confederation Conference held in Charlottetown in 1864.

The province and its people were excited by the visit and were using a lot of elbow grease to make a good impression on the royals. Houses were being painted, trees were being trimmed, lawns and flower beds were being weeded, fertilized and watered.

That kind of thing.

On our first day on the island, we were being taken to a brand new seafood processing plant a few miles outside of Charlottetown that the Queen and Prince Phillip were to visit. As we drove along an asphalt road, we could see a large red brick building on a hill---the new factory.

As we got close to the factory, our host, the manager of the local Canada Immigration office, pointed to the road. He said that it had been a gravel road but it had just been paved---especially for the royal visit.

Smiling, he said that the paving stopped just over the crest of the hill. Islanders felt that it was important to put on a good show for the royals, but there was no need to get carried away.

000

As the day of touring plants and businesses came to an end, we asked our host if he could recommend a restaurant where we could have 'a good feed of lobster'. He shook his head. No restaurant at the time served lobster---fish sticks maybe, but no lobster. Residents went down to the dock, bought lobsters from the fishermen, took them home and cooked them.

Church groups occasionally had lobster dinners for tourists but there was none scheduled for that time.

We groaned and complained about how we had been dreaming about tender lobster bits dipped into melted butter.

Our host took pity on us, said he would arrange a dinner that we could eat back at the motel. He asked us what we would like for dinner. Our menu was simple: lots of lobster, some beer and perhaps some pie.

Leave it to me, he said,

Will you join us, we asked. Of course, he said.

Our first stop was at the dock where he arranged with one of the fellows to boil some lobsters. We would be back to pick them up.

Then it was off to the provincial beer store. There were some scruffy looking men loitering outside the beer store. They stopped us as we were about to enter.

"Are you from off the island?", one asked. We said we were.

"Well then, could you buy us some beer." He explained that locals could only buy a certain amount of beer a month, whereas visitors could buy as much as they wanted. He held out some bills.

They looked thirsty and our inclination was to be good Samaritans and help them. At that point, our host who had been watching from his car, came over and shooed them away. He explained that they didn't want the beer for themselves, but that they were working for a local bootlegger. Any beer they cadged went into his stock.

We mused about the differences between Quebec, which we had just visited---where beer was sold freely in grocery stores---and PEI (or Ontario for that matter).

We got our box of 24 Molson's Ex and headed for a local 'greasy spoon' restaurant for an apple pie, which we knew would be made of canned apples with a cardboard crust---it was---but what the hell, you couldn't have a 1960s dinner without some pie.

Then to the dock for the lobsters and some melted butter.

Back at the motel, our host produced a bottle opener (this was before screw tops) some nut crackers and picks. And we started some serious lobster cracking.

I'm not going to say it was the best meal I have ever had, but it was clearly the best lobster dinner ever.

000

Later on, after I had left the Foreign Service, I went often to the Island for conferences and meetings. I loved the island and the people, and decided that Pat should have a chance to enjoy it.

Leaving the kids with a motherly woman who was used to looking after them, we flew to PEI for a holiday at the family-run Shaw's Hotel (which is still in business---after 150 years!)

It was early in the season and we were the first guests that year.

I had of course told Pat about the wonderful PEI lobsters so we didn't have to look at the dining room menu. It was going to be lobster.

The young and cheerful server went off to the kitchen with our order. She came back with a delicious salad and some fresh rolls.

We finished the salad and waited. There was laughing in the kitchen but no lobster.

The server came back and took our empty salad plates. The lobster would be ready soon, she said.

And we waited some more. The laughing in the kitchen continued.

Finally, as I was about to knock on the kitchen door, our server came back, flushed from laughing. She said that the chef for the season had just arrived on the Island that day. "He's from Winnipeg", she smiled, "and doesn't know how to cook lobsters!".

We discovered later that he was a good looking young man, and our server and the other young women in the kitchen had obviously enjoyed teaching him how to boil lobsters.

The lobsters when they came were fine, but perhaps not quite as good as the lobsters at the motel.

Must have been the motel's ambiance.

000

After breakfast one morning at Shaw's , we joined an elderly local for coffee. He had lived his whole life on the Island, and told some marvellous stories about growing up on PEI.

We mentioned our lobster dinner experience and he laughed about a chef from the West who didn't know how to cook lobsters.

He said that when he was growing up, his family was poor but they never went hungry---they always had lobsters and potatoes. His father had a few lobster pots and a large potato garden.

He said that he and his brothers and sisters had always gone off to school with lobster sandwiches for lunch. He remembered asking his mother why they couldn't have bologna sandwiches like the other kids. She had explained that bologna was too expensive for them.

He looked out the window and mused, "Who would have thought?"

000

In the early 1970s, while working as a social policy officer at the Privy Council Office, I was part of a team looking at ways of increasing the income of what at the time were called 'have-not provinces'.

PEI was one of the provinces.

The team was looking at a variety of solutions including adjustments to the equalization payments made by the Federal Government, and different kinds of development assistance.

In the midst of this work, I found a survey that had just been conducted by a reputable Toronto firm in which they had asked Canadians to rate their level of happiness. The survey found that the happiest people in Canada lived in---you guessed it, Prince Edward Island.

I suspect that if the survey were repeated today, the results might well be the same.

What is that old saying: 'Money doesn't bring happiness'.

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See you on September 4th for Posting #121 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

On August 28th, you may like to check out the next Posting of The Icewine Guru. http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #119

2011-08-06T08:15:00.000-07:00

NOTE

In my last Posting---#118 at the beginning of July---I asked permission to continue my blog holiday so I could finish some chores around the house.

Things have gone well.

I can now go into the garage, the work room, my study and the store room without shuddering at the confusion and disorganization. When I want to find something or fix a problem, it is a breeze.

Now I am ready to get back to blogging.

As I have been bringing order out of the chaos, my mind has been working away on its own, as minds sometimes do.

The mind is suggesting that I should have two blogs, not just one.

The rationale is that I should have one blog for telling stories ---this blog, Letter from Virgil---and a second blog in which I can discuss current issues.

I have always tried to avoid mixing opinions in with the stories, and looking back over the Postings I think I have generally been successful. (There have been some slips, for example, when I offered some comments on the US health care system.)

My government career involved a fair bit of policy development, which I enjoyed. Today when I read or listen to pundits discussing this or that social, political or economic issue I find myself arguing with them. "You are giving too much prominence to this factor and not enough to that." Or, "You are overlooking an underlying trend that makes your proposal nonsensical."

Instead of just continuing to complain to Pat, who I must say is a very patient and tolerant listener, I have decided to send my views into cyberspace. Hopefully this will reduce the number of tirades that Pat has to put up with.

The second blog will be called, The Icewine Guru, and will be found at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

It will consist (hopefully) of lively and entertaining Postings of imaginary conversations between two friends, one a semi-retired consultant whose hobby is producing the world's best organic icewine, and a retired high school history teacher.

When in my government work, I had to come up with recommendations on complex policy issues, I sometimes imagined a debate between two intelligent, well-informed people who although strong-willed were open to being convinced by a proposition that involved better facts and stronger arguments.

The two blogs will alternate, with Letter from Virgil one Sunday, the Icewine Guru the next.

The first Icewine Guru Posting will appear on August 14.

Please give The Icewine Guru a try and let me know what you think.

Now, here is today's Letter from Virgil.

The Contractor and the Lincoln

There is a story that I have been wanting to tell for some time involving a friend I have known since we were young, let's call him Freddy.

But I didn't want to tell it until I had a chance to check the facts with him, which I was able to do recently.

When we were young, I was always envious of Freddy's skill in woodworking. In shop class he could turn out bird houses that didn't need plastic wood to fill in gaps from poorly fitting joints---I always had a problem with joints (to be clear, I should say we're talking here about joints of the wooden, not pot kind).

