POSTING #155

PAUSE IN THE POSTS

It seems that I have some medical issues to deal with.

There will have to be a pause in the Postings until the doctors have finished with their testing, poking and prodding.

Hopefully the pause won't be too long---just a short 'pause that refreshes'.

See you soon.

John


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There is a new Icewine Guru Posting (#15, November 15th) in which the Guru castigates Romney and extracts some lessons from the US presidential election. http://theicewineguru.blogspot.ca/

POSTING #154

THE BATTLE OF QUEENSTON HEIGHTS

Last weekend, after more than six years of planning, the re-enactments of the Battle of Queenston Heights and the Burial of General Brock took place.

The email below, addressed to the two Federal Ministers involved in supporting the 1812 Bicentennial, mirrors what seems to have been the reaction of most of the 15,000 people who attended the events.

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From: Family Near
Subject: 200th Anniversary Battle of Queenston Heights: Well Done Parks Canada and The Ministry of Canadian Heritage

Dear Honourable Ministers Kent and Moore:

I am writing to congratulate both your Departments for the outstanding commemorative ceremonies that marked the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Queenston Heights and the death of Major General Isaac Brock, which took place this past weekend (13-14 Oct) at Niagara on the Lake / Queenston, Ontario.

Our family drove from Kanata, Ontario to Queenston Heights and the town of Niagara on the Lake specifically to see and participate in this event, and we were not disappointed!  Indeed, we were immensely impressed with the manner in which Parks Canada, the Friends of Fort George and the Ministry of Canadian Heritage planned and oversaw both the re-enacted Battle of Queenston Heights on the Saturday, followed on Sunday by the sombre "funeral" procession and entombment of MGen Brock and his ADC LCol John Macdonnell, at Fort George.

The planning and organization required to effect this commemoration must have been immense, involving as it did more than a thousand re-enactors representing British regulars, Canadian Militia and US forces.  However, I can assure you, Honourable Ministers, that the combined efforts of your staffs and the Friends of Fort George, was superb in every respect.  Certainly, the 15,000 people who attended this re-enactment were provided with a tremendous visual and emotional Canadian historical experience, along with an appreciation that the bravery and sacrifices made in 1812 are what allowed the Canada of today to exist!   It was also gratifying to see attendance by a large number of civic officials from all levels of Government, including the Minister of Justice (Hon Rob Nicholson)

So, well done to both your Departments, with special kudos to Parks Canada for their appreciation of Canadian history and their ability to make it come alive!   I feel that my taxpayer dollars have been very well spent here!

Yours sincerely
Robert Near
29 Cheltonia Way,
Kanata, Ontario, K2T1G6

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Unfortunately, I missed the whole thing!

I had volunteered to be on Queenston Heights in my 1812 costume to help direct the crowds, and was really looking forward to all the “pomp and circumstance”.

Then a few days before the weekend, I fell ill and had to withdraw.

Oh well, there are several important events next year, such as the Battle of Fort George, and the Occupation and Burning of the Town.

Health permitting, I will be there!

000

WHAT TO DO ABOUT DRIVERS WHO TAILGATE?

The Queen Elizabeth Way (the QEW---which our GPS insists on called ‘Cue’) is getting more and more congested. Impatient drivers do stupid and dangerous things such as speeding excessively (come on, we all speed a bit, but anything over 130 KMS is ridiculous) and weaving in and out of lanes without warning.

And tailgating!

We were lucky to have escaped several near-accidents recently, in each case with some idiot right on our tail. If there had been an accident, the tailgater would have ended up inside---or on top of--- our car.

I was reminded of a BBC program from the 1960s on safe driving. British roads at the time were more than a bit treacherous. There were three-wheeled Messerschmitt cars chugging along at 30 miles an hour and Jaguars whipping past them at 100 plus MPH. You never knew what you would encounter around the next bend.

After a few horrendous accidents, the BBC decided to do some research on safer driving.

One of the experts on the program was the popular British racing driver, Stirling Moss who, Wikipedia notes, was called "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship". I remember three things about the program. One was Moss’s description of how to handle curves at high speed: hit the brakes going into the curve and then accelerate like hell coming out of it.

The second was his description of how he relaxed after a day of racing. He had a hot water tank in his London apartment that kept the water at precisely his favourite bath temperature. As he got close to his apartment, he could flick a switch in the car and his bathtub would fill automatically. In the pre-electronic age of the 1960s, that was impressive. Once at home, he stripped off his clothes and jumped into a soothing tub.

The third thing I remember was the program’s advice on how to deal with tailgaters: you should slow down so as to increase the space between your car and the car ahead. This would provide a ‘cushion’ of space in case the car ahead had to stop suddenly. In that event, you could slow down gradually so the idiot tailgater wouldn’t end up in your glove compartment.

The program also said that slowing down would make it easier for the tailgater to overtake you and be on his/her way.

The slowing down has always seemed to me to be good advice but some tailgaters---obviously infuriated by the widened gap between us and the car ahead---press in even closer to our car.

A friend deals with that problem by turning on his windshield washers. The airstream carries some of the washer liquid over his car and onto the windshield of the tailgater. The problem is that at 100 KMS, I am not sure how safe it is to distract the person who is breathing down your neck.

In England in the 1960s, a Canadian friend with a British-born wife had another solution. The wife printed a large sign with the word ‘NIT’ on it---NIT being short for ‘nitwit’ and British for 'idiot'. Whenever anyone followed her and her husband too closely, she showed the sign through the back window.

I’m not sure that holding up a sign that said something like ‘IDIOT’ would work too well in Canada (or the US!). The result would probably be a classic case of road rage.

By the way, that British-born wife was (and is) a very skilled knitter. After they returned to Canada, she was asked by the Canadian Government to knit a sweater that was later presented to Prince Charles during one of his visits to Canada.

After that, we all referred to her as the Royal (K)nit.

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The US Presidential Election is heating up and I expect that the Icewine Guru will soon have something to say. http://theicewineguru.blogspot.ca/

POSTING #153

WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN

In the last Posting (#152) I spoke about the potato peeler and the “Pete-the-Peeler” salespeople who persuaded us to give up the paring knife.

In this Posting I would like to talk about another kitchen gadget that our family had when I was growing up.

But first, I need to set the stage a little.

I like honey, especially the delicious wild flower variety produced by brother Jim and sister-in-law Fannie. When I am lucky enough to get some of Jim and Fannie’s honey I decant it into recycled plastic containers, with a screw top cap. (See the photo)

But honey is sticky stuff and no matter how carefully I pour the honey I get spillage down the side. I have to wash the plastic container under the hot water tap every few times I use it.

Something else you need to know is that I like honey in my Starbucks decaf latté. Most of the Starbucks stores have offered plastic honey containers of the kind shown in the photo on the right.

But Starbucks cafes have been doing away with honey because, I suspect, of the stickiness of the containers. Instead they have been offering Demerara sugar, which is a fine, noble product but definitely not a substitute for honey.

And then this past week I found a Starbucks that was once again offering honey, not in a plastic container, but in a glass jar with a spring-mounted blade that opens to let the honey out and then closes---with no mess, and no stickiness.  (See the photo below.)

I asked one of the staff (I guess they call them ‘Baristas’) about the new honey jars. She was young and enthusiastic, “Aren’t they amazing!”

I agreed but added that when I was growing up---before the wheel was invented---we had a similar container that we used to dispense corn syrup (Beehive, as I recall).

She looked at me sceptically, as though I was having her on. I could tell that as far as she was concerned this was a brand new product of the very latest 21st century technology.

Instead of arguing with her, I asked her where the store had bought it. She called over the manager and explained my query. “Aren’t they wonderful!” , the manager enthused.

It turned out that they had purchased them from a restaurant supply company, but the manager suggested I check out Williams-Sonoma or some other high-end kitchen store.

I found that Bed Bath and Beyond had a stock of them and bought two---one for wildflower honey, and the other for buckwheat honey, which I also like. They work beautifully with nary a drop of sticky honey.

I’m puzzled about why we forgot about these glass dispensers. Did they get left behind in our mindless dash toward everything plastic?

I don’t know but I’m glad that something that was old is new again.


THE BATTLE OF QUEENSTON HEIGHTS IS FINALLY HERE!!

