Outhouses

At the Memoir Writing Group we have a system in place for obtaining subjects on which to write.

We have a bundle of small cards and a coffee can. If anybody thinks of a subject which could be fun to write about, she or he writes the title on one of those cards and tosses it into the can. When it is time to select a topic, one of us will put her or his hand into the can and draw out one of the cards. Sometimes it is tempting to throw the chosen card back in and draw another one but that is not allowed. Naturally some of the titles are similar to ones about which we had written previously. However, our agreed upon rule is  that the chosen topic is the topic.

Towards the end of our session this past Monday the card chosen had one word printed upon it - 'Outhouses' - only I completely misunderstood what was read and wrote on a subject that was completely irrelevant. I am writing this blog as an attempt at atoning for my error.

Most of the houses in which my family lived until I was about 15 years old had no indoor plumbing (except for the kitchen sink) so outhouses were a necessity.

If you have been reading my blogs as I go along you will know that our first two homes were pretty primitive and there were no bathrooms.  I have no recollection whatsoever of the outhouses at my grandparents' homestead nor at the cabin in the forest but I do remember the facility at the third house.

Our next door neighbors - and good friends - were Mr and Mrs Bartlett and they had some dairy cows as well as an ample garden. Therefore the area around the house where we lived and up the hillside in back was denuded of trees and left as grazing land - except for one giant Douglas fir which stood near the top of the hill. The outhouse was a number of yards out behind the house. It was a 'two-hole' affair (why some had two holes while the majority seemed to have only one I have no idea!).

This incident happened when Alda was about three or four years old. She went out to use the facility and came running back into the house sobbing her heart out. She never went anywhere without a beloved pillow and that had fallen down the hole beside the one upon which she had been sitting. Mom had no choice but to go out there, fish out the truant pillow, and then wash and dry it before handing it back to Alda.  That is the only memory that I have of that pillow - it seems to have disappeared not very long after that incident.

In conversations within our family we always refer to the houses in which we have lived by the names of the landlords. The incident recorded above happened while we were living at the Williams house. From there we moved to the Black house which was situated across the road from the school that I attended during  Grade 1. There must have been an outhouse but I have no recollection of it.

A photo of the 'Black House'. The black Cocker Spaniel is 'Nigger' (I mentioned him in the 'Dawes Hill - Part 1' blog).


Next was the move to Dawes Hill in Coquitlam. I have no idea as to who was the landlord so we have always referred to that place as 'the House on the Hill'. That house had an indoor toilet  but baths had to be taken in a galvanized tub with water carried from the kitchen stove.  Each of us had a bath on the same evening and in the water used by the sibling or parent who had preceded. Fun and games!

The next move was to the Picton house down beside the highway. Out the back door and over beside the creek (a road ditch overflow from a byway up above us) was the woodshed and, next to it, was the privy. I do remember ribald comments being made by the person who was chopping and piling wood to or about the person using the privy! Also, the water for the house came from a well which was in a field up above the house. The well was not all that deep so it contained mostly surface water. There was one summer that had very hot and dry conditions. Dad had vacation time and the family went to Bowen Island. When we returned home and Dad went up to the well he saw the carcass of a dead rat floating in it. No - we did not drink from the well until the corpse had been removed and the water purified.

From the Picton house we moved back up the hill to the Finnegan house which Dad and Mom eventually bought. When we moved in, there were a bathroom and a toilet - only they were entirely different rooms. The bathtub was in a small room on the second floor and at the top of the stairs. The toilet and hand basin, on the other hand, were in what had originally been the pantry so immediately off of the kitchen. The kitchen was huge and, while there were a dining and a living room as well, that is where people tended to gather in order to visit. Therefore the odor emanating from what had been a pantry led to many a ribald comment!

The kitchen sink was against the east wall of the kitchen while the stove was against the south wall and there was a doorway in between which led to a spare bedroom. Not long after we moved in there Dad made the move which he had been contemplating for years - converting  the stove from a wood burning affair to oil. We  were situated at the end of Kaptey Avenue and that road made a loop beside the back (kitchen) door. The storage tank for the oil was beside the kitchen window and - unfortunately - to the far side of the septic tank. The driver of the oil tank truck was informed where the septic tank was located so he would not drive over it. However, there was one occasion when he erred and broke the top of the tank. On the following Saturday afternoon Dad bailed out the broken tank while I had the wheelbarrow and wheeled the odoriferous sludge down a trail into the forest to a spot where I could safely tip the wheelbarrow. Now that pathway is a street lined by lovely houses. I wonder if one of those homeowners ever wonders why their flower gardens do better than those of the neighbors?