He could take a block of hardwood and shape it into a glorious fruit bowl.

He was a whiz.

After leaving school, Freddy started working as a carpenter building houses and ended up as a very successful and respected contractor, building not just houses, but apartments, nursing homes, that kind of thing.

Freddy never advertised and always had more work than he could handle, because of word-of-mouth recommendations.

On one occasion, the owner of a Lincoln dealership intent on diversifying his savings tried to persuade Freddy to construct an apartment building for him as an investment property. Freddy declined, saying he had enough on his plate, he just couldn't' handle any more work.

The car dealer tried to sweeten the deal by saying he would throw in a new Lincoln.

Freddy thought about it, and agreed to drop by the dealership some time and check out the Lincolns.

Now, Freddy's success was largely due to the fact that he was a hands-on manager. He didn't sit in an office, he was on the site each day pitching in with whatever task was falling behind.

At the end of a particular workday, he showed up at the dealership in his dusty boots and overalls. The salesman, dressed in an impeccable suit and tie---he was selling Lincolns, after all--- clearly didn't know what to make of this strange customer.

Freddy opened the driver's door of a big Lincoln and leaning in checked out the dashboard and the fine upholstery on the seats.

"That looks OK, " Freddy said as he shut the door. I imagine the salesman started breathing again when it became clear that this man in the dusty overalls wasn't going to get in and sully the Lincoln's pristine upholstery.

"Could you open the trunk?", Freddie asked.

"The trunk?", the salesman looked puzzled. No one buying a Lincoln was ever interested in the trunk.

"Yes, I just want to see if I can get a wheelbarrow and a bag of cement in it."

The salesman gasped, but he opened the trunk and Freddy checked it out.

Nodding, he left the dealership, leaving behind a totally confused salesman who couldn't wait to regale his colleagues with the story about his bizarre customer.

Freddy rearranged his projects, and soon took delivery of a large silver-grey Lincoln, provided by a grateful dealer.

000

When I checked the above details with Freddy, he said that I had the story right.

He added one factor. He said that at that time he had been suffering from back pains and his doctor had been trying to persuade him to stop driving a pickup truck---to get a sedan instead. After checking out the Lincoln, Freddy had asked the doctor if he thought that a Lincoln would be better for his back.

The bemused doctor thought for a moment and then gave his considered medical opinion---that a Lincoln would indeed be just fine for his back. He may also have been wondering whether he was in the wrong business.

Freddy added another story about the Lincoln. He was once driving on the 401 highway on his way to a project, with the trunk lid up and a builder's jack sticking out the back.

An OPP constable waved him over. Freddy rolled down his window and the constable said, "OK where'd you steal this car. No one who owns a Lincoln drives around with the trunk full of stuff and the lid up."

After Freddy showed his documentation, the policeman walked back to his car shaking his head.

Although around 80, Freddy continues to work, helping his son who has now taken over the business. The company still doesn't advertise and still has more business than it can handle.

A Sequel to Jonas Robinson

At our anniversary party (see Posting 118) I had a chat with a cousin from Florida who had seen Posting 108 in which I described buying some paintings from---at that time---an unknown Ottawa Valley folk artist, Jonas Robinson.

My cousin said that the story reminded him of two paintings his father---my uncle----had brought home some years before his death,

His father had read about a terrible fire on Lake Rose, near Orlando, in which a man had died and his artist wife had been badly burned. When the wife returned from an extended stay in hospital, his father had driven over to see if he could help. He found that the woman had resumed painting and he bought two paintings---of pelicans---as a gift for his wife.

The paintings hung in the living room of my cousin's parents home on the Inland Waterway, near Edgewater, Florida. He says that his parents loved to look at the paintings and then move to the porch to watch live pelicans fly over or glide onto the Waterway.

When his dad and mother had died, my cousin and his siblings had to sort out their belongings. They studied the paintings, found them attractive, but the cousin and his siblings couldn't figure out what to do with them. No one had space on their walls for the rather large pictures (24 by 30 inches), and yet they didn't want to get rid of them.

Finally, it was agreed that one of the siblings and his wife would take the pictures and store them in their laundry room. Recently they saw a newspaper story about 'a local artist', Joy Postle (pronounced 'postal') Blackstone who for years before her death in 1989 loved to paint Florida scenes, especially of pelicans and flamingos. An author, Judy Madsen Johnson, had just published a book, "Joy Cometh in the Morning: the Joy Postle Blackstone Story"

My cousins checked the paintings in the laundry room and sure enough they were by Joy Postle Blackstone.

(I have found that many articles about the artist refer to her just by her maiden name, Joy Postle.)

The University of Central Florida has recently developed a website featuring Joy and her work. Here is a another sample of Joy's work, taken from that website.

The Wikipedia Encyclopaedia has an article on Joy Postle Blackstone in which she is described as "...a pioneering American environmental artist and creator of celebrated murals depicting Florida wildlife."

The paintings have now been moved from the laundry room to the living room, and my cousins are delighted they had the good sense---and taste---to keep the pictures. (I am grateful to them for taking the pictures of the pelican paintings shown above!)

Jonas Robinson and Joy Postle are similar in some respects. Their paintings are being rediscovered after their deaths, and they were both devoted to preserving, through their work, the world around them.

But there are marked differences.

Jonas was a self-taught artist who captured local scenes in a lively and happy but naive style. Joy on the other hand was a highly-trained artist who produced elegant pictures in a variety of media: oil paintings, water colours, murals etc.

According to the articles I have been able to read, she lived a life full of both adventure and adversity, and through it all she kept on painting.

I wonder how long it will be before someone in Hollywood decides that Judy Madsen Johnson's new biography should be turned into a movie.

I am so grateful to my cousins for introducing me to Joy Postle, and for giving me some (more) warm memories of their parents---my aunt and uncle---who were very special people to all who knew them.

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See you on August 21st for Posting #120 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

On August 14th, you may like to check out the first Posting of The Icewine Guru. http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

Tags: my contractor friend and his Lincoln, Jonas Robinson, Joy Postle Blackstone, Judy Madsen Johnson,

POSTING #118

2011-06-29T10:50:00.000-07:00

NOTE

In my last Posting---#117 at the end of May---I said I hoped that June would bring better weather after a damp and dismal spring.

It did.

June was a fine month with a good mix of sun, heat and showers. The shrubs and flowers we had planted last fall grew like crazy, and I was able to lick the front and back gardens into shape.

I was also able to start tackling some others issues around the house, especially organizing my study, the garage, the work room and the 'storeroom' (a basement room full of unopened moving boxes and furniture, dishes, pots and pans etc., 'things that we might want in the future---you never know').

They say that a rolling stone gathers no moss, but rolling Hunters have sure gathered a lot of stuff.

I would like to complete this work---in effect, to finish moving in---and I am going to ask if you would let me continue my 'blog-holiday' through July.

I will be back with a new blog, #119, on August 7, and will then have regular weekly Postings.

I promise.

In the meantime, here is a story that came to mind as I was going through a box of files from our Russian project.

I hope you enjoy it.

See you on August 7th!

Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary

Pat and I were married on June 24th, 1961 so this was our 50th anniversary. Our children hosted a party at the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto last Sunday, June 26th.

Here is a slideshow that they put together for the party, with photos of the immediate and extended families, and some witty multiple choice quizzes.

(One can view it as a slideshow or just browse through the pictures and quizzes.)

I have attached at the end of the Posting some pictures taken at the party by Pat's cousin, Catherine George (thanks Catherine for permission to use the photos!)

