Thank you Susan for hanging my Flag.
July 1st: The True North, strong and free…
July 1, 2022 by 22 Comments
Thank you Susan for hanging my Flag.
No one tells you this
September 18, 2018 by 11 Comments
I’d never been outside of Canada. When I complained about this growing up in our suburban house outside of Toronto, my father would helpfully point out that he’d once driven us across the border at Niagara Falls and then done a U-turn and driven us right back, so technically speaking I had, in fact, left the country. I was unmoved. Literally as well as figuratively. Unlike every other person I knew in Ontario, my family had not gone to Florida for winter vacation. We had not done the drive down I-95 to visit grandparents or go to Disney World. We didn’t even make the trip to Buffalo to take advantage of the cheaper American prices at the mall outlets. The MacNicols stayed put. Travel was for other people…
Growing up, nearly everything existed for me only in books, which had the effect of making all travel seem automatically rife with adventure and exoticism, no matter the reality. When friends complained about the terrible monotony of being trapped during spring break in the back of their parents’ car en route to Myrtle Beach, it fell on uncomprehending ears. To me, the concrete American Interstate held the same unknowable mystique as Paris. Perhaps it was less than surprising then that I cleaved on to the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder the way I did: not only was she also an adventurous young girl, she was a real person; I could find the places she’d gone to on a map and know she’d actually been there, and that because she’d done it, perhaps I could do it, too. Eventually I found my way to those dots in real life along with many others, always slightly astounded that I had managed to manifest my own childhood imagination.
~ Glynnis MacNicol, No One Tells You This: A Memoir (July 10, 2018)
Book Review: HuffPost – ‘No One Tells You This’: The Triumph Of Choosing A Single, Childfree Life At 40
Miracle. All of it.
June 24, 2018 by 24 Comments
It had snowed overnight, but there were already tracks on the ground. The fine powder had covered the perimeter of spruce and willow and was already starting to melt on the topmost branches when I set out on my expedition. Ahead was a denuded and frozen basin of snowy ridges and gently rising slopes.
The noise of the village had faded, and as I took my first steps onto the plateau, following the contour of the land, an intense squeak escaped from under my boots. It was all I could hear for the next 10 minutes. A muffled, metronomic marriage of snow groaning on sand. After that, I had reached my destination. I had crossed what many believe is the world’s smallest desert.
This was my introduction to one of North America’s most bizarre geological phenomena, the Carcross Desert in Canada’s Yukon. At first glance, it admittedly didn’t look like much. Hardly recognisable as a desert and only 600m wide, best measured end to end by bootprints, it was blanketed in snow, the sand only apparent between cracks in the melted crust. But the details sharpened over time. Closer inspection revealed a miniature kingdom of fine-grain sands, a rare habitat for plants, ungulates and insect species that may be new to science…
The Carcross Desert’s unique genesis is the result of 10,000 years of natural labour. The Yukon was last glaciated during the Wisconsinan McConnell glaciation, she explained, some 11,000 to 24,000 years ago. “Carcross would have had 1km of ice sitting on top of it,” she told me, while hunched over research papers and geological fieldwork studies. “You just can’t picture it.”
As the ice started to melt, lobes of ice began to retreat south, leaving the southern Yukon with heavily scarred valleys. Lipovsky likens this to a vast construction site, as “the ice bulldozed everything”. Over time, massive lakes formed at the snout of the lobes, then when the ice retreated, water levels dropped, leaving beaches and strand lines socked in between the valleys. To finish, sand was hoovered up by fierce winds and blown north-west, giving birth to one of the world’s most unlikely deserts…
To be categorised as an arid desert for scientific purposes, one needs to receive less than 250mm of annual precipitation, while semi-arid deserts receive between 250mm and 500mm. This is the category that Carcross falls into, despite sitting in the rain shadow of the surrounding mountains…
Despite such contradictions, what’s not debated is the sense of awe and sheer amazement the desert inspires. As you enter, its mystery deepens, the tall willow and spruce appearing in ghostly silhouette. Beyond this, surprises wait. Yukon lupine and Baikal sedge flower in summer. Rarely seen coast dart moths and dune tachinidae hover in the skies. Five new species of gnorimoschema, a genus of the moth family, have been discovered. The likelihood is there are more.
All this beauty in one of the Earth’s most unforgiving and complex environments is hard to fathom. This isn’t the Sahara, the Gobi or the Kalahari. But each step across its diminutive dunes makes you realise: this desert is a whole world of wonder unto itself.
