A Happy Old Man in Virgil; Fighting a Forest Fire in Northern Ontario in 1956: Part Three; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
A Happy Old Man in Virgil
As I was trying to find some ripe avocados in our local supermarket, a man whom I didn’t know shouted to me, “Do you know why I’m happy that I’m an old man?”
Now, that’s a tough question to answer, apart from any concern about getting into a conversation with a man whose elevator may stop a good bit short of the top floor.
If one responds, does that confirm that one sees him as an old man----and that could be insulting if he doesn’t really think of himself as old. Lots of thoughts like that were going through my head.
Getting impatient with my mental dithering, the fellow shouted, “I’ll tell you why. When I was young, you wouldn’t have had half these things in a store. Look at all these things to buy.”
Well, he had a good point. Certainly, when I worked in a supermarket---after four and on weekends while going to high school---we never had the range of vegetables and fruit that one sees today. Certainly no avocados!
Just as I was mulling over that thought, the man greeted a woman who was about his vintage. “How nice it is to meet my mother in the store, today!”
Shy grins from some shoppers and a clerk told me that the old fellow was a regular---and a regular card.
I moved to the meat department.
Fighting a Forest Fire in Northern Ontario in 1956: Part Three
In last week’s posting, I described how my friend Sven and I had precipitated probably the first and only strike in an Ontario fire camp by the quality (or lack of quality) of our cooking.
At the time, I was angry with the fire ranger. He had shown poor judgment in putting two young fellows in charge of the kitchen. Looking back, I can see that he was just totally burned out (I guess the pun is intended) from the stress of fighting fires for 6 weeks straight.
However that may be, he then made another impetuous decision. He appointed me team leader and gave me two Franco-Ontarians and a First Nation fellow. We were to go to the burned over areas and put out embers (hot spots) that could ignite and start the fire running in a different direction if the wind shifted.
I told him that although I wanted to go to the fire line, I knew nothing about fire fighting, and that he should appoint one of the other fellows as head.
He just looked at me, as much as to say,’ Are you going to start arguing with me again?’
OK.
I went to the three fellows, told them what the ranger wanted us to do, and asked them how we should split up the stuff we had to carry to the fire.
One of the Franco-Ontarians, replied, “You tell us, you’re the boss.”
He and his mate looked down at the ground.
So that’s how it was going to be.
I could understand that they resented my being appointed head (I suppose the ranger was getting back at the Franco-Ontarians for going on strike).
The First Nation fellow said he would take the heavy water pump and that left the hoses and shovels for the rest of us.
After a long trek through the bush, we found a stream, installed the water pump and fed hose up to the hot spots. The First Nation guy asked if I would like him to wet down the embers while the rest of us turned over the ash with shovels to make sure we got all the hot bits.
That was our life for the next 5 or 6 days. The Franco-Ontarians came around quickly---they were mad at the ranger, not me. They were basically happy-go-lucky fellows who couldn’t stay angry long, especially since the meals were more to their taste and a lot better in quality. I remember pots of delicious baked beans and pork chops with mashed potatoes. I don’t know how the cooks did it.
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The First Nation fellow and I got along well. He was in his 30s, medium height, thin with bow legs who could walk effortlessly through the bush with a huge load on his back. He had the knack of quietly defusing tense situations with an irreverent sense of humour.
I had known some First Nation workers on a summer construction job near Parry Sound when I was 16. Their English was limited and they hadn’t travelled much (except for one young fellow who had spent a year in the reformatory in Guelph for breaking into summer cottages along the French River).
This First Nation fellow was more worldly wise. It turned out that he had served in the Korean War with the Princess Pats. He joked that when they were on a scouting mission, the white soldiers would ask him for directions. “They thought because I was a native I had a compass in my head”, he laughed.
From what he said and from what I have read since, it is clear that duty in Korea was tough. One never knew when the North Koreans or their Chinese allies would sweep down and overrun the Canadian positions. And the winter weather was harsh.
Despite the hardships, the Princess Pats performed bravely and well in Korea. They had to retreat from time to time when outnumbered, but then fought back.
He said that humour helped them get through the worst of the war. The troops had composed new words for Hank Snow’s first hit (from 1950), “I’m movin’ On” (you can find the original lyrics here, and you can find out more about the Nova Scotia born Hank Snow here.
The fellow sang verse after verse of the song as we trudged through the bush. I can only recall the first verse—I should have written down the other verses. It went:
“Hear the pitter patter of little feet,
It’s the Princess Pats in full retreat
We’re movin' on, we’ll soon be gone
You were coming too close to our little outposts…
So we’re movin’ on.”
I never learned how he ended up at the fire camp---he didn’t work for the pulp and paper company. I suspect he may have needed the money. My recollection is that we were paid $10 a day, which I would suppose would be worth about $50 in today’s money.
He was a good guy. I hope life worked out well for him.
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After 6 days or so, it started to rain. We stayed in the tents for a couple of days until the ranger was sure the fire was out, and we could leave.
As we were loading our stuff on the plane, the pilot joked about being overweight for a safe take off. I guess he saw our looks of concern and he quickly added that there would be no problem. The lake was long so he could have lots of opportunity to get the engine revved up so he would have enough speed for takeoff.
He said that if he had to take off with a heavy load from a smaller lake he would sometimes tie a rope from the plane’s tail to a tree and then nick the rope with his knife. This allowed him to get the engine running fast and at some point the rope would break,the plane would race forward, and become airborne before the end of the lake.
I don’t know whether he was pulling our legs or not.
I was glad we didn’t have to try the rope trick.
It was good to get home to the Dog River camp, and some clean sheets and clothes.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
In last week’s posting, I mentioned that Pat’s family had a white rabbit as a house pet when Pat was growing up.
Thumper sometimes felt the need to chew on things, like the fringe of oriental rugs.
Pat tells a story about her father, Dr. Henderson, and the rabbit.
As well as being the only dentist in Aurora, Dr. Henderson was mayor for many years and at one time considered running as a Liberal candidate in a Federal election.
A reporter for the Toronto Star heard that he was planning to speak at a constituency meeting and phoned to ask about the subjects he was going to cover in his speech.
Dr. Henderson asked him to hold the line while he went to get the speech. He was laughing when he picked up the phone, “Our rabbit has eaten the speech.”
Knowing a good story when he came across one, the reporter started his article about the constituency meeting with the tale about the rabbit that ate a political speech.
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See you next Sunday for Posting #31 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.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
POSTING # 29
A Lump on the Road near Virgil: Fighting a Forest Fire in Northern Ontario in 1956: Part Two; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
A Lump on the Road near Virgil
A few nights ago, Pat and I were taking ‘the back way’ from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Virgil, along some country roads.
As we turned off one road onto another, we saw a man with a photographer’s tripod in the middle of the road beside a large, dark lump. He waved us around the lump, which from a distance looked like a large piece of tire, or clump of sod.
As we drove past, we realized that the lump was a large turtle. We turned around and came back to have a better look at it.
The man explained that he had been driving home and when he saw the turtle he became concerned that someone might drive over the turtle accidentally (or perhaps even intentionally---there are some odd people about).
He said he had tried to prod the turtle with the tripod in the hope of speeding up its trip across the road. The turtle had taken umbrage at the prodding and had bitten off---quite cleanly---the foot of one of the tripod’s legs.
The man looked at us and said, “I know you are supposed to be able to pick them up by the shell, but after I saw what he did to the tripod…”
Some Google research later on, confirmed what we suspected at the time, that this was a larger-than-normal Snapping Turtle. He (or she---we didn’t check for gender) had a shell that was about 20 inches long and 15 inches wide, a huge head with a vicious jaw, massive feet with long sharp claws and a long tail with scales that gave it a prehistoric air. The turtle also looked quite heavy.
