Not taking debate

There's quite a war going on in social media about whether this is the time for debate about the continued existence of the British monarchy, especially when the debate consists of tweets, some in decidedly questionable taste. 

I'd take the hint to take a break from social media until say, October or so, except I keep running into the occasional gem.

I do think comic relief will become increasingly necessary over the next couple of weeks of lamentation, no matter what you thought of the late Queen, so here is a possible way to joke gently, done by a Canadian, of course. 

The Canadian is "Brittlestar" (real name: Stewart Reynolds), who is based in Stratford, Ontario, and if you're unclear of the situation with Lisa LaFlamme -- well, actually, this video explains it pretty well.

Then we make poutine

 This is a joke about Canadian invasion -- probably only Canadians will get it.

I'm Canadian, so I thought it was a hoot.

Hey? (Nay!)

 I went to the drug store, as is my custom, on October 31st, to cut down on the possibility that I might consume all the Hallowe'en candy before the little goblins show up.

This year, however, it's unlikely. Across the country, provincial premiers and health officers are declaring a moratorium on trick-or-treating.  Even our prime minister, an avid Hallowe'en dresser-upper (sometimes with disastrous results) has declared to the children of Canada that the pandemic "sucks".

We've carved our jack o' lanterns, nevertheless, and, with three or four families with young children in our building, we're prepared to shell out.  Perhaps in baggies.  Delivered by reacher/grabber.

To fully understand the joke behind this rather wonderful "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" parody, it helps to have: a) been in French Core or French Immersion in the primary grades at a Canadian elementary school within the past forty or so years; or: b) had children in French Core or French Immersion in the primary grades at a Canadian elementary school within the past forty or so years.

Here's the original:

Out of puck

Okay, something's weird with Blogger, so I'm going to attempt to leave a video and flee, hoping that things in the photo archives are back to normal tomorrow.

I was born in Edmonton, Alberta, so you might be surprised to learn that I loathe hockey. (Or not.)

Oh, I did try to appreciate it in the early years of my marriage, for the sake of the Resident Fan Boy, but, face it, it's a violent, shout-y, interminable game.

However, I was born in Edmonton, so I instinctively hate anything to do with Calgary. I think it's something they put in our baby formula.

This video rather perfectly encapsulates the antipathy that Edmontonians and Calgarians feel for one another, right down to their symphony orchestras.



The theme music for "Hockey Night in Canada" strikes anticipation and longing in the hearts of hockey-lovers - and dread and a certain air of resignation into the hearts of hockey-haters. Until today, I'd never heard the whole theme. The Resident Fan Boy tells me that it's because I never hang around for the show-end credits.

The game actually ends? News to me.

Kicking at the darkness

Elder daughter has been flattened by the COVID-19 crisis.

No, she doesn't have it, but it has struck at a crucial time of transition for her, and has put all her dreams on hold. She posted this on social media yesterday, saying it gives her "casual full body chills". I think I know what she means, but am not sure why they are "casual" - it's an adjective she uses a lot.


She's too young to remember the original.

I'm not.



When elder daughter was about two months away from being born, the Barenaked Ladies, who were almost, but not quite, famous (and still had Steven Page), had this cover all over the airwaves. It's, arguably, an improvement on the original. The video is brimming with Canadian nostalgia and self-deprecation. Also early-nineties-style jeans and jackets.

And this copy is wildly low-definition.

As a Canadian, I can only say, "Sorry".

The longest spring

The past couple of weeks have taken on the slower pace of a holiday, like Christmastime, or the summer -- with rather less joy and enjoyment.

It seems like an age since Sophie Grégoire Trudeau returned from the UK with her own case of COVID-19. As Justin Trudeau joined her in self-isolation (in a different part of the house, it should be hastily added), it seemed to plunge Canada into the reality of the threat, and for the past fourteen days, the noose has tightened.