Preparing Canadian Consultants for the Cultural Challenges of Russian Dinners

In May 1995, we were getting ready to launch our project to help create model employment offices from Moscow to the Pacific Ocean. As part of that effort, we brought together for a week-long orientation session the 30 or so Canada Employment officials from across Canada who had volunteered to work in Russia.

Rather than rent hotel space in Ottawa, we took over a summer resort located between Ottawa and Kingston on the Rideau River. It had agreed to open a weekly earlier than the usual May 24th weekend opening, and to let us have the whole facility for our training.

The resort was ideal for an orientation session. We lived in comfortable cottages surrounding the main building that housed the dining room, and recreation rooms that we turned into meeting rooms. There were no city distractions, just pine trees, birds and the meandering river.

During the week we covered the tasks to be performed in Russia and provided training on matters such as how to travel to and in Russia, how to hire and work with interpreters, how to stay safe and healthy, and so on.

Consultants who had worked in Russia on other projects shared their experiences with our recruits.

In planning the orientation training we wanted to give the recruits a taste of a formal Russian dinner and especially the toasts---and the vodka. We decided to turn the last dinner, on Thursday evening, into a Russian dinner, and the resort agreed to get a liquor licence so we could have vodka with our meal.

Toasts in Russia are a highly developed art form and foreigners can appear to be boorish if they don't understand the tradition. The toasts have to include lavish praise for the hosts, patriotic comments about the motherland and commitments to work together for the mutual benefit of everyone, etc etc.

And, of course, vodka can be deadly for foreigners if they don't know how to handle it.

I have very positive memories of the week's orientation sessions in general but the dinner is another matter.

I made two mistakes that led to an embarrassing incident that can still jolt me awake at three A.M.

The first mistake came from performing a good deed (a New York friend likes to say that no good deed goes unpunished).

During the week, the owner of the resort came to me and said that some locals had seen activity at the resort and wondered if they could have dinner on Thursday evening. Would it be possible, he asked, to have three or four tables of outsiders at our special dinner, if the tables were set apart from our own, although in the same room?

As I mentioned, the agreement with the resort had been that we would have exclusive use of all the facilities for the week.

I should have said 'no' but the resort had been wonderfully helpful and obliging, and I knew that after being closed all winter the resort could use the extra revenue.

I agreed.

Big mistake!

The dinner started well. Between the salad and the soup courses, I made a toast in which I tried to capture the style and content of a typical Russian toast. We drained our vodka glasses and I sat down.

I noticed the outsiders, who seemed to be mainly retired folks, were watching us in that particularly Canadian way of trying not to appear to be watching.

Our recruits took turns at standing up and delivering toasts and they did well.

One of our people had done graduate work in Russia and he followed his toast with an invitation for us to join him in singing the Volga Boatmen song. He had a fine voice and was able to sing the words in Russian. He taught us some of the words of the refrain, and feeling a pleasant glow from the vodka, everyone joined in enthusiastically. (Click here for the Red Army Choir's rousing version of the song via YouTube.)

The outsiders continued their 'I'm watching-but-I'm-pretending-not-to-watch' observation of what was going on.

I was feeling quite happy at this point. The recruits were getting a pretty authentic experience of a convivial Russian dinner.

Then the recruit who had led us in the Volga Boatmen song, demonstrated that he was more than just a song man, he could dance as well. Squatting low on his haunches, he started a Cossack dance. Kicking one leg out after another while shouting Cossack cries, he wound his way among our tables. He was remarkably good (we later learned that he was a dance instructor in his spare time).

At this point, the outsiders gave up any pretence of not watching. They stopped eating and stared as our fellow whooped and hollered around the tables.

This was when I made my second mistake.

I began to worry that the outsiders might take away the impression that these were public servants---which they were (except for me, I was retired).

And horrors of horrors, that these public servants were drinking vodka.

And that the vodka was probably being paid for by Canadian taxpayers.

I knew that the dinner with its toasts was a perfectly legitimate training exercise. I also knew that the vodka was coming from money provided, not by Canadian taxpayers, but through our project contract with the Russian government.

But it could look bad and I began to see headlines in the Globe and Mail.

I kicked myself that I had agreed to let outsiders into our dinner.

I don't know whether the devil made me do it, or whether it was the vodka consumed to that point but I made a decision that has troubled me ever since.

I decided to use a little dose of what I believe is called 'disinformation' in the intelligence business. Leaning over to a person who was about to propose a toast, I suggested that he begin by saying, "We would like to thank out employer, XYZ, for making this dinner possible". (I am using XYZ instead of the name we actually used---that of a well-known high tech firm.)

Other persons in their toasts repeated that line and some embellished it with comments about what an intelligent, forward-thinking employer XYZ was.

The dinner wrapped up with more praise for XYZ, and then we left for our cottages.

As I was going down the steps from the dining room, one of the outsiders, an elderly woman with a cane, was having trouble with the steps. I gave her my arm and helped her to the bottom of the steps.

When we reached the bottom, she asked, "Are you really with XYZ?"

I replied that we weren't, but before I could explain who we were and the purpose behind the dinner, she cut in angrily, "I didn't think you were".

She gave me a fiercely disapproving look, and then headed for her car.

At that point I began to realize just how silly my little attempt at 'disinformation' had been.

From a training point of view the dinner had been a great success. The participants learned some valuable lessons about toasting---and about vodka---that helped them in their subsequent missions to Russia. And we identified a couple of persons who needed some special coaching on how to handle vodka.

But the disapproval of the elderly woman with the cane still makes me cringe when I recall her angry comment, "I didn't think you were".

Pictures of the 50th Anniversary

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See you on August 7th for Posting #119 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

POSTING #117

2011-05-28T10:52:00.000-07:00

NOTE

Now that the spring rains have finally stopped (fingers crossed!), the next month is going to be busy as we work to complete the landscaping changes we started last fall.

To give me some time for those gardening chores, the next Posting, number 118, will not appear until July 3rd.

I hope you will enjoy the great weather that June is going to bring us (fingers still crossed!!) and please come back on July 3rd!

A Speech I Couldn't Give

I was asked to speak on May 6th to the 2011 class of Frontier College labourer-teachers as part of their orientation training for summer assignments working with and teaching migrant workers on Ontario farms.

Officials of the College thought that the new recruits might like to hear about some of my experiences as a labourer-teacher.

Unfortunately, a bout of acute bronchitis prevented me from speaking to the group.

I have written often about my Frontier College experiences in this blog and I thought readers might find the talk interesting.

So, here is the speech I couldn't give.

000

Good evening!

It is 55 years, almost to the day, since I and 20 or so university students attended an orientation session at the Frontier College headquarters in what had once been a stately home on Sherbourne Street in Toronto.

When I was considering whether to accept an invitation to speak to you, I tried to think what I would have thought if the organizers of that 1956 orientation session had brought in an old guy from the class of 1901 to speak to us.

I think I would have been dubious about the usefulness of listening to some geezer reminisce about his experiences from the remote past.

My first inclination, therefore, was to refuse the invitation to speak---but I gave it some more thought.

I remember feeling pretty scared back in 1956 about what I was going to face as a labourer-teacher. Would I be able to cope with the work, the teaching and the living conditions in the place where I would be spending the next four months?

Perhaps you are also feeling a little scared about what you have got yourselves into.

I asked myself: What can an alumnus from the distant past say that would be relevant to the 2011 class? Is there something that I could say that would allay somewhat the natural nervousness that one has before going into the field?

In the end, I decided to talk about four things. First, the labouring part of being a labourer-teacher; then the teaching part; thirdly, the importance of stories (I'll explain more about that later on); and finally, the need to look after yourselves.