As we stood looking at it, I was debating about suggesting that the man and I each grab a side of the shell and lift it off the road. Before I could say anything, a large, black Lexus pulled up and a woman jumped out of the passenger seat.
“Leave it alone, I know what to do.”
She bent down behind the turtle, grabbed each side of the shell and straightening her knees picked it up, and carried it toward the ditch.
The turtle was outraged. It was snapping its jaw and kicking its legs in mid-air.
The woman hung onto the turtle despite all the movement, carried it to the ditch, and dropped it with a thud.
She wiped her hands on the grass, said it was the second turtle she had removed from the road this year, and got back into the car.
As the car drove away, we all clapped.
She nodded and smiled----and we felt like a bunch of wusses.
Fighting a Forest Fire in Northern Ontario in 1956: Part Two
In the last posting (#28, July 12, 2009), I explained that a friend, Sven, and I had been appointed by the fire ranger, over my objections, to cook for some 20 fire fighters.
Our first meal was breakfast on the morning after our arrival in the fire camp.
I can’t begin to describe the challenges of cooking in the bush for fire fighters. We had a tent, some tables, naphtha stoves, a strange set of pots, pans and utensils, and no say in the provisions (the food was whatever Lands and Forests decided to send in on the daily plane).
Sven obviously had some experience in bush cooking and he set about organizing things. I became his ‘gofer’, fetching water for the coffee and porridge (from the lake, of course), cracking eggs, peeling strips of bacon into cast iron frying pans, that sort of thing.
It wasn’t a gourmet breakfast---the porridge was lumpy, the eggs were a bit runny and the bacon and the coffee were a little burned--- but it was edible. At least, there wasn’t much left by the time the men had finished.
We didn’t have to make lunch---the men made their own.
Once they had finished making their lunches, the ranger divided them into teams of four and gave them their tasks for the day.
As the men left the camp for the fire line---carrying their gas-run water pumps, coils of canvas fire hose and shovels---a plane arrived. The ranger helped tie it to a tree and an older man and the pilot came ashore. The older man and the ranger went off a little ways and were discussing something.
“The ranger’s boss?” Sven wondered.
We were cleaning the breakfast pots and pans but couldn’t help overhearing some of the conversation. The ranger was angry that he hadn’t been allowed to go home for a rest as the boss had promised earlier on. The boss, trying to mollify him, kept repeating that he had had no choice----he couldn’t have allowed the ranger to go home to his family. This was an important fire and he had no one else to assign to it.
Finally, the ranger stormed off to his tent, and the boss and the pilot returned to the plane. As Sven and I helped untie the plane, the boss said to us in a quiet voice, “He’s angry but he’s a good guy. Things will be OK.”
Sven and I started preparing the main course for dinner, which Sven decided should be a traditional Finnish beef stew. We had had it several times back at the Dog River camp and the Finns and Swedes liked it although I found it a bit watery and lacking in flavour.
We heated water in two large pots on the naphtha stoves and dropped in big cubes of un-browned beef. Later on, we added potatoes, carrots, turnips and heads of cabbage cut in eighths.
There is no thickening in the Finnish recipe, and little seasoning---just some salt and pepper. (The cooks at the Dog River camp sometimes added dill but we didn’t have any.)
We cooked the stew all day but the meat was still stringy, and gray, when we served it at dinner time while the vegetables were mushy and the liquid insipid. But, the workers were hungry and they devoured the stew along with loaf after loaf of sliced bread.
I heard some grumbling about the meal but by the time we had cleaned up I was so tired I didn’t care.
Sven and I talked about dinner for the next night. It turned out that he was a one-recipe cook. Dinner the next night would be the same stew, except that the meat would be pork, not beef.
The pork stew was better than the beef but not much. There was more grumbling, coming especially from Franco-Ontarian workers, who came from another camp on Dog River.
I should explain that the pulp and paper company had a number of camps along the Dog River. Several of the camps were made up of Finnish and Swedish immigrants and their Canadian-born sons, along with some other immigrants and some English-Canadians. The cooking in these camps tended to be Scandinavian style.
Other camps were made up of Franco-Ontarian workers and the cooking in these camps tended to be hearty, Quebec-style cuisine.
After breakfast the next morning, the Franco-Ontarians returned to their tents instead of heading for the fire line. We could hear some loud discussions. Later on, one of Franco-Ontarians went over to the ranger. We could see them arguing.
Finally, the ranger came over to Sven and me.
“They’re on strike and they aren’t going to leave the tents until we have new cooks. I tried to reason with them but in the end I had to tell them they could appoint two of their own people to be cooks.”
The ranger turned to me, “You didn’t want to be a cook anyway, did you?’
I felt a bit insulted that we hadn’t measured up, yet I was happy to be finished with ‘kitchen detail’.
But I felt badly for Sven, who was upset. He had tried his best under really tough conditions. He would now have to join the workers at the fire line, something I knew he wasn’t looking forward to.
As they say in the ‘soaps’, stay tuned for the next developments!
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
There was a recent article about the surprising intelligence of crows. Apparently a crow being studied by a psychologist demonstrated a tool-building skill. He bent a piece of wire to make a hook, which he then held in his beak and lifted a small basket of food out of a glass cylinder.
Pat wasn’t surprised at the news that crows are intelligent. When she was growing up she had two house pets---Nanny, a Springer Spaniel, whom we met last week, and a white (house-trained) rabbit called Thumper, both of whom showed considerable intelligence.
But the boy across the street had a pet crow that was remarkably bright.
The boy had rescued a baby crow from a cat and trained it to do some tricks. For example, the crow would perch on his shoulder as he walked along the street.
The crow had also developed some tricks on his own.
Once, while Pat’s father was doing some gardening he bent over and a set of keys came part way out of his pocket. The crow swooped down, pulled the keys out of his pocket, and took off, with a hearty ‘caw-caw’.
The crow also liked to harass Nanny. As she grew older, the dog loved to lie in the sun and sleep. The crow would come up behind Nanny and pull a single hair out of her tail. As Nanny yelped, the crow would take off, again, with her mocking ’caw-caw’.
Another time, an encyclopedia salesman was walking up Pat’s driveway when the crow tried to land on his shoulder. Thinking he was being dive-bombed, the salesman ran for the front door and rang the bell. Pat, accompanied by the white rabbit, opened the door. The poor salesman thought he had stumbled into an Alice in Wonderland world---being chased by a crow and greeted by a rabbit. He fled for his car, yelling, “What the hell kind of neighbourhood is this!”
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See you next Sunday for Posting #30 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.
A Lump on the Road near Virgil
A few nights ago, Pat and I were taking ‘the back way’ from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Virgil, along some country roads.
As we turned off one road onto another, we saw a man with a photographer’s tripod in the middle of the road beside a large, dark lump. He waved us around the lump, which from a distance looked like a large piece of tire, or clump of sod.
As we drove past, we realized that the lump was a large turtle. We turned around and came back to have a better look at it.
The man explained that he had been driving home and when he saw the turtle he became concerned that someone might drive over the turtle accidentally (or perhaps even intentionally---there are some odd people about).
He said he had tried to prod the turtle with the tripod in the hope of speeding up its trip across the road. The turtle had taken umbrage at the prodding and had bitten off---quite cleanly---the foot of one of the tripod’s legs.
The man looked at us and said, “I know you are supposed to be able to pick them up by the shell, but after I saw what he did to the tripod…”
Some Google research later on, confirmed what we suspected at the time, that this was a larger-than-normal Snapping Turtle. He (or she---we didn’t check for gender) had a shell that was about 20 inches long and 15 inches wide, a huge head with a vicious jaw, massive feet with long sharp claws and a long tail with scales that gave it a prehistoric air. The turtle also looked quite heavy.
As we stood looking at it, I was debating about suggesting that the man and I each grab a side of the shell and lift it off the road. Before I could say anything, a large, black Lexus pulled up and a woman jumped out of the passenger seat.
