POSTING #80

A Miscellany of Stories---from Far and Wide

It has been a strange (and very hot) week with no discernable pattern---it has been a little bit of this, with a dash of that.

This posting reflects that lack of a single theme with several unrelated stories, stories that come from Yorkshire, Novosibirsk and Amman.

Now how's that for 'far and wide'?

I hope you enjoy them!

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This week as I was driving along the Welland Canal on a road with a posted speed of 50 kph, a car coming toward me blinked its lights. I travel that road often and know that it is a favourite place for Niagara Region's finest to hang out. Sure enough, just around the next curve was a policeman with a radar gun.

Having learned to set the cruise control at a safe speed, I was OK but the warning blink reminded me of Yorkshire in the early 1960s.

We bought a car and immediately joined the Automobile Association (AA), a venerable organization that provided roadside assistance, as well as maps and authoritative guides to hotels, inns and restaurants.

As part of our membership package, we received a good-sized, yellow and  black metal AA badge to attach to the grill of the car.

In that pre-cell phone era, the AA had a fleet of uniformed employees who cruised the roads on motorcycles with sidecars, ready to help members who were in trouble.

One of the first things I noticed, after affixing the plaque to the grill, was that when we met an AA motorcycle employee, he saluted us.

A nice, crisp salute.

I must say that it felt good to be saluted. It seemed to say, 'Don't worry about car problems, we are here to help'.

It's silly, but it also felt good to be recognized as someone of importance---similar I suppose to the rush that newly-minted army officers must feel when they receive their first salutes. 

When I told an English friend about the AA greetings, he interrupted and asked whether I knew the background to the salutes.

 I didn't.

He explained that in the early days of British motoring, the police started to position officers with stop watches behind trees and posts to catch speeders.

The AA decided to warn its members of these speed traps by having their motorcycle employees salute when there was a policeman ahead. A salute meant a speed trap.

The police took the AA to court for interfering with the course of justice, or some such offense. And the court agreed with the police, that warning motorists was illegal ---it just wasn't cricket.

The AA debated what to do.  Assisted I suspect by some clever lawyer-members they decided on a response.

In future, the AA motorcycle staff would salute all members, EXCEPT when there was a speed trap ahead.

No salute, meant a trap.

The beauty of it was that the police could not charge a motorcycle employee for NOT doing something.

The clever British!

A postscript.

As our time in England came to a close,  the AA decided that the increasing volumes of traffic made it dangerous for their motorcycle staff to watch for the AA badge and then lift a hand off the handlebars to salute.

The salutes stopped and we were on our own, at least as far as speed traps were concerned.

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Talking about police reminds me of a 1996 run-in with a traffic officer in Novosibirsk, the third largest city in Russia (after Moscow and St. Petersburg) and the largest city in Siberia.

My office manager/interpreter, Yuri (not his real name), and I were in Siberia checking on an office that our hosts---the Russian Federal Employment Service---wanted  our Canadian consultants to overhaul and change into a model employment office.

As we were walking to a meeting, we came to  a busy and wide boulevard with 6 lanes of traffic. There was a pedestrian underpass nearly a block away but being a little late we decided to jaywalk across the boulevard, dodging speeding Ladas and the larger Volgas and Zims.

It was an exhilarating bit of broken field running, crossing all those lanes of traffic.

We were feeling good as  we arrived safely at the other side---until we saw a policeman waiting to talk to us.

My first thought was, 'Oh-oh what have we done now' The second thought was, ' Well, they can't send us to Siberia, we are already here'.

And then I thought, 'They could just leave us here.'

The policeman, a somewhat over-weight man in his 50s, wanted to know who we were and what we thought we were doing. Yuri explained and then the policeman launched into a stern lecture aimed primarily at Yuri---I suppose he felt that as a Westerner I couldn't be expected to know any better.  

After what seemed like a severe dressing-down, the policeman's demeanour relaxed a bit, and he motioned for us to move on.

Relieved that we weren't going to get a fine or worse, I asked, " What did he say?".

Yuri replied, "He kept repeating that what we had done was very dangerous and that we should have used the pedestrian underpass.

"And then at the end, he said that on our way back we should use the underpass because he was feeling tired and his back hurt. He didn't want to have to lug our bodies off the road."

And who said Russians don't have a sense of humour?

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There were a number of references in the media this week to the clothing worn by some Muslim women. There is a debate in Turkey and Quebec about the wearing of the hijab, a head scarf, and in France and Syria about the wearing of the burqa (sometimes called the niqab) that veils the face, with just a slit for the wearer to see through.

It is clear from the media items that the debate is going on not just between Muslims and Westerners but also between different groups within the Muslim community---as Muslims try to agree on what the Koran means when it talks about 'modest dress' for women.

