POSTING # 2

POSTING # 2: Whence Virgil; Impact of Economic Problems in Canada and Russia; Bed and Breakfast; Immigration



Whence the Name Virgil?


Friends keep asking how Virgil got its name. Was the town named after the Roman poet, or after some local resident named, say, Virgil Smickerson?


According to Ontario Place Names (Fifth Edition), the village was settled around 1783 and first called Four Mile Creek, and later Cross Roads. In the mid-1800s, the name was changed to Lawrenceville, in honour of George Lawrence, a prominent Methodist settler. In 1895, a post office was established and the name was changed to Virgil after the Roman poet.


The book does not explain why the name was changed to Virgil. What was wrong with Lawrenceville?


I had developed a fanciful theory that the minister of the Anglican Church was fed up with the homage being paid to a Methodist and, having studied the Latin poets at Oxford or Cambridge, promoted a name change that would both smite the non-conformists and honour the author of the Aeneid.


It seems that my theory (as with so many of my theories) does not hold water. The Post Office officials, who played a key role in naming places, had a policy against names that honoured local figures, so Lawrenceville had to go. There was already a nearby village called Homer, in honour of the Greek poet.


Ergo, Virgil.


I still think there is more to it than that and I’ll keep looking for a more entertaining explanation.




Some Local Impacts of the Boom and Bust



Two months ago scrap metal prices were at record levels and they tempted a local thug to steal 20 or so manhole covers--- including one from the middle of a street near our home--- and sell them to an unscrupulous dealer, who then, I suppose, sold them to China..


In the last few weeks, the scrap metal markets, along with other commodity markets, have of course crashed and this week a friend who works in the office of a legitimate scrap metal dealer in Hamilton had his pay cut by 20%. The boss was apologetic but said that there was so little demand for scrap metal that he either had to lay off some workers or cut salaries for everyone. While unhappy and worried, our friend was glad to keep his employee benefits.


It is amazing how quickly the financial and economic situation in Canada and the world has worsened, and how quickly the effects are felt in towns such as Virgil.




Bust in Russia


I had a problem with scrap metal during the 1995-97 period when I was living in Moscow and managing a technical aid project to improve Russia’s employment programs.


Russia was going through terrible economic problems as it tried to make the shift from a state-planned to a market economy. Some western economists convinced the Russian leadership that the most effective way to make the leap from one type of economy to another was ‘shock therapy’. The government agreed and abruptly closed or significantly reduced funding to state industries and slashed spending on health care, education and pensions. This ‘sink-or-swim’ approach resulted in huge increases in unemployment, suicides, alcoholism, sickness and crime, and the emergence of the Russian mafia. Eventually, there was also the creation of some new, legitimate businesses.


The Chinese, encouraged by other western economists, among them J.K. Galbraith, decided instead on a gradual approach. Historians will have to decide which economic prescription was more effective.


In 1996 I was trying to schedule a visit of two Canadian consultants to a city in western Siberia where the Canadians would help the local employment office convert itself into a model for other offices in the region. The local office was undergoing some major repairs and each time I scheduled the visit, I was told that there had been a delay in construction.



The consultants and I were getting frustrated at the last minute postponements. Finally, I was told on a Friday that all that remained was to lift a glass-paneled roof onto the building. A crane had just arrived and it would install the roof on Monday.


On Monday, someone phoned to say that thieves had broken into the crane during the weekend and stripped out all the copper wiring to sell as scrap metal. The building was eventually finished and the consultants were able to do their thing.


At the time, we were incredulous that people would steal copper wiring. It seemed so improbable----like, for example, someone stealing manhole covers.


Bed and Breakfast and the KGB



Although Pat visited me in Russia on a number of occasions, she couldn’t stay because of our bed and breakfast, Blue Spruces, in the Glebe in Ottawa. Many of the stories I will be telling in this blog will relate to our B&Bs (we operated Blue Spruces for 14 years, Denwycke House at Grimsby for 5 years, and Windows-on-the-Lake in Grimsby for another 5 years).


Soon after we started Blue Spruces something happened at a couple of other B&Bs in Ottawa that made us stop and think---do we really want to do this.


The husband at another B&B came home from work to an obviously upset wife. “Our new guest has been wandering around the house naked all day.”


“Naked”, he repeated.


“Naked as the day she was born. I’ve tried to reason with her but she won’t listen. She’s upstairs in the hall on the phone. You go up and tell her to get dressed.”


“Why me?” His wife gave him a fierce look, and he set off up the stairs.


Trying not to look at the woman he started, “Excuse me but you will have to….”


The woman waved her hand at him, “Can’t you see I’m on the phone!”


He waited for a few minutes but when it became clear that she wasn’t close to the end of her conversation he said, “I’m sorry but you really have to get dressed.”


