POSTING # 26

Nubbing in Virgil; Pat’s First Visit to the Bolshoi Theatre; Canadian Consultants at the Bolshoi; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


NOTE: I am having problems uploading some images of the Bolshoi Theatre. I will keep trying. You may want to re-visit the posting in a day or so.

Nubbing in Virgil

After a wetter and cooler spring than normal, I wondered whether we would ever get the kind of strawberries we dream about all winter. You know: berries that are red all the way through, soft to the touch, and have a flavour that says ‘summer’.

The first ones we got were grown under plastic and while better than imported ones, they weren’t the real thing.

And then, after a few days of sunny, warm weather the famous Ontario strawberries were here.

One of the local weekly papers announced that over 100 volunteers at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake were getting ready for the 26th annual festival on the church grounds. The article had this sentence:

“Members of the congregation will begin nubbing the fruit today and continue right through Saturday morning, as long as more fruit is needed.”

‘Nubbing?’

Now, I knew, of course, what the article meant. The volunteers were going to remove the little leaves at the stem-end of the berries.

But where I come from, we always called that ‘hulling’.

Assuming that the term had been brought over from the British Isles by settlers, I checked the Oxford English Dictionary. According to the dictionary, ‘nub’ can mean knob, protuberance or lump, and by extension, gallows, that is, the place, presumably, where one’s knob is lopped off.

The only definition I could find for the word ‘nubbing’ referred to hanging.

There is no reference to strawberries, but it is not unreasonable I suppose to think that in some corner of the British Isles people used ‘nubbing’ to mean the removal of the ‘nub’ at the stem-end of the berries.

Being a modern kind of person, I also checked Google.

That was a mistake.

It seems that in some circles ‘nubbing’ refers to sexual practices, which I am not going to try to describe in a family blog.

I strongly advise readers not to Google the term.

I know that many of you are contrarians at heart and being told not to do something you will immediately do it.

All I can say is that I warned you, and I and “Letter from Virgil” do not accept responsibility for any damage that Googling ‘nubbing’ may do.

You’ve been warned!

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A postscript about all of this.

Just as I was getting ready to upload this posting, I heard that the Strawberry Festival folks were saying that the newspaper had incorrectly reported what they had said, that they used the term ‘nibbing’, not ’nubbing’. According to them, the springy little metal tool used to pinch off the tiny strawberry leaves is called a ‘nibber’ and, therefore, when one uses it one is ‘nibbing’.

I have never heard that little tool referred to as a ‘nibber’ but I am prepared to accept their claim.

Unfortunately, a Google check of ‘nibbing’ brings up references, once again, to sexual practices---practices that we can’t go into here.

At this point, I think I am with George and Ira Gershwin, “Let’s call the whole thing off.”

So to speak.

Pat’s First Visit to the Bolshoi Theatre

I had been in Moscow for several months in 1995, working night and day to start the technical assistance project that was to create some 20 model employment offices from Moscow to the Pacific.

Things were now running smoothly and it was time for Pat to come for a visit.

Talking with a friend at the Canadian Embassy about things Pat and I could do and see, we agreed that a ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre should be at the top of the list.

“But don’t buy tickets from the scalpers in front of the Theatre”, my friend warned. “The tickets are either poor counterfeits or are valid tickets for performances that have already taken place. The writing is all in Russian and until you have picked up some Cyrillic you can’t tell whether they are valid.”

“So I would be out of pocket a good bit of money”, I said.

“Oh, it’s not the money, it’s the embarrassment you’ll feel when the ticket-taking babushka at the Bolshoi cackles to everyone about what an idiot you have been to buy fake tickets.”

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My office manager knew someone who had a friend at the Bolshoi and I bought two tickets.

The night of the performance was cold and wet. We took the Moscow Metro from a subway stop near our apartment and with a transfer or two came up to the surface on a street not too far from the Bolshoi. The street was dark and the grimy buildings on either side were slick with rain. Pat’s knees were sore and we had to take care not to step into potholes in the gloom.

