Lives of Upper Canada Women in the 19th Century; Tailor Made in Yorkshire; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Lives of Upper Canada Women in the 19th Century
Niagara-on-the-Lake is fortunate to have a very active Niagara Historical Society which operates an impressive Museum (click here for its website.
In addition to their work in the Museum, the energetic curator, Clark Bernat, and the equally energetic Society Administrator, Amy Klassen, organize an annual series of lectures on local historical topics.
The topic for the 2009 lecture series was the lives of women in Upper Canada.
There were several lectures---all of which we found stimulating---that discussed the lives of reasonably prominent women using information contained in books, diaries, letters and newspaper articles.
The last lecture,---presented by Professor Douglas McCalla from the University of Guelph---discussed a way of learning something about the life of less prominent women, women who didn't leave any written records of what they thought or did.
Thanks to new tools such as Ancestry.com, we can piece together some of the vital statistics of our ancestors---when they were born, whom they married, how many children they had, when they died. Unfortunately, many of our ancestors were too busy just surviving to produce or preserve written records of what life was like for them.
Professor McCalla has been working for some years on how to make these women a little less invisible using what may seem at first glance to be an unlikely source: the account books maintained by stores in Ontario's rural communities.
In the lecture he examined in detail the purchases of one woman in 1861 and invited us to join with him in some detective work. What did the items she purchase tell us about her life?
Some items seemed obvious: tea, soda, a washboard, a clock.
Other items, especially the fabric purchases, raised interesting questions. What exactly was she going to do with items such as: 2 yards of flannel, 9 yards of printed cotton, 10 1/2 yards of stripe shirting, 2 1/2 yards of cashmere?
It was fascinating to listen as the professor teased out all kinds of interesting speculations and conclusions from the purchases.
Professor McCalla is writing a book on his research. We can't wait to read it.
Tailor Made in Yorkshire
In Posting #37, September 13, 2009, I told some stories about the woollen mills in the area around Leeds in Yorkshire.
Leeds in the early 1960s, when Pat and I lived there, had a large clothing industry that produced ready-made and made-to-measure suits for the whole country.
A fellow Canadian at our Immigration office in Leeds, Henry (not his real name), decided to have a suit made.
Not just a normal suit, but a very special suit.
Now, Henry although a Canadian and supposedly used to the cold, found Yorkshire unbearably cold.
Part of it, I suppose, was a result of his own choices.
He chose to rent an historic stone house with high ceilings, and with drafty windows and doors, a house that was heated by inefficient fireplaces (central heating was just starting to move into Yorkshire).
He also drove a British sports car---with a canvas top---that was as cold as his house.
Henry's solution was to have a suit made of heavy overcoat material---not material in the normal 10 to 12 ounce range per fabric yard, but something up in the 20 to 30 ounce range.
His landlord knew a Leeds tailor who had a thriving wholesale business making made-to-measure suits for men's clothing stores around Britain but who would sometimes make suits for friends of friends.
Henry approached the tailor with his plan.
The tailor said he had never made a suit from such heavy material but he was up to the challenge.
In a few weeks, Henry had a handsome, if somewhat bulky, three-piece suit (jacket, pants and vest) of gray and white overcoat tweed.
He was delighted, but more than that he was warm.
Except for his head.
Another problem, another solution.
He had a peaked cap made from the same material.
Now he could toodle around the moors and dales of Yorkshire in his sports car with the top down, his face a little pink but the rest of him as warm as Canadian toast (British toast was always served cold) in what he called his 'fog-proof suit'.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
I arrived in Leeds in the fall of 1960 to work in the Canadian Immigration office.
As I was getting ready to fly home in June 1961 for my wedding to Pat, I started looking for a couple of suits.
Henry suggested I try his tailor.
After climbing the steps to the second floor of an old building, I entered a huge room full of cutting tables, sewing machines, tailor's dummies and all the other paraphernalia of a clothing factory.
The tailor, a short, wiry middle-aged man, came out of his small cubbyhole office with sample books of fabric. As the workers looked on, we talked about fabrics and weights---not as heavy as Henry's! I decided on a couple of fabric samples.
We then talked about style. I had worn a Canadian off-the-rack suit and asked if he could produce something similar. I didn't want it to appear that I had 'gone native' (that could be fatal for someone in the Foreign Service). I didn't want, for example, jackets with double vents that left a little flap that bounced off the bum as you walked.
He studied the cut of my Canadian suit, the width of the lapels and so on. He declared that he could match the Canadian style but I could tell he wasn't enthusiastic. Why would anyone want to walk around in a suit that looked like that when one could have a British-style suit?
He said he would insist, however, on using a better quality lining and real horse hair canvas backing for the jacket. I got the impression he didn't think much of Canadian tailoring. Come to think of it, I have never run into a tailor who had anything good to say about another tailor's work.
The tailor got out his tape and measured me.
I told him that I had put on a few pounds due to the heavy but delicious Yorkshire food but that I intended to take them off. He could, therefore, make the suits a little tight.
The tailor paused in his note taking. "Sir, I have been a tailor for twenty-five years, and no one EVER loses weight."
I protested but he wouldn't budge.
Then I raised an issue that was more important to me. I wanted a fly with a zipper, not buttons.
Once again the tailor stopped his note taking.
"No sir, you don't. If a button pops off, you are still all right. If a zipper breaks, what can you do?"
