POSTING #127

Mother Russia

A friend who knows that I worked in Russia from 1995 to 1997 asked me what I thought about the latest news out of that country. He mentioned the game of 'musical chairs' apparently  being played by Mr. Putin who, when the constitution wouldn't allow him to run for another term as President, opted for the position of Prime Minister. Having spent 4 years 'in the wilderness' as the Prime Minister---while Mr. Medvedev kept the president's seat warm for him---he can now run again for the presidency.

And it appears that that is exactly what he intends to do.

Because we didn't have much time, I gave my friend a brief response, which essentially paraphrased the old French proverb, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"—"the more things change, the more they stay the same." 

And then I threw in my version of the 'Russian shrug', that gesture that foreigners can imitate but never duplicate, a single gesture that combines a complex basket of messages from 'who knows?', to 'what else would you expect?', to 'I have better things to do with my time than worry about idiots'.

I kept thinking about his question, trying to come up with a better response.

Russia is an immensely important country, not because it poses a nuclear threat to us nowadays but because it is going to play an increasingly important role in international economics, politics and diplomacy.

Here are a few anecdotes, observations and insights (some of which have appeared in earlier Postings) that I would have offered my friend, if I had had the time.

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Political scientists argue that the absolutely essential role of government is to maintain order. Without order---as Hobbes said---life would be " solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." 

During my stay in Russia there was too little order. In many respects, the country resembled the wild west.

Some of the state governors openly disobeyed instructions from the federal government and ran corrupt administrations. One such governor hearing that the Kremlin was sending out a group of officials to 'take him to the woodshed', blocked the airport runway with construction equipment, forcing the officials to return to Moscow.

The Federal Government had no better luck with mafia gangs that were constantly battling with each other for control of this or that illegal activity. I was told that when leaving a posh restaurant, I should look up at the skyline of the buildings across the street to make sure there wasn't a sniper waiting to 'bump off' the leader of a rival gang as he came out of the restaurant.

There is now much more order. State governors do what they are told. And mafia gangs, to the extent that they still exist, restrain their activities because they know the Kremlin could wipe them out.

But as always, order comes at a price---in terms of individual rights. The price in Russia has been high, with the banning of media that displease the Kremlin, and the jailing (or worse) of dissidents or of business people who dare to cross the Kremlin.

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Democracy, as we know it in the west, will take a long time to take root in Russia.

First, there has been no tradition of democracy with free elections. The Czars and the Communist Party had absolute power, which was enforced by their respective secret police and their gulags.

Furthermore, neither allowed the existence of private associations and organizations that political scientists like Harvard's Robert Putnam argue are essential training grounds for democracy. The camera and bowling clubs with their constitutions, rules of order, annual general meetings, elections couldn't exist. There was just the Communist Party and the Young Communists.

And the civic culture as it has evolved over the centuries doesn't lend itself to democracy.

I like the story attributed to Nikolay Karamzin (1 December 1766-3 June 1826), Russia's greatest historian. After he had finished a 12 volume "History of the Russian State", someone asked if he could summarize everything into one sentence. He thought for a moment and said he could do better that that, he could summarize the 12 tomes into one word.

`Stealing`.

The Czars, the landowners, the surfs all stole from each other. That was the history of Russia.

It was the same under the Soviets.

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There is a story about a famous Russian actor who fled from  the country during Czarist times and who became successful in Europe. After the 1917 revolution, the new Soviet Regime asked him to come back to see the changes they had made.

He arrived by train, set his bags down, and looked around at the imposing new railway station.

"Mother Russia', he said, "I didn't recognize you!"

He looked down for his bags, only to find that a thief had stolen them.

"Now, Mother Russia", he said, "I recognize you!"

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A person I worked with in the federal government had a distant relative who had been brought in from Germany by the Czar of the time to help modernize Russia The Czar appointed him as mayor of a major city in the Far East of Russia. After a few months on the job, the mayor sent a message to the Czar complaining about the corruption he had discovered among the city's officials and asking for authority to take action against the guilty officials.

Instead of sending him a message of congratulations on having detected corruption, the Czar had him committed to an insane asylum. The Czar explained that any sane person would have known that there was corruption. The fact that he was surprised by corruption meant he must be insane.

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A Communist Party official who was responsible for the administration of a part of Moscow was called in by his boss, who told him that there had been complaints that he was taking bribes. "But everyone takes bribes!", the man protested.

"Yes, but you", his boss said, pointing his finger at him, "are just too greedy."

(As a digression, I suppose the same reply could be applied to Wall Street's bankers, financiers, and hedge fund managers, couldn't it.)