Starting with 'labouring', I didn't sleep very well the first night in that bush camp bunk house at Dog River, north of Thunder Bay. Part of the problem was that there were 39 other men snoring, snorting, and talking in their sleep, but the big problem was just nerves. I finally fell asleep--- just before, it seemed, someone came to wake us up.

That was the last night I had trouble sleeping.

After that I fell into bed exhausted from the labouring and slept soundly.

The first two weeks were the toughest---until sunburn turned into tan, blisters into calluses, and flabby, essay-writing, muscles into reasonably toned-up sinews.

I found that watching the other workers taught me a great deal about how to perform whatever task we were doing, from ditch digging to hauling logs out of the water. My first attempts were always clumsy but gradually I became more skilled.

The men noticed that I was trying to improve and they seemed to respect that.

In my orientation training I was told that the founder of Frontier College, Alfred Fitzpatrick, had said that labourer-teachers must win the respect of the workers on the point of a shovel.

I found that to be true.

I also found that I enjoyed and felt good about developing manual skills.

I think you will as well.

Let's turn to teaching.

In some ways, I found the teaching role to be more challenging than the labouring one.

I didn't feel I was very successful with formal, class-room type language training. It was hard to keep the workers challenged when the level of English knowledge varied so greatly. Some were beginners while others in the classes were at an intermediate or advanced level.

I had more success with informal, one-on-one language coaching either during work or after dinner.

Language training techniques have progressed a great deal in the last 55 years and I am sure you will have more success than I had.

Citizenship training went better. People were eager to get Canadian citizenship and my political science background made it easy to coach them on our constitution, levels of government and so on.

As another part of the teaching role, the College had provided a 16 mm projector and I held film shows using National Film Board documentaries. In that pre-television era, the shows were very popular.

During one of the shows, the electricity, produced by the camp's diesel generators, surged and blew out the projection lamp. I had a spare but when I tried to remove the burned-out lamp I found that the surge had expanded the bulb so that it wouldn't drop out of its compartment. As I tried to figure out what to do, the audience got restless and I began to sweat.

One of my worker friends looked at the problem, went out and came back with a large screw driver. He stabbed the lamp several times until it broke. It was then an easy matter to replace the lamp.

The whole experience reminded me of a saying that was popular in the camp at that time: "The bigger the problem, the bigger the hammer."

Every few weeks the College sent in a large wooden box with donated paperback books---this informal library was well used.

Looking back, it seems to me that in addition to those efforts to provide some education and entertainment, I played a role somewhat similar to the letter writer in villages in India. Workers asked for help in understanding and responding to letters from Canadian businesses. I remember having a discussion with Lazlo, a Hungarian Refugee, about how to end a letter to a bank. I suggested ``Yours truly`` but he preferred ``Yours very truly``. He said with a big smile that the `very` made it ``nicer``. We went with the `very`.

I also found myself being the arbiter in settling bunkhouse arguments. For example, two fellows came to me with a question: ``Are the tides controlled by the moon?`` I said they were.

That brought a rejoinder: How come there are tides when there is no moon? I am not sure I convinced the loser that the moon is still there even when we can't see it.

I was pleased to learn that in addition to helping with English you will also be offering training in computer skills---I am sure that will be very popular.

I'd like to shift now to my third theme: the importance of stories.

There is a plaque in the sidewalk outside the New York City Public Library with a quotation from Muriel Rukeyser, " The universe is made of stories, not atoms".

The quotation can have many meanings but for me it means that how we understand and interact with the world is determined by the personal universe of stories that we carry around with us. The larger and more varied our collection of stories is, the richer our experience of life can be.

How do we go about collecting stories?

When I was young there was a columnist, Greg Clarke, who told wonderful stories--- humourous, sad, touching, but always entertaining---about his experiences as a soldier in World War I, and then as a journalist, a parent, and a friend.

A suspicious reader once said to Clarke, "How come you have so many stories?"

The questioner seemed to be suggesting that Clarke made up the stories, that they had never happened.

Clarke replied that he just put himself in places where stories could happen.

By joining Frontier College, I put myself---and you are putting yourselves--- in a place where stories can happen. You could have worked in an office, a store, a restaurant or some other 'normal' summer job and that would have been fine. There would have been some stories.

But you have chosen something more challenging, and something that is therefore richer in story opportunities.

For example, in my weekly blog, Letter from Virgil, I have recounted the story told by one of the workers, Fred (not his real name), a quiet, reserved man, who had fought with the Canadian Army during World War I in the trenches in France. During artillery attacks he would dream of returning to Canada, getting married and having a family.

But during one of the attacks he was wounded and lost his manhood.

He told me about spending many angry years drinking and fighting all over North America as he tried to come to grips with his situation. In the end he was able to find something approaching a normal life. (The full story can be found here).

By the way, if you are interested in other stories about my Frontier College experiences, I suggest that you log onto my blog, Letter from Virgil, and then in the Google Custom Search box at the top of the postings enter the name of one of the three places I worked: Dog River, Tulsequah, or Kenora.

You will have your own stories and I would encourage you to capture them. Writing them down will fix them in your memory---perhaps in a journal, or emails to friends and relatives, or as Facebook entries.

Finally, I would like to say a word about the need to look after yourselves.

When I was a labourer-teacher the world was a safer place. The sun didn't pose the hazards it does today to skin and eyes. There weren't so many noisy machines that could damage hearing. There were fewer toxic chemicals.

At our orientation we were warned about the dangers of dehydration, and about the need to keep our electrolytes up---by, for example, adding lemon juice to drinking water.

That was it, and that was perfectly adequate.

But the world has changed.

When we go south in the winter, I am always upset at the sight of migrant workers on golf courses and in residential areas working with leaf blower engines strapped to their backs but without any ear protection, spraying chemicals without face masks, and working in the bright sun without sun glasses.

I am hoping that Ontario labour standards will help protect you and the migrant workers.

Please take care of yourselves.

And have a wonderful, safe summer full of stories!

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See you on July 3rd for Posting #118 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

POSTING #116

2011-05-21T10:58:00.000-07:00

Ottawa Art Theft

In March this year, an article appeared in the "Your Ottawa Region" newspaper reporting on the theft of a painting from a Sussex Drive gallery.

" The 23-by-30-centimetre painting, which was selling for $750, was plucked off the wall of Gordon Harrison Gallery on Feb.20 while about 20 people were inside the shop, said Phil Emond, an employee at the gallery.

'We had a busy Sunday afternoon with many clients in gallery and when we were closing when things got little calmer, I looked around and there was a missing spot on the wall,' said Emond."

According to the article, the painting, which was by Bhat Boy, an Ottawa artist, "...depicts a young couple holding hands at the intersection of Sparks and O’Connor streets with the Parliament Buildings in the background".

Here is an image of the painting, as shown on the www.crimestoppers.ca website.

The article goes on:

"While the artist said it feels bad to lose your painting, he is also flattered.
"'I have now joined the club with artists like Leonardo DaVinci, and Edvard Munch now that I have had my art stolen from a gallery,' Bhat Boy said.
"He said he has had his work stolen twice before. In both incidents, the artwork was eventually returned, but one did suffer some damage.
"'My experience is that it is usually because someone covets the work, and not because of any sort of monetary reason.' ”

I liked the article.

The location depicted in the painting is one of my favourites in Ottawa---full of memories of pleasant lunch-time strolls along the Sparks Street Mall.

I also enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek attitude of the artist that the theft meant he had 'arrived', had joined an exclusive club of artists whose works have been stolen.

And I liked the generous spin that Bhat Boy puts upon the intentions of the thieves.

It was good to see that he was growing into, not just an accomplished artist, but a well-balanced person with a good sense of fun.

You see, we knew Bhat Boy years ago, when he was just getting started.