The articles reminded me of two stories from  my consulting assignments in the Kingdom of Jordan, during the period from 2001 to 2006.

One evening in Amman, a couple of Canadian colleagues and I were window shopping in Swafia, an upscale area with fancy and expensive shops selling jewellery, clothing, perfume, shoes and so on. As we passed a Victoria-Secrets-type lingerie shop, we saw three women wearing brown burqas---the women were obviously from Saudi Arabia or one of the Gulf states because although the headscarf (hijab) was fairly common among Amman women, the burqa was not.

One of the women was holding a skimpy, lacy bra across the front of her burqa. Although we couldn't hear what they were saying and couldn't see their faces, we could tell from the shaking of their shoulders that the woman were laughing and having fun imaging what effect the bra would have in the boudoir, back home.

I am sure that a video of those burqa-clad women and the bra would have been a great hit on U-tube---if it had existed at that time.

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The other story is one told by the taxi driver---I'll call him Fadi---who usually drove me from the hotel to my office. At the end of a particular week he told me that he would not be able to drive me the following week but would arrange for one of his taxi driver friends to take me.

I said that was fine.

He said he had been hired for the whole week to take a newly-wed couple from one of the Gulf states on a honeymoon tour of Jordan. Fadi was excited by the challenge of fitting into just one week all the attractions Jordan offered.

In the middle of the next week, he suddenly showed up at the hotel, looking unhappy.

"What happened, I thought you were tied up for the week with the honeymoon couple", I asked as I got into his taxi.

He shook his head and the story poured forth.

He had met the couple at the Amman airport and driven them to the hotel. He said the husband was in his early 20s and although expensively dressed seemed a little unsure of himself. The tall, slender wife was wearing a white burqa made of some fine material, probably silk, with just a slit for her eyes.

After they had checked in, Fadi took them on a driving tour of Amman.

The next morning after the couple got into the taxi, the husband, who seemed upset about something, asked Fadi to turn the rear-view mirror up toward the roof of the car. He said he didn't want Fadi looking at his wife in the mirror.

Fadi protested that he needed to see what was behind him, but the husband told him he could use the side mirrors.

Fadi reluctantly agreed and twisted the mirror upwards.

At lunch-time, Fadi stopped at a restaurant and selected a good table. The husband made a point of asking Fadi to sit at a different table.

When Fadi called at the hotel the next morning to pick up the couple, the doorman told him that they had returned to the Gulf. It appeared that  the stress of men looking at his new wife was too much for the young man.

Fadi said he understood about modesty and veils over the face. In fact, he hadn't seen his future wife's face until the two families had nearly completed their marriage negotiations (his mother had seen the girl's face and told him that she was pretty). It was only then that the young people were allowed to go into a room by themselves. Once there, the girl removed her veil.

But, in Fadi's opinion, the young husband's concern about men looking at his burqa-clad wife was excessive.

He shook his head and said that it was a shame that a young man with obvious wealth and a new wife couldn't let himself be happier.

Fadi didn't say it, but I like to think that he was concerned as well about the happiness of the wife. 

After all, Fadi had refused to insist on the customary (in the Middle East) and substantial  (US$3000 was common) 'dowry' paid by a man---in gold--- to the father of the woman he wanted to marry.

Fadi wanted his daughters to marry men who would make them happy, even if the men didn't have a lot of money. All Fadi asked was that a man who wanted to marry one of his daughters should give the daughter a small piece of gold jewellery on the wedding day.

From photos that Fadi loved to show me of his daughters with their husbands and children it seemed pretty obvious that the marriages had worked out well.

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See you on August 8th for Posting #81 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@gmail.com.

POSTING #79

A Surprise in Sheffield

When I was young, there was a large wooden box of old books in the attic of our Arthur home, novels, histories and biographies mainly published before World War I.

The box was uncovered and the books with their faded blue, green and red cloth bindings had been attacked by mice.

When I asked about the books, I was told that they had belonged to an uncle, John Harris, who had been a Hudson Bay Company factor on James Bay, and had gone back to his birthplace, Sheffield, England, before I was born.   

That was just enough information to whet my appetite and I wanted more.

Here is what I found out.

John Harris had been born in Sheffield in 1876, and had come to Canada as a young man to work as a factor for the Hudson Bay Company. He had been assigned to Moose Factory on James Bay and he did what factors did: buy furs from the First Nation people  in the area and sell them a broad range of food, clothing, hunting gear and so on.

While in Toronto on one of his annual breaks from the North, he had met my father's sister, Rose, whom he later married.

My understanding is that when they first married, Rose lived with him in Moose Factory but when children came (Olwyn, John (Jack) and Elizabeth (Betty)), she remained in Toronto with the children.

On his annual visit to Toronto he would visit used book stores and collect dozens of books of all sorts to keep him company through the long, northern winters.