After several years of planning we are about to experience the re-enactment of the Battle of Queenston Heights. A thousand Canadian, American and First Nation volunteers will be firing muskets and cannons on Saturday, October 13th.  The following day, October 14th, there will be the re-enactment of the burial of General Brock who was killed leading his troops into battle at Queenston Heights.

It promises to be a spectacular event, probably the largest military re-enactment ever staged in Canada. Just in case you are interested in attending here is a fact sheet prepared by The Friends of Fort George:

“Next weekend, 1000 volunteer reenactors will descend upon Queenston Heights.
There is educational programming on the Heights Friday and some great events in Lewiston, New York Friday night including Fireworks and Cannons at 7pm. (which can be viewed from the Canadian side in the village of Queenston). The action really gets underway on the morning of the battle anniversary, October 13th. On Saturday morning at 10am, a plaque honouring the home that held General Brock’s body during the battle, after he was fatally wounded, will be marked in a ceremony on Queenston Street in the village of Queenston.
At 11am on the Heights, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board will unveil a plaque honouring Major General Sir Isaac Brock as a person of National Significance. There will be tours of the battlefield and you can climb the Monument. Period entertainers like Muddy York, Gin Lane and the Queenston Ladies Choir will perform during the day.
Starting out @ 9:30 a.m. the troops will be marching from Fort George to Queenston as the cannons boom from the Heights. There will be warm, tasty food and beverages available at General Brock’s Store and historic merchants offering their unique wares at Queenston Heights.  At 3pm, the battle re-enactment will take place in the park and it will be followed at 4:30pm by a commemorative service at Brock’s Monument.
Spectacular Fireworks, framing Brock's Monument, will end the day at 7:15pm.
Dress for mid-October weather and bring a lawn chair or blanket to sit on. Rain or shine, the battle goes on.
If you plan on attending, the only parking cost is $5.00 to park on the Heights. A better alternative will be to park for free at other locations along the Parkway, from the rear lot of the Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory all the way to Fort George National Historic Site, and ride the new WEGO buses for free. The buses will run from 9am to 9pm with pick-ups every 20 minutes at six stops along the North Parkway.
On Sunday October 14th, the funeral of Isaac Brock and his Canadian aide de camp John Macdonell will be recreated in old town Niagara-on-the-Lake and Fort George.  The procession leaves Fort George at noon, arriving at the Old Court House on Queen Street at 12:30 pm. Following a short commemoration, the caskets of Brock and Macdonell will be placed on horse-drawn wagons and the procession continues to St. Mark's Church, where Carilloneur Richard M. Watson from Georgetown, Ohio, will play “Onguiaarha”, by Canadian Composer Michel Allard, an original piece commissioned by St. Mark’s to commemorate the bicentennial. The procession will then proceed to Fort George where a Drumhead service will take place at the bastion, where Brock was buried in October 1812. Cannons will be fired from both Fort George and Fort Niagara
‘Come all you brave Canadians’ - as the song from 1812 proclaimed, and mark this important date in the story of our Canada.”

For more information see the Niagara-on-the-Lake 1812 Bicentennial website 

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The Battle and the Burial are the last major Bicentennial events for Niagara-on-the-Lake for 2012 so after the coming weekend I should be able to get back to my old schedule of a new blog Posting every Sunday morning.

Next year there will be more events that may interfere with my schedule of Postings. For example, there will be the capture of Fort George and of the Town by the Americans in June, the occupation of the Town until December; and then the burning of the Town in December.

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The US Presidential Election is heating up and the Icewine Guru offers his views on the VP debate in Posting #13, uploaded on October 12, 2012: Icewine Guru blog.

POSTING #152

A FEW ODDS AND SODS

      Policeman’s Heel

In Ottawa we had friends who traded in their cars every three years. Unlike those of us who kept our cars longer (we usually traded in after 5 to7 years) they never had the ‘joy’ of learning about things like alternators, struts, or transmission belts. Their cars ran perfectly with nary a visit to the garage except for regular oil and lube jobs.

I’ve been thinking that one can draw a kind of analogy between the aging of cars and the aging of humans. The longer we live, the more we learn about the things that can go wrong with the human body. In recent conversations with other seniors we have heard about malfunctioning knees, hips, gall bladders, heart rhythm and on and on.

When I was young, I laughed to myself about old duffers---of both genders---describing their ailments. I thought it must be really boring for the people listening to those tales of pain and pills.

Now that I am an old duffer myself, I realize it is not boring at all to listen to someone tell about a health problem they are dealing with. I am too busy storing away information in case I too get an intermittent pain---‘just over here’---that may mean a gall stone attack. I wasn’t bored when someone described how he had to have his transmission belt replaced. I knew that that could happen to me, so I stored away that tale of woe. And now I stow away tales of ailments.

All of which may mean it is OK for me to talk about my latest ailment: plantar fasciitis.

Some months ago I was doing a little gardening and afterwards my right heel was tender. I decided that I had bruised it, and like other bruises it would eventually go away.

But it didn’t. Some days it didn’t hurt too much, but the tenderness never went away completely.

Then a week ago I was doing some strenuous walking around the track at our gym. Afterward the pain in my heel became so intense I had to use a cane.

The doctor said I had plantar fasciitis and, smiling sympathetically, told me he had once had it in both heels after a racket ball tournament. “It was so bad I couldn’t even limp”, he laughed. He prescribed an anti-inflammatory drug and recommended physical therapy. (The choice of an anti-inflammatory drug was tricky because I am on a blood thinner and can’t take oral drugs like Advil. He chose a liquid anti-inflammatory that is rubbed into the skin of the heel.)

The physical therapist went into detail about the mechanics of the foot: “I like to think of the foot as just a bag of loose bones. When we want to walk, the plantar fascia tendon that runs from the heel bone to the ball of the foot comes into action and pulls all the bones together. If something irritates the fascia, inflammation can set in and we feel pain when we walk.”

He used ultra sound to ease the inflammation, taught me some exercises to stretch and strengthen things, and recommended a cushioning heel cup.

I’m happy to say that things are on the mend.

You may have wondered about the title I chose for this story: ‘Policeman’s Heel’. Apparently in the olden days when policemen pounded the beat, they often developed plantar fasciitis. It was so common, doctors referred to the problem as ‘Policeman’s Heel’.

Now, my father was a policeman (Ontario Provincial Police).

You don’t suppose there is something genetic going on here?

     REMEMBERING THE CNE’S ‘PETE THE PEELER’

We had an invitation to accompany some friends to the Canadian National Exhibition (also CNE or ‘the Ex’) in Toronto in August but had to decline. The invitation brought back memories of my first visit to the Ex, in 1948. The CNE grounds had been taken over for the War effort and were only returned to the City of Toronto in 1947, which then began planning for the first post-war Ex in the following year.

My parents gave me (12 at the time) and my brother Chuck (9) a few dollars and told us to meet them at the fountain in the late afternoon. (Everyone always arranged to meet at the fountain!)

We toured the booths in Food Building, which at that time offered free samples---in later years they charged for them. We went on a few rides in the midway and then climbed up into the Grandstand to watch Jack Kochman's Hell Drivers perform amazing stunts with Yellow Dodge cars. (The CNE archives have a brief film shot by a visitor in 1950 that shows some of the Hell Driver stunts:  The film is blurry but it does bring back a host of memories!)

One of my strongest memories of that day at the EX is of listening to the marketers my family had dubbed ‘the Pete the Peelers’. They were men (I can’t remember any women) who demonstrated and sold various household items. I am assuming that the nickname came from the 1920s and 1930s when the potato peeler was being introduced as a replacement for the paring knife. By 1948 the potato peeler had been accepted in most homes and while the Pete the Peelers were still selling them, they packaged them with gadgets that sliced, diced and shaped vegetables into exotic shapes. While they demonstrated a gadget they kept up a folksy patter with the crowd of women, not flirting exactly but flattering them outrageously.

Other men demonstrated items such as cloths that would prevent eye glasses and windshields from fogging up, and imitation chamois clothes that would dry a car without streaks.

But the stand that really fascinated me was one that sold glass cutters. At home, when we needed a piece of glass we always went to the hardware store, which had a diamond tipped glass cutter. The Ex man selling the glass cutters said that it was no longer necessary to buy an expensive diamond glass cutter, or to travel to a hardware store. “Modern technology has created a glass cutter with a tip of hard amalgam, and for just a dollar you can cut your own glass”.