Food

For a person living on a low income I must confess that I eat out more than my budget allows. I have two problems - I really do not like to eat alone (does that come from growing up in a family of six persons where we almost always ate together?) - nor do I enjoy cooking.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a Food Court which is in a mall beneath a department store. There are at least two dozen eateries there which serve up all sorts of different types of food. One of my favorites is 'Soup-It-Up' where there are ten or so tureens each containing a different soup. Also available is a slice of white or multi-grain buttered bread. I had a bowl of clam chowder along with the buttered chunk of the 'brown' bread.

In the center of the court are a few dozen tables and chairs and - during the noon hour - seats at these tables are hard to come by. Rarely does a person sit alone but shares a table with others who, often, are complete strangers. The other people who were already seated at the table that I chose soon left as did the party who were seated at the next table. They were replaced by a group of men who - by the looks and complexions of each of them - were of different ethnic backgrounds. Also, a fifth member of that group came along later and sat at the table where I was. We passed some amusing comments with each other but did not enter into actual conversations. What intrigued me was the different ethnicities of the food in front of each of us.

Each of them had a different ethnic food in front of him and - by the looks of each of them - not any of the foods consumed was of the ethnicity of the diner. One had souvlaki, another sushi, another spring rolls, and so on. 

My mother was a good - but not exceptional - cook. Her background was British while Dad's was French Canadian. Mom had a few of her own recipes and, as time went by, these were added to with recipes from friends.  There was the odd dish that Mom served which I did not care for but most of them I really enjoyed. For instance - Mom often cooked a roast of beef or pork on the weekend. The beef was always juicy, well done on the outside and pink in the middle. The pork was well done - as pork should be.

Both of these roasted meats - as did cooked fowl - left a lot of juice in the pan. The juice from roast beef was turned into a wonderful gravy while the juices from the roast pork were left to gel and became a wonderful spread called 'pork dripping' which, when cooled, became a spread to put on a piece of bread with a little salt and pepper on top. Probably these two foodstuffs lead to clogged arteries but they certainly were good!

Later in the week - after the roast beef dinner on the Sunday evening -  Mom would cut up the cold beef into cubed chunks, brown them in the skillet and put them in a pot. To that was added sliced carrots which were also browned, browned onion slices, the left over gravy and some water. The pot was left to simmer on the back burner and then served with boiled potatoes for supper. I liked that recipe so much that I made the same dish with the left overs from a roast beef dinner. I have taken that dish to potluck suppers to the appreciative comments of other diners.

When it came to Christmas, Mom always made her own Christmas cakes as well as both shortbread and 'overnight' cookies and they - along with cold turkey and cranberry sauce - were the staples throughout the week between Christmas and New Year.

My partner, Ric Reed, is an exceptional cook and I have enjoyed a number of dinners which he has created.  The most memorable of these was a dinner party at his apartment in Oakland, California on New Years Day, 2009. He cooked a leg of ham as his Mom cooks it back in Arkansas and, with that, he served vegetable dishes which are commonly found on tables in that State. There were eight or ten of us at that dinner - it was a buffet -  and Ric received a number of compliments. What did I contribute to that dinner? I washed all of the dishes after the guests had left.

There were a number of other enjoyable meals which we shared in Oakland. For a year or two there was a restaurant not far away which was owned by a black man from Louisiana. His kitchen cooked food in a Louisiana style and the dinners were oh so good! I became friends with a black woman who - while she lives in the San Francisco suburb of Richmond - is originally from the mid-west. She recognized  the recipes offered in that restaurant and had quite a lengthy and amusing conversation with the owner/chef.

Being a Canadian and growing up in a culture of British food - with a little French/Canadian thrown in - it is wonderful to see all of the people from different ethnic backgrounds who now live here and have the opportunity to taste all of the different ethnic dishes.