Today, I went to the grocery store for the first time in a couple of days, and noted the prevalence of face-masks and the shoppers carefully avoiding each other in a fashion that simply wasn't the norm a short time ago -- which seems like an eternity. We're Canadian, so we smile apologetically.

Except when we don't.

Gifts from the Maple Leaf Fairy

The Resident Fan Boy has resumed his custom of draping our dwelling with a flag for Canada Day. He had stopped during Stephen Harper's Reign of Middle Management. I awoke this morning and it was like the Maple Leaf Fairy had left a blessing for the homes of good little Canadians.

So how is one a good little Canadian? Well, there's this much-shared video, which has much that Canadians might recognize, although some things have changed in the three brief years since this was first produced. Note the outdated references to the Raptors, Donald Trump, and Stephen Harper himself.



I was wondering why some of the actors looked familiar, and realized I'd seen them in the YouTube series Convos with My Two-Year-Old, which operates on the strange conceit of a father recreating actual chats with his toddler daughter -- who is played by a grown man.

Sequential and sesquicentennial

I so wanted to snap a picture this afternoon.

I went to use the facilities at the Bay Centre in downtown Victoria and found a line-up snaking out nearly to the corridor.

It was a winding curve of women of many colours and shapes. I saw an older woman in a sari, a young redhead with sunburnt shoulders, and two Japanese students using the waiting time to maple-leaf each other with tap water and temporary tattoos.

Almost the entire line was a whiplash of red and white. One girl used the time-honoured out of wearing a Canadian flag as a cape, but it was mostly scarlet tops and white or cream trousers, or red caps and sun hats, or patriotic hair decorations.

And I thought of how Canada has changed, and especially, how Victoria has changed. It was once said that there was nothing wrong with Victoria that four hundred Ukranians couldn't fix. It was a bit homogenous when I was growing up here.

But I didn't pull out my phone.

Taking pictures in a women's washroom borders on the creepy.

So I took this one.

One star at a time

On the eve of the 150th anniversary of Confederation, Canadians are taking to social media to argue about "the most Canadian song". Well, I've answered this question on the blog, and naturally it's a Tragically Hip song.

But CBC Music decided to ask which was most Canadian: "A Case of You" by Joni Mitchell, or "Bobcaygeon" by the Hip.

I happen to think that "Bobcaygeon" is an Ontarian song; to me, it's all about cottage country, and that's always been out of my reach. Ontarians, bless 'em, think that Ontario is Canada. Some Hip fan told me to "STFU", and a Joni Mitchell fan remonstrated gently with him, saying his response "wasn't very Canadian".

Well, you don't tangle with Hip fans, to whom "Bobcaygeon" is practically a hymn, and I know that the song speaks to a lot of people, some of whom may not even be from Ontario.

Here's a current Canadian song. I don't think it's the most Canadian song ever, but when I hear it, I will think of the spring of 2017. I probably like it because the band is British Columbian, so their music speaks to me.

It's certainly not a hymn either; I apologize in advance for the "F" and "S" bombs - which, come to think of it, is rather Canadian of me.

Art appreciation

"I never understood the Group of Seven," sighs the barista at Planet Coffee.

"Until I travelled from Toronto to Ottawa in October."

"Have a nice life."

Some years ago, I ran into my ex-boyfriend.  We'd been having a friendly chat, so I was startled when, as he walked off, he said, "Have a nice life."  I realized I would never see him again.

On Saturday evening, I joined eleven million other Canadians - that's roughly a third of the country, folks - in watching a dying man's final concert. As massively morbid as that sounds, there were many moments of joy, of poignancy and even awkwardness.

 Of course, that was a Tragically Hip concert at the best of times.

This wasn't the best of times. Gordon Downie, the Hip's lead singer, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer not long ago. This follows hard on the heels of the farewell concert for John Mann, the lead singer of The Spirit of the West, who is heading down the long road of early onset Alzheimer's. The Hip are huge in Canada, so they too decided to embark on a 15-concert farewell tour, starting in Victoria on July 22nd, passing through Hades on August 18th, and finishing in their hometown of Kingston, Ontario on Saturday night.

