POSTING #97

Christmas Food Court Flash Mob, Hallelujah Chorus

On Thursday, November 18th, Pat received this email from a friend, fellow quilter and chorister, Joan:

"Check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE 

To hear my Chorus (Chorus Niagara) surprise a crowd of shoppers last weekend!  It was fun watching the reactions of unsuspecting innocent bystanders!  I can see by the video that some people who were not choristers also joined in! 

Joan"

Now, we ignore many emails that invite us to check out this or that website or video.

Life is short and our 'to-do lists' are long.

And experience has taught us that such invitations often lead  to porn, a spam message about how to increase breast or penis size, or---worse---to a virus.

But since Joan is her friend, Pat clicked on the link. She watched for a few moments and then shouted, "This is amazing, You've got to see this!"

I went over and watched.

It was amazing.

When we first watched the video, there had been 350 viewings. Within a day the viewings were in the thousands, a week later the viewings were 1.2 million and as I upload this posting the total is over 2.1 million---all of that in 10 days!

This posting is going to be about that YouTube video. May I respectfully suggest that if you haven't already watched the video (4 minutes and 57 seconds) you click on the link above, in Joan's email?

And then come back.

Please don't forget to come back!

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If you are wondering how the video came to be made, I recommend this article in the Welland Tribune. It explains why the opening singer has a cell phone to her ear throughout the video, and who the 'janitor' in the coveralls waving a 'Wet Floor' sign actually is.

I hope the Tribune won't mind if I reprint a couple of excerpts.

"WELLAND — One minute, Stephanie Tritchew was just a face in the busy Seaway Mall crowd, sipping coffee at a cafeteria table and chatting on her cellphone.
The next, the St. Catharines native was standing and belting out "hallelujahs" from the famed chorus in Handel's Messiah in front of a stunned food court congregation.
"The first reaction was jaw-dropping surprise and people laughing," said the startling soprano, who broke into song around noon last Saturday at the Welland mall. "Then just about everyone whipped out their phone cameras at once." "

And the article concludes with this quote from Ms. Tritchew about the reaction of a family sitting right in front of her.

"'They had these two little kids with big eyes and one of them said, 'Mom, this is so cool,'" recalled Tritchew. "I just loved it. I loved that we really seemed to lift people's spirits like that."

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There have been hundreds and hundreds of comments on the video. Here is one of my favourites, from a woman named Martine in France---my translation follows:

Mille mercis pour ces prodigieux instants de pur bonheur!.
Fantastique, fabuleux, extraordinaire, merveilleux!.
L'Art près de chez nous!.
Sans cérémonie, costumes et noeuds papillons, robes de soirée ni rivières de diamants!.
Une simple mais exceptionnelle présence et pas uniquement auditive!.
Celle du coeur (du choeur!) tout simplement!!!......

A thousand thank-you's for these amazing moments of pure happiness!

Fantastic, fabulous, extraordinary, marvellous!

Art brought to where we live!

Without ceremony, no suits with bow-ties, no silk dresses, no sparkling jewellery!

A simple but exceptional performance and not just for the ears!

A performance straight from the heart!!!

(The original has a clever play on words in the last line involving 'coeur'---'heart'---and 'choeur'---'choir'--- that I haven't been able to translate into English.) 

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I also liked a comment in which the writer proposed that the Niagara Chorus create another flash mob experience, this time using Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

If that happens, perhaps Pat could persuade Joan to give us a 'heads up' so that we could join the mall crowd.

To quote the little boy, that would be 'so cool'.

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See you on December 5th for Posting #98 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 #96

"The Civil War of 1812"

I have a confession to make.

While I was studying Canadian history at high school and later at university I found the War of 1812 boring---extremely, even deadly boring.

To be sure there was the tragic story of brave General Brock being shot and killed by an American sniper as he led his troops up the hill in an effort to retake Queenston Heights from an American force that had managed to capture it.

And I liked the story about the tall monument on the top of Queenston Heights built in his honour by a grateful nation, topped with an immense statue of the General with a finger pointing---it is claimed---at Washington, with the implicit message, 'Don't ever try that again!'

I also admired the bravery of Laura Secord who trekked through dense bush to warn the British that the Americans had invaded---although I didn't much like her chocolates.

But the War seemed to be about several years of border skirmishes, the dates and locations of which I had trouble remembering. And when it ended, the pre-war borders remained intact.

My views about the War began to change after we moved to Virgil 2 years ago. Planning for a War of 1812 Bicentennial was heating up. I joined  one of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Bicentennial committees and started dipping into some histories about the War.

