And at the same time, I'm Canadian to my core.
Nearly every morning, I wake up with a song playing in my head. My brain has done this most of my life. It's like I have an iTunes programme in my brain, loaded with every song I've ever heard, set to random shuffle. I guess it's from having woken up every morning to the clock radio playing the CBC morning show.
This morning, it was this one. I hummed it as I fed the cat her breakfast and put the coffee on.
This also makes me cry.
These days, when someone asks where I'm from, I often just start stammering and don't know how to answer.
Stan Rogers, the avatar of Canadianness.
~
3 comments:
Hilary, I think "time bubbles" are a reflection of upbringing. If you have older parents (mine were in their 40s when I was born), and no older siblings to bridge the gap, you tend to reflect your parents' generation more. Here I am, knocking on the door of fifty, with parents who had Depression-Era childhoods, and grandparents who were late Victorian!
Despite growing up in the age of television, to the extent that I have any accent, it is old school Boston Brahmin, with a touch of Maine and an ever so occasional West Clare hiccup.
Btw, love Stan Rogers. Sang Barrett's Privateers around many a campfire at night when I was playing AWI Redcoat!
How then did I end up reflecting my grandparents' generation? I'm more Edwardian in outlook than 1950s by a long shot.
The War really muddled things too. My mother and Uncle Mike were raised by Mike's grandmother, (whom I knew as "Nan") in the period immediately following the war when the whole country, particularly bomb-flattened Manchester, had been in a very real sense for most people thrown back into the 19th century.
I think the impact of the War on British people really hasn't been fully assessed yet. I know that my own family was drastically changed by it, and the repercussions are very easily seen two and three generations later.
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