“Leave it alone, I know what to do.”
She bent down behind the turtle, grabbed each side of the shell and straightening her knees picked it up, and carried it toward the ditch.
The turtle was outraged. It was snapping its jaw and kicking its legs in mid-air.
The woman hung onto the turtle despite all the movement, carried it to the ditch, and dropped it with a thud.
She wiped her hands on the grass, said it was the second turtle she had removed from the road this year, and got back into the car.
As the car drove away, we all clapped.
She nodded and smiled----and we felt like a bunch of wusses.
Fighting a Forest Fire in Northern Ontario in 1956: Part Two
In the last posting (#28, July 12, 2009), I explained that a friend, Sven, and I had been appointed by the fire ranger, over my objections, to cook for some 20 fire fighters.
Our first meal was breakfast on the morning after our arrival in the fire camp.
I can’t begin to describe the challenges of cooking in the bush for fire fighters. We had a tent, some tables, naphtha stoves, a strange set of pots, pans and utensils, and no say in the provisions (the food was whatever Lands and Forests decided to send in on the daily plane).
Sven obviously had some experience in bush cooking and he set about organizing things. I became his ‘gofer’, fetching water for the coffee and porridge (from the lake, of course), cracking eggs, peeling strips of bacon into cast iron frying pans, that sort of thing.
It wasn’t a gourmet breakfast---the porridge was lumpy, the eggs were a bit runny and the bacon and the coffee were a little burned--- but it was edible. At least, there wasn’t much left by the time the men had finished.
We didn’t have to make lunch---the men made their own.
Once they had finished making their lunches, the ranger divided them into teams of four and gave them their tasks for the day.
As the men left the camp for the fire line---carrying their gas-run water pumps, coils of canvas fire hose and shovels---a plane arrived. The ranger helped tie it to a tree and an older man and the pilot came ashore. The older man and the ranger went off a little ways and were discussing something.
“The ranger’s boss?” Sven wondered.
We were cleaning the breakfast pots and pans but couldn’t help overhearing some of the conversation. The ranger was angry that he hadn’t been allowed to go home for a rest as the boss had promised earlier on. The boss, trying to mollify him, kept repeating that he had had no choice----he couldn’t have allowed the ranger to go home to his family. This was an important fire and he had no one else to assign to it.
Finally, the ranger stormed off to his tent, and the boss and the pilot returned to the plane. As Sven and I helped untie the plane, the boss said to us in a quiet voice, “He’s angry but he’s a good guy. Things will be OK.”
Sven and I started preparing the main course for dinner, which Sven decided should be a traditional Finnish beef stew. We had had it several times back at the Dog River camp and the Finns and Swedes liked it although I found it a bit watery and lacking in flavour.
We heated water in two large pots on the naphtha stoves and dropped in big cubes of un-browned beef. Later on, we added potatoes, carrots, turnips and heads of cabbage cut in eighths.
There is no thickening in the Finnish recipe, and little seasoning---just some salt and pepper. (The cooks at the Dog River camp sometimes added dill but we didn’t have any.)
We cooked the stew all day but the meat was still stringy, and gray, when we served it at dinner time while the vegetables were mushy and the liquid insipid. But, the workers were hungry and they devoured the stew along with loaf after loaf of sliced bread.
I heard some grumbling about the meal but by the time we had cleaned up I was so tired I didn’t care.
Sven and I talked about dinner for the next night. It turned out that he was a one-recipe cook. Dinner the next night would be the same stew, except that the meat would be pork, not beef.
The pork stew was better than the beef but not much. There was more grumbling, coming especially from Franco-Ontarian workers, who came from another camp on Dog River.
I should explain that the pulp and paper company had a number of camps along the Dog River. Several of the camps were made up of Finnish and Swedish immigrants and their Canadian-born sons, along with some other immigrants and some English-Canadians. The cooking in these camps tended to be Scandinavian style.
Other camps were made up of Franco-Ontarian workers and the cooking in these camps tended to be hearty, Quebec-style cuisine.
After breakfast the next morning, the Franco-Ontarians returned to their tents instead of heading for the fire line. We could hear some loud discussions. Later on, one of Franco-Ontarians went over to the ranger. We could see them arguing.
Finally, the ranger came over to Sven and me.
“They’re on strike and they aren’t going to leave the tents until we have new cooks. I tried to reason with them but in the end I had to tell them they could appoint two of their own people to be cooks.”
The ranger turned to me, “You didn’t want to be a cook anyway, did you?’
I felt a bit insulted that we hadn’t measured up, yet I was happy to be finished with ‘kitchen detail’.
But I felt badly for Sven, who was upset. He had tried his best under really tough conditions. He would now have to join the workers at the fire line, something I knew he wasn’t looking forward to.
As they say in the ‘soaps’, stay tuned for the next developments!
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
There was a recent article about the surprising intelligence of crows. Apparently a crow being studied by a psychologist demonstrated a tool-building skill. He bent a piece of wire to make a hook, which he then held in his beak and lifted a small basket of food out of a glass cylinder.
Pat wasn’t surprised at the news that crows are intelligent. When she was growing up she had two house pets---Nanny, a Springer Spaniel, whom we met last week, and a white (house-trained) rabbit called Thumper, both of whom showed considerable intelligence.
But the boy across the street had a pet crow that was remarkably bright.
The boy had rescued a baby crow from a cat and trained it to do some tricks. For example, the crow would perch on his shoulder as he walked along the street.
The crow had also developed some tricks on his own.
Once, while Pat’s father was doing some gardening he bent over and a set of keys came part way out of his pocket. The crow swooped down, pulled the keys out of his pocket, and took off, with a hearty ‘caw-caw’.
The crow also liked to harass Nanny. As she grew older, the dog loved to lie in the sun and sleep. The crow would come up behind Nanny and pull a single hair out of her tail. As Nanny yelped, the crow would take off, again, with her mocking ’caw-caw’.
Another time, an encyclopedia salesman was walking up Pat’s driveway when the crow tried to land on his shoulder. Thinking he was being dive-bombed, the salesman ran for the front door and rang the bell. Pat, accompanied by the white rabbit, opened the door. The poor salesman thought he had stumbled into an Alice in Wonderland world---being chased by a crow and greeted by a rabbit. He fled for his car, yelling, “What the hell kind of neighbourhood is this!”
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See you next Sunday for Posting #30 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.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
POSTING # 28
Chocolate; Fighting a Forest Fire in Northern Ontario in 1956: Part One; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Chocolate
Pat wasn’t feeling too well this week---and then had a miraculous recovery.
She emailed a friend about her illness and has agreed to let me share the email with you:
“Yesterday I had an upset stomach and headache and my intestines were not too good either. Food did not appeal to me at all - soup was fine - and maybe a bit of toast. John was going out grocery shopping and asked me if there was anything not on the list that I might want. I said, "Um, just chocolate cake," and then my head
realized that chocolate cake was EXACTLY what I wanted.
So he went to Willows [Willows Cakes and Pastries in Niagara-on-the-Lake] and told the fellow that his wife was not feeling well and she needed some really disgusting chocolate - something that was pretty well only chocolate. So he suggested the perfect thing. By the way, another customer who was dithering about what she wanted, heard the exchange between John and the server, and uttered the now famous line "I'll have what he's having."
So I got my chocolate cake (which fixed my ailments by the way).”
Willows is one of our favourite places (it is also a favourite of our children and grandchildren when they come to visit). We like to go and pick up a loaf of artisan bread and something disgustingly sinful. If we have time, we enjoy sitting down with a cup of great coffee and a French pastry, and watch---through a window into the bakery---the staff icing cakes, baking bread, and doing unbelievable things with chocolate.