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During a winter visit to Siberian, a Russian friend and I went into a Russian Orthodox Church to study the art and the architecture. But our attention was caught by the people---frail, elderly, with thin, worn coats who were praying, lighting candles and collecting holy water in bottles and cans.

My friend explained that the government had cut pensions and the elderly didn't have  money for clothes, food or heat. The Soviet system of medical care had been decimated so that care was either not available or was too expensive to afford. The people were taking holy water home so they could take a spoonful if they felt ill.   

I felt sad and helpless as I watched these wretched people trying to find some support and solace.

As we left the church, my friend, with anger in his voice, said, "You Westerners say that  people get the government they deserve. These people don't deserve this!"

All I could do was nod.

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Friends in Russia, and people who have visited Russia recently tell me that things are getting better.

The high international price of oil and gas---of which Russia has abundant supplies---has provided the government with revenues that has allowed it to improve programs for the poor.

However, if the price for petroleum products should fall sharply, the recent improvements would be in jeopardy.

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I grew to love the Russian people.

I just hope they will eventually get the kind of government they deserve.

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See you on November 6th for Posting #128th 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.

Note:

I have just uploaded a new Posting on The Icewine Guru blog: "Are Canadian Politics Dull?" You can read it at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #126

Hankerings

Anyone who has lived abroad knows about 'hankerings', those powerful urges for something from home. This week as I watched apples being picked in local orchards I remembered a hankering I had in England---one that landed me in the dog house.

After I wrote the title and the first paragraph, I began to wonder whether 'hankering' was a generally accepted word or was it yet another rural-Ontario expression that I grew up with and have been using uncritically ever since.

In other words, I wondered whether using 'hankering' was labeling me as a hick.

I checked the Internet and found that the Word Detective has this to say about hankering:

"But even if you find yourself unable to break your "hankering" habit, you can take comfort in the fact that "hanker" does not automatically brand you as either a rube or a wannabe cowboy (goodie!).  The first appearance of "hanker" dates back to about 1600 in England, and such literary luminaries as Milton and Thackeray used the word without being mistaken for Jed Clampett.

"The origin of "hanker" is a bit obscure, but most authorities have come to the conclusion that it arose as a form of the verb "to hang" used in a "frequentative" or "repetitive" sense, and originally meant "to hang around, to loiter with expectation or longing."  Thus, in this original sense, a lovesick swain might "hanker" in the vicinity of his beloved, hoping for an encounter (as in Thomas Hughes, 1859: "I used to hanker round the kitchen, or still-room, or wherever she might happen to be").  By the late 17th century, "hanker" had lost its "loitering" connotation and had settled on its modern meaning of "to long for or crave something." "

I find that interesting---and reassuring!

Now, overseas hankerings can take all forms.

A British colleague in Moscow pined after Heinz baked beans with tomato sauce---not pork and beans, just beans in tomato sauce! He was ecstatic when a local store started importing them.

A few years ago I was in the Rideau Bakery in Ottawa and watched as a  woman who said she had moved to Florida was stowing loaves of freshly-baked rye bread into a couple of carry-on bags. Smiling, she said she was on the way to the airport, "Tonight, ex-Ottawa people all over Miami are going to have a treat".

I have known Canadians overseas who would have given anything for a box of Timbits ("lots of chocolate ones, please").

One of my hankerings while living in England (the one that got me into trouble), was for---don't laugh---apple butter.

Now, I asked you not to laugh.

I think I can hear some ask, "Apple, what".

Wikipedia to the rescue. "Apple butter is a highly concentrated form of apple sauce, produced by long, slow cooking of apples with cider or water to a point where the sugar in the apples caramelizes, turning the apple butter a deep brown. The concentration of sugar gives apple butter a much longer shelf life as a preserve than apple sauce. Apple butter was a popular way of using apples in colonial America, and well into the 19th century. There is no dairy butter involved in the product; the term butter refers only to the thick, soft consistency, and apple butter's use as a spread for breads." 

When I was growing up, we would drive in the autumn to Elmira to an apple mill run by a Mennonite farmer, a Mr. Martin. Farmers brought trailer loads of 'wind-fall' apples that he would, for a small charge, crush and turn into delicious cider. We had no apples, we were just there to get a few gallons of cider and some containers of apple butter.

There was nothing nicer after playing in the snow to come in and have some of Mom's home-made bread covered with 'real' butter and then slathered on top with apple butter!

Finally, (and not a minute to soon, I can hear you saying) we have come to the story about how I ended up in the dog house.