A block from where I live is located one of a chain of Vietnamese restaurants called 'Ginger'. They are 'fast food' restaurants and, among the staples served there is 'Pho' (a beef soup served with rice noodles and bean sprouts) as well as spring rolls and a bowl of food stuffs which is a melange of salad, barbecued beef and topped off with the usual spring rolls. A good healthy fast food.

Along the block between here and Ginger is Sushi Club where I often eat. Usually I order the menu item which includes sushi, beef teriyaki and tempura (tempura is deep fried vegetables which have been covered by a batter before being cooked).

Both Ginger and Sushi Club are east of here and there is another ethnic restaurant - the New Yorker which is a Jewish deli - up the block form here towards Bloor Street.  More food to die for - and the slices of dill pickle served with the main menu items are absolutely delicious! 

I cannot leave this topic with out mentioning souvlaki - a Greek dish consisting of a skewer or two of braised pork which is served with a white yogurt-based sauce.

Now I am hungry so I think that I will close and go to get something to eat. 

Part Time Work

Throughout most of my growing up years I earned a small allowance by bringing in the wood needed for the stove (before we switched to an oil burning range). If I remember correctly, my 'wage' was $.25 a week. However, upon arriving at the ripe old age of 13 or so, I was given the opportunity to earn more based upon how much I accomplished each day. The two 'jobs' of which I am thinking were picking strawberries for Tom Wesley and picking raspberries for the Smith family.

Later on - while in Australia - I picked apples, pears, grapes and watermelons and I have commented upon those experiences in the blogs about life in Tasmania and in Goodnight, N.S.W.   This blog is about the summer jobs I worked at while in High School and - later - in between steady work.

One summer - during my teenage years - I was hired by our neighbor and friend, Jim Mackie, to help him with some yard work. My memory of what I did for that money is dim and I do not believe that I did much. Jim knew that we were poor and my 'hiring' was just to help us out.

Back before the '80s there were no 'Dollar Stores' but '5 and Dime' stores instead. There were three of them in downtown New Westminster and one of them was a branch of the Woolworth chain. I was hired as a 'stock boy' (another term for 'gofer') - worked there for a few weeks - and hated every moment of that!

My Dad was a millwright at the Capilano Timber Shingle/Shake Mill. On a couple of occasions I went to the mill with him to help in clean up work and, when I was in my later teens, as an employee on the afternoon shift. My task was to stand beside the conveyor belt which was taking cedar shingles through a machine which was spraying them with paint. I had a stick in my hand and, if I saw a shingle or two which were not aligned with the other shingles, I had to poke each miscreant into line. Lord - I hated that job!

Working the afternoon shift meant that I was not finished until midnight. The last bus out of New Westminster which serviced our neighborhood was at 11:15 PM but one of the city transit buses went out to Fraser Mills shortly after midnight so I would catch it to where it turned down into the mill. From that point it was about an hour of walking along the shoulder of the highway and then up the hill  to our house. One evening I witnessed a 'spooky' event in the eastern sky - a full eclipse of the moon. I had not heard that an eclipse was expected so that surprised me!

This photograph (taken recently by a friend who lives in Vancouver) shows the view down the Fraser River to New Westminster. Below the hill (and where mooring logs can be seen) was where Fraser Mills was located. To the extreme right of the photo you can see two green residential towers. They have been erected where the large B.C. Prison was once located and , below that on the banks of the Fraser, was Capilano Timber.  The next paragraph is about my working at the Royal City Cannery which was immediately on this side of the bridges shown in the background.

Royal City Cannery processed vegetables - mainly peas - (as well as fruit like strawberries and raspberries) for sale in supermarkets all over the country and abroad.  This cannery was a great source of summer employment and, during the summer following my stint at Capilano Timber, that was where I worked.

The cannery was an older ramshackle building perched upon the river bank. One evening during that summer - 1954 - a fish boat moored up near the community of Port Kells was destroyed by an explosion and fire. Unfortunately, a teenage deckhand lost his life in that accident and - a few days later while we were eating our lunches - we watched a police boat (which was moored right beside the railway bridge) fishing the corpse out of the river. Not a pleasant view while one is digesting lunch - and was much on my mind a day or so later when I went out on the tiny verandah, slipped upon some green peas which had been spilled there and was lucky to be able to grab a railing - otherwise I would have been another victim of that turgid water!