I noticed that the nearby workers had stopped to watch. Protesting, I showed him the zipper on my Canadian trousers. It had never broken.
He shook his head and I could tell from the stern look on his face that this was a deal-breaker. Some standards had to be maintained. The British Empire depended on keeping buttons on flies.
A quick glance at the surrounding workers told me that they agreed with him---totally.
I gave in---buttons it would be.
How soon could I have the suits? There would be three fittings, and the suits would be finished in three weeks.
How much would that be, I asked.
He motioned for me to follow him into his tiny office. He closed the door and pointing to the fabric samples told me what each would cost.
I knew that I was being taken advantage of---that's why he didn't want to quote prices in front of his workers---but I also knew that I was getting a great bargain by Canadian standards.
The suits were ready on time, fitted perfectly and the styling while not exactly Canadian was acceptable---sort of mid-Atlantic.
I eventually lost some of the Yorkshire fat but not until the suits were worn out. It was good that he hadn't made them tight. I guess we can say he was partly right about people not losing weight.
But I never got used to the buttons on the fly.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
It is sad but the Leeds clothing industry started to decline about the time Henry and I were buying our suits. I understand that it is now just about extinct.
After the early 1960s, clothing became more informal (the Beatles and all that) and people bought fewer suits.
And suits that where being bought were increasingly made in countries with lower wages.
I count myself lucky that I had the experience of buying some suits from that Leeds tailor.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Pat's mother, Georgina, was about 10 or 11 when her mother---Pat's grandmother--- decided that she should find a time to tell her daughter the facts of life.
She thought that a good time would be while she and her daughter were returning home in the family's horse-drawn buggy from a shopping trip in Barrie.
As the horse trotted along the Ridge Road toward Oro, her mother explained to Georgina about the birds and bees, and about what was going to happen to her body.
Georgina just listened, didn't say anything.
Finally her mother asked, " So, what do you think of that?"
Georgina crossed her arms, and looking straight ahead replied, "I don't believe a word of it."
We aren't sure what Pat's grandmother thought of Georgina's response but it is likely that she secretly admired the spunkiness of the little girl. And she probably felt relaxed that she had done her duty, and that time and nature could now take over.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #40 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.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
POSTING # 38
Letter to Americans
This week’s posting is different.
Instead of recounting some of the stories from our family’s universe, it deals with a very current issue: attacks by some Americans on Canada’s health care program.
Back to our normal postings next week.
Letter to Americans
Dear Americans,
You may not have noticed that some of the mudslinging by those opposing health care reform has been directed at Canada’s health care program.
We’ve noticed.
We all recognize that our plan is not perfect but 85% of us like it--- like it a lot. There are problems and glitches but everyone is covered, infant mortality is low and longevity is high.
We feel hurt by the misrepresentations, exaggerations and damnable mendacity.
And hurt that you would think we are so dumb that we would put up with a system that is so 'flawed'.
Now, we understand that hired guns in your country see it as their duty to provide the best possible defense in the court of public opinion for the weak, vulnerable vested interests who may suffer if the US health care system is changed.
I am sure these mudslingers see themselves as providing a valuable public service---providing a voice for some maligned and misunderstood corporations.
What are ends for if not to justify the means.
If the truth gets trampled a bit---well, this is war.
And so what if there is some collateral damage up in Canada.
Some of my compatriots have become angry (is ‘an angry Canadian’ an oxymoron---at least off the ice?)
They have fired off letters to the editor, shouted on talk shows and complained to our politicians ‘to do something’.
The majority of us are still trying to figure out how to respond to these attacks, attacks that are coming from a country that we like and respect.
My own take is something like this. Some of you who voted for change last November and most of you who voted against change have discovered that change means leaving the comfort of the familiar.
And change is coming, inevitably, not just in health care but in finance, energy and climate change, race, immigration and international threats.
All at once.
My sense is that many of you are grieving. That some of you feel that your country, your constitution, your way of life is being taken away.
If this analysis is true, then those Americans will have to go through the well-known stages of grieving: denial, anger, depression, and, finally acceptance.
What can an outsider do?
Personally, I have never found it helpful to tell a person in denial to wake up, or to tell a person who is angry to calm down, or to tell a person who is depressed to snap out of it.
The answer, I think, is for Canadians to ignore the attacks on our health care.
Of course, we have had our differences. In the War of 1812, you burned down what is now Toronto, and we (helped by the British) burned down Washington.
In the 1840s, some of your firebrands wanted to annex all of western Canada except for some bits near the North Pole, with their demand of (latitudes) “Fifty-four forty or fight”.
In an 1911 election, one of our parties campaigned, successfully, on a slogan, “No truck nor trade with the Yankees”.
But, hell, what neighbours don’t have squabbles from time to time.
We love what you have given the world: the ideals spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and your Constitution, Huck Finn, the Model T, Hollywood, the Marshall Plan, the Internet, Google, and so much more.
We also love you Americans for what you are.
I think of a friend who came back to his car after a show on Broadway only to discover he had locked his keys in it. A figure emerged from an alley, pulled a tool from his jacket and opened the car. He then retreated into the alley saying, “Remember, you never saw me.”
Or of the dentist in Gloucester Massachusetts who gave up part of his Saturday to fix a broken tooth. When I talked about payment he insisted on telling me about the annual dory race between fishermen of Gloucester and Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.