Fighting a Forest Fire in Northern Ontario in 1956: Part One
There was a TV program this week about a modified Boeing 747 that is being tested for fighting wild fires. In a demonstration, the huge plane, flying at 160 mph and just 400 feet above the ground, dropped an ocean of water on an imaginary fire. The engineers say there are some safety concerns to be sorted out (I guess!) but they are optimistic that the plane could help with fires in California and elsewhere.
That all reminded me of June 1956 and my one and only forest fire experience (we called them forest fires, not wild fires in those days).
I was working as a labourer-teacher for Frontier College at a bush camp on Dog River, north of what is now Thunder Bay (see Posting # 9 March 1, 2009 for more details about that summer job).
It had been a very dry spring and we kept hearing about fires many miles north of us. Then, one day, we saw what looked like a light fog in the distance up the river valley. The next day, we could smell smoke.
In the bunkhouse that night, the old-timers speculated about where the fire was and whether some of us would have to go to fight it. They had all been on fire lines before and talked about living in tents, about the black flies, deer flies and mosquitoes, about back-packing water pumps, coils of hose and shovels through the dense bush, and about the heat and smoke.
They talked about the powers the Ontario Lands and Forest officials had to conscript workers---you could be enjoying a brew in a beer parlour one minute and out on a fire line the next. They said that pulp and paper companies like ours were expected to contribute workers if fires became serious.
After work the next day, our foreman came into the bunk house. He said there was a 1000 acre fire north of us that was in danger of getting out of control. The company had agreed to provide ten men to fight the fire. As he read out the names, the affected men groaned.
My name wasn’t on the list, and I talked to the foreman afterwards. I told him I would like to go.
“I don’t think the company would let you go,” the foreman replied (companies tended to be a little protective of Frontier College students), “But are you sure you want to go?”
“Sure, I would like to go.”
“OK, I’ll check with the company.”
He came back in a few minutes and told me I would go in place of one of the older workers. He said that I should be ready early the next morning for a ride to a nearby lake where a bush plane would meet us.
A friend my age, Sven (not his real name), who was born in Canada of a Swedish father and a Finnish mother and worked full-time in bush camps, was on the list to go. He had fought several forest fires and thought I was crazy to volunteer.
Sven and four other fellows decided that since fighting a fire would be hot and thirsty work, they should have some beer before setting out. There was a beer parlour up the road in Raith. Would I like to go? Sure, why not.
The six of us piled into a battered car and took off for the beer parlour. At a quarter to twelve, the waiter came around for last orders. One of the fellows suggested that we skip the last orders and instead drive to Upsala, thirty miles west of Raith, which, since it was on the other side of the time line between Eastern and Central time zones, would give us an extra hour of drinking time.
Back in the car, and off to Upsala.
We closed the Upsala beer parlour and headed back to the camp. A few miles down the road, in the middle of the bush, I smelled smoke, not cigarette smoke (there were two or three smokers in the car) not forest fire smoke, but burning fabric smoke.
From inside the car.
When we got out, we found a red-ringed hole in the bottom of the back seat. We got the seat out of the car and looked around for some water.
No water.
One of the fellows, a short guy who had fought in World War II with the Polish Free Army, and who had a great capacity for beer, had the solution. He pulled down his zipper and extinguished the fire with a steady and copious flow of recycled beer.
We put the seat back in the car, covered the wet part with an old blanket from the trunk and got back to the camp around 3 AM.
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Awakened by the foreman at 5.30, I stumbled around threw some toilet items and clothes in a duffle bag and went to the cookhouse for something to eat. Although none of us was very hungry, we managed to get down some coffee and toast.
A van picked us up and took us to meet the bush plane.
The pilot of the pontooned Lands and Forest plane (a de Havilland Canada Beaver, a wonderful, wonderful plane) told us that he had a part load of water pumps and fire hose so he could only take 3 of us and would have to come back for the others. Sven, another guy and I clambered onto one of the pontoons and up into the plane. Sven and I sat on the coils of fire hose while the other fellow sat up front with the pilot.
“Hang on”, the pilot shouted as he gunned the engine. There were no seat belts and not many places to get a hand grip. We pulled free from the water, just clearing some trees at the end of the lake, and headed for the fire.
We saw the fire as we got closer. Now, a 1,000 acre fire doesn’t sound like much when compared with some of the California blazes we see on television that are 50,000 or 100,000 acres in size.
But, it was the size of ten 100 acre farms.
And, that’s not peanuts, especially when one is flying a few hundred feet above it.
It was early in the morning and there wasn’t much wind to stoke the fire. We could see smoke and glowing embers beyond the part that had been burned over.
The pilot swooped down over the lake where Lands and Forest had decided our camp should be. The lake, which was smooth as glass, seemed to be about a mile from the fire, which was comforting but also meant, as Sven shouted to me, that we would have to trek a long way through the thick bush to get to the fire line.
The pilot suddenly opened a side window and threw out a cushion. He shouted that when a lake was very calm it was hard to judge the plane’s height above the water. The ripples from the cushion would help him judge where the surface was.
He came around again, looked at the ripples, and landed. He taxied over to a point on the shore where a couple of tents had already been set up. A fellow waiting for us grabbed a rope that the pilot threw and looped it over a stump.
As soon as we had unloaded the plane, and given the pilot his rope, he took off down the lake to get more workers.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
The fellow on the shore introduced himself as the Lands and Forest fire ranger. He was a thin, wiry Franco-Ontarian, who looked both tired and sullen.
“Pitch a tent over there somewhere, behind the cook tent.” Pointing at Sven and me, he said, “You two can be cooks.”
Sven was delighted--- trudging through the bush with 70 pounds of gear was not for him.
I was upset.
I had come for an adventure, not to peel potatoes.
When I told the ranger I would prefer to be out on the line, he snarled, “You’re not happy and I’m not happy. Just do it.”
Sensing, I guess, that he had been a bit out of line, he explained that he had been fighting fires for six weeks straight. His boss had told him that he would have a week off after the last fire, a chance to be with his family in Sudbury.
Then, the boss had changed his mind, and told him he would have to spend another week or so at this fire. He was tired and angry, and he missed his family.
The plane ferried in more workers, until we were about 20 in all, and then brought in more fire-fighting equipment, food stocks and some naphtha gas stoves.
That first day we fed ourselves, as we set up camp, sorted out the water pumps and hoses and in general prepared to start the fire fighting the next day.
The fire ranger’s mood didn’t improve as the day went on. When he was asked a question, he shrugged and said, ”Do what you want.”
The men had experience and they generally knew what needed to be done.
After dinner, someone built a camp fire and we sat around it, chatting about the next day.
The ranger didn’t join us. Instead, he crawled into his pup tent, and tied the flap down.
Before we fell asleep, Sven and I talked about what we would feed 20 hungry people for breakfast the next morning. We decided on coffee, bacon, eggs, porridge and white sliced bread with peanut butter and jam.
In Part Two, next week, I will tell the rest of the story of John’s not-so-excellent adventure.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
I’ve told many Cassidy stories, the American Cocker Spaniel that helped raise our children.
Now it is the turn of Nanny, the white-and-liver Springer Spaniel that helped raise Pat and her brother.
Nanny understood that she was not allowed in the dining room in Pat’s Aurora home. She would lie on the floor of the kitchen with her front paws positioned precisely at the dividing line between the two rooms. When she thought Pat’s mother wasn’t looking, Nanny would quietly push her paws a few inches into the dining room. Pat’s mother would pretend not to notice, and Nanny would push the paws a little further into the dining room.
When the paws were a foot or so into the dining room, Pat’s mother would give Nanny ‘the look’, a stare---eyeball to eyeball---combined with a little tilt of the head. No words were spoken, but Nanny would grumble quietly and pull the paws back to the dividing line.