One of my tasks in the cannery was to team up with another fellow to hoist a heavy tray of filled cans into and then out of the oven. In that part of the cannery there were rails upon which dollies were rolled towards and out of the ovens. I was walking backwards when I tripped over one of those rails and fell backwards upon my tailbone. That hurt but I did not bother to go to the first aid room. Dad chewed me out about that - if there were recurring problems I would have no recourse for legal action against the cannery! For years the bruised tailbone bothered me but it seems to have healed itself.

The work at the cannery was not all that pleasant but it did give me the funds to spend on new clothes for school and to afford a ticket on a Greyhound bus up to 100 Mile House, to attend the wedding of Roseanna Poirier, and to be a part of the incident involving a fishing trip out on Canim Lake when a sudden thunderstorm nearly sunk our rowboat!

During the winter of 1954/55 I attended Senior Matriculation at the Duke of Connaught High School in New Westminster and then had to wait until a position opened in the office of a Chartered Accountants' firm. In the meantime I found a part time position in the office at Essondale - the Provincial Mental Hospital - about a mile east of where we lived.  There I handled the patients' "comfort money" accounts as well as meal tickets to the cafeteria for other employees. I had been to Essondale numerous times before but working with and around mental patients was daunting at first. That is - until I discovered how sweet and non-threatening those people could be. Particularly, I remember one middle-aged woman who would wander the grounds and be in and out of the 'Tuck Shop' singing 'tra la la' and telling everybody about the kittens born to her cat - "They all had such beautiful blue eyes!"  Yes - she was 'nuttier than a fruit cake' but she was so sweet.

It took me a while to land a position with Chadwick Potts and Company and, in the interim, there was one more part time position. That was in the Sears mail order warehouse in Burnaby. My task was to load the parcels being shipped to people who lived all over B.C. As I have had a lifelong interest in the names of people and of communities I enjoyed the work.

The Lower Mainland of B.C. is usually free of major snow storms - but not that year. One of the other fellows who was working at Sears drove a car and lived east of where my family lived. The drive home with him on that snowy evening was a tense one - but we made it. Naturally, I would not allow him to attempt to drive up the hill to our house - I slogged up Hillside Avenue on foot! 
 

Hillside Avenue as it looks today. On the evening of the snowstorm it was no more than a rutted laneway leading up from the highway at the foot of the hill. Now vehicles must turn onto Montgomery and then descend on one of the three other roads.



     

Music In My Life

It seems that we always had at least one radio in the house. For the first few years we did not have electricity so I am presuming that the radio was powered by batteries.

One fairly vivid memory of music that I have is about a song that seemed to have been quite popular during the 1930s. This song must have been written for a British Music Hall skit and the lyrics went something like this:

                  Knees up, Mother Brown!
                  Knees up, Mother Brown!
                  Come on, Dearie, let it go
                  Eei-eei-eei-o,
                  It's your bloomin' birthday.........and so on.

My maternal grandmother was known to all as 'Queenie Brown'  so - at four years of age - I thought that she would be thrilled to be hearing a birthday song about her? No - Grandma was horrified!

When we moved to the Dawes Hill area, Alda and I were signed up for music lessons at a studio in New Westminster.  Dad had had cousins who took music lessons - the girl on the piano and the boy on the violin - so he hoped that we would follow suit. However, that was not to be as our choices were the opposite. The studio loaned smaller instruments to the families of students but pianos did not fall into that category so I had to settle for lessons on the Hawaiian guitar which I hated. A piano did not arrive in the house until many years later and that was when I began lessons on that instrument. This situation lasted for a number of years but I have not touched a piano since.

Our younger sister, Babs, was coming along and she had the gift of being able to play by ear. As far as I know, that same piano is the one found in her living room in Kamloops and she still plays - but by ear.

As that music studio evolved the principal people came to be Mr and Mrs Harvey and a Mrs Brown. Mr. Harvey built a fine little orchestra and I remember the music concerts held on Good Friday evening every year - and in a high school auditorium in Vancouver. Mr Harvey was always attired in a tuxedo and, as he had a fine baritone voice, he would hum and sing along with the music. Also, he was a very proud Englishman so every concert ended with a rendition of "Land of Hope and Glory". The lyrics of the verses would be sung by a young soprano with a lovely voice and Mr. Harvey would always join in at the chorus.