We turned a corner, and saw a large dark building on our left.

I pointed and said, “That’s Lubyanka Prison”.

“Lubyanka”, Pat repeated.



We stopped and stared at the prison, shuddering a little at the thought of all the evil that had taken place there in Soviet times under Stalin and Beria.


We trudged on and, finally, Pat said, “Are you sure you know where we’re going?”

We carried on to the bottom of the dark street and turned right.

There, before us was the stunning, brilliantly illuminated Bolshoi---all white stone and gilt trim---shining against the dark sky.




Pat gasped and we stood for several minutes in awe.

Inside, (we had no trouble with the ticket takers) the dancing and the music were superb.

But there was so much else for the eye.



Pat fell in love with the stage curtain, which, despite the Soviet symbols, is a wonderful example of the weaver’s art. (The photo distorts, we think, the colour of the curtain. Our recollection is that the colours are softer, more muted.)



A Russian friend called the other day from Moscow and we talked about the Bolshoi and the curtain. The friend said he didn’t know what had happened to the curtain. The Bolshoi Theatre has been closed since 2005 and probably won’t reopen until 2013 (what were to be minor repairs have turned into major structural changes because the building is sinking). In the meantime, performances are taking place in a temporary home.

The Soviet Union was indeed in many ways as Reagan said ‘an evil empire’, witness the brutality that went on at Lubyanka Prison. And perhaps it would be wrong to continue to display the Communist symbols in the Bolshoi Theatre. But we would like to think that the curtain will be preserved, somewhere, as a work of art---and as a reminder of the evils of the Soviet times.

Canadian Consultants at the Bolshoi

Our Project’s work of creating model employment offices required the secondment of more than twenty officials from Canadian employment offices from Newfoundland to British Columbia to work in Russia.

I always made sure that the consultants had a chance to attend a ballet if the Bolshoi season was on.

After one visit to the Bolshoi, a consultant said: “How can I tell my friends back home that I sat in the Bolshoi. They’ll never believe me.”

He and all of us felt privileged to have been in that wonderful, historic theatre and to have enjoyed some of the world’s greatest music and dancing.

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Despite the legendary thoroughness of the ticket-taking babushkas, there could be slip ups.

On one occasion, we arranged Bolshoi tickets for several consultants who were in Moscow at the same time---on their way to, or from assignments out in the provinces.

One of the consultants had been in a meeting and had to rush to get to the Theatre on time. He was puzzled when he arrived because although his colleagues had agreed to meet him at the entrance there was no one there. He assumed that because he was a little late they had gone ahead and taken their seats. The babushka checked his ticket, gave it back to him and pointed out his seat.

He took his seat and became even more puzzled. The consultants’ seats were supposed to be all together but he was surrounded by strangers.

He shrugged his shoulders, settled back in his seat and enjoyed the ballet.

The next day he ran into a colleague and asked where the person had been the night before.

“Our ballet is tonight, not last night”, was the reply. “You got your dates mixed up.”

The consultant asked a Russian employee to check his ticket. It was a valid ticket, but valid for the coming night.

The babushka had let him in despite the wrong date, and as luck would have it, that seat hadn’t been sold.

What to do about the coming evening’s visit to the Bolshoi?

The consultant still had his ticket, and a different ballet was being performed.

So he went back to the Theatre, this time with his colleagues.

I was talking to him a few weeks ago and he was still chuckling that he must have been one of the few people ever to have enjoyed two ballets for the price of one at the Bolshoi.

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A Russian friend was complaining about the quality of goods being produced at that time---1995. Clothes, cars, appliances were all shoddily made---managers still had the Soviet-era mentality of meeting their production targets, and not caring about quality.

“We Russians can’t make anything right”, he muttered.

I asked, “What about the Bolshoi?’

“Oh, the Bolshoi, that’s special.”

And indeed it was.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

We had a problem with squirrels at our bed and breakfast, Denwycke House at Grimsby. Guests would hear noises above their heads, in the attic,. As one guest said, “I think you have non-paying guests in the attic.

