S.O.S.

When "Body Works", the collection of posed plasticised human bodies, first hit the Ontario Science Centre a few years ago, it made me uncomfortable although it was carefully marketed as a science exhibit. To me it looked like an art show. At the time though it wouldn't have occurred to me to question the Science Centre.

But now the science/art line has been crossed and I think we need to think about it. A similar show of plasticized human bodies is coming to Niagara. This time it is being advertised as "artistic, entertaining...also educational" and a real money maker for the area.

A more truthful marketing ploy, I suppose, but still very disquieting because it is literally an art exhibit of soulless humans.

Suppose a local sculptor managed to find a number of dying people and offered to pay them for the use of their bodies after death. Suppose the people were in need of the money and so agreed. Suppose the sculptor draped their naked, dead bodies across frames that made them seem as if they were engaged in an activity of some kind so that we could see the miraculous way the skin works to cover our internal organs and muscles. It isn't likely that many of us would go and see this art show. Because we might have known one of the people? Because it smelled? Actually it doesn't matter because the police would close it down.

I believe the adage that art reflects society. We've become so desensitized to death, especially death that happens far away to people we don't know, that we too are in danger of losing our souls.

Pretty and sanitized as it may be, this art show smells.

Actually it reeks to high heaven.

The Good, The Bad and the Only Too Human

I know the last thing the free world needs is another comment about Tiger Woods, but I just can't resist it.

Is he a good man? A bad man?

A good man is a protector of women and children and sometimes the sole provider in a family, particularly when the children are young. A man who is particularly successful at these things is likely financially secure, intelligent and healthy, jam packed with just the kind of genes the female of the species is hard wired to want to pass on.

Tiger Woods is a very successful man who people clearly identified as 'a good man' and because of his success and 'goodness', women were drawn to him. The problem? It seems he took advantage of several women he had no intention of providing for or protecting and somebody, I'm guessing one of the women, told his wife. Women don't take that sort of thing, if you'll pardon the terrible way I'm going to put it, lying down anymore.

But Tiger Woods didn't kill, maim or mutilate anyone. It doesn't seem that he fathered any unwanted children.

His being good or bad is moot. Few of us will ever meet him and find out. What we know for sure is that he's human and he erred. So have we all.

Go play golf, Tiger.

Honk if You Love General Motors

Before I retired, I needed a vehicle that would get me out of the driveway during a snowstorm if the farmer down the road didn't arrive with his tractor on time.

Not being a large person, I asked the local car dealer to show me the smallest four wheel drive he had. He took me over to see the only Jimmy on the lot. It was love at first sight. I knew the Jimmy was a keeper when I took it for a test drive. I felt safer in that vehicle than in any other car that I have driven. And it had so much power I was sure there were testicles hanging between its back two wheels.

So I was in a good mood when I arrived at work the Monday after I bought the Jimmy, eager to get to the staff room to brag about my new mode of transportation. I parked, turned off the vehicle and pulled the visor down.

No mirror.

Now you might not think this is a major defect in a car. It will likely depend on your sex. Most women will probably understand my feeling - that GM should announce an immediate recall.

I leaned over and checked the passenger seat visor. There was a mirror. It slowly dawned on me then - this wasn't a manufacturing defect, my poor Jimmy was made that way on purpose. There wasn't a mirror on the driver's side, because GM didn't think that women ever needed four wheel drive and men evidently don't worry whether or not they have a piece of their breakfast hanging off a front tooth.

I wasn't happy about it, but I learned to live with my Jimmy's one defect. My cranky attitude towards GM did get me thinking about some of the other things that bug me about cars though.

For example, I would like a selection of pleasant noises that I could use to communicate with someone who is not in the car with me. I hate being limited to the 'F--- you' sound of my present horn. I would like a polite little beep that I could use if I needed to get another driver's attention. I would like a cheery "Hi,how ya doing" chirp that I could use if I saw someone I knew walking down the street. A friendly ' see ya later' sound would be nice, too.

And what about my purse? It goes everywhere I go. It is my most important possession and yet there is no place to store it safely in my car. I need my purse close at hand but up off the floor away from pedals and dirt. Putting it on the passenger seat is sometimes okay if I have no passenger, but too many times my purse has gone flying if I've had to make a quick stop and if I haven't closed it I have to spend half an hour picking up lipstick, coins, keys, cards etc from the floor.

I could go on, but in the interest of brevity I'll only mention one other thing. In my whole life, absolutely no one, and I must stress this point - no one has ever asked me how many revs my car engine makes. So why is the gas gauge, which is REALLY important to me, such a tiny little Tinkerbelle sized window that I have to squint to see while the dial that shows the number of engine revs is the size of the porthole to the whale aquarium at Marine land?