Rose died of heart trouble, in 1925, and the three children were looked after by Rose's mother (my Grandmother Hunter) and Rose's  two sisters (my Aunts Lily and Adelaide). John Harris continued to work as a HBC factor and sent money for the care of the children.

At some point in the early 1930s, John Harris received an urgent message from his in-laws asking him to return to Toronto from Moose Factory immediately.

Assuming that there was a crisis concerning the children, he left the post, without getting permission.

When he arrived in Toronto, he found that there was no real crisis---that the children were fine. Apparently his in-laws, with whom he had never got along very well, had decided more or less on a whim that they needed to consult him.

The Hudson Bay Company fired him for deserting his post.

All of this left John in a pretty tough spot: in his 50s, without a job, without a reference, in the middle of the depression, and bitter about how his in-laws had made him leave his post for what he was convinced were frivolous reasons.

He decided to return to England, leaving the children in Canada.

The two eldest children, Olwyn and Jack, were old enough to strike out on their own, but the youngest, Betty, was just in her early teens and needed a family. Ultimately, she came to live with my parents---bringing with her a box of her father's books, which ended up in our attic.

Some in the family were angry that Uncle John had 'abandoned' his family but I was prepared to cut him a little more slack because of the tough breaks life had dealt him and I suppose because I had been fascinated as a child with the Hudson Bay Company and with the factors.

After Pat and I settled in our posting in Yorkshire in the early 1960s, I decided that I would like to meet Uncle John, who was then in his late 80s. I wrote to him suggesting that Pat and I take him out for lunch. He responded quickly with a note inviting us to have lunch with him.

He met us at the door of his small, but pleasant semi-detached council-owned house where he lived on his own---see the photos of Pat and me with Uncle John taken during our visit.  He moved  somewhat slowly and he grumbled a bit about his eyesight but he was very sharp mentally.

He said that he took the bus once a week into downtown Sheffield to visit the library (he was still a great reader). The neighbours next door---a kindly couple in their 60s whom we met---obviously liked and looked after him.

It could have been a strained lunch but he was a good host. He served us a simple but tasty lunch with cold cuts, bread and salad.

As we ate, he talked about the German bombing of Sheffield, about what his children and grandchildren in Canada were doing and about my work in England. We didn't talk about why he had left Canada.

As he took our first course plates away, he said that dessert would be some CPR strawberries. That was  a new expression for me and seeing my puzzled look, he told me to wait and see. He  smiled as he came back with bowls of stewed prunes.

"That's what we called them up north", he said.

 After lunch, we chatted for a while and then when we were getting ready to say our good-byes, he said he had something he wanted to show us.

He brought out a sheaf of papers, which he spread on the table. He explained that when he was canoeing in the area around Moose Factory visiting First Nation families he had noticed some strange deposits of blue clay in the hard rock of the Canadian Shield.

No one he talked to seemed to know what the deposits were, so he just stored the questions away in his head.

He told us that a year or so before  our visit he had read in a book about South Africa that diamonds are sometimes found in what are called Kimberlite pipes that were formed by volcanic activity in the distant past. The pipes are sometimes filled with deposits of blue clay.

Using the library he did some more research and became convinced that the deposits of blue clay he had seen around James Bay were the same as those in which diamonds are found.

He showed us a copy of a letter he had written to a South African diamond mining company, offering to share the location of the blue deposits with the company in return for some suitable compensation.

The thought of diamonds in Canada stunned me. I had spent the summer of 1957 in a mining camp while going to Queen's and had often talked with  geologists and prospectors about mineral deposits in Canada's north. I had never heard anything about diamonds in Canada---gold, silver, base metals, uranium, but not diamonds.

As I tried to get my head around the possibility of diamonds in Canada, Uncle John showed us the reply from the South African company. It was polite but the thrust was clear---the company was not interested.

Uncle John was disappointed but he wasn't giving up, he was going to try to find another company that might be interested.

It would be nice to end this posting by saying that things came together for this man who had been dealt some pretty nasty blows by life.---that some company followed up with him and made him an offer.

But that didn't happen.

Uncle John died without being able to interest any firm in the possibility of diamonds around James Bay.

And then in 1991, a prospector named Chuck Fipke discovered the Lac de Gras Kimberlite pipes in the Northwest Territories.

And today Canada is one of the world's major sources of diamonds.

Now, although the existing mines are a good distance away from James Bay, is it possible that there are more diamonds hidden alongside those rivers that Uncle John used to travel in his canoe? Diamonds that could have been discovered years ago if only someone had listened to him.

Or perhaps geologists have already found those areas on their own and decided that they didn't have enough potential to develop?

I don't know, but in my mind's eye I can see Uncle John up there somewhere, watching intently what is happening with Canadian diamonds--- as he enjoys a bowl of CPR strawberries.  