Another memory of those days that has remained with me was that Mrs. Brown smoked so there was always an ashtray on the shelf above the keyboard and the room would be full of cigarette smoke. Yes - even as she was teaching we students how to play, a cigarette would be burning.

A business group in New Westminster was given a license to operate a radio station so CKNW was born. In the early years the studio was on the second floor of an older hotel on Columbia Street - the downtown thoroughfare. The bus from where we lived into town ran every two hours and this got us there well in advance of the time for our music lessons so we would go up to the studio and sit in on the broadcast. The noon hour program was 'The  Roundup' and it was live. There were some local 'cowboy singers' and we got to hear them perform (my best memory is of a trio - Mike, Mark and Jack).

A number of years later I was one of a number of articled students in the office of a Chartered Accountant firm. By that time CKNW had moved the studio and was on the ground floor  of a newer building and our office was immediately above them. The format was no longer Country and Western music but had become that of live talk shows and radio contests. Sometimes the jackpots offered by the main contest would reach a fairly high sum so, when we arrived for work in the morning - and especially on Mondays - when we opened the street door we had to wade through piles of envelopes containing the entries from contestant hopefuls.

While the building was newer than the original one had been, it still was not air-conditioned. As it had been built into the side of a fairly steep hill, the parking lot was out behind the building and was accessed by a ramp from the back of our office up to the door into the alley. Connecting to that ramp was a staircase up from the radio studio. A number of commercials were recorded there so, when the air was warm, the doors were left open and we would hear the same commercial sung over and over and over ad-nauseum.

Many of the guys with whom I worked were avid golfers and were buying  items - especially metal tubing - from which to make golf buggies. It was only natural that the boys would become so fed up by the repetitious nature of recording the commercials that one of them would grab one of the metal pipes, quietly lower it down the back staircase and try to drown out the commercial being recorded  by their vocal noises amplified by the tubing. It worked - the connecting door down below was closed!

While I was always aware of the 'Hit Parade', my musical tastes were Classical so, when I was able to, I tuned into CBC/Radio Canada on Saturday afternoons in order to listen to the live broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera House in NYC. However - I never saw a live opera performance until I lived in Prince George. An American company had been on tour in Alaska and stopped in Prince George to stage a performance in a high school gymnasium. It certainly was not like a real opera house  but I - and the girls from the office where I worked - enjoyed the performance. I cannot remember which opera was performed that evening for certain but I believe that it was one which had been written by Mozart.

This is a late insertion placed here on May 11, 2013.

On this past Wednesday evening I was again a guest at a performance of the Canadian Opera Company. The opera was Poulenc's "Dialogue of the Carmelites". A friend and I saw and heard this opera performed in Vancouver many years ago. The Director at that performance used the classic ending as written by Poulenc. At the end of the performance we hear the nun's singing and - one-by-one - leaving the stage followed shortly by a 'ker-chunk' sound from the orchestra. This continues until there are no nuns left on stage.

The Director of the version currently being performed at the Four Seasons Center here in Toronto has a newer - and even more powerful - ending. The nuns remain on the stage - clad in white habits - singing and then, one-by-one, they collapse on to the floor and into the classic posture of one about to be guillotined. This continued until  there are none left. There was silence from the audience followed by thunderous applause! 

As I have written in the blogs which cover my time in Australia I did see - and hear - some wonderful performances while I was down there. The most memorable of those was a performance in Brisbane by a Maori group from New Zealand of Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" - it was pure magic!

While in Brisbane I attended Kedron Methodist Church and sang in the tenor section of the church choir. I must confess, though, that I am a 'coattail singer' in that I am able to sing what you are singing - but ask me to sing a certain note by myself then I am lost! The Messiah is performed every Easter and once I was coerced into being in the choir for that. Rehearsals were in the evening and I was horrified at one rehearsal to find myself the only tenor present! There was no way that I alone could sing a certain note and be in harmony with vocalists from other sections!

As I have mentioned in some previous blogs, I was also very fortunate in being able to be at some wonderful musical performances like Gracie Fields - while on her farewell tour - and to hear the great Paul Robeson (also while he was on his farewell tour).