Well, I don't have the Jimmy anymore. If there is a snowstorm I have the luxury of staying home and besides that, the payments were killing me. I went back to my GM dealer because I'm a loyal customer but I don't know if I would have if somebody else offered a girl friendly vehicle at a reasonable price.

Are you listening GM?

Women buy a lot of cars. You need to sell more cars.

Safe, affordable, practical, friendly, attractive .

You can do it.

A Cover Up in Quebec?

Quebec seems on the verge of banning the niqab, though evidently there are only about a dozen women in the whole province who choose to veil themselves.

I find it a strange but somewhat romantic practice. If it had been at all common in the early 1970's when I was a young art student I might have taken it up myself on occasion. I love the look of the flowing robes and the mystery of the veil.

However this being 2010, I do find it disconcerting to see an Islamic family strolling down the street on a blazing hot day, the husband and children in cool western summer wear and the wife covered from head to foot in long robes. I have seen the same sort of thing in Mennonite communities, ordinary men standing beside wives dressed in traditional garb.

I may wish that the women didn't seem so subservient but I don't feel threatened by Mennonites. I feel more uncomfortable when I see a veiled woman. My mind immediately flies to the 'honour killings' that have gotten a lot of press in Canada recently even though I know that the number of women killed by their husbands or lovers is probably ten times higher in the general population. It is unfair and I've had to really think about how I feel about these things. Watching the Twin Towers fall changed a lot more than the landscape of New York City, unfortunately.

So here are my thoughts on the subject:

The main question that is troubling Quebec politicians seems to be whether veiled Muslim women should have to reveal their faces for things like Canadian driver's licences and passports. From what I have read it seems to have become a question of frightening political correctness.

I think that if it hadn't been for 9 11 we would probably see these Muslim women as just another interesting part of the Canadian mosaic and they would be expected to comply without question to Canadian laws or they would be deported. Obviously the Quran is open to interpretation because some women do not wear a head covering at all, some wear the hajib or headscarf and some the veil or niqab.

Women who choose the niqab must be prepared to show their faces for identification purposes. It is a no brainer and not worth a lot of fuss in anybody's legislature when there are so many real problems that need attention. However, the niqab should not be banned. Women should have the freedom to wear what they want and to practise their religion the way they want.

It's the almost-totally-free-to-do what-you-want Canadian way.

It Isn't Easy Being Greenish

I'm now a member of the Federal Green Party AND the Provincial Green Party.

But I find it harder being green than being NDP orange. For me, social justice issues are much clearer than environmental issues. Oh I know social justice is part of the Green Platform, that's one of the reasons I joined, it just isn't the raison d'être, and isn't what people have had time to discuss at the meetings I've been to.

" Shift" might happen, but it doesn't happen easily for some of us.

The backlash against the global warming theory unnerved me shortly after I joined the Federal party last spring. There is a strong contingent of very vocal people out there that believes global warming is hogwash. Naturally, just because I had committed myself, every newspaper and magazine article, as well as radio and television show I happened upon, seemed to be promoting that view.

I searched for the truth. But the truth on environmental issues isn't always easily found. Research on Google was overwhelming. I couldn't just pop up to the Arctic and see for myself.

In the end I thought of Hamilton.

For me, the Burlington Skyway has always been the link between Niagara and the great outside world. I remember when there was just one bridge. Heck, I even remember when you had to pay to go over it. But mostly I remember those giant Stelco smokestacks. For decades they spewed a toxic smelling black smoke across Hamilton harbour. The sky and water were a sickly steel gray even on the sunniest of days. The paint peeled on the few houses that were strung along the beach and they looked grim and abandoned. The stench was nauseating. I pitied the few small people I would sometimes see scurrying below as my car safely sped over the span and away from the hellish scene.

I realize now that the environment had to have been affected by Stelco and I believe that global warming, or to use the new and I think more apt phrase, "global wierding" is a direct result of human activity.

So I was in a self-congratulatory mood as I headed to last week's Green Party meeting. "In like flint," I thought to myself with relief, "I've finally got it."

After signing in I made my way across the head table where the books, pamphlets, buttons etc. were spread out for the party faithful to fondle. I picked up a couple of things, more for show than anything else. The buzz in the room was loud and as I'm not one for mingling, I returned to my seat. Waiting for the meeting to start, I turned over one of the pamphlets.

My hair stood on end. I didn't know the Green Party was against nuclear power. I thought nuclear power was 'clean' energy - dangerous maybe, but environmentally friendly unless there was a melt down and millions of people and animals suffered endless agonies and then died lingering painful deaths. But there it was in black and white and green, "We can keep the lights on without nuclear." The pamphlet went on to note that Ontario's wind power potential is more than ten times greater than our total electricity consumption. There was even a cheery little picture of a wind farm.