~ Mike MacEacheran, from “The Unlikely Home of the Smallest Desert” (BBC.com Travel, June 22, 2018)
Notes:
- Thank you Christie!
- Photo: Dave Brosha with Carcross Desert. “The Carcross Desert, famous for being one the of the smallest “deserts” in North America. Located in Carcross, Yukon, Canada. I really don’t think there’s too many places in the world that combine such a strangely beautiful mix of snow and sand.”
- Related Posts: Miracle. All of it.
Miracle. All of it.
October 26, 2017 by 34 Comments
It is, after all, not necessary to fly right into the middle of the sun,
but it is necessary to crawl to a clean little spot on earth where the sun sometimes shines
and one can warm oneself a little.
~ Franz Kafka, from Letter to His Father
Notes:
- Photograph: Rob Miller Photography in Dundas, Ontario, Canada (via Your Eyes Blaze Out)
- Kafka Quote source: kafkaesque-world
- Related Posts: Miracle. All of it.
It’s not that Canadians don’t love their country. I do. Most Canadians do, too. They just love it quietly.
July 1, 2017 by 25 Comments
July 1 is Canada’s 150th anniversary, but nobody seems particularly eager to join the party…
The irony is that Canada, at the moment, has a lot to celebrate. Our prime minister is glamorous and internationally recognized as a celebrity of progressive politics. We are among the last societies in the West not totally consumed by loathing of others. Canada leads the Group of 7 countries in economic growth. Our cultural power is real: Drake recently had 24 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time — for one shining moment he was nearly a quarter of popular music. Frankly, it’s not going to get much better than this for little old Canada…
Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s father, articulated Canada’s difference from other countries perfectly: “There is no such thing as a model or ideal Canadian,” he said when he was prime minister in 1971. “What could be more absurd than the concept of an ‘all Canadian’ boy or girl? A society which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate.”
Nationally, Canada has been spared the populism that has swallowed the rest of the Western world because there is not, and has never been, such a thing as a “real Canadian.” … To lead this country, you must be able to navigate multiple languages and multiple cultures. Our longstanding identity crisis has suddenly turned to a huge advantage — we come, in a sense, pre-broken…
So why is Canada so bad at celebrating itself?…Canadian self-flagellation results always in the same warm, comfortingly smug sense of virtue…It transcends the political spectrum. Whether it is Conservative insistence on frugality and small-town values or the furious outrage of identity politics on the left, everyone has the same point to make: We’re not as good as we think we are, and the government should do something about it…
None of what I have written should be taken to imply that Canadians don’t love their country, or that I don’t love my country. I do. Most Canadians do, too. They just love it quietly…
~ Stephen Marche, excerpts from “Canada Doesn’t Know How to Party” (NY Times, June 23, 2017)
Berg!
April 25, 2017 by 34 Comments
An iceberg ran aground over Easter weekend just off the small Newfoundland town of Ferryland, population 465, drawing knots of tourists eager to catch a glimpse. Some are locals or travelers who happened to be nearby, but many are a special Canadian breed, the iceberg chaser — People who flock to the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland at this time of year hoping to see the huge frozen chunks of broken glacier that drift by on a stretch of sea known as Iceberg Alley.
The berg at Ferryland rises about 15 stories above the waterline — and that is only about 10 percent of its mass. Some of the submerged ice comes into view when the berg is seen from above…
The stunning view that is causing traffic jams of onlookers on the coast road is actually a snapshot of the iceberg’s death throes, 15,000 years in the making. What began as snowflakes falling on Greenland during the last ice age has crept to the sea in a glacier and then broken off, probably sometime in the last three years, to float slowly out into Baffin Bay. Bumped and nudged by one another and by melting pack ice, the bergs eventually get caught up in the southbound Labrador Current and sail down Iceberg Alley.
~ Dan Levin, excerpts from a story in the NY Times, April 20, 2017
Don’t miss the full story and other fantastic photographs by Jody Martin here: A Chunk of the Arctic Stops By for a Photo Shoot
Dinner! Let’s eat together…
February 16, 2017 by 36 Comments
Stick with this to the finish…
Thank you Susan
Breathe into me
November 29, 2016 by 24 Comments
At night I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its
face against mine.
Breathe into me.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, excerpt from “Some Kiss We Want” in A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings by Coleman Barks
Photo of full moon over Peyto Lake by Cath Simard. Peyto Lake is a glacier-fed lake in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. Don’t miss her other shots of Banff here.