The home we rented in the Golders Green area of London had a prolific apple tree in the backyard. The apples looked good---large with a shiny green colour--but they were really sour. We didn't eat them, that is, except for one of our boys. On one occasion, our family doctor who lived next door phoned to say that our two-year old son was in the backyard eating apples off the ground. "I just thought I would call to save myself a trip later on."

One fall as I was preparing to rake up the apples, I suddenly had an idea. Why not turn some of them into apple butter? No one in England at that time sold apple butter, not even Harrod's Food Hall. Remembering Mom's bread slathered with apple butter, I developed a plan to turn the windfalls into a delectable spread.

Early the next Saturday morning, I collected some bags of apples, got out a large, antique brass jam pan (see picture), and filled it with peeled, cored and quartered apples along with some sugar, vinegar and seasonings. Soon the gas stove had the apples simmering and well before noon they had broken down into apple sauce. I turned the gas down a bit to a medium heat that would turn the sauce into the thick, brown apple butter I loved.

I was sure that the apple butter would be finished well before our dinner party guests arrived.

Oh, I didn't mention about the dinner party?

Just slipped my mind, I guess.

The afternoon went on and the apple mixture started to turn a little brown but it was still too thin. I was afraid of turning the gas up too high for fear of scorching the mixture.

Meanwhile, Pat was trying to prepare a special meal for our guests---with one of the gas elements taken up with the jam pan---and feed the children. Around 5 PM (the guests were coming at 6), the apple mixture was finally approaching apple butter colour and thickness.

Just then, Pat asked if I had got the wine for dinner. Nope, had slipped my mind. No problem, I would just slip down to the local wine store and be back in a jiffy.

I asked Pat if she would give the mixture a stir from time-to-time and took off for the wine store.

Something I learned about apple butter, was that when it approaches that critical point of thickness---critical mass, as it were---things start to happen very quickly. It bubbles and begins to spit and splatter. Some splatter can reach as high as a kitchen ceiling!

Amazing!

When I arrived back with the wine, the guests had arrived, the apple butter was sitting on the back of the stove with the gas turned off, and Pat was very unhappy.

Fortunately, Pat hadn't been burned by the spitting apple butter.

The dinner party was a little strained but it went all right, I guess.

The next morning, I reheated the apple butter and bottled it.

It was all a waste of effort. We never ate any of the apple butter. It looked fine but didn't have the tang or flavour of the Elmira stuff. I learned later that good apple butter is made with a mix of different varieties of apples, some tart and some sweet.

At the end of our London stint, we had to clean the house to give it back to the owner. Part of the cleaning involved removing apple butter splatter from a huge area of the kitchen ceiling, splatter that we had lived with for over a year.

I like to experiment with making-my-own things, but never again with apple butter!

 Great Ontario apple butter (for example, the Wellesley brand made by the Jantzi family in Wellesley Ontario) is available everywhere, thanks to globalization.

In doing research for this Posting I found that there is a Wellesley Apple Butter and Cheese Festival on the last Saturday in September that features Wellesley apple products as well as cheese from the J.M. Schneider Cheese Factory. The festival sounds like a lot of fun 

I think I may go next year, but I will probably have to go alone. 

Some scars take longer to heal than others.

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See you on October 30th for Posting #127th 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.

Note:

I have now uploaded four Postings on The Icewine Guru blog: one about the dangers of the US income gap; one about a possible lesson the US could learn from Canada about how to deal with its unemployment crisis: one about whether 'Western' countries should ban the wearing of face coverings by Muslim women; and, one which asks the question, 'Is Obama a Wimp?'. The topics are serious but I have tried to give them an entertaining treatment. If you haven't tried the Guru blog yet, you might like to browse these Postings by clicking on the link below. The next Guru Posting will appear when I feel I have something to say about an important public issue---at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #125

"No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" (Quotation attributed to Clare Boothe Luce)

In last week's Posting (#124), I told a family story about the province-wide Prohibition in Ontario from 1916 to 1927, and about Port Credit fishing boats that supposedly carried booze to Cuba.

In this Posting, I would like to tell another family story, this one from the 1880s, when my great-grandfather, Thomas Lush, got enmeshed in an attempt by governments of the time to deal with the problem of alcohol abuse by allowing local communities to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages.

First a tiny bit of history. (I am indebted to Jim Dills, a former editor of the Canadian Champion, Milton's weekly paper, who went through reels of microfilm of old editions of the Champion at the Milton Public Library searching for references to Thomas Lush. Jim provided his notes to my brother, also a 'Jim', who kindly let me have a copy. Thanks to both of you!)