We called an exterminator who used live traps to catch the squirrels, which he took out into the country. He also blocked the holes the squirrels had used to get into the attic.

That fixed the problem of beasties in the attic but since we had a number of chestnut and black walnut trees on the property we always had lots of squirrels on the property,

We noticed that some of them especially the young ones seemed to behave oddly. They would run in circles, fall out of trees, start off across the lawn and suddenly go tearing off in a different direction.

Strange.

I asked an expert at our gardening club about the odd behavior. She said she hated squirrels. “Everyone thinks they’re cute. I don’t. They’re just rats with fluffy tails.”

She suggested that perhaps they had a disease, and that would be a good thing, as far as she was concerned, so long as it was fatal.

We stopped worrying about the squirrels. There are lots of things to worry about when one is trying to run a B&B in a 160 year-old house that has been neglected.

At least the squirrels weren’t in the house.

Then we started having phone problems.

Our line would go dead---not a good thing when one is running a B&B. I would call Bell and a technician would climb the pole in front of our house and eventually the phone line would work again.

A month or so later, the line would go dead again.

After several problems, I went out to talk with the technician to find out what was going wrong.

He said, “It’s the damn squirrels”.

He explained that the telephone lines were encased in a lead tube filled with a gas, nitrogen I think, to keep moisture out of the lines. Young squirrels were always looking for something to sharpen their growing teeth against. They would chew into the soft lead, puncture the tube thus releasing the gas. The lines would get wet and stop working.

He said they hadn’t been able to think of a solution apart from burying the lines, which would have been very costly in an old neighbourhood.

Now we knew what was causing the odd behavior of the squirrels.

Lead poisoning!

And whenever our line went dead, we called Bell and said that the squirrels were at it again.

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See you next Sunday for Posting #27 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 # 25

Two Markets on the Niagara Parkway that We Like; Messenger from the Prime Minister; “Follow John”; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Two Markets on the Niagara Parkway that We Like

Before we moved to Virgil, I tended to ignore the markets along the Niagara Parkway, assuming they were oriented mainly to tourists who wanted an ice cream cone, a small souvenir bottle of maple syrup, a handful of sweet cherries and a pit stop (not necessarily in that order).

I was wrong.

And I should have known better.

My maternal grandparents, Reuben and Maggie Lush, had what some people claim was Canada’s first roadside fruit and vegetable stand at their farm on Highway 2 in Clarkson, Ontario. It was 1917 and the first concrete highway in Canada---between Toronto and Hamilton--- had just been completed. My grandparents figured that they could make more money by selling their produce to weekend tourists out for a drive in their Model T’s than by shipping it to wholesalers in Toronto, Montreal or Chicago.

I should have realized that the markets along the Parkway are in a very real sense legitimate descendants of Reuben and Maggie’s stand.

This became clear to me after I overcame my prejudice and actually stopped at some of the markets.

There are two markets that we particularly like, each of which, incidentally, has links to Virgil. Both are just a few kilometres south of Niagara-on-the-Lake, on the way to the Falls.

One is the Kurtz Orchards Gourmet Marketplace. It was started by Mrs. Kurtz over half a century ago. Initially, she sold fruit and vegetables from a roadside stand on a farm that she and her husband (now deceased) operated but soon added some jams, jellies and pickles that she made in her basement. The family business now makes a wide range of preserves and sauces in a small-batch factory in Virgil.

Mrs. Kurtz is still going strong. When we dropped in at the market a few weeks ago, we were told that she had been in the market that morning but was now on her way to Poland to visit family and friends.

The market on the Parkway is only open during the ‘season’ but the family has a store on Queen St. in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Kurtz Culinary Creations, that sells the family’s products year-round.

The second market is Walker’s Country Market, which is even older than the Kurtz one, having been on the Parkway since the 1930s.

Jim, the third generation Walker to run the market, and his wife Donna live just up the street from us in Virgil.

