A bit like the Queen’s birthday [Queen Victoria, that is, no getting all modern around here!] which we celebrate on a day that is specifically, by statute, never her actual birthday, May 24th, Canada day is a holiday dedicated to outdoor eating and drinking. Fireworks, yes, but mostly drinking and eating. Like July 4th, but with hesitant polite patriots. And a lovely neighbour, who hails from the U.S., who has managed to fill in enough paperwork again to get us barricades so we can block off our block, almost legally.
Setting the ambience for this public display of eating and drinking, much waving and wearing of the Liberal Party colours will be evident here in Ottawa, the nation’s capital, ostensibly picked by said Queen because that is where her finger landed on the map … not really, just a bad Ottawa joke … there are three rivers that intersect here that were of significant navigational and economic import at the time. And speaking of said Queen, I just have to add, she seems to have enjoyed her eating and drinking, as they can date her underpants by their waistband, having what one might call an expansive photographic record of their owner’s expanding waist: Queen Victoria’s ‘big pants’ to be sold at auction in Wiltshire:
The liberal government of the day cleverly remade our national flag into essentially a Liberal Party sign, removing any trace of blue, the colour associated with conservatism here, and any symbols other than the maple leaf, during one of our spasmodic attempts to reinvent our past and create a national story by destroying all remnants of our colonial history. But I am proud of our slow shedding of our colonial yoke and the use of argument over weapons and will raise a glass of not Canadian wine in thanks for wonder at being born at all, let alone into such a magically lucky setting.
Replacing the flag at the cottage, May 2013
Bonne Fête, Canada, and Santé, which we could all use a little bit of, to go with our dwindling sanity.
Thanks for holding down (and up) the fort. Sun beginning to filter through Xty’s clouds and we are off for a boat tour of the Micramichi River. Walking with a cane, struggling but coming along. The interwebz suggest 12 to 18 weeks for full recovery and I am at week 5. But I lost a lot of muscle on the drive it would appear and am just getting it and my stamina and my mood back.
http://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=1235
native copper and silver, Minesota Mine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minesota_Mine
That is really beautiful, both the lighthouse and the metal. I am going to try to put together a little montage of photos although it has been very rainy. I managed to record some of the boat tour to try to capture the bilingual nature of Canada when it is operational … I thought this guy switched from English to “now en francais” very smoothly but I have to get it onto my computer somehow. And we found out that 52% of Atlantic salmon spawn in the Miramichi river. And the entire town burnt to the ground in 1825, except for 4 houses, and it is home to a huge Irish population because when unscrupulous sea captains were bringing Irish emigrants from the potato famine they packed them into ships that got known as coffin ships because so many of the passengers would be dead on arrival and one of the first ships of such people was bound for Quebec City but the passengers were so sick with typhoid and scarlet fever that the captain came into Miramichi asking for help and after six days they got permission to land on a little island that became a quarantine island, and those that were sickest stayed and never moved on, and then more and more came. Probably why the Irish ended up in New York too – too sick from famine to go farther west. Just a quick fact dump, but I thought it was interesting. And then other than fish it is pulp and paper and it is a little alarming how much wood there still is, and was, and is being cut and processed. Very hard to tell people surrounded by forest to stop cutting it … and it seems so vast until it isn’t.
A math quiz with the log-in. Is that a new feature,? 1st time I’ve seen it.
Cool front heading this way with a nice storm and hopefully drop from 97 to 80 something.
Hi/thanks Xty.
Just read that a couple of times (your’s Xty) and when you look back and all around, we all really do have it very good.
Back to gearing down my reducing valve.
More Steely that probably only makes sense in my head.
Hi Woodpecker!
Another really good video of this used to exist and now vamoose! And a song that i’ve liked since the first time.
nice cool rain…mucho complaining about it all around but i welcome it. everybody forgets how dry it gets and i love my trees, flowers (hibiscus especially), tomatos, grass. bunnies, birds, lightning bugs….
The plate and the screws have to come back out later?