literature | Building Everest

What it is, isn’t

Posted on April 18, 2021 by canadaslim

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Friday 12 February 2021 / Eskisehir, Turkey, Tuesday 13 April 2021 (or Day 1 of the month of Ramadan 1444 AH)

The further one travels back in time, the more alien the landscape seems to us.

Part of the problem is that we find it difficult to accept that the ways in which we think today were not always so in the past.

For us, the revelations and the sensation that these revelations created then seem almost passé and bizarre to us these days.

Take the name and work of the French philosopher René Descartes as an example.

I will be direct here.

Descartes is not an easy read – in truth, I have never read anything written by those of a mathematical mind, scientific spirit or engineerial enterprise (all three of which Descartes possessed) that I wouldn’t instantly recommend as a cure for insomnia.

(Which is why I tell my students never to study, never to read, in bed or in a prone position on the sofa.)

To read Descartes, to read anyone from the time before computers, requires an alert mind, a free spirit and an open heart.

I mention Descartes, for it was he who questioned the reliability of perception, the idea that what is, really isn’t.

And it is this notion, this idea of creating illusion to disguise reality, this habit of seeing what we want to see rather than what actually is, that is simultaneously the theme of events of 12 February as recorded in Landschlacht and my present set of circumstances here in Eskisehir.

First, a few words about the man himself, for I have always found his life immensely more thrilling than his writing, despite the importance of the works he produced.

René Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine, France, on 31 March 1596.

His mother, Jeanne Brochard, died soon after giving birth to him, and so he was not expected to survive.

Descartes’ father, Joachim, was a member of the Parlement of Brittany at Rennes.

René lived with his grandmother and with his great-uncle.

Although the Descartes family was Roman Catholic, the Poitou region was controlled by the Protestant Huguenots.

In 1607, late because of his fragile health, he entered the Jesuit College Royal Henri-le Grand (now the Prytanée national militaire) at La Fleche, where he was introduced to mathematics and physics.

After graduation in 1614, he studied for two years (1615–16) at the University of Poitiers, earning a Baccalauréat and Licence in canon and civil law in 1616, in accordance with his father’s wishes that he should become a lawyer.

Above: Graduation registry for Descartes at the University of Poitiers, 1616

From there, he moved to Paris.

In his Discourse on the Method, Descartes recalls:

I entirely abandoned the study of letters.
Resolving to seek no knowledge other than that of which could be found in myself or else in the great book of the world, I spent the rest of my youth travelling, visiting courts and armies, mixing with people of diverse temperaments and ranks, gathering various experiences, testing myself in the situations which fortune offered me, and at all times reflecting upon whatever came my way to derive some profit from it.

In accordance with his ambition to become a professional military officer in 1618, Descartes joined, as a mercenary, the Protestant Dutch States Army in Breda, and undertook a formal study of military engineering.

Descartes, therefore, received much encouragement in Breda to advance his knowledge of mathematics.

Docks in the city centre — Above: modern Breda, Netherlands

In this way, he became acquainted with Isaac Beeckman, the principal of a Dordrecht school, for whom he wrote the Compendium of Music (1618).

Both believed that it was necessary to create a method that thoroughly linked mathematics and physics.

While in the service of the Catholic Duke Maximilian of Bavaria since 1619, Descartes was present at the Battle of the White Mountain near Prague, on 8 November 1620.

Schlacht am Weißen Berg C-K 063.jpg — Above: Battle of White Mountain

On the night of 10–11 November 1619 (St. Martin’s Day), while stationed in Neuburg an der Donau, Descartes shut himself in a room with an oven to escape the cold.

Residenzschloss, the seat of Palatine Electors. — Above: Neuburg Castle, Neuburg an der Donau, Bavaria, Germany

While within, he had three dreams, and believed that a divine spirit revealed to him a new philosophy.

Upon exiting, he had formulated analytical geometry and the idea of applying the mathematical method to philosophy.

He concluded from these visions that the pursuit of science would prove to be, for him, the pursuit of true wisdom and a central part of his life’s work.

Descartes also saw very clearly that all truths were linked with one another, so that finding a fundamental truth and proceeding with logic would open the way to all science.

Descartes discovered this basic truth quite soon:

His famous “I think, therefore I am.”

In 1620, Descartes left the army.

He visited the Basilica della Santa Casa in Loreto, then visited various countries before returning to France.

Above: Basilica della Santa Casa, Loreto, Italy

During the next few years, he spent time in Paris.

It was there that he composed his first essay on method: Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii (Rules for the Direction of the Mind).

He arrived in La Haye in 1623, selling all of his property to invest in bonds, which provided a comfortable income for the rest of his life.

Descartes was present at the siege of La Rochelle by Cardinal Richelieu in 1627.

In the fall of the same year, in the residence of the Papal Nuncio Guidi di Bagno, where he came to listen to a lecture given by the alchemist, Nicolas de Villiers, Sieur de Chandoux, on the principles of a supposed new philosophy, Cardinal Bérulle urged Descartes to write an exposition of his new philosophy in some location beyond the reach of the Inquisition.

Giovanni Guidi di Bagno.jpg — Above: Giovanni Guido di Bagno (1578–1641)

Above: Cardinal Pierre de Berulle (1575 – 1629)

Descartes returned to the Dutch Republic in 1628.

In April 1629, he joined the University of Franeker (1585–1811).

The next year, under the name “Poitevin“, he enrolled at Leiden University to study both mathematics and astronomy.

In October 1630, he had a falling-out with Beeckman, whom he accused of plagiarizing some of his ideas.

In Amsterdam, he had a relationship with a servant girl, Helena Jans van der Strom, with whom he had a daughter, Francine, who was born in 1635 in Deventer.

She died of scarlet fever at the age of 5.

Unlike many moralists of the time, Descartes did not deprecate the passions but rather defended them.

He wept upon Francine’s death in 1640.

According to a recent biography by Jason Porterfield, “Descartes said that he did not believe that one must refrain from tears to prove oneself a man.”

Russell Shorto speculates that the experience of fatherhood and losing a child formed a turning point in Descartes’s work, changing its focus from medicine to a quest for universal answers.

gravure d'un homme au chevet d'une petite fille — Above: Descartes mourning his daughter (1635 – 1640), engraving (1790)

Despite frequent moves, he wrote all of his major work during his 20-plus years in the Netherlands, initiating a revolution in mathematics and philosophy.

In 1633, Galileo was condemned by the Italian Inquisition, compelling Descartes to abandon his plans to publish Treatise on the World, his work of the previous four years.

Above: ***Treatise of the World*** (1664)

Nevertheless, in 1637, Descartes published parts of this work in three essays: “Les Météores” (The Meteors), “La Dioptrique” (Dioptrics) and La Géometrie (Geometry), preceded by an introduction, his famous Discours de la méthode (Discourse on the Method).

In it, Descartes lays out four rules of thought, meant to ensure that our knowledge rests upon a firm foundation:

The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.

In La Géométrie, Descartes exploited the discoveries he made with Pierre de Fermat, having been able to do so because his paper, Introduction to Loci, was published posthumously in 1679.

Pierre de Fermat.jpg — Above: Pierre de Fermat (1607 – 1665)

This later became known as Cartesian Geometry.

Descartes continued to publish works concerning both mathematics and philosophy for the rest of his life.

In 1641, he published a metaphysics treatise, Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Meditations on First Philosophy), written in Latin and thus addressed to the learned.

It was followed in 1644 by Principia Philosophiae (Principles of Philosophy), a kind of synthesis of the Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy.

In 1643, Cartesian philosophy was condemned at the University of Utrecht, and Descartes was obliged to flee to the Hague, settling in Egmond-Binnen.

Above: Logo of the University of Utrecht

Descartes began a six-year correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, devoted mainly to moral and psychological subjects.

Connected with this correspondence, in 1649 he published Les Passions de l’âme (Passions of the Soul), which he dedicated to the Princess.

In 1647, he was awarded a pension by King Lousi XIV of France, though it was never paid.

A French translation of Principia Philosophiae was published in 1647.

This edition was also dedicated to Princess Elisabeth.

In the preface to the French edition, Descartes praised true philosophy as a means to attain wisdom.

He identifies four ordinary sources to reach wisdom and finally says that there is a fifth, better and more secure, consisting in the search for first causes.

By 1649, Descartes had become one of Europe’s most famous philosophers and scientists.

That year, Queen Christina of Sweden invited him to her court to organize a new scientific academy and tutor her in his ideas about love.

She was interested in and stimulated Descartes to publish the Passions of the Soul, a work based on his correspondence with Princess Elisabeth.

Descartes accepted, and moved to Sweden in the middle of winter.

Swedish queen Drottning Kristina portrait by Sébastien Bourdon stor.jpg — Above: Christina of Sweden (1626 – 1689)

Descartes arranged to give lessons to Queen Christina after her birthday, three times a week at 5 am, in her cold and draughty castle.

It soon became clear they did not like each other.

She did not care for his mechanical philosophy, nor did he share her interest in Ancient Greek.

By 15 January 1650, Descartes had seen Christina only four or five times.

On 1 February, he contracted pneumonia and died on 11 February.

Descartes did not believe that the information we receive through our senses is necessarily accurate.

After the revelation he experienced on 10 November 1619, Descartes undertook his own intellectual rebirth.

His first step was to throw out everything he thought he knew, refusing to believe in even the most basic premises before proving them to himself satisfactorily.

In this act of demolition and reconstruction, Descartes felt it would be a waste of time to tear down each idea individually.

Instead, he attacked what he considered the very foundation: the idea that sense perception conveys accurate information.

He developed several arguments to illustrate this point.

In his Dream argument, Descartes argues that he often dreams of things that seem real to him while he is asleep.

In one dream, he sits by a fire in his room, and it seems he can feel the warmth of the fire, just as he feels it in his waking life, even though there is no fire.

The fact that he feels the fire doesn’t really allow him to tell when he is awake and when he is dreaming.

Moreover, if his senses can convey to him the heat of the fire when he does not really feel it, he can’t trust that the fire exists when he feels it in his waking life.

Amazon.com: Fireplace Burning Wood HD: Appstore for Android

Likewise, in his Deceiving God and Evil Demon arguments, Descartes suggests that, for all he knows, he may be under the control of an all-powerful being bent on deceiving him.

In that case, he does not have a body at all but is merely a brain fed information and illusions by the all-powerful being.

(Fans of the Matrix films may recognize this concept.)

Descartes does not intend these arguments to be taken literally.

His point is to demonstrate that the senses can be deceived.

If we cannot trust our senses to convey true information about the world around us, then we also can’t trust deductions we’ve made on the grounds of sense perception.

At the time Descartes cast doubt on the reliability of sense perception, it was a radical position.

He was proposing that scientific observation had to be an interpretive act requiring careful monitoring.

The proponents of the British empiricist movement especially opposed Descartes’ ideas.

They believed that all knowledge comes to us through the senses.

Descartes and his followers argued the opposite, that true knowledge comes only through the application of pure reason.

Although Descartes mistrusted the information received through the senses, he did believe that certain knowledge can be acquired by other means, arguing that the strict application of reason to all problems is the only way to achieve certainty in science.

In Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Descartes argues that all problems should be broken up into their simplest parts and that problems can be expressed as abstract equations.

Descartes hopes to minimize or remove the role of unreliable sense perception in the sciences.

If all problems are reduced to their least sense-dependent and most abstract elements, then objective reason can be put to work to solve the problem.

Rules for the Direction of the Mind: Descartes, René, Anderson, Taylor: 9781978280434: Amazon.com: Books

Descartes’ most famous statement is:

Cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I exist.”

With this argument, Descartes proposes that the very act of thinking offers a proof of individual human existence.

Because thoughts must have a source, there must be an “I” that exists to do the thinking.

In arguments that follow from this premise, Descartes points out that although he can be sure of nothing else about his existence—he can’t prove beyond a doubt that he has hands or hair or a body—he is certain that he has thoughts and the ability to use reason.

Descartes asserts that these facts come to him as “clear and distinct perceptions.”

He argues that anything that can be observed through clear and distinct perceptions is part of the essence of what is observed.

Thought and reason, because they are clearly perceived, must be the essence of humanity.

Consequently, Descartes asserts that a human would still be a human without hands or hair or a face.

He also asserts that other things that are not human may have hair, hands, or faces, but a human would not be a human without reason, and only humans possess the ability to reason.

Descartes firmly believed that reason is a native gift of humans and that true knowledge can be directly gleaned not from books but only through the methodical application of reason.

The expressed aim of many of his books was to present complex scientific and philosophical matters in such a way that the least sophisticated readers could understand them.

Because Descartes believed that every human possesses the “natural light” of reason, he believed that if he presented all his arguments as logical trains of thought, then anyone could understand them and nobody could help but be swayed.

In the original edition of Discourse on the Method, in fact, Descartes declares his aim with the subtitle “In which the Author… explains the most abstruse Topics he could choose, and does so in such a way that even persons who have never studied can understand them.”

In an attempt to reach a wider audience, Descartes occasionally wrote in French, the language of his countrymen, rather than Latin, the language of scholars, so that people without a formal education could understand him.

Perhaps a Cartesian way of thinking is sorely needed in these times we live in, for so often what some folks say is true may not necessarily be as true as they say.

Take a gander at what this day (12 February) is famous for….

1404: Italian Professor Galeazzo di Santa Sophie performed the first post-mortem autopsy for the purposes of teaching and demonstration at the Heiligen–Geist Spital in Vienna.

The principal aims of an autopsy are to determine the cause of death, mode of death, manner of death, the state of health of the person before he or she died, and whether any medical diagnosis and treatment before death was appropriate.

In most Western countries the number of autopsies performed in hospitals has been decreasing every year since 1955.

Critics have charged that the reduction in autopsies is negatively affecting the care delivered in hospitals, because when mistakes result in death, they are often not investigated and lessons therefore remain unlearned.

When a person has given permission in advance of their death, autopsies may also be carried out for the purposes of teaching or medical research.

An autopsy is frequently performed in cases of sudden death, where a doctor is not able to write a death certificate, or when death is believed to result from an unnatural cause.

These examinations are performed under a legal authority (Medical Examiner or Coroner or Procurator Fiscal) and do not require the consent of relatives of the deceased.

The most extreme example is the examination of murder victims, especially when medical examiners are looking for signs of death or the murder method, such as bullet wounds and exit points, signs of strangulation, or traces of poison.

Above: Autopsy room, La Charité, Berlin

Some religions including Judaism and Islam usually discourage the performing of autopsies on their adherents.

Organizations such as ZAKA in Israel and Misaskim in the United States generally guide families how to ensure that an unnecessary autopsy is not made.

Above: Logo of ZAKA (“*disaster victim identification*“)

Autopsies are used in clinical medicine to identify medical error, or a previously unnoticed condition that may endanger the living, such as infectious diseases or exposure to hazardous materials.

A study that focused on myocardial infarction (heart attack) as a cause of death found significant errors of omission and commission, i.e. a sizable number of cases ascribed to myocardial infarctions (MIs) were not MIs and a significant number of non-MIs were actually MIs.

I am torn in knowing what to think about autopsies.

I comprehend the wish for the loved ones of the dearly departed to wish to maintain the dignity of the deceased, but death, which is the absence of awareness, including self-awareness, is not felt by those whom death has claimed.

And, perhaps, even a nameless form on an autopsy table has tales to tell of how their life was lived and how that life ended, and perhaps has value in its parts that can aid in the continuation of other lives.

I think, therefore I am?

Certainly.

But when thought ceases and all that remains are remains and other people’s memories of the person that once inhabited this now emptied shell, eventually for most of us (at least for those with tombstones upon their final resting places) all that will mark the moment of our lives will be a name that means nothing to anyone anymore).

So, have at it, hack at it, seek the secrets of the past in the remnants that lie before you.

For, what is in a name when the spirit of the man is no longer caring of the reputation that name may hold?

A man is dead upon a slab.

He is, and yet….

He isn’t.

The forced conversions of Muslims in Spain were enacted through a series of edicts outlawing Islam in the lands of the Spanish Monarchy.

This effort was overseen by three Spanish kingdoms during the early 16th century: the Crown of Castille (1500–1502), followed by Navarre (1515–1516), and lastly the Crown of Aragon (1523–1526).

After Christian kingdoms finished their reconquest of Al-Andalus (the Iberian peninsula) on 2 January 1492, the Muslim population stood between 500,000 and 600,000 people.

At this time Muslims who lived under Christian rule were given the status of Mudéjar, legally allowing the open practice of Islam.

In 1499, the Archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros began a campaign in the city of Granada to force religious compliance with Christianity with torture and imprisonment.

This triggered a Muslim rebellion.

The rebellion was eventually quelled and then used to justify revoking the Muslims’ legal and treaty protections.

Conversion efforts were redoubled, and by 1501, officially, no Muslim remained in Granada.

Encouraged by the success in Granada, Castile Queen Isabella issued an edict on 12 February 1502 which banned Islam for all of Castile.

While adhering to Christianity in public was required by the royal edicts and enforced by the Spanish Inquisition, evidence indicated that most of the forcibly converted (known as the “Moriscos“) clung to Islam in secret.

In daily public life, traditional Islamic law could no longer be followed without persecution by the Inquistion.

As a result, the Oran Fatwa was issued to acknowledge the necessity of relaxing sharia, as well as detailing the ways in which Muslims were to do so.

This Fatwa become the basis for the cypto-Islam practiced by the Moriscos until their expulsions (1609 – 1614).

Some Muslims, many near the coast, emigrated in response to the conversion.

However, restrictions placed by the authorities on emigration meant leaving Spain was not an option for many.

Rebellions also broke out in some areas, especially those with defensible mountainous terrain, but they were all unsuccessful.

Ultimately, the edicts created a society in which devout Muslims who secretly refused conversion coexisted with former Muslims who became genuine practicing Christians, up until the expulsion.

The Moriscos were Christians, but yet….

They weren’t.

Above: **Moorish Proselytes of Archbishop Ximenes, Granada, 1500**, Edwin Long, depicting a mass baptism of Muslims

On 12 February 1825, the Creek Nation ceded the last of their lands in Georgia to the US government by the Treaty of Indian Springs, and migrated west.

The treaty that was agreed was negotiated with six chiefs of the Lower Creek, led by William McIntosh.

McIntosh agreed to cede all Muscogee lands east of the Chattahoochee River, including the sacred Ocmulgee National Monument, to Georgia and Alabama, and accepted relocation west of the Mississippi River to an equivalent parcel of land along the Arkansas River.

In compensation for the move to unimproved land, and to aid in obtaining supplies, the Muscogee nation would receive $200,000 paid in decreasing installments over a period of years.

Above: Creek cessions of the Treaty of Indian Springs

The treaty was popular with Georgians, who reelected George Troup governor in the state’s first popular election in 1825.

It was signed by only six chiefs.

The Creek National Council denounced it, ordering the execution of McIntosh and the other Muscogee signatories, as it was a capital crime to alienate tribal land.

On 29 April, the Upper Creek Chief Menawa took 200 warriors to attack McIntosh at his plantation (McIntosh Reserve) on the Chattahoochee River in present-day Carroll County, Georgia.

They killed him and two other signatories, and set fire to the house.

Both his sons-in-law, Samuel and Benjamin Hawkins, Jr. were slated for execution.

Samuel was hanged but Benjamin escaped and lived for another decade.

A delegation from the Creek National Council, led by Chief Opothleyahola, travelled to Washington, DC with a petition to the American President John Quincy Adams to have it revoked.

They negotiated the 1826 Treaty of Washington, in which the Muscogee surrendered most of the lands sought by Georgia under more generous terms, retaining a small piece of land on the Georgia-Alabama border and the Ocmulgee National Monument.

They were, moreover, not required to move west.

Troup refused to recognize the new treaty, and ordered the Muscogee lands surveyed for a land lottery.

He began forcibly evicting the Lower Creek.

George M. Troup.jpg — Above: George Troup (1780 – 1856)

Adams threatened federal intervention, but backed down after Troup mobilized Georgia militia.

Like the Cherokee in northeastern Alabama, most of the Muscogee people were forcibly removed by the federal government from their original lands in the 1830s during the Trail of Tears to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).

The Indian removal in 1838 (the last forced removal east of the Mississippi) was brought on by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega, Georgia in 1828, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush.

The relocated peoples suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route to their newly designated reserve.

Thousands died before reaching their destinations or shortly after from disease.

They had signed a treaty that meant that justice would prevail, except….

It didn’t.

Émile Henry grew up in a liberal, aristocratic family with anarchist sympathies.

An anarchist, by definition, is a person who is sceptical of authority and rejects all involuntary, coercive forms of hierarchy.

(I am not an anarchist, for despite my inborn scepticism of authority, I believe that society cannot function properly without some form of organization, thus requiring those that lead and those that follow.

My scepticism arises from observing those that lead and those that follow failing to do what they should.)

"Circle-A" anarchy symbol — Above: Anarchy symbol

The Henry family were exiled to Spain for a time because his father, Fortune Henry, was a Communard (a supporter of the 1871 Paris Commune).

Above: A barricade thrown up by Communard National Guards on 18 March 1871

(The Paris Commune (Commune de Paris) was a revolutionary socialist government that controlled Paris from 18 March to 28 May 1871.

During the events of the Franco-Prussian War (1870), Paris had been defended by the National Guard where working class radicalism grew among soldiers.

Above: Revolutionary units of the National Guard briefly seized the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) on 31 October 1870, but the uprising failed.

In March 1871, during the establishment of the Third Republic under French chief executive Adolphe Thiers, soldiers of the National Guard seized control of the city and then refused to accept the authority of the French government, instead attempting to establish an independent government.

The Commune governed Paris for two months, establishing policies that tended toward a progressive, secular system of social democracy, including the separation of church and state, self-policing, the remission of rent during the siege, the abolition of child labour, and the right of employees to take over an enterprise deserted by its owner.

Feminist, socialist and anarchist currents played important roles in the Commune.

The Commune was eventually suppressed by the national French Army during La semaine sanglante (“The Bloody Week“) beginning on 21 May 1871.

Between 6,000 and 7,000 Communards are confirmed to have been killed in battle or executed, though some estimates tend as high as 20,000.

The Archbishop of Paris, Georges Darboy, and other hostages were shot by the Commune in retaliation.

Debates over the policies and outcome of the Commune had significant influence on the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who described it as the first example of the dictatorship of the proletariat (worker).)

Description de cette image, également commentée ci-après — Above: ***Battle of the Père-Lachaise Cemetery***, Henri Félix Emmanuel Philippoteaux

As a result, Émile Henry was born in Barcelona and regaled from an early age with stories of state oppression.

These anti-state attitudes were confirmed when the Spanish authorities confiscated the Henry family’s property due to their political beliefs.

Henry’s father was forced to take a miserable factory job and died of mercury poisoning when Henry was only 10 years old.

The family returned to France and Henry’s brother, an anarchist, eventually helped him establish connections with French revolutionary circles.

Émile passed the writing portion of the entrance exam for the prestigious École Polytechnique, but he failed his oral exams and went on to find work as a trainee for an engineering firm.

Émile was furious over the state execution of fellow anarchist Auguste Vaillant.

(Auguste Vaillant (1861 – 1894) was a French anarchist, most famous for his bomb attack on the French Chamber of Deputies on 9 December 1893.

The government’s reaction to this attack was the passing of the infamous repressive Lois scélérates (villainous laws) – a set of three French laws passed from 1893 to 1894 under the Third Republic (1870 – 1940) that restricted freedom of the press, after several bombings and assassination attempts carried out by anarchists.

(The term “villainous laws” has since entered popular language to designate any harsh or unjust laws, in particular anti-terrorism legislation which often broadly represses whole social movements.)

Image dans Infobox. — Above: Auguste Vailliant

Vaillant threw the home-made device from the public gallery and was immediately arrested.

The weakness of the device meant that the explosion only caused slight injuries to twenty deputies.

At his trial in Paris, Vaillant claimed that his aim was not to kill but to wound as many deputies as possible in revenge for the execution of Ravachol.

(François Claudius Koenigstein, also known as Ravachol (1859–1892), was a French anarchist, who died by being guillotined on 11 July 1892, at Montbrison after being found guilty of complicity in bombings.

On 1 May 1891, at Fourmies, a workers’ demonstration took place for the eight-hour day; confrontations with the police followed.

The police opened fire on the crowd, resulting in nine deaths amongst the demonstrators.

The same day, at Clichy, serious incidents erupted in a procession in which anarchists were taking part.

Three men were arrested and taken to the commissariat of police.

There they were interrogated (and brutalised with beatings, resulting in injuries).

A trial (the Clichy Affair) ensued, in which two of the three anarchists were sentenced to prison terms (despite their abuse in jail.)

In addition to these events, authorities kept up repression of the Communards, which had continued from the time of the insurrection of the Paris Commune of 1871.

Ravachol was aroused to take action in 1892 against members of the judiciary.

He placed bombs in the living quarters of the Advocate General, Léon Bulot (executive of the Public Ministry), and Edmond Benoît, the councillor who had presided over the Assises Court during the Clichy Affair.

