The Turning of the Year

This post has been some time in coming. Late fall melted into advent, into Christmas, into the new year and January is waning like the moon. My Christmas cards printed in October are, as yet, unsent awaiting a lull in the relentless business of working full time, meeting obligations and weathering numerous colds and flu. I have had two months to read a book for my book club, a pleasurable experience I will have to achieve in 48 hours if I am to be ready to share. We are reading Rudy Wiebe's Sweeter Than All the World. Reading is and has always been for me sweeter than all the world for each book contains its own world where I can visit, linger, leave at my will. In the end this book moved way too slowly for me and repeated a lot of his memoir Of This Earth, but without the charm. My whole book club of the four of us agreed on this.

Almost two months have passed since I started this blog.Our next book club book  I just finished reading. It is Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland which, of course, deals with Renoir's painting by the same name. This was slower to pull me in than The Girl with the Pearl Earring, but eventually the fictionalized truth of the painting's composition and subjects created a hypnotic sense of time-traveling backward.I found myself cutting a pattern for a blue dress with Aline, balancing between loss and a new shoot of hope and love with Alphonsine, taking risks with Ellen, mixing paints with impressionistic abandon and control, all of it with sails, boats and skiffs in the background like an armada to the brevity of summer. Each second in the sunlight stretched like a butterfly still fluttering, but pinned. A thing past and present and living fixed in the paint.

In a few days we will have the spring equinox. In the midst of a late brush with wintry weather on the March break Mathew and I went to see the Toronto Home and Garden Show at the Enercare Exhibition Grounds. We walked some 20 kilometres in total that day!

  It was as cold as these pictures look! 

Matthew got cozy with Glenn Gould. 

 Inside it was a haven to the wind weary pair of us!

 The floral show was in celebration of Canada's 150th anniversary this year. We really enjoyed some of the displays.

 This last picture was missing half of an important province! It sort of takes away from the patriotic pride to have left out the most easterly province. Otherwise, I am left to conclude it was another example of a central Canada idea of what area is not important to the country!

 There were competitions in so many different categories of floral arranging. It was all mind-boggling to me how many different elements there are to it. Below are a few highlights I was taken with on both the large and small scales.

We met up with a familiar face at the home show. 

 Two more pictures : one of each of us. 

We met up with our friends Andy and Kris and spent a happy evening with them at their lovely home. 

 At the Art Gallery of Ontario I have never seen so much by way of Indigenous Art. I found it ironic that as I am fighting as a Mi'kmaq to retain recognition as a status Qalipu member due to politically imposed injustices, that artistic statements about the importance of reclaiming one's culture and writing wrongs were being given voice at both the AGO and even the Toronto Home Show. It is one step forward and one or two steps backward.

This is from the Home and Garden Show. Residential schools were devastating, but they were not the only means used to try to extinguish a culture as my family can attest to. There are so many more people of indigenous background who have suffered and who are suffering still.

I do not want to leave this post on such a negative, sad note. The battle for justice, fairness and healing goes on. I like to believe that with love and a true, universal  desire to right the wrongs of the past that we may be able to cease the need to battle and be embraced for who we are and who we wish to become.

Being Canadian

Growing up in Newfoundland in the 60s and 70s I was always conscious of being a Newfoundlander. My whole world was bounded by a triangle from St. Georges to Stephenville to Corner Brook with the odd trip to Barachois Park and to Deer Lake to visit relatives. I didn't even visit the rest of the island much less Canada until I was 17. So I grew up steeped in ocean, trees, rocks, sand and Newfoundland folklore, family history and stories. My Dad was in the  Canadian Air Force when I was born so  I was born in Ontario travelled at the age of six weeks by car in a carry cot in the backseat of Dad's car as we moved "home". Being born Ontario always was the only piece of exotica about me. It was shrouded in mystery. My early experience being Canadian was that we had the maple leaf flag and that for those who had fallen on hard times there was social assistance, welfare, so that they didn't have to starve like my mother's family had when she was young. She spoke of regularly fainting from hunger, having no shoes, no uniform for school and being called "Christmas tree" by the other children and trying to scrape flour from the edges of the cupboards and picking out mouse poop to see if they could get enough for a loaf of bread. So early on for me Canada was an abstract idea with a positive association.
 As I reached my teen years I was in the era of Prime Minister Elliot Trudeau. I grew up believing in bilingualism. I grew up adjusting to the metric system. I grew up believing that Canada was a world leader in peace keeping because it was. I learned all the statistics about Canada's involvements in the two world wars and of Newfoundland's involvement in these same.  I grew up curious about Canada and eager to see something of it. In my final year of high school My knowledge of Canada grew from experiences that changed my life. There were two events: my participation in my high school's play The Miracle Worker and my participation in the Rotary Club's public speaking contest. Both of these were frightening and daunting for me. Chuck Furey, my grade 11 high school teacher, believed I could do these things and so I made the huge effort and succeeded with his help. With the play I traveled with my fellow students and saw more of Newfoundland. It was as exciting as going into space for me. I had to buy two towels at the Avalon Mall, never having traveled before I did not think to pack any, and I still have their remnants as rags and think of this when I use them. Incredibly I won the public speaking contest  and won a trip to Ottawa called "Adventure in Canadian Citizenship. I was so excited and overwhelmed at the same time. I met so many young people from all over the country. We were only five students from Newfoundland and how awe-struck I was to be one of them and to see and have a tour of the Parliament buildings, visit the Governor General's House ( Ed Shreyer himself greeted us), visit an embassy ( mine was Equador), eat dinner at the Chateau Laurier ( an true castle in my mind) and have something from each region of Canada. From NL we had petits fours (not a Newfoundland dish but I loved the name) and I think there were cloudberries involved, but we call them bakeapples so I was bewildered at the time. At any rate my life long interest in Canada and in politics was assured.