It shouldn't have been a problem. I should have been able to 'shift' my thinking. Right? Not exactly because lately I've been concerned and puzzled by the reports coming out about windmill farms making people sick.

Sigh. It still isn't easy being Green.

Frogs and Snails and XM8 Lightweight Assault Rifles

On Face Book this week I had a message from a young man. Well actually there was no message, just a request to become his friend. At first I was puzzled. The accompanying photo showed four laughing young men who looked to be about nineteen or twenty standing in a line, arms draped over shoulders, on the pavement in downtown Toronto. Not one of them looked familiar.

I studied the name and out of the misty depths of my teaching memories, a face began to emerge. A thin blond grade six boy with an big, loveable grin. He and his younger brother had been homeschooled but for some reason the family had decided to send the boys to public school one year and I became the oldest boy's teacher.

He was enthusiastic and genuinely glad to be in school with other kids. I liked him a lot. There was only one issue that I remember worrying about and it had to do with something he told me about himself, his grandfather and guns. For the life of me though, after all of these years and so many kids that I worried about, I can't remember what it was. I just remember that an alarm bell rang quietly in my head.

Thinking this might be who was trying to contact me, I went to his home page photo gallery to see if there was a better picture of him. I was quite taken aback by what I saw. A number of photos were of young men in camouflage uniforms holding guns. They seemed to be involved in some kind of military exercise. There were photos of young women holding rifles too but these women weren't Canadian army women, unless halter tops, lots of skin and hip huggers are allowed on the shooting range. I had no idea what I was looking at. Boy Scouts gone bad? A scary gun club? Camp Borden after hours? An Aryan paramilitary group? I found the images alien and disturbing.

Little boys grow up and change but I didn't expect this one would grow up and move to such a hostile planet in some other universe.

I suppose the warning bell that went off in my head as he described the activity he had done with his grandfather was a hint of the direction his life would take.

Jeesh. I wonder what some of the kids I really worried about are doing now.

Hey, Who's the Naked Canadian Guy?

We don't have free speech in Canada and yet everybody is up in arms over this Ann Coulter thing. Somebody needs to tell the emperor he's not wearing any clothes.

If we had free speech we would be able to buy newspaper ads threatening death and dismemberment to any person or group we didn't like and we would be able to encourage others to join us.

We don't even have freedom to own certain things. I'll never be the old lady next door with the Uzi.

I think freedom is what this whole brouhaha regarding Ms Coulter is really about. A lot of people have forgotten who we are. We are the people who accepted the War Measures act in 1970 during the FLQ crisis. We had one Cabinet Minister murdered, a British diplomat had been kidnapped, bombs were going off in Montreal and our Prime Minister did away with our civil liberties. Can't imagine that happening in the U.S. The part about the civil liberties - not the murder, kidnapping and bombs.

As a nation, we prefer law and order over individual rights. One in six Canadians is descended from a United Empire Loyalist after all. They are the folks who were willing to pay the heavy taxes on tea and other commodities rather than go to war against the powerful British during the American Revolution. Sitting on the fence backfired though. People were either with the Patriots or they were against them in 1776 and thousands of refugees had to flee the U.S. for Canada where they could live peacefully under the established British law.

So maybe it's in our gene pool.

Actually, I think that how our acceptance of a modified form of freedom came about, isn't as important as the fact that we need to see ourselves as we truly are. We're not free to spread hate and despair. We aren't free to arm ourselves. Good? Bad? I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that our way is the better way.

Now cover up, you great big naughty boy!

And About Those Baby Seals...

Since my last post, I've spent a sleepless night worrying that anyone who happens to read my blog about polar bears will come to the conclusion that I support the seal hunt.

I don't. I don't I don't. The seal hunt is something far beyond what a human being with a soul would do to a defenceless animal. Unfortunately, up until now I have been burying my head in the sand about the seal hunt because it is too upsetting. I have been leaving the room when there was a television story, glancing away from pictures, and trying generally to avoid thinking about it.

But I crossed a line somewhere in my psyche with my polar bear blog and here I am, finally giving my opinion on sealing.

I was pleased to learn that even PETA, (the international paint and pie throwing group), is not against the Inuit people hunting seal for the traditional reasons. Having spent 12 years in the north I know that food is shockingly expensive and artificial fur will not protect you at 40 or 50 degrees below zero. Seal meat and seal fur are a necessity of life for many Inuit. Inuit use all parts of the animal, not much is wasted, whereas the sealers take only the fur of young seals in the most cruel manner possible.

Sealing started in 1720 or thereabouts. It is not a traditional hunt done by indigenous people in a humane, spiritual manner. It is a merciless slaughter done on an icy abattoir.

So who buys seal pelts? The largest market by far is Norway. The most important seal pelt processing plant in Newfoundland, Carino, (according to the most recent info I could find), is actually owned by a Norwegian company. But don't think they need the pelts, because although Norway is a northern country, it has a fairly temperate climate due to the warm Gulf Stream. Finland and Germany are the second and third largest markets but there are many other countries who import thousands of pelts each year.

