POSTING #52

Saunas in Dog River Ontario, and Siberia

During a swim this week at the Brock University's pool I noticed that the men's sauna was back in operation. It is one of those saunas in which a few rocks are heated by electrical elements. Despite large signs warning us not to, someone periodically throws water on the rocks thus destroying the elements.

I was reminded of some saunas I have known, saunas of the real kind with piles of rocks heated by wood fires

A Sauna in Dog River Ontario

I heard this story while I was working in the summer of 1956 as a labourer-teacher for Frontier College at Dog River, a bush camp west of what is now Thunder Bay.

There were no indoor bathroom facilities at Dog River. Men used a 5 hole privy out back (I don't know anything about the privy for the 6 or so female cooks and cookees---cookees were the women who helped the cooks and served the food in the kitchen).

We went to a wash house to shave and wash our faces. We would fill an enamel basin with hot water dipped from a huge cauldron and after we had finished we would rinse out the basin, wipe it dry with our towel and hand it to the next person.

All-over-washes (you couldn't call them 'baths') took place in the sauna, a good-sized wooden building on the shore of the Dog River. As one entered the sauna there was a 'cooling room' and then beyond that the hot room, the heart of the sauna.

The practice was to hang ones clothes in the cooling room, go into the hot room and sit on one of the tiered benches, going higher until one found a heat level that was just right. If even the top bench wasn't hot enough, one threw a scoop or two of water on the stones.

After a spell in the hot room, the hardy ones ran through the cooling room, onto a short deck and then jumped into the river.

The rest of us went into the cooling room, got a bucket of warm water and soaped, shampooed, scrubbed and rinsed off with the water draining between the boards onto the ground below.

(While I was at the camp, the younger workers started a campaign for in-door plumbing---I will write about that in another blog.)

Sorry for all this description but I needed to provide some background for the story that---finally---I can tell.

The previous summer, one of the accountants from head office spent a few weeks at the camp reviewing the books. When his 12 and 10 year old sons got out of school he decided to bring them to the camp, to give his wife a break.

There was nothing organized for the boys to do, so they just wandered around the camp looking for adventure and more often than not finding mischief.

The men working in the camp, pulling logs from the river and loading them onto trucks, were bothered by the boys tricks and worried that they were going to get hurt.

Complaints to the accountant didn't do any good.

Finally, a couple of the men decided to teach the boys a lesson.

They asked the boys if they would like to have a sauna. This was something new and the boys quickly agreed. They put on their swim suits, and entered the sauna.

The men explained that really tough people used the top tier bench but if that was too hot they could cool things down by throwing cold water on the stones.

The boys nodded impatiently and said they would be OK.

The men shut the door to the hot room and quietly moved a bench against it so the kids were blocked in. Then they sat down quietly to wait.

One of the kids said that it was too hot and threw some water on the steaming stones, which, of course, just produced more searing heat.

The fellows in the cooling room heard the kids muttering and moving down to the middle and then to the bottom tier. Then the splash of yet more water.

Finally, the kids tried to get out of the hot room but found they couldn't open the door.

The fellows gave them a few minutes and then opened the door.

The boys were lying on the floor, trying to suck cool air from the cracks between the boards.

Later that day, the boys told their father that they were bored with the camp and wanted to go home. After dinner, the dad drove them home.

Tough love?

I guess so, but they were safe at home, not running behind trucks and heavy equipment.



A Sauna in Siberia

My interpreter, Yuri, and I were on a state-owned farm in deepest Siberia in 1996 as I continued my travels from Moscow checking Russian employment offices to see whether they could be converted into model offices by Canadian consultants.

I had checked out a proposed model office in a nearby city and since there was no decent hotel in the city we were staying on the farm---in very comfortable rooms.

After dinner with some of the farm managers, they invited us to join them for a sauna evening.

The sauna was very similar to the one at Dog River--- a genuine wood-fired sauna---with a couple of exceptions. There was no river or lake to jump into so the farm had built a deep, indoor pool filled with cold water, just off the cooling room. The other difference was that there was a table in the cooling room covered with beer, vodka, smoked fish, cheese, and cut tomatoes and cucumbers. The Dog River camp as with all Canadian bush camps banned alcoholic beverages.

Yuri and I joined the managers in the hot room. Yuri, having had more sauna time than I, was able to go higher up on the tiers. One of the hosts brought out a pail of water with fresh poplar branches and offered to swat our backs, to get the circulation going. It felt good.

After turning lobster red, we jumped in the cold pool for a few minutes and then returned to seats in the cooling room to have some vodka toasts, and food.

Then the cycle was repeated: hot room, pool, cooling room.

During a session in the cooling room, one of our hosts told a story about a Moscow bureaucrat who had come out to inspect the farm during the Gorbachev era.

Gorbachev had decided to move against the Soviet Union's massive drinking problem with many measures to ban or at least limit the use of alcohol.

Government officials who were used to long official lunches and dinners with copious amount of vodka, wine and beer were upset but, of course, couldn't object.

I was told that the rules about drinking were tightly enforced in Moscow but the further one travelled from the Kremlin, the less they were followed. Moscow officials loved, therefore, to travel.

This particular Moscow official had a lot to drink at dinner and could hardly make his way to the sauna for an evening of further comradeship. His hosts were almost as drunk as he was---they had had to appear to keep pace with him, glass for glass.

After ten or fifteen minutes on the top tier of the hot room, the Moscow official stammered that he was going to jump in the pool. People helped him get down from his perch and he stumbled into the cooling room on his way to the pool.

The farm managers chuckled about how drunk he was. One of them said that the cold water would sober him up.

Then, someone said, "Oh, my god, the maintenance people drained the pool today!"

Sudden horror.

If something had happened to him, how would they explain that to Moscow---that they weren't following the official policy of alcohol-free meals. Although their heads were fuddled with drink, terror was sobering them up.

They stumbled into the cooling room, opened the door to the pool, and expected the worst.

The Moscow official was spread out on the bottom of the empty pool. Someone clambered down a ladder and went over to the body.

After a moment, he said, "He's snoring."

The Moscow official had done a belly flop, and then fallen asleep.

Our hosts told us that they got him out of the pool and into bed.

And then on a plane back to Moscow the next day.

As he got on the plane, the fiercely hung-over official thanked them for a very pleasant evening.

New Year Wishes

Pat and I would like to wish everyone a wonderful, story-full 2010!


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See you next Sunday for Posting #53 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@cs.com.

POSTING #51

Christmas Memories from Arthur, Golders Green, and Virgil


Christmas Memories from Arthur

One December when I was about 11 and my brother Chuck was about 8, we decided to go into the woods and cut down a Christmas tree.

In Arthur at that time no one bought a tree----a farmer friend would bring one in as a gift, or invite you to visit his bush and cut your own.

The idea of paying for a Christmas tree would have seemed as bizarre to people in Arthur at the time as the thought that someday people would be paying for bottles of water.

Trees were everywhere.

Carrying our family's rusty hand saw and a hatchet that was battered from chopping ice off the sidewalk, we set out along the railway tracks for Cameron's, a farm about two miles west of Arthur.

Walking along the railway tracks wasn't as dangerous as it might sound. There were only a couple of trains a day and we knew the times by heart.

Reaching the farm, we decided on a nice bushy tree that was 7 or 8 feet tall. We set to felling it (that's bush lingo for 'cutting it down').

One of us would attack it for a time with the blunt hatchet, and then the other would take over with the saw. Then we would try to push or pull it over.

Finally the tree broke free.

Then we dragged the tree home, over the railway ties, and the gravel between the ties.

We felt proud of ourselves. We had done it.

When we got home, a relative who was visiting looked at the tree and started to laugh, "It's all flat on one side!"

Of course, dragging a tree along railway tracks for a couple of miles will do that to a tree---something we hadn't counted on.

Mom quickly moved in, "It's just fine, we'll put that side to the wall."

And dressed with lots of lights and tinsel it looked just great.

Every Christmas, I remember Mom's quick and kind response.

Christmas Memories from Golders Green

In 1964, we DID buy a tree.

Pat and I were living in Golders Green, an area of northwest London that was almost entirely Jewish.

We lived in a house rented from a Jewish couple, with a mezuzah on the frame of the front door (we had only one child at the time and he liked to point at the object and say 'zooza'---one of his first words).

We debated about having a Christmas tree and then decided that if people were offended they would probably say, "Oh, it's just those Canadians. They don't know any better."

In fact, we noticed that people passing on the sidewalk would stop and look at the tree in our front window.

They didn't seem to mind at all.

