Update on Project Niagara (aka Tanglewood North); University Reunions; Smith College Reunion; Queen’s University Reunion; Reunions and Aging; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Update on Project Niagara (aka Tanglewood North)
In Posting #7, February 2009, I outlined the plan that would use some lakefront land (now owned by the Federal Government but which could be transferred to the town) to create an outdoor, international music festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake. I explained that the proposal had both supporters and detractors in the community, the latter concerned mainly about the impact the increased traffic would have on the quality of life in the town.
A community meeting was held this week to consider a consultant’s report on the traffic issue. Many of the participants argued that the study, which was funded by proponents of Project Niagara, was skewed in favour of the Project.
An opponent of the Project has made a proposal to the town council that the land in question should be converted into an eco-park, with a beach and forests.
Democracy is wonderful---but messy.
I’ll let you know what happens.
University Reunions
Pat and I both graduated 50 years ago, in 1959, Pat from Smith College in Northampton MA, while I graduated from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
We started receiving information in 2008 about 50 year reunions that both colleges were planning. Initially, we were uncertain about whether to attend the reunions but later decided to go.
The Smith 50th Reunion was held May 15-17, while the Queen’s one was held the following weekend, May 22-24. In between the reunions we squeezed in a mini-holiday at a favourite resort, in Manchester, Vermont.
We had a wonderful time at each reunion. They were carefully planned and the hospitality was extraordinary.
There was a mellowness among the classmates that was refreshing. At earlier reunions, there seemed to be a certain competitiveness about careers, children and achievements, but at these 50 year reunions, we were just people, happy to see each other again, with nothing to prove.
Each reunion produced some great stories that I would love to share with you but I’m afraid that reunions are like Vegas, what happens there, stays there.
Instead of stories, I’ll restrict myself to some random observations and comments that I hope you will enjoy.
Let’s start with Smith College.
Smith College Reunion
In Posting #13, March 29, 2009, I told about a stroll in the park that Pat invited me to take with her. She walked better than she had in decades thanks to two total-knee-replacement operations.
It was after that success that Pat began to think seriously about attending the Smith reunion. Before that, she was worried about the Ivy Day Parade. Here is Wikipedia’s accurate but dry-as-dust account of Ivy Day:
“Ivy Day, the day before Commencement, is the high point of reunion and a significant event for seniors as well. Junior ushers lead a parade through campus, carrying vines of ivy to be planted by the departing seniors as a symbol of their lifelong connection to the college. Alumnae (and, often, their children), dressed in white and wearing sashes in their class color, line up in reverse order by class along both sides of the route. Seniors line up nearest the end of the parade route, wearing traditional white outfits and each carrying a single red rose. All cheer each alumnae class as it marches past, then fall in to join the end of the parade. Many alumnae classes carry signs with humorous poems or slogans, or hold balloons or wear hats in their class color. Ivy Day festivities conclude in the Quad, where the seniors plant their ivy and speakers address alumnae on the progress of fundraising and the state of the college.”
The Wikipedia account doesn’t begin to capture the emotional significance of this ceremony, of the feeling of sisterhood as the old Smithies and the about-to-be graduated students walk together, showing love and respect for the values and traditions of their remarkable college.
Pat wanted to join the walk but would her new knees carry her?
Now, Smithies who can’t walk can be pushed in a wheelchair by bright, enthusiastic undergraduates.
But Pat was not going to be pushed. She would walk or not go.
Finally, Pat decided to go.
The weather was excellent for the walk---the temperature was pleasant and the humidity was low.
Pat teamed up with a fellow ‘59er and they set off.
They finally reached the quadrangle but couldn’t take their seats immediately because of a backup.
Standing still for long periods is hard on new knees, but the knees came through. Pat took her seat for the speeches looking radiant and triumphant.
Later on, in Vermont, she climbed some hills and at Queen’s she wandered all over the campus.
We are still shaking our heads at what a difference the new knees have made.
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The current economic and financial problems were referred to often at Smith. The College’s endowment fund has suffered greatly and the President, Carol Christ (pronounced Crist), reportedly had to trim the school’s budget by some $30 million dollars through savings and cuts.
Interestingly, she reported to the reunion folks that in finding ways to make up the shortfall, she had studied how Smith had survived the Great Depression.
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Despite these financial problems, Smith is continuing its efforts to seek out and give talented but underprivileged young women from the US and abroad a chance at a first class education.
At the reunion ceremony, a young woman from Afghanistan, Shaharzad Akbar, told about her gratitude to Smith. She had been plucked out of a tribal community and through the generosity of Smith and private donors was about to graduate.
Her account had the large audience in tears.
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The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter’s famous phrase “creative destructiveness of capitalism” is being played out on the main streets of Northampton.
I saw three large bank buildings---solid stone structures designed to convince the investor that they were a safe place for deposits---that had been converted to other uses.
One was occupied by a web design company.
Another was being used by a home and office design firm.
The third had been taken over by an outfitter for climbing and other outdoor sports.
I wonder if the new businesses will flourish, or will we see them replaced by still other businesses as the process of creative destructiveness carries on?
Incidentally, I saw a Canadian banking interloper in a strip of modest stores, a branch of TD Banknorth. The branch had the same corporate look as our TD offices, and seemed busy.
Several people at Smith, when they found we were Canadian, congratulated us on our banking system and on our relatively good record for public deficits and debt.
Our replies tended to be of ‘the fingers-crossed’ and ‘so-far-so good’ variety.
Queen’s University
When I left Queen’s in 1959, there were about 3000 full-time undergraduate students. I remember the Vice-Principal, Dr. J.A. Corry, saying that the university was an ideal size. It had the principal faculties that a comprehensive university should possess: Arts and Science, Engineering, Medicine and Law. And yet it was small enough to foster close relationships between students and faculty. He said that the university would fight to stay at that size.
It wasn’t long before Queen’s began to surge in size, prodded by the provincial government that was worried about how to educate the baby boomers who were beginning to leave high schools across the province.
By 2008, the number of full-time undergraduates had climbed to about 14,000.
Smith College had about 2300 full-time undergraduates in 1959 but by contrast with Queen’s it has had only a small increase in enrolment---there were some 2800 undergraduates in 2008.
Although there is much construction underway to replace and improve the infrastructure, Smith exudes tradition, stability and even serenity.
While Queen’s has kept alive many of its traditions--- especially those connected with its Scottish heritage (we loved being piped into gatherings!)---it exudes change, growth and hustle.
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Like Smith, Queen’s faces formidable financial problems, some caused by the recent stock market and banking crises, and others, it seems, by some weaknesses in governance over the last few years. We heard that several millions of operating funds have to be diverted each year to pay pensions of retired university faculty and staff who are living 7 years longer on average than the actuarial tables predicted.
Dr. Daniel Woolf, who becomes Principal in September 2009, will have to deal with some considerable financial and governance issues. Happily, he will have the support of a particularly strong Chancellor, David Dodge, the ex-Governor of the Bank of Canada. Both men are Queen’s grads.
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One of the challenges the new Principal will face is to find a use for the old Prison for Women, which the Federal Government sold to Queen’s for one dollar. The Government removed the walls but the agreement of sale requires that the heritage character of the building be preserved----we were told for example that the bars and cells cannot be removed.
People have suggested using the building for the storage of the university’s archives and for office space but no final decisions have been made.
There are no reports of university faculty or staff jumping up and down asking to be moved to the old prison.
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One of the guests at our final banquet at Queen’s was Dr. Alfred Bader who graduated from Queen’s in the years immediately after World War II.
Dr. Bader escaped from Austria before World War II, fled to England and then to Canada.
After the war, he had tried to attend McGill but had been rejected.
Queen’s decided to take a chance on him.
And now Dr. Bader is taking a chance on Queen’s.
And how!
Dr. Bader made a fortune in the US chemical industry and he and his wife, Isabel, have been extraordinarily generous to Queen’s. The gifts include a 15th century castle in England, a number of Old Masters paintings, including two by Rembrandt (Queen’s now has two of the six Rembrandts in Canada). The couple has also contributed large amounts of money to various campus projects. The latest contribution is $14 million dollars toward a proposed waterfront performing arts centre.
Reunions and Aging
Although the turnout at both reunions was high, we wondered why some classmates had decided not to attend.
There was a saying in England in the 1960s that more girls said ‘no’ because of raggedy knickers than for any other single reason.
I suspect that more people say ‘no’ to reunions because of aging than for any other single reason.
First, there is the concern about how others will react to the older us.
Our experience was that after the first ‘oh-my-god-is-that-really-her/him’ reaction things settled down quickly. Yes, the person had aged but there was still the same chuckle, cant of the head, sense of humour and so on.
But, there is also, perhaps, a subconscious fear that seeing our aging classmates will strip away the defences we may have built up to deny our own mortality.
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I liked Bill Smiley’s take on aging. Years ago, Bill was a columnist in a number of Ontario weekly newspapers, including my hometown Arthur Enterprise News.
As Bill entered his seniorhood, he said, “I feel 18 and think I look 19”. And then he said he would look in the mirror and try to figure out who that person was.
I can identify with that!
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Pat’s class put out a book before the reunion showing both the graduation photo and a recent one---before and after---that helped reduce the shock of the first meeting.
A good idea.
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As we were getting on a Smith shuttle, one of the ‘59ers was complaining about how everyone had changed. Pat piped up, “But it’s half a century”.
A bright-eyed woman at the back of the shuttle shouted, “Oh, shut up!”
(Somehow, ‘half a century’ sounds worse than ‘fifty years’.)
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As I was wandering around Queen’s, and thinking about aging, I remembered a meeting I had with Professor Arthur Lower back in 1959. Our class had decided to honour him as professor of the year in our yearbook.
I was asked to write an article about him. He talked and I scribbled down his pithy observations on the world, Canada, Queen’s, Kingston etc. As I was leaving he asked about the photo we would use in our yearbook.
“I am not particularly vain but”, and he pointed to a photo that Maclean’s had used for an article about him, “I don’t want to look like I’ve been dead for two weeks.”
The Maclean’s photo was indeed awful---mouth open, glasses and hair askew.
We were able to get Wallace Berry, who took all the Queen’s graduate portraits, to provide a much more suitable photo for our yearbook article.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
This is a variation on the ‘cat stuck in the tree’ story.
While we were in Manchester VT, the power went off in the whole community. I was browsing in the Polo Ralph Loren outlet when the lights went out. We were quickly herded out of the store.
I thought I would use the time to get some money from an ATM but, of course, they weren’t working.
After the power came back on, everyone was asking what had happened. We were told that power outages happened from time to time in the winter because of ice and snow, but not in the middle of May.
Finally, we heard what had happened.
Two men were in a tree pruning branches alongside the main power line coming into Manchester. A big branch fell into the tree instead of onto the ground, making it impossible for the men to get down without touching a live wire. Their colleagues on the ground couldn’t help them.
The only answer was to turn off the power while the men extricated themselves.
Can you imagine the embarrassment of those tough Vermonters when they tried to explain in the local bar that night how they managed to get stuck in a tree!
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NOTE: Some people have wondered whether I have trouble sleeping, given the time the postings are uploaded.
No, I sleep well.
The posting times are Google-time, that is Pacific Time. So, if I upload at 6 AM Eastern time, it is shown as 3 AM. I don’t know why this is---it just is.
Thanks for asking!
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See you next Sunday for Posting #23 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
POSTING # 21
“The Prettiest Sunday Afternoon Drive in the World”; Roy Thomson Visits the Newcastle-on-Tyne Evening Chronicle; Kenneth Thomson; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
“The Prettiest Sunday Afternoon Drive in the World”
We enjoy driving along the Niagara Parkway, which Winston Churchill once described as “The Prettiest Sunday Afternoon Drive in the World”.
One Sunday a few years ago, when we lived in Grimsby, Pat and I decided to take a senior official from the Kingdom of Jordan to Niagara Falls. After a tour of Niagara-on-the-Lake, we entered the Niagara Parkway and I told the official what Churchill had said about the drive.
Big mistake!
I had forgotten that Churchill does not enjoy a good reputation in the Middle East. Let’s be even clearer: Churchill is one of the most detested Westerners around. Part of the anger is due to his role in carving up the Middle East after World War I, part to his support for the creation of the State of Israel after World War II and part to other things Churchill said or did.
The Jordanian official was diplomatic, but firm, “We don’t think highly of Churchill.”
We carried on to Niagara Falls with some stops to enjoy the beauty of the river.
As we got closer to the Falls, we lowered the car windows so our guest could hear the roar of the rushing water.
The Jordanian official was watching everything, but saying nothing.
As we drove slowly past the Falls, the official finally said, “Well, Churchill was right about one thing.”