But last weekend, my views about the War did a sudden shift to a full 180 degrees away from 'boring'. I went to Buffalo for a lecture given by Professor Alan Taylor who has just finished a massive history of the War, called "The Civil War of 1812". (Pat couldn't come---she was attending a lecture on how to cut out patterns to make 1812 vintage clothes for us to wear during the Bicentennial!)

Taylor, a native of Maine,  teaches American and Canadian history at the University of California at Davis and has received a number of prestigious awards for previous books, including a Pulitzer Prize.

As I listened to the professor, I remembered a discussion with a retired historian in Kingston. She said that in history it was not important to know that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. Instead, it was important to know why it couldn't have taken place in 966 or 1166.

Professor Taylor's talk was full of the 'why's' of the War of 1812.

And suddenly, I saw the War in a new light and realized that it wasn't boring at all.

Let me jot down some points that I took away from his talk and from the questions period that followed. I should stress that these are my conclusions, not necessarily those of the good professor.

1. Americans have been taught that the British started the war, and that it consisted mainly of some naval battles and the glorious victory at New Orleans when General Andrew Jackson defeated an invading British force (this was in January 1815, a month after a peace treaty had been signed in Europe but word hadn't yet reached the North America combatants). Out of this battle came the US national anthem and the myth that the US won the War.

2. In fact, the US started the war, with a Declaration of War passed in 1812, primarily with the support of southern and western members of Congress. Congress decided to leave town without voting tax increases for the cost of the war, the argument being that the war would  cost very little because the residents of Upper Canada would welcome the US troops as liberators and would provide them with free shelter and food. (Remind you of another war?)

3. Americans have not been taught that most of the fighting in the War took place in the Great Lakes basin and that the US lost most of those battles.

4. The War should be seen as a kind of civil war with Americans, British Subjects, Irish settlers and natives on both sides of the border fighting each other, sometimes literally brother against brother.

5. Canada would almost surely have lost the war if it had not been for the support of native warriors at critical points. Instead of rewarding the natives for their invaluable help, Canadian authorities treated them abominably.

6. By the autumn of 1814, the War had almost bankrupted the US, and states in the north-east which were furious at the western and southern states who had pushed for the War, were threatening to secede from the union. If Britain hadn't offered the US a peace treaty, the US would probably have gone broke and split up.

7. Taylor argues that the War was not inconsequential as many American histories have suggested but that it had profound consequences for the US.

8. He sees the American Revolution as having two acts. The first act was the successful fight by the American colonies against the British in the period from 1776-1783. But that act left unresolved the issue of whether the new nation would tolerate a northern nation that was British. The second act was the War of 1812 in which the US attempted to finish the revolution by taking over its northern neighbour.   

9. The failure of the US invasion in the Great Lakes basin convinced most Americans that they had to share North America, and this in effect marked the true end of the American Revolution.

10. And on this side of the border, the War convinced Upper Canadians that they had to create their own country, a country that would have friendly relations with the US but would have to have its own institutions and values.

So, both nations were dramatically shaped by what I had thought was a boring War.

Not boring, at all.

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My experiences with the border officers as I travelled to Buffalo for the lecture and later returned to Canada were interesting.

At the US border, the officer when he heard I was going to hear a lecture on the War of 1812 said, "Wow, I love the history of that period. I wish someone had told me about the lecture."

At the Canadian border on the way home, the officer when he heard that I had been to the War lecture almost hissed, "How biased was it?"

I said that I thought the lecture was fair and even-handed.

Looking skeptical, he asked, "Did they tell you that General Brock died when he fell off his horse, not when he was leading his troops into battle---stuff like that?"

I shook my head, and said that the speaker hadn't said anything like that.

With a look that said he was disappointed in how gullible I was, he waved me through.

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One shouldn't extrapolate from two brief encounters.

But I will, anyway.

It seems to me that many Americans, including tourists who will come to our Bicentennial, are ready for a more accurate account of the War---an account of the kind conveyed in Professor Taylor's book.

For our part, we will have to suppress the urge to get even for past insults and slights. I believe the expression is, 'suck it up'.

In that connection, I am told that when the Bicentennial folks in Niagara-on-the-Lake were trying to find a motto to go below the logo they were developing, someone facetiously suggested, 'We Beat the Bast--ds!'.

It was decided to go with 'Upper Canada Preserved".

A wise choice!

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If you like history, and relatives or friends are asking for hints about what you would like for Christmas, you might suggest Professor Taylor's book. I bought a copy at the lecture and it is a wonderful read.