Judging from their smiles, just the reverse.

ooo

There was a church (Methodist, I think) in Golders Green that according to the sign out front had a pastor named the Reverend Goy.

This was strange because the Yiddish word 'goy' means, of course, a Gentile, or someone not of the Jewish faith or people.

When we told Jewish friends in the States about the Reverend Goy in Golders Green, they didn't believe it.

The husband had his own story about the word 'goy'.

He said that when his solidly Jewish firm decided to hire a non-Jewish person, they joked that it was because they needed a 'whipping goy'.

Christmas Memories from Virgil

We got out our boxes of Christmas tree ornaments this week to decorate our two, three-foot-tall artificial trees---the green one is on a table on the front porch and the white one on a side table in the dining room.

We noticed again how the decorations mirror the different stages of our family.

There are red toilet rolls with pipe cleaner antlers, and sheets of red and green paper with squiggly letters wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.

And there are hand-made plaster angels with red ribbons that can hang on the branches of the trees.

Among the decorations are two colourful rope circlets that are used to hold on the traditional Arab headdress, which I brought back from a 1969 trip to Beirut.

I am not sure how they ended up on our Christmas trees, but they did, year after year, slung over a branch.

The branches of the artificial trees are not strong enough to hold a circlet, so we have hung one on the drawer knob of the side table.

Some traditions must be preserved!

Holiday Wishes

So there you have it, Jewish and Arabic memories mingled with our own.

It somehow seems appropriate as we celebrate an event that happened in the Middle East 2009 years ago.

Pat and I would like to wish everyone a wonderful holiday season.


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See you next Sunday for Posting #52 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@cs.com.

POSTING #50

Dishwasher Problems;  Looking for an Apartment in Moscow (Conclusion)

Dishwasher Problems

When we were looking for a new home, one of the absolute requirements was that everything had to be brand new---the house, the furnace, the air conditioner and the appliances.

We had fixed up three houses---one in Ottawa and two in Grimsby---and felt that we had done our bit for preserving Canada's urban landscape. More prosaically, we had swallowed enough plaster dust, and negotiated with enough contractors and repair people to last us for the rest of our lives.

Our Virgil home met all those requirements, and we have enjoyed the luxury of a trouble-free life (there was, of course, the construction of the basement rooms, and a small flood from the water line to the refrigerator, but who is counting).

Then a couple of weeks ago, we noticed that when we emptied the dishwasher, the dishes weren't very clean. We studied the trouble-shooting part of the handbook and couldn't see a solution.

As I got ready to deal with the dishwasher people, Pat happened to say that she had noticed that the current bottle of dishwasher gel was more liquid than usual. We assumed that the company had changed their formula but when we checked a recently purchased backup bottle, the gel was thick.

When I called the company's 1-800 number and gave the clerk the batch number from the bottle of the gel, she immediately apologized and said she would be sending a coupon for a new bottle.

I got the clear impression that ours wasn't the first complaint.

It kind of boggles the mind how with all the quality control measures that companies supposedly take that a whole batch of watery gel could leave the factory.

I tell this story in case any reader has been feeling that the dishes aren't coming quite as clean as usual.

Looking for an Apartment in Moscow (conclusion)

Last week's posting ended with my feeling blue because I couldn't find an apartment in Moscow at a rent I could afford.

Gennady, the real estate agent, had come up with another apartment, which a number of westerners had already looked at and rejected because it had not been modernized.

Although the asking rent was beyond my means, perhaps the owner would be prepared to negotiate a lower price.

We agreed to have a look at it.

The places I had been looking at had all been in low-rise apartment buildings but this was in one of Stalin's Seven Sisters, a group of skyscrapers that Stalin commissioned after a trip to New York after the War. He is supposed to have said that communism needed some skyscrapers to show that it was capable of doing anything that capitalism could do.

Stalin used Russian architects to design the buildings but most of the construction was carried out by German prisoners of war whom he refused to return to Germany after the War.

Two of the buildings became  hotels, another one housed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, one became the main building of the University of Moscow, and one became an administrative centre. Two of the hotels became apartment buildings, one for senior party people and one for cultural heroes. Click here for an article about the Seven Sisters.

The apartment that Gennady had in mind was in the last building, the one for cultural heroes, called the Kudrinskaya Square Building, which is located near the US Embassy. 

(Here is a quote from Wikipedia about the apartment building: " Designed by Mikhail Posokhin (Sr.) and Ashot Mndoyants. 160 metres high, 22 floors (17 usable). The building is located on the end of Krasnaya Presnya street, facing the Sadovoye Koltso and was primary (sic) built with high-end apartments for Soviet cultural leaders rather than politicians.")

There was a locked door with a combination to the lobby but no guard. The lobby must have been spectacular in the Soviet period with marble columns, high ceilings and lots of gilt paint but it was now tired and in need of sprucing up.

But it was clean and there was no smell of urine.

The apartment, on the 13th floor, had a heavy oak door, not steel, with two locks. Inside, the kitchen was large, with older but serviceable appliances, and a splendid view of the Russian parliament, the so-called White House.

The bathroom had a deep tub, huge porcelain sink with a pedestal. The bedroom was not large but would work.

The living room and dining room were combined into one large room with an enormous crystal chandelier hanging from the 12 foot ceiling, and fine views of Moscow. The table and furniture were well-crafted with simple lines, not the overstuffed items I had seen in other apartments.

The oak parquet floors were sprinkled with fine carpets.

I liked it.

Turning to Gennady I asked, "What's the matter with this one?'

After a perplexed silence, he replied, "That's what you're supposed to tell me".

Then muttering with distaste, he added, "This could be the set for a 1950s movie".

I asked him to find out if the owner would come down to my price level. He said the owner was a widow with a son at university studying medicine and the rent would be her only source of income.

But, he mused, for a single tenant she might come down a little.

The owner insisted on meeting me to discuss the rental. She came with her son to the meeting. She was in her late 50s and was the daughter of the senior military officer who had first acquired the apartment. Her son was in his early 20s, tall with dark hair, We met,  negotiated a price I could afford, and I finally had an apartment.

Pat, who came over for five visits, said that she always felt at home in the apartment.

And the groups of Canadian consultants, who came to Moscow on their way to their assignments in the provinces, always came for a pizza and beer evening in the apartment. (They always stayed at the KGB residence.)

In the summer of 1996, our children and their spouses came for a two-week visit and used the apartment as the base---they too stayed at the KGB residence.

The apartment worked out very well.

ooo

During Pat's first visit we discovered pencil marks on the kitchen door jamb. Looking at them we realized they were height marks, made over the years for the young man who was now studying medicine. There were short horizontal lines made, we assume, as he stood with his back to the jamb, and then the date.

The markings made me smile. During the Cold War, when we were so worried about what the Soviets might do, the original owner of the apartment who was a senior military officer---and proud grandfather---was recording the growth of his grandson.

ooo

The apartment had a cable TV connection but no TV. I bought a set and then spent weeks trying to get someone to activate the cable. Yuri finally called the owner and she successfully intervened with the building management.

I was finally able to get CNN and the BBC.

I was told that the delay was caused by the fact that the cable signals came into an antenna on the roof and my apartment had to be connected to the antenna. Also on the roof were numerous eavesdropping antennae pointed at the US Embassy a few hundred yards away. Only people with the highest security screening, I was told, could go up on the roof.

However, looking back I suspect that if I had offered a good bottle of cognac things might have moved faster.

ooo

There is a story that I was told about the US Embassy. During the Cold War when part of the embassy was being rebuilt, a number of KGB agents worked as labourers, their task being to plant bugs in the walls. The Americans realized of course that the KGB would attempt to plant bugs so they had inspectors watching the work.

(The US General Accounting Office included this sentence in one of its reports at the time about the Moscow Embassy, " The State Department considers Moscow to be one of the most technologically hostile intelligence-gathering locations, requiring the highest level of security.")

At one point, a KGB operative was about to plant a key bug when an American inspector appeared. Another KGB fellow seeing what was happening threw himself off a scaffold to create a diversion.

In the confusion that followed this 'accident', the bug was planted.

The KGB agent, who survived but was badly crippled, was celebrated as a hero by the Soviets but after the end of the USSR he was ignored. A Russian friend, who was no fan of the Soviets, argued vigorously that the nation should not have turned its back on someone who made such a selfless sacrifice.

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See you next Sunday for Posting #51 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@cs.com.

POSTING #49

NOTE TO READERS; Tough Times for the Hospitality Industry in Niagara-on-the-Lake; Looking for an Apartment in Moscow


NOTE TO READERS

Next week's posting will be the 50th! Isn't that something.