Roy Thomson Visits the Newcastle-on-Tyne Evening Chronicle
Roy Thomson, later Lord Thomson of Fleet, was clearly the most newsworthy Canadian in Britain when we lived there in the 1960s. He had bought Scotland’s national newspaper, The Scotsman, went on to purchase dailies and weeklies throughout Britain, started television stations and, eventually, bought the London Times.
He had earned his success. His empire had started with tiny radio and newspaper businesses in Northern Ontario in the depression, businesses that were held together, as Canadian farmers liked to say, by ‘haywire and binder twine’ (younger readers may have to ‘Google’ this expression).
A colleague in the Canadian Immigration Office in Leeds told me that his father had worked for Roy Thomson in Timmins during the depression. When payday---Saturday--- came around, Thomson would have to visit businesses that owed him money from advertisements on his radio station or newspapers. Some weeks he collected enough to pay his workers in full but other weeks he had to ask them to take an IOU. The workers understood---times were tough---but it was hard on families.
The Leeds Immigration office recruited many of its immigrants from the Newcastle area and I spent a good deal of time talking about advertising and publicity to the staff at the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, a newspaper that Roy Thomson had bought from the Kemsley Newspapers Company.
A friend at the newspaper told me about Roy Thomson’s first visit to the Chronicle.
Apparently Thomson sent out word that he wanted to meet with all the newspaper’s staff in the private dining room. My friend said that he and the other employees thought there must be a mistake. Only the most senior executives were allowed in the private dining room. That’s the way it had always been.
He was assured that Mr. Thomson had given specific orders that the meeting was to be held in the private dining room.
Full of awe, the staff trooped into the oak-paneled and richly furnished room. As they entered the room, a stocky man with thick eyeglasses and a big smile shook hands with them.
Mr. Thomson.
When they had all arrived, Thomson moved to a table at the front of the room. Sitting on the end of it with his legs dangling, he talked to them.
He told them---in what my friend said sounded like an American accent---that they had nothing to fear from his purchase of the newspaper. He would not interfere in the editorial policy of the newspaper.
He said his concern was that the paper should be profitable. He had examined the balance sheets carefully and he felt sure that the paper, which had been in financial trouble, could make money. He was asking them to help him turn the paper around.
As he spoke, my friend told me, he swung his legs and the newspaper staff could see that he was wearing bright red socks, socks my friend said that could have been worn by a County Durham coal miner at the pub on a Saturday night. The socks were not only a brilliant red, they were also too short. A good bit of bare leg was showing above them.
My friend was not sure how he and his colleagues were going to adapt to all this change---it was so different from the way the Kemsley Newspapers had operated.
I said that the important thing was not to underestimate Roy Thomson, despite his informal approach, his accent, his eyeglasses and his red socks. People, who underestimated him, generally lived to regret it.
Kenneth Thomson
Kenneth, Roy Thomson’s son, took over the family businesses on his father’s death. Kenneth did not have his father’s flamboyancy but he had his father’s knack for making money through shrewd business deals and careful management of his enterprises.
Peter Newman’s article for Maclean’s on Kenneth’s death provides many revealing insights into this quiet, complex person.
Kenneth was brought up in the depression and he never overcame the need to ‘pinch pennies’. Newman tells the story of a friend finding Kenneth in a supermarket with his cart loaded down with hotdog buns that were on special. He planned to put the buns in his deep freezer.
Here is a story that I heard recently from someone who once worked for Kenneth. Apparently, Kenneth was visiting a friend in Belleville who had recently completed an office building that would serve as the new headquarters for his businesses.
The friend asked Kenneth to go with him to an office supply store in Belleville to look at office furniture for the new building. The two men priced desks, chairs, filing cabinets etc and decided that they might do better in Toronto. They jumped in the friend’s Rolls Royce and took off on the 401 for Toronto. Outside Toronto, seeing a billboard advertising an office supply company, they decided to try that store.
Kenneth’s friend gave the salesman the list of items they wanted. The salesman said it was a big order---it would probably take five trucks to carry all the furniture to Belleville---but not to worry, the company would provide free shipping. The company would also do its best to give him a good price.
The salesman excused himself, went off to calculate the total and came back with a sum. Kenneth and his friend immediately said they were sure that the store could do better than that. The salesman said that was as low as he could go.
Could they see the manager?
The manager came and took a few dollars off the total but Kenneth and his friend were not sure they had the best deal possible.
Kenneth said, “We understand that you can’t go any lower. Perhaps it is time to talk to the owner.”
The salesman---who was still participating in the discussions and who had recognized Kenneth Thomson when the men came into the store but hadn’t let on---said,” Well, Mr. Thomson, your company bought our store seven or eight years ago…..”
Kenneth turned to his friend with a smile, “It looks as though we have the best deal we can get.”
The papers were signed and the two men, laughing, got back into the Rolls Royce and returned to Belleville.
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Although the depression scars he bore caused Kenneth to worry about the pennies in everyday life, he was enormously generous to cultural and charitable causes. Toronto, Ontario and Canada are much in his debt.
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David Thomson---Kenneth’s son---is now in charge of the Thomson businesses. Before the financial meltdown that started last September, Forbes Magazine calculated the Thomson family wealth at about US$19 billion. In March of this year the magazine said the family was worth some US$13 billion. It was the richest Canadian family, with the Galen Weston family having about US$5 billion.
So, the family has lost some wealth but there is still enough to buy a lot of hotdog buns.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Our 13 year old child wanted to go to a rock concert in Ottawa with a friend. Pat and I flipped and I lost. I would accompany the two kids to what was certainly going to be a noisy event.
I was sitting back, trying to ‘enjoy’ the music when our child leaned over and shouted at me, “Take those ear plugs out. You’re embarrassing me.”
I shook my head. (Despite my industrial-strength, yellow ear plugs, my ears rang for a couple of days after the concert.)
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A friend also had to take his children to a rock concert. He had to work late at the office but agreed to meet them outside the hall. Wearing his suit and tie, he bought the tickets and waited with his children in a line of scruffily-dressed teenagers. At the gate, the attendant took the tickets and waved them in. Our friend was surprised that he hadn’t stamped their hands or given them back a portion of the tickets.
“But what if I have to come out and then want to get back in?’ he asked.
Looking at the suit and tie, the young attendant said, “Oh, we’ll remember YOU, Sir”.
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See you next Sunday for Posting #22 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
“The Prettiest Sunday Afternoon Drive in the World”
We enjoy driving along the Niagara Parkway, which Winston Churchill once described as “The Prettiest Sunday Afternoon Drive in the World”.
One Sunday a few years ago, when we lived in Grimsby, Pat and I decided to take a senior official from the Kingdom of Jordan to Niagara Falls. After a tour of Niagara-on-the-Lake, we entered the Niagara Parkway and I told the official what Churchill had said about the drive.
Big mistake!
I had forgotten that Churchill does not enjoy a good reputation in the Middle East. Let’s be even clearer: Churchill is one of the most detested Westerners around. Part of the anger is due to his role in carving up the Middle East after World War I, part to his support for the creation of the State of Israel after World War II and part to other things Churchill said or did.
The Jordanian official was diplomatic, but firm, “We don’t think highly of Churchill.”
We carried on to Niagara Falls with some stops to enjoy the beauty of the river.
As we got closer to the Falls, we lowered the car windows so our guest could hear the roar of the rushing water.
The Jordanian official was watching everything, but saying nothing.
As we drove slowly past the Falls, the official finally said, “Well, Churchill was right about one thing.”
Roy Thomson Visits the Newcastle-on-Tyne Evening Chronicle
Roy Thomson, later Lord Thomson of Fleet, was clearly the most newsworthy Canadian in Britain when we lived there in the 1960s. He had bought Scotland’s national newspaper, The Scotsman, went on to purchase dailies and weeklies throughout Britain, started television stations and, eventually, bought the London Times.
He had earned his success. His empire had started with tiny radio and newspaper businesses in Northern Ontario in the depression, businesses that were held together, as Canadian farmers liked to say, by ‘haywire and binder twine’ (younger readers may have to ‘Google’ this expression).
A colleague in the Canadian Immigration Office in Leeds told me that his father had worked for Roy Thomson in Timmins during the depression. When payday---Saturday--- came around, Thomson would have to visit businesses that owed him money from advertisements on his radio station or newspapers. Some weeks he collected enough to pay his workers in full but other weeks he had to ask them to take an IOU. The workers understood---times were tough---but it was hard on families.
The Leeds Immigration office recruited many of its immigrants from the Newcastle area and I spent a good deal of time talking about advertising and publicity to the staff at the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, a newspaper that Roy Thomson had bought from the Kemsley Newspapers Company.
A friend at the newspaper told me about Roy Thomson’s first visit to the Chronicle.
Apparently Thomson sent out word that he wanted to meet with all the newspaper’s staff in the private dining room. My friend said that he and the other employees thought there must be a mistake. Only the most senior executives were allowed in the private dining room. That’s the way it had always been.
He was assured that Mr. Thomson had given specific orders that the meeting was to be held in the private dining room.
Full of awe, the staff trooped into the oak-paneled and richly furnished room. As they entered the room, a stocky man with thick eyeglasses and a big smile shook hands with them.
Mr. Thomson.
When they had all arrived, Thomson moved to a table at the front of the room. Sitting on the end of it with his legs dangling, he talked to them.
He told them---in what my friend said sounded like an American accent---that they had nothing to fear from his purchase of the newspaper. He would not interfere in the editorial policy of the newspaper.
He said his concern was that the paper should be profitable. He had examined the balance sheets carefully and he felt sure that the paper, which had been in financial trouble, could make money. He was asking them to help him turn the paper around.
As he spoke, my friend told me, he swung his legs and the newspaper staff could see that he was wearing bright red socks, socks my friend said that could have been worn by a County Durham coal miner at the pub on a Saturday night. The socks were not only a brilliant red, they were also too short. A good bit of bare leg was showing above them.
My friend was not sure how he and his colleagues were going to adapt to all this change---it was so different from the way the Kemsley Newspapers had operated.
I said that the important thing was not to underestimate Roy Thomson, despite his informal approach, his accent, his eyeglasses and his red socks. People, who underestimated him, generally lived to regret it.
Kenneth Thomson
Kenneth, Roy Thomson’s son, took over the family businesses on his father’s death. Kenneth did not have his father’s flamboyancy but he had his father’s knack for making money through shrewd business deals and careful management of his enterprises.
Peter Newman’s article for Maclean’s on Kenneth’s death provides many revealing insights into this quiet, complex person.
Kenneth was brought up in the depression and he never overcame the need to ‘pinch pennies’. Newman tells the story of a friend finding Kenneth in a supermarket with his cart loaded down with hotdog buns that were on special. He planned to put the buns in his deep freezer.
Here is a story that I heard recently from someone who once worked for Kenneth. Apparently, Kenneth was visiting a friend in Belleville who had recently completed an office building that would serve as the new headquarters for his businesses.
The friend asked Kenneth to go with him to an office supply store in Belleville to look at office furniture for the new building. The two men priced desks, chairs, filing cabinets etc and decided that they might do better in Toronto. They jumped in the friend’s Rolls Royce and took off on the 401 for Toronto. Outside Toronto, seeing a billboard advertising an office supply company, they decided to try that store.
Kenneth’s friend gave the salesman the list of items they wanted. The salesman said it was a big order---it would probably take five trucks to carry all the furniture to Belleville---but not to worry, the company would provide free shipping. The company would also do its best to give him a good price.
The salesman excused himself, went off to calculate the total and came back with a sum. Kenneth and his friend immediately said they were sure that the store could do better than that. The salesman said that was as low as he could go.
Could they see the manager?
The manager came and took a few dollars off the total but Kenneth and his friend were not sure they had the best deal possible.
Kenneth said, “We understand that you can’t go any lower. Perhaps it is time to talk to the owner.”
The salesman---who was still participating in the discussions and who had recognized Kenneth Thomson when the men came into the store but hadn’t let on---said,” Well, Mr. Thomson, your company bought our store seven or eight years ago…..”
Kenneth turned to his friend with a smile, “It looks as though we have the best deal we can get.”
The papers were signed and the two men, laughing, got back into the Rolls Royce and returned to Belleville.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Although the depression scars he bore caused Kenneth to worry about the pennies in everyday life, he was enormously generous to cultural and charitable causes. Toronto, Ontario and Canada are much in his debt.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
David Thomson---Kenneth’s son---is now in charge of the Thomson businesses. Before the financial meltdown that started last September, Forbes Magazine calculated the Thomson family wealth at about US$19 billion. In March of this year the magazine said the family was worth some US$13 billion. It was the richest Canadian family, with the Galen Weston family having about US$5 billion.