Demand for tickets was so high that the CBC actually put aside three hours of prime Olympic Games broadcast time - on the last full day of competition, if you please - and broadcast the concert via television, radio and the Internet.

I'm not even a "Hip-head", but you can't live in Canada and be unaware of their music.  I first heard them through Much Music, of course, back in the late eighties when they played driving rock and mostly appealed to adolescent and post-adolescent boys.  As Downie himself commented between songs Saturday night, the "girls" finally started following the Hip in the mid-nineties and, indeed, the first Hip song I recall even liking was the wistful and regretful "Ahead by a Century".  This is also the one song the Resident Fan Boy recognizes -- and he thought it was by some English group because of the cricket reference.

With illusions of some day
Casting a golden light
No dress rehearsal
This is our life.

The Tragically Hip have been described, maybe several times too often, as the quintessential Canadian band, especially over the past few weeks as CBC Radio has been playing hours of Hip music and Hip-related interviews.  Rush fans might contest the "most Canadian band" thing, but frankly, the appeal of Rush has always eluded me.  Geddy Lee, Rush's lead singer, said on yet another CBC Hip-related interview that most people might argue that Bobcaygeon is the most Canadian song (it isn't - that's so Ontario), but he thought that "Fifty Mission Cap" was.  An odd choice, considering that Canadians never had a fifty mission cap, to the best of my knowledge.  When the song opened the concert, the RFB and I looked at each other in bemusement.  Like most of Gordon Downie's songs, the lyrics are a bit obscure and you have to look them up on some web site like A Museum After Dark to know what the hell he's going on about.

You won't be surprised to learn that I disagree with Geddy Lee.  I think the most Canadian song ever is indeed a Hip Song:
Like "Fifty Mission Cap", "Fireworks" also references hockey, in this case, the hockey moment that every Canadian above the age of thirty-five remembers - Paul Henderson's goal at the 1972 Summit Series. However, it also features a girl who doesn't "give a f*&% about hockey" (sister!), and mentions the dreaded Canadian Fitness Programme that made P.E. a hell on earth for kids attending school between 1970 and 1990.

So, I, the non-Hip-head, remained entranced in my chair throughout three sets and three encores, with the growing realization that these songs were being performed for the last time.

Among other things, Downie sang about a cholera epidemic, Hugh MacLennan, the mysterious disappearance of a member of the Group of Seven, the sinking of the Bismarck, and the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of David Milgaard.  He even cornered the Prime Minister of Canada about Attawapiskat and the continuing crisis with the First Nations.

Each song sounded like a finale, but I looked at the Resident Fan Boy and shook my head.  "He hasn't sung 'Locked in the Trunk of a Car' or 'Ahead by a Century' yet."

Finally, Rob Barker started an unfamiliar acoustic solo with a familiar rhythm that segued into the unmistakeable opening chords.

Here's how it sounded in Edmonton, about three weeks before that.

However, Kingston is the hometown of the Hip and with this song, as with all songs that last evening, the crowd sang along, and as the instruments took over, Downie had a last communion with the crowd, who eagerly and almost desperately reached out to him. The sound quality in the video below, taken near the stage in Kingston, is not as clear as the CBC broadcast, but this gives you some indication of the atmosphere, and why so many people across Canada were crying.


Not long before this, Gordon Downie told the audience to "have a nice life".

When a Canadian says that, you know it's goodbye for good.

Two solitudes (with a possible third)

The expression "Two Solitudes" comes from the 1945 novel of the same name by Hugh MacLennan.* The "solitudes" of those of anglophone Canada and francophone Canada, and the topic has come up a lot over the past seventy years, along with words like "separate" and "distinct".