PETA and likeminded groups need to go after these markets with a renewed vengeance. If there was no money in sealing the industry would die. Our politicians need to wok to find alternate employment for the workers.

The seal hunt must stop.

Inuit Need Support, Not Critcism

I was quite interested to read the recent reports that Canadian and Inuit leaders were instrumental in the defeat of the proposal to classify polar bears as a species threatened with extinction at the UN wildlife observation meeting. The great white bears can still be hunted. I'm sure that many Canadians are upset at this turn of events and I must say the killing of animals is abhorrent to me as well. However, having had a firsthand glimpse of what our southern values have done to some of our northern indigenous people, I have to say that I think we need to butt out on this one.

Many years ago I learned that you can't teach a child who spent the previous night sitting outside a bar so that he can make sure his parents don't pass out in a snowdrift and freeze to death on the way home. Nor can you teach a child who comes to school dirty, cold and hungry because there is no heat or food at her house.

These things happen to some children in Canada. They happen because a spirit, a culture and a way of life were destroyed.

I don't know if there is a way back for our native people or even if they should go back, but whatever the future holds, we shouldn't try to do it for them. They will find their own way. As Canadians we need to support them.

I think the government did the right thing.

Take the Gun, Leave the Asparagus

_{The hunt for wild asparagus in southern Ontario brings out the Alaskan frontierswoman in me}

_{Many years ago when I was teaching in Dawson City, Yukon, I would on occasion cross the border into Alaska. I went by river a few times. My friends and I could leave Dawson on Friday night and arrive in the village of Eagle, Alaska on Sunday. I have some fine memories of paddling down the Yukon River, eating fresh salmon and camping out under the midnight sun.}

_{Sometimes we would fly into Juneau, other times we would take the 'Top of the World Highway' and drive to Skagway or Chicken.}

_{Chicken, Alaska, in those days was about the size of Eagle but as the name implies, it didn't have the same fierce charm. What it did have was an old lady named Anne Purdy.}

_{Anne Purdy had a big gun and a super-sized Alaskan personality to go with it.}

_{When I first moved to Dawson I came across, " Tisha", a book written about her life. She had been a young New England girl who had gone north to teach school in the 1920s. She had fallen in love with a young man who was part native and the prejudice they faced kept them apart for years. Sarah Palin wasn't the first Alaskan to take advantage of Canadian health care, the climax of Mrs. Purdy's story involved a harrowing, life and death dog sled race to Dawson City for medical treatment at fifty degrees below zero.}

_{When I found out that she was still alive I decided to go and meet her.}

_{Around that time Mrs. Purdy was in the middle of a political brawl with the Alaska Bureau of Land Management. I heard her threaten to shoot every last one of the s.o.b.s if they took one step on her (disputed) property. Imagine a proud old lady, tall, with long gray hair, a floor length gingham skirt over rubber boots and a rifle she was prepared to use. The image stayed with me.}

_{Now years later, back in Ontario, I'm the old(ish) lady with the gray(ish) hair. But my land dispute isn't with a faceless bureaucracy, my dispute is with sneaky city people who steal my wild asparagus. We're talking important issues here, folks.}

_{You see, asparagus often grows on the edge of the road in Niagara, the part that is owned, (on paper), by the region. But psychologically, emotionally and spiritually, that little strip of land on the other side of the ditch belongs to the home owner.}

_{I believe that people have no business picking the home owner's asparagus from the home owner's land!}

_{So be warned, if you are on the trail of the wild asparagus in North Pelham this spring, the crazy old lady standing in the ditch will be me. Being Canadian I don't have a gun, but I have a broom, and by golly this year I intend to use the bristly end of it.}

_{So be afraid, you asparagus thieves, be very afraid...}

The Sky is Falling

re: the national anthem

I’ve always been able to vote. I can’t imagine what it was like for the Suffragettes who struggled for the right to be a part of the democratic process. I wasn’t refused entry to university because I was female. Those battles were long over by the time I became active in the women’s movement in the early seventies.

Was I grateful? Did I feel that we were picking up where they had left off? I’d like to think that we felt a connection but truthfully, winning the vote might as well have happened in the 13th century. We didn’t identify with those long gone women in their big, feathered hats, corsets and ankle length skirts. They were the past, we were the future. We were young and caught up in the excitement of the social change that was steam rolling across the land.

I can’t imagine what it is like to be young in 2010 any more than I was able to imagine what it was like to be young in 1910. But I’m proud that girls today have opportunities that were unheard of in my time. We had a lot to do with that. Because of us, most sexual stereotypes and sexist language are things of the past.