Or of the anonymous person in South Carolina who, finding the cell phone we hadn't realized we had lost, called our son in Toronto and said he would leave the phone at the front desk of a nearby hotel. Two hours---and an email---later we had the phone back.
I hated the movie Borat.
I cringed as it took advantage of the kindness and, yes, goodness of Americans to set them up in ways that made them look ridiculous.
When the arguing is done and your health care reform legislation is finally passed, we’d love to have you come up to see us. We can sit down and discuss what we can learn from each other about how to ensure high quality, affordable health care.
In the meantime, may I leave you with a saying of one of our sages, Red Green (Steve Smith). “Remember, I’m pulling for you. We are all in this together.”
Best wishes,
John
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #39 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.
This week’s posting is different.
Instead of recounting some of the stories from our family’s universe, it deals with a very current issue: attacks by some Americans on Canada’s health care program.
Back to our normal postings next week.
Letter to Americans
Dear Americans,
You may not have noticed that some of the mudslinging by those opposing health care reform has been directed at Canada’s health care program.
We’ve noticed.
We all recognize that our plan is not perfect but 85% of us like it--- like it a lot. There are problems and glitches but everyone is covered, infant mortality is low and longevity is high.
We feel hurt by the misrepresentations, exaggerations and damnable mendacity.
And hurt that you would think we are so dumb that we would put up with a system that is so 'flawed'.
Now, we understand that hired guns in your country see it as their duty to provide the best possible defense in the court of public opinion for the weak, vulnerable vested interests who may suffer if the US health care system is changed.
I am sure these mudslingers see themselves as providing a valuable public service---providing a voice for some maligned and misunderstood corporations.
What are ends for if not to justify the means.
If the truth gets trampled a bit---well, this is war.
And so what if there is some collateral damage up in Canada.
Some of my compatriots have become angry (is ‘an angry Canadian’ an oxymoron---at least off the ice?)
They have fired off letters to the editor, shouted on talk shows and complained to our politicians ‘to do something’.
The majority of us are still trying to figure out how to respond to these attacks, attacks that are coming from a country that we like and respect.
My own take is something like this. Some of you who voted for change last November and most of you who voted against change have discovered that change means leaving the comfort of the familiar.
And change is coming, inevitably, not just in health care but in finance, energy and climate change, race, immigration and international threats.
All at once.
My sense is that many of you are grieving. That some of you feel that your country, your constitution, your way of life is being taken away.
If this analysis is true, then those Americans will have to go through the well-known stages of grieving: denial, anger, depression, and, finally acceptance.
What can an outsider do?
Personally, I have never found it helpful to tell a person in denial to wake up, or to tell a person who is angry to calm down, or to tell a person who is depressed to snap out of it.
The answer, I think, is for Canadians to ignore the attacks on our health care.
Of course, we have had our differences. In the War of 1812, you burned down what is now Toronto, and we (helped by the British) burned down Washington.
In the 1840s, some of your firebrands wanted to annex all of western Canada except for some bits near the North Pole, with their demand of (latitudes) “Fifty-four forty or fight”.
In an 1911 election, one of our parties campaigned, successfully, on a slogan, “No truck nor trade with the Yankees”.
But, hell, what neighbours don’t have squabbles from time to time.
We love what you have given the world: the ideals spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and your Constitution, Huck Finn, the Model T, Hollywood, the Marshall Plan, the Internet, Google, and so much more.
We also love you Americans for what you are.
I think of a friend who came back to his car after a show on Broadway only to discover he had locked his keys in it. A figure emerged from an alley, pulled a tool from his jacket and opened the car. He then retreated into the alley saying, “Remember, you never saw me.”
Or of the dentist in Gloucester Massachusetts who gave up part of his Saturday to fix a broken tooth. When I talked about payment he insisted on telling me about the annual dory race between fishermen of Gloucester and Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.
Or of the anonymous person in South Carolina who, finding the cell phone we hadn't realized we had lost, called our son in Toronto and said he would leave the phone at the front desk of a nearby hotel. Two hours---and an email---later we had the phone back.
I hated the movie Borat.
I cringed as it took advantage of the kindness and, yes, goodness of Americans to set them up in ways that made them look ridiculous.
When the arguing is done and your health care reform legislation is finally passed, we’d love to have you come up to see us. We can sit down and discuss what we can learn from each other about how to ensure high quality, affordable health care.
In the meantime, may I leave you with a saying of one of our sages, Red Green (Steve Smith). “Remember, I’m pulling for you. We are all in this together.”
Best wishes,
John
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #39 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.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
POSTING # 37
Signs of Fall; Some Yorkshire Stories; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Signs of Fall
There doesn’t seem to be any justice.
First we have a summerless summer and now there are signs of autumn all around us:
• The electronic sign in front of the arena announces: “Ice Available September 12”;
• Boys and girls, well back-packed, were lined up at the school bus stops on Tuesday for their first day of school, accompanied by their Moms and assorted sad younger siblings and dogs;
• Canada Geese are stuffing themselves out in the park on this year’s especially succulent grass, getting ready for the trip south; and,
• The new Consumer Reports edition has a review of snow blowers.
After I wrote the above, Environment Canada came out with a forecast saying that the temperature for the next 2 to 3 months is likely to be above normal for eastern Canada.