I love opera - and I love hearing (and watching) performances of Broadway hit shows. While I have never been to NYC I have attended performances of "West Side Story", "My Fair Lady", "The Music Man" and "Les Miserables" in other cities.  Also, I must mention a performance of "Cats" at an AIDS benefit in Vancouver.

While in Vancouver I had come to know a younger fellow who had a wonderful baritone voice (he had gone to the auditions in Seattle for the Metropolitan Opera). While I was in Victoria, he was as well. He was ill with an AIDS related condition but he sang "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the Rogers and Hammerstein production of "Carousal" at an AIDS benefit concert while most of us wept.

Here in Toronto I have a friend who has two season tickets for every opera performed. Always he takes friends to these operas and I get to see and hear every other one. These, of course, are at the magnificent Four Seasons Opera House down on Queen Street West. I have seen some little known operas as well as 'chestnuts' like "Madama Butterfly" and Wagner's "Ring Cycle".

I am a regular attendee at church and - I must confess - the biggest draw for me is the music. For instance, this past weekend was Palm Sunday and the soloist was a bass baritone who sang one of my absolute favorites - "The Holy City". We have an incredible Music Director and she has her finger in seemingly all of the musical circles in the city. Therefore, we have been blessed by incredible soloists and other musical performers. 

I could go on and on with this subject of music - but I will close here - at least, for now!

     

Prejudices and Bigotry

I own a large collection of movies on DVD and, on evenings when I am at home, I watch one.

Last evening I re-watched one of my favorite Westerns - "The Magnificent Seven". The movie begins in a rough and ready frontier town somewhere in the southwest of the United States.  A North American Indian (an Amerind) has died and a wagon is ready to take the casket out to the community cemetery - only the driver and his helper are being shot at. Why? "Those no good Injuns are not to be buried beside White Folks!" The character played by Yul Brynner - along with a couple of other Caucasian gunslingers - take over the wagon, shoot up a few naysayers, and the interment happens.

The story goes on to relate how they - and a few other white gunslingers - then unite to go to a village over the border in Mexico where the local peasants are beset by Mexican Bandidos. The film is amusing, exciting and romantic all at the same time. All through that film racial tension raises its ugly head but the 'good guys' (mostly) overcome it and win out in the end.

It is a beautifully filmed movie, exciting to watch and - in places - amusing and with great background scenery. However, I am struck by the bigotry portrayed throughout the film which begs the question, "When will stupid thinking end - or will it ever go away?"

My parents were very different from each other. Dad was raised in a Roman Catholic boys' orphanage in Montreal until he was of the age when he could leave and be on his own. After that he worked in a market garden, on Great Lake boats which carried grains and other supplies through the Great Lakes system - and even across the Atlantic to England. When the Depression happened, he rode the rails out to B.C., was hired by a man who needed help on his dairy farm, met Mom there, married her and raised a family.

Mom - on the other hand -  was born in London to a woman who had been disowned by her upper middle class family and who had to work to support her child. The man whom I knew as my maternal Granddad was a Canadian soldier from Saskatchewan who had joined the Canadian Army upon the outbreak of World War I, was sent with his unit to Belgium where many of them were gassed by German soldiers while in a church. While recuperating in London, Granddad met my grandmother, married her and brought her to Canada.

They went to my Granddad's home village of Theodore, Saskatchewan and, shortly thereafter, followed other relatives to North Vancouver. Once there, Granddad learned of an abandoned homestead in the community of Ruskin in the Fraser Valley so he acquired ownership of it, built a house and lived there until the house was destroyed by fire in 1941.

They became involved in their new community which consisted of people from many backgrounds. Grandma got along well with those who were British by origin - but not necessarily with those who were not. For instance - neighbors along the road out from the homestead were Ukrainian people and Grandma refused to learn how to correctly pronounce their name! I have been told how, when I learned to talk, I knew how to pronounce the surname of this family so I would correct Grandma  every time that she got the name wrong!

Other neighbors in that community were of Japanese origin and, when hostilities erupted in the Pacific during World War II, they were deemed a threat and were forced to move to internment camps over the mountains from the coastal area (for a more detailed writing about that period, please read my first blog "Our Japanese Neighbors"). Mom, Granddad and Dad all liked our Japanese neighbors so were saddened by that event. Many of the Japanese young women were 'girlfriends' of Mom - a legacy from their school days together at the Ruskin Public School. 