Thomas Lush was born in 1844, in the US, probably near Joliet, Illinois, and at the age of 3 moved with his family to Eramosa Township in Ontario. He married Margaret Jane Howson in 1867. They had 13 children, the eldest of whom we met briefly in Posting #124, Reuben Lush, the Justice of the Peace in Clarkson, Ontario during Prohibition.

Thomas began a successful butcher shop in a brick building on Main St. in  Milton, Ontario. He was noted for his entrepreneurial innovation and energy. For example, The Champion said in 1885 that he had installed a refrigerator, "that was capable of holding the carcasses of two or three animals at one time and it will keep the meat fresh for weeks without the least taint". In an advertisement in another edition of the paper, Thomas said that he had managed to make arrangements so that, "White fish, Salmon &c caught in the morning at Collingwood (...will be) delivered at Milton by eleven o'clock of same day".

He served as a councilor in Milton, was active in his church (Methodist, I believe), and was a teetotaler who had campaigned for the Canada Temperance Act (CTA), a law sometimes called 'the Scott Act', a reference to its sponsor, Sir Richard William Scott. The Act, which was passed by the Canadian Parliament in 1878, allowed communities to prohibit the sale of alcohol, if a majority of voters agreed.

A vote was held and Milton became a 'dry' community.

I am sure that my great-grandfather rejoiced when the Milton prohibition was approved. Little did he know that the Canada Temperance Act would soon create enormous problems for him.

It happened like this.

Innkeepers and hoteliers were adamantly opposed to the CTA, arguing that they couldn't stay in business with just the revenue from meals and room rentals. They claimed that they needed the income from selling alcoholic beverages to run a viable business. But there existed in Ontario at that time some apparently successful 'Temperance Hotels', which offered rooms and meals, but no liquor.

In the 1870s in Milton there was a hotel, the Thompson House, which served alcohol. Enthused with the 1878 victory on the CTA, some prominent prohibitionists in Milton, including Thomas Lush, formed a syndicate to lease the Thompson House for a period of 5 years at $500 per annum and turn it into a temperance hotel, the Milton Temperance Hotel.

In this undated (but judging from the cars, about 1920) copy of a post card entitled "The New Royal Hotel", the men are standing in front of what was the old Thompson House---the part to the left was added later on.  Today, the building at 165 Main Street East, Milton, houses on the ground floor a popular restaurant, La Toscana. The original of the post card belongs to John Duignan. This copy was kindly provided to me by Jim Dills.

The syndicate members worked hard to make the hotel profitable, but after three years the hotel had lost nearly $2000 and they felt they could no longer continue supporting it. According to a story in the Champion of May 24th, 1883, the other syndicate members turned to my great-grandfather and asked him, as a successful entrepreneur, to take over the hotel for the remaining two years of the lease.

Great-grandfather agreed and after some financial matters had been sorted out he took over responsibility for the hotel.

Thomas's move was kind and generous---truly a good deed.

At this point it is perhaps appropriate to remember Clare Boothe Luce's quotation which I have used as the title of this Posting: 'No Good Deed Goes Unpunished'.

Scarcely a month after he took over ownership of the Hotel, a Canada Temperance Act inspector accompanied by a constable searched the hotel on the basis of a warrant issued against Thomas Lush by the Milton police magistrate.

An August 30, 1883 Champion article states that two charges were filed against Thomas Lush for permitting the sale of intoxicating liquor. The police magistrate found him guilty and sentenced him to two months in jail. The article then says, "As the ex-member of the syndicate is at present in Uncle Sam's dominions and will probably stay there, it is not likely that the sentence will ever be carried out".

Great-grandfather had taken off for the States!

But then he came back---sort of.

A report in the Champion on November 29th, 1883 reminded its readers that Thomas Lush had been convicted of CTA offenses but had absconded to the US. The article went on, "He, however, had paid his family a clandestine visit last week, which was discovered by Constable Dent, who captured him on the road near his house on Thursday morning, and lodged him in jail where he will probably be compelled to remain four months".

The Champion for December 6, 1883 said it had received a letter from Thomas Lush and reported on the letter in this manner: "Writes from jail. His perspective on the temperance question and being fined for selling ginger wine which he thought was a temperance drink."

On December 13, 1883, the Champion reported that Thomas Lush had been released from jail the day before on paying a fine of $100. The paper said, "Scarcity of funds for the enforcement of the Act probably had something to do with the compromise in this case. Perhaps the fact that Mr. Lush is an old-time temperance man was remembered by our worthy Police Magistrate when he exercised his clemency in favor of his whilom associate." (I had to do a dictionary check on 'whilom', and found that as an adjective it means 'former; sometime, late'. It would appear that Thomas and the Magistrate had had some prior relationship, probably in the temperance movement.)