I was never able to figure out who enjoyed the game more, Nanny or Pat’s mother.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
My presence in the household, first as a suitor and then as Pat’s husband, upset Nanny. When Nanny and I were alone together, we got along well enough but when Pat or other family members were around she gave me the cold shoulder. As Pat’s father used to say she was treating me as ‘the new boy’ to whom she owed no loyalty, and no show of friendliness. More than that, it was clear that she thought I was someone who had to be viewed with a good bit of suspicion.
The night we came back from our honeymoon, we slept in Pat’s old room. In the morning, Nanny came upstairs while we were still asleep and pushed open the door with her nose. She saw what she had expected all along. I was up to no good.
Quickly, she leapt onto the bed and then squirmed, lengthwise, between us. She became a kind of bundling board that was used by Ontario pioneers to keep a courting couple from getting up to any hanky-panky.
Then, she put her head down and pretended to be asleep.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #29 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.
Chocolate
Pat wasn’t feeling too well this week---and then had a miraculous recovery.
She emailed a friend about her illness and has agreed to let me share the email with you:
“Yesterday I had an upset stomach and headache and my intestines were not too good either. Food did not appeal to me at all - soup was fine - and maybe a bit of toast. John was going out grocery shopping and asked me if there was anything not on the list that I might want. I said, "Um, just chocolate cake," and then my head
realized that chocolate cake was EXACTLY what I wanted.
So he went to Willows [Willows Cakes and Pastries in Niagara-on-the-Lake] and told the fellow that his wife was not feeling well and she needed some really disgusting chocolate - something that was pretty well only chocolate. So he suggested the perfect thing. By the way, another customer who was dithering about what she wanted, heard the exchange between John and the server, and uttered the now famous line "I'll have what he's having."
So I got my chocolate cake (which fixed my ailments by the way).”
Willows is one of our favourite places (it is also a favourite of our children and grandchildren when they come to visit). We like to go and pick up a loaf of artisan bread and something disgustingly sinful. If we have time, we enjoy sitting down with a cup of great coffee and a French pastry, and watch---through a window into the bakery---the staff icing cakes, baking bread, and doing unbelievable things with chocolate.
Fighting a Forest Fire in Northern Ontario in 1956: Part One
There was a TV program this week about a modified Boeing 747 that is being tested for fighting wild fires. In a demonstration, the huge plane, flying at 160 mph and just 400 feet above the ground, dropped an ocean of water on an imaginary fire. The engineers say there are some safety concerns to be sorted out (I guess!) but they are optimistic that the plane could help with fires in California and elsewhere.
That all reminded me of June 1956 and my one and only forest fire experience (we called them forest fires, not wild fires in those days).
I was working as a labourer-teacher for Frontier College at a bush camp on Dog River, north of what is now Thunder Bay (see Posting # 9 March 1, 2009 for more details about that summer job).
It had been a very dry spring and we kept hearing about fires many miles north of us. Then, one day, we saw what looked like a light fog in the distance up the river valley. The next day, we could smell smoke.
In the bunkhouse that night, the old-timers speculated about where the fire was and whether some of us would have to go to fight it. They had all been on fire lines before and talked about living in tents, about the black flies, deer flies and mosquitoes, about back-packing water pumps, coils of hose and shovels through the dense bush, and about the heat and smoke.
They talked about the powers the Ontario Lands and Forest officials had to conscript workers---you could be enjoying a brew in a beer parlour one minute and out on a fire line the next. They said that pulp and paper companies like ours were expected to contribute workers if fires became serious.
After work the next day, our foreman came into the bunk house. He said there was a 1000 acre fire north of us that was in danger of getting out of control. The company had agreed to provide ten men to fight the fire. As he read out the names, the affected men groaned.
My name wasn’t on the list, and I talked to the foreman afterwards. I told him I would like to go.
“I don’t think the company would let you go,” the foreman replied (companies tended to be a little protective of Frontier College students), “But are you sure you want to go?”
“Sure, I would like to go.”
“OK, I’ll check with the company.”
He came back in a few minutes and told me I would go in place of one of the older workers. He said that I should be ready early the next morning for a ride to a nearby lake where a bush plane would meet us.
A friend my age, Sven (not his real name), who was born in Canada of a Swedish father and a Finnish mother and worked full-time in bush camps, was on the list to go. He had fought several forest fires and thought I was crazy to volunteer.
Sven and four other fellows decided that since fighting a fire would be hot and thirsty work, they should have some beer before setting out. There was a beer parlour up the road in Raith. Would I like to go? Sure, why not.
The six of us piled into a battered car and took off for the beer parlour. At a quarter to twelve, the waiter came around for last orders. One of the fellows suggested that we skip the last orders and instead drive to Upsala, thirty miles west of Raith, which, since it was on the other side of the time line between Eastern and Central time zones, would give us an extra hour of drinking time.
Back in the car, and off to Upsala.
We closed the Upsala beer parlour and headed back to the camp. A few miles down the road, in the middle of the bush, I smelled smoke, not cigarette smoke (there were two or three smokers in the car) not forest fire smoke, but burning fabric smoke.
From inside the car.
When we got out, we found a red-ringed hole in the bottom of the back seat. We got the seat out of the car and looked around for some water.
No water.
One of the fellows, a short guy who had fought in World War II with the Polish Free Army, and who had a great capacity for beer, had the solution. He pulled down his zipper and extinguished the fire with a steady and copious flow of recycled beer.
We put the seat back in the car, covered the wet part with an old blanket from the trunk and got back to the camp around 3 AM.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Awakened by the foreman at 5.30, I stumbled around threw some toilet items and clothes in a duffle bag and went to the cookhouse for something to eat. Although none of us was very hungry, we managed to get down some coffee and toast.
A van picked us up and took us to meet the bush plane.
The pilot of the pontooned Lands and Forest plane (a de Havilland Canada Beaver, a wonderful, wonderful plane) told us that he had a part load of water pumps and fire hose so he could only take 3 of us and would have to come back for the others. Sven, another guy and I clambered onto one of the pontoons and up into the plane. Sven and I sat on the coils of fire hose while the other fellow sat up front with the pilot.
“Hang on”, the pilot shouted as he gunned the engine. There were no seat belts and not many places to get a hand grip. We pulled free from the water, just clearing some trees at the end of the lake, and headed for the fire.
We saw the fire as we got closer. Now, a 1,000 acre fire doesn’t sound like much when compared with some of the California blazes we see on television that are 50,000 or 100,000 acres in size.
But, it was the size of ten 100 acre farms.
And, that’s not peanuts, especially when one is flying a few hundred feet above it.
It was early in the morning and there wasn’t much wind to stoke the fire. We could see smoke and glowing embers beyond the part that had been burned over.
The pilot swooped down over the lake where Lands and Forest had decided our camp should be. The lake, which was smooth as glass, seemed to be about a mile from the fire, which was comforting but also meant, as Sven shouted to me, that we would have to trek a long way through the thick bush to get to the fire line.
The pilot suddenly opened a side window and threw out a cushion. He shouted that when a lake was very calm it was hard to judge the plane’s height above the water. The ripples from the cushion would help him judge where the surface was.
He came around again, looked at the ripples, and landed. He taxied over to a point on the shore where a couple of tents had already been set up. A fellow waiting for us grabbed a rope that the pilot threw and looped it over a stump.
As soon as we had unloaded the plane, and given the pilot his rope, he took off down the lake to get more workers.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
The fellow on the shore introduced himself as the Lands and Forest fire ranger. He was a thin, wiry Franco-Ontarian, who looked both tired and sullen.
“Pitch a tent over there somewhere, behind the cook tent.” Pointing at Sven and me, he said, “You two can be cooks.”
Sven was delighted--- trudging through the bush with 70 pounds of gear was not for him.
I was upset.
I had come for an adventure, not to peel potatoes.