Do you suppose they are serious?
Or is the Federal Government just trying to keep our dollars in Canada, to stimulate the economy. You will recall that I suggested last week that we might have to go to the Kingdom of Jordan to get some decent tomatoes (and some warm weather). Perhaps the government has heard that a lot of Canadians are planning trips to places where they can dry out and warm their bones.
Some Yorkshire Stories
My work in the Canadian Immigration in Leeds, Yorkshire in the early 1960s involved, among other things, attending receptions to promote immigration to our country.
At one of my first receptions, I was having a pleasant discussion with a Yorkshireman when he reached over and started fingering the lapel of my suit coat.
“Hmmm, interesting material”, he said. “Canadian?”
I said it was---at that time we had wool weaving mills.
At the next several receptions, at least one Yorkshireman would stroke my lapels.
Finally I asked a Yorkshire friend about this custom.
He laughed, “So Canadians don’t finger your fabric?”
No.
He laughed again. “You know there is a saying that Yorkshiremen aren’t backward in coming forward.”
He explained that almost everyone in the Leeds area had some connection to a wool weaving mill through a grandfather, a father, brother, cousin or friends. They grew up hearing about and feeling material produced by the different mills.
“Obviously, some of them just can’t resist getting a feel of Canadian material. Let me tell you a story.”
After the outbreak of the Second World War, the British Ministry of Defense asked 6 or 7 Yorkshire mills to bid on the production of thousands of yards of khaki material for army uniforms. The Ministry set out detailed and rigid specifications about the quality and weight of the wool, the tightness of the weave, colour and so on.
The Ministry scientists found that each of the samples submitted by the mills met the specifications. They then checked for wearability using abrasion, chemical and other tests. All the results were similar.
The financial aspects of the bids were also very similar.
The Ministry experts were puzzled. How should they decide the winner?
One of the experts heard that mill managers could, by simply feeling material, often tell things about its quality that couldn’t be picked up by tests.
He went to Leeds and showing the coded samples to a manager of one of the mills that had submitted a bid. He asked him to rank them by quality. The expert pointed out that the samples were all woven to exactly the same specifications and requirements and the Ministry’s tests had shown them to be indistinguishable.
The manager said he could rank them but it wouldn’t be fair because he could tell by feeling the samples which came from his mill and which from his competitors’ mills.
Seeing that the expert didn’t believe him, he asked to feel the samples. He correctly identified the mill that each came from.
The story doesn’t tell us how the Ministry finally made a decision.
I think of that story when some experts, for example in education or health care, seem to be relying too much on ‘objective and standardized’ tests.
There is a clearly a place for an experienced and knowledgeable teacher, nurse or doctor to supplement the ‘objective’ data with factors that exist but can’t yet be measured.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
One of the Canadians in the Leeds office was down in Sheffield interviewing prospective immigrants. During his lunch break he dropped into a large butcher’s shop.
Along with pork chops and roasts he saw a tray piled high with something that was called ‘Pork Bones’ with a price of 6 pence a pound (about 10 cents at the time). He decided they looked a lot like spareribs, only there was more meat left on the bones.
He asked for a few pounds to take home to his wife.
The butcher said it was an odd purchase. The only people who bought the pork bones were Jamaicans.
The pork bones were delicious---meatier and juicer than Canadian spareribs. After that anyone going to Sheffield came back with 50 or 60 pounds that were shared among the Canadians.
There were some negatives to living in Yorkshire in the 1960s such as cold, damp homes, but the pork bones were a definite plus.
Later on, the British discovered barbequed spareribs. The price this week at Tesco (one of the large British supermarket chains) for spareribs is about CDN$3.70.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
There has been a debate in the media about whether animals have emotions similar to our own.
You didn’t have to live very long with Cassidy, our family dog, to become convinced that he, at least, had all our emotions and perhaps a few more for good measure.
Once someone left a door open and Cassidy took off. He never went outside without a leash and a boy or girl.
The alarm went up as soon as he was missed (probably when someone opened the fridge and Cassidy didn’t appear to see what was on offer).
Pat and I and the kids were out checking our own and our neighbours yards when we saw him trotting down the street. He had obviously gone around a rather large block.
As he came closer, we could tell that he expected to catch heck. He had that look about him.
But as he reached us, his demeanour changed.
And he growled.
The best defence is an offense.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
As he got older, he had trouble with his bladder. If he were left alone too long without a walk he might have an accident.
If he did, we would find him sitting with his head in a corner, his shoulders sagging.
That was the signal to go around and find the puddle.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #38 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.
Signs of Fall
There doesn’t seem to be any justice.
First we have a summerless summer and now there are signs of autumn all around us:
• The electronic sign in front of the arena announces: “Ice Available September 12”;
• Boys and girls, well back-packed, were lined up at the school bus stops on Tuesday for their first day of school, accompanied by their Moms and assorted sad younger siblings and dogs;
• Canada Geese are stuffing themselves out in the park on this year’s especially succulent grass, getting ready for the trip south; and,
• The new Consumer Reports edition has a review of snow blowers.
After I wrote the above, Environment Canada came out with a forecast saying that the temperature for the next 2 to 3 months is likely to be above normal for eastern Canada.
Do you suppose they are serious?