So, the family has lost some wealth but there is still enough to buy a lot of hotdog buns.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Our 13 year old child wanted to go to a rock concert in Ottawa with a friend. Pat and I flipped and I lost. I would accompany the two kids to what was certainly going to be a noisy event.
I was sitting back, trying to ‘enjoy’ the music when our child leaned over and shouted at me, “Take those ear plugs out. You’re embarrassing me.”
I shook my head. (Despite my industrial-strength, yellow ear plugs, my ears rang for a couple of days after the concert.)
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
A friend also had to take his children to a rock concert. He had to work late at the office but agreed to meet them outside the hall. Wearing his suit and tie, he bought the tickets and waited with his children in a line of scruffily-dressed teenagers. At the gate, the attendant took the tickets and waved them in. Our friend was surprised that he hadn’t stamped their hands or given them back a portion of the tickets.
“But what if I have to come out and then want to get back in?’ he asked.
Looking at the suit and tie, the young attendant said, “Oh, we’ll remember YOU, Sir”.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #22 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
POSTING # 20
Planning for the Bicentenary of the War of 1812; Helping a Fellow B&B Entertain Two VIPS; A Gracious Queen at Windsor Castle; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Planning for the Bicentenary of the War of 1812
If organizers and volunteers in Niagara-on-the-Lake have their way, we are all going to know a lot more about the war of 1812 by the end of 2012.
Ideas, big and small, are being proposed and considered.
One of the big ones is to have two symphony orchestras, one on either side of the Niagara River playing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture simultaneously. One would be located in Fort George, in Niagara-on-the-Lake and the other just across the river in Old Fort Niagara in Youngstown, NY.
Can’t you hear the canons booming across the river!
And, of course, there will be re-enactments of famous battles, and of Laura Secord’s courageous night-time trip through the bush to alert the British troops to an imminent attack by the American forces.
I toured Fort George recently and one of the visitors asked the guide which side had won the war.
The guide laughed, “I always find out where the visitors are from. If there are both Canadians and Americans in the group, I say that no one won. After all, the war ended in 1815 with no land having been gained or lost.
“If, as with this group, there are only Canadians, I say that we won because the Americans invaded us and they had to leave with empty hands.”
Our guide was the ultimate diplomat!
Helping a Fellow B&B Entertain Two VIPS
A few years ago Pat and I were checking in for two nights at a Bed and Breakfast near Norfolk in England.
After showing us our room, the owner said, “This is a bit embarrassing but I was wondering if you were planning to have dinner with us tonight or tomorrow night, and if you were, could it be tomorrow night, please?’
Pat and I looked at each---we hadn’t made any plans for dinner in Norfolk.
The woman carried on, “I hate to put pressure on you but tomorrow night we have Sir Percy and Lady Anne (not their real names) staying with us and they want dinner. To tell you the truth my husband and I feel a bit intimidated by people with titles and we would love to have another couple to, you know, break the ice.”
We said that as fellow B&B owners, we would be delighted to help. We would have dinner with Sir Percy and Lady Anne.
The next day I went to the Norfolk Public Library to look up Sir Percy. It turned out that before his retirement, he had been chairman of a very large British firm and was knighted by the Queen for his contribution to the British economy.
We met the couple the next afternoon in the lounge of the B&B for pre-dinner cocktails. They had just come from grouse hunting on a nearby estate with the Queen.
They were in their late 60s or early 70s, pleasant looking with ‘educated’ accents, suggesting they had gone to good public schools (that is, private schools).
Lady Anne wanted to know about our children and whether we had any grandchildren. (Sir Percy and Lady Anne had 4 children and 8 grandchildren). Pat said that we hadn’t any grandchildren yet but were still hoping.
“Don’t worry,” Lady Anne said, “Once they start to come it will be just pop, pop, pop.”
Just then the B&B’s two dogs came into the lounge to see us. I am not sure of the breed but they were large, with short gray hair and long snouts.
One of them sniffed Sir Percy’s pant legs and then wandered off.
Lady Anne started a story about the people who owned the estate where they had been hunting. As she talked, the other dog sniffed her tweed skirt and then--- how can I put this delicately---started to push his snout between her thighs.
Lady Anne carried on with her story, apparently oblivious to the dog.
Suddenly the dog yelped, jumped back and ran out of the lounge.
Lady Anne finished her story.
We still don’t know what she did to the dog. Did she step on one of his feet? Or, did she give him a sharp toe in the chest---or somewhere else perhaps?
Pat and I were both watching her as she told the story and neither of us saw any movement of her legs or feet.
We were impressed.
We decided that breeding and a good public school education must equip the British upper classes for just about any eventuality.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
After cocktails, we changed and came down for dinner. The food was delicious and the discussions were relaxed and fun.
On our way to bed, we thanked the hostess for a fine meal. She whispered that she was so grateful. We told her that everything had gone well---she should be proud.
A Gracious Queen at Windsor Castle
We had breakfast with Sir Percy and Lady Anne the next morning---there were no dogs around.
After they had left, the hostess told us a story about a charity that she was involved with.
The charity was trying to find a new way to raise money. Someone mentioned that the Queen sometimes allowed charities to use the grounds of Windsor Castle. Our hostess told us that she and many of her friends had horses and it suddenly came to her that people might like to buy tickets for a ride in the beautiful grounds.
The charity had no trouble selling tickets for the event.
On the day of the event, the hostess and some of her friends were riding along one of the paths when a Range Rover pulled up. The woman driver leaned out and called, “I hope you are having a fine time.” It was the Queen!
The hostess said she was just able to stammer, “Yes…. Your Majesty”.
The Queen wanted to know which group they were with. The hostess told them the name of the charity.
“Oh’, the Queen said, “I am so pleased, that’s one of my sister’s favourite charities’.
Then the Queen added, “I’m afraid I don’t have any money with me at the moment, but could we meet at the gate in about an hour?’
The hostess said she told the Queen that it wasn’t necessary but the Queen insisted that she wished to make a donation.
In an hour, the Queen drove up to the gate in her Range Rover and handed over a generous gift.
Now, that’s a gracious Queen!
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
A few years ago, a woman in Grimsby called to reserve a room at our B&B for relatives, a couple from England. She told us that the man, her cousin, had just retired after working at Buckingham Palace for many years. She said she was sure that her cousin could tell fascinating stories about the Royal Family but that he was from ‘the old school’ and just wouldn’t talk about the Royals.
The Grimsby woman brought her relatives to the B&B and we instantly liked them.
When we had lived in Yorkshire, we were shocked the first time we heard someone say that so-and-so was ‘homely’. We learned that ‘homely’ to them meant someone who is homey, cozy, or comforting.
The British couple was definitely ‘homely’. They liked their room, commented on its decoration and furnishings and asked us questions about our family.
At breakfast the next morning, the English folks were joined by a Canadian couple. When the Canadians heard about the Buckingham Palace experience, they tried to pump the man for stories. The man turned away the requests with good humour.
Finally, he said he thought he could tell one story.
He had finished work for the day and had returned to his apartment in Buckingham Palace. There was a phone call from one of the on-duty staff saying that the Queen would like to see him.
Wondering what she wanted, he hurried to the Queen’s personal apartment. Thanking him for coming, the Queen explained that her dogs ---the famous corgis--- had pushed their balls under her bed. They were insisting on having their balls and weren’t prepared to settle down for the night without them.
Our guest described how the Queen and he---on their hands and knees on either side of the bed---managed to recover the balls.
What a fine story!
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #21 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 you can email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Planning for the Bicentenary of the War of 1812
If organizers and volunteers in Niagara-on-the-Lake have their way, we are all going to know a lot more about the war of 1812 by the end of 2012.
Ideas, big and small, are being proposed and considered.
One of the big ones is to have two symphony orchestras, one on either side of the Niagara River playing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture simultaneously. One would be located in Fort George, in Niagara-on-the-Lake and the other just across the river in Old Fort Niagara in Youngstown, NY.
Can’t you hear the canons booming across the river!
And, of course, there will be re-enactments of famous battles, and of Laura Secord’s courageous night-time trip through the bush to alert the British troops to an imminent attack by the American forces.
I toured Fort George recently and one of the visitors asked the guide which side had won the war.
The guide laughed, “I always find out where the visitors are from. If there are both Canadians and Americans in the group, I say that no one won. After all, the war ended in 1815 with no land having been gained or lost.
“If, as with this group, there are only Canadians, I say that we won because the Americans invaded us and they had to leave with empty hands.”
Our guide was the ultimate diplomat!
Helping a Fellow B&B Entertain Two VIPS
A few years ago Pat and I were checking in for two nights at a Bed and Breakfast near Norfolk in England.
After showing us our room, the owner said, “This is a bit embarrassing but I was wondering if you were planning to have dinner with us tonight or tomorrow night, and if you were, could it be tomorrow night, please?’
Pat and I looked at each---we hadn’t made any plans for dinner in Norfolk.
The woman carried on, “I hate to put pressure on you but tomorrow night we have Sir Percy and Lady Anne (not their real names) staying with us and they want dinner. To tell you the truth my husband and I feel a bit intimidated by people with titles and we would love to have another couple to, you know, break the ice.”
We said that as fellow B&B owners, we would be delighted to help. We would have dinner with Sir Percy and Lady Anne.
The next day I went to the Norfolk Public Library to look up Sir Percy. It turned out that before his retirement, he had been chairman of a very large British firm and was knighted by the Queen for his contribution to the British economy.
We met the couple the next afternoon in the lounge of the B&B for pre-dinner cocktails. They had just come from grouse hunting on a nearby estate with the Queen.
They were in their late 60s or early 70s, pleasant looking with ‘educated’ accents, suggesting they had gone to good public schools (that is, private schools).
Lady Anne wanted to know about our children and whether we had any grandchildren. (Sir Percy and Lady Anne had 4 children and 8 grandchildren). Pat said that we hadn’t any grandchildren yet but were still hoping.
“Don’t worry,” Lady Anne said, “Once they start to come it will be just pop, pop, pop.”
Just then the B&B’s two dogs came into the lounge to see us. I am not sure of the breed but they were large, with short gray hair and long snouts.
One of them sniffed Sir Percy’s pant legs and then wandered off.
Lady Anne started a story about the people who owned the estate where they had been hunting. As she talked, the other dog sniffed her tweed skirt and then--- how can I put this delicately---started to push his snout between her thighs.
Lady Anne carried on with her story, apparently oblivious to the dog.
Suddenly the dog yelped, jumped back and ran out of the lounge.
Lady Anne finished her story.
We still don’t know what she did to the dog. Did she step on one of his feet? Or, did she give him a sharp toe in the chest---or somewhere else perhaps?
Pat and I were both watching her as she told the story and neither of us saw any movement of her legs or feet.
We were impressed.
We decided that breeding and a good public school education must equip the British upper classes for just about any eventuality.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
After cocktails, we changed and came down for dinner. The food was delicious and the discussions were relaxed and fun.
On our way to bed, we thanked the hostess for a fine meal. She whispered that she was so grateful. We told her that everything had gone well---she should be proud.
A Gracious Queen at Windsor Castle
We had breakfast with Sir Percy and Lady Anne the next morning---there were no dogs around.
After they had left, the hostess told us a story about a charity that she was involved with.
The charity was trying to find a new way to raise money. Someone mentioned that the Queen sometimes allowed charities to use the grounds of Windsor Castle. Our hostess told us that she and many of her friends had horses and it suddenly came to her that people might like to buy tickets for a ride in the beautiful grounds.
The charity had no trouble selling tickets for the event.
On the day of the event, the hostess and some of her friends were riding along one of the paths when a Range Rover pulled up. The woman driver leaned out and called, “I hope you are having a fine time.” It was the Queen!
The hostess said she was just able to stammer, “Yes…. Your Majesty”.
The Queen wanted to know which group they were with. The hostess told them the name of the charity.
“Oh’, the Queen said, “I am so pleased, that’s one of my sister’s favourite charities’.
Then the Queen added, “I’m afraid I don’t have any money with me at the moment, but could we meet at the gate in about an hour?’
The hostess said she told the Queen that it wasn’t necessary but the Queen insisted that she wished to make a donation.
In an hour, the Queen drove up to the gate in her Range Rover and handed over a generous gift.
Now, that’s a gracious Queen!
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
A few years ago, a woman in Grimsby called to reserve a room at our B&B for relatives, a couple from England. She told us that the man, her cousin, had just retired after working at Buckingham Palace for many years. She said she was sure that her cousin could tell fascinating stories about the Royal Family but that he was from ‘the old school’ and just wouldn’t talk about the Royals.
The Grimsby woman brought her relatives to the B&B and we instantly liked them.
When we had lived in Yorkshire, we were shocked the first time we heard someone say that so-and-so was ‘homely’. We learned that ‘homely’ to them meant someone who is homey, cozy, or comforting.