The Walker market has many items similar to the Kurtz market but gives prominence to local fruit and vegetables. They have links with some of the best local producers and their cherries, peaches, tomatoes, and corn are wonderful (they even cook cobs of corn while you wait).

I am proud of the two markets. In a time when too many businesses seem intent on ‘skinning’ the tourists, these markets offer tourists (and residents) products of high quality at a fair price.

The service in both is friendly and professional.

And I just love the many tasting stations in each market.


Messenger from the Prime Minister

Looking back on my childhood in Arthur, Ontario, it seems to me that young people at that time inherited three things from their parents (in addition to hair and eye colour etc): choice of church, make of car and political party. In my case, respectively, it was the United Church, Ford cars and the Progressive Conservative Party.

The situation was not quite as clear cut in the case of Pat, at least as far as religion was concerned, since she was the child of a mixed marriage (Anglican and Presbyterian) but the rest held: GM (Buick) cars and the Liberal Party.

So, when I went to Queen’s it was natural for me to join the Progressive Conservative Club.

It was a bleak time, in 1955, to be a PC in Canada. The hated Liberals, the ‘Grits’, had been in power federally for 20 years. The leader of the Liberal Party, and the Prime Minister, Louis St. Laurent, was getting on in years but he had considerable appeal (he was known as Uncle Louis). The PCs hoped that St. Laurent might step down because of his age but some Liberals ministers were saying privately that in the next election, expected in 1957, they would run him stuffed if necessary.

And the PCs agreed that, stuffed or not, he would win.

In 1956, the PCs chose John Diefenbaker as leader after a fairly bitter leadership race. Many members of the party were lukewarm about John whom they saw as a loner and a maverick. He was widely seen as a caretaker leader.

Things picked up a little for the PCs in the summer of 1956 and early 1957. The Liberals were getting tired and arrogant. Both showed in the way they tried to push through legislation in what was called “The Pipeline Debate”, and in some relatively small scandals.

An election was called for June 10, 1957. Almost everyone, including many PCs, assumed that the Liberals would lose a few seats but would still have a comfortable majority.

I was working in Tulsequah, BC that summer (see Posting # 17, April 26, 2009). Just before going to bed on the 10th I tried to find some news on my radio. Reception was always terrible because of the remoteness of the mining camp and because of the mineral-laden mountains. I finally found a Juneau, Alaska radio station and through a lot of static heard the news announcer say, with a tone of disbelief, “There is a report that the Canadian Government has been defeated”.

I couldn’t believe it.

As news trickled in I learned that the PCs had won 111 seats to 104 for the Liberals. Louis St. Laurent had resigned both as Prime Minister and as leader of the Liberal Party. John Diefenbaker was our new Prime Minister.

Back at Queen’s in September, I found new life in the PC Club. We talked about ways of getting some speakers, perhaps a minister, from the national party. We also talked about how we could take the PC cause into the upcoming model parliament.

Then the President of the Club got a phone call saying that the Prime Minister was sending a special messenger. Could a meeting of the Club be arranged so the messenger could address us?

The messenger turned out to be a tall, skinny, young fellow with a brush cut, wearing a university jacket that I didn’t recognize.

I remember thinking that this special messenger is just a student like us. What gives, anyway?

The messenger started to talk about personal discussions he had had with the Prime Minister, and how the PM had asked him to visit university PC clubs. The PM expected that there would have to be a relatively early election and he wanted the university clubs to mobilize and help the party gain a majority.

One of the members, a Franco-Ontarian with a strong accent asked a question and the messenger responded in rapid, fluent French.

I was envious of this young fellow, with his self-confidence and his ability to talk not just about programs and policies, which was our strong suit, but about the practical strategies and tactics required to win an election.

And he was bilingual!

By now, you have probably guessed the identity of the messenger.

Martin Brian Mulroney,

Later on he was to demonstrate his mastery of the strategies and tactics of winning elections by being elected Canada’s 18th Prime Minister, in September 1984.