An informant told of his actions, and Ravachol was arrested on 30 March 1892 for his bombings at the Restaurant Véry.

The day before the trial, anarchists bombed the restaurant where the informant worked.

Ravachol became a somewhat romanticised symbol of desperate revolt.)

RAVACHOL face (cropped).jpg — Above: François Claudius Koënigstein, aka Ravachol

Vaillant was put to death by the guillotine on 5 February 1894.)

Above: Vailliant being led to the guillotine

Émile Henry took it upon himself to avenge Vaillant’s death.

He saw the café as a representation of the bourgeoisie itself and his intent was to kill as many people as possible in the bombing.

When brought to trial for these acts, he was asked by the courts why he had needlessly harmed so many innocent people, to which he replied, “there are no innocent bourgeois“, adding that his acts caused the “insolent triumphs” of the bourgeoisie to be shattered, and “its golden calf would shake violently on its pedestal, until the final blow knocks it into the gutter and pools of blood.”

On 12 February 1894, Émile detonated a bomb at the Café Terminus in the Parisian Gare Saint Lazare, killing one person and wounding twenty.

This was not Henry’s first terrorist act.

On 8 November 1892, he had placed a time bomb at the offices of the Carmaux Mining Company, which exploded when the police removed it, killing five officers in the Commissariat on the rue des Bons-Enfants.

Indeed, after his arrest for the Terminus bombing, Henry took credit for a series of other bombings in Paris, and in his apartment was found material to make many more explosive devices.

Above: Interrogation of Émile Henry

This was his address at his trial:

I became an anarchist only recently.
It was no longer ago than around mid-1891 that I threw myself into the revolutionary movement.
Previously, I had lived in circles wholly permeated with the established morality.
I had been accustomed to respecting and even cherishing the principles of the nation, family, authority and property.

But those educating the present generation all too often forget one thing – that life, indiscreet with its struggles and setbacks, its injustices and iniquities, sees to it that the scales are removed from the eyes of the ignorant and that they are opened to reality.
Which was the case with me, as it is with everyone.
I had been told that this life was easy and largely open to intelligent, vagarious people, and experience showed me that only cynics and lackeys can get a good seat at the banquet.

I had been told that society’s institutions were founded on justice and equality, and all around me I could see nothing but lies and treachery.
Everyday I was disabused further.
Everywhere I went, I witnessed the same pain in some, the same delights in others.
It did not take me long to realize that the same great words that I had been raised to venerate: honor, devotion, duty were merely a mask hiding the most shameful turpitude.

The factory-owner amassing a huge fortune on the back of the labour of his workers who lacked everything was an upright gentleman.
The deputy, the minister whose hands were forever outstretched for bribes were committed to the public good.
The officer testing his new model rifle on seven-year-old children had done his duty well, and in open Parliament the Premier offered him his congratulation.
Everything I could see turned my stomach and my mind fastened on criticism of social organization.
The criticism has been voiced too often to need rehearsing by me.
Suffice it say that I turned into an enemy of a society which I held to be criminal.

Momentarily attracted by socialism, I wasted no time in distancing myself from that party.
My love of liberty was too great, my regard for individual initiative too great, my repudiation for feathering one’s nest too definite for me to enlist in the numbered army of the fourth estate.
Also, I saw that, essentially, socialism changes the established order not one jot.
It retains the authoritarian principle, and this principle, despite what supposed free-thinkers may say about it, is nothing but an ancient relic of the belief in a higher power.

In the merciless war that we have declared on the bourgeoisie, we ask no mercy.
We mete out death and we must face it.
For that reason I await your verdict with indifference.
I know that mine will not be the last head you will sever.
You will add more names to the bloody roll call of our dead.

Hanged in Chicago, beheaded in Germany, garroted in Xerez, shot in Barcelona, guillotined in Montbrison and in Paris, our dead are many; but you have not been able to destroy anarchy.

Above: the hanging of the Haymarket Massacre accused – George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Albert Parsons, and August Spies

The Haymarket massacre (also known as the Haymarket affair, Haymarket riot, or Haymarket Square riot) was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on 4 May 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago.

It began as a peaceful rally in support of workers striking for an 8-hour workday, the day after police killed one and injured several workers.

An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at the police as they acted to disperse the meeting, and the bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians.

Dozens of others were wounded.

Illustration of Haymarket square bombing and riot — Above: The Haymarket Riot

Ernst Max Hödel (1857 – 1878) used a revolver to shoot at German Emperor Wilhelm I (1797 – 1888) on 11 May 1878, while the 81-year-old and his daughter, Princess Louise of Prussia (1838 – 1923), paraded in their carriage.

Hödel was seized immediately.

He was tried and convicted of high treason, and sentenced to death on 10 July by the Prussian State Court.

The Prussian state executioner beheaded Hödel on 16 August 1878 in Moabit Prison.

The night of 8 January 1892, between 500 and 600 fieldworkers (campesinos) entered Jerez with their agricultural tools to spark a rebellion.

While the uprising had no particular motivating factor, their demands included the release of prisoners and changes to regional economic circumstances.

The uprising was suppressed within hours after receiving no support from the townspeople and military.

Three people were killed: a tax official and wine salesman, who were mobbed for their bourgeois associations, and a Cuban army soldier, who was shot by mistake.

The case of anarchist association with the Jerez uprising has been a longstanding histriographical debate.

The Jerez fieldworkers included some anarchists but were not anarchists in their entirety.

The group had concrete demands based on their living conditions, and were not possessed by a collective urge for destruction.

Historian James Michael Yeoman writes that some participants’ desire for revolution was as much a factor as the rain that night that kept potential participants at home.

While the resulting popular violence is associated with anarchism, where ideology and material need coincided, the ideology does not explain its entirety.

The repression of the otherwise unexceptional uprising was disproportionately severe.

The Cádiz province labour movement was sent underground as its organizations were shuttered, publishing abated, and militants arrested.

Local authorities did not question the uprising’s connection to the anarchist movement.

Tasked with restoring order, the army strongly repressed what it considered a military insurrection.

The Spanish Civil Guard gathered anarchists and labour activists from the countryside over months, prioritizing the authors and distributors of the anarchist press, which it considered the key vehicle for transmitting ideas of revolt with the working class.

At trial, the ability to identify issues of the anarchist press was treated as incriminating.

A total of 315 detainees from this period were mostly fieldworkers who identified as anarchists.

The regional repression outpaced the anarchist press’ ability to report on the uprising, leading anarchists to rely on official and mainstream reporting.

Some anarchist papers followed the official reports of the uprising as revolutionary violence, the type of spontaneous and inevitable reaction to debilitating regional poverty.

The Seville anarchist paper La Tribuna Libre was suppressed after affirming its support for subsequent revolutionary action.

More often, anarchist papers denied the uprising’s affiliation with anarchism yet did not decry it.

Le Corsair justified the fieldworkers’ rage as the result of farm owner exploitation.

The publication condemned the “bourgeois press” as using the opportunity to defame anarchism.

The largest Spanish, non-Catalan anarchist newspaper, La Anarquía, doubted the uprising’s revolutionary potential as either a political or social revolution based on its organization and location.

All refuted the mainstream claim that anarchists had sparked the uprising, whether to avoid press censorship or because anarchists believed that anarchist revolutions would not have leaders, only instructional propaganda.

The first trial — two military tribunals on charges of sedition and murder — was held a month after the uprising, in February.

The main evidence came through an informant and forced confessions.

Of the eight on trial, four were executed by garrote on 10 February 1892: self-declared anarchists Antonio Zarzuela and Jesús Fernández Lamela for starting the uprising, and Manuel Fernández Reina and Manuel Silva Leal for the murder of Manuel Castro Palomino.

On 24 September 1893, and in celebration of the day of the Saint of the Princess of Asturias, General Martínez Campos had arranged a military parade in the Gran Via de Barcelona.

Paulino Pallás dropped two Orsini bombs against the horse’s legs and side of the Captain General’s chariot to the cry of “Viva la Anarquía”, causing minor injuries to him and Generals Castellví and Clement and killing the civil guard Jaime Tous.

There were also a dozen wounded.

After dropping the two bombs, Paulino Pallás threw his hat aloft and continued to shout Viva la Anarquía.

He was immediately arrested, tried and convicted on 29 September and shot on 6 October in the prison yard of Montjuich Castle in Barcelona.

Above: The execution of Paulino Pallás

Its roots go deep:
It sprouts from the bosom of a rotten society that is falling apart.
It is a violent backlash against the established order.
It stands for the aspirations to equality and liberty which have entered the lists against the current authoritarianism.
It is everywhere.
That is what makes it indomitable, and it will end by defeating you and killing you.”

Émile Henry was executed by guillotine on 21 May 1894.

His last words were reputed to be “Courage, camarades! Vive l’anarchie!“

Though his activity in the anarchist movement was limited, he garnered much attention as a result of his crimes and of his age.

He was also seen as one of the first people of a growing group of revolutionaries (largely anarchist) who subscribed to the doctrine of the “propaganda of the deed“, which would later take the life of many governmental figures.

Émile believed himself to be a hero, but yet….

He wasn’t.

I see no honour, no glory, no justification, in the acts of Émile Henry (or his ilk), despite the soundness of some of his arguments.

Violence begets violence, a lesson that repressive regimes and those who rally against them never seem to realize.

The violence of the Franco-Prussian War inspired violence from soldiers of the National Guard who were the military might of the Paris Commune.

The Paris Commune inspired violence from the government of the Third Republic in La semaine sanglante.

The repression of the Commune inspired the violence of worker demonstrations.

The demonstrations inspired the police to gun down people in the street and the government to create repressive laws.

This violence and repression inspired Ravachol who was bloodily executed.

His execution inspired Vaillant who was bloodily executed.

Vaillant’s execution inspired Émile Henry who was bloodily executed.

Henry’s execution inspired others to commit acts of violence which were in return met with bloody reprisals.

An endless cycle of death and violence, whatever it is in the name of, always ends in death and violence.

Ideals of human rights and dignities need to be fought for and defended, but violence is never the answer.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, founded on 12 February 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W.E.B. DuBois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells.

Its mission in the 21st century is “to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination“.

National NAACP initiatives include political lobbying, publicity efforts and litigation strategies developed by its legal team.

The group enlarged its mission in the late 20th century by considering issues such as police misconduct, the status of black foreign refugees and questions of economic development.

Its name, retained in accordance with tradition, uses the once common term colored people, referring to those with some African ancestry.

37 years later to the day, African American US Army veteran Isaac Woodard is severely beaten by a South Carolina police officer to the point where he loses his vision in both eyes.

The incident galvanizes the civil rights monument.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Such is how the US Declaration of Independence begins.

In America, all men are equal, except….

They are not, in the way in which they are treated.

As I write these words in Eskisehir (13 April), as the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd continues, protests have again erupted across America over the police killing of Daunte Wright.

George Floyd'u öldüren polis memuru Derek Chauvin serbest bırakıldı - Son dakika dünya haberleri — Above: George Floyd (left) and Derek Chauvin (right)

Two days ago (11 April), Daunte Demetrius Wright, a 20-year-old African-American man, was fatally shot by white police officer Kimberly Potter during a traffic stop and attempted arrest for an outstanding arrest warrant in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.

After a brief struggle with officers, Wright was shot, and then drove off but crashed his vehicle into another and hit a concrete barrier.

He was pronounced dead at the scene.

A lovable young man': Daunte Wright was a doting father with big life dreams | Daunte Wright | The Guardian — Above: Daunte Wright (2001 – 2021) (with son)

Yesterday (12 April), police said that Potter meant to use her Taser but accidentally grabbed her gun instead, striking Wright with one shot to his chest.

Officer who shot Daunte Wright makes first court appearance | Black Lives Matter News | Al Jazeera — Above: Kimberly Potter

The shooting has sparked protests in Brooklyn Center and renewed ongoing demonstrations against police brutality in the Minneapolis – Saint Paul metropolitan area, leading to citywide and regional curfews.

Demonstrations have also spread to cities across the United States.

All men are equal, except….

They are not.

Animal Farm - 1st edition.jpg — Above: **ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.** (George Orwell)

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918 – 2008) was a Russian novelist, philosopher, historian, short story writer and political prisoner.

One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of Communism and helped to raise global awareness of human rights abuses, the Gulag concentration camp system and political repression in the Soviet Union.

Solzhenitsyn was born into a family that defied the Soviet anti-religious campaign and remained devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church.

While still very young, however, Solzhenitsyn lost his faith in Christianity and became a firm believer in both athieism and Marxist – Leninism.

While serving as a captain in the Red Army during World War II, Solzhenitsyn was arrested by the SMERSH and sentenced to eight years in the Gulag and then internal exile for criticizing Josef Stalin in a private letter.

By the time of his release, Solzhenitsyn had returned to the religion of his childhood and was determined to expose the countless human rights abuses committed by the Soviet state.

He was allowed to publish only one work in the Soviet Union, the novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962).

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich cover.jpg

Although the reforms brought by Nikita Khruschchev freed him from exile in 1956, the publication of Cancer Ward (1968), August 1914 (1971), and The Gulag Archipelago (1973) outraged the Soviet authorities, and Solzhenitsyn lost his Soviet citizenship on 12 February 1974 and was flown to West Germany.

In 1976 he moved with his family to the US, where he continued to write.

In 1990, shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, his citizenship was restored, and four years later he returned to Russia, where he remained until his death in 2008.

In totalitarian governments, officially everyone is equal, Comrades, except…..

They aren’t.

The Soviet flag being lowered from the Moscow Kremlin and replaced with the flag of Russia

Nice, France, Friday 22 January 1892

One evening I was walking along a path, the city (Oslo) was on one side and the fjord below.

I felt tired and ill.

I stopped and looked out over the fjord—the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red.

I sensed a scream passing through nature.

It seemed to me that I heard the scream.

I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood.

The color shrieked.

This became The Scream.

I was walking along the road with two friends.

The sun was setting.

Suddenly the sky turned blood red.

I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence.

There was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city.

My friends walked on.

I stood there trembling with anxiety and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

It has been suggested that the proximity of both a slaughterhouse and a lunatic asylum to the site depicted in the painting may have offered some inspiration.

The scene was identified as being the view from a road overlooking Oslo, by the Oslofjord and Hovedoya, from the hill of Ekeberg.

At the time of painting the work, Edvard Munch’s manic depressive sister Laura Catherine was a patient at the mental asylum at the foot of Ekeberg.

The imagery of The Scream has been compared to that which an individual suffering from depersonalization disorder experiences, a feeling of distortion of the environment and one’s self.

(Perhaps a feeling that what is, isn’t?)

Arthur Lubow has described The Scream as “an icon of modern art, a Mona Lisa for our time.”

It has been widely interpreted as representing the universal anxiety of modern humanity.

(Perhaps what should be, isn’t?)

The version held by the National Museum of Norway has a pencil inscription, in small lettering, in the upper left corner, saying “Kan kun være malet af en gal Mand!” (“could only have been painted by a madman“).

It can only be seen on close examination of the painting.

This had been presumed to be a comment by a critic or a visitor to an exhibition.

It was first noticed when the painting was exhibited in Copenhagen in 1904, eleven years after this version was painted.

Following infrared photography, study of the handwriting now shows that the comment was added by Munch.

The theory has been put forward that Munch added the inscription after the critical comments made when the painting was first exhibited in Norway in October 1895.

There is good evidence that Munch was deeply hurt by that criticism, being sensitive to the mental illness that was prevalent in his family.

Above: The pencil inscription

On 12 February 1994, the same day as the opening of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer (Norway), two men broke into the National Gallery, Oslo, and stole its version of The Scream, leaving a note reading:

“Thanks for the poor security.”

The painting had been moved down to a second-story gallery as part of the Olympic festivities.

After the gallery refused to pay a ransom demand of US$1 million in March 1994, Norwegian police set up a sting operation with assistance from the British police covert operation group and Los Angeles’ Getty Museum.

The painting was recovered undamaged on 7 May 1994.

In January 1996, four men were convicted in connection with the theft, including Pal Enger, who had been convicted of stealing Munch’s Vampire in 1988.

They were released on appeal on legal grounds:

The British agents involved in the sting operation had entered Norway under false identities.

(Perhaps who they claimed to be, they weren’t?)

For centuries, it seems the Greeks and the Turks have had the greatest difficulty getting along with one another and as is often the case rivals usually have more in common than they would like to admit.

One of these similarities is the presence of other ethnic peoples within and without their borders that cause them no end of anxiety, haunted by the possibility that the ethnic minority within will seek to unite with the similar ethnic minority beyond the border to form a united front.

Akin to Turkey’s Kurdish conundrum wherein the Kurds within Turkey are perceived to long to unite with Kurds in the neighbouring nations of Syria, Iraq and Iran, the Greeks have worried about ethnic Macedonians in the areas of Greek Macedonia, in the Republic of (North) Macedonia and in southern Bulgaria.

Kurdish-inhabited area by CIA (1992) box inset removed.jpg

For nearly a thousand years the name of “Macedonia” had different meanings for Western Europeans and for the Balkan people.

For Westerners, “Macedonia” denoted the territory of ancient Macedonia (the western and central parts of modern Greece), but for Balkan Christians, when rarely used, it covered the territories of the former Byzantine Theme (province) of Macedonia, situated between modern Turkish Edirne and the river Nestos, in present-day Thrace.

The Ottoman Empire (1299 – 1922) absorbed the area in the 14th century.

There was no Ottoman province called “Macedonia“.

In the early 19th century the name of “Macedonia” was almost forgotten in the modern-day area, but within the decades after the Greek independence (1830) it was revived by Greek propaganda.

In 1912 rivalries resulted in the First Balkan War (1912 – 1913) and the Ottomans lost most of their European lands.

In 1913, the Second Balkan War began in the aftermath of the division of the Balkans among five entities to have secured control over these territories: Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Montenegro (all hitherto recognized).

Albania, in conflict with Serbia, Montenegro and Greece, declared its independence in 1912, striving for recognition.

The Treaty of London (1913) assigned the region of the future Republic of (North) Macedonia to Serbia.

The outbreak of the First World War allowed Bulgaria to occupy eastern Macedonia (Thrace) and Vardar Macedonia (today’s Republic of North Macedonia), helping Austria-Hungary defeat the Serbs by the end of 1915, and leading to the opening of the Macedonian front against the Greek part of Macedonia.

Bulgaria would maintain control over the area until their capitulation in September 1918, at which point the borders reverted (with small adjustments) to the situation of 1913, and the present-day Republic of North Macedonia became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

This period saw the rise of ideals of a separate Macedonian state in Greece.

Above: Scenes of the First World War (1914 – 1918)

The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes changed its name in 1929 to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the present-day Republic of North Macedonia was included as South Serbia in a province named Varder Banovina.

During World War II, Axis forces occupied much of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1941.

Bulgaria as an associate of the Axis powers advanced into the territory of the Republic of North Macedonia and the Greek province of Macedonia in 1941.

The territory of the Republic of North Macedonia was divided between Bulgaria and Italian Albania in June 1941.

The Yugoslav Communist Resistance began officially in 1941 in what is now the Republic of North Macedonia.

On 2 August 1944 (St. Elias’s Day), the Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM), meeting in the Bulgarian occupation zone, proclaimed clandestinely the Macedonian state (Democratic Federal Macedonia) as a federal state within the framework of the future Yugoslav federation.

In 1946 the People’s Republic of Macedonia was recognized by the new Communist constitution as a federal component of the newly proclaimed federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito.

The issue of the Republic’s name immediately sparked controversy with Greece over Greek concerns that it presaged a territorial claim on the Greek coastal region of Macedonia.

The US Roosevelt administration expressed the same concern in 1944.

The Greek press and the government of Andreas Papandreou continued to express the above concerns confronting the views of Yugoslavia during the 1980s and until the Revolutions of 1989.

In 1963 the People’s Republic of Macedonia was renamed the “Socialist Republic of Macedonia” when the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was renamed the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

It dropped the “Socialist” from its name a few months before declaring independence from Yugoslavia in September 1991.

Strong Greek opposition delayed the newly independent republic’s accession to the United Nations and its recognition by the European Community (EC).

Although the Arbitration Commission of the Peace Conference on the former Yugoslavia declared that the Republic of Macedonia met the conditions set by the EC for international recognition, Greece opposed the international community recognizing the Republic due to a number of objections concerning the country’s name, flag and constitution.

In an effort to block the European Community from recognizing the Republic, the Greek government persuaded the EC to adopt a common declaration establishing conditions for recognition which included a ban on “territorial claims towards a neighboring Community state, hostile propaganda and the use of a denomination that implies territorial claims”.

In Greece, about 1 million Greek Macedonians participated in the “Rally for Macedonia“, a very large demonstration that took place in the streets of Thessaloniki in 1992.

The rally aimed to object to “Macedonia” being a part of the name of the newly established Republic of Macedonia.

In a following major rally in Australia, held in Melbourne and organised by the Macedonians of the Greek Diaspora (which has a strong presence there), about 100,000 people protested.

The major slogan of these rallies was “Macedonia is Greek“.

Greece’s major political parties agreed on 13 April 1992 not to accept the word “Macedonia” in any way in the new Republic’s name.

This became the cornerstone of the Greek position on the issue.

The Greek diaspora also mobilized in the naming controversy.

A US Greek group, Americans for the Just Resolution of the Macedonian Issue, placed a full-page advertisement in the 26 April and 10 May 1992 editions of the New York Times, urging President George H.W. Bush “not to discount the concerns of the Greek people” by recognizing the “Republic of Skopje” as Macedonia.

Greek Canadians mounted a similar campaign.

The EC subsequently issued a declaration expressing a willingness “to recognize that republic within its existing borders under a name which does not include the term Macedonia“.

Greek objections likewise held up the wider international recognition of the then Republic of Macedonia.

Although the Republic applied for membership of the United Nations on 30 July 1992, its application languished in diplomatic limbo for nearly a year.

A few states — Bulgaria, Turkey, Slovenia, Croatia, Belarus and Lithuania — recognized the Republic under its constitutional name before its admission to the United Nations.

Most, however, waited to see what the United Nations would do.

The delay had a serious effect on the Republic, as it led to a worsening of its already precarious economic and political conditions.

With war raging in nearby Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Croatia, the need to ensure the country’s stability became an urgent priority for the international community.

The deteriorating security situation led to the UN’s first-ever preventative peacekeeping deployment in December 1992, when units of the United Nations Protection Force deployed to monitor possible border violations from Serbia.

During 1992, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia all adopted the appellation “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” to refer to the Republic in their discussions and dealings with it.

The same terminology was proposed in January 1993 by France, Spain and the United Kingdom, the three EC members of the UN Security Council, to enable the Republic to join the United Nations.

The proposal was circulated on 22 January 1993 by the UN Secretary General.

However, it was initially rejected by both sides in the dispute.

It was immediately opposed by the Greek Foreign Minister, Michalis Papakonstantinou.

In a letter to the Secretary General dated 25 January 1993, he argued that admitting the Republic “prior to meeting the necessary prerequisites, and in particular abandoning the use of the denomination ‘Republic of Macedonia’, would perpetuate and increase friction and tension and would not be conducive to peace and stability in an already troubled region.“

United Nations UN Audiovisual Library — Above: Michalis Papakonstantinou (1919 – 2010)

The president of the Republic of Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov, also opposed the proposed formula. In a letter of 24 March 1993, he informed the President of the United Nations Security Council that “the Republic of Macedonia will in no circumstances be prepared to accept ‘the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’ as the name of the country.”

He declared that “we refuse to be associated in any way with the present connotation of the term ‘Yugoslavia’“.

Kiro Gligorov.jpg — Above: Kiro Gligorov (1917 – 2012)

The issue of possible Serbian territorial ambitions had been a long-running concern in the Republic of Macedonia, which some Serbian nationalists still called “South Serbia” after its pre-World War II name.

The government in the Republic of Macedonia was consequently nervous of any naming formula which might be seen to endorse a possible Serbian territorial claim.

Both sides came under intense diplomatic pressure to compromise.

The support that Greece had received initially from its allies and partners in NATO and the EC had begun to wane due to a combination of factors that included irritation in some quarters at Greece’s hard line on the issue and a belief that Greece had flouted sanctions against Slobodan Milosevic’s Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The intra-Community tensions were publicly exposed on 20 January 1993 by the Danish foreign minister, Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, who attracted the ire of Greek members of the European Parliament when he described the Greek position as “ridiculous” and expressed the hope that “the Security Council will very quickly recognise Macedonia and that many of the member states of the Community will support this.“

The Greek Prime Minister, Konstantionos Mitsotakis, took a much more moderate line on the issue than many of his colleagues in the governing New Democracy party.

Despite opposition from hardliners, he endorsed the proposal in March 1993.

Mitsotakis 1992.jpg — Above: Konstantinos Mitsotakis (1918 – 2017)

The acceptance of the formula by Athens also led to the reluctant acquiescence of the government in Skopje, though it too was divided between moderates and hardliners on the issue.

On 7 April 1993, the UN Security Council endorsed the admission of the Republic in UN Security Council Resolution 817.