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See you on August 1st for Posting #80 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@gmail.com.

POSTING #78

1960s Do-It-Yourself--- English Style

We recently met a couple who are in the process of creating a rural 'off-the-grid' home near Collingwood. Using technologies such as passive and active solar power and high efficiency wood stoves, they are trying to become energy self-sufficient. If successful they won't have to worry about power outages caused by ice storms, overloaded circuits, terrorist attacks, or whatever.

Their story reminded me of some much less ambitious efforts I made in the 1960s to replace purchased items with home-produced things.

We were living in Britain for the first half of the 1960s and there was a minor resurgence of the early 1900s Arts and Crafts movement, as some people turned their backs on commercial products in favour of home-produced goods.

I made yoghurt, pickles, wine and beer and convinced myself that they tasted better and had more goodness than the standardized, 'homogenized' items one found in the stores.

And there was a feeling of satisfaction when one replaced something from a factory with something from the home.

So when a Canadian friend living in London came to me and said he had a new idea for a do-it-yourself product, I listened to him.

He said we should try making our own cigars.

Cigars!

Both of us enjoyed a good cigar after a pleasant dinner, especially when combined with a fine glass of port or cognac.

But good cigars were hard to find. The Castro take-over in Cuba in 1959 seemed to have disrupted the flow of excellent Cuban cigars to Britain. As a member of the Canadian High Commission, I was entitled to some diplomatic supplies but the only cigars available were a machine-made brand produced in Canada (I won't mention the brand---it is still in existence---to avoid lawyer's letters) that burned hot and harsh.

The only good thing about them was that they were cheap, really cheap.

As a digression, can I mention that the diplomatic supplies also included a gin made in Canada, which sold for under a dollar for a 26 ounce bottle, The gin was not strong on flavour but was strong in alcohol. During the cold winters in Yorkshire, we used the gin as windshield cleaning fluid in our Ford Anglia---it was cheaper, and better, than the commercial brands available at the service stations. Besides it was pleasant to smell the juniper scent when we spritzed the windshield.

But back to home-made cigars.

I had never heard of making cigars and was really skeptical. For starters, how could one grow the tobacco, given the English climate?

My friend, let's call him Freddy, patiently explained that there was a small, loosely-knit group of people in the English midlands who made their own cigars and were quite happy to share their expertise.

There was also a Church of England clergyman who produced tobacco seedlings as a hobby and shipped them around the country.

And there was someone else who was importing the special gum that one needed when rolling the cigars.

Freddy said that both our rented homes had back gardens with rose beds. We could stick some tobacco plants amongst the roses, and they would do well.

I should have said 'no'.

I am not sure why I didn't, but England in the 1960s was a place where eccentrics flourished. (and eccentricity as everyone knows is contagious---I hope that Thatcherism hasn't killed off all of it.)

So, I chipped in some money for the seedlings. When they arrived, I planted them in our round rose garden, with a statue of some ancient goddess in the centre looking down at me.

I thought she had a disapproving look about her.

Contrary to my expectations that the plants would wither and die in the cool damp spring, they took hold and started to throw out new leaves.

Freddy, who had studied some chemistry and biology at university, had been doing research on how to fertilize the plants.

He claimed that the absolutely best fertilizer for tobacco plants was the urine of pregnant women---something to do with ph balance and hormones and some other stuff I forget.

As it happened, both our wives were pregnant at the time.

I doubted very much that our wives would agree to pee in a plastic bucket just so Freddy and I could ladle the stuff onto the tobacco plants.

But they agreed!!

Pat and I used to joke through the various pregnancies that there was something called 'preggy brain' which allowed mothers-to-be to ignore the small stuff---like your husband asking you to pee in a bucket.

From time to time--- always at night---I would take the bucket out and 'water' the tobacco plants.

The effect was almost magical. Soon the plants were covered with huge, oval leaves.

When Freddy's research suggested they were ready for harvesting, I picked the leaves and strung them on strands of piano wire.

Then I hung the wires from hooks in the garage, above our car, with the leaves hanging down.

Now, I have to insert a technical point. Tobacco leaves are normally 'cured' (a process a little like fermentation) in kilns in which the temperature and humidity are carefully controlled, before the leaves are turned into cigarettes, pipe tobacco or cigars.

The amateur cigar makers in Britain couldn't figure out how to replicate a kiln in the average home so they changed the sequence of things. They let the leaves dry, as we did in our garages, and once they were dry, they rolled them into cigars. They then cured the cigars by storing them in metal boxes and placing them over an Aga stove or furnace for several weeks, if they were lucky enough to have one of those.

I was in the midst of a busy spell at the office when the leaves were dry enough to roll, and we agreed that Freddy would go ahead with some of his leaves and make the first cigars.