Poor great-grandfather's problems with the Milton Temperance Hotel were not over.

It appears that at some point during the judicial proceedings, he sold the Hotel to a William Murray. But Murray decided after a few months that he could not make a go of the hotel and moved out.

The Syndicate then sued Thomas Lush for $200 for rent and 'installment on furniture'. The case went to a jury, which rejected the claimants' arguments and found for Thomas.

The indefatigable Jim Dills has found more references to Thomas Lush in the microfilm record of the Champion, references that sketch out his life after the brush with the CTA.

In 1887, the Champion reported: "Mr. Thomas Lush has exchanged his brick store and dwelling on Main St. with Mr. McFerran for the 'Walker Farm' at the foot of the mountain in Nelson. Mr. Lush paying a difference of $3,500."

In December 1888, Thomas brought a rock from his farm into the Champion's office that he thought might contain silver. An assay showed that it did not contain any silver.

(May I add a note from family lore. During this farming period, Thomas used to travel to England to bring back breeding stock for his farm. Reuben Lush, who accompanied his father, told his children that on one return from Britain their ship was wrecked on Anticosti Island!)

In 1890, Thomas offered his farm for sale by auction.

He died in 1909 at Huntsville in his 66th year, while he was living, I believe, with one of his children.

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Our family is deeply grateful for the information that Jim Dills has collected about our ancestor. It adds important dimensions to him, and helps to bring him alive. He was obviously a remarkable man, and the eleven children who survived infancy made important contributions to the community, each in his or her own way. One of them, Clifford, is supposed to have invented an endless-belt oven for Weston's Bakery, so that loaves of risen bread went in at one end and came out at the other fully baked.

It would be good to have a biography of Thomas and his family---perhaps some history buff in the family will take up the challenge.

I think before leaving the story we should try to deal with an issue that may be in the minds of some readers: is it credible to think that Thomas Lush really believed that ginger wine was non-alcoholic?

Perhaps I am biased because of my familial links to him, but I think it may well be that Thomas, who I am sure never had a drink in his life, did indeed believe that ginger wine was non-alcoholic.

However, this being a democratic blog, I will let the reader decide what s/he thinks.

Note:

I have condensed somewhat the story of the temperance hotel incident, leaving out details that would have been necessary for a scholarly historical article but did not seem important to the story I was trying to tell. Mr. Dills is a serious historian of Milton and Halton County and I will be pleased to amend the Posting if he feels that I have done violence to key facts.By the way, I searched without success for photos of Thomas Lush and of the Thompson House. I would love to include one or both, if anyone can help me.

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See you on October 23rd for Posting #126th 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.

Note:

I have now uploaded four Postings on The Icewine Guru blog: one about the dangers of the US income gap; one about a possible lesson the US could learn from Canada about how to deal with its unemployment crisis: one about whether 'Western' countries should ban the wearing of face coverings by Muslim women; and, one which asks the question, 'Is Obama a Wimp?'. The topics are serious but I have tried to give them an entertaining treatment. If you haven't tried the Guru blog yet, you might like to browse these Postings by clicking on the link below. The next Guru Posting will appear when I feel I have something to say about an important public issue---at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #124

 

Prohibition

This week, PBS has been running a series on prohibition in the US. The blurb for the program says:

"PROHIBITION is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed."

Watching the superb documentary (when was Ken Burns ever involved in any project that was  less than superb?) I recalled a family story about Ontario's experiment with prohibition.

Fishing for Midnight Herring in Lake Ontario

When I was growing up I loved to hear my father and his brother---my Uncle Syd---tell stories about their time as traffic officers on the Toronto to Hamilton highway. (The highway, built by the Toronto-Hamilton Highway Commission---a body of the Ontario Government---was finished in 1917. The highway, the first concrete one in Canada, had its own traffic officers who tried to enforce the 'sensible and sane' speed limit of 30 miles an hour. Later on, the highway was absorbed into the growing network of Ontario highways---as Highway 2---and the traffic officers were taken into the Ontario Provincial Police.)

One of their favourite stories was about the fishing boats from Port Credit that carried Canadian rye whisky to Cuba.

Sounds implausible?

You're right.

Let me back up a bit and set the stage.

 But first, I should deal with the spelling of whisky. There is a dispute about which spelling is correct: whisky or whiskey. The Scots clearly favour 'whisky' but in North America we seem to vacillate between the two spellings. I'm going with the Scots, and if you don't mind, I would really prefer not to have an argument about that.