"And now", as Paul Harvey, the late radio columnist with the deep voice, would have said, 'here is the rest of the story".

In the spring of 1997 we lived at 187 Glebe Avenue in Ottawa, in a pleasant Queen Anne revival style house, built around 1911. Once the children started to leave for college Pat opened a very successful bed and breakfast, called Blue Spruces.

Although it was an attractive house, it didn't photograph very well. A large maple tree near the sidewalk blocked much of the view from the front while two enormous blue spruces obstructed the view from the side.

We had been using photos---similar to the one below---of the house on B&B brochures and web sites but never felt that the photos did the house justice.

We decided to try to find someone who could provide a sketch of the house that would de-emphasize the trees and place greater prominence on the house itself.

Our first choice, an artist at a local architect's office, prepared a sketch that while accurate and correct had very little character.

A neighbour said that she had heard of a young artist who was good at capturing the soul of houses and landscapes. She said that although he had a perfectly fine name---Ian Van Lock---he had adopted a new name, Bhat Boy.

I phoned the number she gave me and when a pleasant-voiced woman with a soft British accent answered, I asked if I could speak with Bhat Boy.

The women, whom I took to be his mother, said he was out but she would have 'Ian' call me when he got home. It didn't seem that she had fully bought into the new name.

Bhat Boy (or Ian if you wish) called and we discussed the sketch we were hoping he could do for us.

A few days later, a slim young man showed up at our door with a pen and sketch pad.

He looked like so many of the young high school students that walked past our house each day on their way to Glebe Collegiate.

Except for a ' court jester' toque!

The toque was made from bright oranges, reds, and blues, with three floppy points. Wikipedia claims that the three points of a jester's hat represent a donkey's ears and tail. In medieval times the points had little bells, but I don't recall that Bhat Boy's toque had bells (I could be wrong).

After saying that he understood what we wanted, he crossed the street, sat on the steps of the house opposite and began to sketch.

Pat and I looked across at him, with his head and toque bent over the pad, and wondered what the sketch would look like.

After several hours of sketching, he told us that he would do some more work on it in his studio. We would have the finished product in a few days.

Shortly after, he came back with the finished product--- see below.

We loved it. The trees now framed the house instead of obscuring it, and we admired the detail that he had lavished on the bricks, shingles, windows and other details of the house.

We felt that his sketch had brought out the personality of the house---a little spooky even (perhaps influenced by this father's occupation---see below).

We used the sketch in our bed and breakfast advertising. Some guests commented that they had been attracted by the interesting image, having passed by the hum-drum photos used by other B&Bs.

The framed sketch is now displayed in our Virgil home, along with the images of some of the other places where we have lived.

In his stunningly attractive website, Bhat Boy gives us a little information about himself, some of it factual, some of it tongue-in-cheek.

"Bhat Boy was born in London, England somewhere in the latter half of the 20th Century. He immigrated to Canada on a steam ship in 1966, and became a naturalized Canadian and grew up in the Nation's Capital with his parents - a cleaning lady and a spy."

"I have been a self employed painter since 1992. I am represented by Art Fifteen Gallery in Fort Lauderdale Florida, and the Gordon Harrison Gallery in Ottawa and I have been showing with the Art of Imagination Society all over Europe and North America since the 1990's. My unique style is representational but imaginative, often conveying complex ideas and scenarios. I am a Fine Arts graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, my studies included a year in Florence Italy where I studied traditional renaissance painting. I live in Ottawa, Canada, the city where I grew up. I have developed my own niche in the art market, and to this day most of my livelihood is made from commissioned works for individuals and corporations....

"I am always being asked questions about my paintings. What does it mean? What is the story you are trying to tell? For my part, I enjoy engaging the imagination of spectators. The very fact that my painting inspires questions underscores its value as a work of art. Some of the characters that inhabit my works are deliberately designed to raise questions. I paint Nuns because people have so many preconceived ideas about who they are and what they should be doing, as a result they make an excellent counterpoint in my paintings to contrast with other elements. Dragons usually represent the darker side of the male psyche in my painting, while goldfish represent our relationship to the environment in the scenes that unfold on my canvases."

Here are some images of Bhat Boy's work, which I am including with his kind permission.

This is one of a number of houses built in Ottawa's Glebe area by a contractor, Younghusband, who was noted for his attractive, well-constructed homes

Bhat Boy calls himself an Envisionist and in this painting he imagines the view of Ottawa that Canada Geese would have as they head south in the autumn.

"The cold water of the Ottawa River flows past the National Gallery as the city is blanketed with snow. A crow checks out the enormous spider, wondering if it is too big for lunch. Earns"The cold water of the Ottawa River flows past the National Gallery as the city is blanketed with snow. A crow checks out the enormous spider, wondering if it is too big for lunch. Earnscliffe appears to be on a perch overlooking the Rideau Falls and Green Island with New Edinburgh and the Anglican Church set behind. In the foreground is the Royal Mint and the basilica, with St Bridget’s and the Parliament buildings in the background, all laid out as if Lower Town were a little village of towers."cliffe appears to be on a perch overlooking the Rideau Falls and Green Island with New Edinburgh and the Anglican Church set behind. In the foreground is the Royal Mint and the basilica, with St Bridget’s and the Parliament buildings in the background, all laid out as if Lower Town were a little village of towers."


"Lone Moose looks out over Algonquin park in the last golden days of Autumn."

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Bhat Boy is now taking a sabbatical in London England.

I can't wait to see the fresh interpretation he will bring to iconic images such as Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, and London Bridge.

I have a feeling that Londoners will love his work.

A side story. Some time after the sketch had been completed, Pat was in a gallery near Almonte, Ontario and saw a Bhat Boy painting. Pat told the owner that Bhat Boy had sketched our house.

Impressed, she shouted, "You have a Bhat Boy!"

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We would like to wish Bhat Boy every success in his burgeoning career.

And finally, if you see the stolen painting, please call Crime Stoppers!

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See you on May 29th for Posting #117 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

POSTING #115

2011-05-14T07:39:00.000-07:00

Day Trips to the US

With the Canadian dollar above par with the US greenback, lots of Canadians are taking day trips to shopping malls across the border.

Here are a few stories about border crossing experiences.

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Last year we were waiting on the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls for our turn to be seen by American customs. We were stopped fairly far out on the bridge, over the water.

Suddenly, the processing of cars stopped. The green indicators above the previously 'open' lanes turned to red, and the customs officials left their booths to move among the waiting cars, obviously looking for something.

We asked an official what was going on. He said that a radiation detector had gone off and the bridge was in lock-down until the source had been discovered.

Now, the Rainbow Bridge is an engineering marvel with superb views of the Falls and the Niagara Gorge. It is also high---very high---above the Niagara River.

Pat and I don't have an abnormal fear of heights (let's just call it 'a healthy respect for heights) but we always breathe a little easier when we reach the other side and there is solid rock under us instead of rushing water.

Stuck out in the middle of the bridge, we have sometimes mused about what would happen if an earthquake hit. Then we try to remember what you are supposed to do if your car goes into the water. Are you supposed to roll the windows down, or up? Do you open the doors or keep them shut?

But being told that a radiation detector had gone off, introduced a whole new level of scariness.

The worry part of the brain went into overdrive.

Just when we had reached the point of blaming each other for not having reminded the other to phone the lawyer to bring our wills up to date, the Customs processing started again.

When we finally got to the Customs booth, the official told us that the problem was that a person in one of the waiting cars had been undergoing medical tests involving the use of radioactive isotopes.

Imagine the sensitivity of the radiation detectors that they could pick up a few isotopes floating around in someone's blood stream!

Amazing!

And reassuring!

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We don't smuggle.