Or is the Federal Government just trying to keep our dollars in Canada, to stimulate the economy. You will recall that I suggested last week that we might have to go to the Kingdom of Jordan to get some decent tomatoes (and some warm weather). Perhaps the government has heard that a lot of Canadians are planning trips to places where they can dry out and warm their bones.
Some Yorkshire Stories
My work in the Canadian Immigration in Leeds, Yorkshire in the early 1960s involved, among other things, attending receptions to promote immigration to our country.
At one of my first receptions, I was having a pleasant discussion with a Yorkshireman when he reached over and started fingering the lapel of my suit coat.
“Hmmm, interesting material”, he said. “Canadian?”
I said it was---at that time we had wool weaving mills.
At the next several receptions, at least one Yorkshireman would stroke my lapels.
Finally I asked a Yorkshire friend about this custom.
He laughed, “So Canadians don’t finger your fabric?”
No.
He laughed again. “You know there is a saying that Yorkshiremen aren’t backward in coming forward.”
He explained that almost everyone in the Leeds area had some connection to a wool weaving mill through a grandfather, a father, brother, cousin or friends. They grew up hearing about and feeling material produced by the different mills.
“Obviously, some of them just can’t resist getting a feel of Canadian material. Let me tell you a story.”
After the outbreak of the Second World War, the British Ministry of Defense asked 6 or 7 Yorkshire mills to bid on the production of thousands of yards of khaki material for army uniforms. The Ministry set out detailed and rigid specifications about the quality and weight of the wool, the tightness of the weave, colour and so on.
The Ministry scientists found that each of the samples submitted by the mills met the specifications. They then checked for wearability using abrasion, chemical and other tests. All the results were similar.
The financial aspects of the bids were also very similar.
The Ministry experts were puzzled. How should they decide the winner?
One of the experts heard that mill managers could, by simply feeling material, often tell things about its quality that couldn’t be picked up by tests.
He went to Leeds and showing the coded samples to a manager of one of the mills that had submitted a bid. He asked him to rank them by quality. The expert pointed out that the samples were all woven to exactly the same specifications and requirements and the Ministry’s tests had shown them to be indistinguishable.
The manager said he could rank them but it wouldn’t be fair because he could tell by feeling the samples which came from his mill and which from his competitors’ mills.
Seeing that the expert didn’t believe him, he asked to feel the samples. He correctly identified the mill that each came from.
The story doesn’t tell us how the Ministry finally made a decision.
I think of that story when some experts, for example in education or health care, seem to be relying too much on ‘objective and standardized’ tests.
There is a clearly a place for an experienced and knowledgeable teacher, nurse or doctor to supplement the ‘objective’ data with factors that exist but can’t yet be measured.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
One of the Canadians in the Leeds office was down in Sheffield interviewing prospective immigrants. During his lunch break he dropped into a large butcher’s shop.
Along with pork chops and roasts he saw a tray piled high with something that was called ‘Pork Bones’ with a price of 6 pence a pound (about 10 cents at the time). He decided they looked a lot like spareribs, only there was more meat left on the bones.
He asked for a few pounds to take home to his wife.
The butcher said it was an odd purchase. The only people who bought the pork bones were Jamaicans.
The pork bones were delicious---meatier and juicer than Canadian spareribs. After that anyone going to Sheffield came back with 50 or 60 pounds that were shared among the Canadians.
There were some negatives to living in Yorkshire in the 1960s such as cold, damp homes, but the pork bones were a definite plus.
Later on, the British discovered barbequed spareribs. The price this week at Tesco (one of the large British supermarket chains) for spareribs is about CDN$3.70.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
There has been a debate in the media about whether animals have emotions similar to our own.
You didn’t have to live very long with Cassidy, our family dog, to become convinced that he, at least, had all our emotions and perhaps a few more for good measure.
Once someone left a door open and Cassidy took off. He never went outside without a leash and a boy or girl.
The alarm went up as soon as he was missed (probably when someone opened the fridge and Cassidy didn’t appear to see what was on offer).
Pat and I and the kids were out checking our own and our neighbours yards when we saw him trotting down the street. He had obviously gone around a rather large block.
As he came closer, we could tell that he expected to catch heck. He had that look about him.
But as he reached us, his demeanour changed.
And he growled.
The best defence is an offense.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
As he got older, he had trouble with his bladder. If he were left alone too long without a walk he might have an accident.
If he did, we would find him sitting with his head in a corner, his shoulders sagging.
That was the signal to go around and find the puddle.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #38 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, September 6, 2009
POSTING # 36
Ontario Field Tomatoes; a Trip to Sochi; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Ontario Field Tomatoes
When I’m scraping ice off the windshield or snuggling down into my parka trying to find some warm air to breathe, I think of Ontario field tomatoes.
I think of the way my mother liked to serve them. Large glistening slices overlapped on a plate, sprinkled with sugar, vinegar and a little salt and pepper, and served with warm, home-made bread (preferably a crust---we called them ‘heels’).
Or, I think of how we ate tomatoes, warm from the garden. First, we licked a place on the skin so that salt would stick, then bit in, leaning over so the juices didn’t run down our fronts. Then a little salt with each bite. Heaven!
Those memories help me survive our winters. I tell myself that in seven or eight months, I will be feasting on Ontario field tomatoes.
Just hang in there.
I was worried about this year’s tomatoes back in June. A local grower told us that her tomato plants had been in the ground for 6 weeks but they hadn’t grown at all. They hadn’t died but they hadn’t grown. The weather was just too cool and damp.