She ignored him but he kept repeating his request and finally added, “Perhaps you would be happier at another B&B.”


She ended her call, banged down the phone and said that she wasn’t going to take this anymore and was going to leave.


The next night the host and hostess in a nearby B&B were awakened in the middle of the night by loudspeakers, flashing lights and when they looked out they found their house was surrounded by the Ottawa Police Swat Team in full gear. The husband stumbled into the hall and met the new guest, clothed this time, going down to open the door.


“What’s going on?” he asked.


“It’s OK”, she said, “I called the police to tell them that the KGB is after me.”


Now, in most cities a 911 call such as that would have resulted in a squad car making a discreet visit, but this was Ottawa and no one could forget September 5, 1945. On that day, Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk in the Russian Embassy, defected with secret documents describing the spy network that Russia, the supposedly loyal World War II ally, had established in the United States, Canada and Britain.


Gouzenko was turned away by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on a couple of occasions but as Russian secret agents searched for him he finally found an officer who would listen. He was soon in a secret location sharing his documents with the RCMP, the FBI and MI5.

The poor woman was taken by the police to a local hospital.



Bed and Breakfast and the Forgotten Umbrella




The Ottawa B&B community spent a good bit of time talking about the ‘naked lady and the KGB’ episode and I guess we all decided that although we would have to be careful in checking new guests, something like this would not happen to us. And nothing as dramatic as that happened to us but there were some interesting times.


For example, a very nice couple spent a weekend with us and after they had checked out we noticed that the man had left an umbrella. This was not just a normal umbrella but an expensive one with an elaborate, hand-carved handle. We decided we should call them and ask if we could forward it to them (we always got a telephone number when people booked a room).


A woman answered and when we explained that they had left an umbrella at our B&B last weekend, the woman said, “But we weren’t at a B&B last weekend…” There was a significant and increasingly ominous silence and we quickly said that we must have made a mistake.


We’ve often wondered what happened to that marriage. But, we learned our lesson: store left-behind items and wait for a call. Don’t ever call the guest’s home.




Immigration and Infidelity



That reminds me of a story told by one of my trainers when I was studying in Ottawa to be an Immigration Foreign Service officer.


A group of Immigration officers liked to have their sandwich and coffee lunch on the 7th floor of an office building in downtown Ottawa. One day, one of them looked at the building across the street and shouted for the others to check out what was happening in the dentist’s office across the way. The dentist and his nurse were indulging in a little lunchtime misbehaviour, hugging, kissing, etc.


The dentist and nurse were at it again the next day. One of the immigration officers went across the street, found the name of the dentist and did a Yellow Book search for his phone number.



The following day, the immigration officers waited until the couple were at each other and then one of the officers dialled the dentist’s number. As the officers watched, the dentist separated himself, reached for the phone and muttered an out-of-breath “Hello”. The immigration officer intoned in a deep voice, “This is God. You should be ashamed of yourselves.” The dentist looked over at the Immigration building, stumbled across the room and pulled the drapes.



NEXT SUNDAY

Watch for a more stores from our universe in next Sunday’s Letter from Virgil.

Posting #1

LETTER FROM VIRGIL

INTRODUCTION

“The universe is made of stories, not atoms” (Muriel Rukeyser)

Every family has its universe of stories and this weekly blog, LETTER FROM VIRGIL, will recount some of our family’s stories.

The blog is intended primarily for our grandchildren who must wonder sometimes what kind of weird galaxy the fates have dropped them into. Perhaps the stories will help them find their place in it.

Although the blog is aimed at our family, we would be happy if others in the blogosphere enjoy the stories. We would love to hear from you.

Each posting will start with a few lines about things my wife, Pat, and I have done in the previous week in our new home in the Village of Virgil---a few kilometers from Niagara-on-the-Lake.

But the bulk of each posting will be stories from the past.

The stories won’t be organized in any particular way. We will let them flow the way stories flow after a hearty family dinner as someone says, “Do you remember the time…” And after that story someone else says, “That reminds me of the time…”

Now, here are a few stories.

Where was I?

One of our sons likes to tell bedtime stories about our family dog, Cassidy, a Golden Cocker Spaniel with an attitude. (When we went to choose a dog at the breeders, 3 black pups came running to the door. Then, a little ball of yellow fluff came bounding into the hall, chased by a little girl screaming, “Mom, Cassidy peed on my piano music.” Of course, we had to have Cassidy.)

After our son had finished his story about one of Cassidy’s misadventures, our granddaughter, who was just two and a half, asked her Dad, “Where was I then?”

“You were nowhere.”

“Oh”, she said.

The next night, she asked her father to tell the same story. Afterwards, she said, “And where was I?”

“You were nowhere.”

The daughter spat out, “I somewhere now”.

