Canada Days*

The first time I felt old I was 17. I was baby sitting and my charge said he liked Elton John’s Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. I said I preferred the original Beatles’ version. He said, “the who?”

Of course I said, “not The Who, The Beatles.” 

Now Canada is 150 (Ringo is 77!), and I remember Centennial Year, she said with a creak. We students of Stilecroft Public School got to have a day of lessons in the one room schoolhouse at Black Creek Pioneer Village dressed in “period” costumes. Mine was a white blouse and an old skirt of my mother’s, green and white horizontal stripes with pansies on the white stripes.  It was floor length on me. She also made me a blue satin sash that I wore again when I married for the first time. Something old. The things we remember, eh? . . . Expo, riding the monorail, helping to print our class Centennial booklet on the mimeograph machine that filled the room with a wonderfully weird chemical smell . . . creak, creak, creak.

Fast forward to Canada Day celebrations 1980s-style. The reach of my cooking ambitions often exceeds my grasp, else what’s pizza delivery for, (apologies to Robert Browning). I attempted Cornish hens. The recipe called for them to be deboned, stuffed with rice (some of it wild, tip of the chef’s hat to our home and native land), then sewn back together for ease of eating, and served with a fruited curry sauce. I know, fusion run amok. Problem was I hadn’t allowed enough time for the little birds to defrost. Deboning was nearly impossible and almost ended in frostbite, but I did get them on the table and no one died. In attendance: an Italian, a Welshman, a Kenyan, a Scot and me. In 2017 my guest list doesn’t sound very diverse, but at the time I remember thinking this is what Canada is all about.

Last October I was giving my empty apartment a last look before leaving for a new house in a new town. I was scared. There was a folded square of paper on the floor. I nearly didn’t bother to pick it up. It was a letter dated June 5, 1956 from the CBC offering my father his first job in Canada at $2,584.00 per annum. He was 24 and in a new country. The offer included a pension, health and life insurance. That is also what Canada is all about.

The Staff of Life, the Roar of War

If you have any aspirations to bake your own bread you cannot go wrong with Janice Gill Murray’s The Canadian Book of Bread, which is out of print, but still available on www.abebooks.com. The recipes are easy to follow and truly Canadian in their diversity.

Michael Shara’s The Killer Angels is a fictional exploration of the Battle of Gettysburg as experienced by officers on both sides. It is timely in two respects. The Fathers of Confederation could not ignore the recently concluded American Civil War as they did their work in Charlottetown. It is, in part, why Canadian government has generally favored a federalist model. The Killer Angels is also apropos in our strident times. The book brilliantly illustrates the tragic consequences of assuming we understand a demonized opponent, and not continually examining our own reasoning and objectives for errors and obsolescence.

*The name of the boy in the second row from the top, third from the right is John Macdonald. Pinky swear.