Are they grateful? No more than we were to the Suffragettes. They’ve never known life any other way. Thank heavens.

So I suppose I can understand the lack of interest in changing the lyrics to ‘Oh Canada'.

But geez Louise, it’s the national anthem we’re talking about, the most important song in the country. This one matters - oh, and for those who worry that changing one line will open the door to the atheists, etc., women aren’t a special interest group. We “hold up half the sky”.

The anthem should reflect this.

God Has Great Hair

Hair dressers somehow sense that they hold my self esteem between the blades of their scissors. I walk into a hair salon every six weeks glad to finally get something done with my mop of odd cowlicks and inevitably walk out an hour later looking like a shellacked, semi-plucked chicken. It’s a vicious cycle of hope and despair and it has been going on my whole life.

Now, anybody who has taken Art History 101 or has picked up a magazine that features an archaeology dig in Europe, knows that not only was God exclusively female in prehistoric times, She also had great hair. Braided, beaded, coiled, wrapped around the head, the dos were really something. So much effort went into the carving of the hair styles on the ancient Goddess figurines; it seems obvious to me that great hair had as much importance to those women as it does to women of the 21st century.

But who were the early stylists? Without mirrors, the women couldn’t have managed such elaborate coifs by themselves. I can only surmise it must have been a mother/daughter/sister, you-do-mine, I’ll-do yours, sort of thing. Pity the poor cave woman without female relatives. She must have been the schmuck of her clan, forever whining about her hair, avoided at the drinking stream and in the berry patch, passed over by the best hunters.

The conclusion is undeniable. I am channeling some poor cave woman who was an orphan and without sisters or daughters.

Now that I understand this, I can relax. Maybe I’ll let my hair grow. Revisit Woodstock, (not that I was actually there). Get in touch with my inner prehistoric woman. Because one thing is for sure, if the Goddess is reemerging and if you’ve ever seen those small sculptures of Her, you’ll understand, my fellow female persons, we’re going to have other things to worry about.

See you at the gym.

Sevice This, Ontario

I don’t travel much, but I do like to visit the US occasionally.

“I’m going to get a handy dandy enhanced driver's license,” I thought enthusiastically when the government first floated the idea.

After a lot of phoning and e-mailing back and forth, the Service Ontario license bureau was willing to grant me an interview. I anxiously waited the two weeks it took for them to fit me in. They had nailed my appointment time down to the exact minute and I was in a state of high anxiety. If I missed it I might have to wait who knows how long for another chance. I hadn’t been to the States in over a year but because I couldn’t just cross the border willy nilly anymore, I felt a desperate need to see Buffalo again.

I arrived at my appointed time and I waited.

Now the upside of aging is that as your eyesight and hearing diminish, your chutz pah grows. After about half an hour of bench sitting I saw an empty wicket. I scooted into it before the person whose name was called could reach it. I eyed the old lady whose place I had usurped. I figured I could take her down if I had to, so I quickly explained my predicament to the woman behind the counter.

According to her, they had called my name at the appointed time but when I didn’t appear they had simply moved on, but now that I had arrived, they would try to fit me in.

Right. So kind. Get a bullhorn.

I went back to my seat, avoiding the old lady, and waited some more.

Eventually I was indeed serviced and it cost me forty some odd dollars.

I was serviced again last week when I found out my brand new enhanced license had to be renewed on my birthday. Same rigmarole about appointments. This time it cost me seventy-five dollars.

Moo.

Take my advice, folks, if you have a burning desire to see Buffalo – get a passport.

A Terrible Death

The death of the Olympic athlete, Nodar Kumaritashvili, was a terrible event.

I was disturbed by the assessment of one Olympic observer – a Canadian, I believe. He said, “Well, these guys are warriors!” The implication being that the possibility of death is something that the athletes accept and we shouldn’t mourn too much.

His words and the fact that young Mr. Kumatritashvili’s death was actually televised chilled me and sent me back a few decades.

The controversial film director, Peter Watkins, directed and wrote ‘Gladiators’ way back in the late sixties. I saw it in the early seventies when it made the rounds of the university campuses.

“Gladiators” was unsettling. The timeframe was the near future. Humankind had somehow realized after the development of the nuclear bomb that war between nations would mean the end of the human race. But what do do with all that aggression? Well, in order to quell our innate bloodlust, each nation agreed to send a team of soldiers to some remote site to compete in what was called ‘The Peace Games’.

Now it has been a long time, but if I remember correctly, the games were fought to the death and they were televised world wide. People got to sit in their own homes or local bars to cheer and watch their nation’s team kill or be killed.

Sound familiar? Feeling queasy?

Let’s not brush Nodar Kumaritashvili's death off. He wasn’t a warrior and his death should have been private. CBC had no business broadcasting the scene. As far as I can see he was a boy from a particularly poor part of the globe who had earned the chance of a lifetime – to come to our beautiful country and compete in the Olympic Games. Olympic Games, not war games.