The five Newfoundlanders on our adventure in citizenship. I am the furthest to the right. 

At my high school graduation our local MP, a friend of my teacher Chuck Furey, Brian Tobin spoke as our guest speaker. For all of us this was somebody famous. That is my Canada where a small group of high school graduates are important enough for a local MP to come and speak to them about what the future might hold for them.

That is me giving the valedictory speech. Brian Tobin is immediately in front of me. 

At some point in my post secondary studies I visited Ottawa and saw Chuck, who was now the assistant to Brian Tobin, in his office there. I never got over the feeling of feeling important to be visiting someone on Parliament Hill. Just at the beginning of the month I was in Ottawa and took another tour of the Parliament buildings. That same feeling remained of being awed and proud at the same time to be a Canadian. In between these two visits I visited with my daughters and husband because I feel it is so important for each Canadian to see the seat of where so much of our country's history, present and future happened and will happen. This middle tour we did with a francophone  guide and the latest with an anglophone guide. I love that Canada is bilingual. I was ever so proud to be able to speak both official languages and to share this with my daughters and husband and most recently with my son-in-law ( and wee grandson :Canadian in training already).

We don't always get it right. Witness residential schools, the internment of Japanese Canadians during WWII, the exploitation of Chinese workers during the building of the Canadian Railway, the exploitation of indigenous workers at Great Bear Lake during the WWII, the ruling by the SCC in 1928 that women were not persons, the banning of Potlatches until 1951, many provisions of the Indian Act such as the one stripping women who married outside of their indigenous group of status, the deportation of the Acadians in pre-Confederation Canada between 1755 and 1763, decisions harming French language and culture for the early part of our history and the, until recently, lack of interest in the epidemic of murdered and missing indigenous women across the country. What we do extremely well, however, is learning from our mistakes. What we do equally well is continuing to implement needed changes and national programs to help all Canadians, not just those whose voices are loudest or most powerful. We can be proud of our country, while remaining on guard for freedom and for the eradication of all types of prejudice and injustice. We don't claim we are the greatest country on Earth because we carry the knowledge of our past accomplishments and our past injustices into our present and our future to continue to make this country better and better, It is not a contest with the world. It is a sacred pursuit of freedom, respect, justice and equity within the Canadian psyche and heart. It is a contest with ourselves to raise each member of each  generation to a better human condition than ever before in Canada and in the world where we can bring our pursuit of the humble and ever-unfolding Canadian dream to help. Our hands will not fail as we hold high the torch passed on to us by those who have given much and gone before us. We will not break faith.

Montréal 2016

5 days in Montreal under cloudy skies for the most part with sun in our hearts and a much needed respite from the slings and arrows of outrageous, or even capricious, fortune. We stayed in the Auberge Bonaparte on Rue Saint François- Xavier.

Our welcome hotel the Auberge Napoleon

One of the highlights for us was in staying in such nice surroundings in le vieux Montréal.

We realize how lucky we were to be able to do this. I know so many people who cannot do this for one reason or another. The old bricks and the old catch on the deep window made me feel how ephemeral our existence is. I could almost hear the century old footsteps and voices and imagine the touch of metal and brick beneath so many hands. I felt adrift in time. A day or two later we came upon a plaque in Place d'Armes commemorating Paul de Chomedy, Lord of Masionneuve for having killed the Chief of the Iroquois with his own hands. It made me think of the original inhabitants of the area who do not seem to be commemorated at all except in touristic stereotypes. I must have been upset because the only picture of his statue I took is as an aside to the picture I took of Notre Dame Basilica.

Plaque celebrating the  murder of the "Indian Chief"

Stereotyping 

On the same day as I took this picture we came across a monument to the "prisoners of opinion " arrested during the FLQ crisis in 1970. The end of this plaque says history will give them justice. I wonder when First Nations people will have justice. I wonder, too, if there is any awareness of the irony in the fight for justice and independence amongst the Québecois when the rights and lives of First peoples have been so trampled for so long by those who lament oppression at other hands.