We interrupt this broadcast for Breaking News from Canada
November 29, 2016 by 41 Comments
The Gray Jay? Say What?
After a process lasting nearly two years…Canadian Geographic hopes the government will adopt its recommendation in celebration of Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017. It says the choice between the country’s 450 species of birds “was made neither lightly nor quickly.”
Part of the controversy is about the selection process — the gray jay came in third in the online poll, behind the common loon and the snowy owl…
But the pick is controversial, prompting headlines such as this one in The Toronto Star: ” ‘The gray what?’ Outcry as gray jay named Canada’s national bird.” Hashtags such as #teamloon are full of outrage and sadness. “Unlike Canada … the gray jay is drab and not terribly photogenic,” wrote the Ottawa Citizen in an unflattering article titled, “7 embarrassing photos that gray jays don’t want you to see.”…
It was a long, heated selection process. Backers for the different birds duked it out in a “battle royal” debate, streamed live, where they mulled questions such as “Is the cry of the loon a hauntingly beautiful lament or the stuff of children’s nightmares?” and “Is the Canada goose a messy, ill-tempered brute or a unifying symbol that is also surprisingly delicious?”…
But Aaron Kylie, an editor for Canadian Geographic said: “We didn’t just follow the popular vote, because also, to be frank, I don’t think that we should decide a national symbol based on a popularity contest,” Kylie told the newspaper. He pointed to what some see as a cautionary tale, from the U.K.: “If we did those kind of things, that’s how you end up with Boaty McBoatface. It’s not really the right way to go about something that’s so serious.”
Read on – Merrit Kennedy, Canada Is Agonizing About Choosing A National Bird:
I come here for silence
November 13, 2016 by 19 Comments
Filmed in the Canadian and Greenlandic High Arctic
TRUTH: Canada to you.
October 17, 2016 by 33 Comments
Check out what some Canadians are saying about what’s happening down south.
Thank you Lori!
RIP: Mr. Everything
June 10, 2016 by 17 Comments
Gordie Howe, known as “Mr. Hockey,” had died at 88 this afternoon. Howe was also referred to during his career as Power, Mr. Everything, Mr. All-Star, The Most, The Great Gordie, The King of Hockey, The Legend, The Man, No. 9, and “Mr. Elbows”. Here’s some excerpts from terrific tribute by Adam Gopnik from the New Yorker:
“Gordie Howe, who died today, was so much a legend—Mr. Hockey!—and so often referenced as the greatest player of all time, even lending his Number 9 to Wayne Gretzky (who turned it into his own 99), that it is surprisingly hard to put his achievements into clear relief. His persistence was such that, in memory, it overwhelms his peculiar excellence. The persistence was pretty startling. He played until he was fifty-two, long enough to skate professionally alongside his own sons. His accumulated stats include 2,421 games, 1,071 goals, 1,518 assists, 2,589 points, and 2,418 penalty minutes…He seemed to play forever, and he forever played well, winning six M.V.P. awards and six scoring championships, too…
Some of Howe’s peculiar greatness is summed up in the still-current “Gordie Howe hat trick,” which is when a player has a goal, an assist, and a fight all in one game. Howe was tough—and, by all accounts, mean…
Above all, he was a representative—the perfect representative—of a certain kind of Canadianness, reflected, as it was bound to be, in a hockey player, as perhaps Lou Gehrig or Stan Musial, other Iron Men, were representative of similar, American baseball values, now largely lost. A product of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the most Canadian of Canadian places, Howe might have had the Canadian fault of being a touch too trusting, easily and even brutally exploited by the Red Wings owner Bruce Norris. He nonetheless made the Canadian virtues of modesty, persistence, and family-above-all-else part of the heritage of hockey. He didn’t just play with his sons; he played well with his sons—while his wife, Colleen, a Detroit girl, was always surprisingly visible, in a way few athletes’ wives were at the time. He even got to play in the now mostly—and unfairly—forgotten 1974 Summit Series, when the World Hockey Association’s stars took on the Soviets. He was old, but still the leader.
~ Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker: Gordie Howe Was the Ideal Canadian Athlete
Photo: Amazon – Mr. Hockey: My Story. By Gordie Howe
Hasselblad
April 19, 2016 by 13 Comments
Patience please. Don’t quit too soon…
“Jean-Michel Blais is a 31-year-old pianist from Montreal. He grew up in a rural French Catholic town in Quebec, and at age nine began tinkering with his family’s organ. By 16, he was invited by a conservatory to train as a classical pianist. Deep in the throes of teenage rebellion, Blais found the constraints of formal training cumbersome and, after two years of study, he decided to trade the conservatory for a life of world travel. Blais then spent his 20s living around the world — including stints in Berlin and South America — before finally settling in Montreal where he began to work on his debut album, entitled Il, which was released on Arts & Crafts on April 8, 2016.”
If you liked this, you’ll love this tune: Jean-Michel Blais | Il.
To Find The Wild Within
April 3, 2016 by 34 Comments
If you have not visited, Go. JUST GO.
“…All in the court of her majesty, Mother Nature. She chose this place to erect her monuments…”
One Planet. Two Worlds.
December 30, 2015 by 12 Comments
Hot Tea @ – 40°F
December 23, 2015 by 24 Comments
“Michael H. Davies took this photo on the tundra outside Pangnirtung, Nunavut, a community of about 1,400 just a few kilometres south of the Arctic circle. The photo shows local resident Markus Siivola throwing hot tea into the air as he bends backwards. In the –40 C weather, the tea freezes as soon as it’s tossed. Davies, originally from Pontypool, Ont., is a trained painter, photographer and glass blower. He has lived in Pangnirtung for about 10 years with his wife and, now, two young children.”
Source: CBC News – Nunavut tea toss photo at – 40 C proves internet gold
Riding Metro North. With a Legend.
October 23, 2015 by 14 Comments
Wednesday. 5:07 am to Grand Central.
I lift my briefcase to store it on the overhead rack and I jam my Oxford into the steel girder under the seat. I look down to assess the damage. A thin sheaf of leather dangles from the toe cap. Expensive miss. Damn it!
I take my seat. I wiggle the toes on my right foot triggering a flashback. A tumble back, way back.
I was 14.
The ice rink. It was a Campbell Soup can without the label, rough cut vertically, flipped on its side and dropped on frozen dirt. No insulation.
Fans, mostly parents, sat huddled on one of three wooden benches that circled the rink, standing to stomp their feet and slap their mitts to keep the blood moving. It was cold, always cold.
An oxidized chain link fence protected the fans from the pucks. Players did not have face masks. It was skin to fence. No, better stated, face to fence. Cage matches before cages were a WWF sport. [Read more…]
Saturday Morning
April 18, 2015 by 8 Comments
Of life are woven woes
the days dissolve to live a bit
a lot!
dissolve.
—Anne-Marie Alonzo, from “Lead Blues,” Voices in the Desert: The Anthology of Arabic-Canadian Women Writers
Anne-Marie Alonzo is a Quebec poet, translator, literary critic and editor who made a major contribution to the culture of Canada despite her severe physical disabilities. Alonzo was born in Alexandria Egypt in 1951 and came to Quebec with her family in 1963. In 1966 she was the victim of a car accident which left her quadriplegic and confined to a wheelchair. She earned a B.A. in 1976, an M.A. in 1978 and a Ph.D. in French studies in 1989 from the Université de Montréal.
Notes:
- Photographer: “Deadly Calm” by Olly J Film and Photo ( Facebook // Twitter // Tumblr ) on Mar 20, 2015. South Wales, UK.
- Poem Source: metaphorformetaphor
A blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others
April 7, 2015 by 3 Comments
By: Lili Loofbourow, The Many Faces of Tatiana Maslany:
Tatiana Maslany, the 29-year old actress, is a native of Regina, Saskatchewan. She is the leading lady on the set of “Orphan Black,” the BBC America television show that has the same star many times over. “Orphan Black,” you see, is about a group of persecuted clones, and all of them are played by Tatiana Maslany.
Despite Maslany’s reluctance, I managed to steer our conversation back to her magical quick-change act. I still wanted to know how she does it. “I think there’s something about being prepared enough that you can surrender,” she said. Then she quoted to me something the dancer Martha Graham told the choreographer Agnes de Mille in 1943.
At the time, de Mille was confused and bewildered by her sudden rise to fame, and Graham offered her words of encouragement. […] De Mille asked Graham when she would feel satisfied, and Graham replied: “There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.” I asked Maslany what her divine dissatisfaction was. “I don’t know how I would label it right now,” she said. “I think if I looked back on this time, I’d probably see where it lived.”
Don’t miss entire NY Times Magazine article here: The Many Faces of Tatiana Maslany.
Live & Learn 