When I told the ranger I would prefer to be out on the line, he snarled, “You’re not happy and I’m not happy. Just do it.”
Sensing, I guess, that he had been a bit out of line, he explained that he had been fighting fires for six weeks straight. His boss had told him that he would have a week off after the last fire, a chance to be with his family in Sudbury.
Then, the boss had changed his mind, and told him he would have to spend another week or so at this fire. He was tired and angry, and he missed his family.
The plane ferried in more workers, until we were about 20 in all, and then brought in more fire-fighting equipment, food stocks and some naphtha gas stoves.
That first day we fed ourselves, as we set up camp, sorted out the water pumps and hoses and in general prepared to start the fire fighting the next day.
The fire ranger’s mood didn’t improve as the day went on. When he was asked a question, he shrugged and said, ”Do what you want.”
The men had experience and they generally knew what needed to be done.
After dinner, someone built a camp fire and we sat around it, chatting about the next day.
The ranger didn’t join us. Instead, he crawled into his pup tent, and tied the flap down.
Before we fell asleep, Sven and I talked about what we would feed 20 hungry people for breakfast the next morning. We decided on coffee, bacon, eggs, porridge and white sliced bread with peanut butter and jam.
In Part Two, next week, I will tell the rest of the story of John’s not-so-excellent adventure.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
I’ve told many Cassidy stories, the American Cocker Spaniel that helped raise our children.
Now it is the turn of Nanny, the white-and-liver Springer Spaniel that helped raise Pat and her brother.
Nanny understood that she was not allowed in the dining room in Pat’s Aurora home. She would lie on the floor of the kitchen with her front paws positioned precisely at the dividing line between the two rooms. When she thought Pat’s mother wasn’t looking, Nanny would quietly push her paws a few inches into the dining room. Pat’s mother would pretend not to notice, and Nanny would push the paws a little further into the dining room.
When the paws were a foot or so into the dining room, Pat’s mother would give Nanny ‘the look’, a stare---eyeball to eyeball---combined with a little tilt of the head. No words were spoken, but Nanny would grumble quietly and pull the paws back to the dividing line.
I was never able to figure out who enjoyed the game more, Nanny or Pat’s mother.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
My presence in the household, first as a suitor and then as Pat’s husband, upset Nanny. When Nanny and I were alone together, we got along well enough but when Pat or other family members were around she gave me the cold shoulder. As Pat’s father used to say she was treating me as ‘the new boy’ to whom she owed no loyalty, and no show of friendliness. More than that, it was clear that she thought I was someone who had to be viewed with a good bit of suspicion.
The night we came back from our honeymoon, we slept in Pat’s old room. In the morning, Nanny came upstairs while we were still asleep and pushed open the door with her nose. She saw what she had expected all along. I was up to no good.
Quickly, she leapt onto the bed and then squirmed, lengthwise, between us. She became a kind of bundling board that was used by Ontario pioneers to keep a courting couple from getting up to any hanky-panky.
Then, she put her head down and pretended to be asleep.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #29 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.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
POSTING # 27
Bird Bangers Start in Virgil; Organizing Prime Minister Trudeau’s 1972 Conference of First Ministers on Social Policy; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Bird Bangers Start in Virgil
A week ago, we heard in the distance the first bird bangs since last fall when the vineyards were protecting their crops of ripening grapes from flocks of blackbirds.
I was puzzled---there are no grapes yet, hardly even blossoms---but a neighbour explained that the farmers were now protecting their sweet cherries from hungry birds.
It seems that the fruit farmers this year are worried about more than birds. Reports are that the sweet cherries will be smaller and less sweet than usual. And if the cool, wet weather continues, the peaches will be spongy with excess water.
So it looks as though high quality cherries and peaches are going to be few---and expensive.
But perhaps the Hudson Bay Low (or whatever it is that is causing this weather) will take itself off to Greenland, or somewhere.
By the way, I must apologize for not being more precise about the meteorological factors that are causing our current weather. Whenever the Weather Channel comes on, I get distracted by the outfits the men and women forecasters are wearing. The men’s clothes don’t fit and look like they were designed by a Soviet-era tailor while the women’s clothes resemble those found on the street corners of downtown Toronto.
My poor head can’t cope with all that mixed input and in the end I’m not sure whether the weather systems are too high and the skirts too low, or vice-versa.
I would be grateful if the Channel’s management would increase the clothing budget for these otherwise estimable people and arrange for some fashion advice.
Then, perhaps, I will be able to pass along a more valid explanation of why the weather is so lousy.
Organizing Prime Minister Trudeau’s 1972 Conference of First Ministers on Social Policy
The latest Canada-Russia hockey matchup happened in May, with Russia taking the World Championship for a second year in a row. I was thinking about how little media attention the series received compared with the great 1972 battle---Paul Henderson’s goal etc.
While the 1972 series was being played, I was working with colleagues in the Federal-Provincial Relations Secretariat of the Privy Council to organize a conference of the Prime Minister and the ten provincial premiers. The conference was to discuss some social policy initiatives the Federal Government wished to take and discuss some problems that had come up in existing social programs.
Perhaps it will be helpful if I digress for a moment and provide a bit of organizational context. A Prime Minister has two organizations under her/him: the Privy Council, staffed by career public servants, that gives advice on the substance of government policies while the Prime Minister’s Office, staffed by (usually) short-term appointees, that provides advice on political issues.
I spent most of my 32 years with the Federal Government working in departments concerned with immigration, employment and employment insurance. I was, however, seconded for a three year period to the Privy Council, from 1970-1973.
It was during this secondment that I became responsible for the day-to-day planning for the 1972 First Ministers’ conference on social policy. This meant consulting Federal Departments and the premiers’ offices about what should be on the agenda. Once the agenda was set, I was responsible for coordinating the briefing material to be given to the Prime Minister and to those Federal ministers with social policy portfolios.
I should say that I can’t talk about the substance of the discussions (Official Secrets Act, and all that). Not that I would want to—boring stuff---but I think I can tell a few stories about what went on behind the scenes.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
In my canvassing of the premiers’ offices to identify issues they would want to raise at the conference, I left British Columbia to the end. The NDP party under Dave Barrett had just unseated the Social Credit government in September 1972, and I thought it would be a good idea to let the new government ‘get its feet under the desk’.
Now, everyone in Ottawa was interested in what changes the new government would want to introduce. The former (Social Credit) government, which had been in power for years, took a distinctly conservative approach to social policies
I had just started chatting with one of Premier Barrett’s senior people (we were just finishing a comparison of the weather in Victoria and Ottawa, a subject that always had to precede the ‘meat’ of a call) when the official said, “John, could you hold on. The Premier wants to talk to you.”
Whoops!
Members of the Privy Council Office didn’t talk to premiers. This was unprecedented.
The Premier’s opening remarks were also unprecedented.
“Mr. Hunter, I want you to tell the Prime Minister that we are fed up with all the Federal horsesh-t.”
He went on for about five minutes in the same colourful vein, punctuating his points with good, solid Anglo-Saxon oaths. He told me that the new government had a mandate from the people of BC to introduce change, and that as a former social worker he had plans to re-shape the Province’s social programs.
When I tried to identify specific areas he wanted to change, he brushed off my questions. That would come later, he said.
He closed by demanding that I tell the Prime Minister that there would be no more business as usual between BC and the Federal Government.
He hung up.
I tried to collect my thoughts. The first one was that he made it sound as though I was in the habit of dropping into the Prime Minister’s office, throwing a leg over a chair and saying “Pierre, we have a problem with BC’.