We had a stock of odd-sized sheets of glass at home and I thought that it would be great to be able to cut a piece to replace a broken window or to fit into a picture frame.

The salesman demonstrated straight cuts and fancy, curvy cuts. He scored the glass and then effortlessly broke off the piece he had been working on.

I succumbed and bought a cutter.

When I tried it at home, the glass broke every which way, every time I used it. I was disappointed and felt that I had been taken.

A couple of weeks ago we had dinner with another couple and the Ex came up. I told the glass cutter story. The husband, who had grown up in Toronto and regularly attended the Ex, remembered being fascinated as well by the people selling the cutters but he hadn’t bought one.

I said that my theory was that although the seller made a point of using a cutter from one of his packages, he had used some sleight of hand and was, in fact, using a diamond-tipped cutter. I said that after more than sixty years I still felt annoyed at being taken.

Our friend had another theory. He asked whether I had noticed how thin the glass was that was being used in the demonstrations. I hadn’t. According to our sharp-eyed friend, the glass was much thinner than the standard glass used around a home. It was, therefore, much easier to cut.

Whether the man tricked us by sneaking in a diamond-tipped tool or by using extra thin glass the point is he did trick us.

I suppose I learned a pretty cheap lesson, one that I think about when I see some ‘wonderful, unbelievable’ gadget being advertised on television.

Thanks, CNE!

     SOME APPS WE LIKE

When I was young people shared plant cuttings, recipes, and (sometimes) the location of favourite fishing holes. Today, they share favourite smart phone apps. Friends and relatives have been very generous in tipping us off to useful or entertaining apps.

I would like to return the favour by listing a few apps that we particularly like. These are for iPhones and iPads and available through iTunes but I am sure that there are versions available for android and Blackberry devices.

          MarineTraffic. $3.99

The Niagara-on-the-Lake owner of a large sailboat introduced us to this app, which lets one:

“Watch the positions reported by more than 60000 vessels per day on an interactive map. The application provides worldwide coverage of more than 2000 ports and a significant number of open-sea areas.

Port arrivals and departures are recorded in real-time. Search for current conditions in ports, vessel details, historical data and estimated time of arrivals.”

We use the app primarily to find the location of ships in the Welland Canal so that we can tell which bridges are likely to be up but (because we are nosey) we also use it to check the name of ships out in the lake as we drive along the QEW.

Friends on a cruise? You can watch the progress of the ship from port to port.

Amazing!

          BorderTimes. Free

The BorderTimes website describes the app this way:

“BorderTimes is a Free iPhone application developed by GeoGrant.com.

BorderTimes gives you the ability to access US/Canadian land border (Customs & Immigration) wait times from your iPhone or iTouch. The application offers both a Northbound and Southbound Quick View that lists all the land borders along with a green, yellow or red icon (indicating wait time). A button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen allows you to toggle between Passenger, Nexus and Commercial wait times.”

The app tells us which bridge has the shortest wait time when we are going to the States: Queenston/Lewiston, the Rainbow (Niagara Falls) or the Peace Bridge (Fort Erie). We also use it for the return trip to Canada.

The information is updated hourly. On particularly busy days, we may also call the Niagara Bridge Information number, 1 (800) 715-6722 for between-the-hour updates.


          Remove Duplicate Contact $0.99

From time to time my iPhone list of contacts decides to reproduce itself and suddenly instead of one listing for, say, Mary Jones, I have three or four---all identical. Perhaps I am doing something wrong (always possible) or maybe it is just the machine ‘acting out’. I really don’t know but from the number of questions posed to support groups I don’t seem to be alone.

I started going through eliminating the duplicates one by one but quickly decided, “Hey I have better things to do with my time’.

Then I found the “Remove Duplicate Contact” app.

It removed all the duplicates in about 30 seconds!

Wow!

(In doing a double check on the app I found that it doesn’t work with the new IOS 6 operating system. However the developer of the app has provided Apple with an update that will fix the problem. He expects it to be accepted soon. If you have a problem with duplicate contacts, I suggest you check with iTunes in a couple of weeks.)



Toca Kitchen Monsters. Free

This app had a test run at a recent family reunion and we would recommend it for people from 2 to at least 76. Try feeding the monster broccoli or lemons and enjoy the sights and sounds of his displeasure. Or put too much salt or pepper on items he normally loves, such as carrots, or hot dogs.

A nice antidote when the cares of the world are getting you down!


Note:

The next Letter from Virgil will hopefully appear in a couple of weeks.

I am also hoping that Posting #12 in the companion Icewine Guru Blog will appear in the next little while. http://theicewineguru.blogspot.ca

POSTING #151

THE ARTHUR DISTRICT HIGH SCHOOL BUGLE BAND---TWO MEMORABLE PARADES

A few weeks ago I attended a Fife and Drum Band Program at Fort George with bands from the US and Canada. The experience brought back memories of July, in (I think) 1954 when our high school band---with its mix of Protestants and Catholics---played in two parades: one for the Catholic picnic on July 1, and a second on July 12th when we led the Arthur contingent in a march of area Loyal Orange Lodges, which took place in a nearby town.

First, a bit of background about the religious complexion of Arthur and the surrounding area when I was growing up.

I don’t have precise figures but my guess is that about 75% of the population was Protestant---split among the Anglican, Presbyterian, United Church and Baptist congregations---with the remaining 25% belonging to the Roman Catholic congregation.

The Roman Catholics had their own primary school, called The Separate School, but after Grade 8 their children attended the Arthur District High School.

Relations between the Protestants and the Catholics were generally peaceful despite the fact that the area had been settled, in part, by immigrants from Ireland, some from the North and some from the South. As in the rest of Canada, the Irish immigrants tended to bring to their new country their age-old religious enmities.

But although relations were generally good between the Catholics and the Protestants, there were occasional religious frictions.

When I was 5 or 6 a group of us were playing shinny with a tennis ball in front of the Separate School. During a break, a friend who was Catholic said he was sorry that I wouldn’t be able to go to heaven. I hadn’t thought much about heaven at the time---whether in fact I wanted to go or not---but I didn’t like the idea of being excluded. When I asked him why I couldn’t go to heaven he said that a nun had told them in class that Protestants wouldn’t be admitted because they didn’t belong to The One True Church.

When I told Mom about the conversation, she laughed and said she didn’t believe that God would exclude us Protestants. She said that I wasn’t to worry about it---and I didn’t.

On another occasion when I was about the same age, I was helping a retired farmer with a few chores around his house. He referred to a Catholic family down the street as ‘those dogans’. I hadn’t heard that expression before and when I asked Mom about it she became upset. I was never to use that term. When I told her who had used it, she shook her head and said that some people just didn’t know any better.

But generally the two communities got along well.

On one occasion, the heavy oak front door of the Catholic Church needed some repairs. The priest, Father Trainor I think, called on a skilled local carpenter, Joe Wilson, to repair it. The fact that Joe was an active member of the Orange Lodge didn’t prevent the priest from picking him for the job. And Joe, for his part, didn’t refuse to work on a Catholic Church.

We got along.

Now on with the stories.

       July 1st Catholic Picnic

Each July first, the Catholic Church had a picnic at the Arthur Fairgrounds. The celebrations began with a parade along George Street (our main street), and up Tucker Street to the Fairgrounds.

On this particular July first, the band assembled in the south end of town along with a few floats. When everything was ready, Dad, in his Ontario Provincial Police car, started out with our band right behind him, and the floats behind us.

We arrived at the Fairgrounds and came to a halt by the ball diamond. I thought we were finished but one of the organizers came up and asked if we could play ‘God Save the Queen’ to open the picnic.

Now, that was a problem. We didn’t have the anthem in our repertoire.

As the leader of the band, I tried to figure out which of the pieces we knew would work. We didn’t know ‘Oh Canada’ and while we knew ‘The Maple Leaf Forever’ it didn’t seem official enough somehow. I finally decided on ‘Rule Britannia’. We gave a rousing performance, everyone cheered and the picnic was officially open.