“Follow John”

The new Diefenbaker government enjoyed a honeymoon period during its first 6 months in office. The press and the public were surprised (and pleased) that someone who was not a Liberal could lead the country. We Progressive Conservatives at Queen’s were delighted.

But some despondency crept into the PC Club in January 1958 when the Liberals chose Nobel-Prize winner Lester Pearson as the new leader of their Party.

How could we win a majority against a popular person like Mike Pearson?

Then, the PC party convoked a national conference at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa at the end of January.

Party headquarters said the PM wanted a good showing from Queen’s and money was provided for hotel rooms and meals. I went to the conference along with a dozen or so members of our PC Club.

At noon Saturday, February 1, while the conference was still going on, the Prime Minister made a secret plane trip to Quebec City to meet the Governor General. He asked that Parliament be dissolved. Even though the PCs had only been in power for nine months, the Governor General agreed.

John Diefenbaker had decided to gamble everything on a snap election---before Lester Pearson could get organized as leader of the Liberals.

That evening I was in the lobby of the Chateau Laurier with the other Queen’s students waiting to greet Mr. Diefenbaker as he entered to give a speech to the party. He stopped to shake hands with us.

Now, I don’t recall the term ‘charisma’ being used at that time (it seems to me it came into the political vocabulary about the time of Pierre Trudeau) but looking back, Dief really had it that night. He seemed to glow.

As he shook hands, he said to us, “Can you feel the electricity?”

And we felt it.

He gave a tub-thumper of a speech. We returned to Kingston fired up to take on those Grits, and elect a PC in Kingston.

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We were fired up but the Kingston PC Association wasn’t. It couldn’t find a candidate to run for the party in Kingston. The seat had almost always gone Liberal and no prominent member of the party wanted to take a chance on a run.

Finally, the party found a candidate, Ben Allmark, who was a supervisor at the Aluminum Company of Canada plant in Kingston. He was an honest, hardworking, likable family person but he lacked the political experience necessary to be a strong federal candidate.

Ottawa wanted us to arrange a speech for him on the Queen’s campus. How could we give him a chance to speak without exposing him to almost certainly embarrassing questions from Liberal and CCF (the predecessor of the NDP) students?

We put together a strategy.

I wrote a short speech, heavy on platitudes and talking points from party headquarters.

Ben Allmark read the speech and just as he reached the end, one of our members, a tall burly Medical student, rushed up to the podium. He thanked the speaker, and said that unfortunately, Mr. Allmark couldn’t take any questions because he was already late for another meeting. Amid howls and shouts from the audience, the Med student and some other club members hustled Ben out a back door to a waiting car.

Our strategy had worked.

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Our PC club tried to promote the cause by papering the campus with cut-outs of a footprint with the words, “Follow John” (note, there was never any mention of candidate Allmark).

The campaign was effective, even if a cartoon in the Queen’s Journal showed a series of “Follow John’ footprints on a counter top disappearing down the sink.

A little side note. After the election, I ran for student office, and I shamelessly used the “Follow John” slogan.

The things one does in politics!

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On March 31, 1958, the Canadian people gave Diefenbaker a huge majority. The PC party surged from 111 seats to 208, while the Liberals under Lester Pearson dropped from 104 to 48.

To everyone’s surprise---including I am sure his own---Ben Allmark was elected. His moment in the sun came to an end four years later, in 1962, when he was defeated by a Liberal in the general election of that year.

Allmark handled himself well in Ottawa. He was not a spectacular MP but he didn’t embarrass himself or his home town.

After his defeat, he went back to Alcan to finish his career with the company. He died at the good age of 93, recalling I am sure those heady days from 1958 to 1962.


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My parents phoned during the evening of March 31st, a rare event because long distance calls were expensive. They were ecstatic but I felt unsettled. I was pleased that the PC party had won but I was uneasy at the size of the win. It was as though all the passengers on a ship had rushed to one side. I wasn’t sure that a victory that size was good for the party or the country.

After the call I felt badly that I hadn’t been able to match their enthusiasm. I am sure they must have wondered what was wrong with me.