The British couple was definitely ‘homely’. They liked their room, commented on its decoration and furnishings and asked us questions about our family.
At breakfast the next morning, the English folks were joined by a Canadian couple. When the Canadians heard about the Buckingham Palace experience, they tried to pump the man for stories. The man turned away the requests with good humour.
Finally, he said he thought he could tell one story.
He had finished work for the day and had returned to his apartment in Buckingham Palace. There was a phone call from one of the on-duty staff saying that the Queen would like to see him.
Wondering what she wanted, he hurried to the Queen’s personal apartment. Thanking him for coming, the Queen explained that her dogs ---the famous corgis--- had pushed their balls under her bed. They were insisting on having their balls and weren’t prepared to settle down for the night without them.
Our guest described how the Queen and he---on their hands and knees on either side of the bed---managed to recover the balls.
What a fine story!
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #21 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 you can email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
POSTING # 19
Virgil Dandelions; Words, Words, Words; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Virgil Dandelions
The parks in Virgil have gone ‘green’ (no herbicides), which means in fact that they are now yellow (lots of dandelions).
When I was young, no one fussed about dandelions.
But then the chemical age began. It became possible to have dandelion-free lawns with little work. Just spray on a chemical, sit back and watch the dandelions wilt.
Of course, we have since learned that the chemical sprays were a deal with the devil.
What to do about the dandelions?
Consultants, like myself, glibly say that one should see a problem as an opportunity.
What are the opportunities?
Well, there is dandelion wine, and this IS wine-growing country.
I have made wines from fruit (a quite respectable ‘Bordeaux’ from peaches and blueberries) and even from vegetables (an undrinkable ‘Chardonnay’ from green tomatoes) but I have never made dandelion wine.
I have tried some made by other people. The colour was attractive but it was always so sweet that I wanted to rinse my mouth out with cold spring water and lemon juice.
A recipe I saw said that a drinkable dandelion wine was possible if one used grape juice as the sweetener instead of white sugar. But why not leave out the dandelions and just make grape wine?
And then there are dandelion greens.
When we were young, my mother read an article saying that dandelion greens were full of vitamins and minerals. She made a salad with the greens and put it on the table without telling us what it was. The oil-free, sweet and sour dressing was delicious but the leaves looked strange. Then one of us realized what they were. We rebelled, saying that worms crawled over dandelion leaves.
Mom started to say something---perhaps that worms also crawled over lettuce leaves--- but quickly thought better of it.
Our rebellion may have been a good thing. What Mom’s article didn’t say was that dandelion greens have strong diuretic properties (a fact recognized by the French whose name for dandelions is ‘pis-en-lit’).
Wet beds were the last thing that Mom needed as she tried to cope with three boys.
Perhaps we will have to turn the clock back and just not fuss about dandelions.
Words, Words, Words
As I was thinking about our family’s stories, I realized that many of them have to do with words---their pronunciation, meaning, or translation.
Here are a few of our ‘word’ stories:
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
My family likes to tease me about my pronunciation of Lake Huron. Unless I catch myself, my pronunciation suggests that the lake is full of a warm, yellowish body fluid.
Definitely, not something you would want to swim in!
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
When we were young we would tease Mom about her pronunciation of Washington. She added an ‘r’, so the word became Warshington.
Mom would say, “I do not say Warshington”
She would pause, getting her tongue and brain synchronized, “I say Warshington”.
Being mean kids, we would say, “But you are still saying ‘Warshington’.
“No, I’m not.”
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Perhaps genetically wonky synapses would explain the pronunciation problems Mom had and I have.
Which reminds me of the problem some Asian persons have with the letters ‘r’ and ‘l’.
There is a story I heard from a colleague in the Foreign Service. A diplomat who had been posted in Ottawa was told that he would be appointed Ambassador to Washington. He was pleased to be offered this very responsible position. And he was also happy to be leaving Ottawa, where the Government had recently been defeated, a polling date had been set and the politicians were starting their usual shenanigans of charges and counter charges that meant an increased workload for public servants.
When he arrived in Washington, he made the usual round of calls, introducing himself to other ambassadors.
Trying to find a subject for conversation, the ambassador from an Asian country, said, “You have a erection”.
The Canadian, looking down at his trousers, started to say, “No I don’t…..” when he realized what the ambassador was trying to say.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
A memo from a British official of the World Bank in Moscow had a sentence, “We will have to make sure that the Russians stop prevaricating”. From the context of the memo it was clear that the World Bank person was concerned about delays that were taking place. I assumed that the author had confused ‘procrastinate’ and ‘prevaricate’, as people sometimes do with words that have similar sounds, such as ‘militate’ and ‘mitigate.”
I drafted a short email note, gently chiding the author and was about to send it when something told me I should check.
I looked in an American dictionary and according to it, ‘prevaricate’ meant to lie.
Then, to be absolutely sure, I checked the Oxford Dictionary. The entry showed ‘lie’ but also said that the word could mean ‘postpone or delay’.
I scrapped the email.
A close call!
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
During part of our stay in London, we had a wonderfully helpful and pleasant French au pair who had come to England to learn English. She had a girl friend who worked for a English woman who had gone to a well-known girls school. Whenever the two French girls got together, the English women would try to make sure that our au pair was learning English and not ‘Canadian’.
One day our au pair told the woman that she had learned something new from us. Our refrigerator had stopped working and we had told her that ‘we were going to get it fixed’.
The woman told her that the expression was incorrect. We should have said that ‘we were going to get it repaired’. She explained that in proper English, the word ‘fix’ meant to attach something to something else, for example one could talk about ‘fixing’ a set of shelves to the wall.
Our au pair told us what the woman had said.
We agreed that she was right, that in England people used ‘repair’ rather than ‘fix’ in that context, but that in Canada (and North America generally) one could use either ‘fix’ or ‘repair’ when talking about a broken appliance, car etc.
Our au pair’s ambition was to become a flight attendant for Air France on their North Atlantic flights. She just grinned and said she would use ‘fix’.
(She joined Air France when she returned to France and after training on the airline’s domestic routes was assigned to the North Atlantic flights. She visited us from time to time after we returned to Canada.)
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
The family and I were in a Quebec City restaurant for breakfast. The server spoke only French and our French was pretty rudimentary. We got by with a lot of pointing at items on the menu.
I wanted some decaffeinated coffee and decided I had enough French to ask for that. I created a sentence in French that ending by asking if I could have ‘un Sanka’.
The server said, in French, that she wasn’t sure whether they could serve any before noon. I asked why and she said she would talk to the manager. She came back and said that they couldn’t serve that before noon.
The mystery sorted itself out when the bill came. I saw that the server had written down ‘un cinquante’, and then crossed it out. She thought I wanted a Labatt 50, a beer that was very popular in Quebec at the time.
Sanka and cinquante---pretty close.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Queen’s Politics Professor J.A. Corry, liked to tell this story about President Truman, who was known as a blunt-spoken person.
Apparently, the President’s daughter, Margaret, complained to her mother, Bess, about her father’s frequent use of the word ‘manure’. It was embarrassing, and Bess should get him to stop using it.
Bess sighed and said, “It took me twenty years to get him to say ‘manure’.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
We were at home and I was cleaning up the garage with the help of a child. As I was tidying things, the child picked up a paint can and shook it. Hearing paint slosh around in it he said, “Wa-wa”, the two-year-old’s version of ‘water’.
“No,” I said, “It’s paint”.
Another shake of the can and the child contradicted old Dad, “No, wa-wa”
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
In London, we lived next door to our doctor, a kindly but taciturn fellow.
One Sunday morning, there was a phone call from him, “Your child is eating green apples off the ground in your back garden---just thought I would save myself a trip.”
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #20 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Virgil Dandelions
The parks in Virgil have gone ‘green’ (no herbicides), which means in fact that they are now yellow (lots of dandelions).
When I was young, no one fussed about dandelions.
But then the chemical age began. It became possible to have dandelion-free lawns with little work. Just spray on a chemical, sit back and watch the dandelions wilt.
Of course, we have since learned that the chemical sprays were a deal with the devil.
What to do about the dandelions?
Consultants, like myself, glibly say that one should see a problem as an opportunity.
What are the opportunities?
Well, there is dandelion wine, and this IS wine-growing country.
I have made wines from fruit (a quite respectable ‘Bordeaux’ from peaches and blueberries) and even from vegetables (an undrinkable ‘Chardonnay’ from green tomatoes) but I have never made dandelion wine.
I have tried some made by other people. The colour was attractive but it was always so sweet that I wanted to rinse my mouth out with cold spring water and lemon juice.
A recipe I saw said that a drinkable dandelion wine was possible if one used grape juice as the sweetener instead of white sugar. But why not leave out the dandelions and just make grape wine?
And then there are dandelion greens.
When we were young, my mother read an article saying that dandelion greens were full of vitamins and minerals. She made a salad with the greens and put it on the table without telling us what it was. The oil-free, sweet and sour dressing was delicious but the leaves looked strange. Then one of us realized what they were. We rebelled, saying that worms crawled over dandelion leaves.
Mom started to say something---perhaps that worms also crawled over lettuce leaves--- but quickly thought better of it.
Our rebellion may have been a good thing. What Mom’s article didn’t say was that dandelion greens have strong diuretic properties (a fact recognized by the French whose name for dandelions is ‘pis-en-lit’).
Wet beds were the last thing that Mom needed as she tried to cope with three boys.
Perhaps we will have to turn the clock back and just not fuss about dandelions.
Words, Words, Words
As I was thinking about our family’s stories, I realized that many of them have to do with words---their pronunciation, meaning, or translation.
Here are a few of our ‘word’ stories:
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
My family likes to tease me about my pronunciation of Lake Huron. Unless I catch myself, my pronunciation suggests that the lake is full of a warm, yellowish body fluid.
Definitely, not something you would want to swim in!
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
When we were young we would tease Mom about her pronunciation of Washington. She added an ‘r’, so the word became Warshington.
Mom would say, “I do not say Warshington”
She would pause, getting her tongue and brain synchronized, “I say Warshington”.
Being mean kids, we would say, “But you are still saying ‘Warshington’.
“No, I’m not.”
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Perhaps genetically wonky synapses would explain the pronunciation problems Mom had and I have.
Which reminds me of the problem some Asian persons have with the letters ‘r’ and ‘l’.
There is a story I heard from a colleague in the Foreign Service. A diplomat who had been posted in Ottawa was told that he would be appointed Ambassador to Washington. He was pleased to be offered this very responsible position. And he was also happy to be leaving Ottawa, where the Government had recently been defeated, a polling date had been set and the politicians were starting their usual shenanigans of charges and counter charges that meant an increased workload for public servants.
When he arrived in Washington, he made the usual round of calls, introducing himself to other ambassadors.
Trying to find a subject for conversation, the ambassador from an Asian country, said, “You have a erection”.
The Canadian, looking down at his trousers, started to say, “No I don’t…..” when he realized what the ambassador was trying to say.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
A memo from a British official of the World Bank in Moscow had a sentence, “We will have to make sure that the Russians stop prevaricating”. From the context of the memo it was clear that the World Bank person was concerned about delays that were taking place. I assumed that the author had confused ‘procrastinate’ and ‘prevaricate’, as people sometimes do with words that have similar sounds, such as ‘militate’ and ‘mitigate.”
I drafted a short email note, gently chiding the author and was about to send it when something told me I should check.
I looked in an American dictionary and according to it, ‘prevaricate’ meant to lie.
Then, to be absolutely sure, I checked the Oxford Dictionary. The entry showed ‘lie’ but also said that the word could mean ‘postpone or delay’.
I scrapped the email.
A close call!
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
During part of our stay in London, we had a wonderfully helpful and pleasant French au pair who had come to England to learn English. She had a girl friend who worked for a English woman who had gone to a well-known girls school. Whenever the two French girls got together, the English women would try to make sure that our au pair was learning English and not ‘Canadian’.
One day our au pair told the woman that she had learned something new from us. Our refrigerator had stopped working and we had told her that ‘we were going to get it fixed’.
The woman told her that the expression was incorrect. We should have said that ‘we were going to get it repaired’. She explained that in proper English, the word ‘fix’ meant to attach something to something else, for example one could talk about ‘fixing’ a set of shelves to the wall.
Our au pair told us what the woman had said.
We agreed that she was right, that in England people used ‘repair’ rather than ‘fix’ in that context, but that in Canada (and North America generally) one could use either ‘fix’ or ‘repair’ when talking about a broken appliance, car etc.
Our au pair’s ambition was to become a flight attendant for Air France on their North Atlantic flights. She just grinned and said she would use ‘fix’.