As an aside, not many of the people at the picnic would have expected that in a decade Canada would have its own flag and that in the years that followed ‘Oh Canada’ would have replaced ‘God Save the Queen’ at most official functions. In the 1950s, Arthur was fiercely loyal to Britain and the Queen.

After we had played ‘Rule Britannia’, our work was done and we were free to visit the various booths operated by Catholic women and eat their hot dogs and apple pie, or play bingo, or just take off for home.

July 12th Loyal Orange Lodge Parade

For the July 12th parade, we piled into a school bus and were driven to the town that was hosting the Orange parade. We located the members of the Arthur Orange Lodge, many of whom I knew, and found out what our position would be in the parade.  A man dressed in uniform with a large sword and riding on what was supposed to be a white, riding horse---but was in fact a gray Percheron work horse---would lead the parade as King Billy.

Perhaps a bit of history will be useful here:

From Wikipedia:

“The Battle of the Boyne …was fought in 1690 between two rival claimants of the English, Scottish, and Irish thrones – the Catholic King James and the Protestant King William (who had deposed James in 1688) – across the River Boyne near Drogheda on the east coast of Ireland. The battle, won by William, was a turning point in James' unsuccessful attempt to regain the crown and ultimately helped ensure the continuation of Protestant ascendancy in Ireland.”

In Canada in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, the Orange Lodge was popular and powerful, especially in Ontario. The mayors of Toronto were always Orangemen.

Queen Victoria didn’t want to have anything to do with the Orange-Catholic fights in Canada. When her son, Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, visited Toronto in 1860 Orangemen tried to force the Prince’s carriage under an Orange arch in an attempt to have the monarchy endorse, indirectly, the Orange Lodge. The Prince’s attendants frustrated the attempt. Click here for the full, fascinating story

By 1954, membership in the Orange Lodges had dwindled in Ontario. Previously each town and village would have had its own Orange Parade but by the 1950s a number of Lodges would have to come together to get a reasonably substantial turnout for the July 12th celebration.

When our turn came, we started out with the Arthur Lodge behind us. Two men carried a banner with the name of the Arthur Lodge and behind that marched perhaps thirty men and women, looking smart in white shirts and blouses, with stern, serious faces. They were showing their support, in this public way, for the goals of the Orange Lodge.

When we arrived at the town’s fairgrounds those of us in the band settled in a shady spot, and waited for the speeches to finish so our school bus could take us back to Arthur.

There were a number of speakers all repeating essentially the same message: the members must remember ‘the Glorious Twelve” and make sure that the Catholic Church wasn’t allowed to use its power to destroy the links between Canada and Britain, and the Queen.

The first speakers were not skilled orators. They read their speeches, sometimes haltingly, and the anti-Catholic message, while it was there, was somehow muted. I looked around at our band members, especially at those who were Catholics. There was an occasional wink, suggesting that they had heard worse and were not upset.

Then a local politician took the stage. I had heard him talk at other events and knew that he was a good speaker. I wondered how this man, who needed both Protestant and Catholic votes to stay in office, would handle his speech.

I didn’t have to wait long. He started immediately with a lambasting attack on the Catholic Church and the Pope. I won’t repeat the charges and attacks but will just say that at one point he told the audience that they would have to be prepared to ‘take up the sword’ to protect Canada and its links to Britain and the Queen.

The crowd loved it. The members stood and cheered.

I remember feeling astonished and embarrassed.  I was astonished because the politician had always struck me as a moderate fellow. And I felt embarrassed that the Catholic members of the band were being subjected to this vitriol---I couldn’t look at them.

It was a quiet trip back to Arthur, without the usual horsing around. The politician’s speech had ruined the day for all of us, Catholics and Protestants.

Looking back, I am encouraged that the fears that generated the Orange-Catholic feuds have almost disappeared. And beyond religious differences, I am impressed with how Canadians have learned to accept differences of ethnic origin, colour and dress. For me, one of the major turning points was when the RCMP decided that Sikhs could wear a turban, instead of the usual hat, with the dress uniform.

About the politician: I have intentionally left out details so that his identity is concealed. I am giving him the benefit of the doubt, and hoping that he didn’t really mean the things he said---that he was just doing what he thought politicians should do.

I hope that was it.

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Note:

The next Letter from Virgil will hopefully appear in a couple of weeks.

On September 3rd, I uploaded Posting #11 in the companion Icewine Guru Blog---"Some Thoughts on the US Presidential Election and on the Republican Convention". See http://theicewineguru.blogspot.ca/

POSTING #150

SOME ODDS AND SODS

This 150th Posting (isn’t it amazing how time flies!) contains a few unrelated stories but first I would like to respond to questions from two readers (I always like to hear from readers!).

One reader said he really liked the story about the Russian paintings we bought in Moscow's Izmailovsky Market in the 1990s. “It’s such a good story, why did you wait so long to tell it?”

Another reader had a similar question about the last Posting, the one with stories about artificial insemination. He wondered why I hadn’t told those stories (which he found hilarious---thank you, kind reader!) earlier.

Well, the short and honest answer is that I don’t know.

But I have a theory.

My theory is that part of my brain---let’s call it the Story Editor--- works in the background reviewing events that have happened to Pat and me and our family, trying to figure out which events contain a story worth telling. Next, the Story Editor works on the tales that seem right for the blog by, for example, focusing on the story line, deleting extraneous details, and finding a suitable conclusion.

At some point, the Story Editor gives me a nudge and says that there is a story ready to tell. All I have to do is perform some fact checking (to make sure my memory disk hasn’t become corrupted), and then key the story into the computer.

I have no idea about the logic, assumptions and logarithms that go into the Story Editor’s decision about when to tell a particular story. What I do know is that things don’t go well when I try to over-ride the Story Editor and tell a story that hasn't been worked over by him or her. The story is invariably wooden and uninteresting.

So, I’m afraid the stories will continue to appear in what may seem to be (and is in fact) a haphazard fashion.

Perhaps Dr. Freud could explain it---I can’t.


A Cream-Coloured White Elephant

Friends who were visiting Vietnam a few years ago fell in love with a carved, cream-coloured marble bench with a matching marble coffee table. It was a good-sized bench, about 8 feet long, with arms and a high back that was heavily carved with bunches of grapes and small animals.  They decided that it would fit beautifully into a corner of their back yard.

The asking price was reasonable but our friends were worried about the logistics of getting it to Canada, and the cost (the bench and table together weigh about three-quarters of a ton). The owner of the business said he had experience in shipping marble items to North America. He quoted them a price to ship it from Vietnam to Mississauga, which they found reasonable, and the deal was consummated.

After some months, the bench and table arrived in Mississauga and were trucked to Niagara-on-the-Lake. They were placed in our friends’ backyard under a spreading tree, where they were a source of pleasure for our friends and their guests.

Then, our friends decided to move to another home in town, a home without a yard large enough for the bench and table. When they found a buyer for their house, they offered to leave the marble items but the buyers didn’t want them. Then our friends offered the bench and table---free---to local parks departments, pointing out how useful and attractive they would be in a lookout over the Niagara River, or over Lake Ontario.

The parks officials were initially very interested but when they viewed the bench they became concerned about how to move it. One of them wondered how they could get a crane into the backyard without damaging the trees or the lawn. In the end, the parks people all said ‘no’.

At that point a neighbour said that perhaps they had been wrong in trying to give the bench and table away. Why not try to sell them to someone, perhaps a local winery?

A few phone calls and the owner of a winery came to see the items. After a brief bit of haggling about the price he agreed to buy them. He said he would be back the next day to pick them up.

Our friends wondered how he would load the bench onto a truck.

The next day, the winery owner showed up with a team of--- piano movers! The men put rolling dollies under the bench and wheeled it to the street and up a ramp into the back of their truck. The whole operation took 15 minutes---and no crane.

There seem to be two morals to the story. First, it is sometimes easier to sell a thing than to give it away. And second, when confronted with a problem one shouldn’t jump too quickly to a complicated solution (such as a crane) and instead one ought to try to think outside the box for a simpler, more elegant solution (such as piano movers).


They Stole What?

One morning during the recent heat wave, the owners of a high-end antique shop in Virgil unlocked the store and found that the air conditioner wasn’t working. The temperature inside the store was much higher than that outside.