Perhaps, they assumed it was the pressure of exams or a girlfriend problem.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Our family dog, Cassidy, loved to try to catch flies. Whenever they buzzed around, he would strike at them with a large furry paw but the flies always dodged the blow.

One day when he was in the backyard he spotted a butterfly resting on the grass. He snuck over and brought both paws down on it.

Lying on his stomach, he slowly pulled his paws apart, looking to see what he had trapped.

As the paws separated, the butterfly fluttered up and away.

Cassidy turned to us with an embarrassed, Maxwell-Smart-kind-of-look that said, “Missed it by that much!”



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See you next Sunday for Posting #26 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 # 24

Fewer Ships Using the Welland Canal; The Dream of Owning a Vermont Bed and Breakfast; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Fewer Ships Using the Welland Canal

In last week’s posting (Posting 23, June 7, 2009), I noted that the Virgil area had not really felt the impact of the recession until GM announced that it would be closing its dealership in Virgil.

This week there was another sign of the recession.

For a couple of weeks Pat and I have been thinking that there have not been as many ships using the Welland Canal as last year. I checked with someone at the Welland Canal and they said that there are definitely fewer ships this year. They said that some ships have been tied up until there is an increase in cargo to be moved.

Unlike people who have to get somewhere on time and get frustrated at having to wait at a lift bridge while a ship goes through, we are usually in no rush. Often we get out of the car, watch the behemoths slide past, and wave at the crew.

I suppose one could say that we should ‘get a life’, but we enjoy it.

Our still-working neighbours are happy that there are fewer ships (and fewer delays on the way to work), but we miss the sweet interludes at the lift bridges.


The Dream of Owning a Vermont Bed and Breakfast

Last week we told about a problem at a Vermont B&B that didn’t want Canadians in its bathtubs, a problem that was amicably resolved.

During our stay, the owners, an attractive English couple in their early ‘40s, told us a great story about their introduction to running a B&B.

Although they both had good jobs in London, they had a dream of owning a country bed and breakfast, not in England but in New England. They would be their own bosses, living in an attractive, historic house in a picturesque village surrounded by wooded mountains. In the winter, they would entertain skiers; in the summer, hikers and cyclists; and, in the autumn, people attracted by the fall colours.

After studying listings of B&Bs for sale, they identified a handful of possible businesses. Ultimately, they settled on the Vermont B&B---it and the town were exactly what they had been dreaming about. They found a lawyer and began the process of offer, counter-offer, counter-counter-offer and so on.

The negotiations dragged on, with lawyers, real estate agents and bankers. Then one Saturday morning, their lawyer asked if they come back to his office. They thought this would be yet another meeting but when they arrived the lawyer told them that the seller was coming and it looked as though the B&B could be theirs by noon.

The seller came, the documents were signed and they all shook hands. The B&B was finally theirs.

The husband and wife were thrilled. They couldn’t wait to get into their new home, explore it, prepare menus, and plan some small renovations they felt were necessary.

As the seller was leaving the office, he said, as a kind of after-thought, that a cycling club with 12 members would be arriving at 5 P.M. and they were expecting dinner at 7 P.M. He added that they would have cycled some 50 miles and would be ready for a big meal.

“Oh”, he added, “we had a full house last night. We stripped the beds but didn’t have time to make them or clean the bathrooms.”

The couple streaked to their new home, made the beds and cleaned the bathrooms.

Then going down to the kitchen to plan meals for the new group, they noticed that the morning’s breakfast dishes hadn’t been washed. They decided that the wife would do the dishes and clean the kitchen while the husband raced off to the supermarket for groceries for dinner (they decided on pasta with a meat sauce and lots of bread and salad) and breakfast (lots of bacon and eggs and toast).

The cyclists arrived, sweaty and tired, at 5 P.M. and headed for the showers.

Dinner was ready at 7 P.M and the cyclists ate huge amounts of pasta, and then talked and laughed until nearly 10 P.M. After the cyclists had finally left the dining room, the couple washed the dishes, cleaned up the kitchen and set the tables for breakfast.