It has been great fun turning memories into written stories and sharing them with friends and relatives.

But I have felt a little confined by the format that I established at the beginning. I had decided that I would include a story in each posting about Virgil, and another about children and/or pets.

Some weeks it has been hard to come up with stories for these two sections that were interesting and fitted in with the theme of the main story I wanted to tell.

So I have decided to end this self-imposed requirement. I will still have stories about Virgil and about children and pets but not necessarily every week.

Starting with this posting, then, the format will be more free-form.

We'll see how that works.

Thank you for reading the blog, and for your feedback!!

John

Tough Times for the Hospitality Industry in Niagara-on-the-Lake

While 2009 was not as bad as the Shaw Festival and local tourist businesses feared last fall, in the midst of the international financial and economic meltdown, it was not good.

Now that the Shaw has closed for the season and most of the tourists have stopped coming we are beginning to see the fallout from the steep recession, the border passport policy and the general decline in tourism.

The owner of the elegant and beautifully restored Riverbend Inn and Restaurant, and of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Golf Club has just announced that he has placed both of them into voluntary receivership.

He says there is a conditional offer of purchase for Riverbend and he hopes that the deal will close in February allowing it to continue. In the meantime, the bank has appointed someone to manage the business.

The owner hopes that the bank will agree to open the NOTL Golf Course in the spring, but in the meantime the clubhouse and its popular restaurant will be closed during the winter. The course claims to be North America's oldest existing course---it began in 1875---but I understand that the Royal Montreal Golf Club disputes this.

Both businesses have made major contributions to life in the area and we hope they will be able to continue.

ooo

On a lighter note, a sign above the urinal in the men's washroom at the golf course wins a too-many-commas prize:

Please do not put hand,
towels, Kleenex,
or other objects
in the urinal.

Above the word 'hand', some wit has scribbled, "Why would I do that?"

Looking for an Apartment in Moscow

In April 1995, after the World Bank had signed the contract for the two-year project to create model employment offices, I flew to Moscow to launch the project.

The Russian Federal Employment Service booked me into a kind of private hotel that the KGB built during the Cold War to train spies who were to be smuggled into the west. The hotel lobby, dining room and rooms were modeled after those in Western hotels of the 1960s so the KGB recruits could practice their spy craft.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union the training facility was given to a Foundation started by ex-President Gorbachev, the intention being to give the Foundation a lucrative source of revenue. The Foundation ran it as a hotel for government officials and for foreign visitors coming to Moscow to work for the Government or for official conferences.

Unfortunately, Gorbachev apparently criticized the new president, Yeltsin, once too often and the facility was taken away from him and given to an association of accountants.

Russian politics are never dull!

The rooms were a little spartan but clean and the residence had superb security---one could leave computers and cameras in the room without worry and there were no night-time phone calls from hookers, a common occurrence in most Russian hotels at the time.

During the time I lived at the residence, I set up my office in the Federal Employment Service headquarters, hired Yuri as my office manager/interpreter and found a driver (with an old but reliable Lada).

Then I started looking for an apartment.

The project contract allocated a certain maximum monthly rental for an apartment, an amount that seemed huge to me (it was much higher than the income for an average working Russian for a whole year) but the influx of Western business people was pushing up rents.

Yuri found me a young student from the Moscow University who worked part-time for a real estate firm that specialized in rental accommodation. Gennady (not his real name) was slim, blond with a backpack slung over one shoulder who spoke English with an American accent and vocabulary, unlike older English-speakers in Russia who tended to sound British.

And he had an almost New York entrepreneurial hustle---he would get a generous portion of the first month's rent if I found an apartment and he was determined that I should find one.

Gennady asked me what I was looking for in an apartment but it was a little hard for me to answer---I had never been inside a Moscow apartment and didn't know what to expect.

Finally, I told him that I wanted a furnished place that was roomy enough for two of us when Pat came to visit, with a good kitchen because I liked to cook, and close to a metro stop.

And then told him my rental range, expecting him to be impressed.

He wasn't.

Gennady shook his head and said it would be hard to find a suitable place in my price range but he could show Yuri and me a few places that fit my budget.

"Let's go", he said.

I suggested we use my driver but Gennady said it would be faster to use the Metro and buses. I remembered that I had a supply of the plastic Metro tokens---called jetons---worth about ten cents at the time but I didn't have any tickets for the bus system.

We came up out of one of the Metro stations and Gennady told us to run for a bus. We jumped in the back door just as the bus was leaving. I told Gennady that I didn't have a ticket.

"Don't worry', he said, "you'll be OK---there aren't many inspectors at this time of day."

But the thing is that I do worry about things like that!

About being marched off the bus by an inspector who didn't speak English, to some kind of uncertain fate.

But we got off without encountering an inspector, and I quickly bought a strip of bus tickets for the next time.

As we walked to the first apartment, Gennady said that security was a top priority. Yuri agreed wholeheartedly.

He said that the door to the apartment should be steel with two or three deadbolt locks while the best doors had four hardened-steel bars that shot into the top, bottom and sides of the doorway when the door was locked.

Some apartments had an alarm that rang at the local police station but that was a bad idea. It told the police that you had something of value and the police would then sell that information to the local mafia.

He said that the best apartments had a guard in the lobby to screen visitors but my price range wouldn't allow for that.

Second best, was to have a door to the lobby with a combination that the apartment occupant gave to friends, cleaning women, pizza deliverers.

"But", I said, "the combination will soon be all over Moscow."

"Of course, but we have a saying in Russian that 'locks keep out only honest people'."

As we came up to the first apartment, he said that it was very secure because it was over a jewelry store. I didn't see the connection but he pointed to a small car in front of the store with two thuggish looking men sitting in it.

"They're armed guards, they'll be here around the clock to protect the store. You wouldn't have to worry about people breaking into your apartment."

As we entered the apartment building I noticed that there was no lock on the door to the lobby, and that the lobby itself was littered with trash and had a smell of old urine.

The terrazzo steps to the second floor apartment were badly cracked.

This was typical of most of the apartments we saw---the lobbies and stairwells were in poor shape, even if the apartments were basically OK.

Gennady rang the bell after pointing out, approvingly, that the door was steel with 3 deadbolts.

The couple who came to the door were typical of most of the apartment owners we met. People in their late 50s or early 60s who had led a comfortable middle-class existence in Soviet times but had been thrown out of work because of the budget cuts caused by the government's economic shock therapy policy. They all looked beaten down and worried.

The apartment owners had little money coming in but they did own an apartment and in most cases a car. They could survive if they could just rent the apartment to a Westerner for US dollars and then jam themselves in with relatives.

The husband could also bring in some more money by joining the thousands of other Muscovites lucky enough to have a car who were cruising the streets as unlicensed taxis.

The owners were pathetically anxious to rent their apartments. It was depressing and degrading to have their eyes follow me as I checked out the apartments.

If they sensed I was unhappy about something they would jump in and offer to change it.

The dining rooms and living rooms were full of the trappings of a successful apparatchik existence---crowded with large tables, over-stuffed, leather-covered furniture, large, black lacquered cabinets full of fine Czechoslovakian crystal, and carpets from the Caucasus.

But this apartment like most of the others I saw had a small, primitive kitchen and a tiny bathroom with leaky taps and stained tubs.

At the end of the visit I would say that we would get back to them, but they knew and I knew that I wouldn't.

It was sad. They had little chance of renting to a westerner without major renovations--- which they couldn't afford.

After seeing six or seven apartments of this type, I suggested we increase the price range and if necessary I would pay the difference myself.

Gennady showed us one apartment that was well above my allowance and well above what I could afford to add to the allowance. It had a bathroom with a whirlpool, four-person tub and black tiled walls, a modern kitchen with good appliances, Scandinavian furniture and an electric water heater to provide hot water during the month each year when Moscow's central steam plants were closed down for servicing.

I asked if the owners might come down by---and I mentioned an amount--- but Gennady just laughed.

Later, as we returned to my office on the Metro, I remember feeling depressed and wondering whether I might have to stay at the old KGB residence for the two years of the project.

This was a low point in the project for me.

As the train rattled through the Metro tunnel, Gennady was leafing through his list of apartments for rent, shaking his head---then he paused and looked at us.

He described an apartment that might be worth considering. The apartment was small-- just one bedroom---and hadn't yet been 'modernized' (which meant a North American style kitchen and bathroom). The furniture was old-fashioned.