Taylor is a skilled, subtle and good-humoured story teller who, I believe, has 'reset' the history of that period. All future histories of the War of 1812---whether written by Canadians or Americans---will have to start with his work.

Here are the details of the book:

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies by Alan Taylor, published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group,

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See you on November 28th for Posting #97 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 #95

Some Stories about Ottawa's Chateau Laurier Hotel

In an earlier posting I mentioned swimming in the pool at the Chateau Laurier Hotel (now called the Fairmont Chateau Laurier) while I was working on Parliament Hill in the early 1970s.

The hotel had a membership program that allowed male members to use the changing room, showers, a pool, a  large dry sauna, and a Turkish steam bath. A massage therapist was on hand---at additional cost---to soothe away whatever tensions were left after sessions in the sauna and steam room.

The setup wasn't luxurious by today's standards but it was a very pleasant place to get some exercise and forget the 'crise du jour'.

I've listed the facilities that males were entitled to use.

You may ask 'what about females'?

When I first joined the program, women could be members but they had only a changing room, showers and what I was told was a pokey dry sauna, and of course the pool.

Women members started agitating for facilities that were more like those enjoyed by the men.

The management found it difficult to tweak the basement space in the 1912 hotel, with its heavy stone construction, in order to increase the space for the women's program.

The hotel decided on a compromise. The women members could use the men's facilities twice a week (I seem to recall it was Tuesdays and Fridays) for several hours over the lunch-time period.

The male members grumbled a bit but acquiesced---after all fair is fair. We just made a mental note to fit our visits around the 'women's times'.

A colleague in the  Privy Council, where I worked at the time, was a member of the club. He was a highly intelligent fellow, but very shy.

One day, he came back from lunch looking shaken.

"What's wrong?', I asked

"It was terrible!"

"What was terrible?"

"I went to have a swim, and as I was going into the changing room I saw this naked fellow walking ahead of me."

"So?', I said.

"This guy had really big hips and I thought that was strange. And then I realized it was Tuesday, women's day, and the 'guy' was a woman.

"What did you do?"

"I fled."

"Did she see you?'

"I don't think so, but I keep thinking---what if she had turned around, had seen me and started to scream."

There was silence for a time as we looked at each other and tried to imagine the scene that might have occurred, with the naked woman wheeling around, seeing him, letting out an enormous scream, all of this while she was trying to cover her bits.

And then of staff members rushing in to help a damsel in distress.

He was right.

Scary stuff.

It turned out he had been so upset that he hadn't been able to eat lunch. We went down to our canteen and after a sandwich and some herbal tea he was able to go back to work.

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The pool complex was managed by a very efficient, motherly woman in her early 60s whose mother tongue was French. Her English was good but she sometimes had trouble finding the right word in her second language.

One day as I was signing in she leaned over the counter and said in a low voice, "Does Mr. Hees ever bother you in the pool?"

Now, I knew who she was talking about. Everyone knew who 'Gorgeous' George Hees was---the tall, handsome, millionaire son of a famous Toronto family, who had been an Argonaut football player, a war hero, a Member of Parliament and a minister in several departments in the Diefenbaker governments. I had seen him once or twice in the pool but hadn't taken any particular notice of him---lots of celebrities used the pool.

But what was she talking about. The expression, 'bother you' had at least a couple of possible meanings. I have to confess that my first thought was that she was asking whether Mr. Hees was making advances to me (OK, I have a suspicious mind, with a sometimes dirty tinge).

But this didn't square with his public reputation, which was a bit Clintonesque---if you'll forgive the anachronism. Although he had a charming and attractive wife, he liked women and they liked him.

There had been reports of dalliances but I had never heard any rumours about him being interested in men.

Stumped, I replied that, 'no', he hadn't bothered me.

Then her meaning became clearer. She said that some patrons had complained that Mr. Hees had inadvertently hit them as he swam. If he hit me I was to tell her and she would speak to him.

Later, before getting the pool, I watched Mr. Hees plow back and forth in his lane. He was using an aggressive, unorthodox crawl stroke. As you know, with a skilled swimmer, when one arm has pulled through the water, the swimmer lifts the elbow out of the water, brings the arm forward just above the water and slips the arm into the water in front of the head, with hardly a ripple.

Mr. Hees, on the other hand, rotated the arm out of the water, thrust it up in a half-circle high above his body and let it crash down in front of him. His arms were extra long and heavy and  I could see that if an arm went a little astray and  landed in a neighbouring lane it could damage anyone unlucky enough to be there.

After that, I made a point of swimming in a lane well away from Mr. Hees so that he wouldn't 'bother' me.