We declare everything---including, as Pat likes to say, replacement tubes of toothpaste we have bought on a trip.

It is not because we are people of superior moral character---we probably fit somewhere in the middle range of 'moralness'.

There are two reasons why we don't smuggle.

First, we are lousy liars. If we tried to tell a whopper, our ears would go red, we would sweat, and our eyes would shift guiltily from side to side.

Second, we are scared of what could happen if we are caught in a lie. People we know tried to smuggle some jeans into Canada and were told they couldn't bring anything into Canada for two years. We have heard of people having their cars confiscated.

So, we were shocked when, a few years, ago we went shopping with a couple in the US and the wife told us she wasn't going to declare the coat she had bought.

She had brought the bag with the coat into the restaurant where we were having lunch and started to remove the price tags.

"What are you doing/", we asked.

"I'll wear the coat. They'll never know."

We reminded her of our no-smuggling policy. Reluctantly, she put the coat back in the bag.

We were obviously no fun to go border shopping with.

When we got to Canadian Customs we did what we always do. When the officer asked for the value of the purchases, we gave him the total amount for everyone in the car---four, in this case---down to the last penny, with a sheaf of supporting bills in hand. The officer, in his turn, divided the total by four and deciding that the per-passenger cost wasn't material enough to bother with, waved us through.

The lesson here is that women going shopping in the US should always take at least one man with them.

Men don't shop!

The other fellow and I had bought a pair of socks and a belt between us.

The secret is, I believe, what investment experts refer to as 'averaging down'.

But a warning: this won't work if one of the men has his heart set on a leather jacket.

You better leave him at home, or convince him that he can do far better at the Bay!

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When we lived in Grimsby, an Ottawa couple came to visit us.

They set off one day, their plan being to drive along the Niagara Parkway all the way to Fort Erie and then return to Grimsby on the QEW.

They had a delightful trip along the Parkway but got confused with all the construction near the Peace Bridge. They got turned around somehow and found themselves heading for Buffalo and the

Desperately trying to figure out what they had done wrong, they missed the last exit before the bridge. They ended up in the Duty Free shop, which is on the Canadian side of the river, but inside the no-man's land.

They thought they could just turn around but an official told them they would have to go though Canadian Customs since they were now legally out of the country.

The conversation at the Canadian booth went something like this:

"When did you leave

Canada

" We never left Canada!"

They explained what had happened.

" What did you purchase at the duty free shop?"

"We didn't buy anything, we just want to get back to Grimsby."

He grinned and welcomed them back to Canada.

And this wasn't a doddering old couple, they are two of the savviest people we know.

Just a warning. Until the construction is finished and the proper signage is installed, be careful of the Peace Bridge (the same warning should also apply to the constantly-under-construction Queenston-Lewiston Bridge).

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Once, crossing the Peace Bridge in Buffalo we were behind a car of what seemed to be elderly people, As we reached the American side, the driver slowed down and appeared to have trouble deciding which inspection lane to join.

He finally joined one line-up and we joined an adjacent one.

We watched as the car of elderly people worked its way to the front of the line. When it became their turn, the driver pulled under the inspection canopy, paused and then drove on, slowly, without waiting for the Customs Officer to ask any questions.

Lights and sirens went off as the car meandered in a confused sort of way, with officials running over trying to flag it down.

Our turn came and we had the absolutely briefest examination ever.

With his eyes following the unfolding drama, the Customs Officer asked, " Canadians?:

When we said 'yes', he shouted, " Go ahead".

I have often thought that if an author were writing a novel about people trying to smuggle something into the US, he could have the smugglers follow a decoy car of elderly people.

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Some attractive teenage girls we know once decided to do some shopping in the

The

official asked them, "What is the purpose of the trip?'

The young and somewhat flighty driver responded,, "Just bored, I guess."

The official looked at her and her friends for a moment and then waved them over for a secondary examination.

The other girls, angry at the driver for her flip remark and anxious to start trying on shoes at the Shoe Factory Outlet, glared at her as they were led into an interview room.

The examining officer, a strict, by-the-book type with no sense of humour, decided that they should be returned to Canada.

They were escorted back to their car, but when they got in, it wouldn't start.

We understand it didn't take long for some young male officers to spot the attractive damsels in distress and to come to their aid.

After some good-natured flirting, the girls were soon on their way.

Back to

Canada

The shoe stores would have to wait for another time.

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See you on May 22nd for Posting #116 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Tags: day trips to the US, Queenston-Lewiston Bridge, Rainbow Bridge, Peace Bridge

POSTING #114

2011-05-07T07:23:00.000-07:00

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Some Thoughts on Water-Efficient Toilets and Blue Jeans

Someone may ask, 'What in the world is the connection between toilets and blue jeans?'

Good question!

I suppose a Buddhist could argue that there is some connection in 'cosmic unity' and 'beingness' between these two things.

However, I would not make that link.

The fact is that the two subjects are linked in my mind because of a recent trip that Pat and I took during which the two subjects came up.

Let's start with toilets.

Water-Efficient Toilets.

I have long been a strong proponent of water-efficient toilets. It has seemed to me that it is terribly inefficient to use between 3 and 5 gallons (may I use US gallons for ease of calculation?) of purified, polished water to get rid of a few ounces of waste.

As an aside, a wag in Guelph thought there could be social benefits to frequent flushing. He posted this notice above a toilet, "Flush often, Brantford needs the water." (Guelph and Brantford are of course part of the Grand River system, with Guelph being 'up-water' from Brantford.)

Our new home has---as required by code---toilets that use only 1.6 gallons per flush. The toilets also have 2 buttons so that even less than 1.6 gallons can be dispensed for 'liquid waste'.

Frequently, the rush of water will be insufficient to wash away all the waste. A second flush may be needed to complete the job.

But sometimes that is not sufficient. The toilet becomes blocked---the technical term for which is, 'bunged up'.

The cry then goes out, 'Get the plunger!'. In more genteel households than ours the cry might be "Would someone please bring the plumber's helper?'

In the old days, plungers sat in a dark corner of the basement collecting cobwebs, and were called into service only once or twice a year.

Now, as I say, they are used more often. Cobwebs don't have a chance to form. In fact, the plungers barely have a chance to dry.

Inconvenient? Yes, but it is a small price to pay for using scarce water resources more wisely (and to hell with the good citizens of Brantford).

Now that is my view, but this is an issue that has important gender aspects. Women have told me that they must use more toilet tissue because of the nature and geography of their personal plumbing. Therefore, although I haven't been able to find any data, it is claimed that women experience more blocked toilets than men.

In the view of these women, the water-efficient toilet is yet another way in which society discriminates against them.

The water-efficient toilet was obviously designed by a male engineer to be installed by male plumbers.....

I think we better move on quickly to our recent trip.

For more than 10 years, we have been staying two or three times a year at the same hotel. When we booked our most recent stay, the hotel clerk told us proudly that the hotel had been completely renovated.

It was grand to see the huge, arena-sized flat-screen TVs, the firmer beds, the up-dated sofas and chairs, the CEO-style desk with four (!) electrical outlets, and the discreetly hidden fridge and microwave.

And a new 1.6 gallon flush toilet.

Which acted up the first night.

The assistant manager came up with a plunger in a plastic bag. He unsheathed the plunger and began to puddle away amongst the waste in our toilet.

Reader's Digest used to have articles about life's embarrassing moments. Having a stranger push a plunger up and down in your toilet to free your waste has to be one of the absolutely most embarrassing moments.

When the toilet was clear, I asked if he could leave the plunger with us. I had a feeling that we might have to use it again. He looked at me with some doubt, as though he was not sure that I could be entrusted with such a high-tech gadget, but he finally agreed.

My hunch proved to be right---we had to use the plunger again in the morning.