It recommended to the UN General Assembly “that the State be admitted to membership in the United Nations, this State being provisionally referred to for all purposes within the United Nations as ‘the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’ pending settlement of the difference that has arisen over the name of the State.”

The recommendation was agreed by the General Assembly, which passed Resolution 225 on the following day, 8 April, using virtually the same language as the Security Council.

The Republic of Macedonia thus became the 181st member of the United Nations.

One additional concern that had to be taken care of was the seating of the Republic of Macedonia in the General Assembly.

Greece rejected seating the Republic’s representative under M [as in “Macedonia“], and the Republic rejected sitting under F (as in “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia“).

Instead, it was seated under T as “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” and placed next to Thailand.

In due course, the same convention was adopted by many other international organisations and states but they did so independently, not as the result of being instructed by the UN.

For its part, Greece did not adopt the UN terminology at this stage and did not recognise the Republic under any name.

The rest of the international community did not immediately recognise the Republic, but this did eventually happen at the end of 1993 and start of 1994.

The People’s Republic of China was the first major power to act, recognising the Republic under its constitutional name on 13 October 1993.

On 16 December 1993, two weeks before Greece was due to take up the European Union presidency, six key EC countries — Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom — recognised the Republic under its UN designation.

Other EC countries followed suit in quick succession and by the end of December, all EC member states except Greece had recognised the Republic.

Japan, Russia and the United States followed suit on 21 December 1993, 3 February 1994, and 9 February 1994 respectively.

Despite the apparent success of the compromise agreement, it led to an upsurge in nationalist agitation in both countries.

Anti-Western and anti-American feelings came to the fore in Greece, in response to a perception that Greece’s partners in the EC and NATO had betrayed it.

The government of Constantine Mitsotakis was highly vulnerable.

It had a majority of only a couple of seats and was under considerable pressure from ultra-nationalists.

After the country’s admission to the UN, the hardline former foreign minister Antonis Samaras broke away from the governing New Democracy (ND) party along with three like-minded deputies who resented what they saw as the Prime Minister’s unacceptable weakness on the Macedonian issue.

This defection deprived ND of its slim parliamentary majority and ultimately caused the fall of the government, which suffered a landslide defeat in the general election of October 1993.

It was replaced by the PASOK party under Andreas Papandreou, who introduced an even more hardline policy on Macedonia and withdrew from the UN-sponsored negotiations on the naming issue in late October.

The government of the Republic of Macedonia also faced domestic opposition for its part in the agreement.

Protest rallies against the UN’s temporary reference were held in the cities of Skopje, Kocani and Resen.

Parliament only accepted the agreement by a narrow margin, with 30 deputies voting in favour, 28 voting against and 13 abstaining.

The nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party (then in opposition) called a vote of no confidence over the naming issue, but the government survived with 62 deputies voting in its favour.

The naming dispute has not been confined to the Balkans, as immigrant communities from both countries have actively defended the positions of their respective homelands around the world, organising large protest rallies in major European, North American and Australian cities.

After Australia recognised the “former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” in early 1994, tensions between the two communities reached a climax, with churches and properties hit by a series of tit-for-tat bomb and arson attacks in Melbourne.

The relations between the two countries further worsened in February 1994 when Greece imposed a trade embargo on Macedonia which coincided with the UN embargo on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on its northern border.

The combined blockade denied Macedonia access to its closest and most accessible sea port, Thessaloniki, and rendered its main north-south trade route useless.

The country was forced to supply itself through the undeveloped east-west route.

During the embargo oil was imported to Macedonia via the Bulgarian port of Varna, which is located over 700 km from Skopje, on tank trucks using a mountain road.

It has been estimated that Macedonia suffered damages of around US$2 billion due to the trade embargo.

Greece received heavy international criticism.

The embargo lasted for 18 months, and was lifted after the interim accord between the two countries was signed in October 1995.

Greece and the Republic of Macedonia eventually formalised bilateral relations in an interim accord signed in New York on 13 September 1995.

Under the agreement, the Republic removed the Vergina Sun from its flag and allegedly irredentist (desires to reclaim lost territory) clauses from its constitution, and both countries committed to continuing negotiations on the naming issue under UN auspices.

For its part, Greece agreed that it would not object to any application by the Republic so long as it used only the appellation set out in “paragraph 2 of the United Nations Security Council resolution 817” (i.e. “former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia“).

This opened the door for the Republic to join a variety of international organisations and initiatives, including the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Partnership for Peace (a NATO program).

The accord was not a conventional perpetual treaty, as it can be superseded or revoked, but its provisions are legally binding in terms of international law.

Most unusually, it did not use the names of either party.

Greece, “the Party of the First Part“, recognised the Republic of Macedonia under the term “the Party of the Second Part“.

The accord did not specifically identify either party by name (thus avoiding the awkwardness of Greece having to use the term “Macedonia” in reference to its northern neighbour).

Instead, it identified the two parties elliptically by describing the Party of the First Part as having Athens as its capital and the Party of the Second Part having its capital at Skopje.

Subsequent declarations have continued this practice of referring to the parties without naming them.

The naming issue was effectively at a stalemate until the 2018 agreement.

Various names had been proposed over the years, for instance “New Macedonia“, “Upper Macedonia“, “Slavo-Macedonia“, “Nova Makedonija“, “Macedonia (Skopje)” and so on.

However, these had invariably fallen foul of the initial Greek position that no permanent formula incorporating the term “Macedonia” was acceptable.

Athens had counter-proposed the names “Vardar Republic” or “Republic of Skopje“, but the government and opposition parties in Skopje had consistently rejected any solution that eliminated the term “Macedonia” from the country’s name.

Following these developments, Greece has gradually revised its position and demonstrated its acceptance of a composite appellation, with a geographical qualifier, erga omnes (i.e. the incorporation of the term “Macedonia” in the name, but with the use of a disambiguating name specification, for international and intergovernmental use).

The inhabitants of the Republic were overwhelmingly opposed to changing the country’s name.

A June 2007 opinion poll found that 77% of the population were against a change in the country’s constitutional name, and 72% supported the Republic’s accession to NATO only if it was admitted under its constitutional name.

Only 8% supported accession under the reference “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia“.

A number of states recognized the Republic of Macedonia by its constitutional name.

A few had recognised it by this name from the start, while most others had switched from recognising it under its UN reference.

By September 2007, 118 countries (61% of all UN member states) had recognised the Republic of Macedonia under its constitutional name, including the likes of the United States, Russia and China.

Some observers had suggested that the gradual revision of the Greek position means that “the question appears destined to die” in due course.

On the other hand, attempts by the Republic to persuade international organisations to drop the provisional reference have met with limited success.

A recent example was the rejection by the Parliamentary Assmebly of the Council of Europe of a draft proposal to replace the provisional reference with the constitutional name in Council of Europe documents.

The compromise reference is always used in relations when states not recognising the constitutional name are present.

This is because the UN refers to the country only as “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia“.

Moscow’s ambassador to Athens, Andrei Vdovin, stated that Russia will support whichever solution stems from the UN compromise talks, while hinting that “it is some other countries that seem to have a problem in doing so“.

Most Greeks reject the use of the word “Macedonia” to describe the Republic of Macedonia, instead calling it “Skopje“, after the country’s capital.

The latter name is not used by non-Greeks, and many inhabitants of the Republic regard it as insulting.

Greeks also call the country’s inhabitants Skopians, a derogatory term.

Greek official sources sometimes also use the term “Slavomacedonian“.

The US Department of State has used the term side by side with “Macedonian” in context of the ethnic Macedonian minority in Greek Macedonia and their inability to self-determine as Macedonians due to pressure by the Greek government.

Both terms were used by the US Department of State in quotation marks to reflect nomenclature being used in Greek Macedonia.

The name “Macedonian Slavs” is another term used to refer to the ethnic Macedonians, though this term can be viewed as derogatory by ethnic Macedonians, including those in Greek Macedonia.

A number of news agencies have used it, and it is used by the Encarta Encyclopaedia.

The name has been occasionally used in early ethnic Macedonian literary sources as in Krste Misirkov’s work On Macedonian Matters (Za Makedonckite Raboti) in 1903.

Although the two countries continue to argue over the name, in practice they deal pragmatically with each other.

Economic relations and cooperation have resumed to such an extent that Greece is now considered one of the Republic’s most important foreign economic partners and investors.

Since coming to power in 2006, the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE government pursued a policy of “Antiquisation” (“Antikvizatzija“) as a way of putting pressure on Greece and for domestic identity-building.

Above: Logo of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity

Antiquisation is also spreading due to a very intensive lobbying of the Macedonian Diaspora from the US, Canada, Germany and Australia.

As part of this policy, stations and airports were renamed after ancient Macedonian figures.

Statues of Alexander the Great and Philip II of Macedon were built in several cities across the country.

In 2011, a massive, 22-metre tall statue of Alexander the Great (called “Warrior on a Horse” because of the dispute with Greece) was inaugurated in Macedonia Square in Skopje, as part of the 2014 remodelling of the city.

An even larger statue of Philip II was under construction at the other end of the square.

Statues of Alexander also adorn the town squares of Prilep and Stip, while a statue to Philip II of Macedon was recently built in Bitola.

Above: Philip II Square, Bitola, North Macedonia

A triumphal arch named Porta Macedonia, constructed in the same square, features images of historical figures including Alexander the Great, causing the Greek Foreign Ministry to lodge an official complaint to authorities in the Republic of Macedonia.

Additionally, many pieces of public infrastructure, such as airports, highways, and stadiums, have been named after them.

Skopje’s airport was renamed “Alexander the Great Airport” and features antique objects moved from Skopje’s archeological museum.

One of Skopje’s main squares has been renamed Pella Square (after Pella, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Macedon, which falls within modern Greece), while the main highway to Greece was renamed to “Alexander of Macedon” and Skopje’s largest stadium was renamed “Philip II Arena“.

Night shot — Above: Philip II Arena, Skopje

These actions were seen as deliberate provocations in neighboring Greece, exacerbating the dispute and further stalling Macedonia’s EU and NATO applications.

Antiquisation faced criticism by academics as it demonstrated feebleness of archaeology and of other historical disciplines in public discourse, as well as a danger of marginalization.

The policy also attracted criticism domestically, by ethnic Macedonians within the country, who saw it as dangerously dividing the country between those who identify with classical antiquity and those who identify with the country’s Slavic culture.

Ethnic Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia saw it as an attempt to marginalise them and exclude them from the national narrative.

The policy, which also claims as ethnic Macedonians figures considered national heroes in Bulgaria, such as Dame Gruey and Gotse Delchev, also drew criticism from Bulgaria.

Foreign diplomats warned that the policy reduced international sympathy for the Republic of Macedonia in the naming dispute with Greece.

In early April 2010, it emerged that the Greek government considered “Northern Macedonia” a possible compromise name, indicating it was up to the Republic of Macedonia to decide whether to accept that proposal.

The Macedonian Prime Minister Nicola Gruevski declared he would reject this proposition and called for a vote on the new name.

The 13 June 2010 issue of Kathimerini reported that sources claim that Greece and the Republic of Macedonia appeared to be close to a solution to their name dispute, and were set to agree on using the name of the Vardar river (the longest river in the Republic of Macedonia) to differentiate the Republic of Macedonia from Greek Macedonia.

It was not clear at this stage if this would mean Republic of Macedonia would be called “Republic of Macedonia of Vardar“, “Republic of Vardar Macedonia“, “Vardar Republic of Macedonia” or “Republic of Macedonia (Vardar)“.

Macedonian Diaspora organizations, such as the Macedonian Human Rights Movement International (MHRMI) and the Australian Macedonian Human Rights Committee (AMHRC), launched a campaign placing advertisements in newspapers and billboards across Macedonia “demanding an end to all negotiations with Greece over its name“.

Above: Banner of Kathimerini newspaper

On 12 June 2018, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced that an agreement had been reached with his Macedonian counterpart Zoran Zaev on the dispute, “which covers all the preconditions set by the Greek side“.

Alexis Tsipras, prime minister of Greece.jpg — Above: Alexis Tsipras

Zoran Zaev official portrait 2020 (cropped).jpg — Above: Zoran Zaev

The proposal would result in the Republic of Macedonia being renamed the Republic of North Macedonia, with the new name being used for all purposes (erga omnes), that is, domestically, in all bilateral relations and in all regional and international organizations and institutions.

The agreement, effective 12 February 2019, was signed at Lake Prespa, a body of water which is divided between the Republic of Macedonia, Greece and Albania.

The deal includes recognition of the Macedonian language in the United Nations, noting that it is within the group of South Slavic languages, and that the citizenship of the country will be called Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia.

Also, there is an explicit clarification that the citizens of the country are not related to the ancient Macedonians.

Specifically, Article 7 mentions that both countries acknowledge that their respective understanding of the terms “Macedonia” and “Macedonian” refers to a different historical context and cultural heritage.

When reference is made to Greece, these terms denote the area and people of its northern region, as well as the Hellenic civilization, history and culture of that region.

When reference is made to Republic of Macedonia, these terms denote its territory, language and people, with their own, distinctly different, history and culture.

Additionally, the agreement stipulates the removal of the Vergina Sun from public use in the Republic of Macedonia and the formation of a committee for the review of school textbooks and maps in both countries for the removal of irredentist content and to align them with UNESCO and Council of Europe’s standards.

The historian Eugene Borza summarises historic controversy surrounding the naming dispute as “one of the enduring characteristics of modern Greek life: a desperate attempt to regain a past glory, rooted in cultural accomplishments of antiquity and the religious and political might of Byzantium.

An identification with the ancient Macedonians is part of that attempt.”

While, on the other hand, the ethnic Macedonians, being “a newly emergent people in search of a past to help legitimise their precarious present” whose ethnicity developed in the twentieth century, had no history and needed one.

Makedonika - Eugene N. Borza - Google Books

As sympathetic as I am to both sides of this endless debate, it strikes me as similar to two bald men fighting over a comb using their former manes of glory as justification for the struggle over the question of whether they are heirs to the hair they once had.

Kath's Arty Blog: "Two Bald Men Fighting Over a Comb"; Jorge Luis Borges, 1982

The question of the name of Macedonia has been a real issue for decades, and yet…..

It isn’t.

Imagine if all the energy and expenditure that was put into this issue had instead been put into improving the economic and social welfare of both nations?

Meanwhile, this day (12 February 2021) sees Facebook announcing they are limiting content posted by the Myanmar military, in the wake of the coup that overturned the elected government earlier in the month.

In a post, Facebook said they have taken multiple steps to reduce the reach of some military accounts to stop the ‘spread of misinformation’.

They also called the ongoing situation in Myanmar an “emergency“.

Myanmar’s military staged a coup on 1 February in the Southeast Asian country and arrested de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior politicians.

They were detained on the grounds of claims of widespread voter fraud and foreign interference in last November’s election, triggering global condemnation.

Facebook has pledged to reduce the distribution of all content on Facebook pages and profiles run by the Myanmar Military “Tatmadaw”, as well as accounts linked to the armed forces spokesperson Brigadier-General Zaw Min Tun.

The social media company also said they will protect content, including political speech, that allows the people of Myanmar to express themselves and to show the world what is transpiring within the country.

They have also suspended the ability for Myanmar government agencies to send content removal requests to Facebook through normal channels reserved for authorities around the world.

“These efforts build on our work since 2018 to keep people safe and reduce the risk of political violence in Myanmar,” Facebook said in a statement.

Myanmar has experienced nationwide internet blackouts as a wave of anti-military protests gripped the country, according to NetBlocks.

Protests continued for a second week, demanding that power be restored to Suu Kyi’s deposed civilian government, despite security forces ratcheting up their use of force against them.

Facebook is the latest to join governments, the UN and people around the world in calling for Internet services in Myanmar to be restored immediately, so that people can communicate and express their political views, access important information and run their businesses.

A coup d’état in Myanmar began on the morning of 1 February 2021, when democratically elected members of the country’s ruling party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), were deposed by the Tatmadaw — Myanmar’s military — which then vested power in a stratocracy (military rule).

The Tatmadaw proclaimed a year-long state of emergency and declared power had been transferred to Commander-in-Chief of Defense Services Min Aung Hlaing.

It declared the results of the November 2020 general election invalid and stated its intent to hold a new election at the end of the state of emergency even though most of Myanmar’s people are satisfied with the results of the election.

The coup d’état occurred the day before the Parliament of Myanmar was due to swear in the members elected at the 2020 election, thereby preventing this from occurring.

President Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi were detained, along with ministers, their deputies and Members of Parliament.

On 3 February 2021, Win Myint was charged with breaching campaign guidelines and Covid-19 pandemic restrictions under Section 25 of the Natural Disaster Management Law.

Aung San Suu Kyi was charged with breaching emergency COVID-19 laws and for illegally importing and using radio and communication devices, specifically six ICOM devices from her security team and a walkie-talkie, which are restricted in Myanmar and need clearance from military-related agencies before acquisition.

Both were remanded in custody for two weeks.

Suu Kyi received an additional criminal charge for violating the National Disaster Act on 16 February, two additional charges for violating communications laws and an intent to incite public unrest on 1 March and another of violating the official secrets act on 1 April.

As of 31 March 2021, at least 520 civilians, including children, have been killed by military or police forces and at least 3,070 people detained.

Three prominent NLD members also died while in police custody in March 2021.

According to the Tatmadaw, everything that has been done has been for the benefit of the people.

Few see the benefit of martial law.

Aung San Suu Kyi & Min Aung Hlaing collage.jpg — Above: Aung San Suu Kyi (left), Min Aung Hlaing (right)

The head of the Tokyo Olympics resigned Friday (12 February) after a scandal over sexist remarks he made about women threatened to overshadow preparations for the pandemic-hit games.

“As of today I will resign from the president’s position,” Yoshiro Mori said to open a meeting of the Olympic Committee’s executive board and council.

It was unclear who would succeed him.

Mori’s departure comes after outcry both at home and abroad after he reportedly said women talk too much and have a “strong sense of rivalry” during a board meeting earlier this month.

After a wave of criticism, Mori, 83, apologized and retracted his remarks, acknowledging they were inappropriate and against the Olympic spirit.

He apologized again Friday as he announced he was stepping down.

“My inappropriate comments caused big trouble.

I am sorry,” he said.

Mori added that he felt his comments were misinterpreted by the media and that he was not prejudiced against women.

“The IOC fully respects President Mori’s decision to step down and understands his reasons for doing so,” its President, Thomas Bach, said in a statement later Friday.

“The IOC will continue working hand-in-hand with his successor to deliver safe and secure Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 in 2021.”

Let me tread carefully here.

Do women talk more than men?

Perhaps.

Do they talk too much?

Some might.

But no one is asking Mori what provoked his remarks.

Could he have been referring to a particular woman (or women) rather than all women?

Perhaps there was a contentious woman in the midst of the board meeting.

It was my understanding that board meetings tend to involve only board members.

Which disgruntled or manipulative board meeting participant decided to attack Mori through the press?

Was agism at work here with chauvinism used as the excuse to dismiss Mori?

I think what is presented as the entire picture, isn’t.

China barred Britain’s BBC World News from its television networks on Friday and Hong Kong’s public broadcaster said it would stop relaying BBC World Service radio, a week after Britain revoked Chinese state television’s broadcast licence.

China’s National Radio and Television Administration said BBC World News’ reports on China had “seriously violated” a requirement to be “truthful and fair“, harmed China’s interests and undermined national unity.

Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), the publicly funded broadcaster in the former British territory, said it was suspending the relay of BBC radio news programming.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) said it appeared that China was trying to force foreign media to follow the Chinese government line, while China’s embassy in London accused the BBC of “relentless fabrication“.

Foreign Correspondents' Club of China ‹ International Association of Press Clubs

RTHK’s Radio 4 (R4) station had carried BBC World Service radio for eight hours each night and the R1 station had carried a one-hour BBC programme once a week.

The private Hong Kong platforms Cable TV and Now TV were still carrying BBC World News as of Friday.

Before the ban, BBC World News had not been included in most TV packages in mainland China, but had been available in some hotels and homes.

Two Reuters journalists in Beijing found that the channel had disappeared.

The BBC, which is a public corporation, said it was “the world’s most trusted international news broadcaster and reports on stories from around the world fairly, impartially and without fear or favour“.

British foreign minister Dominic Raab called the ban “an unacceptable curtailing of media freedom“, adding:

“China has some of the most severe restrictions on media and internet freedoms across the globe, and this latest step will only damage China’s reputation in the eyes of the world.”

China’s embassy in London responded with a stinging statement, attributed to an unnamed spokesperson:

“BBC’s relentless fabrication of ‘lies of the century’ in reporting China runs counter to the professional ethics of journalism, and reeks of double standards and ideological bias,” it said.

“The so-called ‘media freedom’ is nothing but a pretext and disguise to churn out disinformation and slanders against other countries.”

RTHK’s decision underlines how Beijing’s tightening grip on Hong Kong extends to media.

Last year, when Beijing expelled about a dozen journalists working for US news outlets, it also barred them from relocating to Hong Kong.

RTHK, founded in 1928 and sometimes compared with the BBC, is the only independent, publicly funded media outlet on Chinese soil and has a charter guaranteeing editorial independence.

It had angered both the Hong Kong government and Beijing with its coverage of anti-government protests that shook the city in 2019.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price told a regular briefing on Thursday that it was “troubling that as (China) restricts outlets and platforms from operating freely in China, Beijing’s leaders use free and open media environments overseas to promote misinformation“.

This month, the State Department said it was “deeply disturbed” by a BBC report of systematic rape and sexual abuse against women in internment camps for ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region.

China denies accusations of abuses in Xinjiang and said the report was “wholly without factual basis“.

The FCCC noted the explanations for the ban, in particular the accusations of harming Chinese national interests and undermining national unity.

“The FCCC is concerned that such language is intended to send a warning to foreign media operating in China that they may face sanctions if their reporting does not follow the Chinese party line about Xinjiang and other ethnic minority regions,” it said in a statement.

On 4 February, the British media regulator Ofcom revoked China Global Television Network’s (CGTN) licence after an investigation found the licence was wrongfully held by Star China Media Ltd.

China said the ruling was political, and reserved the right to make a “necessary response“.

It bothers me immensely that we live in times when we are uncertain as the legitimacy of that which we are told.

We want to believe the media, for a responsible press is the cornerstone and the guardian of the people’s rights and is essential in keeping the public informed on all that they need to know.

(At least, in theory.)

We want to believe that those that govern us truly have our best interests in mind and seek not only to protect us but as well endeavour to improve the moral, economic and social lives of its citizenry.

(Though this seems difficult an illusion to believe it as those who seek power do so for their benefit rather than for the benefit of those they claim to represent.)

If anything my time in Turkey is teaching me is that how a nation is seen by outsiders is not always accurate with the reality of life therein.

Turkey is not as democratic as it should be but nor is it as autocratic as it could be, as portrayed by foreign media.

The truth lies in between.

How it is seen is not always how it is.

As I write these words in Eskisehir (13 April), I find myself wondering at the wisdom of a part of Émile Henry’s address to the jury during his trial.

I wonder that Émile’s words of the dangers of education what worry governments.

For though education is crucial to the development of a society, it also exposes the weaknesses and injustices of that society through the knowledge that is revealed.

It is no accident that many of the protests demanding societal change often originate on the campuses of a nation’s academic institutions.

It is no accident that there are nations that prefer to keep the costs of higher education exorbantly expensive so that only the ruling élite can afford to be educated and are unlikely to protest the status quo that benefits them.

There are those in Turkey who wonder whether the peculiar way in which the pandemic restrictions are applied might not be connected to the inherant dangers that an educated populace threatens the infallibility and justification of the powers that be.

I never thought I would find myself longing for a proper lockdown, but with numbers of cases climbing and other countries suggesting that their citizens wait a while before visiting Turkey, I find myself wondering if the powers that be are taking things seriously enough.

It seems that during the week everywhere is open, but schools.

Only the weekend shows a lockdown half-heartedly attempted.

Our Monday street market, for example, is business as usual.

The nearby ES Park shopping centre where I do the bulk of my grocery shopping: no lockdown apparent.

Schools are, on the other hand, the breeding ground of contagion, whilst crowded shopping centres are not.

I guess the gathering of folks seeking to develop independent thought is more threatening than thoughtless consumption.

To be fair, the imposition of mask wearing and contact tracing are strictly enforced everywhere one goes, but the unevenness of how further necessary restrictions are being applied strikes the cynically minded as rather suspicious.

Yes, there is a lockdown, and yet….

There isn’t.

Today (13 April / 13 Nisan), Turkey and the greater Islamic world embarked upon the largest communal fasting ritual in history.

For 30 days and nights, devout Muslims will take part in a time-restricted fasting tradition, which dictates nothing is to be consumed from dawn to disk.

This means, no water or other beverages, no food and no smoking from sunrise until sunset.

At approximately 8 pm every day Muslims will break their fast with the iftar meal followed by the early morning sahur before starting the daily fast at around 4 am.

While it may feel like a sacrifice to some, it is a time of introspection, gratitude and being charitable to others.