Hades has two solitudes as well: there's Winter Ottawa and Summer Ottawa.  They're separate, distinct, and living here in Hades is a bit like living in two different cities -- different planets, even.

Winter Ottawa is a real solitude.  People are bundled into parkas and even those who - like me - don't drive, are carefully insulated against the weather and against human contact.  Our winter coats are mostly in the same dark shades, making us indistinguishable from one another.  The hoods, hats, and scarfs, along with heads bent against the wind, block off eye contact.

When summer comes to Ottawa, as it has this week with temperatures rising above twenty degrees Celsius for the first time in months, winter seems like a colourless dream.  Strangers acknowledge each other on the streets.  Acquaintances exchange greetings as if there has been a long separation -- which isn't far from the truth.

When winter comes again, this too will seem like a dream.  I will pace the harsh and narrow sidewalks and try, in vain, to recall what the pavement felt like, just like I cannot quite remember snow right now.

I have my own third little solitude.  Each summer I return to Demeter in Victoria, where Hades slips mercifully out of my grasp for a few brief weeks.

*MacLennan got the phrase from Rainer Maria Rilke in one of his Letters to a Young Poet (in the second-to-last paragraph).

Loopy

Canada has been rather more interesting than usual for the past ten days, for all the wrong reasons.  We're showing up in other countries' news channels and websites, when  On top of that, tonight is Hallowe'en and it's also a Friday, never a great combination for the police or those of us who prefer that boring old "peace, order, and good government".

Seeing as things have been a decidedly un-Canadian kind of loopy lately, I offer two good kinds of loopy.  First, I adore this.  This is Patrick Godfrey, a second-year music student at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.  Anyone who was in school band knows that the French horn is not easy to play. Just listen to what he does:


Second,  absolutely nothing Canadian about this.  But it is loopy, in the best sense of the word.

Helmet-heads

It's been snowing again -- 15 centimetres covering the filthy grey ice that has dominated the streets for the past week or so. This afternoon I looked out of the window as the dark began to draw in and saw a fellow leaping like a gazelle through the snowdrifts clad in his Ottawa Senators jersey.

Oh, that's right, I thought glumly. It's back.

After a stand-off of several months, hockey is back on the TV. As I walked the Accent Snob in the early evening, I could see the glow of television screens from apartments, houses and condos up and down our block. (We must be the only house in Hades without a wide-screen.) It was a line of beacons, welcoming back the violence-prone and ridiculously over-paid men on skates. Even more appalling then the idea of hockey-players going on strike is the fact that they've done this before, and no doubt will do it again, as this skit spoofing the Canadian Heritage Moment television spots attests:

It must be concussion, right?

Post prandial (see what I did there?)

Breakfast options this morning: warmed up garlic bread, cold chicken, left-over (made from scratch) pumpkin pie...

An appetite suppressant may be in order. This YouTube gem features Ellen Page who was born in Nova Scotia and nominated for an Oscar for her role in the quirky flick Juno. For the record, practically nothing in this video is true of Canadian Thanksgivings. Well, except maybe for the Canadian Club...

Tabling

Woke up in a sweat this morning, worrying about homework and schoolwork issues at younger daughter's school and remembering I need to cook today because we're having Thanksgiving dinner on the Sunday because elder daughter flies back to Halifax tomorrow, and Demeter is going to have all sorts of ways of trying to help....

So this video is a tad misleading, but it is also an aspect of the Canadian Thanksgiving experience:

"Mind if I swoop?" "It's your place..."

Demeter flew in for a ten-day visit that encompasses Thanksgiving, so I'm cheating today. I hope I won't have to cheat for the whole ten days, but we'll see. This is my absolute favourite skit from The Kids in the Hall. I find both the characters here rather endearing, but especially the quintessential hockey fan played by Scott Thompson who, ironically, was the first openly gay actor I recall encountering on TV. Mark McKinney, the would-be gay vampire, is actually straight in real life and, I feel compelled to add, co-wrote and starred in one of my favourite television series of all time Slings and Arrows. Also, I grew up knowing guys just like Brad. His caped companion, not so much, but I led a sheltered life and didn't go to hockey games...