If it had been modernized the rent would have been astronomical but even without that the owner was asking a good bit more than my increased limit.

A number of westerners had looked at the apartment and rejected it. Perhaps the owner would be prepared to negotiate a lower price.

We agreed to have a look at it the next day.


TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT WEEK

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See you next Sunday for Posting #50 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@cs.com.

POSTING #48

Clothes Lines; Cheese Skippers; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Clothes Lines

"There is nothing as sad as a wash hung out by a man."

That was a common saying among the women of Arthur when I was growing up.

I figure that there were two possible explanations for the saying.

Perhaps the saying meant that the fact that a man was hanging out the wash meant that there was trouble in the family, the wife was sick or had died.

Something sad had happened.

More likely the expression referred to the belief that men always made a hash of hanging up clothes. Shirts were pinned to the line by the sleeves, instead of by the tail. Men's pants were pinned by the waist instead of by the legs (with the seams aligned carefully together). And women's undies were hung in the open for all to see instead of inside pillow cases.

These thoughts were triggered by the recent arrival in our neighbourhood of several rotating outdoor drying racks placed on porches and in the garages of new homes.

The clothes seem to be neatly and correctly pinned to the lines on the racks, so one can assume they were done by a woman.

Perhaps the dryers haven't yet arrived, or perhaps the newcomers are intent on leading all of us into a greener world.

We'll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, I've been trying to think of the equivalent today of , "There is nothing as sad as a wash hung out by a man."

The closest I've been able to come is, "There is nothing as sad as a dishwasher loaded by a man."

Now, I've known one or two men who were pretty skilled at dish loading.

But most of us bung in the plates, bowls etc. wherever there is a place that fits. Our better halves thank us for our thoughtfulness but as soon as our backs are turned they rearrange everything.

In an attempt to improve my dish loading skills, I once watched a video that came with the dishwasher. A slender woman who looked as though she was on her way to a cocktail party, (a revealing dress and all) provided me---my wife left after the first few seconds---with hints on where and how to place the dishes.

When I suggested we consider adopting some of her suggestions, I was met with this, "You can't believe a word that tramp says!"

What's a man to do?


Cheese Skippers

I have had a story in my memory for years that part of me says, 'Hey, this really happened', while another part is saying, 'Are you sure your brain isn't making this whole thing up?'

I'm going to share the story with you but first I should warn people with weak stomachs that they may find the subject matter a tad upsetting.

Now the story.

My mother told me when I was young that her father---my grandfather---used to eat cheese skippers. Sometimes, while he would be sitting at dinner having a piece of cheese he would come across one of the skippers burrowing its way out of the cheese. He would mash the insect on his plate, put it on his fork with a little cheese and pop the whole thing in his mouth.

As he did this he would say, "They eat the cheese and I eat them".

Mother and her three sisters would squeal and say whatever the 1910 equivalent was of , 'Oh that's so gross!',

Mom couldn't tell me much about cheese skippers but the impression (erroneous) I got was that cheese makers put some cheese skipper eggs in the centre of fifty pound wheels of new cheese. The cheese wheels would be put in a warm storage room to age. The eggs would hatch and when the skippers appeared at the surface of the cheese, it was ready to eat.

That's the story I remember.

Did I make the whole thing up?

I could have but the one feature of the story that always stopped me from labeling it a false memory was the term, 'cheese skipper'. How could I have come up with that name?

I felt that if cheese skippers did in fact exist, then the memory would have to be given some weight. If, on the other hand, no one in biology had ever heard of a cheese skipper, that would shoot down the memory.

A few weeks ago, I decided that the time had come to try to get some answers.

I told Google to search for 'cheese skippers', and in just 0.23 seconds it proudly claimed that it had found 561,000 'hits'. We all know, of course, that Google tends to exaggerate a bit, that when it runs out of true hits for the two words it pads things out with hits for 'cheese' or 'skippers'.

But there were a couple of pages of references to 'cheese skippers'

One of them led me to a Wikipedia article on 'Cheese fly' , which you can read here, if you have a really strong stomach.

It turns out that cheese skippers are the larvae (a.k.a maggots) that hatch out of eggs laid by the cheese fly.

The old time cheese makers didn't intentionally put eggs in their fresh cheese, they just weren't too concerned about hygiene. So, cheese flies buzzing around the cheese vats laid their eggs and some months later cheese skippers started to appear.

The larvae are about 1/3 of an inch long and they can leap about 6 inches into the air, thus the name 'skippers'. Apparently, they do this by bringing their two ends together in a coil and then suddenly springing apart.

Some authorities claim that skippers, if eaten, can pass through the stomach--- unscathed by stomach acids---enter the intestines and then create lesions as they try to burrow out through the walls of the intestine. This can lead to stomach pain, vomiting, and bloody diarrhea.

I think I did warn you that this article could be upsetting.

Wait, there is more nasty stuff.

The skippers are an important factor used by CSI scientists in estimating the time of death. They don't turn up in a corpse for three to six months after death, while the larvae of other flies start arriving in just a few days.

Apparently the good folks of Sardinia make a cheese which depends for its strong flavour on the introduction of thousands of skippers. The cheese, which is called casu marzu (literally 'rotten cheese'), has been banned by the European Union--- which I think is only fair since the EU stopped the British from wrapping fish and chips in the News of the World (a racy tabloid newspaper).

OK, so cheese skippers do exist. There is at least some support for a view that the memory may be real.

But would my grandfather have eaten them?

Now, grandfather was no ignorant clod. He was a successful farmer, a popular local politician and the justice of the peace for Clarkson, Ontario (his friends called him 'the judge').

He also had, from all reports, a lively sense of fun. It is entirely possible that he was capable of putting on a show for his four horrified daughters.

So, after all this weighty research I think I can say that this particular memory is probably valid.

I am sure you are relieved to hear that!


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

One of my cousins, Ruth, tells a story about visiting our grandfather (and grandmother, whom he always referred to as 'Missus') at their home in Clarkson.

She and her sister were sitting at the kitchen table with grandfather, who was reading a newspaper.

Bored, the little girls unscrewed the tops of the salt and pepper shakers, poured out some salt and pepper and started mixing the two together with their fingers---I suppose today we would call it finger art.

When grandfather looked up from his paper and saw what the girls were doing he called out to his wife with delight, "Missus, missus, come see what the girls are doing!"

I suspect that the 'missus' was not quite as delighted as he was with this display of
granddaughterly creativity.



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See you next Sunday for Posting #49 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@cs.com.

POSTING #47

Memories of an Arthur Snow Storm; Some Royal Canadian Air force Stories; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Memories of an Arthur Snow Storm

Last week as I was getting ready to speak about my Russian experiences to a small group of history buffs at our local library, a man wanted to know where I was from. I told him I was from a village that he had probably never heard of, Arthur.

"Oh", he said, "I know it well and I have some very unpleasant memories of the Arthur District High School."

I forgot my nerves about the upcoming talk (it went well), and had to find out about his Arthur experiences.

It turns out that he was working at the University of Guelph in 1972, had been active in the Progressive Conservative Party, and had been invited by someone senior in the Party to run as a candidate in the federal election that was expected later in 1972.

The local Member of Parliament, Marvin (Marnie) Howe, an Arthur storeowner, had decided to retire. The Wellington- Grey-Dufferin-Waterloo constituency was as safe a seat as the Conservatives had in Ontario, and with the unpopularity of the Trudeau Government it was likely that whoever won the Conservative nomination would be a shoo-in for a seat in Parliament.

Bob Stanfield, the leader of the Party and Leader of the Opposition, planned to speak at the meeting, which was scheduled for March in the Arthur District High School auditorium.

Apparently Arthur was hit by one of its infamous March snow storms on the day of the nomination and Stanfield was not able to get through the snow drifts to the meeting.

The nomination process went ahead but I gather that without Stanfield's presence, it didn't evolve quite as the party brass had hoped.

In the end, a 22-year old from a well-know family in Fergus won the nomination, and at the general election held in October 1972 that young man, Perrin Beatty, won the seat.

I could understand why the fellow at the library had unpleasant memories of the Arthur District High School.

I told him that the high school had since been closed, with the students being bused to Mount Forest.

He didn't seem upset about that.


Some Royal Canadian Air force Stories

While I was researching the stories about Bill Attewell, a Wing Commander in the RCAF during the second world war (see Posting #45, November7, 2009) , I kept remembering and running into stories about the RCAF.

Here are some of them.