This year’s holy month of Ramadan began on 12 April and will end on 11 May, followed by the three-day Ramadan Bayram, also known as Eid al-Fitr in Turkey.

While the 30-day duration of fasting is not an official holiday, Eid al-Fitr is.

It is traditionally a time in which elder family members are paid visits and younger members are given gifts, but the bottom line is that family, neighbours and loved ones come together at this time.

Unfortunately, yet understandably, this year, like last year, things will be a bit different due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Certain traditions will not take place for safety reasons.

This includes taking part in the Tarawih prayer ceremony at mosques and attending iftar dinners with others outside of the immediate family, both integral elements of this holy month.

In the past, municipalities, businesses and individuals would host elaborate fast-breaking meals that were open to one and all, and everyone would sit together at long communal tables to break the fast as a community.

Above: Iftar at Sultan Ahmed Mosque, Istanbul (pre-pandemic)

In Turkey, however, a series of measures were introduced today that has necessitated the curtailing of such joyous events and thus altering how the holy month of Ramadan will be practiced this year.

Some of the most striking amendments to the safety measures in place thus far include no more dining at cafés and restaurants, which are only open for take away or delivery, while the 9 pm curfew in place on weekdays has been brought down to 7 pm.

Both of these and in fact all of the measures now in place are in an effort to curb the further spread of the virus during this holy month.

In past years, restaurants would offer elaborate iftar and sahur meals and people would scramble in line for freshly baked flatbread to share at a dinner with their loved ones.

Muslims begin holy month of Ramadan - Turkey News

The mention of lines to buy bread may seem trivial until one remembers that this is the only month a very special rounnd flatbread, the Ramadan pide, is made from an oven-baked enriched dough and sprinkled with nigella and sesame seeds on top.

It used to be tradition to line up for this beloved bread that would be sold straight out of the over, still piping hot, just in time to make it to the table for iftar.

This month with the curfew being brought down to 7 pm, bread bakers have been encouraged to prepare the Ramadan pide earlier than usual and are required to finish baking the bread at least an hour before the fast-breaking meal begins.

Turkish Ramadan Pide / Ramadan Pidesi - Zesty South Indian Kitchen — Above: Ramadan pide

One tradition that will not be foregone this year, however, (and the reason why I am typing these words at 4 am in the morning), is that of the dusk drummers tasked with wandering the streets (including outside my window) and playing handheld drums at around 3 am and even earlier to wake people up for the predawn sahur meal.

For foreign visitors, this is a rude awakening.

One can easily assume that a tribal war of sorts has begun in the neighbourhood.

It is customary to tip these drummers, who used to even pound on the door for the task.

However this year it is advised that any tipping be done from the windows, when possible.

Municipalities strive to maintain tradition of Ramadan drummers - Kusadasi News

The month of Ramadan is based on the lunar calendar, which consists of 12 months and 354 days, meaning it is 11 days short of the Gregorian calendar we are used to.

This means that not only do the dates in which Ramadan takes place change, moving back 11 days each year, but the precise time of the start and breaking fast also alters a few minutes each day.

This holy month is considered the 9th in the Muslim calendar and taking part in the fast is one of the five pillars of Islam, along with faith, prayer, pilgrimage and alms, the latter of which is also a critical part of this annual custom.

A major part of the month of Ramadan is for those who have the means to pay “zakat“, which are alms for the less fortunate, and it can even be calculated as a percentage of annual income.

Meanwhile, the fast is welcomed as a challenge by those who take part in it and is intended to offer insight into what life is like for the needy.

Only those of sound body and mind (I wonder if I qualify?) are expected to fast.

Pregnant women, the elderly, children and those that are chronically ill are all exempt from this practice.

The majority of the 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide will be taking part in the fast and thus as foreigners residing or visiting Turkey, it is important to be conscientious of this fact.

The fast is still a sacrifice of daily comforts.

African students enjoy Ramadan in Turkey

Thus, it is important to be aware that visibly drinking water or consuming foods with wafting aromas makes the Ramadan experience that much more challenging for our Muslim brethren.

Muslims also choose to refrain from negativity, such as arguing and gossip, and thus it is important to make every effort to heed that fact and be extra understanding.

It is also extremely welcoming to wish people a happy fasting experience by stating Ramadan Mubarak (Have a blessed Ramadan.).

Above: Iftar serving for fasting people at Imam Reza Shrine, Mashhad, Iran

Yes, it is the holy month of Ramadan, and yet…..

It isn’t.

Above: Men praying during Ramadan, Shrine of Ali (or “*Blue Mosque*“) in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan (pre-pandemic)

Funnily enough, all of this post was prompted by the question of tea.

There have been more severe transatlantic bust-ups over a brew, such as the American Revolution, but few can have been quite so twee.

Nearly 250 years after the Boston Tea Party, the British ambassador in Washington and her American counterpart in London are going at it over how to make a decent hot drink.

Like many tense diplomatic standoffs, it began with a deliberate provocation.

An American TikTok user going by the name of Michelle from North Carolina posted a video showing how to make what she describes as “hot tea“, which entails mixing milk with powdered lemonade, cinnamon, cloves, sugar and Tang (the soft drink).

As an afterthought, Michelle dunked a teabag and then put the whole thing in the microwave.

Her subsequent attempt at “British tea” involved cold water first.

The British Internet lost its marbles.

Michelle from North Carolina, who actually lives in Britain, quickly amassed 5 million TikTok likes.

Meanwhile, the UK’s powerful ability to get on its high horse about elevenses kicked into gear.

Inevitably, Dame Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to Washington, was obliged to weigh in.

She posted a viral video of her own, explaining that “the Anglo-American relationship is defined by tea“, a reference to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 that eventually led to US independence.

Meet Karen Pierce: Britain's fiercely intelligent, flamboyant first female Ambassador to the United States — Above: Dame Karen Pierce

Then, in what Twitter banter enthusiasts viewed as a thrilling escalation, Dame Pierce threw to three branches of the Armed Forces, who took it in turns to demonstrate to Americans how to make what one Royal Navy sailor called a “proper British cup of tea“.

The war, the Ambassador must have presumed, was over.

If so, she reckoned without the cunning of the US ambassador in London, Woody Johnson, who recognized the impossibility of his position on the tea front and quickly shifted his forces to a classic British weakness:

Coffee.

“I’m going to make an American cup of coffee, the way I make it every day, responding to Ambassador Pierce’s perfect cup of tea and her instructions,” he deadpanned.

Woody Johnson: NFL owner and Trump ambassador to UK sparks watchdog probe over alleged racist and sexist remarks and a push to promote Trump business - CNNPolitics — Above: Woody Johnson

Johnson proceeded to pour a bottle of water into a kettle, stick a spoon of instant coffee in a mug, splash in some milk, and say “have a nice day“.

If he then told his social media assistant that no, he didn’t have time for a second take, he had some chlorinated chicken to sell, history did not record the interaction.

Johnson’s intervention appears to have stunned his British counterpart into silence for the time being.

But there may now be questions as to whether he committed a serious strategic error.

On Wednesday evening (24 June 2020), a source at the Italian embassy asked for a view on the US video replied:

“What he made was American coffee.

And I stress:

American coffee.“

In winning one war, it appears that Johnson may have inadvertedly started another.

I was reminded of this old article by memories of my 27 March visit to the city of Kütahhya and discussions I have had with Turkish friends in St. Gallen and Eskisehir.

For five years I worked for Starbucks in St. Gallen (Switzerland) at all three (now two) stores there.

At the time of my employment I became friends with most of my colleagues (and a few customers) including two Turkish gentlemen Sinan and Volkan.

(Sinan has since moved on to other career options while Volkan is a shift manager / assistant manager at the store in the Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) in St. Gallen.)

May be an image of Funda Sinan Yilmaz, standing, sunglasses and outdoors — Above: Sinan

I am very much the North American in that, like Ambassador Johnson, my habitual coffee is instant coffee (Maxwell House from a store over the Swiss border in Konstanz (Germany) when I lived in Switzerland, Nescafé here in Turkey).

I have never been a huge fan of Starbucks coffee unless something is added to it, like within a Toffeenut Latté, a Pumpkin Spice Latté or a Caramel Macchiato.

In fact, in the year prior to my employment at Starbucks, as a regular customer of Starbucks- when I worked as Head Teacher for Wall Street English (now gone from St. Gallen) – I never ordered coffee per se but rather a “dirty chai” (a chai tea latté with two shots of espresso).

Above: Starbucks logo

When this rat felt WSE St. Gallen was a sinking ship, I was persuaded by two employees of the Bahnhof shop to work there as a Barista.

What was intended as a temp job lasted five years.

Volkan, Sinan and I often debated as to how Starbucks coffee compares to Turkish coffee.

May be an image of Volkan Tanyer — Above: Volkan

In Turkey, meals are events to be celebrated.

The national cuisine is made memorable by the use of fresh seasonal ingredients and a local expertise in grilling meat and fish that has been perfected over centuries.

Here, kebabs are succulent – (though strangely I have yet to have one as mouth-watering as those made by the kebab kiosk Euphrat in the Black Forest (Germany) city of Freiburg im Breisgau) – and the meze dips are made with the best seasonal seasonings and freshly caught fish is expertly cooked and served unadorned, accompanied by Turkey’s famous aniseed-flavored drink, raki.

(I have yet to try raki, but my employer Cem is determined that I will not leave Turkey before I do.)

Turkey is one of the few countries that can feed itself from its own produce and have leftovers, which means that produce makes its way from ground to table quickly, ensuring freshness and flavour.

Türk kahve is a thick and powerful brew drunk in a couple of short sips, which when compared to Starbucks coffee is like comparing real Italian espresso with weak watery coffee that has been filtered through a dirty gym sock.

When you order a kahve, you are asked how sweet you like it – chok shekerli (very sweet), orta shekerli (middling), az shekerli (slightly sweet) and shekersiz or sade (not at all).

Turkish coffee is very finely ground coffee brewed by boiling.

Any coffee bean may be used.

Arabica varieties are considered best, but robusta or a blend is also used.

The coffee grounds are left in the coffee when served.

The coffee may be ground at home in a manual grinder made for the very fine grind, ground to order by coffee merchants in most parts of the world, or bought ready-ground from many shops.

Coffee and water, usually with added sugar, is brought to the boil in a special pot called cezve in Turkey, and often called ibrik elsewhere.

As soon as the mixture begins to froth, and before it boils over, it is taken off the heat.

It may be briefly reheated twice more to increase the desired froth.

Sometimes about one-third of the coffee is distributed to individual cups.

The remaining amount is returned to the fire and distributed to the cups as soon as it comes to the boil.

Turkish Coffee Pot Cezve Copper with Nickle Lining 3/4 Cup | eBay | Coffee pot, Cezve, Turkish coffee

The coffee is traditionally served in a small porcelain cup called a kahve fincanı ‘coffee cup‘.

Coffee is often served with something small and sweet to eat, such as a Turkish delight (a type of candy that is a gel of starch and sugar).

Kahve is sometimes flavoured with cardamom, mastic, salep, or ambergris.

A lot of the powdered coffee grounds are transferred from the “cezve” to the cup.

In the cup, some settle on the bottom but much remains in suspension and is consumed with the coffee.

Korkmaz Freedom 6'Lı Kahve Fincan Takımı A8631 | korkmazstore.com.tr

First appearing in the Ottoman Empire, under the strictest interpretations of the Quran the strong coffee was considered a drug and its consumption was forbidden.

Due to the immense popularity of the beverage, the sultan eventually lifted this prohibition.

Turkish coffee culture had reached Britain and France by the mid to late 17th century.

The first coffee house in Britain was opened by an Ottoman Jew in the mid 17th century.

In the 1680s, the Turkish ambassador to France reportedly threw lavish parties for the city’s elite where African slaves served coffee to guests in porcelain finjans on gold or silver saucers.

As well as being an everyday beverage, Turkish coffee is also a part of the traditional Turkish wedding custom.

TURKISH/Suryoyo wedding entry in LOS ANGELES! - YouTube

As a prologue to marriage, the bridegroom’s parents (in the lack of his father, his mother and an elderly member of his family) must visit the young girl’s family to ask the hand of the bride-to-be and the blessings of her parents upon the upcoming marriage.

During this meeting, the bride-to-be must prepare and serve Turkish coffee to the guests.

For the groom’s coffee, the bride-to-be sometimes uses salt instead of sugar to gauge his character.

If the bridegroom drinks his coffee without any sign of displeasure, the bride-to-be assumes that the groom is good-tempered and patient.

As the groom already comes as the demanding party to the girl’s house, in fact it is the boy who is passing an exam and etiquette requires him to receive with all smiles this particular present from the girl, although in some parts of the country this may be considered as a lack of desire on the part of the girl for marriage with that candidate.

Zeynab Musayeva Küçük @zmkmiami #gelin #guzellik ...Instagram photo | Websta | Turkish coffee, Coffee serving, Coffee recipes

The grounds left after drinking Turkish coffee are sometimes used to tell fortunes, a practice known as tasseography.

The cup is turned over into the saucer to cool, and the patterns of the coffee grounds are interpreted.

In Slovenia, Serbia and Croatia (all visited by your humble blogger) it is called “Turkish coffee“, “domestic coffee” or simply “coffee“.

It is nearly identical to the Turkish version.

Reason enough for me to love Slovenia, Serbia and Croatia.

SERBIAN BLACK COFFEE: Here is what you need to know before you order this drink | Belgrade Restaurants

Volkan encouraged me to try Turkish coffee (as did Nesha in Serbia) and Sinan sent me a video of how to prepare kahve using a cezve.

But for me, as much as I prefer Turkish coffee to Starbucks or instant coffee, kahve is best experienced communally with friends within a coffeehouse.

The novelty of my life in Turkey and the restrictions placed upon me by both my employer and Covid-19 restrictions, I have yet to find myself in a communal situation with my colleagues.

Meanwhile, drinking chay is more the national pastime than kahve.

Turkey’s cup of choice is made with leaves from the Black Sea region.

Sugar cubes are the only accompaniment and the visitor finds these are needed to counter the effects of long brewing, although you can always try asking for it achuk (weaker).

The wholly chemical elma chay (apple tea) is caffeine-free and only for tourists.

Locals wouldn’t be caught dead drinking the stuff.

(In my sole visit to Istanbul years ago – as part of a visit to Turkey four years ago for the wedding of friends – I bought elma chay.

Neither my wife nor I ever drank a drop.)

Buy Turkish Apple Tea, Dogus - Grand Bazaar Istanbul Online Shopping

Every street corner one turns in Eskisehir (and in all the places I have so far visited in the Republic) the sight of old men drinking chay at tiny tables upon the sidewalk is a very common scene.

The solo heart longs to plop oneself down and join them, but as charming as I can be I feel that it is unwise to do without an invitation.

And generally if a tourist is invited into an establishment for a cup of tea it is usually as a preamble to a sales pitch, as experienced from carpet sales vendors in Istanbul and Antalya.

President Erdogan: Don't smoke, drink Turkish tea instead | The National

Kütahya, Turkey, Saturday 24 March 2021

Prior to the closure of WSE and the necessity to do all my teaching online, the only opportunity that presented itself to explore Turkey bit by bit has been exclusively Saturdays, my one day off per week.

Since my arrival in Turkey, I have Saturday explored the Posuk River through Eskisehir, taken the train to Ankara and have taken buses to Kütahya and Bursa.

(All subjects of future posts…..)

In Kütahya (population: 225,000), there are historical attractions on its central pedestrianized boulevards.

Shops around town sell tiles and ceramics, but this industrialized city is said to merit little more than a day trip (1.5 hours from Eskisehir), and, I might have been tempted to agree with this assessment.

I saw Zafer Meyam, Kütahya’s main fountain, overlooked by the vilayet (provincial government building) and the belediye (the town hall).

Kutahya - Premium Travel — Above: Kütahya Fountain

I visited the Tile Museum with pottery beyond pondering, jugs and plates, tiles and embroidery.

KÜTAHYA ÇİNİ MÜZESİ - TİLE MUSEUM - KÜTAHYA / TURKEY.Gezi Videoları 2019. - YouTube

The Archaeology Museum and the Dönenler Cami (mosque) seemed closed, the Kütahya Fortress felt too distant and the Kossuth House impossible to find.

Kutahya Archeology Museum – Paradises of Turkey — Above: Archaeology Museum, Kütahya

Tarihi Yerler - T.C. Kütahya Belediyesi — Above: Dönenler Cami and Whirling Dervish Monument

KUTAHYA CASTLE — Above: Kütahya Fortress

A frustration with modern times that I have, especially in regards to Turkey (save for cities frequented by international travellers like Istanbul and Antalya), is the inability to find street maps.

It seems to be simply assumed that everyone carries a mobile phone and that every mobile phone carries Google Maps.

It is also assumed that Google Maps can be useful in navigating oneself through the bazaars of the Middle East without problems.

The reality is starkly different for me.

Yes, I do have a mobile phone and, yes, it does have Google Maps, but the app is only as good as the information it contains and the ability of the app user to use that information successfully.

I often find myself more lost using Google Maps than if I simply left my phone in my pocket.

I don’t blame Google as much as I blame myself and invariably I spend a portion of any time spent in a new town being totally and completely lost.

So, generally, if I have no pressing appointments, I simply give into my confusion and just let my feet wander where they will.

A Field Guide To Getting Lost: Amazon.co.uk: Rebecca Solnit: 9781841957456: Books

As I wander lost through the old quarter of Kütahya I stumble across a courtyard of men roughly dressed standing or sitting arouns a gravel courtyard.

They seem to be waiting for something, but I know not what.

Racks of clothes hanging outside against the wall of the house whose courtyard this is give the place the feeling of a charity.

Perhaps it is a clothing bank, maybe even a soup kitchen.

I do not know.

The gentlemen do not appear Kurdish and far too many Kurds I have seen are those who collect recycleables from neighbourhoods, for which they are presumedly paid.

Kurdish waste paper collectors face financial hardship in Ankara – MedyaNews

I am easy to identify as a foreigner, baseball cap on my head, bright red sweater with the letters Canada strewn across my chest.

Not to hard to come to the conclusion that this tall man ain’t from around these parts.

May be an image of 1 person — Above: Your humble blogger in Perth, Australia, 5 April 2014, but you get the idea…..

A man (42, I learn later) comes out of an almost teahouse and invites me for a glass of tea.

Muhammed speaks a little English, which is still a great deal more than the three words of Turkish that I know (Merhaba: hello / Lötfen: please / Teshekkür ederim: thank you).

An ancient copper tea stove (I don’t know how else to describe it.) continually brews as men of all ages sit around the tables viewing me much like an alien had suddenly dropped into their midst.

The tea is hot, the thin glass burns my fingers, the strong concoction inflames my lips and warms my stomach.

They are as curious about me as I am about them, but the lack of language between us hinders conversation.

These are working men of hardy stock, all have jobs in local factories.

Mustafa runs the teahouse, but I suspect more out of love for the people he serves than for the monies they provide.

My glass of tea is free.

I am an honoured guest.

Invariably the same question that I have already heard a hundred times before is asked of me again.

Why am I, a Canadian, in Turkey?

For once, my answer isn’t quippy, isn’t glib, isn’t formulaic nor forced.

I answer simply.

“I just wanted to see the place.“

Somehow, I know they understand me, not just my words, but the silence that surrounds them.

Few words are spoken.

Few words are needed.

The tea is strong, the room is warm, the camarderie quiet.

Old oil lanterns hang from the walls next to ceramic plates.

Shelves of bottles of all sizes and shapes stare back at me through their glass case.

A gleaming metal pot holds the cleaning liquid and scouring brush for the remains of the day to be washed before closing.

They compliment me in surprise finding out my age is 55 but my manner much younger, but, in fairness, a senior in a baseball cap always looks deceptively younger.

This room in this anonymous teahouse in a back street of a city few foreigners visit, for me, right here, right now, is Turkey.

Folks in the West, back in Switzerland and Germany and Canada have many things to say about this country.

They say that Turkey is a dangerous country, but I feel no threat here.

They say that Turkey is a poor country, but here and now…..

No, it isn’t.

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Facebook / Bhargav Acharya and Tom Daly, “BBC World News Barred in Mainland China, Radio Dropped by HK Public Broadcaster“, US News and World Report, 12 February 2021 / Archie Bland, “US woman sparks transatlantic tea war“, The Guardian, 24 June 2020 / Hebe Campbell, “Facebook limits content shared by Myanmar military to stop the spread of misinformation“, Euronews, 12 February 2021 / Arata Yamamoto and Yuliya Talmazan, “Tokyo Olympics chief Yoshiro Mori resigns after sexist remarks“, 12 February 2021 / Leyla Yvonne Ergil, “Pandemic 2.0: The Do’s and Don’ts of Ramadan for Expats“, Daily Sabah, 16 April 2021

Canada Slim and the Hungry Hollow

Posted on April 12, 2021 by canadaslim

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Thursday 11 February 2021 / Eskisehir, Turkey, Wednesday 7 April 2021

Hindsight, they say, is 20/20 (perfect vision) and as a more determined lockdown begins today across Turkey (more determined than the half measures set this past weekend) I find myself wondering if the events of 11 February read back in Landschlacht have proven to be prophetic when compared to events of 7 April in Eskisehir.

Solarsystem-Bälle, Galaxie-Kristallkugel – Kristallkugel für Kinder Galaxy Crystal Ball farblos: Amazon.de: Spielzeug

Hospitals and clinics across Turkey have been busy lately with the inoculation drive against COVID-19.

More than 2.8 million people have now received the vaccine as part of the drive, and health care workers, who were first to receive jabs last month, started receiving the second dose of CoronaVac on Thursday.

The inactive vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac is the only one available in the country, which plans to receive its first doses of the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech later this month.

Turkey: China's CoronaVac vaccine '91.25% effective' - CGTN

While health care workers received their second jabs, people at the age of 70 and above are being administered their first shots starting Thursday.

On Friday, people at the age of 65 or above will receive their first shots.

The country’s oldest citizens were vaccinated with their first jabs shortly after the first doses were administered to health care workers.

After completing the vaccination of senior citizens, the country will move to age-independent vaccination in the next phase of the plan.

These people include soldiers, police officers, teachers and people working in sectors critical for daily life, from logistics to the food sector.

Inoculation is also planned this weekend for members of the Cabinet, in a bid to set an example for the public.

Vaccine skeptics and anti-vaxxers thrive on social media, looking to deter inoculation, though surveys show a large majority of people are willing to be vaccinated.

Turkey received its first shipment of COVID-19 vaccines on 30 December 2020 and gave them an emergency usage approval on 13 January 2021, one day before administering them to health care workers.

A health care worker gets a second jab of CoronaVac at a hospital in Gaziantep, southeastern Turkey, Feb. 11, 2021. (AA Photo)

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca, members of the ministry’s Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were also vaccinated with the first dose.

Turkey, Minister of Health Fahrettin Koca Pre | IMAGO — Above: Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca

Erdoğan announced on his Telegram account Thursday that he had his second jab.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan 2019 (cropped).jpg — Above: Turkish President Recep Erdogan

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli also had his second dose administered.

After health care workers, nursing home residents and staff were inoculated.

Devlet Bahçeli ve Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (cropped).jpg — Above: Devlet Bahceli

The country received an additional batch of 10 million doses later in January, in two shipments.

Overall, Turkey has acquired about 15 million doses.

Authorities have signed deals to obtain more than 100 million doses of vaccine for the country of more than 83 million people.

Koca announced Wednesday that a shipment of “500,000 to 800,000” doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine would arrive in the coming weeks while warning about new virus variants.

By the end of March, the country planned to acquire a total of 5 million doses of this vaccine, which is the brainchild of a Turkish couple living in Germany.

BioNTech-Pfizer originally demanded €54 per vaccine dose | News | DW | 18.02.2021

The vaccination rollout is an appointment-only process.

Every citizen is required to make an online appointment or arrange a vaccination time via a Health Ministry hotline.

This practice aims to prevent crowding at clinics and hospitals.

However, health care crews still vaccinate those unable to leave their residences at home, especially in remote rural areas without nearby clinics.

The age limit will gradually drop to younger people, and the penultimate group to be inoculated will be those between the ages of 18 and 29.

Those who missed their scheduled period for vaccination will be the last to be inoculated.

Human trials of Turkish-made COVID-19 vaccines to start in late October | Daily Sabah

“We had an opportunity to get familiar with the vaccine,” associate professor Nurettin Yiyit, who received his second jab on Thursday, told Anadolu Agency (AA).

Yiyit is the chief physician of Sancaktepe Şehit Prof. Dr. Ilhan Varank Training and Research Hospital in Istanbul.

The pandemic hospital has long been on the front line of efforts for the treatment of thousands infected with the virus since last year.

About 4,500 people have been vaccinated at the hospital.

Yiyit said they did not encounter any serious side effects, except a minor rash in three health care workers.

“No one who received jabs was infected with the virus so far,” he underlined.

Asım Ocaklı, a surgeon at the hospital who received his second jab, said he did not suffer any problems.

Ayşegül Erdal, a staff member at the maternity clinic, said she felt “safer” after vaccination.

“People should trust the vaccine,” she said.