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Prime Minister Diefenbaker promoted Mr. Hees to be Minister of Trade and Commerce in 1960 following his successful stint as Minister of Transport.

The new minister decided that the overseas trade commissioners were spending too much time in the embassies on diplomatic activities and  not doing enough to promote the sale of Canadian goods and services. He arranged to have each commissioner sent a tie clip with the initials 'YCDBSOYA', which translated into, "You can't do business sitting on your ass".

I was in Britain at the time---with the Immigration side of our Foreign Service---and I heard my Trade colleagues complain about what they considered a nasty, rude and totally inappropriate ministerial insult.

The tie clips were crude but they made a point. In the rebuilding years after the Second World War, European nations needed whatever Canada had to offer but by the 1960s trade had become much more internationally competitive. Canada had to get out and sell.

Brash old George spelled out that message very clearly.

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As Prime Minister Diefenbaker's leadership and managerial weaknesses became apparent, observers speculated that Mr. Hees might succeed him as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party.

Until, that is, when Mr. Hees had lunch with Gerda Munsinger.    

For younger readers, Ms Munsinger (1929-1998) was an East German prostitute, who married an American soldier, and then, in 1955, somehow immigrated to Canada. She worked in Montreal as a maid, a waitress and a night club hostess, and although it is unproven, it was believed that she was also working as a Soviet spy. She had an affair with a Diefenbaker minister, Pierre Sévigny, and some kind of relationship with Mr. Hees.

In 1961. when the security people found out what was going on, Ms Munsinger was quietly deported from Canada back to Germany. Mr. Sévigny resigned but Mr. Hees, who argued that he had just had lunch with her, was allowed to continue in the cabinet.

The story of her relationships with Conservative ministers remained secret until 1966 when a Minister in Mr. Pearson's cabinet leaked the story, during a heated House of Commons debate.

In the official enquiry that followed, Mr. Hees acknowledged that he had shown poor judgment in having lunch with Ms. Munsinger. The enquiry agreed with him that he had been unwise but did not conclude that his behaviour had put official secrets at risk,

However, Mr. Hees career, which had seemed so promising, stalled.

 When the Conservatives returned to power in the 1980s, the Prime Minister, Joe Clark chose not to include Mr. Hees in his cabinet, an insult that Mr. Hees never forgave.

A Wikipedia article on Hees records that when Joe Clark was defeated in the party's 1983 leadership vote, Mr. Hees was overheard to say, "We got him! We got the s.o.b."

That was brash old George---and I'm sure he didn't use the initials s.o.b.

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See you on November 21st for Posting #96 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 #94

An Update on Life in Niagara

Recent postings have wandered around the world a bit and it seems appropriate to focus some attention on things closer to home---especially in a blog entitled Letter from Virgil.

So here are a few stories about Niagara today.

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Being relative newcomers to Niagara, we are frequently asked how we like the area. We are always positive---genuinely so---and reply that we find it a good place to live.

Recently, a long-time resident who had asked us this question nodded when we said we liked it and then added, "But it is a terrible place for issues. You turn around and there is another issue, with letters to the editor and public meetings."

He's right.

In an earlier posting I mentioned several issues that were big at that time, issues on which we didn't know which side to take because we were just too new to understand all the ins and outs of them.

Here is an update on some of those issues.

There was a debate about whether or not to close the Niagara District Secondary School, as the Regional Board of Education wanted to do. Despite political pressure and some court challenges, the Board won and the school closed at the end of June. The students are now being bused to Niagara Falls or St. Catharines.

Friends of the school are arguing that the school should be essentially mothballed in case the influx of young couples now underway will produce enough students in a few years to justify its reopening.

I suspect that the Board---which like all Ontario boards is chronically short of money--- would like to turn  the school and its large and valuable land into cash.

Another issue revolved around Project Niagara, which would have created an annual summer music festival on the shores of Lake Ontario with the Toronto skyline in the background. The National Arts Centre Orchestra from Ottawa and the Toronto Symphony would have performed along with orchestras from around the world.

The sticking point for local residents was how to get a couple of thousand people to the performances without creating traffic chaos and destroying the character of the town.

The project had received indications of financial support from different levels of government but the recession and rising deficits have scuppered those tentative commitments.

The project is now dead, but perhaps not buried.

Finally there was a debate about where to locate a state-of-the-art hospital for Niagara. Local politicians from Niagara Falls, Fort Erie, Port Colborne etc argued that it shouldn't be located in 'greedy' St. Catharines, 'which always gets everything'.

Talk about sibling rivalry!