Now, here is a second technical point (sorry for all these technical details). According to Freddy, the best Cuban cigars were rolled in hot, humid factories, on the sweaty thighs of young women. This rolling on moist thighs meant that the leaves didn't crack and it gave a certain salty tang to the outer leaves (the 'wrapping') of the cigars.

Looking back, I am not sure that Freddy's claim was based on solid research or whether it was just the product of some erotic fantasy.

In any event, Freddy's wife was adamant. She would pee in a bucket, but she would not roll cigars on her thighs.

I didn't even ask Pat.

So, Freddy rolled some cigars on his own thighs, and put them in a metal box.

Neither of us had a place that was warm enough to cure the cigars, so Freddy talked himself into the heating plant of a major building in downtown London (that's all the description I will give) and placed the box on top of a boiler.

After a few weeks, he retrieved the box and gave me one of the cigars to try.

Freddy was a good friend and I didn't want to hurt his feelings but the cigars looked awful. They were thin in parts, fat in other parts---perhaps his thighs were too muscular (he was a sometime weightlifter).

They looked a little like the cheroots the villains smoked in old-time westerns.

He offered me a chance to light one of them but I declined.

He lit one, took a puff and coughed. He said that it was burning a little hot---not enough filler or something.

I decided that do-it-yourself cigar making was not for me.

That left all the strings of tobacco leaves in the garage.

What to do with them?

Pat and I were getting ready to return to Canada for home leave and then a posting to another country.

Before I had decided what to do with the leaves, the real estate firm through which we were renting the house, announced that an inspector would be coming to check to make sure that we hadn't damaged the premises or the furnishings.

The house was owned by a wealthy couple, who lived in Morocco, and it had some lovely and valuable furnishings, including a painting by Constable.

The inspector was a wiry, short, elderly and taciturn fellow who went though the house checking off an inventory that was prepared before we moved in. He finished with the house and then moved to the garage.

I saw him see the tobacco leaves but he didn't say anything. He focused on the condition of the floor and the garage doors.

Suddenly, he pointed up and blurted out, "What's that?"

I explained that it was tobacco and we would of course remove it before we left.

After telling the tobacco story at the Immigration office, one of the Canadian Officers, a pipe smoker, said he would take the tobacco and try to turn it into pipe tobacco. He and a friend came and collected the tobacco.

We left for Canada in June 1966 and I lost touch with the Officer and never heard whether he was able to produce pipe tobacco.

That was the end of my cigar-making experiment.

But there is a little more to the story.

In November 1979, Iranian students and militants seized the US embassy and took hostage 66 American officials who were kept prisoner until 1981.

Six other Americans were able to escape capture and were sheltered at great risk to themselves and their wives by the Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor and a pipe-smoking Canadian Immigration officer, John Sheardown.

Yes, that's the same fellow who took my tobacco.

We all know the outline of what has become known as the Canadian Caper, of how the Canadian Parliament had to hold an almost unprecedented secret session to authorize the issuance of Canadian passports to the six Americans, and of how they were spirited out of Iran with the help of CIA-produced counterfeit visas.

But if you wish to refresh your memory about the ingenuity and outstanding bravery of the Taylor and Sheardown couples, please click here.

After returning to Canada, I decided that cigar smoking was not good for my health and I stopped.

But when I see or smell a fine cigar, say a premium Romeo y Julieta, I get a strong whiff of nostalgia.


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See you on July 25th for Posting #79 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@gmail.com.

POSTING #77

The Big Bang at Britt

As we drove to Philadelphia last month (you can scroll down to Posting 76), I was impressed with the amount of highway construction taking place---construction that is funded, I suppose, by the US Government's stimulus package.

It was not just resurfacing---although there was a great deal of that---but the building of new and wider roads.

And it was obviously expensive construction, especially in Pennsylvania with huge rock cuts blasted out of the Appalachian mountains.

The rock cuts reminded me of the summer of 1952 when, having just finished Grade 10, I worked for the Drury Construction Company, a firm based in my hometown of Arthur. The company had a contract to build a few miles of the new Trans-Canada Highway, north of Parry Sound, near Britt.

Parliament had passed legislation in 1948 to create a federal-provincial highway system to link the 9 provinces (10 when Newfoundland and Labrador joined Canada the next year).

The Drury contract involved improving parts of the existing Highway 69 by blasting rock cuts through the hills, using the freed-up rock to fill in valleys, thus leaving a wider road surface (although still just two lanes) with gentler hills and more generous shoulders.

And blasting the hard Canadian Shield rock was expensive. We were told that the cost was going to be a million dollars a mile---an unbelievable amount to my 16 year-old ears.

My job when I arrived at the construction site in late June was to feed sticks of dynamite into diamond-drilled holes.

I should warn you that there is going to be a fair bit of description about drilling and blasting techniques before we get to the story.

I think it is interesting stuff---but that's me.