Nurse Esra Zindanoğlu said they were looking forward to the vaccine, and she almost “ran” to get her shot.

“This is currently the only solution against the pandemic,” she said.

BBC World Service - BBC OS, Coronavirus: One year of a pandemic

Turkey seeks to diversify its options for vaccines, and authorities hope a locally made vaccine will also be available soon for citizens.

An inactive vaccine candidate, similar to CoronaVac, leads the domestic vaccine race.

Developed by scientists at Erciyes University in the central province of Kayseri, ERUCOV-VAC moved to phase two human trials on Wednesday, two months after the beginning of phase one trials.

Some 250 volunteers will be inoculated with the vaccine.

Scientists hope to make it available for use in June after the completion of the analysis and approval processes that follow trials.

The university cooperates with a local pharmaceuticals company for its plans to produce 10 million doses monthly.

أهم أطباء وخبراء أمريكا يعلق عن لقاح "سبوتنيك V" الروسي - Sputnik Arabic

Authorities say three more local vaccines will likely receive approval for phase one trials in the coming weeks.

Among them are an inactive vaccine developed by Selçuk University in the central province of Konya, a vaccine based on virus-like particles (VLP) developed by Middle East Technical University (METU) and an adenovirus-based vaccine from Ankara University in the Turkish capital.

I have been in Turkey a total of 38 days and I have not heard a whisper of when I or my colleagues will ever be vaccinated.

Medical staff, politicians and seniors have all been protected, but it seems the younger you are, the longer you must wait.

It is the young that concern me in this post.

As much as I may moan about bones that ache and weight that remains and attitudes that annoy about getting older, it is easy to forget that being young ain’t no picnic either.

The powerlessness to choose how you spend your days, the helplessness of being ignorant of how to fend for yourself, the vulnerability from those who seek to use you for their own purposes, the assumption that youth means idiocy, the pressures to meet everyone’s standards regardless of your feelings about this.

When I consider 11 February 2021, I remember that it is the grim anniversary of the murder of Özgecan Aslan.

Ozgecan Aslan.jpg — Above: Özgecan Aslan

Özgecan Aslan (22 October 1995 – 11 February 2015) was a Turkish university student (age 19) who was murdered while resisting attempted rape on 11 February 2015 on a minibus in Mersin, Turkey.

Her burnt body was discovered on 13 February.

The murder was committed by minibus driver Ahmet Suphi Altındöken.

His father Necmettin Altındöken and friend Fatih Gökçe were accomplices in covering up the murder.

All perpetrators were handed aggravated life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Özgecan Aslan'ın Katilinin Cezası Belli Oldu!

The murder caused nationwide outrage and sparked protests across the country on the following days.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in several provinces, with some criticizing the government for its “insufficient response” and alleged normalization of the rape of non-conservative women.

The protests were described as the first mass movement for Turkish women.

It also provoked calls for reforms to combat violence against women more effectively.

The case received great attention on social media and prompted women to share their experiences of harassment, with 16 February being dubbed as “Black Monday” due to protests.

The murder was described as a catalyst for women to speak out about their long-withheld suffering, but The Guardian expected also a rift between women who defend silence and patriarchal status quo and those refusing to keep quiet.

Women hold pictures of murder victim Ozgecan Aslan during protests in Istanbul on Saturday

Özgecan was born into a poor Alevi Turkish family, who traced their origins to Tunceli.

She was a first-year psychology student in Caq University in Tarsus.

She was born and raised in Mersin, and wanted to study psychology, for which she had developed a strong passion while she was studying at high school.

Her parents were supportive of her, with her mother returning to the workforce in order to fund her education, to augment the 50% scholarship she had earned.

Her father is a graphic designer, but he lacked a permanent job at the time of the murder, while her mother had previously retired from a cargo company.

She was also planning to work at a hotel in Northern Cyprus during the summer to help with her fees.

She had an elder sister who was studying opera and singing in Adana.

Özgecan was also described as an avid opera listener and reader.

Top: A view from Çukurova, 1st left: Adana station, 1st right: Taşköprü, 2nd left: Sheraton Adana, 2nd right: Sabancı Central Mosque, Bottom: White Houses neighborhood. — Above: Images of Adana

The perpetrator’s father, who assisted him, hailed from a wealthy family in Tarsus and was at one time a jeweller.

However, he had since gone bankrupt and started to work with his son as a minibus driver.

He had previous records of smuggling.

The perpetrator’s wife (married to him five years prior to the murder) claimed that he had continuously inflicted violence on her, and that he had forced her to withdraw her suit for divorce a few months before the incident as he allegedly had threatened to kill her and their son.

A friend of Özgecan claimed that they had been afraid to use the minibuses in the area, and that the drivers and some passengers had stared at them through mirrors and windows whenever they left the bus several times before the incident.

DOLMUŞLARDA YENİ ÜCRET TARİFESİ | Mersin Haberci Gazetesi

On the day of the murder, Özgecan went to a shopping centre with her friend.

After eating, the women took the minibus to return home.

Özgecan was last seen by her friend when she alighted at her stop, leaving Özgecan alone in the minibus.

As Özgecan did not return home after nightfall, she was reported missing.

Meanwhile, the minibus driver stopped at a Gendarmerie checkpoint to ask for directions, but instead of following the directions, diverted into a forest.

The gendarme became suspicious and stopped the vehicle to find smears of blood, which the driver claimed had been caused by a fight between passengers.

After a brief investigation, the suspects were released.

After Özgecan was reported missing, the gendarme looked for the minibus again.

Emblem of the Gendarmerie General Command

It was captured with two of the suspects.

Özgecan’s hat (confirmed as hers by her father) was found inside.

The two suspects subsequently admitted the murder, and the search for the third suspect began.

According to news reports, the driver of the minibus attempted to rape Özgecan, but she resisted by using pepper spray.

Massive protests in Turkey after student murdered & burnt in attempted rape

Following this, he stabbed her multiple times, and beat her to death with an iron rod.

He returned to Tarsus following the murder and asked for help from his father and a friend.

The three men burnt Özgecan’s body together in a forest and cut off her hands, as Özgecan had scratched the perpetrator’s face during the struggle, and they feared that his DNA would be identified on the fingernails.

Later, the post-mortem examination revealed that she had not been raped and DNA of the prime suspect was indeed found on her fingernails.

The trio is then alleged to have disposed of the burnt body into a creek near the village of Camalan.

The body was discovered by the police on 13 February and was transported to the Tarsus State Hospital.

The body and Özgecan’s face were burnt to the point that it rendered identification impossible.

Clothes found with the body were used in identification.

Medical Park Tarsus Hospital - Medical Center Turkey — Above: Tarsus State Hospital

As a high school student in Turkey, whenever journalist Elif Shafak took the bus she would make sure to keep an open safety pin in her hand – to poke molesters with.

By the time she started university, she was carrying pepper spray in her bag, as did many of her female friends.

They spoke about these things among ourselves, quietly.

Interview with Turkish author Elif Shafak: Democracy in a downward spiral - Qantara.de — Above: Elif Shafak

Today, Turkey’s women are publicly sharing stories of sexual harassment, opening up and speaking out.

They are worried.

They are mourning.

At the same time, they are angry.

Istanbul protest against murder of Ozgecan Aslan

Aslan’s brutal murder unleashed an unprecedented storm of protest throughout Turkey.

The head of the Mersin Bar Association announced that none of the 1,600 lawyers licensed to work in the region would represent the murderer and his accomplices.

University students dressed head to toe in black and women went to work wearing black ribbons.

Women protesting about the murder of Ozgecan Aslan

In her hometown of Mersin, Aslan’s funeral was attended by thousands of women.

According to the understanding of Islam prevalent in Turkey, women stay at the back of the funeral crowd and let the men carry the coffin and lead the prayers.

This time it was different.

Despite repeated warnings from the Imam, women refused to step back and said they were determined “no other man’s hands would touch her again”.

Women carried her coffin.

Women buried her.

Women’s advocacy groups have for years been warning the government about the sharp deterioration in gender equality and freedoms.

But for the most part their voices have fallen on deaf ears.

In the Global Gender Gap report Turkey ranks 125th among 142 countries.

It still holds the lowest position among OECD countries.

Above: Logo for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

The AKP replaced the Ministry of Women and Family Affairs with the Ministry of Family and Social Policy.

The renaming, seemingly small, is rather telling:

The word “women” has been taken out and the emphasis has been placed on “family”.

While visiting a maternity hospital in January, the minister of health, Mehmet Müezzinoglu, said a woman’s primary career was motherhood and that Turkish women should focus only on this career.

The statement provoked a major backlash.

Above: Justice and Development Party (Turkey) logo

Even though a new law to “protect family and prevent violence against women” was enacted in 2012, few concrete steps have so far been taken to provide actual financial, psychological or social aid to abused women.

A panic-button project, which was introduced with much fanfare, has proven to be ineffective.

There are still fewer than 100 shelters in the entire country.

Women’s NGOs say the number should be at least 7,500.

Speaking at a political rally, the Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, vowed to launch a new campaign to make sure this kind of violence is eradicated.

Secretary Kerry Meets With Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu (2) (cropped).jpg — Above: Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu

President Erdoğan has spoken out about Aslan’s murder, saying:

“I will personally follow the case so that they [the perpetrators] will be given the heaviest penalty.

I am already following the case.”

Strengere Kontrolle von Social Media in der Türkei | BR24 — Above: President Recep Erdogan

But at the same time several AKP members have made incendiary statements, adding insult to the injury.

The head of the Human Rights Investigation commission, Ayhan Sefer Üstün, went as far as to declare that “killing the baby in the mother’s womb is a greater crime than the deeds of the rapist”.

AK Parti'den ihracı istenen Ayhan Sefer Üstün'den ilk açıklama: Kendi öz evlatlarını yiyorlar - Internet Haber — Above: Ayhan Sefer Üstün

There are two main factors behind the government’s poor handling of the situation.

Firstly, it is, structurally and ideologically, just like many other political parties in Turkey past and present, deeply patriarchal.

Turkey has one of the lowest rates of female representation in politics.

Above: Tansu Ciller is the first and only female Prime Minister of Turkey (1993 – 1996)

Secondly, the AKP has so sharply estranged itself from one half of its people that it now doesn’t know how to collaborate with women’s advocacy and civil society groups.

But gender violence is such a widespread and deeply rooted problem that it can only be improved via efforts that transcend ideological lines.

Turkey, however, is so deeply politicised and polarised that no one is willing to do that.

In the meantime, a social transformation is taking place.

A change that many analysts, focused primarily on politics rather than culture, are failing to notice.

Turkey’s women are becoming more openly politicised than its men.

Half of the protesters at the Gezi Park demonstrations (27 May – 20 August 2013) were women.

(A wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Turkey began on 28 May 2013, initially to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park.

The protests were sparked by outrage at the violent eviction of a sit-in at the park protesting the plan.

Subsequently, supporting protests and strikes took place across Turkey, protesting a wide range of concerns at the core of which were issues of freedom of the press, expression, and assembly, as well as the political Islamist government’s erosion of Turkey’s secularism.

With no centralised leadership beyond the small assembly that organized the original environmental protest, the protests have been compared to the Occupy Movement and the May 1968 events (a period of civil unrest across France).

Social media played a key part in the protests, not least because much of the Turkish media downplayed the protests, particularly in the early stages.

Three and a half million people (out of Turkey’s population of 80 million) are estimated to have taken an active part in almost 5,000 demonstrations across Turkey connected with the original Gezi Park protest.

Twenty-two people were killed and more than 8,000 were injured, many critically.

The sit-in at Taksim Gezi Park was restored after police withdrew from Taksim Square on 1 June, and developed into a protest camp, with thousands of protesters in tents, organising a library, medical center, food distribution, and their own media.

After the Gezi Park camp was cleared by riot police on 15 June, protesters began to meet in other parks all around Turkey and organised public forums to discuss ways forward for the protests.

Then Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan dismissed the protesters as “a few looters” on 2 June.

Police suppressed the protests with tear gas and water cannons.

In addition to the 11 deaths and over 8,000 injuries, more than 3,000 arrests were made.

Police brutality and the overall absence of government dialogue with the protesters was criticized by some foreign governments and international organisations.

Above: Unarmed woman protester pepper sprayed by police

The range of the protesters was described as being broad, encompassing both right- and left-wing individuals.

Their complaints ranged from the original local environmental concerns to such issues as the authoritarianism of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, curbs on alcohol, a recent row about kissing in public, and the war in Syria.

Protesters called themselves çapulcu (looters), reappropriating Erdoğan’s insult for themselves (and coined the derivative “chapulling“, given the meaning of “fighting for your rights”).

Many users on Twitter also changed their screen name and used çapulcu instead.

According to various analysts, the protests were the most challenging events for Erdoğan’s ten-year term and the most significant nationwide disquiet in decades.)

In social media most of the critical campaigns are led by women.

Women’s bodies and lifestyles have turned into an ideological battleground.

President Erdogan slammed the women who protested against domestic violence and sexual harassment in Turkey for singing songs and dancing together.

In the pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak, some columnists have said that rape also happens in America and therefore people should shut up about it.

Another columnist argued “keep quiet and go to a doctor”.

Just like the society they come from, Turkey’s women are divided.

Not as Turks and Kurds.

Not as Muslims and non-Muslims.

Not even as conservatives and secularists.

From now on the biggest rift will be between those who defend silence and the status quo, and those who refuse to keep quiet in the face of growing gender violence.

(Postscriptum:

While serving life sentence at a high-security prison in Adana, Özgecan Aslan’s killer Ahmet Suphi Altindoken and his father were gunned down by an inmate in their own cell on 11 April 2016.

Severely wounded, they were rushed to hospital.

Ahmet Suphi Altındöken died.

His father survived the attack.

Gültekin Alan, a 46-year-old inmate serving a 50-year sentence, was found guilty.

He was transferred to the high-security prison in Diyarbakir.

No cemetery in Tarsus or Adana accepted Ahmet Suphi Altındöken’s funeral.

The crisis lasted five days.

Finally, the corpse was taken out of the hospital morgue in a midnight undercover operation masked as a woman, and was interred at an undisclosed burial site.)

Above. The grave of Özgecan Aslan, Mersin Interfaith Cemetery

As the oldest and largest male at my school, I see not only the bevy of beauties that comprise more than half of the staff, but as well how many of our students that are young ladies.

The Dad part of my nature sees them not as women but as children in women’s bodies.

So vulnerable, despite their courage and steady resolve, they are, compared to myself, young enough to be my daughters or even my granddaughters, and the parent (that never was) persona within me wishes to protect them without treading over that fine line that doesn’t respect their independent free will.

I cannot, nor will not, ever suggest to them any course of behaviour that is not in keeping with their free will, but I worry that there are those who are not so tolerant of their exuberance or that there are those who take women’s liberty of thought as a signal of sexual availability and thus wish to do them harm.

As a large man I am aware that I am less threatened by those who seek to harm the vulnerable.

As a large man I am also aware that I can also be seen as a symbol of those of whom women must be wary.

It is so damned easy to cross that line between gentleman and creep in a woman’s mind because of the potential danger a man represents.

I compliment a woman’s fashion sense but consciously veer away from description of her physical form.

I seek to be seen as someone safe so I consciously avoid physical contact or too intimate proximity with my female colleagues so they can feel that their personal space remains respected.

(Being in the midst of a pandemic does make this distancing easier.)

Ubudu - Social Distancing Assistant for enterprises to provide a safe workplace until Covid-19 goes away

Do I find women I see desirable?

Of course.

But I think to myself of how I desire to be treated as an individual and thus I control any overt signs or any inappropriate behaviour my quickening pulse might suggest.

Top 10 Most Desirable Women in the World - 2019 (updated)

As an older man, I also view the young ladies that come across my path less as enticements and more as (too) young people worthy of respect, support and a feeling of security whenever they are within my orbit.

I weep inside when I think of so many young women whose lives have been taken and/or their bodies ravaged for the sole reason they are vulnerable young women.

I curse the complexity of a world that compels young women to flaunt their feminity (which is their right) and yet simultaneously makes it unsafe for them to do so.

I curse the fates that compel men to desire women without granting so many men the wisdom and respect that desire demands.

I wish men would view women not merely as objects of gratification but as people worthy of the respect one gives (or should give) to mothers and daughters, wives and sisters.

So many men seem to think that danger delights the dames, but fail to see that it is safety that ultimately seduces.

Women are a gift to men and should be viewed as such.

A woman gives her body to a lover.

It should never be taken by a thief.

At my school, my mind walks the tightrope of viewing those who surround me as mature-looking children and simultaneously treating them with the respect that adults deserve.

A tightrope walk ahead for corporate sustainability managers | Greenbiz

It is also too easy to forget that children, regardless of their maturity (or lack thereof), should be accorded respect and protection as well.

But history is replete with examples of how often children have suffered when that respect and protection failed….

At the time of the tragedy, Malta was under British rule and experiencing a famine, and it had become a tradition to gather 8- to 15-year-old boys from the lower classes of Valletta and the Three Cities (the three fortified cities of Birgu, Senglea and Cospicua) to participate in a procession during the last few days of Carnival.

Datei:Carnival in Valletta - Trucks in Street of Valletta.jpg – Wikipedia — Above: Carnival in Valetta

After the procession, they would attend Mass, and they would be given some bread afterwards.

This activity was arranged by ecclesiastical directors who taught catechism (the teaching of Christianity), and its main aim was to keep children out of the riots and confusion of Carnival.

This activity was organized on 10 February 1823, when children attended mass at Floriana (a fortified town outside of Valetta) and then went to the Convent of the Minori Osservanti (a Franciscan church in Valetta, now better known as ta’ Ġieżu) where they were given bread.

Everything went as planned, and the same procedure was planned for the following day.

The same procedure took place on 11 February 1823.

Children were gathered and attended mass at Floriana, but the ceremony lasted an hour longer than usual.

The children’s procession to the convent in Valletta occurred at the same time as the carnival celebrations had ended, so they met with many people who were returning home.

At this point, some adults and children from the crowd mixed in with the boys in order to receive some free bread.

The boys entered one of the convent’s corridors from the vestry door in the church, and were to be let out through another door in St. Ursula Street.

The bread was to be distributed at the latter door.

Although the vestry door was usually locked to prevent boys from reentering to receive more bread, this time the door was left open since the boys were late.

Due to this, more men and boys entered without anyone realizing.

Those who had entered began to push the boys queuing in the corridor, who were shoved to the end of the corridor near a half-open door.

At this point, a lamp went out leaving the corridor in darkness, and the people inside began to push forward even more.

The boys at the front fell down a flight of steps, blocking the door in the process.

Those who were distributing the bread as well as some neighbours rushed to assist the children after they heard screams.

They managed to open the doors, and many boys got out and were revived.

However, a number of boys had already died due to suffocation or being trampled upon.

The exact number of casualties is not known.

Records of the Sacra Infermeria show that 94 bodies of boys aged between 15 and 16 were brought to the hospital on 11 February, and they were buried the following day.

However, contemporary records, such as The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle, reveal that “no less than 110 boys perished on this occasion“.

An investigation led by the Lieutenant Governor took place after the disaster, and a report about the findings was published a few days after the incident.

The investigation concluded that the stampede took place as a result of a succession of errors.

No one was accused for the deaths of the children.

Sacra Infermeria in 2016.jpg — Above: The Sarca Infermeria, now the Mediterranean Conference Centre, Valetta

There should have been culpability assigned to this tragedy.

Where was the forethought when it was needed that allowed boys to be thrown into a crowd of Carnival celebrants?

Was the sermon so significant that it needed to be expanded and the essence of timing forgotten?

Where was the forethought when it was needed to prevent access through the vestry door for anyone other than the boys and those of the church?

Where is the sanctity of the church respected if one invades it with no decorum or respect for the faith it represents?

Where is the love of Christ for others if the lives of boys matter less than the stomachs of men?

Why was there a famine in Malta and why were the authorities not feeding the populace?

Were the stomachs of the stampeding men so hollow, were their souls so empty, that children would be crushed to death because they stood in the way of food?

Was the church sustaining the lives of a few to the detriment of the many?

Were the souls of the authorities so hollow that no one was held responsible for the deaths of these innocents?

Or would fingers pointed at others lead to questions of their own incompetence?

When the life of a child matters less to me than my own then I have truly become unworthy of my life that I have so desperately tried to preserve.

It is a law of nature that the old must give way for the young, for such is the circle of life.

An old man dies, a little girl lives. Fair trade | Picture Quotes

St. Thomas, Ontario to Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada), Monday 13 January 2020

It was the last significant stop before Brampton and Toronto that my train from London (Ontario) would make that morning and like the towns I have described within previous posts of this blog, Georgetown would, as well, leave an impression on my thoughts and emotions when I considered what the place represented to me.

Georgetown, like the aforementioned St. Marys, Stratford, Kitchener and Guelph, is, at first glance, unremarkable.

Georgetown is a community in the town of Halton Hills, Ontario, Canada and is part of the Regional Municipality of Halton.

The town includes several small villages or settlements, such as Norval, Limehouse, Stewarttown and Glen Williams, near Georgetown, and another large population centre, Acton.

In 2016, the population of Georgetown was 42,123.

It sits on the banks of the Credit River, approximately 60 km west of Toronto, and is part of the Greater Toronto Area.

Georgetown was named after entrepreneur George Kennedy, who settled in the area in 1821 and built several mills and other businesses.

The Wikipedia description alone is a great cure for insomnia.

By 1650, the Hurons had been wiped out by European diseases and the Iroquois.

The region was now open to the Algonquian Ojibwa (also known as the Mississauga).

By 1850 the remaining Mississauga natives were removed to the Six Nations Reserve, where the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation Reserve was established.

Commencing in 1781, the British government purchased blocks of land from the Mississauga Nation.

In 1818, they purchased land that later became the townships of Esquesing and Nassagaweya.

The task of laying out the townships fell to Timothy Street and Abraham Nelles.

Charles Kennedy was hired by Nelles to survey the northern part of Esquesing Township in 1819, and Charles Kennedy received a significant parcel of land as payment for his work.

The brothers of Charles Kennedy, John, Morris, Samuel and George, all acquired land close to each another in the Silver Creek Valley.

Charles Kennedy built a sawmill in a location where Main Street meets Wildwood Road today.

Photo Gallery #2 : The Mills | Esquesing Historical Society

George Kennedy took advantage of the Silver Creek in the early 1820s to power a sawmill, and later a gristmill and foundry and then a woolen mill.

A small settlement formed around the mills, often called “Hungry Hollow“.

Town Completes the Hungry Hollow Trail - Halton Hills

In 1828, John Galt of the Canada Company opened the York to Guelph Road (now Highway 7) which connected the settlement around George Kennedy’s mill with other settlements in the area.

The road also extended to Galt, Guelph and Goderich.

John Galt - Charles Grey 1835 (cropped).jpg — Above: John Galt (1779 – 1839)

In 1837 the Barber brothers, including William and James, purchased land and the woolen mill and foundry from Kennedy in 1837.

They renamed the settlement Georgetown.

The brothers started the paper-making industry in 1854, using electricity produced by a dynamo at the Credit River.

Their products included large volumes of wallpaper.

John R. Barber’s home, Berwick Hall, still stands at Main and Park Streets.

The business prospered for over 100 years.

Other entrepreneurs arrived including Philo Dayfoot in the early 1840s, who started the local leather industry.

In the 1850s, George Kennedy subdivided his land into small lots for sale to new settlers.

George Kennedy (Georgetown, Ontario) | This is a mural found… | Flickr

Esquesing Village (Stewarttown) was settled around 1818 and became the seat of the Township of Esquesing.

It was also on the main north-south route to the steamships at Oakville.

In 1846, Norval had a population of about 200 inhabitants, served by two churches, various tradesmen, a grist mill, an oatmeal mill, a distillery, two stores and a tavern.

Author Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874 – 1942), who wrote the Anne of Green Gables series lived in Norval from 1926 to 1935 and considered it to be “one of the prettiest villages in all Ontario“.

Lucy Maud Montgomery was born in Clifton (now New London) in Prince Edward Island (PEI) on 30 November 1874.

Above: Birthplace of LM Montgomery, Clifton, PEI

L. M. Montgomery — Above: Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874 – 1942)

Her mother, Clara Woolner Macneill Montgomery, died of tuberculosis (TB) when Lucy was 21 months old.

Stricken with grief, her father, Hugh John Montgomery, placed Lucy in the custody of her maternal grandparents, though he remained in the vicinity.

However, when Lucy was seven, he moved to Prince Albert, North-West Territories (now Prince Albert, Saskatchewan).

From then on Lucy was raised by her grandparents, Alexander Marquis Macneill and Lucy Woolner Macneill, in the community of Cavendish, PEI.

Montgomery’s early life in Cavendish was very lonely.

Despite having relatives nearby, much of her childhood was spent alone.

She created imaginary friends and worlds to cope with her loneliness, and Montgomery credited this time of her life with developing her creativity.

Montgomery’s imaginary friends were named Katie Maurice and Lucy Gray who lived in the “fairy room” behind the bookcase in the drawing room.