Growing up in B.C. we had neighbors from numerous ethnic backgrounds - especially after we moved to the Dawes Hill area of Coquitlam and we kids attended Millside Public School followed by Coquitlam High.  In my class was Emma Wong every year until we graduated. As well there was a Sikh family whose kids attended with us. The majority of the folk were of French-Canadian origin but there were Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian and Ukrainian kids among us - and even more of other ethnic backgrounds. An adage espoused by Dad and Granddad has always been with me - "It matters not what a person's ethnicity nor religious beliefs are - it is who he or she is as a person that counts!"

When Mom and her parents arrived in B.C., they lived in North Vancouver for a few years before moving to Ruskin and Mom remained in touch with some of her girlfriends. One of these was May who was married to Bob Brown.

One weekend - when I was about twelve years old - our family spent a weekend with the Browns. Saturday afternoon Bob took Dad, Alda and I for a drive. We traveled along Third Street towards Lonsdale (the dock for the ferry from downtown Vancouver was at the foot of Lonsdale). As we neared this main thoroughfare, Bob pointed out an older and well-dressed lady who was walking along the sidewalk. That person had been a neighbor of the Browns when they lived in an apartment building on Lonsdale. This person was not a woman but a man dressed in women's clothing. He was a house painter by trade and dressed in female attire every Saturday and Sunday when he went for his/her walks along East and then West Third Street.

I was intrigued but - as yet - had no idea that I would have a feeling of affinity for that person. There was no indication of disapproval by Bob as he told us the person's story. However, he did mention that he/she was not allowed by the authorities to travel across to Vancouver.


As I mentioned in the first "Dawes Hill" blog, there were an inordinate number of bachelors living on and around that hill while I was growing up. One of them whom I did not mention before was 'Old' Bill Collicott who lived in a bungalow on Mundy Road along which the Dawes Hill bus traveled while on its way out from New Westminster. I remember overhearing Mom gossiping with some of her lady friends and saying, "Old Bill likes boys, you know!" By that she did not mean that he was a pedophile but that he looked for sexual relations with other males.

Again - there was no judgment in that statement.    

Ice Sculptures

As I write this entry the date is March 19 - only two days away from the advent to Spring. However - warm it is not! The weather forecast issued yesterday was for a major storm with a combination of snow, ice pellets - and rain. When I arose this morning and looked out through the blinds I saw a mere skiff of snow on the plaza but noticed the people, who were passing by, were rugged up suggesting that it was cold out there.

When one lives in a cold climate the best way to cope with the elements is to join with what the weather provides. The upscale shopping area known as Yorkville is only three blocks from here. Every winter the businesses which are located there unite in a festival celebrating winter and that features an ice sculpting competition. On a cold Saturday morning a few years ago I went up there with my camera. The following is a photo essay of what I saw while I watched - and shivered!

                                                   A competitor working on his ice creation.

                                                 A different sculptor working on his creation.

Naturally, the sponsors of the event are local businessmen so the works of art reflect those businesses.

Harry Rosen is a well known local haberdasher. He is a tall man and specializes in outfitting larger males.


 

                                                A well known upscale department store.

                                       A bulletin board sponsored by a number of media outlets.

                                                            A more elaborate sculpture

The Whole Foods chain owns upscale supermarkets. As well as the one here in Yorkville, I have been with Ric to the one in Alameda, California too.

                            This is an incomplete 'work in progress' for a hair styling salon.

I used a file on Photobucket to store these photos. Somebody saw this particular one and asked how they got those items into the block of ice? I have no idea - this was a completed 'work of art' by the time that I saw it.

Like in the photo above, this sculpture was already finished when I saw it and the 'BT' sign was in the block.

                The artist of this creation is the fellow on the right hand side of the photo.

                                                         The signature piece for the event.

It may be cold enough to 'freeze one's butt off' but there are still interesting and fun things to do.