In my time at the Privy Council, I can only recall speaking with the PM on three occasions. Two of them were during conferences when I had to clarify some minor administrative points. The other time was at a reception for the PCO staff and partners at the PM’s residence, 24 Sussex Drive, which Pat and I attended. (A little side note: the PM had just married Margaret Sinclair---March 4, 1971--- and they were obviously very much in love. At one point in the reception, the two, smiling at each other, put their heads together as Margaret helped fix a cuff-link that had got stuck. Later on, when the relationship soured we liked to recall that tender moment.)
So, like all the officials in the Privy Council, my communications with the PM were through memoranda that were passed up a formidable chain of command.
After Dave Barrett hung up, I wrote a memo outlining the substance of the conversation. I left out the picturesque language but tried to convey the strength of the Premier’s feelings.
I handed the memo to my boss, saying that it was about a chat I had just had with the Premier of BC. He turned a little white, until he understood how the conversation had come about.
He passed the note along to his boss and it eventually ended up with the Prime Minister. The Privy Council had been wondering about the approach the new BC government would take. My memo was welcomed as the first indication of what that would be.
I had my Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame in the Privy Council---as the person who had talked to Dave Barrett.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Having written chunks of the briefing material and editing the rest, I then had to oversee the assembling of the Prime Minister’s briefing book, a thick black binder with three-inch rings.
Each agenda item had its own divider, from the PM’s opening remarks, through each of the discussion items, ending with his concluding remarks. The background and Federal position were printed on paper of one colour, questions which the premiers might raise in another colour, and a set of suggested responses in a third colour.
In an era before word processing, there was an enormous amount of typing and retyping---every time a change was made in a document it had to be totally retyped. It is easy to forget how word processing has simplified our business and personal lives.
Finally, we had a hundred or so piles of different coloured pages of approved text sitting on every available desk, table and chair in a large room. The pages had to be collated and inserted in the binder for the PM, and in the 20 or so extra binders for Federal Ministers and senior officials.
The binders had to be ready for the following morning and there was no choice but to work through the evening, until the job was done. Working evenings was not unusual at the Privy Council but this was the evening of one of the early Canada-Russia games---a game that everyone wanted to watch.
As Privy Council people, we prided ourselves on being both dedicated and creative. Some colleagues ‘liberated’ a television set and brought in a case of beer. With one eye on the game and the other on our beer, we went round and round the piles of pages, handing our pages to a secretary who inserted them in the binders.
Early the next morning, I went through each of the binders to make sure that the game and the beer hadn’t fouled things up.
Apart from a couple of beer stains, things were fine.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
The conference went well.
Unlike the stereotypes that some people had of Mr. Trudeau as an impatient, arrogant, imperious person, he was a relaxed and effective chair. He listened carefully to the premiers and responded in a thoughtful way to their comments.
There were two or three issues that involved some spirited give and take but compromises were worked out in each case.
The plan was to finish the agenda items on the morning of the final day, have lunch and then spend part of the afternoon reviewing the communiqué that would be issued later to the media.
The agenda items were finished well before noon and the PM asked the premiers if they had any questions they would like to raise, since there was some free time.
There were no takers.
The PM decided to play with them a little. He pointed out that in his binder he had green pages that listed all the questions his officials thought the premiers might want to raise. Some had come up in the meeting but others had not.
He read one question, as an example. The premiers nodded, indicating they thought that was a reasonable question.
Then he said that his binder also had suggested responses. Flipping to the pink pages, he read out the response to the question he had read.
The Prime Minister adopted a mock gunslinger pose that said,’ C’mon, make my day, ask me a question.’
The premiers laughed, and in that jovial mood they and the PM went off to lunch.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
While they had lunch a group of us huddled over the draft communiqué, sandwiches in hand.
We had started the communiqué weeks before the conference, trying to anticipate the decisions that would be made. A copy of this draft was given to the translators so they could have a head start on the French version.
We updated the communiqué and had a version ready for the PM and premiers when they reassembled after lunch.
Most of the communiqué was accepted with little discussion but the portions that dealt with the contentious issues were a problem. Words had to be found that left some wiggle room for the two orders of government. It was a time for some creative ambiguity and vagueness, not as blatant as Prime Minister King’s famous “Conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription” but of the same genre.
Formulations were finally found that satisfied everyone. The PM thanked the premiers and the meeting broke up.
I took the re-worked communiqué to the translation section. A few minutes later, the head of the section came to see me. He had flagged the contentious sections and said that he couldn’t understand what they meant, precisely. The sentences weren’t clear.
I explained that the vagueness was intentional, and gave him some background on the discussions.
“So, I said, “That’s why those sections are a bit ambiguous”.
“But’, he replied, “French is a precise language, you can’t be ambiguous in French, words have to mean something.”
I sympathized with him but said the PM had approved the communiqué and was expecting a French version before the end of the day. Could he try his best?
The translator went off, muttering. In the end, he too was creative and the PM approved the French version.
After the communiqué was finished, a few of us went out for a drink.
It had been weeks of hard work but the conference had gone well.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Years ago, I was taking some officials from a southern European country on a sight-seeing tour of Ottawa. We drove past the Parliament Buildings, the National Gallery and the Museum of Civilization but the visitors didn’t show much enthusiasm.
I then drove them along the canal, around Dows Lake and into the Arboretum in the Experimental Farm. Suddenly one of the visitors shouted, “Stop car, please. Take picture”
As soon as the car stopped the visitors jumped out and ran toward some squirrels that were cavorting on the lawn among the trees.
The visitors were laughing, pointing and taking pictures of the little gray and black fellows.
“They are beautiful”, one visitor said.
I asked if they had squirrels in their country.
“No, we had them, but we ate them all.”
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #28 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.
Bird Bangers Start in Virgil
A week ago, we heard in the distance the first bird bangs since last fall when the vineyards were protecting their crops of ripening grapes from flocks of blackbirds.
I was puzzled---there are no grapes yet, hardly even blossoms---but a neighbour explained that the farmers were now protecting their sweet cherries from hungry birds.
It seems that the fruit farmers this year are worried about more than birds. Reports are that the sweet cherries will be smaller and less sweet than usual. And if the cool, wet weather continues, the peaches will be spongy with excess water.
So it looks as though high quality cherries and peaches are going to be few---and expensive.
But perhaps the Hudson Bay Low (or whatever it is that is causing this weather) will take itself off to Greenland, or somewhere.
By the way, I must apologize for not being more precise about the meteorological factors that are causing our current weather. Whenever the Weather Channel comes on, I get distracted by the outfits the men and women forecasters are wearing. The men’s clothes don’t fit and look like they were designed by a Soviet-era tailor while the women’s clothes resemble those found on the street corners of downtown Toronto.
My poor head can’t cope with all that mixed input and in the end I’m not sure whether the weather systems are too high and the skirts too low, or vice-versa.
I would be grateful if the Channel’s management would increase the clothing budget for these otherwise estimable people and arrange for some fashion advice.
Then, perhaps, I will be able to pass along a more valid explanation of why the weather is so lousy.
Organizing Prime Minister Trudeau’s 1972 Conference of First Ministers on Social Policy
The latest Canada-Russia hockey matchup happened in May, with Russia taking the World Championship for a second year in a row. I was thinking about how little media attention the series received compared with the great 1972 battle---Paul Henderson’s goal etc.
While the 1972 series was being played, I was working with colleagues in the Federal-Provincial Relations Secretariat of the Privy Council to organize a conference of the Prime Minister and the ten provincial premiers. The conference was to discuss some social policy initiatives the Federal Government wished to take and discuss some problems that had come up in existing social programs.
Perhaps it will be helpful if I digress for a moment and provide a bit of organizational context. A Prime Minister has two organizations under her/him: the Privy Council, staffed by career public servants, that gives advice on the substance of government policies while the Prime Minister’s Office, staffed by (usually) short-term appointees, that provides advice on political issues.
I spent most of my 32 years with the Federal Government working in departments concerned with immigration, employment and employment insurance. I was, however, seconded for a three year period to the Privy Council, from 1970-1973.