During a church service, Montgomery asked her aunt where her dead mother was, leading her to point upwards.

Montgomery saw a trap door in the church’s ceiling, which led her to wonder why the minister did not just get a ladder to retrieve her mother up in the church’s ceiling.

Avonlea Village Church in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island | Mapio.net

In 1887, at age 13, Montgomery wrote in her diary that she had “early dreams of future fame.”

She submitted a poem for publication, writing:

“I saw myself the wonder of my schoolmates – a little local celebrity.”

Upon rejection, Montgomery wrote:

“Tears of disappointment would come in spite of myself, as I crept away to hide the poor crumpled manuscript in the depths of my trunk.”

She would later write:

“Down, deep down under all the discouragement and rebuff, I knew I would ‘arrive’ some day.”

505 Victorian Era 1880s 1890s Restored Dome Top Antique Trunk For Sale and Available

After completing her education in Cavendish, Montgomery spent one year (1890) in Prince Albert with her father and her stepmother, Mary Ann McRae.

While in Prince Albert, Montgomery’s first work, a poem titled “On Cape LeForce“, was published in the Charlottetown paper, The Daily Patriot.

She was as excited about this as she was about her return to her beloved Prince Edward Island in 1891.

Before returning to Cavendish, Montgomery had another article published in the newspaper, describing her visit to a First Nations camp on the Great Plains.

Montgomery often saw Blackfeet and Plains Cree in Prince Albert, writing that she saw many Indians on the Prairies who were much more handsome and attractive than the ones she had seen in the Maritimes.

However, her return to Cavendish was a great relief to her.

Her time in Prince Albert was unhappy, for she did not get along with her stepmother.

According to Montgomery, her father’s marriage was not a happy one.

In 1893, she attended Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown to obtain a teacher’s license.

Montgomery loved Prince Edward Island.

During solitary walks through the peaceful island countryside, Montgomery started to experience what she called “the flash” – a moment of tranquility and clarity when she felt an emotional ecstasy, and was inspired by the awareness of a higher spiritual power running through nature.

Montgomery’s accounts of this “flash” were later given to character Emily Byrd Starr in the “Emily of New Moon” trilogy, and also served as the basis for her descriptions of Anne Shirley’s sense of emotional communion with nature.

Emily of New Moon Children's continuous series : 1 Emily Novels: Amazon.co.uk: Montgomery, L. M.: Books

In 1905, Montgomery wrote in her journal that:

“Amid the commonplaces of life, I was very near to a kingdom of ideal beauty.

Between it and me hung only a thin veil.

I could never quite draw it aside, but sometimes a wind fluttered it and I seemed to catch a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond–only a glimpse–but those glimpses have always made life worthwhile.”

A deeply spiritual woman, Montgomery found the moments when she experienced “the flash” some of the most beautiful, moving and intense of her life.

The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery - Wikipedia

She completed the two-year teaching program in Charlottetown in one year.

Subsequently, in 1895 and 1896, she studied literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Upon leaving Dalhousie, Montgomery worked as a teacher in various Prince Edward Island schools.

Though she did not enjoy teaching, it afforded her time to write.

Beginning in 1897, her short stories were published in magazines and newspapers.

A prolific writer, Montgomery published over 100 stories between 1897 and 1907.

The Paris Review - The Strange Note at Lucy Maud Montgomery's Bedside

During her teaching years, Montgomery had numerous love interests.

As a highly fashionable young woman, she enjoyed “slim, good looks” and won the attention of several young men.

In 1889, at 14, Montgomery began a relationship with a Cavendish boy named Nate Lockhart.

To Montgomery, the relationship was merely a humorous and witty friendship.

It ended abruptly when Montgomery refused his marriage proposal.

Lucy Maud Montgomery – Wikipedia — Above: young LM Montgomery

The early 1890s brought unwelcome advances from John A. Mustard and Will Pritchard.

Mustard, her teacher, quickly became her suitor.

He tried to impress her with his knowledge of religious matters.

His best topics of conversation were his thoughts on predestination and “other dry points of theology“, which held little appeal for Montgomery.

During the period when Mustard’s interest became more pronounced, Montgomery found a new interest in Will Pritchard, the brother of her friend Laura Pritchard.

This friendship was more amiable, but, again, he felt more for Montgomery than she did for him.

When Pritchard sought to take their friendship further, Montgomery resisted.

Montgomery refused both marriage proposals:

The former was too narrow-minded and the latter was merely a good chum.

She ended the period of flirtation when she moved to Prince Edward Island.

However, she and Pritchard did continue to correspond for over six years, until Pritchard died of influenza in 1897.

Das faszinierende, herzzerreißende Leben von "Anne of Green Gables" Autor

In 1897, Montgomery received a proposal from Edwin Simpson, who was a student in French River near Cavendish.

Montgomery wrote that she accepted his proposal out of a desire for “love and protection“, and because she felt her prospects were rather poor.

Montgomery came to dislike Simpson, whom she regarded as intolerably self-centred and vain to the extent of feeling nauseated in his presence.

View of French River, PEI. | Lugares maravilhosos, Lugares para visitar, Destinos — Above: French River, PEI

While teaching in Lower Bedeque, she had a brief but passionate affair with Herman Leard, a member of the family with which she boarded.

Reading to Know: Visiting Lower Bedeque Schoolhouse — Above: Lower Bedeque schoolhouse

School museum where L.M. Montgomery taught forced to close its doors | CBC News — Above: Lower Bedeque Schoolhouse Museum

Of the men she loved, it was Leard she loved the most, writing in her diary:

“Hermann suddenly bent his head and his lips touched my face.
I cannot tell what possessed me – I seemed swayed by a power utterly beyond my control – I turned my head – our lips met in one long passionate pressure – a kiss of fire and rapture such I had never experienced or imagined.
Ed’s kisses at the best left me cold as ice – Hermann’s sent flame through every fibre of my being.”

On 8 April 1898, Montgomery wrote she had to stay faithful towards Simpson as “for the sake of my self respect I must not stoop to any sort of an affair with another man” which was followed by:

“If I had – or rather if I could have – kept this resolve I would have saved myself incalculable suffering.
For it was but a few days later that I found myself face to face with the burning consciousness that I loved Herman Leard with a wild, passionate, unreasoning love that dominated my entire being and possessed me like a flame – a love I could neither quell nor control – a love that in its intensity seemed little short of absolute madness.
Madness!
Yes!“

Photos, Journals, Scrapbooks, and the Past | Lucy maud montgomery, Angel books, Montgomery

In Victorian Canada, premarital sex was rare for women (although it was common for unmarried men seeking sex to visit brothels), and Montgomery had been brought up in strict Presbyterian household where she had been taught that all who sinned in “fornication” were among the “damned” who burned in Hell forever, a message she had taken to heart.

Despite this upbringing, Montgomery often invited Leard into her bedroom when everybody else was out, and though she refused to have sex with him as she wanted to be a virgin bride, she and Leard engaged in kissing and “preliminary lovemaking.”

Montgomery called Leard in her diary only “a very nice, attractive young animal!“, albeit one with “magnetic blue eyes” as she wrote in another entry.

Following objections from her family and friends that Leard was not “good enough” for her, Montgomery broke off her relationship with him.

He died shortly afterwards of the flu.

Lucy Maud Montgomery connection celebrated in Leard home restoration | CBC News — Above: Photo of Herman Leard

In 1898, after much unhappiness and disillusionment, Montgomery broke off her engagement to Simpson.

Montgomery no longer sought romantic love.

Montgomery was greatly upset when she learned of Leard’s death in June 1899, writing in her diary:

“It is easier to think him as dead, mine, all mine in death, as he could never be in life, mine when no other women could ever lie on his heart or kiss his lips.”

L.M. Montgomery's Letters to Scotland: Reading Between the Lines | Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies

In 1898, Montgomery moved back to Cavendish to live with her widowed grandmother.

Site of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Cavendish Home — Above: LMM House, Cavendish, PEI

For a nine-month period between 1901 and 1902, she worked in Halifax as a substitute proofreader for the newspapers Morning Chronicle and The Daily Echo.

Clockwise from top: Downtown Halifax skyline, Crystal Crescent Beach, Central Library, Sullivan's Pond, Peggy's Cove, Macdonald Bridge — Above: Images of modern Halifax

Montgomery was inspired to write her first books during this time on Prince Edward Island.

Until her grandmother’s death in March 1911, Montgomery stayed in Cavendish to take care of her.

This coincided with a period of considerable income from her publications.

Although she enjoyed this income, she was aware that “marriage was a necessary choice for women in Canada.”

In 1908, Montgomery published her first book, Anne of Green Gables.

An immediate success, it established Montgomery’s career, and she would write and publish material (including numerous sequels to Anne) continuously for the rest of her life.

Anne of Green Gables was published in June 1908 and by November 1909, the book had already gone through six printings.

The Canadian press made much of Montgomery’s roots in Prince Edward Island, which was portrayed as a charming part of Canada where the people retained old-fashioned values and everything moved at a much slower pace.

The American press suggested that all of Canada was backward and slow, arguing that a book like Anne of Green Gables was only possible in a rustic country like Canada, where the people were nowhere near as advanced as the United States.

Typical of the American coverage of Montgomery was a 1911 newspaper article in Boston, which asserted:

“Recently a new and exceedingly brilliant star arose on the literacy horizon in the person of a previously unknown writer of ‘heart interest’ stories, Miss Lucy M. Montgomery, and presently the astronomers located her in the latitude of Prince Edward Island.
No one would ever imagined that such a remote and unassertive speck on the map would ever produce such a writer whose first three books should one and all be included in the ‘six best sellers.’
But it was on this unemotional island that Anne of Green Gables was born.
This story was the work of a modest young school teacher, who was doubtless as surprised as any of her neighbors when she found her sweetly simple tale of childish joys and sorrows of a diminutive red-haired girl had made the literary hit of the season with the American public.
Miss Montgomery, who is entirely unspoiled by her unexpected stroke of fame and fortune, made her first visit to Boston last winter and was lionized to quite an extent, her pleasing personality making a decidedly favourable impression on all who met her.
It was all very nice and novel, but the young lady confided to her friends that she would be more than glad to get back to her quiet and uneventful country life and she would far prefer it as a regular thing even to a residence in Boston.
One of the most delightful of her Boston experiences was a lunch that was given her by a local publishing house that issues her books, a thoroughly Bostonian idea as well as a most creditable one.
Britain possesses as a cherished literacy shrine, the Isle of Man, but on this side of the ocean we have our Isle St. Jean, where, in good old summer time, as Anne Shirley found it on the day of her arrival, the gulf-cooled air is ‘sweet with the breath of many apple orchards’ and the meadows slope away in the romantic distance to ‘horizon mist of pearl and purple.'”

In contrast to this publisher’s ideal image of her, Montgomery stated in a letter to a friend:

“I am frankly in literature to make a living out of it.”

Furthermore, the British scholar Faye Hammill noted that in the books Anne is a tall girl and Montgomery was 37 at the time, which hardly made for a “young school teacher.”

Hammill also noted the author of the piece chose to present Montgomery as the idealised female author, who was most happy in a domestic/rural environment, and who disliked fame and celebrity, which was seen at the time as conflicting with femininity.

In emphasizing Montgomery’s modesty and desire to remain anonymous, the author was portraying Montgomery as the ideal woman writer, who wanted to preserve her femininity by not embarking on a professional career, with writing only as a part-time job at best.

At the same time, Hammill noted the author was using the anachronistic French name for Prince Edward Island, to add to his picture of a romantic, mist-shrouded fantasy island, where the old ways of life continued “unspoiled“, as just Montgomery herself was portrayed as an “unspoiled” woman.

Canadian Literature (Buch (kartoniert)), Faye Hammill

Shortly after her grandmother’s death in 1911, she married Ewen (spelled in her notes and letters as “Ewan“) Macdonald (1870–1943), a Presbyterian minister, and they moved to Ontario where he had taken the position of minister of St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church, Leaskdale in present-day Uxbridge Township, also affiliated with the congregation in nearby Zephyr.

Montgomery wrote her next eleven books from the Leaskdale Manse that she complained had neither a bathroom nor a toilet.

The structure was subsequently sold by the congregation and is now the Lucy Maud Montgomery Leaskdale Manse Museum.

The Reverend Macdonald was not especially intelligent, nor was he interested in literature as Montgomery was.

Montgomery wrote in her diary:

“I would not want him for a lover but I hope at first that I might find a friend in him.”

File:Ewan macdonald 1900.jpg - Wikimedia Commons — Above: Ewen Macdonald

After their marriage, Montgomery took her honeymoon in England and Scotland, the latter being a particular point of interest to her, as Scotland was for her the “Old Country” — the romantic land of castles, rugged mountains, shining glens, lakes and waterfalls that was her ancestral homeland.

By contrast, the Reverend Macdonald’s parents had come to Canada after being evicted in the Highland Clearances, and he had no desire to visit the “Old Country“, most notably having to be dragged by his wife to the Isle of Skye, the home of the Clan MacDonald, where the Macdonalds had once reigned as the Lords of the Isles.

The MacDonalds had been Gaelic-speaking Highlanders while the Montgomerys and Macneils had been English-speaking Lowlanders, which might explain the differing attitudes held by the couple to Scotland, as Montgomery was more proud of her Scottish heritage than her husband.

MacDonald of the Isles tartan (Vestiarium Scoticum).png — Above: Tartan of the Clan Macdonald

Furthermore, Montgomery had read the works of Scottish writers like Robbie Burns and Sir Walter Scott, whereas her husband did not read literature at all, forcing his wife to explain to him who Burns and Scott were.

In England, Montgomery visited places associated with her favourite writers: going to the Lake District made famous by William Wordsworth, to William Shakespeare’s house in Stratford-upon-Avon, and to the Haworth House in the Yorkshire Moors where the Brontës (Anne, Charlotte, Emily and Branwell) had lived.

Above: John Shakespeare’s house, believed to be William Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratofrd-upon-Avon

Above: William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

Branwell Brontë, self-portrait, 1840 — Above: Self-portrait, Branwell Brontë (1817 – 1848)

The Macdonalds had three sons.

The second was stillborn.

Montgomery believed it was her duty as a woman to make her marriage work, though she quipped to a reporter during a visit to Scotland that:

“Those women whom God wanted to destroy He would make into the wives of ministers.”

The great increase of Montgomery’s writings in Leaskdale is the result of her need to escape the hardships of real life.

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. 2: 1910-1921 by L.M. Montgomery

In 1909 – 1910, Montgomery drew upon her Scottish Canadian heritage and her memories of her teenage years to write her 1911 novel The Story Girl.

Montgomery’s youth had been spent among a Scottish Canadian family where Scottish tales, myths and legends had often been recounted, and Montgomery used this background to create the character of 14-year old Sara Stanley, a skilled storyteller, who was merely an “idealized” version of her adolescent self.

The character of Peter Craig in The Story Girl very much resembles Herman Leard, the great love of Montgomery’s life, the man she wished she had married, but did not, right down to having blonde curly hair just as Leard did.

As with her relationship with Leard, the other characters object to the lower-class Craig as he is not “good enough” for her, but unlike her real-life relationship with Leard, which was broken off because he was not “good enough“, Felicity King chooses Peter Craig.

The Story Girl (The Story Girl, #1) by L.M. Montgomery

During the First World War, Montgomery, horrified by reports of the “Rape of Belgium” in 1914, was an intense supporter of the war effort, seeing the war as a crusade to save civilization, regularly writing articles urging men to volunteer for the Canadian Expeditionary Force and for people on the home front to buy victory bonds.

Montgomery wrote in her diary on 12 September 1914 about the reports of the “Rape of Belgium“:

“But oh, there have been such hideous stories in the papers lately of their cutting off the hands of little children in Belgium.
Can they be true?
They have committed terrible outrages and crimes, that is too surely true, but I hope desperately that these stories of the mutilation of children are false.
They harrow my soul.
I walk the floor in my agony over them.
I cry myself to sleep about them and wake again in the darkness to cringe with the horror of it.
If it were Chester!“

In Leaskdale, like everywhere else in Canada, recruiting meetings were held where ministers, such as the Reverend MacDonald, would speak of Kaiser Wilhelm II as the personification of evil, described the “Rape of Belgium” in graphic detail, and asked for young men to step up to volunteer to fight for Canada, the British Empire, and for justice, in what was described at the time as a crusade against evil.

In a 1915 essay appealing for volunteers, Montgomery wrote:

“I am not one of those who believe that this war will put an end to war.

War is horrible, but there are things that are more horrible still, just as there are fates worse than death.”

Above: Images of World War I (1914 – 1918)

Montgomery argued prior to the war that Canada had been slipping into atheism, materialism and “moral decay” and the War had brought about a welcome revival of Christianity, patriotism and moral strength as the Canadian people faced the challenge of the greatest war yet fought in history.

Montgomery ended her essay by stating that women on the home front were playing a crucial role in the war effort, which led her to ask for women’s suffrage.

The Canadian Home Front: L.M. Montgomery's Reflections on The First World War (2014) | L. M. Montgomery Institute

On 7 October 1915, Montgomery gave birth to her third child and was thrown into depression when she discovered she could not produce breast milk to feed her son, who was given cow’s milk instead, which was a health risk in the days before pasteurization.

Montgomery identified very strongly with the Allied cause, leading her on 10 March 1916 to write in her diary:

“All my misery seemed to centre around Verdun where the snow was no longer white.

I seemed in my own soul to embrace all the anguish and strain of France.”

In the same diary entry, Montgomery wrote of a strange experience:

“A great calm seemed to descend upon me and envelop me.

I was at peace.

The conviction seized upon me that Verdun was safe-that the Germans would not pass the grim barrier of desperate France.

I was as a woman from whom some evil spirit had been driven-or can it be as a priestess of old, who out of depths of agony wins some strange foresight of the future?”

Montgomery celebrated every Allied victory at her house, for instance running up the Russian flag when she heard that the Russians had captured the supposedly impregnable Ottoman city-fortress of Trebizond in April 1916.

Every Allied defeat depressed her.

When she heard of the fall of Kut-al-Amara (7 December 1915 – 29 April 1916), she wrote in her diary on 1 May 1916:

“Kut-el-Amara has been compelled to surrender at last.

We have expected it for some time, but that did not prevent us from feeling very blue over it all.

It is an encouragement to the Germans and a blow to Britain’s prestige.

I feel too depressed tonight to do anything.”

Much to Montgomery’s disgust, Ewen refused to preach about the War.

As it went on, Lucy wrote in her diary:

“It unsettles him and he cannot do his work properly.”

The Reverend Macdonald had developed doubts about the justice of the War as it went along, and had come to believe that by encouraging young men to enlist, he had sinned grievously.

Montgomery, a deeply religious woman, wrote in her diary:

“I believe in a God who is good, but not omnipotent.

I also believe in a principle of Evil, equal to God in power… darkness to His light.

I believe an infinite ceaseless struggle goes on between them.”

Biography – MONTGOMERY, LUCY MAUD (Macdonald) – Volume XVII (1941-1950) – Dictionary of Canadian Biography — Above: Ewen Macdonald and Lucy Maud Montgomery

In a letter, Montgomery dismissed Kaiser Wilhelm II’s claim that God was on the side of Germany, stating that the power responsible for the death of “little Hugh” (her stillborn son) was the same power responsible for the “Rape of Belgium“, and for this reason she believed the Allies were destined to win the War.

Montgomery had worked as a Sunday School teacher at her husband’s church, and many of the men from Uxbridge County who were killed or wounded in the war had once been her students, causing her much emotional distress.

Uxbridge County lost 21 men in the Great War from 1915, when Canadian troops first saw action at the Second Battle of Ypres, until the War’s end in 1918.

Coat of arms of Uxbridge — Above: Uxbridge coat of arms

Montgomery’s biographer Mary Henley Rubio observed:

“Increasingly, the war was all that she thought of and wanted to talk about.

Her journals show she was absolutely consumed by it, wracked by it, tortured by it, obsessed by it — even addicted to it.”

Montgomery was sometimes annoyed if her husband did not buy a daily newspaper from the corner store because she always wanted to read the latest war news.

Lucy Maud Montgomery by Mary Henley Rubio: 9780385667609 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

Montgomery underwent several periods of depression while trying to cope with the duties of motherhood and church life and with her husband’s attacks of religious melancholia (endogenous major depressive disorder) and deteriorating health:

“For a woman who had given the world so much joy, life was mostly an unhappy one.“

Lucy Maud Montgomery - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia

In 1918, Montgomery was stricken with and was almost killed by the “Spanish flu” pandemic that killed between 50 and 100 million people all over the world in 1918–1919, spending ten days bed-ridden with the Spanish flu.

In her diary on 1 December 1918, Montgomery wrote after a visit to Toronto in November:

“Toronto was then beginning to be panic stricken over the outbreak of the terrible “Spanish flu.”

The drug counters were besieged with frantic people seeking remedies and safeguards”.

Montgomery wrote in her diary about being infected with Spanish flu:

“I was in bed for ten days.

I never felt so sick or weak in my life”, going on to express thanks to God and her friends for helping her survive the ordeal.

Above: Nurses tend to flu patients in temporary wards

Montgomery’s best friend Frederica Campbell MacFarlane was not so lucky and died after contracting the Spanish flu on 20 January 1919.

Lucy Maud Montgomery, Frede, Ewan and baby at dining table. Leaskdale, ON.: University of Guelph Library Digital Collections — Above: Frederica, Lucy and Ewen

Montgomery was upset that her husband had been indifferent to her as she was dying of the Spanish flu, which drove her to think about divorce:

(Something very difficult to obtain in Canada until 1967.

Between 1873 and 1901, there were only 263 divorces out of a population of six million).

Ultimately, Montgomery decided it was her Christian duty to make her marriage work.

After the First World War, a recurring character in Montgomery’s journal that was to obsess her for the rest of her life was “the Piper“, who at first appeared as a heroic Highlander piper from Scotland, leading men into battle while playing traditional Highland tunes, but who turned out to be the Pied Piper of Hamelin, a trickster taking children away from their parents forever.

The figure of “the Piper” reflected Montgomery’s own disillusionment with World War One and her guilt at her ardent support for the war.

To inspire men to volunteer for the war, a piper had marched through the centre of Leaskdale daily for all four years of World War I, playing Highland war tunes, which had given Montgomery the inspiration of the figure of “the Piper“.

“The Piper” first appears in the Anne books in Rainbow Valley (1919), inspiring the future grown children of Glen St. Mary with his courage.

Rainbow Valley (Anne of Green Gables, #7) by L.M. Montgomery

In Rilla of Ingleside (1921), “the Piper” returns as a more sinister figure, inspiring Anne’s son Walter to enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, while taking on the appearance and personality of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Rilla of Ingleside (Anne of Green Gables, No. 8): Montgomery, L. M.: 9780553269222: Amazon.com: Books

The Reverend Ewen MacDonald, a good Calvinist who believed in predestination, had become convinced that he was not one of “the Elect” chosen by God to go to Heaven, leading him to spend hours depressed and staring into space.

The Reverend MacDonald often told his wife that he wished she and their children had never been born as they were also not of “the Elect” and all of them were going to Hell when they died as he believed that they were all predestined to be among the “damned“.

MacDonald refused to assist with raising the children or the housework, and was given over to erratic, reckless driving as if he was deliberately trying to get himself killed in a car crash, as perhaps he was.

Montgomery herself was driven to depression by her husband’s conduct, often writing that she wished she had married somebody else.

Montgomery wrote in her diary that she could not stand looking at her husband’s face, when he had that “horrible imbecile expression on his face” as he starred blankly into space for hours.

Who is Lucy Maud Montgomery dating? Lucy Maud Montgomery boyfriend, husband

In February 1920, Montgomery wrote in her diary about having to deal with:

“A letter from some pathetic ten-year old in New York who implores me to send her my photo because she lies awake in her bed wondering what I look like.
Well, if she had a picture of me in my old dress, wresting with the furniture this morning, “cussing” the ashes and clinkers, she would die of disillusionment.
However, I shall send her a reprint of my last photo in which I sat in rapt inspiration – apparently – at my desk, with pen in my hand, in gown of lace and silk with hair so – Amen.
A quite passable woman, of no kin whatever to the dusty, ash-covered Cinderella of the furnace-cellar.”

Amazon.de: Cinderella ansehen | Prime Video

For much of her life, writing was her one great solace.

In 1920, Montgomery wrote in her diary a quotation from the South African writer Olive Schreiner’s book The Story of an African Farm which defined different types of love, including a “love without wisdom, sweet as life, bitter as death, lasting only a hour“, leading her to write:

“But it is worth having lived a whole life for that hour.”

Montgomery concluded:

“My love for Hermann Leard, though so incomplete, is a memory which I would not barter for anything save the lives of my children and the return of Frede.” [Frederica Campbell MacFarlane, her best friend]

Montgomery believed her spells of depression and migraine headaches she suffered from were both expressions of her suppressed romantic passions and Leard’s ghost haunting her.

The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner

Starting in 1917, Montgomery was engaged in five bitter, costly, and burdensome lawsuits with Louis Coues Page, owner of the publishing house L.C. Page and Compnay, that continued until she finally won in 1928.