The hospital is now well underway---in St. Catharines.

But to keep peace in the family, Niagara Falls wins a consolation prize in the form of a transfer of the headquarters for the Niagara Regional Police Service, which has been in St. Catharines, to a large new building that will be located in the Falls.

There is now a new issue. 

Trish Romance (surely one of the most commercially successful artists in Canada) and her husband own the large, historic Randwood Estate and wish to develop part of it.  (Click here for an excellent website with great images of the buildings and grounds.)   Plans include a hotel,  a spa, a restaurant and so on.

There is an upcoming public meeting sponsored by the developers that will try to convince residents that the proposed changes will be a 'good thing', that will benefit the community. Neighbouring residents are very skeptical.

I will keep you posted.

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Recent statistics on visits by Americans to Ontario show some improvement for July compared with last July, but the figures for the first 7 months of 2010 are lower than for the same period in 2009. Obviously, the recession in the US, passport requirements and the higher loonie are still hurting our tourism business.

Meanwhile, trips into the US by Ontario residents are up markedly.

Before the statistics came out we had conducted a couple of totally unscientific surveys that came to roughly the same results as the official statistics.

We drove slowly along some of the main streets in the Old Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake counting license plates. Eight out of 10 cars were from Ontario, with a sprinkling of cars from Quebec and the US. Judging by dealer stickers, many of the Ontario cars were from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) It seems that the GTA is keeping the Shaw Festival and the other parts of our tourist industry afloat.

Good for Toronto!

The second survey was conducted in the parking lot at Fashion Outlets in Niagara Falls NY---home to 150 outlet stores. Again, 8 out of 10 cars were from Ontario, with many of those from Markham, Oakville and other centres in and around the GTA.

It seems that the GTA is also keeping part of the Western New York State economy afloat!

In our Fashion Outlets survey we found a Porsche with Ontario plates and a dealer's sticker from the GTA. We also happened to notice that the license plate had expired many months before, in February 2010

What conclusion should we draw from that?

That Porsche owners are somehow special and don't have to bother with trifling things like updating licenses?

That even Porsche owners are feeling some financial pain, and they are skipping license fees in order to make the monthly car payments---and to be able to shop for bargains at an outlet mall?

Or, that Porsche owners have many weighty things on their minds, and they tend to be a bit forgetful?

I will leave it to you, gentle reader, to figure out which of these hypotheses seems most apt.

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I'll conclude with another story about a fancy European car--- not as expensive as a Porsche but expensive.

A friend had bought a ticket for a relative living in the GTA, so the relative could accompany her to a costly conference in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

When the GTA person was ready to leave for the conference, she found that her car wouldn't start.

She decided to borrow her son's European car that he had stored with her while he went overseas for a few months. She checked the gas, which was fine, as was the license plate renewal sticker.

However, she forgot to check the car insurance.

The need to switch cars meant she was running behind schedule so she pushed the softly purring car a good bit above the speed limit on the QEW.

Exiting the QEW and getting onto Highway 55 she saw that she was just 15 kilometres from the conference. But time was still tight, so she kept her foot on the gas.

I should interrupt the story here to issue a warning about Virgil and speed traps. Coming  into the town, one can be driving along---posted speed of 80 KPH--- enjoying the vineyards and suddenly there is a small sign at the under-populated edge of Virgil that gives the speed limit as 50 KPH. The sign is easy to miss, as is the police officer standing well back from the road with a radar gun.

Until the officer pulls you over!

And that's what happened to the woman from the GTA.

Apparently, the police officer was a young man, and 'quite cute'. The driver explained about her car not starting, about being late for the conference, and I suppose fluttered her eyelashes---who knows.

The officer seemed sympathetic and said that perhaps he could let her off with a warning, but he should see the ownership and insurance documents first. The woman got the documents from the glove compartment and handed them over.

After studying the documents, the officer said that the ownership was OK but the insurance had expired. He was sorry but he would have to issue a speeding ticket plus a ticket for driving without a valid insurance certificate.

He told her how much the combined fine would be. She cringed a little and promised herself that she would give her son a bit of her mind about not keeping his insurance up-to-date. But in the meantime, she could get back on the road.

When she started to put the car in gear, the police officer shook his head. She couldn't drive an uninsured car, she would have to get a garage to tow the car away. She could have the car back when  she had a valid insurance certificate.

At that point the woman called her friend's cell phone. The friend, who was in the conference that had already started, agreed to leave right away and pick her up in Virgil.

The moral is, when nearing Virgil, watch for the speed limit signs and sloooooow down.

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See you on November 14th for Posting #95 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.