We need to mourn. For him and for us.

Queen of (Seal) Hearts

Canada is a constitutional monarchy. There’s no getting around it.

Oh I’m not complaining, most of the time it works quite well. Sometimes it is even fun – lots of pomp and ceremony. The only real problem is the monarch with whom we are constitutional. She isn’t Canadian, she lives far, far away and she doesn’t appear to be much interested in us.

I don’t think she knows or cares how the Leafs are doing. I doubt she marks the coming of spring by the start of the annual Tim Horton’s ‘Roll up the Rim to Win’ coffee cup contest. She has probably never bought a ticket that required her to guess the time and day the ice will go out in a Canadian river. Nor has she likely ever rejoiced at the return of the first humming bird in May.

This regal disinterest has been a concern of mine for some time so when I read the wonderful book, ‘King John of Canada’, by Scott Gardiner I was ecstatic. “What a great idea!” I thought. “We’ll say thanks to Britain for the laws and the system of parliament and the loan of their queen. Then we’ll sell tickets and have a draw to find a home grown King or Queen of Canada.” Great fund raiser for our health care system.

But then I began to worry that Don Cherry would win, or Celine Dion, or, (horrors), Mel Lastman. (Who would be a better king than Badboy? NOOOOBODY!) It just didn’t seem workable and I slipped back into constitutional lethargy.

Recently however, I have been rethinking the whole idea. Canada, we don’t need to have a contest to find a new monarch! We have the perfect person in place already. She has the class, the wardrobe, the international contacts, and the courage. (Be honest, how many of us would be able to chow down on raw seal heart?)

That’s right, folks, I propose that we offer Michaelle Jean the job of Queen of Canada.

If she has political opinions, she keeps them to herself. She has a slightly goofy husband which is ‘de rigueur’ for queens and will certainly earn her the sympathy of all Canadian women. She has a way with common people and is sensitive to our multi-cultural society. She has a daughter so the succession is ensured. And she is already living at Rideau Hall; we won’t even have to pay moving expenses!

But we have to put a rush on it, Canada, she won’t be Governor General much longer.

Write to your local MPs and MPPs. Start a face book petition. Cut out a red heart and put it in your rear car window or attach it to your backpack, (symbolic of the seal heart). Design a truly Canadian crown for her coronation ceremonies.

And somebody, please, please, please, write us a new national anthem for the occasion.


*first posted to the St. Catharines Standard Blogsite

Doukhobours Want You Naked!

Doukhobours plan to take over Canada and force everybody into nudist colonies!

Preposterous? I agree and I think it’s just as preposterous as the e-mail I received this week telling me that Muslims are planning to take over Canada and impose Sharia Law across the land. The Muslim people I came across as a teacher in Niagara had no more interest in taking over the country than do the Doukhobours. They were gentle people interested in raising their families and practicing their faith in peace.

I am a fan of Doug Jamieson, AKA Geezeronline (twitter). His blogs are sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful, whimsical, serious, thought provoking etc. In a recent blog he spoke about an e-mail he received recently. Although the scenario was different it was similar to the one I received in its anti-Muslim message. He writes so eloquently I am takng the liberty of quoting him here because I believe what he says is true.

“This kind of thinking is bred and spread among fearful people who move only among their own kind, feeling threatened by the "other." It is tribal, and flies in the face of Canada's desire to be a welcoming, multicultural, nation. It leads to division and, ultimately, to retaliation.” By Doug Jamieson/Geezeronline

I have one other thing to say this morning. A few weeks ago there was letter to the editor of the Standard from a woman, (I’m sorry I don’t remember her name), who asked why we are not hearing from the moderate Muslims in our communities. I have to agree with her. The woman who forwarded the worrisome e-mail to me is my friend, an educated, reasonable person, but as a new grandmother of a baby girl, she was frightened by its message.

Muslim Canadians must be more vocal. Tell us that you are as appalled by the terrorists as we are.

Tell us why being a Canadian is important to you.


*This blog was first posted to The St. Catharines Standard blogsite.

Runchey's Company of Coloured Men, 1812

The British did leave us the names of the men who served in what became known as ‘Captain Runchey’s Company of Coloured Men’. Runchey’s Company was a part of the small group of soldiers that fought the first wave of American invaders at Fort George on May 27, 1813 according to Bob Foley’s book, War of 1812. Casualties were high and the British regulars and the Canadian Militia were forced to withdraw.

I didn’t have much time to look at the list of names as I’m still working my way through the 2nd Lincoln Regiment, but I did jot down a few interesting points. (For more information, the Mayholme Genealogy and Historical Foundation is open Thursdays and Fridays from 10 to 5 or by appointment. The phone number is 905-934-1173. All they ask is a $5.00 donation.)