Communication Devices

On this past Monday afternoon - when I left the Lillian H. Smith branch library - the time was near 4:30 in the afternoon and the sidewalks (especially on the north side of College Street) were crowded by university students leaving their classes. As I turned onto the sidewalk to walk east I was faced by a younger man walking along while texting. I could have walked around him but I stopped just to see what would happen. At the last minute he glanced up, noticed me, and stepped to his right in order to pass on my left.

I have noticed people doing this all the time - whether on sidewalks, in stores, on subway platforms, in transit vehicles - and I wonder how many have encountered accidents because they were not alert?  We - as a society - have become addicted to the communication devices so, as a senior citizen, I have begun to wonder how this is affecting interaction between people?

Telephones were invented well before I was born and, as we were a poor family, we could not afford to have one in our house until I was well into my teen-age years.

My maternal grandfather was born and raised in the agricultural village of Theodore, Saskatchewan and - one of the stories that he used to relate - was about the arrival of telephones in that village.

Naturally, the doctor was one of the first to acquire a telephone. One day he was chatting over the telephone with a patient when he heard the telltale 'click' of another receiver being lifted. Somehow he knew who that other person was so he said, "Mrs. S............?" A woman's voice responded breathlessly, "Yes, Doctor?" "Get off the line!"

For many of our growing up years, either my sister or I would be sent to a neighbor's house - quite a distance away from where we lived - with a quarter or a dime so that we could use the telephone that was there. Finally - in the early 1950s - the British Columbia Telephone Company acquired the funds to expand the telephone system so that everybody could have one. Our number was Lakeview (there was no lake any where near us!) 4398L3. It was a party line with six subscribers (three of us were given the descriptive 'L1, L2, and L3' with the other three subscribers 'R1, R2 and R3'). Our telephone would ring when calls were coming in for the "L" numbers but not for the "R" ones. "L2" had been assigned to our neighbor across the road but we had no idea who owned "L1".

Around that same time two of Alda's girlfriends were hired as telephone operators so, when we picked up the receiver to place a call, we would hope that either Kathleen or Gladys would be the operator and, if so, we would gossip for a couple of minutes before giving her the number that we wanted.

One of Alda's sisters-in-law was married to a son of a leading family in the Forest Grove/100 Mile House area in the Cariboo Country in north central B.C. In the eyes of many of the neighbors, the Sandbacks were rich people - they had done well with the ranch that they owned as well as with a sawmill or two - so, when Claire Sandback would give us a call, we would hear the ring, pick up the receiver and Claire would begin chatting to whichever one of us had answered. Not long after we began the chat we would hear the line becoming fainter and fainter and then Claire's voice  yelling, "Get Off the Effing Line!". B. C. Telephone was not yet established in the smaller interior communities so the local system was locally owned. When a caller wanted to call long distance, a special number had to be used. This caused a certain ring to sound in all of the subscribers' homes  so many would know that one of the 'Rich Sandbacks' was calling long distance and curiosity would outweigh good manners. We always chuckled when that occurred!

Now all sorts of methods for communicating with others are in use. My partner lives in the San Francisco Bay area. He has a computer and at least one of the texting devices. His telephone, however, is a cellphone which was given to him by his grandparents. Therefore - when I call him in the Bay Area - actually I am calling Arkansas and that is the area code which appears in the listing of long distance calls on the telephone bill. Even that is different as I have signed up with a long distance service for seniors that is based in Montreal - it is to them that I send my remittance to cover the long distance charges. Gone are the telephones hooked up to a wall in the house and shared by a number of neighbors!

I have a computer, Ric has a computer, most of my family members who live in B.C. and Alberta have computers, and I believe that all of my friends and acquaintances have them as well. Sometimes we message friends or family members directly while - at other times - we leave messages in the more public places like Facebook. As for me, the latter only works when what I want to communicate is NOT personal and private.

When I lived in Australia and needed to call my family - or be called by them - the process was lengthy and passed through services rendered by many different operators. The transmission was by cable which extended from continent to continent beneath the oceans (which made the sound of the transmissions odd - it was like speaking into a tube with a 'hollow sound' emitting at the other end). Those calls were quite infrequent, however, due to the awkwardness of the system and the cost that would appear upon the monthly telephone bill!

I have a computer and a land line telephone. I have had a cellphone but it was used only when I was traveling in the Bay Area and needed to communicate with Ric. I may get another cellphone at some future time - but I doubt very much that I will be texting!