Page had a well-deserved reputation as one of the most tyrannical figures in American publishing, a bully with a ferocious temper who signed his authors to exploitative contracts and liked to humiliate his subordinates, including his mild-mannered younger brother George, in public.

Montgomery received 7 cents on the dollar on the sale of every one of the Anne books, instead of the 19 cents on the dollar that she was entitled to, which led her to switch publishers in 1917 when she finally discovered that Page was cheating her.

When Montgomery left the firm of L.C. Page & Company, Page demanded she sign over the American rights to Anne’s House of Dreams.

When she refused he cut off the royalties from the earlier Anne books.

Even though he did not own the US rights to Anne’s House of Dreams, Page sold those rights to the disreputable publishing house of Grosset & Dunlap, as a way of creating more pressure on Montgomery to capitulate.

Instead, Montgomery sued Grosset & Dunlap.

Page was counting on the fact that he was a millionaire and Montgomery was not, and that the prospect of having to spend thousands in legal fees would force her to give in.

Much to his surprise, she did not.

Montgomery hired a lawyer in Boston and sued Page in the Massachusetts Court of Equity for illegally withholding royalties due her and for selling the US rights to Anne’s House of Dreams, which he did not possess.

Anne's House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery

In 1920, the house where Montgomery grew up in Cavendish was torn down by her uncle, who complained that too many tourists were coming on to the property to see the house that inspired the house in which Anne was depicted as growing up.

Montgomery was very sentimental about that house, and the news of its destruction caused her great pain.

The foundation of L.M. Montgomery's home - Picture of L.M. Montgomery's Cavendish National Historic Site of Canada, Cavendish - Tripadvisor

Between May and July 1920, Montgomery was in Boston to attend court sessions with Page, who taunted her by telling her the Anne books were still selling well, making him millions.

In 1920, Montgomery was infuriated with the 1919 film version of Anne of Green Gables for changing Anne from a Canadian to an American, writing in her diary:

“It was a pretty little play well photographed, but I think if I hadn’t already known it was from my book, that I would never have recognized it.
The landscape and folks were ‘New England’, never PEI.
A skunk and an American flag were introduced – both equally unknown on PEI.
I could have shrieked with rage over the latter.
Such crass, blatant Yankeeism!”

Reporting on the film’s premiere in Los Angeles, one American journalist described Anne of Green Gables as written by a “Mr. Montgomery“, who is only mentioned in passing two-thirds into the article with the major focus being on the film’s star Mary Miles Minter, who was presented as the true embodiment of Anne.

Montgomery disapproved of Minter’s performance, writing she portrayed “a sweet, sugary heroine utterly unlike my gingerly Anne” and complained about a scene in the film where Anne used a shotgun to threaten people with, writing that her Anne would never do such a thing.

Montgomery had no say in either the 1919 or 1934 versions of Anne of Green Gables as the publisher, L.C. Page had acquired the film rights to the story in 1908, and as such, all of the royalties paid by Hollywood for both versions of Anne of Green Gables went to him, not Montgomery.

Montgomery stopped writing about Anne in about 1920, writing in her journal that she had tired of the character.

By February 1921, Montgomery estimated that she had made about $100,000 from the sales of the Anne books while declaring in her diary:

“It’s a pity it doesn’t buy happiness.”

She preferred instead to create books about other young, female characters, feeling that her strength was writing about characters who were either very young or very old.

1921 US Morgan Silver Dollar Philadelphia About Uncirculated | GovMint.com

Other series written by Montgomery include the “Emily” and “Pat” books, which, while successful, did not reach the same level of public acceptance as the “Anne” volumes.

Amazon.com: MISTRESS PAT (Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories Book 6) eBook: Montgomery, Lucy Maud: Kindle Store

She also wrote a number of stand-alone novels, which were also generally successful, if not as successful as her Anne books.

On 20 August 1921, Montgomery started writing what became the novel Emily of New Moon, as she planned to replace Anne with Emily as the star of new series of novels.

The character Emily was partly autobiographical, as Emily’s dream was to be a writer when she grew up.

Unlike Anne, who does not have clear goals about what she wants to be when she grows up, Emily Starr knows she wants to be a writer, a characteristic she shared with Montgomery.

One aspect that Emily, Anne and Montgomery all shared was “the flash“—the mystical power that Montgomery called in Emily of New Moon “the wonderful moment when the soul seemed to cast aside the bonds of the flesh and spring upward towards the stars“, allowing the soul to see “behind the veil” to a transcendent beauty.

In 1925, a Massachusetts court ruled in favour of Montgomery against her publisher, Louis Coues Page, as the judge found that he had systemically cheated her out of the profits from the Anne books since 1908.

Page used every conceivable excuse to avoid paying Montgomery what he owed her and, after his brother George died of a heart attack in 1927, accused Montgomery of causing his brother’s death by suing him for her rightful shares of the royalties.

In fact, Louis Page was not close to George, who had just left the firm of L.C. Page & Company to get away from his abrasive and arrogant brother before he died of a heart attack, aged 52.

In October 1928, Montgomery finally won while Page, a sore loser to the end, continued to insist in public that she had caused the death of his brother, which he used as a reason why he should not have to pay Montgomery anything.

Page, who was a notorious bully, waged a campaign of harassment against Montgomery, sending her telegrams accusing her of causing his brother’s death and the subsequent mental breakdown of his widow by defeating him in court, asking her if she was pleased with what she had allegedly done.

Page’s behavior badly damaged his business, as no author chose to publish with a publisher who had revealed himself to be both dishonest and vindictive, and after the 1920s Page’s publishing house largely depended upon reissuing older books rather than issuing new books as authors took their business elsewhere.

On 7 November 1928, Montgomery received a cheque for the $15,000 US dollars that auditors had established Page had cheated her out of.

Chronicles of Avonlea | L. M. MONTGOMERY, Lucy Maud

In terms of sales, both in her lifetime and since, Montgomery was the most successful Canadian author of all time, but because her books were seen as children’s books and as women’s books, she was often dismissed by the critics, who saw Montgomery as merely a writer for schoolgirls, and not as a serious writer.

In 1924, the Maple Leaf magazine asked its readers to nominate the 14 greatest living Canadians, and all of the winners were men.

Montgomery only made the runners-up list to the 14 greatest Canadians, coming in at #16.

However, Montgomery did make it onto another list of the 12 greatest living Canadian women.

Hammill argued that Montgomery was successful at managing her fame, but the media’s fixation on presenting her as the idealised woman writer, together with her desire to hide her unhappy home life with her husband, meant that her creation Anne, whose “life” was more “knowable” and easier to relate to, overshadowed her both in her lifetime and after.

Lucy Maud Montgomery & Anne of Green Gables - Owlcation - Education

In 1925, Ewen MacDonald became estranged from his flock when he opposed his church joining the United Church of Canada, and was involved in an incident when he nearly ran over a Methodist minister who was promoting the union.

Montgomery as the minister’s wife had been a prominent member of the Leaskdale community and had been a much loved figure who organized community events.

Rubio wrote the people of Leaskdale “liked” the Reverend MacDonald, but “loved” Montgomery.

At the same time, she complained in her diary her husband had a “medieval mind” when it came to women as to him:

“A woman is a thing of no importance intellectually — the plaything and servant of man — and couldn’t possibly do anything that would be worthy of a real tribute.”

In 1926, the family moved into the Norval Presbyterian Charge, in present-day Halton Hills, Ontario, where today the Lucy Maud Montgomery Memorial Garden can be seen from Highway 7.

Ontario manse where L.M. Montgomery lived to become museum | CBC News

In 1934, Montgomery’s extremely depressed husband signed himself into a sanatorium in Guelph.

After his release, the drug store gave Montgomery a “blue pill” intended to treat her husband’s depression that was accidentally laced with insecticide (a mistake on the part of the drug store clerk) that almost killed him.

The Reverend Macdonald became notably paranoid after this incident, as his mental health continued to deteriorate.

In 1933, Montgomery published Pat of Silver Bush, which reflected a move towards more “adult” stories for young people.

Unlike Anne with her sense of optimism and vibrancy, Pat is a “queer” moody girl who is noted for being a “loner“.

Pat’s best friend, Elizabeth “Bets” Wilcox, dies of the Spanish flu, giving the book a darker tone than Montgomery’s previous books.

In a letter to a fan in 1934 who complained about the dark mood of Pat of Silver Bush, Montgomery replied:

“I gave Anne my imagination and Emily Starr my knack for scribbling, but the girl who is more myself than any other is ‘Pat of Silver Bush’.

Not externally, but spiritually she is I“.

Pat of Silver Bush (Pat of Silver Bush, #1) by L.M. Montgomery

Pat’s deep attachment to the countryside of Prince Edward Island, especially her family farm, Silver Bush, mirrored Montgomery’s own attachment to the countryside of her home province, and the farm that she grew up on.

In 1935, upon her husband’s retirement, Montgomery moved to Swansea, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, buying a house which she named Journey’s End, situated on Riverside Drive along the east bank of the Humber River.

The tragic final days of Lucy Maud Montgomery - Spacing Toronto — Above: Journey’s End, Swansea

Montgomery continued to write, and (in addition to writing other material) returned to writing about Anne after a 15-year hiatus, filling in previously unexplored gaps in the chronology she had developed for the character.

Amazon.com: The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery: Volume IV: 1929-1935 (9780195423044): Montgomery, Lucy Maud, Rubio, Mary, Waterston, Elizabeth: Books

She published Anne of Windy Poplars in 1936 and Anne of Ingleside in 1939.

Anne of Windy Poplars - Kindle edition by Maud Montgomery, Lucy . Children Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Anne of Ingleside (Anne Shirley Series #6) - Kindle edition by Montgomery, Lucy Maud. Romance Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Jane of Lantern Hill, a non-Anne novel, was also composed around this time and published in 1937.

Amazon.com: Jane of Lantern Hill (9780770423148): L. M. Montgomery: Books

On 3 June 1935, King George V named Montgomery to the Order of the British Empire (OBE), and on 8 September 1935 at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, the ceremony of investiture giving her an OBE was held with the Governor-General, Lord Bessborough, conducting the ceremony.

Above: Sir Vere Brabazon Ponsonby (1880 – 1956), 9th Earl of Bessborough, Governor-General of Canada from 1931 to 1935

As a member of the Order of the British Empire, Montgomery was given a special medal, which could only be worn in public in the presence of the King or one of his representatives like the Governor-General.

Her husband did not attend the ceremony, but Montgomery was by all accounts greatly honoured to be appointed an OBE.

Writing kept up Montgomery’s spirits as she battled depression while taking various pills to improve her mood, but in public she presented a happy, smiling face, giving speeches to various professional groups all over Canada.

TOP 25 QUOTES BY LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY (of 475) | A-Z Quotes

At the Toronto Book Fair, held on 9 November 1936 to promote Canadian literature, Montgomery met the pseudo-Ojibwe author and environmentalist Grey Owl.

During her speech to the assembled authors, Montgomery spoke of hearing an “owl’s laughter” in Leaskdale, causing Grey Owl to jump up and interrupt her, saying:

“You are the first white person I have ever met who has heard an owl’s laughter.

I thought nobody but Indians ever heard it.

We hear it often because we are a silent race.

My full name is Laughing Grey Owl.”

Eastern Barn Owl (Tyto javanica stertens), Raigad, Maharashtra.jpg

Grey Owl’s remark made the front page of The Toronto Mail and Empire newspaper the next day.

Montgomery described Grey Owl in her diary:

“Grey Owl was looking quite the Indian of romance, with his long black braids of hair, his feather headdress and a genuine scalping knife — at least he told us it was genuine.”

Montgomery liked Grey Owl’s speech the same evening stating Canada’s “greatest asset is her forest lands” saying that most Canadians were too proud of “skyscrapers on Yonge Street” rather than the “natural resources we are destroying as fast as we can“.

After Grey Owl’s death in 1938, and the revelation that the supposed Ojibwe was actually the Englishman Archie Belaney, Montgomery stated that though Belaney lied about being an Ojibwe his concern for the environment, nature, and animals were real, and for this reason Grey Owl’s message was worth cherishing.

A black-and-white photo of Grey Owl looking sideways — Above: Archie Bellany (aka Laughing Grey Owl) (1888 – 1938)

On 10 November 1937, Montgomery gave a speech in Toronto at another annual gathering of the Toronto Book Fair calling for Canadian writers to write more stories about Canada, arguing Canadians had great stories worth writing.

Despite her efforts to raise the profile of Canadian literature through the Canadian Author’s Association, the male avant garde of Canadian literature, led by Frederick Philip Grove, F.R. Scott, Morley Callaghan and Raymond Knister, complained about the mostly female membership of the CAA, whom they felt had overly glorified someone like Montgomery who was not a “serious” writer.

Black and white photo of Grove seated at a desk, looking down and writing. — Above: Frederick Philip Grove (1879 – 1948)

What would F.R. Scott say? - Michael's Essay | CBC Radio — Above: F.R. (Francis Reginald) Scott (1899 – 1985)

Morley Callaghan - Ontario Heritage Trust — Above: Morley Callaghan (1903 – 1990)

D.M.R. Bentley | The Canadian Encyclopedia — Above: Raymond Knister (1899 – 1932)

Canadian Authors Association | Canadian Authors Association

Over time, Montgomery became addicted to bromides and barbiturates that the doctors had given her to help treat her depression.

Montgomery was greatly upset by World War II, calling the war in a 1940 letter:

“This nightmare that has been loosed on the world… unfair that we should have to go through it again.“

In her only diary entry for 1941, Montgomery wrote on 8 July 1941:

“Oh God, such an end to life.

Such suffering and wretchedness.”

On 28 December 1941, Montgomery wrote to a friend:

“This past year has been one of constant blows to me.
My oldest son has made a mess of his life and his wife has left him.
My husband’s nerves are even worse than mine.
I have kept the nature of his attacks from you for over 20 years but they have broken me at last.
I could not go out to select a book for you this year.
Pardon me. I could not even write this if I had not been a hypodermic.
The war situation kills me along with many other things.
I expect conscription will come in and they will take my second son and then I will give up all effort to recover because I shall have nothing to live for.“

The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery: 1935 - 1942: Amazon.de: Montgomery, L. M., Rubio, Mary, Waterston, Elizabeth: Fremdsprachige Bücher

In 1940, the Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King introduced conscription under the National Resources Mobilization Act, but with the caveat that conscripts could only be used in the defence of North America, and only volunteers would be sent overseas.

Mackenzie King scheduled a referendum for 27 April 1942, to ask the voters to release him from his promise to only send volunteers overseas, which Montgomery alluded to in her letter mentioning “conscription will come in.”

Above: William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874 – 1950)

In her last entry in her diary on 23 March 1942, Montgomery wrote:

“Since then my life has been hell, hell, hell.

My mind is gone – everything in the world I lived for has gone – the world has gone mad.

I shall be driven to end my life.

Oh God, forgive me.

Nobody dreams of what my awful position is.”

In the last year of her life, Montgomery completed what she intended to be a ninth book featuring Anne, titled The Blythes Are Quoted.

It included fifteen short stories (many of which were previously published) that she revised to include Anne and her family as mainly peripheral characters; forty-one poems (most of which were previously published) that she attributed to Anne and to her son Walter, who died as a soldier in the Great War; and vignettes featuring the Blythe family members discussing the poems.

The book was delivered to Montgomery’s publisher on the day of her death, but for reasons unexplained, the publisher declined to issue the book at the time.

Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre speculates that the book’s dark tone and anti-war message (Anne speaks very bitterly of WWI in one passage) may have made the volume unsuitable to publish in the midst of the Second World War.

An abridged version of this book, which shortened and reorganized the stories and omitted all the vignettes and all but one of the poems, was published as a collection of short stories called The Road to Yesterday in 1974, more than 30 years after the original work had been submitted.

The Blythes are Quoted by L.M. Montgomery – Consumed by Ink

A complete edition of The Blythes Are Quoted, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre, was finally published in its entirety by Viking Canada in October 2009, more than 67 years after it was composed.

The Blythes Are Quoted - Kindle edition by Montgomery, L. M., Benjamin Lefebvre. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

On 24 April 1942, Montgomery was found dead in her bed in her Toronto home.

The primary cause of death recorded on her death certificate was coronary thrombosis.

However, in September 2008, her granddaughter, Kate Macdonald Butler, revealed that Montgomery suffered from depression — possibly as a result of caring for her mentally ill husband for decades — and may have taken her own life through a drug overdose.

A note was found on Montgomery’s bedside table which read, in part:

“I have lost my mind by spells and I do not dare think what I may do in those spells.
May God forgive me and I hope everyone else will forgive me even if they cannot understand.
My position is too awful to endure and nobody realizes it.
What an end to a life in which I tried always to do my best. ”

An alternative explanation of this document is provided in Mary Henley Rubio’s 2008 biography Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings, which suggests that Montgomery may have intended it as an entry in part of a journal now lost, rather than a suicide note.

Montgomery was buried at the Cavendish Community Cemetery in Cavendish following her wake in the green Gable Gables farmhouse and funeral in the Cavendish United Church (formerly Cavendish Presbyterian Church).

During her lifetime, Montgomery had published twenty novels, over 500 short stories, an autobiography, and a book of poetry.

Aware of her fame, by 1920 Montgomery began editing and recopying her journals, presenting her life as she wanted it remembered.

In doing so, certain episodes were changed or omitted.

The End is Just a Transition | Legacy Hunting

Reading of Montgomery’s life as the train idles by the Georgetown station, I am struck by a number of thoughts:

Railpictures.ca - Marcus W. Stevens Photo: VIA train 84 makes a station stop at Georgetown' s shared VIA and GO station. | Railpictures.ca – Canadian Railway Photography – photographie ferroviaire Canadienne.

Lucy should never have left PEI.

It was her home and she was happiest there.

I comprehend the urge of many Canadian writers to live close to the publishing houses of Toronto, but I believe that only those who have known the Toronto area as their childhood abode truly feel that the region is “Home“.

As for me, Landschlacht, despite the presence of wife and library, has never truly felt like home.

I have felt more at home in the winter I visited Dawson City in the Yukon than I ever felt in either Lachute or Landschlacht, for there is something about a mighty river at the foot of majestic mountains that speaks to me more than the foothills of the Laurentians or the shores of Lake Constance.

Aerial view of Dawson City and the Yukon River — Above: Dawson City

(As for Eskisehir, I live here now, but, like Switzerland, I hope not to retire and die in Turkey, despite all the positive things I could say about both nations.)

Lucy, like many people still do, married not so much for passion, as for fear of not finding love, protection and respect.

I married for love, but whether this afforded my wife protection and respect is something only she can say.

Certainly, my wife could have chosen more wisely than me, but then again perhaps she could have done a lot worse.

A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex and the Mind by Siri Hustvedt – review | Siri Hustvedt | The Guardian

I look at the marriage of Lucy and Ewen and I find myself asking how responsible are we as spouses to one another.

Too often it seems we place so much of our happiness in the hands of another and wonder why the other is unable or unwilling to do as we desire.

Where the water gets murky is when an sense of obligation denies us the freedom to choose.

Lucy was more concerned with the appearance of happiness than the courage to seek its possibilities beyond respectability.

Lucy’s need to write is a thirst I fully understand and certainly it would please me to no end to be able to make a living from what I write, but the very evidence of my blogs, wherein I use the writing of others to supplement and fuel my thoughts, is proof that the need to produce words has always outweighed my drive to produce profits from my “pen“.

Red Barber Quote: “Writing is easy. Just sit down and open a vein.”

The sense of isolation that Lucy felt both as a child abandoned by her parents (mother dead, father fled) and as an adult in a world that demands we feel joy in joyless adherence to codes of behaviour we never made nor were never consulted in their creation is a feeling with which I can identify with.

As a toddler, I too had a mother who died and a father who chose to place my care in the hands of others, in my case, the Province of Québec.

My first decade of life saw me shunted from foster home to foster home wherein each reminded me that my primary purpose was to be the income the Province provided for my care if I remained unadopted.

My family name is that of my parents not of my guardians.

That sense of isolation was magnified as a ward of an Anglophone woman who hated and was hated by her Francophone neighbours in a Francophone province where Anglos represented centuries of inequality.

Above: Battle of the Plains of Abraham, 13 September 1759

And I have since carried that sense of isolation as a foreigner in foreign lands, as a stranger in strange lands.

It is that isolation that creates a blindness in recognizing love even when one is wrapped within in.

And no Heraclean labour can cleanse the filth of failure one feels at not fully feeling loved.

It is only in realizing that the flaw is for the isolated one to self-diagnose and self-correct, in realizing that no one can heal a heart from the outside, only then can recovery begin.

Perhaps it is only in isolation can this realization be achieved.

I think I understand Lucy’s moral dilemma with war.

Lucy understood, for example with her publisher Louis Page, that the only way to defeat a bully is to stand up to him, and certainly it seems that (at least from the victors’ perspective) that the Kaiser of World War I and the Führer of World War II were both bullies bent on conquest.

War should never be something that is sought, though it should be prepared for, but rather it should be avoided and postponed and reluctantly entered into, as the death and destruction that war wields are horrific.

The image of the Piper, deliberately similiar to that of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, is truly fitting, for how many young men have sacrificed their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their futures, to the clarion call of combat, on a kind of Children’s Crusade?

And then there is Anne Shirley.

Anne of Green Gables museum actor (cropped).jpg

Anne Shirley was born in the fictional town of Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia to school teachers Walter and Bertha Shirley (née Willis).

No specific birthdate is given, but references in later works suggest her date of birth is 5 March 1865.

Anne was orphaned as an infant of three months, when her parents died of typhoid fever.

Without any other relations, Anne was taken in by the Shirleys’ housekeeper, Mrs. Thomas.

After the death of her husband, Mr. Thomas, Anne lived with the troubled Hammond family for some years and was treated as little more than a servant until Mr. Hammond died, whereupon Mrs. Hammond divided her children amongst relatives and Anne was sent to the orphanage at Hopetown.

She considered herself as “cursed” by twins — Mrs. Hammond had three sets of twins whom Anne helped raise.

Anne taking care of a child at Mrs. Hammond's. | Anne of green, Anne of green gables, Green gables — Above: Anne with one of the twins

At the age of eleven, Anne was taken from the Hopetown orphanage to the neighbouring province of PEI, which she regarded as her true home ever after.

Unfortunately, she arrived by mistake — her sponsors, the siblings Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, wanted to adopt a boy to help them on their farm, but the neighbour with whom they had sent the message was certain they had requested a girl instead.

Matthew quickly became fascinated by the girl’s good-hearted spirit, charming enthusiasm, and lively imagination, and wanted her to stay at Green Gables from the very first.

The Ultimate Guide to Anne of Green Gables Film Adaptations - Tea and Ink Society — Above: Anne and Matthew

Marilla’s reaction was to send her back to the orphanage, but she was eventually won over by Anne’s quirky joie de vivre — and by the fact that another woman, much harder than herself, was set to take Anne should Marilla decline to keep her.

Life Lessons from Green Gables: Mellow Like Marilla Cuthbert — Above: Anne and Marilla

The American scholar Joseph Brennan noted that for Anne “all things are alive“, as she imagines trees by the roadside welcoming her to Green Gables while a leaning plum tree makes her think that it is offering a veil just for her.

Anne at one point says “Maples are such social things” and likes Lover’s Lane because “… you can think out loud there without people calling you crazy.“

Anne has great powers of imagination, fed by books of poetry and romance, and a passion for “romantic” and beautiful names and places.

When she sees a road lined with apple trees in bloom, she falls silent for a moment before naming the road the “White Way of Delight“.

When spying a pond at the Barry homestead, she christens it the “Lake of Shining Waters.”

Anne had been starved of love at the orphanages she has lived at, and for her, Green Gables is the only home she has ever known.

Anne’s imaginative nature matches well with her passionate, warm side, full of bubbly optimism and enthusiasm.

Anne has an impulsive nature which leads her into all sorts of “scrapes“, and she alternates between being carried away with enthusiasm or being in the “depths of despair“.

Above: The portrait of model Evelyn Nesbit (1885 – 1967) by Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr. (1862 – 1932) which was the inspiration of Anne for Montgomery

One scholar Elizabeth Watson has observed a recurring theme, noting Anne’s observations of sunsets mirror her own development.

Under the White Way of Delight, Anne watches the sun set which is to her a glory where “a painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle“.

By the end of the novel, when Anne watches the sun set, it set across a backdrop of “flowers of quiet happiness“, as Anne is slowly falling in love with Gilbert.

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES : THE SEQUEL - Sullivan Entertainment — Above: Gilbert and Anne

Anne initially made a poor impression on the townsfolk of Avonlea with an outburst at the Cuthberts’ neighbour, the outspoken gossip Mrs. Rachel Lynde, but this was amended by an equally impassioned apology.

Anne soon became ‘bosom friends‘ with a girl from a neighbouring farm, Diana Barry.

Together with Matthew, Diana is Anne’s “kindred spirit“.