In the mid-years of the war, I used to rush home after school to listen to the CBC's weekly program, 'L for Lanky'. Crouched by the large speaker in our floor model radio I would listen for the RCAF March Past that introduced the program. Perhaps because of that early exposure to it, the March Past remains one of my favourite marches. (Click here for a video of the music played by the Air Command Band---isn't it a great march?)


Thank to a great website, www.airmuseum.ca, here is a brief description of
'L for Lanky'

"The CBC radio programme, "L for Lanky," was a very imaginative program which many of us remember fondly from our childhoods. "L for Lanky" means the Lancaster bomber that was the central figure in the show. It was about a WWII flight crew and their adventures going out on raids with this bomber -- but the "narrator" of the program was the Lancaster bomber itself. The plane was given a voice and a personality, and it began each show setting up the premise, in a slightly echoed voice with airplane sound behind it, and it always started out by saying "I'm L for Lanky. I'm a Lancaster bomber....." And on it went from there, setting up that week's story and then the regular actors as airmen took over. The voice of Lanky was played by an actor named Herb Gott. A great example of how well radio tapped into the theatre of the mind - one simply bought the premise without question. Otherwise they were standard WW2 air adventures. Apparently most of the ETs [Blogger's note: I'm not sure what ETs are, but assume they are scripts and/or recordings. J.H.] were destroyed after the war and apparently there is little evidence of the show in the CBC archives. There are rumours of excerpts still in existence. "

The program was full of suspense as the bomber tried to avoid or shoot down German fighter aircraft or dodge bursts of anti-aircraft flack. Despite the problems, the Lancaster was usually able to drop its 'payload' on some enemy target.

Looking back, I guess one could say the program was a form of war-time propaganda but we needed some reassurance during parts of the war when the enemy seemed to be winning, especially with their brutal bombing of London and other cities in England.

ooo

In the Canadian Immigration Office in Leeds, Yorkshire, when I was there in the early 1960s there were two RCAF veterans, Cal Willis and Vic Smith.

They never talked about the war unless I prompted them.

Cal had a small, golden, squiggly lapel pin that he wore each day. When I asked him about it he said that it meant that he was a member of the Caterpillar Club, that he had bailed out of a disabled bomber over France and survived, thanks to the parachute. The caterpillar was chosen as the symbol for the club "because the parachute canopy was made of silk and because caterpillars have to climb out of their cocoons and fly away". (Click here for more information on the Caterpillar Club.)

Cal had been rescued by a French farm family and hidden from the Nazi's until the French Resistance could smuggle him to the English channel and to a boat that could take him back to Britain.

If the Germans had found Cal, they would have executed the family and probably shot him as well.

Twenty years later, while he was in Leeds, Cal contacted the family and invited them to join him, his wife and his little boy for lunch at a posh restaurant in the Eiffel Tower.

I wondered how the lunch would go. Would the farm family feel uncomfortable in the fancy restaurant? Would language be a problem?

When I asked Cal, he just beamed broadly.

It had gone perfectly.

ooo

Vic Smith was a navigator on a bomber He said he was viewed by the pilot and the engineer, both in their early 20s, as an 'old' man who was, after all, 30 and married to boot.

Returning from flights over Germany, the pilot liked to relax by finding a radio station playing pop music and then pump it through the intercom system so the gunners, the bomb aimer, the wireless operator and Vic could enjoy it.

The problem was, Vic said, that while the others could relax he had to get them back to base. Using information from speed and altitude gauges, his charts and sometimes celestial navigation if the night were clear he had to chart a path back to the British air base. In a pre-computer era, he was always frantically busy with his slide rule and pencil and paper calculations.

He protested to the pilot that he couldn't do his calculations with the music blaring in his ears. The pilot ignored the 'old man'.

Vic said that he would then turn off his intercom. This was potentially dangerous---what if they were hit and the pilot ordered the crew to parachute out.

But it was more important to get home safely.

I'm told that the attrition rate during bombing raids was at least 5% per raid. My memory is that Vic and his crew flew almost 50 missions.

They beat the odds, thanks in part to the 'old man' and his calculations.

ooo

Here is a story that either Cal or Willis told me.

Some Canadian crews flew daylight missions over Europe to photograph the damage that the night-time bombing had done and to identify new targets.

One crew flew several missions trying to locate a German ammunition dump. They followed the coordinates provided by reports from intelligence officials, took strips of photos but couldn't see anything that looked like an ammunition dump.

Back in Britain, a Canadian who had been raised on a farm, analyzed the photos but he couldn't see a dump.

Where the dump was supposed to be was just a pasture with cows grazing peacefully.

Then it hit him.

He called over his superior, "See those cows, they are always facing in the same direction, in each of the photos."

"So?", the city-born officer said.

"But cows always face the wind. The wind wouldn't come from the same direction day after day. Those aren't real cows."

The next night a bombing crew had the satisfaction of seeing huge explosions when they bombed the 'cows'


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Here is another air force story, one that I heard a few times while living in Britain.

Here is the www.airmuseum.ca website's version of that story.

"A World War II pilot is reminiscing before school children about his days in the air force. "There I was over Germany in 1942," he says, "the situation was really tough. The Germans had a very strong air force. I remember," he continues, "one day I was protecting the bombers and suddenly, out of the clouds, these fokkers appeared. (At this point, several of the children giggle). I looked up, and right above me was one of them. I aimed at him and shot him down. They were swarming. I immediately realized that there was another fokker behind me."
At this instant the girls in the auditorium start to giggle and boys start to laugh. The teacher stands up and says, "I think I should point out that 'Fokker' was the name of the German-Dutch aircraft company."
"That's true," says the pilot, "but these fokkers were flying Messerschmidts."

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See you next Sunday for Posting #48 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@cs.com.

POSTING #46

A Mysterious Credit Card Purchase; Boris from Ulyanovsk; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

A Mysterious Credit Card Purchase

Pat and I were in a mall in Brampton recently doing some shoe browsing (or is that 'surfin') waiting for the start of hospital visiting hours when my cell phone rang.

A woman who said she was from the Fraud Prevention and Detection bureau of one of our chartered banks wanted proof that I was indeed John Hunter. She asked a slew of questions that I was able to answer but I stumbled when she asked the maximum on the card we had with her bank. Like most seniors, we pay off our credit card accounts when they come in and although we love our Canadian banks we would not think of paying them 17.9% interest, or whatever it is they are charging (gouging) today for unpaid balances.

So, I didn't know the maximum.

When I finally convinced her that I was who I was, she wanted to know if I had made a purchase of $1.27 at 12.30 am that morning.

I told her I was sound asleep at that time.

She asked if I recalled making any payments to an APL account.

Nope!

Now any young person reading the above will know immediately what was happening.

I didn't have a clue.

To make a long story short, it turned out that someone had acquired our credit card number and downloaded a song from iTunes, which is owned by Apple.

The bank official speculated that some company at which we had used our card had not protected its computer records carefully enough. Someone had hacked in, got thousands of card numbers, ours included, and then sold them to youngsters who wanted cheap music.

I'm really impressed with the bank. It detected the misuse quickly and we had new cards with new numbers in 5 days. The bank told us it would erase the iTunes amount and would accept responsibility for any other charges that came in for the old card.

Well done!!



Boris from Ulyanovsk

One of the model offices we created during the Russian aid project was in Ulyanovsk on the Volga, named in Soviet times for Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who in 1901 changed his name to Lenin, to confuse the Czar's secret police.

On my inspection trip, I met the Regional Employment Director, Boris, (not his real name), and his manager of the proposed model office.

The visit went well. I toured the office and quickly agreed that it would make a good model office. I proposed a plan of work for the consultants, which Boris and the manager accepted.

Over dinner, Boris and I found that we had two things in common: we were born in the same month of the same year and each had three children. He, however, had a number of grandchildren and Pat and I had none. He told me I was to tell our children to get a move on (we didn't, but they did).

A burly fellow, he had been a senior Communist Party official, responsible for assembling the workforce required to build the Ruslan, (also known as the Antonov AN-124) for many years the world's largest assembly-line plane. The huge workforce required a large new town, but coming from peasant stock he insisted that the rich top soil be carefully scraped off the site and used elsewhere.

Our discussions were very cordial until I asked the wrong question. My map of Russia showed the name of the town we were in as Simbirsk, not Ulyanovsk, and I wondered why. My interpreter tensed up as he translated my question---usually a sign that I was putting my foot in it.

Boris launched into a diatribe about how the new government was changing all the Communist-time names back to the old Czarist names. Leningrad had become St. Petersburg, Stalingrad had become Volgograd and so on. He almost pounded the table as he declared that Ulyanovsk was going to stay Ulyanovsk, in honour of Lenin.