Richard Pierpoint was apparently captured by slave traders in Senegal when he was about 16 years old and sent to North America. Once here he was sold to a British officer.

Slavery’s gradual abolition in Canada began in the late 1700s, but when Pierpoint was freed and how he got to Canada was not recorded. It would have been before or around 1776 because the record notes that he fought with Butler’s Rangers during the American Revolution.

Decades later he was the person who suggested the formation of a company of ‘coloured’ soldiers to help defend the Peninsula during the War of 1812. He must have been about 50 by that time but nevertheless took up arms to defend his new country. He was granted 200 acres in Grantham for his service and became the first black settler in the area. He died in Grantham in September of 1838.

The soldiers in Runchey’s Company of Coloured Men wore a grey great coat, black gaiters and breeches, a felt cap with a plume and a green jacket with yellow facing.

***

As I have typed my way through the list of local men who served in the 2nd Lincoln Militia during the War of 1812 I have noticed a high number of desertions. Most of the entries on the list don’t specify why the men left the regiment or what happened to them. I just assumed that as most of them had been farmers who lived in the area, they had simply gone home when it was necessary to look after things. I imagined that they must have driven the highly trained British officers around the bend, but I didn’t imagine that the punishment would have been severe.

I have reached the names on the list that begin with the letter M and it’s the first time I have come across the comment that someone ‘deserted to the enemy’. That made me sit up a little straighter but it was the fate of Private McMillan that gave me the greatest shock. The notation after his name said ‘shot for desertion, Oct. 1814’.


Shooting a local man wouldn’t have endeared the British to the people living in Niagara. What could have happened? Were the British fed up with the unorthodox comings and goings of the militia men? Was McMillan the last straw? Did some Brit decide to show the local farmers they meant business or did McMillan do something that jeopardized the safety of the populace? Sadly nothing more is recorded.

This is the fifth of eight of my 7th Decade Girl blogs. By far this one held the greatest number of surprises. It also left me with the most unanswered questions. If I ever get to the National Archives in Ottawa I’ll try to find out why young Private McMillan was shot.

Till later,
Francie

Black Orioles of '37

It seemed as if I had just posted my comment about 1937 being a year in which men’s and women’s roles were traditional, well defined and unquestioned when the movie ‘Amelia’ opened. If you haven’t seen it, it is well worth the $5.00 ticket, (cheap Tuesday price). It didn’t get great reviews but nothing short of total earthly destruction seems to excite the critics these days. Anyway, I take back my words. I wasn’t there and I don’t know what undercurrents were flowing through society that year.

And Rosie the Riveter was about to take her place on the assembly line! Shame on me!

Yesterday at the Museum I finished cataloguing the well known, (to most people), photo of the St. Catharines Orioles who played in the Niagara District Hockey League, 1937. They were the first all black hockey team in Canada. I say well known ‘to most people’, because their picture has appeared in McLeans Magazine as well as the Standard and a Toronto paper. A copy of the photo also hangs in the Hockey Hall of Fame. I seem to be the only person who didn’t know about this team.

I rushed into the archives section of the museum library and began working through the file drawers that hold the local sports history. My initial enthusiasm about an unusual story began to falter when I didn’t find anything. I began to worry that a) no one had bothered to collect anything about the team or b) if I did find something, I might not like what I found. I was wrong on both counts. There was a folder with newspaper clippings, and a copy of McLean’s. The stories were upbeat, with just a passing reference to the difficulties the team must have faced.

I learned that the team members all belonged to the BME Church on Geneva Street. At least one family could trace its roots back to the Underground Railroad and the escape to Canada from slavery. Two local businesses, (a trucking and a florist business) had not only sponsored them; they had bought all of the equipment including the skates! The Garden City Arena didn’t open until the following year and the Xerox copy of the only article that mentioned home ice was not readable so I’m not sure where the home games were played. I did learn that the Orioles traveled to Kitchener, Hamilton, Brantford and a few other cities in southern Ontario on the back of a flatbed truck supplied by their sponsor.

One of the articles mentioned that some teams refused to play against them.

The Orioles did it though; they played through the whole season. The opening of the new Garden City Arena was given as the reason why the team was disbanded the following year. The fellows evidently went on to play for various other teams in the league.

I am so impressed by their courage and I’m glad they ‘stepped up to the plate’ at a time when photographic and written records were kept. But now I’m beginning to wonder if the names of the free black men who fought along side the Canadian Militia in the War of 1812 were recorded.

It’s back to Mayholme tomorrow and maybe an answer. I’ll keep you posted.