During prohibition in Ontario---from 1916 to 1927---the sale of alcoholic beverages was banned.

There were however some exceptions. The Canadian Encyclopedia reports on one exception:

 "One way to drink legally was to be 'ill', for doctors could give prescriptions to be filled at drugstores. Scandalous abuse of this system resulted, with veritable epidemics and long line-ups occurring during the Christmas holiday season."

Although the legal consumption of alcohol was banned (for the drinker, there were however a few oases---so called 'speakeasies' and 'blind pigs'---where illegal hooch could be consumed) there was no ban on the production of alcoholic beverages so long as it was for export. The politicians in Queen's Park presumably concluded that it would be wrong to punish the farmers who grew the grain for whisky, the workers who distilled the product, or the owners of the distilleries who were good loyal Canadians, and probably political campaign contributors.

The answer was to keep on distilling but to make sure that the product was exported.

That's where the Port Credit fishing boats came in.

Dad and Uncle Syd would chuckle as they described how, late in the day, fishing boats would pull up at the Parliament Street dock of Gooderham and Worts distillery in Toronto and, with Customs officials watching, take on a load of metal containers of whisky. until the water was up to the gunnels of the boats.

The Customs officer would then sign and stamp the documents to show that the whisky was being legally exported to Cuba, and the boats would sail slowly into the lake being careful of any waves that might wash over the deck and swamp them. As night descended, the boats would disappear into the darkness.

The next morning the boats would be back in the Port Credit Harbour.

Of course, they hadn't sailed to Cuba---only Santa Claus and his reindeer could have accomplished that.

They actually docked, under the cover of darkness, in the abandoned brick yard in Port Credit and unloaded their valuable cargo.

When I did a Google search to try to verify the story, I found Ron Brown's excellent book, "From Queenston to Kingston: The Hidden Heritage of Lake Ontario's Shoreline".

Brown confirms the story and adds some details. He claims that it was a certain bootlegger, Joe Burke, the owner of the Lakeview Inn in Port Credit, who masterminded this fishing-boat-export-to-Cuba scheme. According to Brown, the exercise was code-named 'midnight herring'---therefore the title of this Posting.

Once ashore the whisky had to be transported to thirsty consumers in Canada and the US.

One of the ways was to use high speed cars on Ontario's improving roads. A number of the cars were destined for the Windsor area, from which the whisky could be carried by boats across the St. Clair River into the US.

The tattered clipping--- from I think the Toronto Telegram---shows that these 'rum runners' sometimes forgot that when one is doing something illegal one should be careful not to break other laws, for example, speed limits. I hope you can read the article---you may have to click to enlarge it.

(The article is from a treasured stash of clippings and memorabilia about our family collected over the years by my mother and stored in a battered but airtight blue metal box. According to the printing on the box, it originally contained 'Moonlight Mellos' made by Patterson Chocolates Ltd of Toronto---"Fluffy Marshmallows That Melt in the Mouth".   

The Hunter Family Archive!

 My Dad kept photos of the car with the containers of whisky and I have them somewhere. When they are found, I'll add them to this Posting.

I'm afraid I can't tell you much about the rum runners and what happened to them. My recollection from the story told by Dad and Uncle Syd was that they were Americans but I can't swear to that.

Minor traffic offenses in the Clarkson area of the Toronto-Hamilton Highway were presided over by the local justice of the peace, Reuben Lush, who happened to be my mother's father, and my grandfather---sort of, "All in the Family".

I suspect that because it involved far more than just speeding, this case would have been referred for trial to the magistrate in Port Credit.

My father and Uncle Syd had sworn to uphold the law, and they did their duty in arresting the rum runners, but I think it is fair to say that they thought the prohibition legislation was unfair, silly and, ultimately unenforceable.

That's why they found the saga of the Port Credit fishing boats so humorous.

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See you on October 16th for Posting #125th 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.

Note:

I have now uploaded four Postings on The Icewine Guru blog: one about the dangers of the US income gap; one about a possible lesson the US could learn from Canada about how to deal with its unemployment crisis: one about whether 'Western' countries should ban the wearing of face coverings by Muslim women; and, one which asks the question, 'Is Obama a Wimp?'. The topics are serious but I have tried to give them an entertaining treatment. If you haven't tried the Guru blog yet, you might like to browse these Postings by clicking on the link below. The next Guru Posting will appear when I feel I have something to say about an important public issue---at http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/

POSTING #123

A GENTLE NOTE TO MY READERS:

I am going back to my earlier practice of having a weekly Letter from Virgil.