After breakfast, we reported a problem with the room---unrelated to the toilet---and the hotel found us another room. We moved all our belongings to the new room---but I forgot the plunger.

That evening the toilet in the new room malfunctioned, and again we had to call the desk.

The young man didn't object at all when I offered to fix the toilet myself and easily agreed to leave the plunger with us.

We chatted a bit about our problems with their toilets and he acknowledged, with a little coaxing, that the hotel had been having many complaints about sluggish toilets since the renovation. The hotel had tried various remedies including slimming down the toilet tissue but nothing had fixed the problem.

He then trotted out what I think was the authorized talking point. The toilet flushing problem was caused by the town's low water pressure, something over which the hotel had, of course, no control.

I couldn't figure out how water pressure could be the culprit. It might influence the speed with which the toilet tank refilled after a flush, but once the tank was full, the water dropped by gravity into the bowl.

Later research showed that some toilet companies have experimented with a pressurized tank that stores the water at the same pressure as the water system. The water in this approach doesn't drop by gravity into the bowl but is blown into the bowl with a force that is supposed to carry away all the waste.

My impression is that the pressurized tanks have not been very successful---they are reported to be costly and unreliable.

In any event, a quick check showed that the hotel's toilets didn't have pressurized tanks---just the usual gravity flow tanks.

The young man said that the problem was very frustrating.

In this he was echoing a comment made by Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky during a committee hearing on the work of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Glaring at an EPA official, he complained about the Agency's regulations on energy efficiency standards.

“Frankly, my toilets don’t work in my house, and I blame you.”

Some people have blamed the toilet manufacturers, who in turn claim that the toilets that leave their factories will function properly. They accuse the plumbers who install the toilets who, they claim, are monkeying around with the toilet tank innards and changing the factory settings.

As all this finger pointing carries on, I am happy to say that entrepreneurs are on the case. They are busy designing bathroom caddies that will make sure the plunger is always handy.

Here is a caddy that carries both a plunger and a brush and sells for only $10!

The manufacturer claims that the "Discreet caddy hides two bathroom essentials". I guess that is 'hides' as in 'hides in plain view'. (Kind of brings Osama Bin Laden's compound to mind, doesn't it?)

I gather there are other caddies on the market, some costing several hundred dollars, that are so elegant they would look quite at home in the bathroom of a 5th Avenue condo.

When I asked the young man at the hotel if they had thought of placing a plunger in each bathroom, he said that management had suggested that to the chain's head office. The reply was that 'it would not be professional to have a plunger in the bathrooms'.

Since it is obviously not 'professional' to force guests to call the desk when a toilet malfunctions, I expect that head office will have to change its policy.

If it doesn't, we will start asking for a plunger when we check in.

Blue Jeans

During the trip I bought a new pair of blue jeans.

Unlike the stiff, deep blue denim jeans of yore, the new ones had been softened, faded, and abraded through repeated washes with rocks and goodness knows what chemicals.

They looked as though they had been worn for years by a busy bricklayer.

You know the look!

Pat laughed when she saw them. "When we were young, jeans like that would have been cut into squares for quilts".

According to the BBC, the old blue denim is making a comeback, only now it is being marketed as 'Virgin Denim'.

Apparently the Virgin Denim jeans are especially popular with young girls. I understand that spandex is added to the denim so that the jeans hug the legs and bottoms of the young things.

And now some older women are buying the jeans, because they lift the butt---they are referred to as bras for the butt.

What would we do without the BBC?

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Talking about butts, reminds me of a story that an American friend tells. She was at a charity event in Connecticut hosted by a well-known actor famous for his dazzling blue eyes and his come-hither smile.

According to our friend she was quite smitten by the eyes and smile.

Until she watched him walk away.

To her horror, he had no butt, just a flat backside.

I pointed out that he probably had had a perfectly fine butt when he was younger but time and gravity had done their dirty.

The response was that if aging women have to fight time and gravity, then so should men.

So men, perhaps our next jeans should have a butt lifter feature.

Just saying.....

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See you on May 15th for Posting #115 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

POSTING #113

2011-04-30T07:43:00.000-07:00

The Arab Spring

Recently, a friend who knew I had done some consulting work in the Middle East asked what I thought of the demonstrations taking place across the region.

"They're wonderful!", I replied.

I told him it had been very frustrating watching bright, well-educated young people coming out of universities and colleges with little hope of decent jobs.

As a result of the generosity of the US, Europe, Britain, Australia, Canada and other countries, most Arab nations were able to train professors and teachers and build colleges and universities.

But the creation of modern educational systems had not been matched by comparable changes in the political and business institutions.

Young graduates were not free to express themselves, to be creative, or to apply what they had learned.

And corruption and favouritism meant that whatever jobs existed were filled by the children of the rich and powerful.

I was upset that western aid was being wasted, and frightened that the frustrated young would feel that the only recourse was to join a terrorist group like Al Qaeda.

And the danger was real.

Early in my experience in the Middle East a man asked me if I could keep an eye on a relative who was studying in Canada. I thought at first that the man was worried about whether the young man could cope with life (and the climate!) in Canada and keep his grades up. Pat and I had dinner with the student and it soon became clear that he was coping very well at his college.

When I reported this to the man in Jordan, it turned out that his real concern was that the young man might fall under the sway of terrorist recruiters working among Arab youths in North America.

(I don't think the relative had to worry about that particular young man. He is probably working on his second or third million.)

Now that the political structures in many Middle Eastern countries are being reformed there will be a new openness in business.

I concluded by telling the friend who had asked what I thought of the Arab Spring that I was sure that the results would be messy as hell, in the short and medium term.

But democracy with all its bickering is a pretty hardy plant, well adapted to today's social, economic, cultural and technological changes---changes that will only accelerate in the years to come.

I remember feeling depressed thirty or so years ago when reading studies about South Africa. It seemed as though the whites would never surrender their control and would even use their nuclear arms (remember they did have nuclear weapons!).

And the Africans would never give up their fight for freedom.

I could only see a calamitous blood bath.

I certainly never thought I would live to see the day when South Africa, controlled by Africans, would host one of the most successful World Cups ever.

Let's all welcome the Arab Spring!

We can continue to offer help and assistance but let's back off a little and let the Arabs find their own way to their own kind of democracy.

The Kingdom of Jordan and the Arab Spring

Jordan has had its own Arab Spring demonstrations but nothing comparable to those in other Middle Eastern nations.

I saw an article by one pundit who argued that this was because Jordan was a monarchy, and was therefore inherently more stable than the Middle Eastern nations that were controlled by family dynasties.

That seemed to me to be a pretty superficial analysis.

I think that a good part of the explanation is found in how the Jordanian monarchs have conducted themselves.

To illustrate that point, here are four stories I picked up while working in Jordan.

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A Palestinian friend in Jordan told me about how he and his young family were suddenly expelled along with several hundred thousand other Palestinians from Kuwait in 1991 after the Gulf War.

Angered at Yasser Arafat's support for the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, the newly restored Kuwaiti government gave all Palestinians one week to leave Kuwait.

My friend had been living in Kuwait for years, and had a good job with an oil company.

Having no choice, he loaded up his car with his wife and children and whatever belongings they could fit into the vehicle and headed to Jordan.

Despite being a poor country, Jordan accepted a huge influx of Palestinians. My friend was grateful that Jordan had taken them in but he and his uprooted family faced great hardships as their new country struggled to absorb them.

He said he would never forget King Hussein's response to the education of the displaced children. The King told his Prime Minister that places had to be found in schools for all the children.

School authorities protested they didn't have enough teachers, desks or space for the newcomers.

The King told them to fit the children in.