(She joined Air France when she returned to France and after training on the airline’s domestic routes was assigned to the North Atlantic flights. She visited us from time to time after we returned to Canada.)
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
The family and I were in a Quebec City restaurant for breakfast. The server spoke only French and our French was pretty rudimentary. We got by with a lot of pointing at items on the menu.
I wanted some decaffeinated coffee and decided I had enough French to ask for that. I created a sentence in French that ending by asking if I could have ‘un Sanka’.
The server said, in French, that she wasn’t sure whether they could serve any before noon. I asked why and she said she would talk to the manager. She came back and said that they couldn’t serve that before noon.
The mystery sorted itself out when the bill came. I saw that the server had written down ‘un cinquante’, and then crossed it out. She thought I wanted a Labatt 50, a beer that was very popular in Quebec at the time.
Sanka and cinquante---pretty close.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Queen’s Politics Professor J.A. Corry, liked to tell this story about President Truman, who was known as a blunt-spoken person.
Apparently, the President’s daughter, Margaret, complained to her mother, Bess, about her father’s frequent use of the word ‘manure’. It was embarrassing, and Bess should get him to stop using it.
Bess sighed and said, “It took me twenty years to get him to say ‘manure’.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
We were at home and I was cleaning up the garage with the help of a child. As I was tidying things, the child picked up a paint can and shook it. Hearing paint slosh around in it he said, “Wa-wa”, the two-year-old’s version of ‘water’.
“No,” I said, “It’s paint”.
Another shake of the can and the child contradicted old Dad, “No, wa-wa”
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
In London, we lived next door to our doctor, a kindly but taciturn fellow.
One Sunday morning, there was a phone call from him, “Your child is eating green apples off the ground in your back garden---just thought I would save myself a trip.”
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #20 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
POSTING # 18
The Shaw Festival’s ‘In Good King Charles's Golden Days’; Mike’s Dream of Flying a Bush Plane; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
The Shaw Festival’s ‘In Good King Charles's Golden Days’
On Thursday, April 23, Pat and I and a friend who was visiting us went to see the Shaw Festival production of George Bernard Shaw’s ‘In Good King Charles’s Golden Days’.
The play is not produced often because---I suspect---of its themes of politics, religion and philosophy in 17th century England, and its length (nearly 2 hours and 45 minutes including two intermissions). Only a brave, or foolhardy, director would take it on.
The director, Eda Holmes, has responded superbly to the challenges of the play with a great cast, imaginative sets, and wonderful pacing.
We were enthralled and highly recommend it.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
At university, the courses I took covered the political and constitutional impact of the reign of King Charles II but there was not much about the King as a human being.
And, as Shaw shows, he was very human.
He had no children from his marriage but had a number of children with various women (he acknowledged at least 12).
Apparently the two wives of Prince Charles, Diana and Camilla, are both descended from those children. This means that when Prince William becomes king, he will be the first descendent of King Charles II to be monarch.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
For me, one of the joys of a live performance is to see how a cast responds to the unexpected.
At our performance, there was a small boo-boo. A book fell from a sofa onto the floor.
I looked at the book and wondered what the actress who was sitting near the sofa would do.
Would she ignore the book and continue to follow the dialogue---so she would be ready for her next cue?
Or would she bend down and pick it up?
If this had been a movie, the director would have shouted, ‘Cut’, along with some choice Anglo-Saxon oaths.
But this was live.
In a nanosecond, the actress made her decision. Bending down, she gracefully picked up the book and put it on an end table.
In the car on the way home, I mentioned the book incident. Pat and our friend picked up on my comment immediately. They said that they too had watched the actress and were wondering what she would do.
This was a trivial incident, but it was a human moment.
Being human means having to deal with the unexpected. The calm and perfect response of the actress to a sudden problem enhanced our enjoyment of the play.
Mike’s Dream of Flying a Bush Plane
In the last posting, Posting #17, April 26, I told some stories about my 1957 summer at the mining camp in Tulsequah, B.C.
I had been driving a truck carrying ore down a mountain to a mill in the valley but there was no longer any ore to move--- mining inside the mountain had stopped in line with the Company’s decision to close the mine in September.
The foreman shifted me to other driving duties. The mill still had a stockpile of ore to process and I sometimes drove a truck loaded with concentrated ore, from the mill to a kind of harbour some 10 miles down the Tulsequah River, where the River was deep and wide.
And sometimes, I drove a van carrying people and goods to meet the bush plane that arrived at the harbour three or four times a week.
After the pontooned airplane had landed on the river, the pilot would taxi to the dock. As he got close, he would cut the engine, jump onto one of the pontoons and throw a rope to one of the dock workers. After the plane was secured, the pilot would help any passengers climb down, and unload any supplies.
I liked the pilot, Mike (not his real name), who was in his early 30s, with dark, curly hair. He had a lively sense of humour and we would joke as I helped unload the plane.
I also liked the story of how he had become a pilot---part of which I picked up from him and part from the workers at Tulsequah. Mike had been hired by the mining company as a labourer and while working on the Tulsequah dock had met different bush pilots. Mike talked with them about flying and one of them encouraged him to take flying lessons.
Mike saved his money---not hard to do in a mining camp where the pay was good and there was not much to spend it on. When his contract as a labourer was up, he flew to Vancouver and found a flight school. He got his pilot’s license and thanks to contacts with the pilots he had met in Tulsequah, got a job with their firm.
The miners in the camp were proud of Mike---he was seen as ‘a good guy’ and they were pleased that things had worked out so well for him.
And Mike just loved flying---he kept saying that it was far and away the best job he had ever had.
And then as the summer was drawing to an end, we got word that Mike’s plane with Tulsequah’s chief mining engineer aboard had crashed in the mountains.
Both men were killed.
I never heard the official cause of the crash but the old timers said that there had probably been a sudden downdraft, a terrible hazard in the mountains.
Miners are tough people, used to accidents and death, but there was an almost church-like hush in the cookhouse and the bunk houses that day as the news spread.
Mike’s many friends were mourning.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
A couple of days later, I was asked to drive the engineer’s widow and her children to the bush plane for the start of her trip back to her family in the South. The mine manager and the doctor came along to comfort her.
The widow’s head was down and her shoulders were sagging---her life had suddenly been ripped apart. She responded quietly to the mine manager and the doctor when they spoke to her but she spent most of the time hugging and whispering to her children.
At the dock, we guided her and the children onto the same type of plane in which her husband had perished. Once they were strapped in, the pilot gunned the engine. The plane pulled free of the water and headed for Juneau, and the start of the long trip home.
On the way back to the camp, the mine manager who had been a Canadian army officer during some of the bloodiest battles in Sicily and up the spine of Italy chatted quietly with the doctor. The manager’s normally confident, take-charge demeanour had disappeared, replaced by a look of deep grief.
I heard scraps of the conversation. The manager was telling the doctor about how much he was going to miss his friend.
Canada is fortunate to have a cornucopia of natural resources. It is also fortunate to have people who are prepared to accept the risks involved in extracting those resources. We need to remember the sacrifices that they and their families sometimes have to make on our behalf.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Not long after the deaths of the Mike and the engineer, I was driving a truck loaded with concentrate through the bush to the barge. I saw some motion off to my right, and swiveling my head saw a moose running alongside the truck, on the shoulder of the road. Although I was sitting high up in the truck cab, the moose and I were almost at eye level.
And just a few feet apart.
The bush was dense at that point in the road and it was not unusual to see a deer on the road, trying to get away from the deer flies. But, I had never seen a moose.
The moose ran alongside me for two hundred yards or so, until we came to a clearing, and then he veered off to the right.
I remember his large, brown left eye---the only one I could see---and thinking that there didn’t seem to be any fear in it. We were just two large critters, sharing the road for a few moments.
As I watched him run into the clearing, I wondered how something so huge could grow up in the wild, without veterinarians or medicines.
It doesn’t bother me when I hear friends say they are going ‘up North’ to hunt moose. I just think that after my ‘close encounter’ with the Tulsequah moose I wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger and bring down something as large, wild and wonderful as a moose.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #19 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 you can email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
The Shaw Festival’s ‘In Good King Charles's Golden Days’
On Thursday, April 23, Pat and I and a friend who was visiting us went to see the Shaw Festival production of George Bernard Shaw’s ‘In Good King Charles’s Golden Days’.
The play is not produced often because---I suspect---of its themes of politics, religion and philosophy in 17th century England, and its length (nearly 2 hours and 45 minutes including two intermissions). Only a brave, or foolhardy, director would take it on.
The director, Eda Holmes, has responded superbly to the challenges of the play with a great cast, imaginative sets, and wonderful pacing.
We were enthralled and highly recommend it.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
At university, the courses I took covered the political and constitutional impact of the reign of King Charles II but there was not much about the King as a human being.
And, as Shaw shows, he was very human.
He had no children from his marriage but had a number of children with various women (he acknowledged at least 12).
Apparently the two wives of Prince Charles, Diana and Camilla, are both descended from those children. This means that when Prince William becomes king, he will be the first descendent of King Charles II to be monarch.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
For me, one of the joys of a live performance is to see how a cast responds to the unexpected.
At our performance, there was a small boo-boo. A book fell from a sofa onto the floor.
I looked at the book and wondered what the actress who was sitting near the sofa would do.
Would she ignore the book and continue to follow the dialogue---so she would be ready for her next cue?
Or would she bend down and pick it up?
If this had been a movie, the director would have shouted, ‘Cut’, along with some choice Anglo-Saxon oaths.
But this was live.
In a nanosecond, the actress made her decision. Bending down, she gracefully picked up the book and put it on an end table.
In the car on the way home, I mentioned the book incident. Pat and our friend picked up on my comment immediately. They said that they too had watched the actress and were wondering what she would do.
This was a trivial incident, but it was a human moment.
Being human means having to deal with the unexpected. The calm and perfect response of the actress to a sudden problem enhanced our enjoyment of the play.
Mike’s Dream of Flying a Bush Plane
In the last posting, Posting #17, April 26, I told some stories about my 1957 summer at the mining camp in Tulsequah, B.C.
I had been driving a truck carrying ore down a mountain to a mill in the valley but there was no longer any ore to move--- mining inside the mountain had stopped in line with the Company’s decision to close the mine in September.
The foreman shifted me to other driving duties. The mill still had a stockpile of ore to process and I sometimes drove a truck loaded with concentrated ore, from the mill to a kind of harbour some 10 miles down the Tulsequah River, where the River was deep and wide.
And sometimes, I drove a van carrying people and goods to meet the bush plane that arrived at the harbour three or four times a week.
After the pontooned airplane had landed on the river, the pilot would taxi to the dock. As he got close, he would cut the engine, jump onto one of the pontoons and throw a rope to one of the dock workers. After the plane was secured, the pilot would help any passengers climb down, and unload any supplies.
I liked the pilot, Mike (not his real name), who was in his early 30s, with dark, curly hair. He had a lively sense of humour and we would joke as I helped unload the plane.
I also liked the story of how he had become a pilot---part of which I picked up from him and part from the workers at Tulsequah. Mike had been hired by the mining company as a labourer and while working on the Tulsequah dock had met different bush pilots. Mike talked with them about flying and one of them encouraged him to take flying lessons.
Mike saved his money---not hard to do in a mining camp where the pay was good and there was not much to spend it on. When his contract as a labourer was up, he flew to Vancouver and found a flight school. He got his pilot’s license and thanks to contacts with the pilots he had met in Tulsequah, got a job with their firm.
The miners in the camp were proud of Mike---he was seen as ‘a good guy’ and they were pleased that things had worked out so well for him.
And Mike just loved flying---he kept saying that it was far and away the best job he had ever had.
And then as the summer was drawing to an end, we got word that Mike’s plane with Tulsequah’s chief mining engineer aboard had crashed in the mountains.
Both men were killed.
I never heard the official cause of the crash but the old timers said that there had probably been a sudden downdraft, a terrible hazard in the mountains.
Miners are tough people, used to accidents and death, but there was an almost church-like hush in the cookhouse and the bunk houses that day as the news spread.
Mike’s many friends were mourning.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
A couple of days later, I was asked to drive the engineer’s widow and her children to the bush plane for the start of her trip back to her family in the South. The mine manager and the doctor came along to comfort her.
The widow’s head was down and her shoulders were sagging---her life had suddenly been ripped apart. She responded quietly to the mine manager and the doctor when they spoke to her but she spent most of the time hugging and whispering to her children.
At the dock, we guided her and the children onto the same type of plane in which her husband had perished. Once they were strapped in, the pilot gunned the engine. The plane pulled free of the water and headed for Juneau, and the start of the long trip home.
On the way back to the camp, the mine manager who had been a Canadian army officer during some of the bloodiest battles in Sicily and up the spine of Italy chatted quietly with the doctor. The manager’s normally confident, take-charge demeanour had disappeared, replaced by a look of deep grief.