Writing the every-other-week Icewine Guru Postings took more time and effort (especially for research) than I had expected.

But I am not abandoning the Guru blog. The Postings for it will now be sporadic, appearing when I feel steamed up about an important public issue that I don't feel is receiving sufficient attention. But they will be in addition to the weekly Letter from Virgil Postings--- they will not replace them.

I will put a note in this Letter from Virgil blog telling you whenever there is a new Guru Posting, along with the subject of the Posting, and a link to it.

Thank you for your patience and tolerance as I experimented with the idea of alternating Postings!

A Bountiful Harvest

It has been a great summer in the Niagara Peninsula---probably in the whole Province--- for fruit and vegetables, both in quantity and quality. A wet spring created an abundant supply of ground water and a hot summer spurred the growth of just about everything.

A nearby farmer's stall has a sign advertising hampers of peaches for only $10.

All of this brings back memories of the women of my hometown, Arthur, 'canning' fruit for the winter---in quart glass sealers.

Here is a story about that.

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The climate in the Arthur area was fine for apples and pears but not for soft fruit such as peaches. They were brought to Arthur stores by wholesalers like Sam Bondi from Mount Forest, a large man with a large cigar. He would load his red truck early in the morning with fruit and vegetables at wholesale markets in Toronto and then work his way north, dropping off supplies at local grocery stores.

At a certain point, when the fruit was ripest and cheapest, Mom would buy several 12 quart baskets of peaches at the local store. Then she would go to the basement, collect quart sealers emptied over the course of the past winter and wash them carefully (even though they had been washed carefully before being taken to the basement). Then the jars would be sterilized by pouring in some water and putting them in a hot oven in a pan with a little water.

While the jars were sterilizing, Mom would place the whole peaches in boiling water for a few minutes to make them easier to peel. When they were 'blanched', she would  put them in a pan of cold water and my brothers and I would juggle the still-hot peaches as we peeled off the skins with paring knives. As Mom was slicing the peeled peaches into generous segments, my brothers and I would crack some of the peach stones on a concrete stoop using an old hammer. We would pass the almond-like pits to my mother,  who believed they added flavour to the peaches.

(There are scientific studies now that show that peach pits when raw contain a small amount of hydrocyanic acid---one of the chemicals used in gas chambers!---but that the chemical is rendered non-toxic when cooked. I remember trying one of the raw pits but spitting it out because of its bitterness. I understand that the bitter almond flavour, is extracted from pits of almond-family fruit, such as the peach.)

Mom would take the steaming hot jars from the oven, tip out the water, put a peach pit in each, fill them with the sliced peaches and then add a boiling-hot sugar syrup. Next, she would seal the jars by fitting on a sterilized red rubber ring (this was before Mason Jars), put on a glass lid and then screw everything tight with a zinc top. (During the winter as the jars were emptied, we used the rubber rings to hold catalogues against our shins for hockey games on ice patches in nearby fields---homemade shin pads!)

The contents of the sealed jars were then cooked by placing the jars in the oven in a pan with boiling water (later on, home economists decided that cooking the jars in a hot water bath was  a better way of sterilizing the fruit and thereby preventing spoilage and reducing the risk of things like botulism).

When the peaches were cooked the jars were placed on the counter to cool. Then they were tested to make sure there was a 'good seal',  wiped clean and taken to the basement to be stored on shelves near the furnace.

How delicious those jars looked---all lined up and full of  succulent, golden peach slices!

You may be saying, "Where's the story? Enough already with the detail, get on with it!"

My answer is that to appreciate fully the story---which is coming right up---you need to know the amount of work, not to mention the money, involved in canning peaches.

Besides, if I am to be totally honest, I have to say that I have been enjoying this little trip down memory lane!

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I should start by saying that this story is more than just a story, it is also a test for you, the reader---a test of  your ethics or home economics.

I am not sure which.

You'll see in a minute.

One of Mom's friends went through all the peach-canning palaver described above. As she was placing the jars of peaches on the basement shelves she saw a very white, very small and very dead worm floating in one of the jars. I suppose I should make the point for younger readers that all fruit in the period I am talking about---the 1940s and 1950s--- was 'organic'. This meant that although the fruit contained no harmful pesticides, they often contained worms.

After talking about what to do, Mom and her friend came up with three options.

May I suggest that you consider the options and decide which one you would have taken.

Option 1: Throw out the contents of the jar with the worm and keep the rest of the jars.

Option 2: Keep all the jars but turn the jar with the worm to the back of the shelf so no one could see it. When opening the jar in the winter, one would carefully fish out the worm before the family could see it.