And the weather hasn’t improved much.
In the last week or so, I’ve tried to find some real Ontario field tomatoes at local markets and in the supermarkets. The signs say, ‘Ontario field tomatoes’ and perhaps they were grown in Ontario fields but they are not the real thing.
Some remind me of the tomatoes we get in the winter; bright red but small with a waxy sheen. I take them home hoping they will taste right.
They don’t!
They remind me of a seed catalogue that described one tomato variety this way, “Popular with growers. Turns red early and ships well.”
Nothing about flavour.
I have seen some large tomatoes that look like the real thing but they are greenish-yellow with a few hints of pink, as though the growers decided to pick them before they rotted or got hit by the frost.
Pat has become used to hearing me moan about this summer’s tomatoes. I think she has just put it down to yet another of my loony obsessions.
But, she was at a meeting this week where a woman was complaining about the poor quality of tomatoes. Several other women immediately joined in and the agenda had to give way while these tomato lovers lamented the lack of real Ontario field tomatoes this year.
“You’re as bad as my husband!”, Pat finally told them.
What a cruel thing to say to perfectly respectable women.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
I don’t know how I can face another winter without having had my tomato fix.
Amman has wonderful tomatoes, grown in the lush Jordan valley. Since decent tomatoes don’t ship well, perhaps we will have to ship ourselves to Amman this fall.
A Trip to Sochi
A news item about the 2014 Winter Games being held in Sochi, a Southern Russia resort on the Black Sea, brought back memories of a trip Pat and I took to the city in 1996.
The Russian officials I was working with on a World Bank aid project had selected Sochi as a site for a model employment office. I had to verify that it would make a good model office and, if so, to decide what kind of technical help Canadian consultants would have to provide.
As I had travelled across Russia checking out potential model offices, I kept trying to coordinate things so that Pat could come with me on one of the trips. Sochi fitted the bill perfectly.
As always, my interpreter, Yuri, would accompany us. Nadia (not her real name), my Russian liaison officer would also come. A British official with the World Bank office in Moscow decided to join us. So, we were five in all.
Under Stalin, Sochi became ‘the unofficial summer capital of Russia’. He and senior members of the Communist Party had dachas along the coast. State industries established sanatoriums to treat sick workers and to provide vacation facilities. Click here for an article about Sochi.
We were told that although Sochi had suffered from the economic problems in the early 1990s, it was weathering the storm better than most parts of Russia, especially Siberia. The hotels and restaurants were tired and rundown but one could sense that entrepreneurs were starting to emerge---something that the Western economists who were advising the Russian government had been hoping for.
The Sochi employment office was one of the best I had seen in Russia. The premises were large, bright and airy and the manager seemed unusually competent. He was also an entrepreneur. In addition to managing the employment office, he had started a company to retrain unemployed workers.
I felt sure that with some tweaking by Canadian experts the employment office could be a very useful model for other Russian employment centres. (As it turned out, Sochi did indeed become a very good model office.)
After we had finished at the office, the manager invited us to have a Black Sea sunset cruise on a boat owned by a friend. Sochi, according to the manager, had the most beautiful sunsets in Russia and there was no better place to watch them than from out on the water.
The five in our party plus the employment office manager boarded the boat, which wasn’t as I had expected a small pleasure craft but a three-deck, somewhat rusted freighter.
We met the captain on the bridge and watched as he steered the ship out into the Black Sea.
I should explain here that Pat has always had a fascination with all kinds of motorized vehicles ever since her father taught her to drive, at the age of 13, on the back rounds near Lake Simcoe. Her experience on our rented cruiser on the Thames (see Posting #13, March 29, 2009) had extended her interest from land-based vehicles to marine-based craft.
As we moved into the Black Sea, she had been studying the freighter’s gauges, compasses and levers. The captain, seeing her interest, was explaining with a lot of gesticulation how he controlled the ship.
Once we were about half a mile off shore, the employment office manager invited us to go down on deck so he could point out some of the famous dachas and other buildings along the shore.
Pat said she would join us down on the deck once the captain had finished his lesson.
After 15 minutes or so and no Pat, I began to worry. I went up to the bridge to see how she was doing.
There was Pat---alone on the bridge---steering the ship!
She recalls that I said, “Oh my god!”
Now that’s possible but as I remember my shock, I think I may have used something a little stronger.
She said that after the captain had shown her how the ship was steered and how the speed was controlled, he had let her take the wheel. He told her to steer straight into the reflection of the setting sun in the water and to keep the speed at a certain point on one of the guages.
And he had disappeared.
When I found her, she was happy as could be, turning slightly this way and that to keep the ship in the centre of the sunset path.
After the sun had set, the captain came back to the bridge and with gestures told Pat he wanted her to turn the ship around and head back to Sochi.
She worked the direction and speed controls and the ship gradually came around.
The captain took over as we approached the Sochi harbour.
Pat asked Yuri to ask the captain how long the ship was and what it was used for.
The length came quickly--- just over 33 metres, or about 110 feet.
What the ship was used for took longer and Yuri told us he would tell us later, back at the hotel.
At the hotel, Yuri said that the captain was evasive. Yuri said it was well known that there was a good deal of smuggling---of both goods and illegal immigrants---among the countries bordering the Black Sea,. Times were tough and the captain was probably taking part in some of those activities.