54-40, why fight?

Each weekday, I take an hour's bus-ride with younger daughter to her school, drop her off, then pelt down to whichever bus stop will catch me the first of the three buses that will eventually get me home. I climb on, stick in my ear buds and tune into the last half-hour of CBC Radio Two Morning. It's a very eclectic mix of music and I like it.

The bus was taking a detour down Richmond Street en route to the Westboro Transitway station when this gem came on the other morning:


Geez. I hadn't thought of this song in years. It was getting airplay during our final months in Victoria before we descended into Hades.

Canada's going into Standard Time this evening (except for Saskatchewan which refuses to take part in such nonsense). That gives me an extra hour of sleep. I think I'll play some 54-40 and dance myself to bed....

Write of Passage Number Six: The clash of the stereotypes

A number of thoughts crossed my mind when the big brutha with a ghetto blaster sent up camp at my bus stop. One of them was: A ghetto blaster? Seriously? Is he partying like it's 1979? He stashed his blaster on top of the shelter, thought better of it, then swooped it past my ear a couple of times, while shouting along with the rap lyrics and making those hand signals that seem to have been co-opted by boy bands. (I found this video to try to find out about rapper/hip-hop hand signals, but it's only marginally helpful):

Newest Rap Hand Signs @ Yahoo! Video

As I tried to studiously ignore this guy as he strutted up and down, grinning widely beneath his baggy wool cap and neon-yellow sunglasses, my next thought was: Oh Gawd. Please. Not on my bus. These appeared to be the precise thoughts of the bus driver as I climbed on. He glanced over my shoulder, then back at me and we raised our respective eyebrows. Sure enough, as I took my seat, the brutha-from-anotha-planet made his entrance and proceeded past me. Judging from the facial expressions on the swiveling heads, I'd say roughly half our fellow passengers were thinking: Oh Gawd, not on this bus, and the other half were thinking: A ghetto blaster?? Seriously?
It looked like we were all going to sit this out in quiet Canadian martyrdom, until the song finished and the next one started. That's when a number of guys started shouting back at our homie. A very large man who looked like he rode Harley Davidsons when he wasn't using public transit, was particularly incensed and insistent.

"Have some respect for other people. We don't want to listen to your &%#@."
"Stick in some earphones, like everyone else!" someone else added, while the bus driver pulled over, got out of his seat and pointed meaningfully at the door.

Our homie rose slowly with a few choice words and a face-saving shrug and made his way to the back door... closely followed by Motorcycle Man who, uttering a string of imprecations, gave him a mighty shove. Homie measured his length on the sidewalk for a split second, then sprang up and hurled himself at Motorcycle Man, while those of us still on the bus gasped and gaped. Motorcycle Man soon had Homey pinned on his back, his eyes white and wide without his sunglasses which were scattered across the sidewalk along with his ghetto blaster and several other belongings.

"He picked the wrong white guy to piss off," offered someone.
I had my face buried in my hands and looked up at the young girl seated next to me.
"That was totally unnecessary," I said wearily. "He was getting off the bus."
The girl and a young man standing by us nodded vigorously.
"He didn't need to shove him," they said. A lady in bright yellow Brunhilda braids tried to explain how Motorcycle Man was justified, but no one paid much attention; our eyes were glued on the drama outside.

Our bus driver sighed, waited a moment, then got out and strolled over to tap Motorcycle Man on the shoulder as he continued to pin Homey to the sidewalk. I guess some sort of truce was arranged as Motorcycle Man got up, and Homey struggled to his feet. M.M. tried to hand Homey a yellow book of scripture which had fallen in the melée, but Homey was spitting. There were a couple of additional angry exchanges, before a young fella handed Homey his ghetto blaster and got an embrace in return. Motorcycle Man, thank heaven, did not get back on the bus.