The technician they called reported that someone had drained the refrigerant from the air conditioner’s compressor. The owners checked the outside security camera and found a video of a middle-aged man on a scooter driving up to their A/C unit, calmly draining the refrigerant into a steel bottle, and then driving off.

When the story was reported in newspapers and TV---with the news that there was a video of the culprit---a man phoned the antique store and offered to pay for the stolen refrigerant. The owners passed the culprit’s phone number to the police. A man in Niagara Falls who works with an air conditioning service has been arrested.

Apparently, the new, environmentally acceptable refrigerants (one of the recommended ones is called R410) that replace the old Freon R 22 (that was destroying the ozone layer) are much more expensive. Thus there is an incentive for people to steal the new refrigerants.

A week or so after this theft, we came back from a trip to find the house unusually hot. When I checked, I found that the air conditioner had stopped working. I tried to re-start it (by checking for a circuit breaker problem etc.), but it wouldn’t start.

While we waited for the technician to arrive, we thought about the antique store. Had the arrested person been released on bail and was he now toodling around Virgil on his scooter stealing refrigerant to pay for the fine that he was likely to get? Or were there ‘copy-cat’ thieves at work?

The technician, who lives in Port Colborne, hadn’t heard about the refrigerant theft at the antique shop. He had heard about thieves stealing copper tubing from air conditioners and about vandals releasing refrigerant into the air but no thefts of refrigerant.

After checking the system he found that our refrigerant was a little low and he added two pounds (at $100 a pound---that stuff IS expensive!).  He didn’t rule out the possibility of theft but thought it was more likely that a previous technician had not screwed the valve cap on securely.

So we don’t know whether we were the victims of a refrigerant thief.

Meanwhile, we have noticed that Virgil has a surprising number of middle-aged men with electric scooters.

They should know that we are keeping an eye on them.

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As a sidebar to that story, I saw an article that reported that the car most likely to be stolen in the US is not the Cadillac Escalade or something fancy like that but is in fact the 1994 Honda Accord. Apparently thieves love the Accord’s weak anti-theft systems.

We had a Honda Accord in the 1980s when we lived in Ottawa and can vouch for its vulnerability to theft. During dinner one day, we heard a noise in our driveway and went out to investigate. The door lock had been popped and the car was ready to be driven off, under our noses, so to speak. The police said we were lucky.

On another occasion we weren’t so lucky. The Accord was stolen from in front of our house. The police recovered it a few days later---in fine shape except for a banana stuffed in the tape deck!

I think air conditioner manufacturers are going to have to follow the example of the automobile companies and start installing anti-refrigerant-theft measures.

Who would have thought we would come to this!

 Kids Say the Darndest Things

Years ago the Canadian-born Art Linkletter had a popular TV program called “Kids Say the Darndest Things” in which he interviewed children, usually with hilarious results.

The program is long dead (Bill Cosby carried on the program for a time) but we are enjoying the comments of a handsome and charming  two-year old fellow we know (he’ll be three in October). Here are a couple of his ‘darndest things’.

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Recently, he and his parents went for a short hike in the woods in Caledon with the young man on his dad’s shoulders. The young fellow kept bellowing over and over again "EEEEEEEEEEEEEE". When his mother asked him what he was doing, he said with a big smile, “I’m talking to my echo."

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At lunch one day, the young man said he was ready for dessert even though there were a couple of small, raw carrots on his plate.

The father said he could have dessert after he had eaten the carrots.

The young man replied that the carrots hurt his teeth.

The father agreed that the carrots were a bit thicker than normal but added “They will be good for your teeth.”

There was a brief pause (perhaps two beats) and the young man replied, “My teeth don’t care”.


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Note:

I am hoping that I soon will be able to get back to a more regular schedule for the Letter from Virgil Postings. In the meantime, the next Posting should appear in a couple of weeks.

I am also hoping that Posting #11 in the companion Icewine Guru Blog will appear in the next little while. http://theicewineguru.blogspot.ca/

POSTING #149

A CHANGE OF PACE

The last few postings have been about the War of 1812.

I am sure there are many readers who have had quite enough of stories about the War--- at least for the moment---so I thought I would tell some stories about a totally unrelated subject.

Artificial insemination.

How much more unrelated can one get!

I am not entirely sure why I feel like writing about artificial insemination (AI) but I suspect that the many recent articles in the press about fertility treatments are to blame.

Anyway, here goes….


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Freedom of Choice

In the fall of 1959 I was in BC’s Fraser Valley visiting an Artificial Insemination centre with a small group of other Immigration Foreign Service Officers.

Sitting in a conference room, the manager explained that it was a prosperous business, sending semen from high quality, pure bred bulls all over the world. He described the type of employees they had and then talked about the sort of immigrant workers they would be interested in recruiting.

We then accompanied him to a barn where the semen was collected. As we walked along a centre passageway, he explained that the donor bulls would be brought in along the same passageway. When the bull got to the end of the passageway it would sniff the air and look to the stall on the right and to the one on the left, in both of which an animal had been tethered.

Once the bull had made a decision about which animal it would like to mount, it would strut over to the stall and prepare for action. At this point a technician would slip a heated and lubricated rubber sleeve over the bull’s member. After some thrusts, a quantity of semen would be shot into the sleeve. The semen would then be diluted with distilled water, divided into samples and frozen.

That seemed clear enough and we prepared to leave the barn.

The manager stopped us by saying that there was a sidelight on the collection of semen that might be of interest to us.

He said that before bringing a bull down the passageway, their custom was to put a cow ‘in heat’ in the stall on the right, and a bull in the stall on the left.

He said that visitors were always puzzled about why a bull would choose to mount another bull.

 But some bulls just did.

In the end, as he said it didn’t matter to him whether the bull headed left or right, the centre was still going to get its semen in the rubber sleeve.

“And”, he added with a smile, “We are a democracy after all”.


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The Turkey Trot

In the 1970s I was on a training course with a number of public servants including Albert (not his real name) who was a research biologist with Agriculture Canada, and a very serious fellow. One evening Albert and I and a couple of others went to a busy bar for a beer.

Albert said that the bar reminded him of one he had visited in Washington when he was attending an international conference of research biologists. Four or five of the biologists escaped to the bar after a day of papers and presentations.

Albert then launched into a story.

“After we got our beer and had chit-chatted a bit about the conference, I started to tell them about the work I had been doing in artificial insemination with turkeys. AI with turkeys was new at that time and the other biologists were interested in what Canada was doing.

“I told them how we ran an experiment. We brought a group of tom turkeys into a room and lined them up---as long as there are no female turkeys around tom turkeys are pretty docile. Then we would take the first turkey, massage its member and catch the semen in a test tube. Then on to the next in line.

“Things went well until we discovered that some of the toms that had been ‘done’ were going to the back of the line, ready to be done again. We finally had to paint a mark on the toms that had been done.

“It was at that point that I realized that all the conversation in the bar had stopped. Everyone was looking at me and listening.

“It was really strange”, Albert finished.

I started to laugh---thinking he was being ironic---but when I looked at Albert I realized that he really didn’t understand why a serious discussion of an experiment testing artificial insemination in turkeys would be a conversation stopper in a Washington bar.

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Before Artificial Insemination


This is a story that my father relished telling--- within the family---about a scandal in the Ontario Government sometime in the 1920s or 1930s. Unfortunately, I can’t remember which party was in power during this scandal but since my dad was a closet Conservative---as a member of Ontario Provincial Police he had of course to keep his political views to himself--- I am pretty sure the scandal happened during a Liberal regime or perhaps during the time the United Farmers of Ontario Party was in power (1919-1923). I don’t think dad would have joked about a Conservative scandal.

I am hoping that a reader with an historical bent will be able to tell me when the scandal happened.

Anyway, the government of the day decided that it should help improve the quality of dairy herds in Ontario. Since this was before the time of artificial insemination, it meant bringing in a bull from a fine overseas herd. The plan was to send a team of experts to Britain to find a really good young bull that could be brought to Ontario and used to sire high quality calves.

According to the story, the experts found such a bull in Scotland. It had a most impressive pedigree and was a superb looking animal. The Scots said they were reluctant to sell the bull but were finally persuaded to part with it in return for a goodly sum of money.

The team accompanied the bull back to Ontario and proudly presented it to a farmers’ organization. The farmers all agreed that it was a fine looking bull, and there was some friendly competition about which one would be the first to have a cow serviced by the new bull.