From Pat’s point of view, the fact that she may have been steering a smuggler’s vessel just added spice to the whole episode.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
After the ship docked, we all walked through a gate to the parking lot. As we passed through the gate, I noticed a guard in a small hut. He just looked at us, but didn’t say anything.
When we got to our car, I looked for Yuri. He wasn’t with us.
We waited for 10 or 15 minutes and then Yuri came through the gate.
“Is everything OK?”, I asked.
He shrugged, “When a drunken guard, with a machine gun, wants to talk, you better stop and listen.”
It turned out that the guard---to the extent he could focus on anything---was just curious about who the ‘Westerners’ were, and wanted to talk about how westerners were destroying Russia.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Years later, back in Canada, we were at a party and one of the guests went on and on about his new cruiser and his trips in it on Lake Ontario, all in boring detail. Sensing after a while that he had been monopolizing the conversation, he turned to Pat and me and asked if we had ever skippered a boat.
“Well,” Pat said, with a sweet smile, “the last boat I skippered was a 110 foot freighter on the Black Sea.”
“Oh’, the man said.
Then a pause.
“I think I need another drink”.
He fled to the bar.
Once or twice I caught him staring at us with a look that said, ‘who-in-hell-are-those-people’.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
In last week’s posting, I told about our camping experiences with raccoons. Here is another story.
One of our teenage sons and a pal went camping in the Gatineau Park outside Ottawa. They pitched their tent in one of the popular, ‘civilized’ camp sites. The camp site had working washrooms and even a small Laundromat---but also had raccoons that were even bolder than the ones I described last week.
The boys cooked their dinner and put the food containers in the tent. Late at night, they woke up to find a couple of huge raccoons in the tent rooting through their food.
The boys got the raccoons out of the tent by banging pans and shouting but the raccoons settled down at the edge of the campsite and refused to move further away.
The threat was there. “You go back to sleep and we’ll be back in your tent.”
The boys developed a plan that worked but it is most definitely NOT recommended.
They crumpled up sheets of toilet paper, set fire to them and threw them at the raccoons.
The raccoons must have decided, “These kids are really crazy. They could burn down the whole park, including us”.
They waddled off and weren’t seen again.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #37 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.
Ontario Field Tomatoes
When I’m scraping ice off the windshield or snuggling down into my parka trying to find some warm air to breathe, I think of Ontario field tomatoes.
I think of the way my mother liked to serve them. Large glistening slices overlapped on a plate, sprinkled with sugar, vinegar and a little salt and pepper, and served with warm, home-made bread (preferably a crust---we called them ‘heels’).
Or, I think of how we ate tomatoes, warm from the garden. First, we licked a place on the skin so that salt would stick, then bit in, leaning over so the juices didn’t run down our fronts. Then a little salt with each bite. Heaven!
Those memories help me survive our winters. I tell myself that in seven or eight months, I will be feasting on Ontario field tomatoes.
Just hang in there.
I was worried about this year’s tomatoes back in June. A local grower told us that her tomato plants had been in the ground for 6 weeks but they hadn’t grown at all. They hadn’t died but they hadn’t grown. The weather was just too cool and damp.
And the weather hasn’t improved much.
In the last week or so, I’ve tried to find some real Ontario field tomatoes at local markets and in the supermarkets. The signs say, ‘Ontario field tomatoes’ and perhaps they were grown in Ontario fields but they are not the real thing.
Some remind me of the tomatoes we get in the winter; bright red but small with a waxy sheen. I take them home hoping they will taste right.
They don’t!
They remind me of a seed catalogue that described one tomato variety this way, “Popular with growers. Turns red early and ships well.”
Nothing about flavour.
I have seen some large tomatoes that look like the real thing but they are greenish-yellow with a few hints of pink, as though the growers decided to pick them before they rotted or got hit by the frost.
Pat has become used to hearing me moan about this summer’s tomatoes. I think she has just put it down to yet another of my loony obsessions.
But, she was at a meeting this week where a woman was complaining about the poor quality of tomatoes. Several other women immediately joined in and the agenda had to give way while these tomato lovers lamented the lack of real Ontario field tomatoes this year.
“You’re as bad as my husband!”, Pat finally told them.
What a cruel thing to say to perfectly respectable women.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
I don’t know how I can face another winter without having had my tomato fix.
Amman has wonderful tomatoes, grown in the lush Jordan valley. Since decent tomatoes don’t ship well, perhaps we will have to ship ourselves to Amman this fall.
A Trip to Sochi
A news item about the 2014 Winter Games being held in Sochi, a Southern Russia resort on the Black Sea, brought back memories of a trip Pat and I took to the city in 1996.
The Russian officials I was working with on a World Bank aid project had selected Sochi as a site for a model employment office. I had to verify that it would make a good model office and, if so, to decide what kind of technical help Canadian consultants would have to provide.
As I had travelled across Russia checking out potential model offices, I kept trying to coordinate things so that Pat could come with me on one of the trips. Sochi fitted the bill perfectly.
As always, my interpreter, Yuri, would accompany us. Nadia (not her real name), my Russian liaison officer would also come. A British official with the World Bank office in Moscow decided to join us. So, we were five in all.