It was only when the woman in Brunhilda braids got off at Elgin Street that I realized she was an office worker dressed for this last day of work before Hallowe'en. I was beginning to wonder how many people on that bus had been in costume.

Giving thanks from the heart (well, maybe a bit lower down)

Thanksgiving in Canada, as I keep having to remind my American and British friends and relations, is celebrated the second weekend in October. Canadians have no particular links with The Mayflower or Plymouth Rock; we do have a rather shorter growing season in most parts of the country than in the US, and since many Canadians have English forebears, there is that connection with the Anglican Harvest Sunday. Coming from Victoria, the Resident Fan Boy and I are still struck by urgency of the traditional Harvest Sunday hymns. In a climate like Ottawa's, you better durn well have the crops in. The first frost is on its way.

All the same, this has never been one of my favourite holidays. For many Canadians (the more affluent ones, anyway), this is a weekend to get away. The last camping reservations fall on this weekend, and those with a cottage (in central Canada) or cabin (in British Columbia) usually retreat there for a final sojourn by the lake. This means, aside from the nightmarish gridlock that begins mid-afternoon the previous Friday, that those of us who remain in town have fewer options. The arty films of the autumn will not be opening just yet, there is little in the way of theatre and concerts, and most stores shut down, many for Sunday and Monday.

This means you'd better have all your ingredients for your Thanksgiving dinner ahead of time, whether the big dinner is on Sunday (when you have guests) or Monday (if you don't). And there's another thing: it's a holiday that requires me to spend several hours in the kitchen. We don't do turkey, but this year, because younger daughter seems unusually excited about Thanksgiving, we decided to try a new recipe, Pollo con Zucchini Fritti, which is actually an old Vancouver Sun recipe which I pasted in my book then promptly forgot to try. It involved a lot of sauté-ing, and quite a bit of scotch whiskey, chardonney, port, and cream. It was bloody delicious actually, and was followed up by the mandatory pumpkin-pie-completely-from-scratch-including-the-pastry-thank-you-very-much.

It wasn't until about 4 am that I realized that I might be in a bit of trouble. It took a while for my sleep-hazed brain to understand that the mild indigestion of the evening before had localized to rather more discomfort in a small knot below my rib cage on my right side. Y'know, where my gall bladder is.

I discovered I had gallstones five years ago when I attempted to take both daughters to a second viewing of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, then had to call the Resident Fan Boy at work to pick them up at the Rideau Centre because the pain in my side was enough to bring a sheen of cold sweat on my forehead and upper lip. I headed home on the bus, wondering if I'd just sent my family off to watch a lengthy film while I had a heart attack. I got home, and the pain (which, by the way, was almost as bad as my labour pains and that's saying something) suddenly vanished. It kept recurring over the next week as our annual retreat to Victoria, along with a side excursion to Disneyland, approached. My doctor's locum decided I needed antacids and a bland diet. I figured out myself that it was somehow connected to peanut butter.

Since then, I've had one or two attacks, always on a holiday involving rich food. I decided against surgery since avoiding peanut butter seemed so much easier, but in the past couple of years, I've been foolishly indulging in Kraft Smooth again in a sort of nutty Russian Roulette.

So the Pollo con Zucchini Fritti came home to roost. I shifted myself carefully, praying the pain wouldn't escalate into the cold sweat phase which actually requires labour breathing. Please, no, please. I won't do it again... I took some Tylenol which has worked for me, and woke up functional and only slightly queasy two hours later when I had to get up and escort younger daughter on the long bus trek to school. As we walked through the rainy streets to the bus stop, I was filled with the euphoria similar to that I exuded when they finally gave me the epidural in both my labours. One function of pain: it feels so damn good when it stops. So I did celebrate Thanksgiving this year -- at 7:20 this morning.

Maybe I should substitute one percent milk for the cream in the Pollo...