It was during this secondment that I became responsible for the day-to-day planning for the 1972 First Ministers’ conference on social policy. This meant consulting Federal Departments and the premiers’ offices about what should be on the agenda. Once the agenda was set, I was responsible for coordinating the briefing material to be given to the Prime Minister and to those Federal ministers with social policy portfolios.
I should say that I can’t talk about the substance of the discussions (Official Secrets Act, and all that). Not that I would want to—boring stuff---but I think I can tell a few stories about what went on behind the scenes.
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In my canvassing of the premiers’ offices to identify issues they would want to raise at the conference, I left British Columbia to the end. The NDP party under Dave Barrett had just unseated the Social Credit government in September 1972, and I thought it would be a good idea to let the new government ‘get its feet under the desk’.
Now, everyone in Ottawa was interested in what changes the new government would want to introduce. The former (Social Credit) government, which had been in power for years, took a distinctly conservative approach to social policies
I had just started chatting with one of Premier Barrett’s senior people (we were just finishing a comparison of the weather in Victoria and Ottawa, a subject that always had to precede the ‘meat’ of a call) when the official said, “John, could you hold on. The Premier wants to talk to you.”
Whoops!
Members of the Privy Council Office didn’t talk to premiers. This was unprecedented.
The Premier’s opening remarks were also unprecedented.
“Mr. Hunter, I want you to tell the Prime Minister that we are fed up with all the Federal horsesh-t.”
He went on for about five minutes in the same colourful vein, punctuating his points with good, solid Anglo-Saxon oaths. He told me that the new government had a mandate from the people of BC to introduce change, and that as a former social worker he had plans to re-shape the Province’s social programs.
When I tried to identify specific areas he wanted to change, he brushed off my questions. That would come later, he said.
He closed by demanding that I tell the Prime Minister that there would be no more business as usual between BC and the Federal Government.
He hung up.
I tried to collect my thoughts. The first one was that he made it sound as though I was in the habit of dropping into the Prime Minister’s office, throwing a leg over a chair and saying “Pierre, we have a problem with BC’.
In my time at the Privy Council, I can only recall speaking with the PM on three occasions. Two of them were during conferences when I had to clarify some minor administrative points. The other time was at a reception for the PCO staff and partners at the PM’s residence, 24 Sussex Drive, which Pat and I attended. (A little side note: the PM had just married Margaret Sinclair---March 4, 1971--- and they were obviously very much in love. At one point in the reception, the two, smiling at each other, put their heads together as Margaret helped fix a cuff-link that had got stuck. Later on, when the relationship soured we liked to recall that tender moment.)
So, like all the officials in the Privy Council, my communications with the PM were through memoranda that were passed up a formidable chain of command.
After Dave Barrett hung up, I wrote a memo outlining the substance of the conversation. I left out the picturesque language but tried to convey the strength of the Premier’s feelings.
I handed the memo to my boss, saying that it was about a chat I had just had with the Premier of BC. He turned a little white, until he understood how the conversation had come about.
He passed the note along to his boss and it eventually ended up with the Prime Minister. The Privy Council had been wondering about the approach the new BC government would take. My memo was welcomed as the first indication of what that would be.
I had my Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame in the Privy Council---as the person who had talked to Dave Barrett.
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Having written chunks of the briefing material and editing the rest, I then had to oversee the assembling of the Prime Minister’s briefing book, a thick black binder with three-inch rings.
Each agenda item had its own divider, from the PM’s opening remarks, through each of the discussion items, ending with his concluding remarks. The background and Federal position were printed on paper of one colour, questions which the premiers might raise in another colour, and a set of suggested responses in a third colour.
In an era before word processing, there was an enormous amount of typing and retyping---every time a change was made in a document it had to be totally retyped. It is easy to forget how word processing has simplified our business and personal lives.
Finally, we had a hundred or so piles of different coloured pages of approved text sitting on every available desk, table and chair in a large room. The pages had to be collated and inserted in the binder for the PM, and in the 20 or so extra binders for Federal Ministers and senior officials.
The binders had to be ready for the following morning and there was no choice but to work through the evening, until the job was done. Working evenings was not unusual at the Privy Council but this was the evening of one of the early Canada-Russia games---a game that everyone wanted to watch.
As Privy Council people, we prided ourselves on being both dedicated and creative. Some colleagues ‘liberated’ a television set and brought in a case of beer. With one eye on the game and the other on our beer, we went round and round the piles of pages, handing our pages to a secretary who inserted them in the binders.
Early the next morning, I went through each of the binders to make sure that the game and the beer hadn’t fouled things up.
Apart from a couple of beer stains, things were fine.
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The conference went well.
Unlike the stereotypes that some people had of Mr. Trudeau as an impatient, arrogant, imperious person, he was a relaxed and effective chair. He listened carefully to the premiers and responded in a thoughtful way to their comments.
There were two or three issues that involved some spirited give and take but compromises were worked out in each case.
The plan was to finish the agenda items on the morning of the final day, have lunch and then spend part of the afternoon reviewing the communiqué that would be issued later to the media.
The agenda items were finished well before noon and the PM asked the premiers if they had any questions they would like to raise, since there was some free time.
There were no takers.
The PM decided to play with them a little. He pointed out that in his binder he had green pages that listed all the questions his officials thought the premiers might want to raise. Some had come up in the meeting but others had not.
He read one question, as an example. The premiers nodded, indicating they thought that was a reasonable question.
Then he said that his binder also had suggested responses. Flipping to the pink pages, he read out the response to the question he had read.
The Prime Minister adopted a mock gunslinger pose that said,’ C’mon, make my day, ask me a question.’
The premiers laughed, and in that jovial mood they and the PM went off to lunch.
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While they had lunch a group of us huddled over the draft communiqué, sandwiches in hand.
We had started the communiqué weeks before the conference, trying to anticipate the decisions that would be made. A copy of this draft was given to the translators so they could have a head start on the French version.
We updated the communiqué and had a version ready for the PM and premiers when they reassembled after lunch.
Most of the communiqué was accepted with little discussion but the portions that dealt with the contentious issues were a problem. Words had to be found that left some wiggle room for the two orders of government. It was a time for some creative ambiguity and vagueness, not as blatant as Prime Minister King’s famous “Conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription” but of the same genre.
Formulations were finally found that satisfied everyone. The PM thanked the premiers and the meeting broke up.
I took the re-worked communiqué to the translation section. A few minutes later, the head of the section came to see me. He had flagged the contentious sections and said that he couldn’t understand what they meant, precisely. The sentences weren’t clear.
I explained that the vagueness was intentional, and gave him some background on the discussions.
“So, I said, “That’s why those sections are a bit ambiguous”.
“But’, he replied, “French is a precise language, you can’t be ambiguous in French, words have to mean something.”
I sympathized with him but said the PM had approved the communiqué and was expecting a French version before the end of the day. Could he try his best?
The translator went off, muttering. In the end, he too was creative and the PM approved the French version.
After the communiqué was finished, a few of us went out for a drink.
It had been weeks of hard work but the conference had gone well.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Years ago, I was taking some officials from a southern European country on a sight-seeing tour of Ottawa. We drove past the Parliament Buildings, the National Gallery and the Museum of Civilization but the visitors didn’t show much enthusiasm.
I then drove them along the canal, around Dows Lake and into the Arboretum in the Experimental Farm. Suddenly one of the visitors shouted, “Stop car, please. Take picture”
As soon as the car stopped the visitors jumped out and ran toward some squirrels that were cavorting on the lawn among the trees.
The visitors were laughing, pointing and taking pictures of the little gray and black fellows.
“They are beautiful”, one visitor said.
I asked if they had squirrels in their country.
“No, we had them, but we ate them all.”
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See you next Sunday for Posting #28 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.
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