October Country

Dear (central, coastal) Italy,

you don't understand Hallowe'en. Not having seasons, you really fundamentally fail to grasp this quintessentially pagan, harvest autumn festival.

You are already well-equipped with death-festival material, the home of charnel houses and chapels made of bones, a place where ladies still go to have parties at the family mausoleum. I realise that the Catholic culture is dying out here, but you can just decide to revive it if you want. It's all written down in books. Go do native Italian things, related to All Souls and All Saints. The sane world wants this stuff to be preserved.

But Hallowe'en proper is something you really just can't grasp. It's about pumpkins and fallen leaves and straw-stuffed scarecrows on the porch. It's about decorating your house like a haunted house, trick-or-treating (properly, and only if you're under 12) and long slow walks, shuffling through fallen leaves in cold windy weather; bare oak trees and Edgar Allen Poe readings. It is, in short, Northern and English.

...

Umbria is different, of course. They've got both Autumn and Winter there. In the mornings, you can lie in bed, all curled up with the cat under the quilts, listening to the rain on the roof and the sound of gunshots in the hills as the hunters go after the season's wild boars, the smell of woodsmoke rising up from the valley to heaven through the turning leaves like an evening sacrifice...

Though it might start a little later in the year, since I was there last weekend and the leaves were mostly still green on the trees. So we might have to change it to "November Country".

...

Anyway, Italy, please stop doing Halloweenesque things in the middle of your perpetual-summer, Mediterranean-climate country. It's really just cringingly embarrassing. Like listening to an American trying to do an English accent; you just want to crawl away and hide from the humiliation the person is visiting upon himself.

So, just go to Mass on Saturday, OK?

Thanks.



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Nostalgia food

I love Kraft Dinner. I'll admit it right now. I know, I know, it's fake, it's plastic food, it's a mean fist of carbs, but I can't help it. I love the stuff. (You Americans call it "Mac and Cheese". One time I was in a house full of people including a bunch of kids, and the mum was making KD for the kids to have before the grownup food was put on for supper later. I took one look at that huge pot of glowing orangey-goodness and begged to have some. Yes, I'll take food out of the mouths of children as long as it's KD.

I also love tinned Campbell's chicken noodle soup. So many happy memories of a bowl of that lovely salty stuff, slurping up the noodles with a grilled cheese (cheddar, of course) sandwich on the side.

What are some awful packaged fake-food you like?

(Oh man, I'm so hungry!)



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Good and bad Fantasy

Dallas Road Beach, Victoria, BC


So, a few days ago, I was having a discussion about what constitutes "cute". My friend and I agreed that miniature versions of things are nearly always cute. (This might be part of the appeal of Malta...)

It reminds me of my childhood attraction to tree and beach driftwood forts which I built nearly constantly from age six to twelve: a smaller and more contained and sort of fantasy version of the humdrum home I was used to.

Forts could become anything. Very often my tree fort was a pirate ship, but it doubled as the Tardis, the Enterprise and as an unspecified castle in Narnia under seige by Orcs, Morlocks and Calormenes. A whole world that was contained in my brain.

~
It's funny what your brain tells you. Most of my life, beaches looked like this:


And a beach without driftwood all over it was simply dull. What are you going to lean on when you're reading your book? How are you to build a fort if there's nothing but sand? What are you going to climb around on if there's no rocks? What's the point of a beach that's covered in sand where all you can do is just lie there? How boring is that?

It still throws me off and I'm afraid I look at Santa Marinella's beach culture as dumb, dull and pointless. Beaches are for climbing around on the rocks, gazing deep into tide pools and building forts. Period.



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The Maple Leaf Forever!

OK class, the rest of the day will be spent at the annual Santa Marinella Dominion Day party, where we will eat Canadian barbequed meats, drink Canadian beer and swim in the beautiful Canadian Mediterranean.

Those unable to attend are required to drink a minimum of one (1) beer and to sing at least one Canadian song of their choice.

Here's some help:
Stompin' Tom


Stan


That is all.



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...and Canadian

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.



~

Homesick for Nova Scotia's rocky, stormy shores

Happy Dominion Day, Canadians!

Five points to any Canadian who can identify "Wolfe" in the first line.

(Bonus point for anyone who can locate the Plains of Abraham on a map)



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The Regionals

Last night I was earnestly assured by two young American friends that there is really one "Canadian accent" and that was Southwestern Ontario.

Well, to that, I say,


This. Is. Canadian.



~

Sang the Maple Leaf Forever on our last night at the Roman Forum

I always freeze up when I'm singing by myself in front of people. Get all wobbly-voiced...


But I did my best to educate our American friends that there was a country, called Canada, that was once a respectable place to be from.



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Happy anniversary, Your Majesty

The Queen of Canada took the throne 60 years ago today.


Ad multos annos.

If you want to sing along, here is the Canadian verse of God Save the Queen:

Our loved Dominion bless
With peace and happiness
From shore to shore;
And let our Empire be
United, loyal, free,
True to herself and Thee
For evermore



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People think

I have no excuse whatever for being homesick.


But I'm from here, so...

you know.

And I'm such a BC tree nerd, I can tell you the species of both those trees just from the bark pattern. The one in front is a Douglas Fir and the other is a Western Red Cedar.


(H/T to Vicky. More Vicpics!)



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Tuns on Jack

Paul Tuns was the guy who first told me what a blog was and suggested I start one.

He's been watching the Canadian political scene all his life.

Read him.