Option 3: Throw out the contents of all the jars.

To give you a chance to weigh the options (and to make sure you don't cheat!) I'm going to tell a joke that killed us in Grade 3.

What is worse than finding a worm in an apple?

Give up?

Finding half a worm!

Sorry about that---just a little bit of pre-adolescent Arthur humour.

Back to the quiz. Here is what happened.

Mom's friend chose Option 3 and threw out all the peaches.

My mother would have voted for Option 2. Her view was that the peaches, syrup---and the worm---had all been well sterilized.

As I recall it, Mom was horrified at the waste but respected her friend's decision---that she wouldn't be comfortable serving any of the peaches to her family knowing that the batch had once had a worm in it.

How did you come down?

Personally, I am with Mom, but like Mom I will not object if you came to a different conclusion.

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I would like to end this Posting with another 'harvest' story but this one has been taking  place this summer, in Virgil.

I call it the Great Squash Mystery.

When I was young one of my favourite vegetables was the pepper squash---some people call them acorn squashes, but that's OK. 

I liked it when Mom cut one of them in half, horizontally, scooped out the seeds, filled the hollow with lots of butter, a little brown sugar, some salt and pepper, and then baked them until they were tender.

Oh, that was good! The flesh of the squash was a deep orange, solid and meaty, sweet and full of flavour.

But as time went on, the pepper squashes available in the stores changed until now we have imitations of the real thing, squashes that have a flesh that is pale-yellow, soft, watery, with an insipid taste. I blame the growers for choosing varieties that ripen early, travel well and 'weigh heavy' (i.e. full of water) since squash are sold by weight.

This year I set aside a small space in our backyard to grow some 'real' pepper squashes. I found a variety in a Stokes Seeds catalogue that promised old-time texture and flavour.

Great!

I set out 6 plants, which caught quickly and soon produced large yellow blossoms. The catalogue said that each plant would produce an average of 8 squash. I did the math and that meant something like 50 squash. There would be enough so I could share them with our children who have grown tired and skeptical about Dad and his stories about the delicious squash of his youth. And the remainder could be stored in our cold room so we could have delicious squash dinners in February and March.

I watched with delight as the bees did their thing and the blossoms turned into little green oval balls and then into softball-sized fruit. Everything was going well.

Then one morning I noticed that the two largest squash had disappeared. As I was scratching my head and muttering, our neighbour who is a retired farmer came over to see what the trouble was. I told him about the missing squash.

I said I was wondering whether a raccoon was responsible.

No, he said, raccoons are messy. If they had eaten the squash, they would have left bits of skin and seeds lying around.

Every few mornings, more squash were missing.

And then early one morning when I was backing out of the driveway, I saw a bulky animal heading down the side of our garage toward the backyard. I rushed around the house but he (or she) had disappeared. There is a wooded area with a pond off to the side behind our house and my hunch was that he (or she) had headed home.

Convinced that we were dealing with a raccoon, I installed---near the squash patch---one of Lee Valley's electronic gadgets that is designed to scare off cats. The gadget has a motion detector and emits a high frequency squeal that cats can't stand. I wasn't sure whether it would work for raccoons, but it seemed worth a try.

The thievery ended.

Now I am left with only 6 or 7 small squash, and I am not sure whether they will mature before the frost hits.

So that's my tale of woe.

But the interesting question is what did the raccoon do with the squash. He (she) didn't eat them on site because there was no mess. Therefore, he (or she) must have taken them home---as a treat, presumably, for the family. ('Yum, yum, more delicious squash from that nice man up there!')

But how?

Did he (she) roll them home? Or did he (she) clutch a squash to his (her) chest and do a three-legged hop back to the pond?

If I had been able to capture the nocturnal activity via a night-vision video camera, it would surely have become a viral hit on YouTube!

Next year, I'm going to put out the anti-cat gadget earlier in the season.

And, given the intelligence of those bandit-eyed critters, I might even back that up with a little electric fence, one that has enough amperage to provide a deterring but non-lethal jolt.

We'll see.

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See you on October 9th for Posting #124th 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.

Note:

I have now uploaded four Postings to The Icewine Guru blog: one about the dangers of the US income gap; one about a possible lesson the US could learn from Canada about how to deal with its unemployment crisis: one about whether 'Western' countries should ban the wearing of face coverings by Muslim women; and, one which asks the question, 'Is Obama a Wimp?'. The topics are serious but I have tried to give them an entertaining treatment. If you haven't tried the Guru blog yet, you might like to browse these Postings by clicking on the link below. The next Guru Posting will appear when I feel I have something to say about an important public issue--- http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/