The bull was carted from farm to farm to do his duty, which he did with commendable aplomb.

And then the farmers waited.

And waited.

Weeks passed and it became clear that although he was a fine looking bull he was, as they say, shooting blanks.

And then the Official Opposition bombarded the government with taunts about having been gulled by canny Scots who had sold the Ontario Government a sterile bull.

‘Successful’ scandals are always those that the public can understand. Ontario was still very much an agricultural economy in the 1920s and 1930s and everyone could understand about a bull that had been purchased at great cost, but just couldn't produce.


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Note:

A new Letter from Virgil Posting will hopefully appear during the next couple of weeks.

Posting #10 in the companion Icewine Guru Blog was uploaded on August 6, 2012. In it the Guru expands on the reasons why Obama may win in a landslide. http://theicewineguru.blogspot.ca/

POSTING #148

CATCHING UP

The last few weeks have been crazy here but there is a lull at the moment and it gives me a chance to tell a few stories.

Declaration of War

On June 18, 1812, US President James Madison signed a declaration of war against the United Kingdom and its dependencies (e.g. Upper Canada). Many historical documents are lengthy and boring but the declaration of war is neither. I think it is useful to read it and realize just how threatened Upper and Lower Canada were in June of 1812. (Click to enlarge.)

For several years, legions of Niagara-on-the-Lake volunteers have been preparing to commemorate that event. They’ve been attending lectures on the history of the war, and on matters such as the dress and menus of the time, and, above all, they’ve been planning and organizing.

And now, all that preparation is being put to the test.

And the community is more than passing the test!

There were many activities in the days around June 18th, but I will focus on only a few of them.

The Brock Ball 

History (or legend) has it that word of the declaration of war reached Niagara-on-the-Lake several days after Madison signed it. A breathless messenger burst into a dinner being hosted by General Brock at the Officers Mess at Fort George, and announced to the General and his guests (British and Canadian officers, along with American officers from Fort Niagara) that war had been declared.

General Brock thanked the messenger and then told his guests that he was not prepared to have a declaration of war interfere with a fine dinner. Fighting could start the next day. He led his British and Canadian guests in a singing of God Save the King, while the Americans toasted President Madison.

The guests resumed their eating and drinking.

At the end of the meal, General Brock escorted the Americans to their boats for the short trip across the Niagara River to Fort Niagara. He shook hands with them and is supposed to have said that although they were parting as friends, the next time they met it would be as enemies.

Our Museum, the Niagara Historical Society Museum, decided to organize a re-enactment of that dinner on June 16, 2012 (a few days before anniversary of the signing of the declaration of war, but who is counting). There were 200 tickets sold, mostly to people from the Niagara area but there were guests from around Ontario and a few from the US, for example there were guests from Tennessee and Pennsylvania. The Ontario Lieutenant Governor and various federal, provincial and local officials also attended.

Pat and I travelled to Fort George in a horse and carriage, which we shared with a couple from Toronto, Don and Kathy.

Here is how we looked as we prepared to enter the tent for the dinner.

This picture is courtesy of Ruth Bolton.

 If you will permit me, I would like to say a word or two about our costumes. 

Pat is wearing an outfit, which she made herself working from an1812 pattern. The russet-coloured linen dress is Empire Style trimmed with satin ribbons on the sleeves and under the bodice, and has many deep pleats in the back of the skirt. It is ankle length at the front and dips to floor-length at the back. Note the bell-shaped finish at the elbow. Because this was a formal occasion, Pat also wore an ‘over-dress’ with a taffeta bodice and chiffon skirt.

In 1812, women in Upper Canada attending a formal dance or dinner would wear a small tiara in their hair or a band to which they attached a feather arrangement. Pat chose the feather arrangement. Her jewellery was typical of the period: long, dangling earrings, an amber necklace and an amethyst broach. She carried a black-beaded feticule (a small purse) and an antique fan with a russet tassel.

My dress is formal Scottish from the period. I had originally planned to wear a kilt but found that the wool scratched me something awful. Instead, I opted for what the Scots call ‘trews’, trousers made from the family tartan, which some experts believe predate the kilt. A Toronto firm imported Hunter tartan material from Britain and tailored the trews, lining the legs so the wool didn’t make me feel itchy. My top half consists of a dress shirt, with studs, black tie, a waistcoat and a Prince Charlie jacket (the 17th century Prince Charlie!).

Here is my non-formal 1812 costume, if you are interested. (I should point out that we1812 volunteers are encouraged to select a persona. My persona is that of a retired surveyor, while Rick is playing a Methodist minister, Tom a sheriff and so on.) Here is my concept of what a retired surveyor would wear when he came to town in the summer.

Notice the 'drop-front' cotton trousers. There were no 'flies' in 1812, just lots of buttons. One doesn't leave bathroom calls to the last minute. Pat found the cane in a local antique shop. I have a green wool frock coat, with tails, for cooler weather.

Getting back to the Brock Ball, two hundred of us assembled in a huge tent inside Fort George. The weather was perfect and the sides of the 100 foot long tent were rolled up.
 

Volunteers from the Niagara Horticultural Society prepared elaborate flower arrangements for each of the tables. Some old friends from Grimsby were among the volunteers. Pat kept the spirits of the volunteers up with coffee, tea and treats. In the background one can see Fort George's palisades.

And we began to eat and drink--- and eat and drink, and eat and drink, etc. etc.

Chefs from the Queen's Landing Hotel prepared this menu from 1812 recipes. Every item on the menu was brought to the tables, platter after platter. Sorry about the wine stains---I think it was the Port at the end of the meal. (Click to enlarge.)

After each course, we stood up, walked around, listened to a quartet from Music Niagara and talked.

Part way through the meal, a breathless messenger broke in and shouted to ‘our’ General Brock that war had been declared. The good General told us to continue dining. We sang God Save the King and it is possible that some of the (few) Americans present toasted President Madison but I didn’t see them.

In 1812, dinners began with three or four tablecloths placed on top of each other. There were no dinner napkins, so the guests wiped their hands and mouths on the table cloth. After each course the servers removed the top, soiled, tablecloth.

In our case, we were provided with napkins for the first two courses. Then the napkins and the top table cloth were removed. For the last courses, we did what the 1812ers did---wiped our hands and mouths on the table cloth. It was an odd experience.

Dinner began at 6 PM and we finally struggled (waddled?) off home between 11 and 12.

A wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime, experience!


Fort George

On June 18th we went with some visiting relatives to Fort George for the official commemoration of the Declaration of War. Parks Canada and the Friends of Fort George put on a fine show with a fife and drum concert, Native American drumming, hoop dancing and singing, followed by musket and cannon firing. The evening ended with the world premiere of a spectacular sound and light production about the War of 1812. The sound and light show will be shown at the Fort on Fridays, Saturdays and Mondays from mid-July to October.

My cousins said they enjoyed the show mightily but the one from Saskatchewan couldn’t get used to the fact that as we walked around the Fort it wasn’t necessary to watch for gopher holes.


The Tall Ships Are Coming

Since moving to Virgil, we have learned that if we have to get to an appointment in St. Catharines or Grimsby during the Welland Canal season it is better to cross the canal via the Skyway Bridge. If we aren’t in a rush it is more fun to cross the canal at one of the locks, in hopes that a bridge will be up and we will have a chance to watch as one of the ocean-going vessels or an enormous ‘laker’ threads its way carefully into a lock.

The other evening we were coming home via the Carleton Lock and struck gold.  Coming toward the lock was a tall ship with young men and women standing on the deck and hanging from the riggings.

Tall ship just entering the Carleton Lock on its way from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario.

We couldn't catch the name of the ship,but the flag flying from the top of the centre mast said, “Never Surrender the Ship”. We assume the ship will be taking part in The Navy of 1812: Sailors on the Lakes event which is being held on July 14 and 15 near Fort George. There will be 5 tall ships (4 Brigantines and a schooner-1812 Squadron) and 22 longboats with 300 naval re-enactors.

Yet another 1812 event!

For a full list of upcoming events, please check out NOTL's Bicentennial website.

The Tragically Hip

The popular Kingston Ontario band, The Tragically Hip, held two concerts in Niagara-on-the-Lake--- on Friday, June 29th and Saturday, June 30th. Not being great rock fans, we decided to give the concerts a pass.