When they were finished, the wife poured two glasses of wine, looked at her husband and said, “It wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was rather fun,”

He nodded but said that he wouldn’t have any trouble sleeping.

The wife looked across the kitchen at a door and asked where it went.

The husband opened the door, “It’s a back staircase and…oh, look what’s here.”

The stairwell was full of dirty sheets and towels from the previous night---the seller had just thrown them down the stairs.

The wife checked the reservations book, found they were full the next night and then checked the laundry closet.

It was empty.

At midnight, they started washing and drying sheets, pillow cases and towels.

“So”, the husband told us, “that was our introduction to running a B&B. Now, three years on, we can say that a lot of crazy things have happened to us, but nothing to touch that first day.”


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We liked the couple and admired the warm and friendly way they ran the B&B.

But there were some disturbing signs.

We learned that the wife was working part-time at a high-end clothing store in a nearby town and that the husband was working as a barman at a hotel in town most nights.

It was obvious that the B&B wasn’t bringing in sufficient cash to make ends meet. We wondered how long they would have the energy to run a busy B&B and still have part-time jobs.

We called the following year to reserve a room but were told that the number was no longer in service. We later learned that they had sold the house and returned to England.

A beautiful dream and a lovely couple!

We hope they landed on their feet back in England.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

There was a small colony of feral cats that inhabited the backyards between Glebe and Clemow Avenues when we lived in Ottawa.

A kindly widow, who lived alone on Clemow, arranged to neuter any cats she could catch. She would also leave out food and had made a little shelter on her back porch that they could use when it rained.

Although we had never caught them in our garage---an ancient wooden building that we used just for storage---we suspected the cats stayed in it from time to time. There were some holes at the bottom of the back wall that they could have used to enter and leave.

There were some particularly handsome cats. There was a fluffy female with lovely gray and white markings whom Pat called ‘Pink’. Pat once told the woman on Clemow that she really liked ‘Pink’ and the woman replied that her proper name was ‘Betty’, but Pat could call her ‘Pink’ if she wanted.

And there was a large, distinguished-looking, but timid gray male, whom Pat called ‘Jake’.

When they were hungry, Pink and Jake would come to our back deck. Pink was the designated ‘beggar’. She would plead for a handout in the most outrageous way, meowing, rolling over, licking her lips and rubbing against the door.

But they were wild cats. As soon as we started to open the French doors with some food, the cats would jump down on the ground until we had left the deck. Then Pink would jump up and would have her fill while Jake watched from the deck railing, swallowing quietly and hoping there would be something left for him. (We always made sure Jake got something to eat.)

We enjoyed the cats. It was like having two cats but without the litter box.

From time to time, one of the cats from the colony would disappear and there were reports that people were catching them and selling them to laboratories.

But Pink and Jake came regularly to our deck, summer and winter.

One winter, we had a succession of snow storms. There was so much snow that the people behind us hired a man to clean the snow off their garage so that the old structure wouldn’t collapse.

The weather finally cleared but there were no visits from Pink or Jake. The woman on Clemow phoned and asked if we had seen them. She wondered, as we did, whether they were now in a laboratory somewhere.

A few days later, I was looking at the drifts of snow in our backyard, drifts so high they covered almost the whole of the side window in the garage, except for a little patch at the upper left corner of the window.

And then I saw some movement inside the window.

A cat’s head!

Our kids got snow shovels, and plowing through the drifts found that the person who had cleared the snow off our neighbour’s roof had thrown some of it between the two garages.

The snow had blocked the cats in our garage.

The kids cleared the snow and one after another the cats streaked out of the garage.

Pink and Jake had lost weight but were otherwise OK.

We and the woman on Clemow wanted to tell our neighbours this miraculous survival story but not everyone liked the cats. They didn’t like the way the cats used their flower beds as litter boxes. They didn’t think we should be feeding them.

Looking back, I can’t recall a single problem with mice at our Glebe house, thanks I am sure to the cats.