Till later, Franciel

1812, Some men, Some Women and One Lemon

On Thursday I took a minute to reread the names of the captains whose names appeared at the top of the militia muster list for the 2nd Lincoln Regiment, 1812. Askins, Burch, Cooper, Hamilton, Macklem, Rowe, Tourney, to name a few. Most of these names can be found in the 2009 phone book. I like to think that some of the families are still in the area. Unfortunately, Tourney and one other captain, (I’ve forgotten which one now that I am home and the list is no longer in front of me), were killed at Chippewa. Chippewa was the scene of terrible carnage for this regiment.

When I first read that Laura Secord went to the Queenston Heights battlefield to find her husband after the fighting ended I was quite astounded at her courage. I’ve since learned that she was not the only woman who did that during the War of 1812. It stands to reason that if the women lived in the area, they would have gone to find their husbands and sons. I imagine that the battlefield at Chippewa was the site of a terrible grief. So many men were lost.

If we lived in a society that better funded the arts I would suggest a sculpture of a group of searching women be erected in one of the battlefields.

The idea of a militia intrigues me. I am not a historian and I know nothing about the military, but if it happened in Niagara I’m interested. I gather when war was declared all of the able bodied men in the area had to show up. I was surprised at the number of men in the 2nd Lincoln who were incarcerated by the British at Fort George because they refused to take the oath of allegiance.

So who were these men? It isn’t likely too many of them were refusing to fight on religious grounds as there were evidently provisions made for the Quakers and Mennonites.

I wonder how many of them were Americans who came here after the American War of Independence ended. The government of Upper Canada wanted more settlers and offered an excellent incentive, i.e., cheap land. I’m guessing a lot of Americans loaded up the old family covered wagon and made the long trek north never thinking that they would one day be expected to fight against their former neighbours.

Unfortunately the list doesn’t say what happened to these fellows.

I think I’ll end with a comment about names. The vast majority of the men had names that are still popular today: John, David, William, Samuel, Jacob, etc. However there were some more unusual names such as Ebenezer, Horatio, Chauncey, Obadiah and Phineas. There was one poor soul whose first name I can only hope was the result of a scribing error. His first name was Lemon.

This is the third of eight ‘7th Decade Girl’ blogs. For many people, the 7th decade of life seems to be a time of great business. It is often a time to give back to the community by doing volunteer work. But retirement doesn’t always start out that way. Leaving the teaching profession was a devastating experience for me. I went from being a ‘very important person’ in the lives of at least 30 people to someone even I didn’t recognize as having much to give anymore. I suppose this blog is as much about me finding my way again as it is about the amazing world I’ve discovered.
Till next time,
Francie

The 7th Decade Girl and 1937

This is the second in a series of 8, (maybe10), 7th Decade Girl blogs I hope to post to the St. Catharines Standard website. A 7th Decade Girl is a vibrant, (she says modestly), active woman between the ages of 59 and 68.

On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons I volunteer at the St. Catharines Museum. I am helping to catalogue the Standard Collection. The Standard Collection is comprised of thousands of photographic negatives of people, places and events taken by St. Catharines Standard photographers from 1936 to …? Actually I’m not sure of the date of the last negatives. 1970s, maybe. They certainly won’t all be catalogued in my lifetime so I haven’t concerned myself with the date of the last image.

I sit at a large work table in a brightly lit room in the basement of the Museum at Lock 3 with 4 other cataloguers. We each have a small light table, magnifying glasses, white cotton gloves, rulers, pencils, pens, etc. A similar work table with 3 or 4 other cataloguers is behind us. (They are working to catalogue the Museum’s general collection.) It is a congenial group and I really enjoy being a part of it.

Part of my job is to peer back seventy years into the glass negatives that contain the photographic images of 1937and describe in detail what I see.

Some general impressions of that year – nobody was overweight in 1937, ties to Britain were strong and male and female roles were traditional, clearly defined and not questioned. Oh, and a note about shoes...It was the end of the Depression and although most people managed to get spruced up for the camera they often couldn’t hide their feet. Their shoes speak with painful eloquence about hard times.

Some things have changed since 1937. One image that stands out is a shot of about 10 children taken in one of the local parks. They were waiting to register for the summer programmes that were offered by the city. Not a parent was in sight! Very different from today, but not at all different from Merritton in the 1950s when I grew up. What was alien to my childhood experience was the fact that the little girls were all wearing dresses. To play in! I was as shocked as if they’d all been wearing tiny, little burkas.

While cataloging a series of images of the 1937 Henley Regatta, (already over 50 years old by that time), it was difficult not to wonder what happened to the young men from Niagara who grinned into the camera and wore their medals so proudly. I found myself studying their faces but I never figured out exactly what I was looking for. A hint that they knew what was coming? A dark premonition of Dieppe, Hong Kong or Juno Beach? The war seemed to cast an insidious shadow backwards over those boys but they seemed oblivious to it on that hot day in August.

Something to think about in these uneasy times.

Till later, Francie