Here he is on St. Jack:

I was at Our Toronto Free Press in the late 1990s and I interviewed him about some youth who were squatting on private property and whose actions he was defending. I asked him about the condoms that were strewn on the floor of their trailers and tents and which some of the youth were sleeping on. He said it was very important for young people to have access to condoms, just as important as food. I sarcastically asked if the poor, dirty, malnourished teens who were illegally on other people's property could eat condoms or clean up with condoms and he huffed that "condoms are a human right." Such were Layton's priorities just 13 or 14 years ago. It takes a certain worldview to believe that condoms are as important to street youth as food and that they are, in fact, a human right.

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Oh, and Great Big Sea

...and Newfoundland.




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This is awesome

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Our Emblem Dear...

Happy Dominion Day, everyone.




One long post of all things Canadian today...


The 48th Highlanders. You can't be Canadian if you don't like pipe bands. It's a rule.

A grand Canadian tradition: the Tattoo

Halifax has one of the best in the world, and I went twice. I know someone, who lives now in Toronto but grew up in Cape Breton, (which is the source of all Canadianness) who flies back every year to sing in the Tattoo choir.

Stan,

Oh, how I wish you hadn't left us. Things would have worked out better...



The Canadians arrive: Devil's Brigade.
I've got this movie. It's about how the clean-cut Canadians went to Italy and kicked the tar out of the bad guys. (Yes, that's Cliff Robertson marching in correct Canadian form at the front. I was taught this in army cadets, you make a fist with your thumb straight up on top, and bring your arm up so it is level with the top of your breast pocket.)


It is one of my all time favourite war movies.


Canadians war-like?



Best neighbours.

Big!


But of course, no one likes Toronto.


I went to PEI once. There were LOTS of potato fields...
"...anOTHER big load o' buddados..."

And if you're in Halifax, always get your chips at lunchtime from Bud the Spud, parked in his own officially reserved spot, outside the library.

Big Things! (It's kind of a Canadian thing)

Big Things in Canada I've seen:

The Big Nickel


The Big Hockey Stick


The Big Easter Egg


The Big Blueberry (admittedly, one of the smaller Big Things in Canada, but blueberries are big, both literally and economically in the maritimes...)

Curling! Paul Gross! Leslie Neilsen:

Three other Great Canadian Things no one outside of Canada has ever heard of.
(plus a funny scene with beavers)

Mounties!

(Real Mounties aren't really like Paul Gross in Due South. I thought I'd just say that in case anyone gets confused. For one thing, he never had the regulation mustache. And he wasn't a living embodiment of political correctness...)


(Speaking of PC, Dorothy seems a little down in the dumps this Dominion Day. I've told her that it's because she's an ex-liberal from Toronto, the Source of All Badness in Canada. Being a Toronto ex-liberal can leave deep scars. Toronto liberals are always raised on high-irony diets, which in later life can lead to Bitter Conservatism in which you can't like things any more. One way or the other, Toronto knocks all the cheerful out of you. Go on over there and cheer her up about Canada, OK? Go on. Quote her some funny Canadian poetry or something.)



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So, did you know Orcas eat bears?

Today, for the first time in many years, I fervently wish I was back in Vancouver.



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Domus mea domus orationis vocabitur

For all that they sometimes drove me up the wall, I really miss the Oratory.

One thing these guys really know how to do is create a Catholic world for you to actually live in.

Latest news:
- There will be a Mass for the Graduation of St Philip's Seminary on Friday, May 13, at 8:00 p.m. in Holy Family Church. A reception will follow in the parish hall.

- The next Evening at the Oratory will be a Musical Oratory in honour of St Philip Neri on Wednesday, May 18, at 7:30 p.m. in Holy Family Church.

- The First Vespers of St Philip Neri will take place on Wednesday, May 25, at 7:30 p.m. in Holy Family Church.

- There will be a sung Latin Mass in honour of St Philip Neri on Thursday, May 26, at 6:00 p.m. in Holy Family Church.

I DEFINITELY don't miss Toronto. And, except for the Hockey Night in Canada theme song, there's not much about Canada that I miss, but I miss the Empire.



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Huh

Just noticed that country I used to live in is having a general election today.

Oh, I remember Canadian politics...



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We all seem to be having a great weekend!

Deborah Gyapong, my g'friend!


We've all got such COOL friends, don't we?!

...but who's the guy with the fake smile on the left?



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Hi Paul!!!

This just in the commbox from Paul Szabo, the best thing that ever happened to the Liberal Party of Canada:

Dear Ms. White,

That was a fun Canada Day in Mississauga with Rick Mercer.

There is no Bill I worked harder against than the Repro Tech Act. It still is not fully implemented due to the several amendments I had passed.

As far as the impact on me as an MP,I was subsequently voted hardest working MP for 3 Years in a row, ranked number 1 in speaking in the House over the past 5 years and Chaired the Ethics Committee for 3 years (including the Mulroney / Schreiber hearings and other large investigations). I am now on Finance Committee and doing my job and promoting a national, public cord blood bank which is much needed.

As a prolife MP I have spent some equity but I have always spoken for something, no against. People know I am a catholic and my position on issues have always reflected my religious, morale and family values. After 17 years in Parliament, my integrity is still intact and that is important to me.

Regards,

Paul Szabo BSc, MBA, FCA, MP

HJW responds:

Hi Paul!

You've got no bigger fan in the EU than me. And I'll stand you to a drink any time you come for a visit to Rome.

But it might not be a good idea to let anyone know you read me.

~