Now, we did have a problem with rats coming up our toilets from the sewer, but that’s a story for another time.

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See you next Sunday for Posting #25 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 # 23

Virgil Feels Impact of Financial and Economic Crisis; Finding a B&B Room with a Bathtub; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Virgil Feels Impact of Financial and Economic Crisis

The current problems have seemed a bit remote from a Virgil viewpoint. New houses are still being built and existing ones are selling.

Employment has been pretty good. A newspaper article worried about whether the Niagara Region would have enough trades people to handle all the construction projects underway or planned.

Restaurants are perhaps a little quieter than last year but there are still a good number of patrons.

But this week we learned that the local GM dealership, Niagara Motors, will be dropped by GM next year. (The owner of the dealership is still hoping to convince GM to change its mind.)

What will happen to the sales office, the car repair operation and the lot full of new vehicles if the business loses its GM franchise?

What will happen to all the jobs?

What will happen to the sponsorship of sports teams and of community events?

Suddenly the crisis is real---and a little scarier than people had been thinking.

Finding a B&B Room with a Bathtub

During our recent visit to Vermont, we remembered a visit years ago to a bed and breakfast in that state.

When I phoned for a reservation a woman with a pleasant English accent took our details. I asked for a room with a bathtub and she said they didn’t have an ensuite available but there was a bathroom, with a bath, across the hall from a very nice room. The bathroom would be used only by us.

That was fine and I gave her our credit card details.

The B&B was just what we had been hoping for---a large, elegant but rambling white Victorian clapboard house, right on the town square.

The owners, who had moved to Vermont from England to run a B&B, showed us our room. As we climbed the stairs we told them about our drive from Canada.

“Oh, you are from Canada,’ the wife said, and looked at her husband. “We hadn’t realized that.” She looked worried.

The room was roomy and very nicely furnished. I asked if we could see the bathroom. The couple took us down the hall a little and showed us a room with a sink, toilet, and shower stall.

I reminded them that we had specified a bathroom with a bath.

The couple looked at each other and finally the wife said, “Well, actually, we don’t rent rooms with bathtubs to Canadians…..”

Pat and I looked at them with disbelief as we tried to figure out the basis for this discrimination. OK, our currency looks like Monopoly money, and our hockey players loved to bash each other, and we, as a nation, drink too much beer.

But what did all that have to do with a bathtub?

Pat and I both came up blank and looked questioningly at the couple.

The husband said, “Well, you see, there was this couple from Montreal. When they checked out, the bathtub was coated with a layer of pink gunk. We tried every chemical and cleaner and nothing budged it. We finally had to have the tub re-surfaced.

“And we decided we wouldn’t rent bathrooms with tubs to Canadians any more.”

We explained that we ran a B&B in Canada, lots of Canadians had used our tubs and we had never run into a pink-tub problem.

We spent a few minutes trying to think what the pink substance could have been and how it could have coated the tub.

Could the Montreal woman have spilled nail polish into a tub of hot water? No, nail polish remover didn’t touch the stain.

Had the couple washed a red item of clothing in the tub and the dye ran. No, they had thought of that, and javel bleach hadn’t worked.

Finally, we gave up.

By that time the B&B couple had decided to relent. If we were part of the B&B owners’ fraternity, then, perhaps, we could be trusted.

We had a fine stay and made sure the tub was lovely and sparkling white when we left.

So, we are left with two unsolved mysteries. What caused the pink gunk? And, why did the B&B owners think that banning Canadians from tubs would prevent a recurrence?


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Years ago, when voice synthesizers were new, a couple in Ottawa bought a car that announced, as the car was starting, “Buckle your seat belts”.

Neighbourhood kids loved to hear the voice. They would beg the woman to start the car so they could hear Elmo (her name for the voice).

One of the little guys from up the street wanted to know where Elmo lived.

“Right in there”, the woman said, pointing to the dashboard.

The little fellow thought about that for a time.

Then he asked, “But how does he go to the bathroom?”


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See you next Sunday for Posting #24 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.