On Saturday night our curiosity got the better of us. How were the organizers (and the town!) going to cope with the 20,000-30,000 fans who were expected?

Along with hundreds of ‘eavesdroppers’ we found a spot near the VIP entrance and settled in to watch (through gaps in the fence) and listen.

It is not our taste in music but the fans obviously loved it.

Staid old Niagara-on-the-Lake will never be the same.




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Note:

I hope that the next Letter from Virgil will appear in a couple of weeks, but things are still hectic so I can’t promise that.

There is a new Posting (#9) in the companion Icewine Guru Blog, in which the Guru offers his comments on the US Supreme Court decision on the health care mandate. He is feeling a little smug since he predicted the Court would find the health care legislation constitutional. The Guru also makes some startling comments about the possible outcome of the US presidential election.

POSTING #147

APOLOGIES ARE IN ORDER

I’m sorry I wasn’t able to prepare a Posting for May 27th as I had promised.

As we used to say in Arthur after a tough hockey game, I was ‘out of poof’.

Preparations for the War of 1812 Bicentennial, and some family activities completely overwhelmed me and I just wasn’t able to focus on the blog.

The next few months are going to be hectic as we mark the Declaration of War in mid-June and then get ready to commemorate the Battle of Queenston Heights and the death of General Brock in October.

Given all of that, I think it is unrealistic for me to try to have a new Posting each Sunday between now and mid-October.

However, I have a long list of blog subjects, and whenever I have some spare time I will upload a Posting.

You may wish to log on from time to time to see if there is anything new. Or, if you wish you could give me your email address and I will send you a note whenever a new Posting is uploaded. johnpathunter@gmail.com.

We'll see you from time to time this summer!

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I tried to find the expression ‘out of poof’ in some dictionaries, but no luck. I decided it must be an ‘Arthurism’ but then Google found this comment from a woman in a support forum for pregnant women:

“anyone else huffin and puffin when they're fairly active?

i'm so out of poof! i wish i lived in a rambler. house work day, up and down the stairs, vacumming, and laundry and cleaning the kitchen with steam mop and dishes. nothing out of the ordinary, or too strenuous, but i felt out of breath by the end of it. i gotta lay off those potato chips.. i'm sweatin' like a sinner in church.

anyone else struggling with daily activies while pregnant?”

Google is fun!!

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Note:

In Posting #8 in the companion Icewine Guru Blog, the Guru offers his prediction on the US Supreme Court decision on the health care mandate. He and the Professor and their wives then discuss religion and politics. If you would like to read the Posting, please click on: http://theicewineguru.blogspot.ca/

POSTING #146

“YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN”
(Title of a novel by Thomas Wolfe.)

A week ago we were in Richmond Hill buying clothes for my Bicentennial 1812 ‘persona’ (I am going to be a retired surveyor who was born in Scotland in 1736, immigrated with his family to Philadelphia, trained there as a surveyor, then left the US after the 1776 revolutionary war to settle in Niagara, in Upper Canada. A future Posting will describe the clothes Pat and I will be wearing, and include some photos---you won’t want to miss that!)

After we had finished at the period-clothing shop and had had lunch we decided to carry on to Aurora to see how Pat’s hometown had changed, and most importantly, to have a look at the house in which she had spent her teenage years, at 100 Kennedy St. West. (Pat spent the first years of her life in a house at 26 Yonge St. but in 1950 her parents built the house on Kennedy.)

Her mother designed the house, producing detailed sketches of both the interior and exterior, sketches that she and Pat’s dentist dad, Dr. E.J. Henderson (known as ‘Doc’or ‘Hendy’ to everyone in Aurora) pored over in the evenings in the Yonge St. house. An architect, who was mightily impressed by the drawings, smoothed out some technical issues, and work began on the house.

The house, situated in the middle of a five acre lot, was built with top class materials---carefully selected stone for the exterior and thick rich oak for the floors and stairs.

As we drove up Highway 11 from Richmond Hill, Pat recalled how her family had moved into the house when it was only partly completed, and how they had to put up with workmen under their feet as the finishing touches were installed. She particularly remembered the incessant noise of carpenters driving walnut pegs into the thick and wide oak floor planks.

No nails or screws---pegs! The house was built to last.

We drove around the town, saving the house to the end

Although there were many changes, Pat was impressed with how many landmarks still existed.

There was the Ardill block on the corner of Yonge and Wellington where her dad had his dental office, on the second floor. The wall on the Wellington St. side now sports a huge two-story high “Oh Canada’ mural depicting figures from Canadian history, from Sir John A. Macdonald to Foster Hewitt and Marilyn Bell

Pat's father's dental office faced onto Wellington St., through the mural that now covers that  side of the building.

There was her public school that now seems to be a cultural centre, and the substantial protestant churches (there was no Catholic church in Aurora when Pat was growing up---Catholics had to go to Newmarket).

Pat attended the Aurora Public school from Grade 1 to Grade 7, when the school was closed and replaced with a new one. Pat took her Grade 8 at the Aurora High School. During her High School years, the old high school was closed and also replaced with a new one. The 1950s was a decade of great school construction in Ontario!

 Then we turned onto Kennedy St. West.

Pat pointed out ‘Colonel Dan’s’ house on the left as we drove along. Pat thinks that Colonel Dan had been in the military and the RCMP. He was famous to our generation as the Mountie on a horse in some of our Ontario textbooks. The house, probably built in the late 1800s or early 1900s, is being beautifully maintained.

As we drove further along Kennedy Street, Pat pointed out houses that had been replaced by new, modern, large homes. Although the old houses had had a certain early-1900s charm, they didn’t have the quiet elegance and quality of Pat’s family home. Their disappearance wasn’t a great loss to the history or culture of the town.

Pat's bedroom was behind the gable on the far left of the picture. We aren't sure when this picture was taken but the tall TV  antenna suggests that it was probably in the 1950s or 1960s.

As we got close to 100 Kennedy, we recalled that one of our sons had passed by his grandparent’s house two years ago and said that the house seemed to be in good shape and well-maintained.

There was a fairly high hedge in front of 100 so we weren’t able to get a look at the house until we stopped at the gap made by the driveway.

We looked in but didn't see Pat’s house!

Instead we saw a broad, two-story, stone-faced building with a copper turret, and a portico with pillars.

We checked the street number again. Yes, it said ‘100’.

What had happened to the house built so lovingly by Pat’s parents?

Had someone built around the old house, and incorporated it into the new dwelling?

Or, had they simply torn down Pat’s house to make room for this mansion?

The sentimental journey back to the family home had turned sour.

We headed back to Virgil, puzzled and troubled.

Some research showed us that 100 Kennedy was bought for $1.5 million in 2010 (we guess it was just after our son had seen it) and then the house was demolished.

The new dwelling was built in 2011. We don’t have a photo of it but there is a Google satellite view of the new house.

As one zooms in, it is clear that the house is huge, with a number of connected parts, one of which may be an indoor pool. In the backyard there seem to be terraces with an outdoor pool.

Further research showed that neighbouring houses have sold in the three to four million dollar range, so the new owners could afford to pay $1.5 million for the house and land, demolish the house, and build a new home without exceeding the going-price in the neighbourhood.

A millionaires’ row, indeed.

Pat’s father clearly knew what he was doing when he bought a lot on Kennedy St. West.

At first we felt annoyed, and even angry, at what the new owners had done but as we learned a little about them our view started to change. The couple is prominent in business in the area and very active in fundraising for local institutions, including the Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket.

It was just the shock, really.

And the realization that is forced upon us constantly as we age---that tempus does indeed fugit.

And what do we make of the claim in the title of Thomas Wolfe’s novel--- used as the heading for this Posting--- that “You Can’t Go Home Again”?

The answer seems to be that it IS possible to ‘go home’ but that the home you knew may not be there.

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An interesting sidebar on the story.

The new owners of 100 Kennedy West appear to own an office building on Yonge Street that is exactly on the spot (26 Yonge St.) where Pat spent the first 14 years of her life.