I heard scraps of the conversation. The manager was telling the doctor about how much he was going to miss his friend.
Canada is fortunate to have a cornucopia of natural resources. It is also fortunate to have people who are prepared to accept the risks involved in extracting those resources. We need to remember the sacrifices that they and their families sometimes have to make on our behalf.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Not long after the deaths of the Mike and the engineer, I was driving a truck loaded with concentrate through the bush to the barge. I saw some motion off to my right, and swiveling my head saw a moose running alongside the truck, on the shoulder of the road. Although I was sitting high up in the truck cab, the moose and I were almost at eye level.
And just a few feet apart.
The bush was dense at that point in the road and it was not unusual to see a deer on the road, trying to get away from the deer flies. But, I had never seen a moose.
The moose ran alongside me for two hundred yards or so, until we came to a clearing, and then he veered off to the right.
I remember his large, brown left eye---the only one I could see---and thinking that there didn’t seem to be any fear in it. We were just two large critters, sharing the road for a few moments.
As I watched him run into the clearing, I wondered how something so huge could grow up in the wild, without veterinarians or medicines.
It doesn’t bother me when I hear friends say they are going ‘up North’ to hunt moose. I just think that after my ‘close encounter’ with the Tulsequah moose I wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger and bring down something as large, wild and wonderful as a moose.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #19 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 you can email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
POSTING # 17
Plastic Bags on Earth Day in Virgil; He had to Get Out of Tulsequah; Secretary Treasurer of the Tulsequah Local of the Miners Union; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Plastic Bags on Earth Day in Virgil
On Earth Day, April 22, the Virgil supermarket stopped providing free plastic bags.
Many customers had been bringing in ‘green’ bags and bins well before Earth Day, motivated I suspect by a mix of altruism and guilt. I don’t think the small charge that is now being made for plastic bags was a consideration.
It reminded me of my experience in the first supermarket in Leeds, England back in 1962 (the advertising for the new store called it an authentic American Supermarket). Until the supermarket opened, we customers read or gave our list of groceries to a clerk who scurried around to get our items------just as we had done in Canada before the advent of supermarkets---and placed them in the string bags we had brought with us.
We had had supermarkets in Canada for 15 years or so before we went to England, and we now found it frustrating to wait for a clerk to fill an order.
Soon after the Leeds supermarket opened, I filled my cart and went to the check out. After ringing up my order, the cashier asked if he could have my bags.
I said that I had assumed that the supermarket would be providing paper bags as they did in America (plastic bags came later).
“Supermarkets don’t provide bags in America”, he said.
“Yes, they do”, I replied.
He shook his head.
I thought about the quip we used to hear in Yorkshire about people from Lancashire: ‘You can always tell a lad from Lancashire but you can’t tell him much’.
And then I thought about pots and kettles.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Looking back, Britain in the 1960s was in many ways closer to the goals of Earth Day than we are today (except for the terrible smogs caused by open coal fireplaces---which were in the process of being phased out).
For example:
Petrol was expensive and as a result cars were small and fuel efficient.
Electricity was costly so home owners used it sparingly.
For short trips, most people walked or bicycled.
Many people grew vegetables in their own gardens or on allotments provided by the city.
But the search for the so-called ‘good life’ in both Britain and North America created trends that have been leading us astray.
A few years ago, a friend from London, England and I were talking about these trends. We agreed that they had to change and each of us could see some promising signs.
I said that some people in Canada were now ridiculing huge SUVs by, for example, referring to them as Mall Terrain Vehicles.
He said that there was an astonishing number of SUVs in crowded London.
The locals referred to them, disparagingly, as Chelsea Tractors.
I loved it!
He had to Get out of Tulsequah
I never learned why Larry (not his real name) wanted to get out of Tulsequah.
But he sure wanted out.
Perhaps he had a really severe case of ‘cabin fever’ from being cooped up in an isolated mining camp in the north-western corner of British Columbia. Or he may have had problems with a wife or girlfriend back in Vancouver---problems that he wanted to get home to try to sort out.
He wasn’t saying.
He was a truck driver, in his late 20s, stocky with a fixed sullenness about him. Like the other workers in the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company (COMINCO) mine, he had signed a contract with the company to stay for a set period of time. In return, the Company paid for his fare from Vancouver to Tulsequah and would pay for his fare back to Vancouver.
The routing was complicated and the fare was not cheap. Workers recruited in Vancouver had to fly first to Seattle, catch a plane to Ketchikan, Alaska, then a seaplane to Juneau, Alaska and finally a bush plane to Tulsequah.
The Company was prepared to let him break the contract, but if he did, he would have to pay the full cost of both the fare to Tulsequah and the fare home.
It was June 1957 and I was on the second summer with Frontier College (see Posting #9, March 1, 2009) for stories about my first summer).
The Company decided that I should join Larry and the other truck drivers who were bringing newly-mined ore from half-way up a mountain---via a gravel road with many switchbacks---to a mill in the valley below. (The mill pulverized the ore and using various chemicals concentrated the ore for shipment by barge to Vancouver and then to a smelter.)
Once up the mountain, we backed in under a hopper that contained the ore rocks that had been dumped by mine railway cars.
Then we pulled a lever that opened a door in the hopper, allowing the ore to flow into the back of the truck. Once the truck was full we closed the hopper door and started the trip down the mountain.
The driving, which went on 24 hours a day, was mainly boring---up and down, up and down---but there were a couple of dangers that could make life interesting.
First, the hopper door could jam if a large piece of ore got trapped in it. There were long steel rods that we had to use to push or pry the rock out of the way. If the door couldn’t be closed, the ore just kept coming, and coming….
The second danger was on the way down the mountain. The driver had to find a way to keep the heavily-loaded truck from running away. The secret was to find the right balance of engine braking and air brakes to control the descent down the switchback road. If one used too much engine braking, by using too low a gear, the engine would overheat. If one chose too high a gear, the airbrakes would have to be used too much--- the pressure would fall and the brakes would eventually fail.
It wasn’t always easy to get the right balance. One night, my airbrake pressure got too low and I had to steer the truck into the bank on one of the switchbacks. I waited there until the pressure had come back up, then carried on down the mountain.
Reporting for work one morning, I was told there would be no driving for a few days. Larry had had a problem during the night. He claimed that while he was loading his truck, the hopper door jammed. He said he hadn’t been able to dislodge the rock. The ore poured down on the truck, burying it. The truck was a write-off.
It was treated as an accident and when the mess was cleaned away Larry was given a new truck, a brand new Autocar, which had just arrived by barge from Vancouver. We were told that it cost $150,000 (that’s about $1.2 million in 2009 dollars!)
It was a beautiful looking truck, with a luxurious cab. It had 18 speeds and something I really liked, an RPM gauge. The ore trucks had to be double-clutched to shift gears and this was tough when one was going up or down the mountain. Unless one got the RPM just right there would be a damaging (and embarrassing) grinding of gears. The old trucks didn’t have an RPM gauge and one just had to develop a feel for the speed of the engine. With the Autocar, you just waited until the RPM gauge was in the green zone and every shift was perfect.
We were all envious of Larry’s new truck.
I hoped the Autocar would improve Larry’s disposition---which, perhaps, was the Company’s hope as well.
Two days later, as I was having breakfast in the cookhouse one of the other drivers asked if I had heard about Larry. He said that during the night Larry’s new truck had gone off the road as he was coming down the mountain. Larry claimed, apparently, that the brakes had failed. He was just able to get out of the truck before it crashed down into a deep gully.
It was another write-off.
As I started to look around the cookhouse for Larry, my friend said that I wouldn’t be able to find him. A bush plane had been called and Larry was on his way to meet it. The Company had decided that enough was enough.
Larry had finally got his wish--- he was on his way home.
Secretary Treasurer of the Tulsequah Local of the Miners Union
In July of 1957, the Company announced that it would be mothballing Tulsequah in September---until the price of base metals picked up. Everyone would be laid off except for two watchmen who would stay on-site.
One of the early layoffs was a fellow who was Secretary Treasurer of the Tulsequah local of the union. Knowing that I would be around until almost the end, some workers nominated me to be Secretary Treasurer.
Normally, I wouldn’t have thought twice about accepting. I was paying dues to the Union and had always been a supporter of unions. The problem was that it was the International Mine and Mill and Smelter Union, a union that had alleged links with the Communist Party or at least with Communist sympathizers.
In the end, I decided to accept the post.
After I took over the Secretary Treasurer’s role, one of the workers said that if I didn’t run off with the local’s bank account I would be first one who hadn’t.
I asked him if the police had ever recovered the funds. He said the union never called the police.
“We’ve all been in jail---we would never send anyone there.”
As September approached, I closed out the bank accounts and arranged for all the funds---every last penny--- to be sent to the Union’s regional office in Vancouver.
In agreeing to take on the job, I had not thought that in a couple of years the RCMP would be conducting security checks on me as I applied for entry into the Foreign Service. I had written the Foreign Service exams and had done well enough to be offered a job, subject to background checks.
I don’t know whether my brief stint with the union’s local executive ever came to the RCMP’s attention. If it did, it was obviously---and properly--- treated as something of no security significance.
Still, although I knew I had done nothing wrong I was a bit apprehensive until the Government confirmed the job offer----meaning that I had passed the security check.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
One evening during a holiday in France, we were driving in Paris trying to find our hotel and trying not to hit, or be hit, by aggressive Parisian drivers. Our child was in the backseat.
In the era before children’s car seats, our child wore a harness that was attached to the frame of the car. Believe or not, the harness was a state-of-the-art safety feature at that time, a safety feature that had not yet been adopted by most motorists. It allowed children to stand up and look out the windows but constrained them somewhat if there were a sudden stop or an accident.
As we navigated through the traffic, we heard a little voice from the backseat, “It’s gorgeous!”
A little later, a louder voice, “It’s gorgeous”.
At a traffic stop, we turned around and saw that our child was looking out the back window---at the Eiffel Tower.
And gorgeous, it was--- illuminated against the darkening sky!
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
On the same trip, we had to use an elevator and we wondered how our child would react to its first elevator ride. We watched as the door shut and the elevator started to rise.
The child’s face grew puzzled, and then relaxed.
Looking up at us, the child said reassuringly, “Ride in a cupboard”.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #18 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 you can email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Plastic Bags on Earth Day in Virgil
On Earth Day, April 22, the Virgil supermarket stopped providing free plastic bags.
Many customers had been bringing in ‘green’ bags and bins well before Earth Day, motivated I suspect by a mix of altruism and guilt. I don’t think the small charge that is now being made for plastic bags was a consideration.
It reminded me of my experience in the first supermarket in Leeds, England back in 1962 (the advertising for the new store called it an authentic American Supermarket). Until the supermarket opened, we customers read or gave our list of groceries to a clerk who scurried around to get our items------just as we had done in Canada before the advent of supermarkets---and placed them in the string bags we had brought with us.
We had had supermarkets in Canada for 15 years or so before we went to England, and we now found it frustrating to wait for a clerk to fill an order.
Soon after the Leeds supermarket opened, I filled my cart and went to the check out. After ringing up my order, the cashier asked if he could have my bags.
I said that I had assumed that the supermarket would be providing paper bags as they did in America (plastic bags came later).
“Supermarkets don’t provide bags in America”, he said.
“Yes, they do”, I replied.
He shook his head.
I thought about the quip we used to hear in Yorkshire about people from Lancashire: ‘You can always tell a lad from Lancashire but you can’t tell him much’.
And then I thought about pots and kettles.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Looking back, Britain in the 1960s was in many ways closer to the goals of Earth Day than we are today (except for the terrible smogs caused by open coal fireplaces---which were in the process of being phased out).
For example:
Petrol was expensive and as a result cars were small and fuel efficient.
Electricity was costly so home owners used it sparingly.
For short trips, most people walked or bicycled.
Many people grew vegetables in their own gardens or on allotments provided by the city.
But the search for the so-called ‘good life’ in both Britain and North America created trends that have been leading us astray.
A few years ago, a friend from London, England and I were talking about these trends. We agreed that they had to change and each of us could see some promising signs.
I said that some people in Canada were now ridiculing huge SUVs by, for example, referring to them as Mall Terrain Vehicles.
He said that there was an astonishing number of SUVs in crowded London.
The locals referred to them, disparagingly, as Chelsea Tractors.
I loved it!
He had to Get out of Tulsequah
I never learned why Larry (not his real name) wanted to get out of Tulsequah.
But he sure wanted out.
Perhaps he had a really severe case of ‘cabin fever’ from being cooped up in an isolated mining camp in the north-western corner of British Columbia. Or he may have had problems with a wife or girlfriend back in Vancouver---problems that he wanted to get home to try to sort out.