That should have alerted me that we might have problems with Boris.

Back in Moscow, I made plans to include Boris and his office manager in an upcoming tour to Canada. Just before the group was to leave for Canada, I heard that Boris couldn't go---he had been diagnosed with some kind of cancer. His deputy went instead.

The two Ulyanovsk officials came back from their trip full of praise for what they had seen and ready to start changing their office.

The Canadian employment officers selected for Ulyanovsk---four very strong people---arrived in Moscow, were briefed and then took off for their assignment.

Emails from the team were positive, things were going well. The team members finished their task and returned to Moscow. They told me that the office manager and staff had hosted a lavish send-off dinner, and everyone promised to stay in touch.

In the midst of this debriefing, my Russian liaison officer interrupted. She said that Boris had just phoned the President of the Russian Federal Employment Service complaining that the team had not done what I had promised they would do. He was not going to accept that etc. etc.

The team, which was getting ready to fly home, was puzzled and upset at the complaint.

In the end, I agreed to keep another Canadian team in Russia for an extra two weeks so they could go to Ulyanovsk and remedy whatever shortcomings there were.

After the second's team visit to Ulyanovsk, Boris told Moscow that he was satisfied, but not enthusiastic, with the work of the team.

Ulyanovsk was the only location where we had had any complaints about our work and it rankled with me. In the end, I decided that you can't win them all.

As the project was coming to a close I was assembling the last study tour to go to Canada. My Russian liaison officer came to say that Boris's doctor had declared him fit for travel, and he was demanding to be included in the study tour.

Although our contract didn't require us to include him in a tour---we had already sent two officials from Ulyanovsk--I recommended that he be allowed to travel and Ottawa agreed. I met Boris when he came to Moscow on his way to Canada and took him through the Canadian itinerary.

He was correct but cold---there was no sign of the earlier warmness when we had first met.

Three weeks later, Pat was in the office helping me pull together the final reports required by the World Bank when the interpreter came in and said that Boris was back from Canada and wanted to speak to me.

I thought, "What now? What went wrong in Canada? What is he going to complain about this time?"

Boris started to talk in a low voice, looking at the table. After a few minutes, the interpreter stopped him so he could translate that part.

The interpreter said that Boris saw employment programs in Canada of the kind he had never imagined.

He talked about rehabilitation programs for the disabled in which people in wheel chairs were being taught to use computers by tapping on keys with a stick attached to their forehead.

In Russia, he said, when a person becomes disabled they are left in their apartments to die because there are usually no elevators.

The interpreter told Boris to continue.

Boris resumed talking in Russian but this time instead of looking down at the table, he was looking at me, eye to eye.

After a couple of minutes, he stopped.

The interpreter said that Boris was saying that when the Canadian team was in Ulyanovsk he had been hard on them. He didn't believe that Russia had anything to learn from a NATO country.

The interpreter ended by saying, "Boris wants to apologize. He was wrong and you were right."

Pat said later that you could have heard a pin drop.

Boris and I got up and gave each other a Russian bear hug.

He was a big man---in every sense.

Unfortunately, the cancer came back a few years later and he lost his battle with the disease.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

The greatest British drinking song, in my humble opinion, is "On Ilkla Moor Baht'at". It is sometimes sung by people from the south of England but they should stick to "Knees up Mother Brown". They just can't do the Yorkshire accent.

The rollicking and cheerful song is about a young man who visits Ilkley Moor (a few miles north-west of Leeds) without a hat, catches cold, dies, is eaten by worms etc. etc.

Really cheerful stuff!

Click here for more information on the song.

On the way out of the town of Ilkley there is a cattle grid to prevent the sheep, which graze on the moor, from coming into town and eating the roses.

Friends from Ilkley told us when we lived in Leeds that some sheep had learned how to defeat the cattle grid. They would lie down, tuck in their legs, and roll over the grid.

Now, I think the reader will agree that this is a good story.

And I've told it often, for almost fifty years.

But each time I've wondered whether it was true, or just another urban (rural?) myth.

Thanks to Google, I have now been able to get some corroboration---of a sort. A biologist researching animal behavior posted this request:

"I am a biologist doing research on animal behaviour. There have been several reports in the press about sheep excaping (sic) from pastures by rolling over cattle grids, and i am trying to find out how widespread this behavious (sic) is. Has anyone seen it happening?"

One person responded with this account:

"I've seen it in the Forest of Dean with animals trying to get on to an Industrial Estate. It involved a ewe and, I presume, her two yearling lambs. The first sat down part on a corner of the grid part on the ground whe (sic) was leaving. The other two walked over her, she then used her back legs (front legs still in a kneeling position) to push herself into a half roll so that her back legs were then on the 'new ground.' She then pulled herself back off the grid and only straightened her front legs when she had got them onto the 'new' ground."

(To see the exchanges, click here.)

It is not easy to understand the response but I take it that the ewe lay down on the grid so her lambs could walk across her to the other side. She then rolled, to the other side.

I think that this story from Gloucestershire is even better than the Ilkley moor one, implying as it does intelligence, planning and maternal love.

But "On Ilkla Moor Baht'at" is still the best British drinking song.

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See you next Sunday for Posting #47 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@cs.com.

POSTING #45

Amelia; The Worshipful Company of Fruiterers; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Amelia

In the fall of 2007 we were negotiating the sale of our lakefront home in Grimsby to a family from Oakville.

During those discussions, Chris, who is a location manager in the movie industry, was spending a good bit of his time at the Niagara District Airport in Virgil making arrangements for the use of the airport for scenes to be included in a film about Amelia Earhart.

Filming took place in late June and early July last year and we enjoyed watching from the back deck of our new home as vintage aircraft, followed by a modern plane with a film crew, performed various aerobatic maneuvers.

Although there were rumours that the stars, Richard Gere and Hilary Swank, would be coming that doesn't seem to have been the case---at least according to one waitress who chased down each of the rumours so she could have a look at hunky Richard.

The eternally cash-strapped airport was happy to receive $25,000 for the rental of the grounds and hopes that this was just the first of many films.

The film was released locally on October 22 and although the reviews weren't good Pat and I decided to see it last Sunday, because of the Virgil connection.

Too late.

Amelia had come and gone.

We'll have to wait for the DVD, which, given the short run here, shouldn't be a very long wait.

The Worshipful Company of Fruiterers

When I took over the London Immigration office in 1963. I was introduced to the locally engaged officials, who were all English except for one man, Bill Attewell, who when we shook hands pointed out that he was Canadian, had been in the RCAF during the war and had decided to stay in Britain.

He seemed to be in his 60s, with a lived-in face and hair that looked as though it had been touched up a bit. Later, someone told me that he had a young daughter and that he didn't want to be mistaken for her grandfather.

His work involved preparing landing documents for immigrants, work that had to be absolutely accurate and often had to be completed under pressure---immigrants wouldn't get their passports until the last minute and then our office had to rush to get the documents to them so they could catch their ships or planes.

He was an intense and concentrated worker. Things had to be done correctly or he became upset.

Personally, I found that a very good character trait because it helped me sleep better at night---knowing that I wouldn't be getting rockets from Ottawa about inaccurate documents.

And then came a surprise about Bill.

Someone told me that he had been a Wing Commander at the UK Headquarters of the RCAF during World War II and had played a very key role in supporting the Canadian fighters and bombers.

In recognition of his work King George VI had made him a Member of the British Empire and the City of London had made him a Freeman of the City.

This was Bill Attewell in our documents section!

What was going on?

Why was he, with his background, doing clerical work in our office?

I had two theories. One was that he had a good retirement pension and was just looking for something to keep himself occupied.

The other (and I guess they are not mutually exclusive) was that his work during the war had taken a considerable toll and although he needed some stress he didn't want to have to cope with managing a lot of people.

I never did solve this mystery. Although we occasionally had lunch together in the cafeteria, it was usually with others and he didn't open up very much.

Bill did explain to me that being a Freeman of the City of London came with certain privileges. Among them was one that permitted a Freeman to drive sheep across London Bridge, a privilege that went back to the 11th century.

Bill said that he had never attempted this, but I have found an article about another Freeman of London---Amanda Cottrell---who drove 6 sheep across the bridge last year to give publicity to two causes: the Save Canterbury Cathedral Appeal, and Produced in Kent, a scheme to persuade people to buy local produce. Click here for this fun article.

Bill also told me that a Freeman has the right to join one of the ancient London guilds, for example the guilds of goldsmiths or silversmiths. In medieval times, the guilds existed to protect their trade and their members, but now while they promote their industry they are primarily social and charitable organizations, often with ancient guildhalls that they look after.