My friend said that children sat on the floor, stood against the walls, studied in the school yards but they all got an education.

000

Another friend told me about King Hussein's respect for others. The King was to attend a school ceremony at which one of his children would graduate. The King arrived early and sat in the audience, chatting with other parents. Some members of the Royal Family, intent on making a grand entrance, waited until the program was about to begin and then swept down the aisle.

That was not King Hussein's style.

000

I heard this story from several people about King Abdullah when he took over after the death of his father, Hussein.

He used to dress in humble costumes and go out at night with a scarf covering part of his face. Apparently, he would stand in line in places where the poor sought to get service---for example in hospitals and bus stations---and he watched what happened.

The next morning he would tell his ministers what he had witnessed.

And about the changes they were going to make!

000

This story happened while I was in Jordan in early 2001.

Leaving his palace one morning, King Abdullah stopped to chat with some men who were laying tiles. He found that the workmen were all from either Egypt or Syria, there were no Jordanians.

He called in his Minister of Labour and asked him to find out why, despite high unemployment, the contractor was not using any Jordanian workers.

When he was told that Jordanian workers didn't have the required skills, he asked that a training program be set up immediately. When the Minister said that his budget wouldn't allow for that, the King provided $5 million of his own money to fund the program.

000

As the demonstrations in Jordan show, there are problems that the country must address. Accommodation and food are expensive. Jobs are scarce. There are allegations of governmental corruption. The political system has to be more transparent and responsible.

But I sense that there is an underlying feeling that the King is sincere in his efforts to correct the problems.

Ending on a Lighter Note

I enjoy bumper stickers and signs.

Here are two examples that were new to me.

A car hitched to a large Recreational Vehicle had a sign in its back window: "I go where I'm towed".

A sign appeared overnight on a neighbour's lawn: "House for Sale by Owner---Wife Included". When I stopped by to chat, it turned out that friends of the owner had put up the sign to 'celebrate' his 60th birthday. His wife was not amused

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See you on May 8th for Posting #114 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

POSTING #112

2011-04-23T03:19:00.000-07:00

Pat's Bingo Moment

I was working in my basement study when I heard my wife, Pat, shouting and shouting.

Racing upstairs (now that's a lie---at my age I don't race anywhere---let's just say I 'hurried'!) I found Pat sitting in an easy chair with her iPad on her lap shouting "Bingo, bingo, bingo!"

No, she hadn't found a new iPad app that lets one play bingo. (I have since discovered that there actually is a bingo app!)

She had been using Google to research a drop leaf table she had found in the attic of our local museum, the Niagara Historical Museum. The table was off in a corner, with a rope around the middle holding its leaves together.

Pat, a volunteer at the museum, had been asked by the new curator to use the experience she had gained in years of buying and selling antiques to review the collection of tables, chairs and other pieces of furniture to see whether the description in the museum's database of artifacts was accurate and complete.

A couple of weeks after starting her task, Pat came across the drop leaf table with the rope around its middle. It had elegant proportions, with long, slender legs and neat brass feet. It was obviously very old and very beautifully made.

With the help of other volunteers, Pat was able to get a quick look at the underside and found two markings stamped into the wood. Markings on antiques are, of course, like pure gold as one tries to identify their maker and age.

The following Monday I went with Pat to help decipher the two stamped impressions using a strong light and a good magnifying glass (see Sherlock work!). We untied the rope and found that only minor repairs would be needed. The impressions were quite distinct, but unfortunately the "JME" and "J.Canabar" didn't mean anything to us.

We took photographs of the markings, tied the table back up and went home.

Pat then used Google to try to find the meanings of the markings.

After a number of unsuccessful tries she had her 'bingo moment', which brought me hurrying from my basement lair.

The table was made by Joseph Gengenbach between 1766 and 1797. He was a member of the JMF, the most highly acclaimed guild of cabinet makers in France at that time.

The curator is delighted as the copy of the article from a local weekly paper shows (you may have to click on the image to be able to read the article).

The table is in the big leagues of antique furniture. A slightly smaller Gengenbach table was sold at a Christie's auction in London on December 9, 2010 for $19,763.

Since the article appeared, a local woman has provided some clues about how the table may have ended up in Niagara-on-the-Lake and in our museum. The curator is exploring these tips.

Meanwhile steps are being taken to have the table restored---it is not a big job but it will require an expert with special training. The table will then be moved from its corner in the attic to a place of prominence in the public display area.

The Breakfast Club

The municipality of Niagara-on-the-Lake---of which Virgil is a component---is overrun with volunteers.

You try to have lunch with someone only to find that they are busy that day doing some volunteer work with the Shaw Festival Guild, the Friends of Fort George, the Friends of Laura Secord or with one of the dozens of other voluntary organizations in the area.

The supply of retired persons willing to work for nothing is so great that one has to pay an annual fee to work for certain organizations!

As an aside, I should say that younger members of the community sometimes joke about the growing number of retired people, and talk about the town becoming 'God's Waiting Room'. (I want to assure you that there's a lot of activity in this waiting room!)

In contrast to all this volunteering, and to all these good works, there is the Breakfast Club.

I first heard about the Breakfast Club after giving a talk on my Russian experiences as part of a lecture series put on by our library. A woman who had been in the audience asked if I would be prepared to talk about Russia to the Breakfast Club.

When I asked for more details on the Club, she said it was hard to describe. It would be better if Pat and I went to a meeting of the Club as its guests.

At 8 AM on the second Tuesday of the following month, Pat and I entered a bright, cheerful room at the Riverbend Inn. There were about 40 people, mostly men and mostly retired, but with a significant sprinkling of younger people and women.

Our host, the woman at the library talk, introduced us to the members and we chatted until the call came that the buffet breakfast was ready. It was a hearty breakfast with pancakes and syrup, ham and eggs, sausages, toast, fruit and excellent coffee.

After people had finished their breakfasts, Bob Waugh---one of the founders of the Club, a retired executive from GM, and 91 or 92 years young---welcomed the guests and explained a little about the Club.

With the wit and timing of a stand-up comic, he explained that the Club is best described by what it isn't.

It has no constitution, no board of directors, no Annual General Meetings, no secretary, no minutes, no membership applications, no dues, no bank account, and no fund-raising projects.

Bob looked down at his Blackberry to see if he had forgotten anything.

Oh, he added, breakfast is free for guests but $13 for members. Guests are welcome to attend future meetings but they will have to pay for their own breakfast. There is an honour system and members put their money in baskets on each table.

Bob added that if guests wished, they could give their email address to one of the members who had volunteered to send out meeting notices each month.

A member then introduced the speaker, who talked for about 20 minutes. There was a question and answer session with pointed, intelligent questions.

The meeting was over by 9 AM.

A few months later, I gave my talk on Russia, and we now go regularly to the monthly meetings. Some of the speakers are members while others are from outside the Club.

Recent topics have included a member's talk on a trip to Kenya, the ultra-modern cancer clinic that will be part of the new St. Catharines General Hospital, the future of the public library in the digital age, the upcoming program for the Shaw Festival presented by a member of its repertory company, the future of local independently-owned pharmacies, and hints on coin collecting.

We like the Club very much.

In chatting with a friend I mentioned a talk I had listened to at the Club. He hadn't heard of the Club and asked me to explain about it. I tried to remember all the points that Bob Waugh had made about what it isn't.

"But", my friend butted in, "what does the Club DO?'

I explained that the Club doesn't 'do' anything, that the members are very active in the community but the Club's monthly meetings are just fun.

He looked at me as though I was talking nonsense.

I would recommend the model to anyone who is feeling a bit over-organized.

But don't contact the club for any plans or documents on how to set up a Breakfast Club.

There aren't any!

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See you on May 1st for Posting #113 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.