Please feel free to skim the next page or so.

I'll tell you when the story starts.

On my first day on the job, I had a 10 minute lecture about dynamite from Davey (not his real name), who was in charge of the blasting operation---his informal title, in accordance with construction tradition, was, 'The Powder Monkey'.

Davey, who was short with a slightly hunched back, was a fussy person---but 'fussy' I always think is good when you're dealing with dynamite.

On the job, he wore a pith helmet that looked as though it had come from a Malaysian rubber plantation. (No one, at that time, worn hard hats---just something to keep the sun off.)

Davey started his talk by showing me the wooden case that dynamite was shipped in. It was made without any nails--- just dovetailed joints and glue---to prevent sparks. (I have since seen those boxes in antique stores, selling for upwards of a hundred dollars---we used to burn them to make our lunch-time tea.)

But, he explained, I shouldn't be afraid of dynamite, it was not really that dangerous. You could saw a stick or burn it and it wouldn't explode. It needed an explosion to set it off.

Old dynamite that was 'sweating' was another thing. It was unstable and unpredictable but we didn't have to worry---all our dynamite came fresh from the CIL plant, up the road in Nobel.

He took a stick of dynamite (an oiled cardboard tube about 8 inches long and an inch in diameter, filled with something that looked like compressed, damp sawdust), punctured the bottom with a sharp wooden stake and inserted a small blasting cap with two long, slender wires attached to it. He removed a wooden plug from one of the drilled holes and, holding onto the wires, he gently lowered the stick down the hole. When the stick hit bottom, he anchored the wires at the top.

My job, he said, was to drop sticks of dynamite into the hole, making sure not to let the wires fall in, until the last stick was a foot or so below the surface. An electric charge would detonate the cap in the bottom stick, which in turn would detonate all the sticks above it. Then I was to fill the top of the hole with sand and replace the wooden plug, to keep the rain out.

Standing up, he described the area that was going to be blown up in the next big blast---about 100 yards long, 30 yards wide and 10 yards deep.

He said that he and the drilling foreman, an East European we'll call Joe, had walked over the area and agreed on the placement and depth of the holes. Joe and his men were in the process of finishing the drilling There were wooden plugs, a yard or so apart in every direction, showing the holes that had been drilled. Meanwhile the drillers were at the far end of the area, completing their work.

Davey said that if he and Joe had got it right, the blast would fracture the rock into chunks small enough to be handled by a power shovel and dump trucks and the whole thing would go straight up and then come straight down into the newly-created trench with a nice crest along the middle of the trench.

If they got it wrong, well, rock would fly all over and there would be huge boulders too big for the power shovel to handle, rocks that would have to be re-drilled and blasted, causing delay and extra cost.

I spent the next several weeks feeding dynamite into the holes. I was wearing heavy, rubberized gloves that were designed to prevent the nitroglycerin in the sticks from being absorbed through the skin and causing what was known as 'powder headaches'. (Nitroglycerin's ability to lower blood pressure causes headaches but can also---as in angina, with nitro capsules under the tongue---ease pain.)

The gloves didn't work.

I suppose that's an exaggeration. Perhaps the end-of-day headaches back at the bunk house would have been worse without the gloves.

At the time, I couldn't have imagined anything worse than the pounding that was going on in my head.

Looking back, and to be fair to the gloves, I am sure I wiped sweat off my face with the gloved hands thus transferring nitroglycerin onto my skin.

An old-timer in the bunk house, a fellow in his late 60s told me that even though I had a headache I was lucky to be working with dynamite, rather than black powder.

When he was a teenager, he had worked on the building of a rail line in Northern Ontario. According to him, the technique was to make a hole in the rock with a huge drill bit and a sledge hammer. Men would hold the drill bit and turn it after each hammer blow. When the hole was several feet deep they would fill it with black powder, light a fuse and run.

The rock would fly off in every direction. Then the men would go back to what was now a deeper hole, and repeat the drilling and blasting until the desired rock had been removed.

He said that much of the drilling and blasting was done by workers imported by the railway company from China. The work was hard and dangerous and a number of the Chinese workers were left alongside the rail line in shallow graves.

This is another aspect of the shameful treatment accorded to early Chinese immigrants ---a part of our history that recent governments have, quite rightly, been recognizing and trying to put right.

As I continued filling the holes I wondered about the signs on the highway near our project warning drivers to turn off radio transmitters. I wasn't then---and am not sure now---how great the risk is of a radio transmission setting off a blast.

I remember thinking that it wouldn't be nice to be blown up because a taxi driver decided he should tell his wife he would be late for dinner.

A much greater risk was lightning.

We left the project whenever a thunderstorm threatened.

Smoking was also seen as a risk and it was banned from the blast site. Every hour or so, Davey and Joe would put a pinch of Copenhagen snuff between their cheek and gum, and after they had absorbed all the nicotine, spit it out.