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See you on May 27, 2012 for Posting #147 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please drop me a line at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

In Posting #8 in the companion Icewine Guru Blog, the Guru offers his prediction on the US Supreme Court decision on the health care mandate. He and the Professor and their wives then discuss religion and politics. If you would like to read the Posting, please click on: http://theicewineguru.blogspot.ca/

POSTING #145

NOTE: The next Posting, #146, will appear on May 20th, not May 13th, to give me a chance to do some volunteer work on the 1812 Bicentennial celebrations and to get our yard in shape. Sorry about that!

The Golden Dog/Le Chien d’or

As in the 2007 comedy, ‘Bucket List’, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, I have my own list of things I want to do before I get hit by the Big Bus. Things like visiting some new places abroad, and re-visiting some old ones.

I also have a collection of ‘shoulds’, things that a part of me feels I ought to do before it is too late. The ‘shoulds’ aren’t on any list. Instead, they’re stuffed---by another part of me---into a big sack, helter skelter. In my mind’s eye I see the sack as having a pull-string that tries to keep the bag shut, so that my remaining days won’t be bothered by these ‘shoulds’.

One of my ‘shoulds’ for a long time has been to read the 19th Century Canadian novel, ‘The Golden Dog/Le Chien d’or’ by William Kirby. An English professor at Queen’s argued that we couldn’t claim to be literate as Canadians if we hadn’t read Kirby’s novel.

Photograph of William Kirby, with his signature, ca 1865

I looked at it, flipped through the 600 plus pages, and decided that it was something for the ‘should’ sack, not for the ‘bucket list’.

Now here we are in the Niagara region, and every time we go to the restaurant at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Golf Club (it is open to non-members, like us) we pass the house at 130 Front Street where William Kirby lived from 1857 to his death in 1906.

Plaque in front of 130 Front Street.

And we notice the plaque that tells about The Golden Dog.

And I have always felt a twinge of guilt.

A side view of 130 Front Street.

Niagara-on-the-Lake has its tourist carriages. This scene in front of the Kirby House could have been from the 1800s, except for the people's clothes---and the ‘No Parking’ sign!

But I have managed to keep those twinges of guilt under control until recently.

A few weeks ago, Pat came home from her volunteer work at the Niagara Historical Society Museum where she is helping describe the Museum’s artifacts. She talked about a plaque she had been examining that depicted the legend of The Golden Dog.

Pat is still not sure about the history of this plaque, which is designed to hang on a wall. She thinks it could have been produced in the 1970s, perhaps to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Golden Dog in 1877, or perhaps for tourists to Quebec. Her research continues. I would like to thank Sarah Maloney, Managing Director of the Niagara Historical Museum, for permission to include a photo of the Museum’s plaque.

Pat’s research had begun with questions such as when was the plaque made, by whom, probable value etc. but soon led into questions about the subject depicted on it, The Golden Dog.

At that point, my guilt got the better of me; I decided that the time had come to read the bloody novel. The Museum had a tattered copy of it on its ‘Sale’ table, which I bought.

The book, printed in 1914, has lost its back cover but all its 624 pages are intact.

I started like a swimmer going into the cold waters of the Atlantic off the coast of New England---very gingerly. But as I got immersed in the tale, I found that it was getting harder and harder to put it down.

After more than 600 pages, I didn’t want it to end.

I don’t have the time, energy, space, or (more importantly) skill to do justice to the plot of The Golden Dog or to the life of its remarkable author, William Kirby. (For more information on both, please click here for an article written by Mary Jane Edwards for ‘The Dictionary of Canadian Biography on Line’. )

Let me just sketch in a few details.

The title of the book comes from a sculpted plaque created by a farmer in 17th century France in memory of his dog, which was killed by a neighbour as part of a feud between the two farmers. The plaque showed a dog gnawing on a human bone while the words promised revenge for the killing of the dog.

A settler from the part of France where the feud had taken place had a gilded replica of the plaque placed above the doorway of his house in Quebec City. William Kirby saw the plaque on a visit to Quebec, was fascinated with its theme of revenge and decided to weave it into a novel about the turbulent period in New France before the conquest of the colony by the British in 1759. (I understand that the plaque is now mounted on a post office in Quebec City where lovers of The Golden Dog novel can photograph it.)

Using the history of the time and some Quebec folk stories he created a novel of romance, love, hate, bravery, lechery (warning: the scenes of debauchery at the Palace of the Intendant Bigot are graphic) and ultimately tragedy.

The novel moves along at a leisurely,19th century pace---think of Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’---with time for rich descriptions of life in New France for the habitants and the upper classes, and some philosophising about life, but the author keeps the plot moving along with more than enough suspense to keep the reader involved.

As I read the novel I kept asking myself how Kirby, an immigrant from England with limited education, could have managed to create such a detailed tapestry of 18th century Quebec life. He wrote like a graduate from Oxford or Cambridge but wasn’t. It reminded me a little of the controversy about whether Shakespeare could have authored the plays attributed to him.

As I was finishing the novel, Pat discovered---thanks to Google---that a friend of ours whom we hadn’t seen for some time, Mary Jane Edwards, Distinguished Research Professor and director of the Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts (CEECT) at Carleton University, was the world’s leading expert on the novel. She had just completed a scholarly edition of The Golden Dog.

I bought a copy of the new edition as soon as it was published, and found that the section on Kirby solved my question about how he managed to write The Golden Dog.

Kirby who was born in Kingston-on-Hull in England in 1817, moved in 1832 to Cincinnati with his parents---his father was a tanner by trade. William was sent to a school started by a well-educated Scottish teacher, Alexander Kinmont, who instructed his ‘scholars’ in “the various branches of Classical, Mathematical and English education”. Kirby learned to read and write in French and Latin and was challenged to study books on a variety of subjects.

After a few, obviously formative years in this school, Kirby followed his father into the tannery trade. However, in 1839 he decided to move to the Canadas because of talk in the US, from Fenians and others, about a possible invasion of the Canadas. As a strong supporter of the British monarchy, he decided to move north to help repel any invaders.

In the new edition (on the left), the novel has 755 pages, not the 624 of the version I read. In addition the new edition has several hundred pages of introduction and explanatory notes

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Mary Jane’s version includes William Kirby’s entire novel, unlike the 19th century versions, which had been abridged to reduce the cost of printing. It also includes an introduction that provides a wealth of information about the writing of the novel, the various attempts to have it published, the eventual publishing of it, the fights over royalties (Kirby's total royalties amounted to only somewhere between $100-$200!), the reception the novel has had since its publication, and on and on.

The book also includes wonderfully helpful Explanatory Notes that explain some of Kirby’s references to history, mythology and the literature of various countries.  (Happily, the notes are not flagged in the text with those annoying and distracting footnote/endnote numbers. If the reader wants more information about something on, say, page 455, it is easy to flip to the back of the book where the notes are organized by page and line.)

Although, I treasure Mary Jane’s edition, I am glad that I read the novel before reading ‘about’ it. The tale is so well told that it carried me along even though some parts of it puzzled me. Now I have the joy of going back and reading parts that weren’t in my tattered version, and re-reading the parts that puzzled me, using Mary Jane’s introduction and explanatory notes.

If I have whetted your appetite and you feel you would like to add the Golden Dog to your ‘bucket list’, I would suggest getting Mary Jane’s version, rather than reading one of the older versions. I would also suggest rushing into the story---as though you are dashing into the Atlantic---without reading the introduction. Leave that until later.

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So, the Queen’s Professor was right---as usual--- and I was wrong. I just wish, however, that he had told us that The Golden Dog would be a fun read.

I am happy that through Pat’s work at the Museum I was encouraged to pull The Golden Dog from my ‘should’ sack, and read it.

And I am so grateful that Mary Jane Edwards has poured her body and soul into this monumental edition.

In her book, Mary Jane says that she grew up with The Golden Dog. Her mother, an immigrant from Britain, discovered it when she was searching for books that would help her understand her new country. She loved the novel, re-reading it often. I am sure she would be proud of her daughter’s accomplishment.


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See you on May 20, 2012 for Posting #146 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please drop me a line at johnpathunter@gmail.com.

Note:

In Posting #8 in the companion Icewine Guru Blog, the Guru offers his prediction on the US Supreme Court decision on the health care mandate. He and the Professor and their wives then discuss religion and politics. If you would like to read the Posting, please click on: http://theicewineguru.blogspot.ca/