Under Stalin, Sochi became ‘the unofficial summer capital of Russia’. He and senior members of the Communist Party had dachas along the coast. State industries established sanatoriums to treat sick workers and to provide vacation facilities. Click here for an article about Sochi.
We were told that although Sochi had suffered from the economic problems in the early 1990s, it was weathering the storm better than most parts of Russia, especially Siberia. The hotels and restaurants were tired and rundown but one could sense that entrepreneurs were starting to emerge---something that the Western economists who were advising the Russian government had been hoping for.
The Sochi employment office was one of the best I had seen in Russia. The premises were large, bright and airy and the manager seemed unusually competent. He was also an entrepreneur. In addition to managing the employment office, he had started a company to retrain unemployed workers.
I felt sure that with some tweaking by Canadian experts the employment office could be a very useful model for other Russian employment centres. (As it turned out, Sochi did indeed become a very good model office.)
After we had finished at the office, the manager invited us to have a Black Sea sunset cruise on a boat owned by a friend. Sochi, according to the manager, had the most beautiful sunsets in Russia and there was no better place to watch them than from out on the water.
The five in our party plus the employment office manager boarded the boat, which wasn’t as I had expected a small pleasure craft but a three-deck, somewhat rusted freighter.
We met the captain on the bridge and watched as he steered the ship out into the Black Sea.
I should explain here that Pat has always had a fascination with all kinds of motorized vehicles ever since her father taught her to drive, at the age of 13, on the back rounds near Lake Simcoe. Her experience on our rented cruiser on the Thames (see Posting #13, March 29, 2009) had extended her interest from land-based vehicles to marine-based craft.
As we moved into the Black Sea, she had been studying the freighter’s gauges, compasses and levers. The captain, seeing her interest, was explaining with a lot of gesticulation how he controlled the ship.
Once we were about half a mile off shore, the employment office manager invited us to go down on deck so he could point out some of the famous dachas and other buildings along the shore.
Pat said she would join us down on the deck once the captain had finished his lesson.
After 15 minutes or so and no Pat, I began to worry. I went up to the bridge to see how she was doing.
There was Pat---alone on the bridge---steering the ship!
She recalls that I said, “Oh my god!”
Now that’s possible but as I remember my shock, I think I may have used something a little stronger.
She said that after the captain had shown her how the ship was steered and how the speed was controlled, he had let her take the wheel. He told her to steer straight into the reflection of the setting sun in the water and to keep the speed at a certain point on one of the guages.
And he had disappeared.
When I found her, she was happy as could be, turning slightly this way and that to keep the ship in the centre of the sunset path.
After the sun had set, the captain came back to the bridge and with gestures told Pat he wanted her to turn the ship around and head back to Sochi.
She worked the direction and speed controls and the ship gradually came around.
The captain took over as we approached the Sochi harbour.
Pat asked Yuri to ask the captain how long the ship was and what it was used for.
The length came quickly--- just over 33 metres, or about 110 feet.
What the ship was used for took longer and Yuri told us he would tell us later, back at the hotel.
At the hotel, Yuri said that the captain was evasive. Yuri said it was well known that there was a good deal of smuggling---of both goods and illegal immigrants---among the countries bordering the Black Sea,. Times were tough and the captain was probably taking part in some of those activities.
From Pat’s point of view, the fact that she may have been steering a smuggler’s vessel just added spice to the whole episode.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
After the ship docked, we all walked through a gate to the parking lot. As we passed through the gate, I noticed a guard in a small hut. He just looked at us, but didn’t say anything.
When we got to our car, I looked for Yuri. He wasn’t with us.
We waited for 10 or 15 minutes and then Yuri came through the gate.
“Is everything OK?”, I asked.
He shrugged, “When a drunken guard, with a machine gun, wants to talk, you better stop and listen.”
It turned out that the guard---to the extent he could focus on anything---was just curious about who the ‘Westerners’ were, and wanted to talk about how westerners were destroying Russia.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Years later, back in Canada, we were at a party and one of the guests went on and on about his new cruiser and his trips in it on Lake Ontario, all in boring detail. Sensing after a while that he had been monopolizing the conversation, he turned to Pat and me and asked if we had ever skippered a boat.
“Well,” Pat said, with a sweet smile, “the last boat I skippered was a 110 foot freighter on the Black Sea.”
“Oh’, the man said.
Then a pause.
“I think I need another drink”.
He fled to the bar.
Once or twice I caught him staring at us with a look that said, ‘who-in-hell-are-those-people’.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
In last week’s posting, I told about our camping experiences with raccoons. Here is another story.
One of our teenage sons and a pal went camping in the Gatineau Park outside Ottawa. They pitched their tent in one of the popular, ‘civilized’ camp sites. The camp site had working washrooms and even a small Laundromat---but also had raccoons that were even bolder than the ones I described last week.
The boys cooked their dinner and put the food containers in the tent. Late at night, they woke up to find a couple of huge raccoons in the tent rooting through their food.
The boys got the raccoons out of the tent by banging pans and shouting but the raccoons settled down at the edge of the campsite and refused to move further away.
The threat was there. “You go back to sleep and we’ll be back in your tent.”
The boys developed a plan that worked but it is most definitely NOT recommended.
They crumpled up sheets of toilet paper, set fire to them and threw them at the raccoons.
The raccoons must have decided, “These kids are really crazy. They could burn down the whole park, including us”.
They waddled off and weren’t seen again.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #37 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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