Not a pleasant habit, and cancer-causing according to medical authorities. Google tells me that young people refer to taking snuff in this way as 'dipping'.

See how reading this blog keeps you current!

When the holes had been filled (and my head had stopped pounding), Davey went around connecting the blasting cap wires together into circuits and then checking with a voltage meter to make sure everything was 'live'.

For those of you who have been skimming, this is where the story starts.

The big day arrived. All the circuits had been tested and re-tested and the master wires connected to a portable generator (the blast was too large for one of those plunger things one sees in cartoons).

Flag persons had been positioned on Highway 69 to block traffic. A horn would sound for a minute, Davey would throw the switch on the generator, and the blast would blow.

A tense Davey was prowling around checking and re-checking. He noticed that there was a couple, with a car and a tent, in a camp site, alongside a small river, about three hundred yards from the blast area. He asked me to go over and tell them to go down the road about half a mile until after the blast.

I went over and said there would soon be a warning horn and then a huge blast. No one could predict where the rock would go and I told them that for their own safety they had to leave. Then I waited as they got in the car---leaving the tent---and drove down the road.

I came back and crouched with some others behind the huge and heavy steel bucket of our power shovel, a few hundred yards from the blast.

Traffic had been stopped, and Davey started his countdown.

Suddenly he stopped the countdown and shouted, "Hunter, where are you?"

I stood up.

He said, "I thought I told you to clear that couple out of the camp site."

"I did."

"Look over there."

There was the couple, sitting around their campfire.

I ran over and asked them what they thought they were doing.

The fellow said that they had decided that since the car was safe, they could return to the campsite. He assured me that they would go inside the tent when the warning horn sounded.

I was flabbergasted.

I can't recall exactly what I said but I remember there was a bit about a hundred pound rock coming through the canvas.

They reluctantly took off down the road. I waited until they were a good distance away before returning to my place behind the power shovel bucket.

The countdown started again, then the horn and finally the BLAST.

We scrambled up a hill and looked down at a perfect trench, with a mound of rock littered with pieces of wire and dynamite casings. The rock had gone straight up and come straight down---just as Davey and Joe had planned.

I looked over at the tent and it was fine---no holes from flying rock.

I spent the rest of the summer driving an open-cab dump truck (called a Koehring
Mule) moving the broken rock to build a kind of causeway over a valley.

One of the items in my ever-growing list of things 'to do' before the grim reaper makes his call is to drive up to Britt and try to find that campsite.

I would like to just sit there, think about the big blast and about the couple who thought that a tent would protect them.

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See you on July 18th for Posting #78 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@gmail.com.

POSTING #76

The Philadelphia Stories

In June, Pat and I took a 5-day " National Treasures" tour in Philadelphia offered by the Road Scholar organization,  formerly known as Elderhostel. (While marketed by Elderhostel, Inc as a Road Scholar program the tour was actually organized through the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks (shortened Philadelphia Landmarks Road Scholar).  It is an educational non-profit historic house museum organization and has been the Elderhostel Philadelphia provider since 1992.) 

We enjoyed the tour mightily.

We had tours to the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, the Constitution Center and a slew of churches and monuments, as well as  to historic homes and Philadelphia's wonderful new and old architecture.  We also had lectures on the history and culture of the city, and on the American founding fathers.

My favourite founding father has always been Benjamin Franklin, who contrary to popular culture didn't spend all his time flying kites in thunderstorms.

He was a one-man Silicon Valley of innovation, inventing a huge number and range of items including  bifocals, the Franklin stove, lightning rods, an odometer for his carriage, and a flexible catheter to remove his brother's kidney stones. In his spare time he was a brilliant diplomat for the US in France. He could also write---witness his fascinating Autobiography.

The tour confirmed my view that the stories told by tour guides are often as good as---or better than--- the sites being pointed out.

Experienced guides re-work their stories using feedback from tourists, cutting out extraneous detail and making sure that the punch line has oomph.

Now it is important,  of course, to realize that truth is an 'optional extra' in stories told by tour guides.

 Skilled guides subscribe to my Uncle Syd's dictum that it is important for a raconteur (Uncle Syd was one of the best) to " tell a good story and let the truth fall where it may".

In that spirit, I would like to share some of the stories we have been told by tour guides.

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The first story was told by a guide in Florence---not Philadelphia---some years ago.

As we stood admiring Michelangelo's David, the guide told a story about David's nose.

Apparently, the city council of Florence, which had commissioned the statue, appointed a committee to oversee and eventually approve the sculpture.

When Michelangelo was satisfied with the sculpture he asked the committee to look at it.

All the members of the committee were ecstatic about it except for one pompous, opinionated fellow.