As I recall (I'm not too sure about this) Bill decided that because his father had had some connection with the fruit business---perhaps owned a store, or perhaps worked as a clerk in one---he would join the 700 year-old Worshipful Company of Fruiterers.

And he invited me to the annual banquet of the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers. He said that it would introduce me to an aspect of London life that I wouldn't otherwise experience.

Apparently the Fruiterers no longer had a hall of their own (I don't recall what happened to it) so the banquet would be held in another guild's hall.

At the banquet, he was a gracious host, explaining the significance of the rituals and the elaborate livery worn by the officers of the Company (it was an impressive show--the kind that only the British can mount), and introducing me to members of the Company. All of this was fascinating to a person from the 'Colonies'.

The dinner was superb, filet mignon (I think) with the best Bordeaux I have ever tasted (of that, I am absolutely sure).

I thoroughly enjoyed the evening and told him so. He seemed to be pleased that I had liked the experience.

For that evening he was no longer the person I was used to seeing, a person bent over immigration documents. He was a Wing Commander, a Member of the British Empire, and a Freeman of the City of London.

ooo


In doing some research for the above, I came across more information on Bill Attewell, information that I wish I had known when we were working together.


• He immigrated to Canada in 1914 just before the start of World War I when he was only 15 years old;
• He then lied about his age to get into the Canadian Army so he could flight in the War;
• He was seriously wounded in Europe and was invalided back to Canada;
• He became an aircraft mechanic and then joined the RCAF in the 1920s;
• He started in the RCAF as a lowly airman but was commissioned as an officer in 1940.

As I write the stories for this Blog, I feel again and again that I should have found out more about the people I was meeting.

Bill Attewell is right at the top of that list.

I understand that Bill died at the age of 69, just three years after I returned to Canada from London.

He was a good guy.

Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

The other day I was coming into the house when I heard deep and ferocious barking from just down the street.

I stopped to see what the trouble was.

A woman was pulling on a German shepherd-type dog but he kept turning his head and looking back at a boy with inline skates who was shooting a ball at a net with a hockey stick.

Each time the dog turned he barked, long and deep.

Assuming the dog wanted to attack the boy, perhaps because of the stick or the skates, I was glad the woman had a good grip on the leash.

As she came past our house she said, "It is so embarrassing taking him for a walk. Whenever he sees a ball he goes crazy. He just loves balls."

It wasn't the boy on skates he wanted.

It was just the ball.



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See you next Sunday for Posting #46 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@cs.com.

POSTING #44

Fire in Niagara-on-the-Lake; Some Stories About Economic Success in Asia; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Fire in Niagara-on-the-Lake

Last Sunday after a visit to Queen Street in Niagara Falls, Pat and I decided to drive to Niagara-on-the-Lake for a pleasant stroll on its Queen Street (does every town in Canada have a Queen Street?).

As we neared the town, we could see clouds of brownish-gray smoke billowing up from a site that seemed to be close to the Prince of Wales Hotel---the hotel that has just been named the best hotel in Ontario.

We feared the worst.

It turned out that the fire was not in the hotel but in two heritage, wooden buildings just to the west of it.

For several hours we watched the fire fighters from a spot in front of the restaurant Corks, only about a hundred yards across the street from the flames (for people familiar with NOTL, Corks has replaced the Buttery Restaurant). The NOTL and St. Catharines fire departments arrived at 1.15 PM to fight the stubborn blaze and finally turned off the hoses at 9.15 PM.

They had an aerial ladder on Queen Street pumping water on the front of the buildings and another in a parking lot behind the stores, plus a number of hand-held hoses spraying the fire and cooling adjacent buildings. At one point as the aerial ladder behind the stores swiveled to change its target, water sprayed across the street drenching us.

It was a surreal experience.

A few feet in front of us was the command centre with tables of food and drinks for firefighters taking a break. A woman with a stroller and two young children beside us said that she had two brothers fighting the fire.

A few feet behind us, on the veranda of Corks, people were laughing and joking as they ate their meals and drank their beer. The first line of Lord Byron's poem about the battle of Waterloo kept running through my head, " There was a sound of revelry by night..."

We understand that the fire started in the basement of one of the stores from some sort of electrical problem. Ironically, that store was NOTL's fire hall for part of the 1800s.

No lives were lost, but NOTL has lost two historic buildings that gave character to its main street.

Some Stories About Economic Success in Asia

Recently I was reading an article that analyzed the shift of the world's economic centre of gravity from Europe and North America to Asia.

There is an amazing and continuing transformation of economies that were once known primarily for the production of cheap knock-off watches, lighters, handbags and the like.

Here are three stories about change in Asia.

In 1969, during a visit to the Canadian Consulate in New York I saw one of the consular officials shaking his head.

He had just had a request for assistance from an unnamed Japanese car company. He explained that the Japanese company wanted to buy a hundred used cars from different regions of Canada and ship them to Japan. The company had provided a detailed list of the cars it wanted to buy---both North American and foreign--showing the make, age and location. For example, one of the cars was to be a 5 year-old Chevrolet from Sudbury.

The cars would be taken apart piece-by-piece in Japan by the company's engineers so they could see what driving in Canada did to cars.

The company wanted to be sure that there were no government regulations that would interfere with the purchase of the cars or the shipping of them to Japan. The consular official assured the company that if they wanted to spend a lot of money and time buying used cars the Canadian Government would not object.

He thought the whole thing was bizarre.

Perhaps not so bizarre.

Japan had started shipping cars to Canada in the 1960s and they hadn't fared very well. Japanese cars had to be coddled in the winter or they wouldn't start, and they rusted like nobody's business.

North American cars were no great shakes either but they started better in the winter and didn't rust quite so badly.

Quality was a problem though. This was the time when newspaper articles told us not to buy cars built on Mondays because of high absenteeism after weekends. The factories would produce the same number of cars so the managers could meet their production goals but the cars would often be missing nuts, bolts, bits of trim and other parts.

Japan had begun to listen to Dr. W. Edward Deming, an American expert on quality, who had few if any followers at that time in the North American auto industry. The Japanese car companies and soon most of their manufacturing industries had committed themselves to Deming's 'quality revolution'.

Viewed from this perspective, the buying of used cars doesn't seem so bizarre. The Japanese were determined to build cars that would be reliable in a Canadian environment.

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One of the regular guests around 2000 at our Denwycke House at Grimsby bed and breakfast was a senior manager at a Canadian company that manufactured high-end shower enclosures and whirlpool tubs. As the companies they competed with transferred production off-shore to lower cost countries, his company decided that if they were to compete they would have follow suit.

They decided to shift their production to China.

Our guest visited the Chinese company a few months after it had begun producing goods for his company. He said that as he toured the plant, managers and supervisors kept repeating to him---almost begging, he said---that he and his colleagues must alert the company immediately if they ever found anything wrong with the components. The Chinese wanted to be given a chance to correct the problem.

At the end of the tour the plant manager asked him if he had seen anything that could be improved in how the plant was operating. The Canadian said he thought things were operating pretty well, but taking an envelope from his pocket he started sketching how the various machines might be shifted to create a somewhat smoother production flow.

The plant manager thanked him profusely and asked if he could have the sketch.

When the Canadian returned to the factory the next morning the plant manager asked him if they could take another tour of the plant.

The Canadian was puzzled---they had just toured the plant the day before---but he agreed.

As they entered the factory floor, the Canadian saw that all the machines that he had suggested be moved, had been moved.

He was flummoxed. The machines were large and heavy, and had to be anchored to the floor. How could they have been moved so quickly?

The plant manager told him that he had called in extra teams and they had worked all night to relocate the machines.

The manager bowed and thanked him for his help.

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In the 1980s, officials from the Chinese Public Employment Service were visiting the national headquarters of Canada's Employment Service. After a presentation on Canada's internationally groundbreaking dictionary of occupations that described and classified some 65,000 occupations, the Chinese asked if they could have a copy of the dictionary.

The Canadian officials said they would be happy to provide a set but pointed to the five large, heavy volumes that made up the set and asked if they really wanted to lug those back to China in their luggage. The Chinese said there was no problem, they would divide the set among them.

A couple of years later, a Canadian employment service person was in Beijing visiting one of the Chinese officials who had come to Canada. The official pointed to his bookcase. Sitting on the shelves were the five volumes of the Canadian dictionary, and beside them a number of other volumes with Chinese lettering on the spines.