(Later on, she sorted out to her own satisfaction where she had been when Cassidy was doing his thing. She was on a shelf in a ‘baby store’, waiting for Mommy and Daddy to take her home.)

Father and the Yankees

In the early 1950s, my father who was an officer with the Ontario Provincial Police, received a two-way radio for his police car.

There were many obvious advantages to having an easy means to contact his district office. He no longer had to search out a public phone box or a friendly resident to call for help when there was an accident.

But there were downside issues as well.

Dad had to learn the now-familiar “10” series of commands, “10-4” etc.

Once during a thunderstorm, his car was hit by lightning. He and the car were fine but the radio was literally fried.

Another problem was that reception was sometimes poor because of the way radio signals bounced off the atmosphere in certain types of weather. One time, Dad was trying to call his District Office in Mount Forest from his base in Arthur, a distance of perhaps 15 miles.

The messages from Mount Forest were repeatedly interrupted by chatter from another police force somewhere in the U.S. Finally, Dad shouted, “You will have to repeat your message. The Yankees are interfering.”

There was a pause and then a clear voice with a southern drawl came through. “This is the Kentucky State Police. We are sorry for your problems but we want y’all to know that we are NOT Yankees.”

(A couple of years ago I was guilty of showing a similar lack of sensitivity to southerners. Browsing in a South Carolina bookstore, I noticed that the section that in Canada would be labeled ‘Civil War’ was called ‘The War of Northern Aggression’. On the way out I complimented the owner on his sense of humour. He glared at what I assumed he saw as another stupid Yankee.)

TEA WITHOUT MILK

In 1996, my interpreter and I were waiting at a Moscow airport for an Aeroflot flight to Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Russian Republic of Buryatia located on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal.

The Russian officials with whom I was working to improve the nation’s employment services had recommended that the existing employment office in Ulan-Ude be converted into a model office, using best Canadian practices. My job was to check out the existing office and decide whether the office and staff had the potential to become a model office. If the answer was ‘yes’ I would arrange for a team of Canadian experts to visit the office.

The flight was delayed and the interpreter and I went to a food bar for a snack. I had been in Russia for about a year and although my Russian was still pretty basic it was good enough to order food. I asked for a sweet bun and a cup of tea and the waitress banged them down in front of me. As I was reaching for my money, I saw a container of milk by the cash register.

Now, I should interject that while I can drink tea straight and I did each day at my Moscow office---the tea-trolley babushka had a samovar but no milk--- I much prefer it with milk and sugar.

Seeing the milk carton, I asked if I could have some milk in my tea. The waitress exploded with some machine-gun Russian, the only word of which I could catch was ‘Nyet’. .There was a great deal of laughter from nearby tables and from my interpreter. In fact, he was laughing so hard I thought his tea and bun were going to end up on the floor.

Back at the table, the interpreter asked, “Did you understand what the waitress said?”

“No, it was too fast. What did she say? What’s so funny?”

“She said, ‘You don’t put milk in tea, idiot’”.

The irony was that when we arrived at Ulan-Ude we were met by a few Russian officials and a group of Buryats, descendants of the Mongolian people, in national costume. A Russian leaned over to say that the Buryats would be offering me their national drink and it would be politic to appear to enjoy it.

“Just have a sip or two. It’s tea with milk!”, he whispered, with distain,”

People watched as I tasted the tea---there was milk but also some salt. I enjoyed it and had a second cup.

The story is that tea made with milk and salt was the secret to the success of Genghis Khan and his warriors.

.

HONEYMOON EXCITEMENT

Pat and I were married in Aurora, Ontario and our honeymoon was spent at a summer cottage on Ice Lake on Manitoulin Island.

Pat had worked as a chauffeur for the family during her university vacations and they invited us to use the cottage for our honeymoon. The family arranged for the local person who looked after the cottage during the winter to open it for us, put on the screens, clean out the cobwebs and do all the other things necessary after a long winter.

There was the large main cottage, built in the 1800s, and several cabins. We decided to sleep in the cabin that Pat had used during her summers with the family. We gathered sheets and pillows from the cottage and made the bed.

After a dinner in the screened porch overlooking the lake, and a quiet paddle in the canoe we went to bed.

In the middle of the night, Pat suddenly screamed.

“A mouse just ran up my face and went up there”, pointing to the unfinished wall of the cabin.

I sat up ready to do battle with the varmint that had harassed my new wife.

And the bed collapsed.

We and the mattress ended up on the floor, looking up at the side rails of the bed.

We got up, anchored the slats in the bed, hoisted the mattress up, re-made the bed, and checked to make sure the mouse had left us.

It took a good bit of time to get back to sleep what with the shock of the mouse and the collapse of the bed but when you are newly married time can be your friend.

NEXT SUNDAY

Watch for more stores from our universe in next Sunday’s Letter from Virgil.