He acknowledged that, overall, the sculpture was fine but he was concerned about the length of David's nose.

"Don't you think it is a bit too long?"

Hiding his annoyance, Michelangelo gathered up his hammer and chisel and headed for the ladder. Just before he started to climb the ladder he bent down---ostensibly to adjust his sandals---but actually to pick up some marble dust and chips.

He climbed the ladder and, hiding what he was doing with his body, began to pretend to chisel the nose, meanwhile letting the handful of dust and chips trickle to the ground.

Coming down,  he asked the official what he thought.

The man studied the nose for a time and then pronounced it perfect. He added that it was lucky that he had spotted the flaw.

Michelangelo told his friends what he had done and by nightfall the whole of Florence was laughing at the pompous official.

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Turning to Philadelphia, here is a story about Ben Franklin.

When he died, in 1790, some 20,000 Philadelphians, out of a total population of 28,000, attended his funeral,.

The French Government declared three days of national mourning.

Meanwhile, Congress tried to pass a motion proposing that all members wear black armbands out of respect for Franklin. The proposal was blocked, we were told, by some southern members because of Franklin's support for the abolition of slavery.

The guide rolled his eyes, as though to say, 'with Congress, the more things change, the more they stay the same'.

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In the old part of Philadelphia there are still some workers homes from the 1700s. They are narrow, threes-story brick buildings which originally had  only one room on each floor. They were called 'the Trinity houses'--- The Father on the ground floor, The Son on the second, and The Holy Ghost on the third.

There was a problem about living in these tall narrow homes. If you were on the second or third floor and someone knocked on the front door, you had to come down the steep stairs to see who it was (and then climb back up).

The indefatiquable and ever-creative Ben Franklin came to the rescue.

He invented a gadget using two or three mirrors attached to a rod that could be mounted high on the outside of the building, near a window. The occupant would adjust the angles of the mirrors so they would show who was at the door. The occupant could then  decide whether or not to go down the stairs.

According to the story, Franklin called the device The Busybody.   

The Busybodies are being marketed today by the Ben Franklin Busybody company.

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The workers' houses had fireplaces but no ovens. This meant that housewives had to take risen loaves of bread to a local bakery  to be baked, a service for which they had to pay.

For a half penny, the bakeries would put the loaf on the bottom shelf of the oven, in with the hardwood logs and live coals. Because the heat was uneven on that lower level, the crusts were usually misshapen and sometimes blackened by ash.

For a penny, the baker would put the loaves on the main level, the level on which he baked bread, rolls and pies for his shop.

The 'penny' loaves came out with crusts that were nicely rounded, even and golden brown.

According to our guide, that was the origin of the expression 'upper crust'.

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The visit to Philadelphia also shed some light on an issue that has troubled me for some time: the origin of the word, 'bootlegger'.

In preparation for a future article about some run-ins my policeman father had with bootleggers, I have been doing some research on the term.

There are conflicting  explanations.

For example, American settlers are supposed to have got around the prohibition on selling liquor to native people by sticking bottles of booze down their boots when they rode out to a reservation.

Or, longshoremen unloading cases of whiskey hid bottles in their boots when leaving the docks.

And on and on.

One of our lecturers on the tour had a different explanation.

I should begin by setting out her credentials.

She is a Quaker, a graduate of Harvard, was shot by the Klu Klux Klan while fighting in the 1960s for civil rights for African-Americans, and a professor of history. (As Pat and I discovered in a chat with her, she also knows an enormous amount about Canadian history---she can discuss the 19th century Fenian raids into Canada!--- and has visited and adores Niagara-on-the-Lake.)

Sounds trustworthy to me!

She claims that 'bootlegger' comes from colonial America when mail was carried between cities by couriers on horseback. Letter writers would pay the required fee at a 'post' office and the letter would go in a sealed sack of mail that was given to a courier.

If you knew the courier, he might shove your letter down his boot, and carry it for free to the destination.

Perhaps that explains the old custom of adding a drop or two of perfume to letters---it may have been needed to mask the smell of the boot!

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Death was common in 18th century Philadelphia---from diseases, accidents and crime.

Interestingly, death by fire was not common because William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, remembering London's Great Fire, insisted that houses in Philadelphia be built of brick and that there be large parks sprinkled throughout the city as refuges for  persons fleeing from a fire.

 People had an understandable fear of being declared dead, when they were just in a coma, and of being buried alive.

Lengthy---and noisy---wakes were designed in part to give the 'corpse' lots of time to come to.

But Philadelphians didn't think that was enough protection.

So, when a person was finally put in a grave, one end of a cord was placed in the coffin while the other end was tied to a bell in a nearby tree. If the 'deceased' came to, he or she could pull the cord.

And according to our guide, that's how we got the expression, "Saved by the bell".

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See you on July 11th for Posting #77 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@gmail.com.