Life goes in a chronological fashion, but we remember it in sporadically as we get sensory or emotional input or sometimes as we try to explicitly remember. There are things we would like to forget, but they come unbidden into our active thoughts or, if we fortify against them, they invade our dreams. There are many memories we would cling to, especially of people we have lost, These may linger, but like pieces of puzzle the whole picture is incomplete  and try as we may we cannot retrieve the cadence of voice, the exact sound of laughter, the exact words, touch, place or time. If we are lucky, sometimes a glimpse creeps into our dreams like a mirage of emotion. I will then abandon myself here to a random order of sensations and impressions.

There are so many messages in the statues of Montreal.

Robbie Burns and Modern Art

Les vedettes des canadiens 

Queen Victoria in shadow, King Edward VII and Ste. Marguerite Bourgeoys
and a modern horse and rider with Matthew posing

A juxtaposition: Réné Lévesque. Sir Wilfred Laurier below,
 top right an English snob and a French poodle and iconic Québec art

We visited the musée des beaux arts and saw the exhibition on Pompeii, one on Napoleon and some amazing modern art and antiquities. We met out niece Miebet for a nice lunch. We really enjoyed our visit with her and touring the museum with her after lunch. The museum was a kaleidoscope of experience and emotions.

 Here is some of the statuary and other art from the city of Pompeii.

Bust of Drusus Major and garden statue of a maiden

Isis with Greek features (fecundity, rebirth), the hand of Sabazios ( good fortune, fecundity)
and Pliny's quotation. 

Male youth and woman in the garments of the time.

Tile fragments and frescoes.

Gladiators, theater symbol, portrait and garden bust

 The introduction to the moving resin casts of the people who died after Mount Vesuvius' eruption began with a cast of a dog, guardian to a home with a backdrop of a computer animated eruption sequence and the sound of a barking dog. It was very lonely sound and very moving. The child and man casts below show the same sentiment of isolation at the moment of death. 

These pictures are hard to see and in seeing the casts one cannot help but pray that they have been at peace despite the horror of their deaths. I should need no reminder that every day is a gift, that every person who loves us is a blessing and that every moment counts, but these frozen images of people from 1937 years ago have the power to humble and to slow the rapid pacing of our thoughts.

This is a half loaf of bread carbonized in Pompeii. I found it eloquent. 

Thankfully Matthew provided some comic relief.  Do not worry it appeared to be made of paper!

We saw a sweet exhibition which Miebet and I loved with Australian songbirds landing on electric guitars hooked to amps to make sound art. We were not allowed to take pictures when we were in the exhibition, so these I took through plastic glass with my zoom lens to give you the idea. Matthew prefers his electric guitar to rock rather more. :)

Later that evening we had a different sort of cultural experience when we went to see the Montreal Canadians play the Florida Panthers at the Bell Centre. Montreal did not play well ( lost 4-1), but we enjoyed ourselves as did the fans there. 

Warm up and pre-game stuff. The mascot is Youpi. 

Fans in their hockey sweaters and the strange cheerleaders that I found to be evidence of sexism in their mini-skirts.  

Time out for food, glorious food. We ate all sorts of food and loved it all. Here is a collage of food.

Here are some shots of the architecture.

Chinatown had bright colours, but I wished they kept the gates in better repair. One of the lions had black fill in its toes which seemed to have been vandalized.

More shots from outside. We never got tired of looking. This is Place Cartier and the Hotel de ville.

We took refuge in the Hotel de ville as the skies grayed and then it poured. 

The interior of the Hotel de ville. Note the curved door and the beautiful stained glass in the meeting room. 

We attended noon mass on Monday in the chapel at Notre Dame. It burned down in 1976 and they restored it beautifully to be a place of golden light.

Notre Dame speaks for itself. 

Votives - the far white one in the right hand picture I lit for family and friends.

Holy women with children.

Our visit to the Biodome was disappointing except for the beauty of the birds and fish. I was very upset at how little space  some of the birds were given, especially the birds in the Northern habitat. The poor puffins couldn't even fly. 

Four of the luckier birds with larger habitats. The diving birds were amazing. 

Parrot and penguin pairs two opposite habitats.

Habitats - some are from the Botanical Garden which we liked much more. 

Bonsai- the one in the middle is 110 years old. 

Couldn't resist these flowers. 

We were lucky that it was release the butterfly day. 

The Chinese garden in winter. 

The two of us.

We really enjoyed our trip. Here we are waiting for our taxi to take us to the train station. How very lucky we are. What a trip it was filled with so many experiences: language, beauty, time together, food, culture, entertainment, history, natural wonders, faith, and happiness. We feel blessed.