The official explained that they had translated the Canadian dictionary into Chinese.

This was a monumental task and the Canadian was amazed that they had done so much work and done it so quickly.

But he had some news that he didn't know whether he should share with the Chinese official.

Canada was about to release a new dictionary of occupations that would be more complete and accurate, and that would make the earlier dictionary obsolete.

He finally decided he had to tell the official about the new version. Instead of showing any concern, the official asked if they could have a copy of the new dictionary. He explained that the work they had done on the first dictionary would help them translate the new one.

And, he added with a smile, "We have lots of translators."


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During the latter stages of my government career I helped train senior managers and I suppose it is that experience that makes me ask, 'What are the learning points from these stories?"

It seems to me that they suggest that the Asian economic success is based in part at least on their citizens being willing to learn from others and then to act---to change---and to do so quickly.

A recent article said that the Chinese Government, which as everyone knows has had a poor reputation in the past on pollution, has now decided to be a leading player in green technology. While some of us---and some of our leaders---are debating about whether climate change is real, the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans will be building solar systems, wind turbines and electric cars.

And selling them to us.

The Asian nations have benefited by learning from us.

Perhaps it is now time for us to learn from them.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

When our children were young, we bought a globe for Christmas one year.

After I had explained that this was how the Earth would appear from outer space, one of them wanted to know what 'the lines' were for, pointing to the latitude and longitude lines.

Thinking that this would be a good opportunity for 'a teaching moment', I described how people could use those lines to find their way around the world.

The child thought about this for a moment and then said, "But there are no lines on the land."

I still treasure that moment, as the child tried to make the mental leap from the concrete to the abstract.


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See you next Sunday for Posting #45 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@cs.com.

POSTING #43

"The Day the Falls Stood Still" by Cathy Marie Buchanan; A Computer Program to Match Workers and Jobs; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

"The Day the Falls Stood Still" by Cathy Marie Buchanan

The Niagara Peninsula is a small place.

At a party in Niagara Falls a couple of months ago we met a woman who told us that her daughter was about to have her first novel published. The proud mom said that the book---set in Niagara Falls during the early 1900s---was based loosely on the famous Hill family, a family of 'river people' who rescued people and recovered bodies from the Niagara River and who dared the rapids, the whirlpool and even the Falls. Click here for more information on the Hills and on the day the falls stood still.

Then a few weeks ago the daughter, Cathy Buchanan, spoke about the book at a meeting that Pat attended.

We have both read the book and can highly recommend it. It is well plotted, populated with vivid characters and full of wonderful descriptions of the Falls and the River.

We understand that it is being translated into a number of foreign languages. I am sure that movie producers are drooling over it---what could be better than a great story with the Falls as a backdrop.


A Computer Program to Match Workers and Jobs

The star at an international conference on Employment Services in the early 1970s was a studious-looking researcher in his mid-40s from an employment service in a Western country. He had recently received approval from his government to develop a computer system to match workers and jobs. As he wandered from booth to booth, delegates came up to him with congratulations and questions on how he had managed to pull off this coup.

He took all this attention with modesty but with obvious enjoyment.

The stars at these international conferences were usually hard-driving administrators, not researchers.

His story was fascinating.

Working in the research division of his employment services, he had tried to imagine how computers could be harnessed to take over some of the time-consuming, repetitive tasks performed in the local employment offices.

One of the most labour-intensive tasks in the local offices was to take job vacancies given to them by employers and go through hundreds or thousands of paper applications of unemployed workers in order to find qualified people to send to the employers.

Although they were still new in the late 1960s, computers had already shown that they could store and retrieve enormous amounts of data. The researcher asked himself whether it would be possible to store all the jobs in one data base, the jobs in another and then 'run' the two files against each other.

In this way, a job for an electrician could be matched with electricians in the worker file. Once the computer had done this, employees in the local office could contact the electricians and refer them to the electrical contractor.

The more the researcher studied the idea, the more it seemed to be worth a feasibility study. He prepared a proposal and included a cost of $150,000. He thought that the study could be conducted for about $75,000 but he had learned from experience that his superiors usually cut budget proposals in half.

His boss liked the idea very much. Computers were 'hot' and even if he didn't really understand how they worked, it would be good to be seen to be embracing this new technology. But, he said, it would be better to ask for $300,000 because the managers up the line would undoubtedly cut the proposed budget.

The next level also liked the idea but suggested boosting the budget to $750,000---again because of possible cuts up the line. The researcher reminded his boss that this was just a small feasibility study but his manager said that he should relax. It was clear that his idea was a winner, and he should start to think big.

Finally, the proposal reached the top public servant, the person who reported to a political appointee. He too liked the proposal but being concerned about recent cost-cutting decisions from the political level doubled the budget to $1,500,000.

To the surprise of the public servants, the politicians liked the idea. Unemployment was high at the time and they wanted to be seen to be doing something to fight it.

But the politicians didn't like the idea of a 'feasibility study'---that wouldn't impress voters. This sounded like a simple task---matching jobs and workers--and everyone knew about the awesome power of computers. Why not, the politicians argued, go directly to the development and installation of a matching system in all local offices?

The researcher pleaded for a feasibility study to be sure that the idea worked but was overruled. Instead he was told that he would head up an implementation team with a goal of 'making it happen'. When asked how much money it would take, he consulted some computer companies and after some back-of-the envelope calculations came up with an estimate of $70 million for all the computers and software.

That estimate was included in the organization's annual budget and supporting legislation was passed requiring all regions of the employment service to have the new system installed and operating in three years.

It was at that point that I met the researcher at the international conference. It was no wonder that delegates from the employment services in other countries wanted to find out how he had done it. None of us had ever heard of an idea getting such a rapid and generous reception.

I ran into the researcher again two years later at another conference. What a change! He was wandering alone from booth to booth, his head down looking tired and dejected.

One of his colleagues told me that contracts had been given, people hired, programs written, and computers purchased but it hadn't been possible to get the matching to work effectively. The program had been scrapped, the researcher was back doing research, his career in shreds.

The lesson was that computers were not yet ready to do the complex assessments that a skilled employment official could make about which worker was likely to meet the needs of a particular job vacancy.

Matching workers and jobs is tough. For example, take electricians. Despite the fact that they all have to pass competency exams, they are not all the same. Some prefer to work in residential, others in industrial fields. Among those in residential, some prefer to work in new homes, others in existing homes. Some belong to unions, others don't. Some are willing to travel considerable distances to work, others are not. And on and on.

Matching of workers and jobs had to wait for the development of more sophisticated soft and hard technologies. Now, some 40 years later, and after the investment of millions of dollars by employment services around the world, systems such as the Canada Job Bank are pretty good. They produce reasonable matches at low cost but no one would claim that they produce the kind of matches that the enthusiastic proponents thought would be possible back in the early 1970s.


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The recent stories about the Ontario Government's eHealth computer program made me recall the above story. Like job matching, the computerization of health records makes a lot of sense. I suspect, however, that the actual computerization of health records is proving to be horrendously complex.

When one adds in the temptations that always accompany large budgets and a tight time frame for completion, it is no wonder there are problems with eHealth.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

I have written in a number of postings about my fascination with Canada Geese.

This summer I have watched as a flock of 30 or 40 geese visits the park behind our house. They arrive, stay for a few days and then take off.

Perhaps they are different geese, but I like to think that they are the same geese---Virgil's 2009 flock.

This week the town decided to put in a meandering, six-foot-wide asphalt path in the park, a path that makes it easier for moms to push their strollers to a well-equipped play area with slides, swings and so on.

The geese flew back just after the path was completed. As I watched they landed on either side of the path---no one landed on the path. They waddled (they are getting quite plump, ready for the trip south) along either side of the walk, studying it.

They may have been trying to figure out the purpose of the path, or more realistically, trying to figure out whether it was dangerous or not.

No one walked on it.

Finally, a particularly large goose, perhaps the patriarch, stepped onto the walk and walked gingerly back and forth across it and then walked its full length.

Having accomplished that, he stood in the middle of the walk and stretched his neck and head up in the sentinel-posture, watching for dogs or other threats while the rest of the flock fed on the grass.

At one point, another goose started to climb onto the path but the sentinel lunged at him with wings flapping. The goose backed off.

Was the patriarch playing 'I'm King of the Castle', or was he worried that the path posed some threat that only he was wise enough to withstand?

I don't know.

The geese have left us once again.

I am waiting to see whether when they return they will wander across and along the path, or will they still avoid it.

Interesting critters!


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See you next Sunday for Posting #44 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@cs.com.