He wasn’t saying.
He was a truck driver, in his late 20s, stocky with a fixed sullenness about him. Like the other workers in the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company (COMINCO) mine, he had signed a contract with the company to stay for a set period of time. In return, the Company paid for his fare from Vancouver to Tulsequah and would pay for his fare back to Vancouver.
The routing was complicated and the fare was not cheap. Workers recruited in Vancouver had to fly first to Seattle, catch a plane to Ketchikan, Alaska, then a seaplane to Juneau, Alaska and finally a bush plane to Tulsequah.
The Company was prepared to let him break the contract, but if he did, he would have to pay the full cost of both the fare to Tulsequah and the fare home.
It was June 1957 and I was on the second summer with Frontier College (see Posting #9, March 1, 2009) for stories about my first summer).
The Company decided that I should join Larry and the other truck drivers who were bringing newly-mined ore from half-way up a mountain---via a gravel road with many switchbacks---to a mill in the valley below. (The mill pulverized the ore and using various chemicals concentrated the ore for shipment by barge to Vancouver and then to a smelter.)
Once up the mountain, we backed in under a hopper that contained the ore rocks that had been dumped by mine railway cars.
Then we pulled a lever that opened a door in the hopper, allowing the ore to flow into the back of the truck. Once the truck was full we closed the hopper door and started the trip down the mountain.
The driving, which went on 24 hours a day, was mainly boring---up and down, up and down---but there were a couple of dangers that could make life interesting.
First, the hopper door could jam if a large piece of ore got trapped in it. There were long steel rods that we had to use to push or pry the rock out of the way. If the door couldn’t be closed, the ore just kept coming, and coming….
The second danger was on the way down the mountain. The driver had to find a way to keep the heavily-loaded truck from running away. The secret was to find the right balance of engine braking and air brakes to control the descent down the switchback road. If one used too much engine braking, by using too low a gear, the engine would overheat. If one chose too high a gear, the airbrakes would have to be used too much--- the pressure would fall and the brakes would eventually fail.
It wasn’t always easy to get the right balance. One night, my airbrake pressure got too low and I had to steer the truck into the bank on one of the switchbacks. I waited there until the pressure had come back up, then carried on down the mountain.
Reporting for work one morning, I was told there would be no driving for a few days. Larry had had a problem during the night. He claimed that while he was loading his truck, the hopper door jammed. He said he hadn’t been able to dislodge the rock. The ore poured down on the truck, burying it. The truck was a write-off.
It was treated as an accident and when the mess was cleaned away Larry was given a new truck, a brand new Autocar, which had just arrived by barge from Vancouver. We were told that it cost $150,000 (that’s about $1.2 million in 2009 dollars!)
It was a beautiful looking truck, with a luxurious cab. It had 18 speeds and something I really liked, an RPM gauge. The ore trucks had to be double-clutched to shift gears and this was tough when one was going up or down the mountain. Unless one got the RPM just right there would be a damaging (and embarrassing) grinding of gears. The old trucks didn’t have an RPM gauge and one just had to develop a feel for the speed of the engine. With the Autocar, you just waited until the RPM gauge was in the green zone and every shift was perfect.
We were all envious of Larry’s new truck.
I hoped the Autocar would improve Larry’s disposition---which, perhaps, was the Company’s hope as well.
Two days later, as I was having breakfast in the cookhouse one of the other drivers asked if I had heard about Larry. He said that during the night Larry’s new truck had gone off the road as he was coming down the mountain. Larry claimed, apparently, that the brakes had failed. He was just able to get out of the truck before it crashed down into a deep gully.
It was another write-off.
As I started to look around the cookhouse for Larry, my friend said that I wouldn’t be able to find him. A bush plane had been called and Larry was on his way to meet it. The Company had decided that enough was enough.
Larry had finally got his wish--- he was on his way home.
Secretary Treasurer of the Tulsequah Local of the Miners Union
In July of 1957, the Company announced that it would be mothballing Tulsequah in September---until the price of base metals picked up. Everyone would be laid off except for two watchmen who would stay on-site.
One of the early layoffs was a fellow who was Secretary Treasurer of the Tulsequah local of the union. Knowing that I would be around until almost the end, some workers nominated me to be Secretary Treasurer.
Normally, I wouldn’t have thought twice about accepting. I was paying dues to the Union and had always been a supporter of unions. The problem was that it was the International Mine and Mill and Smelter Union, a union that had alleged links with the Communist Party or at least with Communist sympathizers.
In the end, I decided to accept the post.
After I took over the Secretary Treasurer’s role, one of the workers said that if I didn’t run off with the local’s bank account I would be first one who hadn’t.
I asked him if the police had ever recovered the funds. He said the union never called the police.
“We’ve all been in jail---we would never send anyone there.”
As September approached, I closed out the bank accounts and arranged for all the funds---every last penny--- to be sent to the Union’s regional office in Vancouver.
In agreeing to take on the job, I had not thought that in a couple of years the RCMP would be conducting security checks on me as I applied for entry into the Foreign Service. I had written the Foreign Service exams and had done well enough to be offered a job, subject to background checks.
I don’t know whether my brief stint with the union’s local executive ever came to the RCMP’s attention. If it did, it was obviously---and properly--- treated as something of no security significance.
Still, although I knew I had done nothing wrong I was a bit apprehensive until the Government confirmed the job offer----meaning that I had passed the security check.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
One evening during a holiday in France, we were driving in Paris trying to find our hotel and trying not to hit, or be hit, by aggressive Parisian drivers. Our child was in the backseat.
In the era before children’s car seats, our child wore a harness that was attached to the frame of the car. Believe or not, the harness was a state-of-the-art safety feature at that time, a safety feature that had not yet been adopted by most motorists. It allowed children to stand up and look out the windows but constrained them somewhat if there were a sudden stop or an accident.
As we navigated through the traffic, we heard a little voice from the backseat, “It’s gorgeous!”
A little later, a louder voice, “It’s gorgeous”.
At a traffic stop, we turned around and saw that our child was looking out the back window---at the Eiffel Tower.
And gorgeous, it was--- illuminated against the darkening sky!
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
On the same trip, we had to use an elevator and we wondered how our child would react to its first elevator ride. We watched as the door shut and the elevator started to rise.
The child’s face grew puzzled, and then relaxed.
Looking up at us, the child said reassuringly, “Ride in a cupboard”.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for Posting #18 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 you can email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Posting #16
Crowds back in Niagara-on-the-Lake; Cash for the Russian Project; Carrying Cash to Russia and Keeping it Safe; Wrinkle Remover;
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Crowds back in Niagara-on-the-Lake
The Shaw Festival opened its 2009 season on Saturday, April 11.
Suddenly the town that had been snoozing since last fall came alive.
Parking spaces are scarce again. The sidewalks are crowded with ambling visitors.
And the restaurants are busy. For the last few months, we have been able to gossip leisurely with the servers but no longer. We went to one of our favourite places on April 11th and the server took our order and was off. When she brought our food, I said, “The people are back.”
Looking around the room, she smiled broadly, “Isn’t it great!”
Everyone has been wondering about the impact of the financial and economic problems on the Festival and the town.
Of course, one robin doesn’t a spring make, but we hope that all this activity is a good omen.
Cash for the Russian Project
I knew that there would be many challenges in setting up 22 model employment offices across 8 time zones in Russia but I didn’t expect one of them to be finding the cash to pay the bills.
The problem wasn’t ‘money’, money. The project was generously funded, with more than enough money in the budget to pay all our costs. The challenge was in getting ‘cash’ money.
The basic problem was that Russia did not have a trustworthy banking system in the 1990s.
There WERE banks. In fact, each month, a brand new bank would spring up in Moscow with a respectable facade outside and lots of reassuring marble inside. They looked as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.
But, in two months or so, the bankers and the deposits would be sunning themselves in Dubai.
Because there were no reliable banks, all transactions in Russia in the 1990s had to be in cash---no cheques, credit cards, bank drafts, wired transfers or lines of credit.
And the cash had to be in US dollars.
Furthermore, the US bills had to be totally pristine, with absolutely no identifying marks. I had never paid any attention to markings on bills until I had to sort through stacks of bills to find some that would be acceptable in Russia. I was astonished at how many bills had been ‘defaced’---bills with scribbled numbers on them, staple holes, tears and even badly dog-eared corners.
Exactly why Russians insist on pristine bills is---as President Obama would say---beyond my pay grade. I suspect they are worried that someone may try to track financial transactions by using marked bills, perhaps the police (secret or otherwise), tax inspectors or even criminals. Whatever the reason, Russians wanted clean bills.
And that was that!
I found it was hard to convey the need for clean bills to Canadian bankers. When I tried to get the US$25,000 needed to open the project, I went to the foreign exchange department of a large charter bank in Ottawa.
The clerk listened to me and then said that there would be no problem. Any worn or torn bills were returned to Washington to be destroyed. To demonstrate, she pulled out a stack of US 100 bills. “\See, these bills are fine”.
I leafed through the bills. Pulling out several with handwritten numbers and small tears, I explained that they would not be accepted by the Russians.
“What’s wrong with those Russians? These are perfectly fine bills!”
I sighed and went to the Civil Service Co-op (now called the Alterna Bank). I knew that the Co-op didn’t usually handle large amounts of US dollars---just enough to provide members with a few hundred dollars for trips to the US---but the clerks were generally more helpful than their counterparts at the ‘real’ banks.
I found a wonderful clerk who actually listened to my plea, and understood.
“So, you want me to launder some money for you”, Deidre chuckled.
She told me she would request brand new bills, which would arrive in about a week.
When the money arrived, she and I went into a back room where she ran the bills through an automatic counter---twice. Worrying about me walking on the street with all that money, she found an anonymous looking envelope. “People will think it’s just mortgage documents”, she said.
Whenever we needed more money, Pat or I would call Deidre at the Co-op.
“How much laundered cash do you want this time?”, she would ask.
It is wonderful to find someone who knows what she is doing, and does it with a sense of humour!
Carrying Cash to Russia and Keeping it Safe
Once we had clean bills, Pat or I had to carry them to Russia. On my first trip to Russia, I carried US$25,000 (made up of 100s, 50s and 20s), in two bulging money belts.
Pat brought over US$10,000-15,000 each time she visited me.
(She once startled a friend who was seeing her off at the Ottawa Airport by asking her to keep an eye on her (Pat’s) carry-on case while she went for a magazine. “It has $15,000 in it.” Pat says the friend gasped, and then kept the bag squeezed between her legs until Pat came back.)
Once the cash was in Russia, I had to find a way to keep it safe.
My office manager said that Russians have a saying that locks keep out only honest people. He argued that small safes and filing cabinets with locks were useless---that would be the first place thieves would look. The secret was to find a place to hide the money where no one would think of looking.
Where could that be?
After mulling things over for a while, I came up with a solution. My furnished apartment had a small room with shelves of hundreds of double-banked Russian books. I hollowed out a large old book, stored the cash in it and placed the book on the third shelf behind a red book.
After I did this, I was worried that if anything happened to me, the money might never be found.
I couldn’t figure out how to tell Pat---who was back in Ottawa---what I had done with the money (I assumed---not unreasonably as things turned out---that emails and phone calls would be monitored and that the apartment would be bugged).
I decided that I just had to live with that worry, but one of the first things we did when Pat came to visit was to go for a walk in a nearby park so I could tell her where the money was stored.
Later on, whenever we needed some cash, we would write notes to each other and one of us would go to the stash.
All in all, the systems we developed to deal with cash worked well---no money was ever stolen. But there was a cost in worry and inconvenience. We kept reminding ourselves that this was a cost that all Russians had to bear, day in and day out.
They couldn’t get on a plane and in a few hours be back in a place where banks worked.
Wrinkle Remover
My first trip from Moscow to a proposed model employment office was on an overnight train. When we checked in, my interpreter and I found that we would be sharing a four-berth compartment with another Russian and a fellow from the newly-independent nation of Georgia.
As soon as we heard the fourth person was a Georgian, the interpreter dragged me into the corridor, outside our compartment. He hissed that we had to be very careful with the Georgian.
“They are all thugs”, my interpreter said, “Don’t tell him anything, and above all don’t show him any money”. (I had US$2000 as backup funds in a money belt plus more money in my billfold.)
I learned that there were centuries of bad feelings between the Russians and the Georgians (bad feelings that continue to today, witness the recent border fighting).
As we got ready for bed, I found that the clasp on my suitcase had jammed. The interpreter and I took turns trying to free the clasp but with no luck.
The Georgian, who had been watching us, pulled a 9 inch hunting knife from his suitcase and offered to use it to pry the clasp open. Just then, the clasp came free.
Looking at me, the interpreter nodded almost imperceptibly toward the Georgian, as much as to say, “Didn’t I tell you?”
When I went to the washroom at the end of the corridor to brush my teeth, I put my passport in my money belt with the $2000. Usually, I took the money belt off at night but not that night!
I didn’t sleep much. I felt I had to keep an eye on the Georgian and his knife. And the lumpy money belt prodded me every time I rolled over.
To make matters worse, the train was too hot. Now, the heating in Russian trains is something like the jibe about the army having two sizes: too small and too big. The train that night was definitely too hot. On top of that, I am a ‘hot’ sleeper, in other words, I perspire a lot at night.
In the morning the money belt was damp, very damp.
We had breakfast with the Georgian fellow and he seemed fine, after all---a businessman trying to sell Georgian wines. (I have no idea what he was doing with the hunting knife---perhaps it was protection against Russian thugs.)
We were met at the train station by local employment officials and our visit went well.
The return trip was uneventful.
When I got back to the Moscow apartment, I pulled out the $2000. The bills had dried by that time but were badly wrinkled. No Russian would have accepted them.
That evening, I sent the family an SOS email telling them about the wrinkled bills and asking for suggestions. Daughter Jennifer replied immediately saying that when she was studying fashion design the students often had a problem with wrinkled patterns. A professor taught them how to iron the patterns, using paper above and below and a low-medium setting (no steam!).
I spent a few hours ironing bills on the kitchen table. It was amazing---the wrinkles just disappeared.
The next day, on my way to work, I used one of the ironed bills and it survived the usual thorough screening by a shop keeper.
The next time Pat saw Deidre at the Co-op, she told her that we were no longer just laundering money, we were also ironing it.
Deidre laughed and shook her head as though to say, ‘What will these crazy people be up to next?’
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Cassidy in Quebec
This is still another story about Cassidy, our golden cocker spaniel (I am afraid of boring people with stories about Cass----I promise I will give the old fellow a rest for a few postings).
In 1976, the whole family, Cass included, moved to Quebec City for a year.
One of our neighbours, Pierre, (not his real name) fell in love with Cass and his tricks.
One of the tricks was the old standard, ‘shake hands’. Pierre decided to try the trick in French. He said to Cass, “Donne-moi ta patte”. Cass paused for a moment, then seeing Pierre’s outstretched hand, reached out his paw. Pierre was ecstatic. “He speaks French!”
Now a cynic could say that the outstretched hand was a pretty big hint---that it wasn’t much of a stretch for Cass to figure out that he was expected to hold out his paw.
But after Pierre had played the game several times for his family and friends, Cassidy did indeed learn that “Donne-moi ta patte” meant ‘shake hands’. He would lift his paw even without an outstretched hand.
Pierre had less luck with another trick. Cass hated baths and we would tease him by saying “Have a bath Cass”. He would growl and shake his floppy ears.
When Pierre tried the French for that, Cass just stared at him. There were no cues, no signals and Cass was stumped.
Pierre tried a different tack. He tried to repeat what we said but with his strong accent it came out something like, “Hab a bat Cass”
We wondered what Cass would do.
Cass stared at him for a couple of seconds and then the light came on. Cass growled in the most satisfying way.
Pierre was delighted.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe! Posting #17 will include some stories about a summer I spent in a mining camp at Tulsequah, British Columbia. If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or you can email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Crowds back in Niagara-on-the-Lake
The Shaw Festival opened its 2009 season on Saturday, April 11.
Suddenly the town that had been snoozing since last fall came alive.
Parking spaces are scarce again. The sidewalks are crowded with ambling visitors.
And the restaurants are busy. For the last few months, we have been able to gossip leisurely with the servers but no longer. We went to one of our favourite places on April 11th and the server took our order and was off. When she brought our food, I said, “The people are back.”
Looking around the room, she smiled broadly, “Isn’t it great!”
Everyone has been wondering about the impact of the financial and economic problems on the Festival and the town.
Of course, one robin doesn’t a spring make, but we hope that all this activity is a good omen.
Cash for the Russian Project
I knew that there would be many challenges in setting up 22 model employment offices across 8 time zones in Russia but I didn’t expect one of them to be finding the cash to pay the bills.
The problem wasn’t ‘money’, money. The project was generously funded, with more than enough money in the budget to pay all our costs. The challenge was in getting ‘cash’ money.
The basic problem was that Russia did not have a trustworthy banking system in the 1990s.
There WERE banks. In fact, each month, a brand new bank would spring up in Moscow with a respectable facade outside and lots of reassuring marble inside. They looked as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.
But, in two months or so, the bankers and the deposits would be sunning themselves in Dubai.
Because there were no reliable banks, all transactions in Russia in the 1990s had to be in cash---no cheques, credit cards, bank drafts, wired transfers or lines of credit.
And the cash had to be in US dollars.
Furthermore, the US bills had to be totally pristine, with absolutely no identifying marks. I had never paid any attention to markings on bills until I had to sort through stacks of bills to find some that would be acceptable in Russia. I was astonished at how many bills had been ‘defaced’---bills with scribbled numbers on them, staple holes, tears and even badly dog-eared corners.
Exactly why Russians insist on pristine bills is---as President Obama would say---beyond my pay grade. I suspect they are worried that someone may try to track financial transactions by using marked bills, perhaps the police (secret or otherwise), tax inspectors or even criminals. Whatever the reason, Russians wanted clean bills.
And that was that!
I found it was hard to convey the need for clean bills to Canadian bankers. When I tried to get the US$25,000 needed to open the project, I went to the foreign exchange department of a large charter bank in Ottawa.
The clerk listened to me and then said that there would be no problem. Any worn or torn bills were returned to Washington to be destroyed. To demonstrate, she pulled out a stack of US 100 bills. “\See, these bills are fine”.
I leafed through the bills. Pulling out several with handwritten numbers and small tears, I explained that they would not be accepted by the Russians.
“What’s wrong with those Russians? These are perfectly fine bills!”
I sighed and went to the Civil Service Co-op (now called the Alterna Bank). I knew that the Co-op didn’t usually handle large amounts of US dollars---just enough to provide members with a few hundred dollars for trips to the US---but the clerks were generally more helpful than their counterparts at the ‘real’ banks.
I found a wonderful clerk who actually listened to my plea, and understood.
“So, you want me to launder some money for you”, Deidre chuckled.
She told me she would request brand new bills, which would arrive in about a week.
When the money arrived, she and I went into a back room where she ran the bills through an automatic counter---twice. Worrying about me walking on the street with all that money, she found an anonymous looking envelope. “People will think it’s just mortgage documents”, she said.
Whenever we needed more money, Pat or I would call Deidre at the Co-op.
“How much laundered cash do you want this time?”, she would ask.
It is wonderful to find someone who knows what she is doing, and does it with a sense of humour!
Carrying Cash to Russia and Keeping it Safe
Once we had clean bills, Pat or I had to carry them to Russia. On my first trip to Russia, I carried US$25,000 (made up of 100s, 50s and 20s), in two bulging money belts.
Pat brought over US$10,000-15,000 each time she visited me.
(She once startled a friend who was seeing her off at the Ottawa Airport by asking her to keep an eye on her (Pat’s) carry-on case while she went for a magazine. “It has $15,000 in it.” Pat says the friend gasped, and then kept the bag squeezed between her legs until Pat came back.)
Once the cash was in Russia, I had to find a way to keep it safe.
My office manager said that Russians have a saying that locks keep out only honest people. He argued that small safes and filing cabinets with locks were useless---that would be the first place thieves would look. The secret was to find a place to hide the money where no one would think of looking.
Where could that be?
After mulling things over for a while, I came up with a solution. My furnished apartment had a small room with shelves of hundreds of double-banked Russian books. I hollowed out a large old book, stored the cash in it and placed the book on the third shelf behind a red book.
After I did this, I was worried that if anything happened to me, the money might never be found.
I couldn’t figure out how to tell Pat---who was back in Ottawa---what I had done with the money (I assumed---not unreasonably as things turned out---that emails and phone calls would be monitored and that the apartment would be bugged).
I decided that I just had to live with that worry, but one of the first things we did when Pat came to visit was to go for a walk in a nearby park so I could tell her where the money was stored.
Later on, whenever we needed some cash, we would write notes to each other and one of us would go to the stash.
All in all, the systems we developed to deal with cash worked well---no money was ever stolen. But there was a cost in worry and inconvenience. We kept reminding ourselves that this was a cost that all Russians had to bear, day in and day out.
They couldn’t get on a plane and in a few hours be back in a place where banks worked.
Wrinkle Remover
My first trip from Moscow to a proposed model employment office was on an overnight train. When we checked in, my interpreter and I found that we would be sharing a four-berth compartment with another Russian and a fellow from the newly-independent nation of Georgia.
As soon as we heard the fourth person was a Georgian, the interpreter dragged me into the corridor, outside our compartment. He hissed that we had to be very careful with the Georgian.
“They are all thugs”, my interpreter said, “Don’t tell him anything, and above all don’t show him any money”. (I had US$2000 as backup funds in a money belt plus more money in my billfold.)
I learned that there were centuries of bad feelings between the Russians and the Georgians (bad feelings that continue to today, witness the recent border fighting).
As we got ready for bed, I found that the clasp on my suitcase had jammed. The interpreter and I took turns trying to free the clasp but with no luck.
The Georgian, who had been watching us, pulled a 9 inch hunting knife from his suitcase and offered to use it to pry the clasp open. Just then, the clasp came free.
Looking at me, the interpreter nodded almost imperceptibly toward the Georgian, as much as to say, “Didn’t I tell you?”
When I went to the washroom at the end of the corridor to brush my teeth, I put my passport in my money belt with the $2000. Usually, I took the money belt off at night but not that night!
I didn’t sleep much. I felt I had to keep an eye on the Georgian and his knife. And the lumpy money belt prodded me every time I rolled over.
To make matters worse, the train was too hot. Now, the heating in Russian trains is something like the jibe about the army having two sizes: too small and too big. The train that night was definitely too hot. On top of that, I am a ‘hot’ sleeper, in other words, I perspire a lot at night.
In the morning the money belt was damp, very damp.
We had breakfast with the Georgian fellow and he seemed fine, after all---a businessman trying to sell Georgian wines. (I have no idea what he was doing with the hunting knife---perhaps it was protection against Russian thugs.)
We were met at the train station by local employment officials and our visit went well.
The return trip was uneventful.
When I got back to the Moscow apartment, I pulled out the $2000. The bills had dried by that time but were badly wrinkled. No Russian would have accepted them.
That evening, I sent the family an SOS email telling them about the wrinkled bills and asking for suggestions. Daughter Jennifer replied immediately saying that when she was studying fashion design the students often had a problem with wrinkled patterns. A professor taught them how to iron the patterns, using paper above and below and a low-medium setting (no steam!).
I spent a few hours ironing bills on the kitchen table. It was amazing---the wrinkles just disappeared.
The next day, on my way to work, I used one of the ironed bills and it survived the usual thorough screening by a shop keeper.
The next time Pat saw Deidre at the Co-op, she told her that we were no longer just laundering money, we were also ironing it.
Deidre laughed and shook her head as though to say, ‘What will these crazy people be up to next?’
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)
Cassidy in Quebec
This is still another story about Cassidy, our golden cocker spaniel (I am afraid of boring people with stories about Cass----I promise I will give the old fellow a rest for a few postings).
In 1976, the whole family, Cass included, moved to Quebec City for a year.
One of our neighbours, Pierre, (not his real name) fell in love with Cass and his tricks.
One of the tricks was the old standard, ‘shake hands’. Pierre decided to try the trick in French. He said to Cass, “Donne-moi ta patte”. Cass paused for a moment, then seeing Pierre’s outstretched hand, reached out his paw. Pierre was ecstatic. “He speaks French!”
Now a cynic could say that the outstretched hand was a pretty big hint---that it wasn’t much of a stretch for Cass to figure out that he was expected to hold out his paw.
But after Pierre had played the game several times for his family and friends, Cassidy did indeed learn that “Donne-moi ta patte” meant ‘shake hands’. He would lift his paw even without an outstretched hand.
Pierre had less luck with another trick. Cass hated baths and we would tease him by saying “Have a bath Cass”. He would growl and shake his floppy ears.
When Pierre tried the French for that, Cass just stared at him. There were no cues, no signals and Cass was stumped.
Pierre tried a different tack. He tried to repeat what we said but with his strong accent it came out something like, “Hab a bat Cass”
We wondered what Cass would do.
Cass stared at him for a couple of seconds and then the light came on. Cass growled in the most satisfying way.
Pierre was delighted.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe! Posting #17 will include some stories about a summer I spent in a mining camp at Tulsequah, British Columbia. If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or you can email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.
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