Image result for diana barry anne of green gables | Anne of green gables, Green gables, Diana barry — Above: Anne and Diana

The friendship was disrupted by the temporary enmity of Diana’s mother, after Anne mistakenly made Diana drunk with Marilla’s homemade currant wine, mistaking it for raspberry cordial.

I'm Diana From Anne of Green Gables and I am Fucking Drunk - McSweeney's Internet Tendency — Above: Diana and the currant wine

Anne was soon restored to Mrs. Barry’s good graces by saving the life of Diana’s little sister, Minnie May.

Minnie May had an attack of the croup, which Anne was able to cure with a bottle of ipecac and knowledge acquired while caring for the numerous Hammond twins.

Minnie May Barry | Cena de filme, Green gables, Anne de green gables — Above: Minnie May

Throughout her childhood, Anne continued to find herself in similar “scrapes“, often through mistakes and misunderstandings, and no fault of her own.

8 beauty lessons from 'Anne of Green Gables' | Revelist — Above: Anne’s hair to dye for

At one point Anne “admires to the point of nuttiness” an amethyst brooch, which she is falsely accused of stealing, a crime she has to confess to in order to attend a picnic.

YARN | Have you seen my amethyst brooch? | Anne of Green Gables (1985) - S01E01 Part 1 | Video clips by quotes | 22739ad4 | 紗 — Above: “***Have you seen my amethyst brooch?***“

Anne tends to define herself in opposition to older people via humour, and forges a relationship with Marilla Cuthbert via humour.

Revealing Secrets About Anne Of Green Gables — Above: Marilla

The dreamy and imaginative Anne asks that Marilla call her “Cordelia” and “Geraldine” as Anne likes to imagine herself as somebody that she is not.

Anne also formed a complex relationship with Gilbert Blythe, who was two years older than Anne but studying at her level, having had his schooling interrupted when his father became ill.

On their first meeting as schoolmates, Gilbert teased Anne with the nickname “Carrots“.

Jonathan Crombie, Gilbert Blythe, and the "Perfect Man Archetype" | Quill and Quire

Above: Anne and Gilbert

Anne, perceiving it as a personal insult due to sensitivity over her hair colour, became so angry that she broke her slate over his head.

Gazebo TV- Anne of Green Gables: Slate Scene - YouTube — Above: Slate meets head

When her teacher punished her by making her stand in front of the class, and then later punishes her for tardiness by making her sit with “the boys“, specifically Gilbert Blythe, Anne forms a long-lasting hatred of Gilbert Blythe.

Anne tells Diana that “Gilbert Blythe has hurt me excruciatingly“.

Throughout Anne of Green Gables, Gilbert repeatedly displays admiration for Anne, but she coldly rebuffs him.

25 Times Gilbert Blythe From "Anne Of Green Gables" Melted Your Heart — Above: Anne rebuffs Gilbert

Her grudge persisted even after he saved her from a near-disastrous reenactment of Tennyson’s “Lancelot and Elaine” when her leaky boat sank into the pond.

620 Mad about Anne.....and LMM ideas | anne of green gables, green gables, anne — Above: Anne’s reenactment

After this almost fatal accident, Gilbert pleaded with Anne to become his friend but she refused, although she soon came to regret it.

Anne of Green Gables: Gilbert Rescues Anne - YouTube — Above: Anne is rescued by Gilbert

For the rest of their school years in Avonlea, they competed as intellectual rivals for the top of the class, although the competition was entirely good-natured on Gilbert’s side.

However, Anne forms the “Story Club” at the age of 13, which she tells the story of two girls named Cordelia and Geraldine (both of which were aliases she had adopted earlier) who both love Bertram – a variant of Gilbert.

The story ends with Cordelia pushing Geraldine into a river to drown with Bertram, which suggests subconsciously Anne is attracted to Gilbert.

Near the end, Anne and Gilbert walk together to Green Gables, where Gilbert only jokingly says:

“You’ve thwarted destiny long enough.“

What is "Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story?” — Above: Gilbert and Anne

At the end of Anne of Green Gables, Anne looks out of her window admiring Avonlea as an “ideal world of dreams“, through she sees a “bend in the road” thanks to Gilbert.

Mrs. Lynde at the beginning of the book was the self-important busybody of Avonlea who dominated the community; at the end, the book hints that Anne will play the same role, but only much better in the years to come.

Anne of Green Gables: Amazon.de: DVD & Blu-ray

Immediately after graduating from Avonlea’s public school, Anne and Gilbert both went to Queen’s Academy in Charlottetown, which trained them for teaching and university studies.

They split the most prestigious prizes between themselves, and remained “enemies” all through their studies at Queen’s.

Victoria College, University of Toronto by Stan Wojick | University of toronto, Queen's college, University — Above: “*Queen’s Academy*“, Victoria College, University of Toronto

Anne’s grades, especially in English, won her a scholarship to Redmond College, but Matthew’s death and Marilla’s failing eyesight near the end of Anne of Green Gables led Anne to defer her enrollment at Redmond so that she could stay to help at Green Gables.

Gilbert had been appointed as the Avonlea schoolteacher for the following year, but as an act of kindness, he instead took the position at White Sands School and gave the Avonlea position to Anne.

Anne of Green Gables : The Sequel (The Pringles) - YouTube — Above: Anne teaching at Avonlea

She thanked him for the sacrifice and they made amends, becoming friends at last after five years of intense rivalry.

Anne reads some poetry by Virgil, but abandons the book as the beauty of sun-kissed summer day and her coming career as a teacher inspire a sense of happiness and unity with nature.

19th-century imagining of Virgil — Above: Publius Vergilius Maro (aka Virgil) (70 – 19 BC)

Like too many of my generation and the generations that followed, my love of Anne Shirley, of Anne of Green Gables, was sparked not by Ms. Montgomery’s novels but rather by the 1985 Canadian made-for-television drama film, based on the 1908 novel of the same name, and the first in a series of four films (only three of which I have seen, and of these the latter two decades after they were shown on CBC TV).

The film stars Megan Follows in the title role of Anne Shirley and was produced and directed by Kevin Sullivan for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

It was released theatrically in Iran, Israel, Europe and Japan.

(Green Gables still attracts thousands of Japanese tourists every year.)

Agreement reached for release of 'Anne of Green Gables' in Japan | Provincial | News | The Guardian

The film aired on the CBC as a two-part mini-series on 1 and 2 December 1985.

Both parts of the film were among the highest-rated programs of any genre ever to air on a Canadian television network.

The miniseries, wholly produced in Canada, became successful around the world, and remains to this day the highest-rated drama in Canadian television history.

Anne Of Green Gables - The Sequel - 2 Disc Special Edition DVD: Amazon.de: Megan Follows, Colleen Dewhusrt, Wendy Hiller, Kevin Sullivan, Megan Follows, Colleen Dewhusrt: DVD & Blu-ray

As far as I know, Megan Follows is a brunette (With women, who knows for sure?) but her performance and the character of Anne Shirley, gave me an attraction for redheads (gingers) that I never lost.

(Surprisingly, most of my past belles were brunettes and I married a blonde.)

There was something so damn appealing about Anne Shirley’s strength and spirit that I (and millions like me) forever fell in love with her.

Anne was an orphan like me (I would not discover until my mid-20s that my father still lived), Marilla reminded me of the humourless matron who raised me and Matthew was the role model that I wished Fred who allowed us to share his home would have been.

Gilbert represented the difficulties men faced when seeking the love of a woman and the hope that patience and kindness would eventually bear fruit.

Avonlea was any small town anywhere in Canada and yet was as magical as Prince Edward Island itself.

Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel (1987) — The Movie Database (TMDb)

Anne Shirley was post-Laura Secord and pre-Terry Fox, a folk hero who may not have existed but certainly could have, should have, and does exist while we insist she does.

Painting of Laura Secord led by Mohawk warriors through the woods

Above: Laura Secord (1775 – 1868) is led through the woods by Mohawk warriors to warn the British of an American attack

A young man with short, curly hair and an artificial right leg runs down a street. He wears shorts and a T-shirt that reads "Marathon of Hope" — Above: Terry Fox (1958 – 1981) in Toronto during his Marathon of Hope cross-country run

Anne, who should not have thrived, who came from disadvantage, who rose from disappointment, who had every reason to succumb to the despair her past spawned, fostered an imagination, an inspiration, a determination to dream and dare to be herself.

She is also a reminder of how many children have not been so blessed as Anne Shirley in their ability to rise above the abyss of their fates.

Products of broken homes are often themselves broken.

Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel (1987) Megan Follow Plays Anne Shirley ☆ Toronto stage and wardrobe designer M… | Anne of green gables, Anne of green, Green gables

We return to Wikipedia for more on Georgetown…..

The settlement of Glen Williams had been called Williamsburg, but the name was changed in 1852 when the post office opened.

The Barbers’ brother-in-law, Benajah Williams, was one of the first settlers here and the community’s name was given in his honour.

Limehouse, formerly Fountain Green, was a small settlement that grew after the railway arrived in the area in 1856.

In addition to lime kilns (which opened in about 1840), a sawmill, blanket factory and paint factory opened in the village.

In 1893, a fire destroyed the woollen mill, a paint factory and wood at the waterlime mill in Limehouse creating a serious financial problem for the settlement.

The lime industry operated until 1917.

In 1846, Georgetown had a grist mill, sawmill, cloth factory, tavern, cabinet maker, foundry, chair maker, two tanneries, two tailors, two stores, three wagon makers, three shoemakers, and four blacksmiths.

The population was about 700.

The Grand Trunk Railway arrived in 1856 and a line of the Hamilton and North-Western Railway reached the community about 20 years later.

The two provided a convenient method for transporting not only passengers but manufactured goods.

Hotels opened near the station, including the Railroad Exchange in a building that still stands.

Georgetown was incorporated as a village in 1864.

In 1869, the population was 1,500.

The Ontario Gazetteer mentioned Barber Brothers as a noted paper goods manufacturer with a staff of 40.

The Province of Ontario Gazetteer and Directory, 1869: Containing Descriptions of Cities, Towns and Villages in the Province, with the Names of ... and Principal Inhabitants (Classic Reprint): McEvoy, Henry: 9781390943856: Amazon.com: Books

The settlement was incorporated as the village of Georgetown in 1865.

The 1860s and 1870s were prosperous years.

Recently opened businesses in that era included the Georgetown Herald newspaper, Culp and Mackenzie’s carriage making enterprise, the Creelman brothers’ machine shop and the Bank of Hamilton, the first to open in the entire Halton County.

Georgetown Herald: Halton Hills Newspapers

By 1880, the Chapel Street School and Baptist Church and the Town Hall had been built.

The high school opened in 1887.

Georgetown residents began to receive municipal water in 1891, piped by gravity.

Georgetown, Ontario | Halton hills, Canada, Ontario

Electricity was not available until 1913 although John R. Barber had purchased a generator in 1888 and installed it at the Credit River.

It provided power for the family’s paper mill.

The Abandoned Barber Paper Mill - Drone Footage - YouTube

On 13 May 1895, brothers Sam & John McGibbon leased, in partnership, Thomas Clark’s Hotel for $600/year.

The Hotel McGibbon was built by Robert Jones and was sold to Clark in about 1867.

A double veranda graced the Main & Mill Street side of the building until the hotel was ravaged by fire in the 1880s.

After the fire, a third floor was added to part of the building.

The McGibbon family lived at the Hotel.

Sam’s wife, Ann, kept white linen in the dining room, and in its earliest years, the Hotel had been a popular place for wedding receptions and banquets.

The Toronto Suburban Railway Company ran the Toronto-Guelph electric rail line through Georgetown from 1917 until the Guelph line was closed in 1931.

This line had transported both goods and passengers but business had declined substantially.

The Georgetown Station on Main Street (at the current Canada Trust site) was a familiar landmark.

The venture failed because of the Depression and the increasing popularity of the automobile, buses and trucks.

Its proximity to the competing Grand Trunk Railway (Canadian National) line was also a factor.

By 1921 the village had over 2,000 residents and was incorporated as a town in 1922, with LeRoy Dale as the first mayor.

Many historic buildings still stand in the heart of Georgetown and in its small, more rural communities.

The history of Georgetown from first settler to first mayor does not excite the reader, for this history could be that of almost anywhere, and then many thousands of miles away…..

Every nation has its topics, its dark moments, that its people would prefer not to discuss, would prefer to forget, to ignore, to pretend they do not exist, that they never existed.

Germany, for all its flaws, has chosen to travel a different path in acknowledging its role in the Holocaust and every school child is taught how wrong the nation was to allow itself to be subjugated by National Socialism and how culpable its people were for the deliberate destruction of millions of Jews in concentration camps across Europe.

Japan committed atrocities during its days of Empire, but saving face is more traditional a solution than acknowledging its responsibility for barbaric acts and to the victims and legacy of those acts.

America’s mass slaughter of native nations and the theft of their lands, its warmongering over generations across the globe, and its use of atomic weapons on civilian populations, are testaments to a dark and bloody past, made palatable to its people by extreme nationalism and expert manipulation through fear and prejudice.

Turkey has its own skeletons in its own closet.

The Armenian Genocide was the systematic mass murder and ethnic cleansing of around 1 million ethnic Armenians from the territory of the present-day Republic of Turkey and adjoining regions by the Ottoman Empire and its ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), during World War I.

Den armenske leder Papasian ved Der-ez-Zor - PA 0699 U 36 150 (restored).jpg — Above: Armenian leader Papasyan seeing what’s left after the horrendous murders near Deir-ez-Zor in 1915 – 1916. Some of the bones have been washed away by the Euphrates river.

(The terminology of the Armenian Genocide is different in English, Turkish, and Armenian languages and has led to political controversies around the issue of Armenian Genocide denial and Armenian Genocide recognition.

Although the majority of historians writing in English use the word “genocide“, other terms exist.

Above: The Armenian quarter of Adana after the 1909 massacres

Medz Yeghern (‘Great Evil Crime’) is the Armenian term for genocide, especially in regards to the Armenian Genocide.

Usage of the term has been the subject of political controversy because it is perceived as more ambiguous than the word genocide.

Above: Armenians gathered in a city prior to deportation. They were murdered outside the city.

Contemporary English-speaking observers have used unambiguous terminology to describe the genocide, including “the murder of a nation“, “race extermination“, and so forth.

In their declaration of May 1915, the Entente powers – a coalition of countries led by France, Britain, Russia, Italy and Japan against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, Burlgaria and their collonies during the First World War (1914–1918) – called the ongoing deportation of Armenian people a “crime against humanity“.

Crimes against humanity later became a category in international law following the Nuremberg trials.

(The Nuremberg trials (German: Nürnberger Prozesse) were a series of military tribunals held after World War II by the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war.

The trials were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, judicial, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, and participated in the Holocause and other war crimes.

The trials (30 September – 1 October 1946) were held in Nuremberg, Germany, and their decisions marked a turning point between classical and contemporary international law.)

Above: Cross examination of Hermann Göring (1893 – 1946)

The English word genocide was coined by the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900 – 1959) in 1944.

Raphael Lemkin, Photograph 6.jpg — Above: Raphael Lemkin (1900 – 1959)

Lemkin’s interest in war crimes stemmed to the 1921 trial of Armenian assassin Soghomon Tehlirian (1896 – 1960) for the 15 March 1921 Berlin murder of Talat Pasha (former Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and main architect of the Armenian Genocide).

Photograph of the stone Monument of Liberty in Istanbul — Above: Talat Pasha, the architect of the genocide, was buried in 1943 at the Monument of Liberty, Istanbul as a national hero.

(At his trial, Tehlirian argued, “I have killed a man, but I am not a murderer.”

The jury acquitted him.)

Soghomon Tehlirian 1921.jpg — Above: Soghomon Tehlirian (1896 – 1960)

Lemkin recognized the fate of the Armenians as one of the main cases of genocide in the 20th century.

Although most international law scholars agree that the 1948 Genocide Convention, which established the prohibition of genocide in international criminal law, is not retroactive, the events of the Armenian Genocide otherwise meet the legal definition of genocide.

David Gutman states that “few if any scholars, however, reject the use of ‘genocide’” for the Armenian case solely because they consider it anachronistic.

However, it is possible to write about the Armenian Genocide without downplaying or denying it, using a variety of terms other than genocide.

As well as having a legal meaning, the word genocide also “contains an inherent value judgment, one that privileges the morality of the victims over the perpetrators“.

The term ethnic cleansing, which was invented during the 1990s Yugoslav Wars, is often used alongside or instead of genocide in academic works.

Some Turkish historians are willing to call the Armenian Genocide ethnic cleansing or a crime against humanity but hesitate at genocide.

The Turkish government uses expressions such as “so-called Armenian genocide” (Turkish: sözde Ermeni soykırımı), “Armenian Question” (Turkish: Ermeni sorunu), often characterizing the charge of genocide as “Armenian allegations“or “Armenian lies“.

Turkish historian Dogan Gürpinar writes that sözde soykırım is “the peculiar idiom to reluctantly refer to 1915 but outright reject it“, invented in the early 1980s to further Armenian Genocide denial.

However, in 2006, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered government officials to say “the events of 1915” instead of “so-called Armenian genocide“.

Erdoğan, as well as some Turkish intellectuals, have distinguished between “good” Armenians (those who live in Turkey and Armenia) who do not discuss the genocide and “bad” ones (primarily the Armenian diaspora) who insist on recognition.)

Above: *The Massacre of a Nation*, ***Washington Herald***, 19 December 1915

(The Armenian diaspora refers to the communities of Armenians outside Armenia and other locations where Armenians are considered an indigenous population.

Since antiquity, Armenians have established communities in many regions throughout the world.

However, the modern Armenian diaspora was largely formed as a result of World War I, when the Armenian Genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire forced Armenians living in their homeland to flee or risk being killed.

Less than one third of the world’s Armenian population lives in Armenia.

Their pre-World War I population area was six times larger than that of present-day Armenia, including the eastern regions of Turkey, the northern part of Iran, and the southern part of Georgia.

By the year 2000, there were 7,580,000 Armenians living abroad in total.

Today, the Armenian diaspora refers to communities of Armenians living outside of Armenia.

The total Armenian population living worldwide is estimated to be 11,000,000.

Of those, approximately 3 million currently live in Armenia, 130,000 in the de facto independent Republic of Artsakh and 120,000 in the region of Javakheti in neighboring Georgia.

This leaves approximately 7,000,000 throughout the diaspora (with the largest populations in Russia, the United States, France, Argentina, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Canada, Ukraine, Greece, Cyprus, and Australia).

One of the largest and most established Armenian communities abroad exists in the United States.

In the year 2000, there were 945,615 Armenians living in the United States and Canada.)

(Armenian Canadians are citizens and permanent residents of Canada who have total or partial Armenian ancestry.

According to the 2016 Canadian Census, Armenian Canadians number almost 64,000, while independent estimates claim around 80,000 Canadians of Armenian origin, with the highest estimates reaching 100,000.

Though significantly smaller than the Armenian American community, the formation of both underwent similar stages beginning in the late 19th century and gradually expanding in the latter 20th century and beyond.

Most Armenian Canadians are descendants of Armenian Genocide survivors from the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Egypt), with less than 7% of all Canadian Armenians having been born in Armenia.

Some 1,500 Genocide survivors—mostly women and children—came to Canada as refugees.

Today most Armenian Canadians live in Greater Montréal and Greater Toronto, where they have established churches, schools and community centres.)

Arminfo: Armenian Vice-Speaker and Ambassador of Canada to Armenia discussed issues of Armenian-Canadian cooperation

(Many Turkish intellectuals have been reluctant to use the term genocide because, according to Akçam, “by qualifying it a genocide you become a member of a collective associated to a crime, not any crime but to the ultimate crime“.

According to Halil Karaveli, “the word genocide incites strong, emotional reactions among Turks from all walks of society and of every ideological inclination“.)

Why Turkey is Authoritarian: From Atatürk to Erdoğan by Halil Karaveli

During their invasion of Russian and Persian territory, Ottoman paramilitaries massacred local Armenians.

Massacres turned into genocide following catastrophic Ottoman defeat in the Battle of Sarikamish (22 December 1914 – 17 January 1915), a loss blamed on Armenian treachery.

Above: Russian trenches in the forests of Sarikamish

Ottoman leaders took isolated indications of Armenian resistance as evidence of a nonexistent coordinated conspiracy.

The deportations were intended as a “definitive solution to the Armenian Question” and to permanently forestall the possibility of Armenian autonomy or independence.

Above: Six Armenian provinces (in pink) of the Ottoman Empire

(Sadly, deportations were not an Ottoman invention, nor has Canada been exempt from such a tragedy.

In Canada, the Expulsion of the Acadians, also known as the Great Upheaval, the Great Expulsion, and the Great Deportation (French: Le Grand Dérangement or Déportation des Acadiens), was the forced removal by the British of the Acadian people from the present-day Canadian Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and northern Maine — parts of an area historically known as Acadia (l’Acadie), causing the death of thousands of people.

The Expulsion (1755–1764) occurred during the French and Indian War (1754 – 1763) (the North American theatre of the Seven Years’ War: 1756 – 1763) and was part of the British military campaign against New France (Nouveau France).

The British first deported Acadians to the Thirteen Colonies, and after 1758, transported additional Acadians to Britain and France.

In all, of the 14,100 Acadians in the region, approximately 11,500 Acadians were deported.

A census of 1764 indicates that 2,600 Acadians remained in the colony having eluded capture.)

Above: Deportation of the Acadians, Grand Pré

Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman Army were disarmed pursuant to a February order, and were later killed.

On 24 April 1915, the Ottoman authorities rounded up, arrested, and deported hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders from Constantinople (now Istanbul).

At the orders of Talat Pasha (1874 – 1921), an estimated 800,000 to 1.2 million Armenian women, children, and elderly or infirm people were sent on death marches leading to the Syrian Desert in 1915 and 1916.

(A Middle Eastern Trail of Tears…..)

(The Trail of Tears was part of a series of forced displacements of approximately 100,000 Native Americans between 1830 and 1850 by the US government, known as the Indian removal.)

Driven forward by paramilitary escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to robbery, rape, and massacre.

In the Syrian Desert, they were dispersed into a series of concentration camps.

In early 1916 another wave of massacres were ordered, leaving about 200,000 deportees alive by the end of 1916.

Above: Armenian people are marched to a nearby prison in Mezireh by armed Ottoman soldiers during the Armenian Genocide, Kharpert, Ottoman Empire, April 1915

Around 100,000 to 200,000 Armenian women and children were forcibly converted to Islam and integrated into Muslim households.

Massacres and ethnic cleansing of Armenian survivors were carried out by the Turkish nationalist movement during the Turkish War of Independence after World War I.

The Armenian Genocide resulted in the destruction of more than two millennia of Armenian civilization in eastern Asia Minor.

With the destruction and expulsion of Syriac and Greek Orthodox Christians, it enabled the creation of an ethno-national Turkish state.

Prior to World War II, the Armenian Genocide was widely considered the greatest atrocity in history.

As of 2021, 30 countries, including the US, have recognized the events as genocide.

Against the academic consensus, Turkey denies that the deportation of Armenians was a genocide or wrongful act.

Considering the inflammatory Wikipedia assessment that the Genocide was committed not only by the Ottomans but was as well by the Turks who sought independence from Ottoman rule and that the destruction of Orthodoxy in Turkey enabled the creation of the Turkish state, the Armenian Question puts a pall on the glory and honour of the Turkish Revolution, which is something one simply does not do in Turkey.

It is not an easy pill to swallow, the suggestion that the nation is built on the destruction of others, even though much of recorded history is replete with similar scenarios.

No Turkish government has acknowledged that a crime was committed against the Armenian people and all major political parties in Turkey, except the Peoples’ Democratic Party, support Armenian Genocide denial.

Ottoman and Turkish leaders argued, and continue to argue, that the mass deportation of Armenians was justified by national security concerns.

Above: Logo of the Peoples’ Democratic Party

As aforementioned, Minister of War Enver Pasha took over command of the Ottoman armies for the invasion of Russian territory, and tried to encircle the Russian Caucasus Army at the Battle of Sarikamish.

Unprepared for the harsh winter conditions (a common and oft-repeated mistake made by those attempting to battle Russians), Pasha’s forces were routed, losing more than 60,000 men.

The retreating Ottoman army indiscriminately destroyed dozens of Ottoman Armenian villages in Bitlis Vilayet, massacring their inhabitants.

Returning to Constantinople, Enver Pasha publicly blamed his defeat on Armenians in the region, saying they had actively sided with the Russians, which became a consensus among CUP leaders.

Enver Pasha 1911.jpg — Above: Enver Pasha (1881-1922)

Claims of Armenian revolts deflected blame for the Ottoman military’s failures, especially Sarikamish.

Any local incident or discovery of arms in the possession of Armenians was cited as evidence for a coordinated conspiracy against the empire.

Professor Taner Akçam concludes that “the allegations of an Armenian revolt in the documents have no basis in reality but were deliberately fabricated“.

“It’s not easy for a nation to call its founding fathers murderers and thieves.”

Most historians date the final decision to exterminate the Armenian population to the end of March or early April 1915.

Historian Ronald Grigor Suny states:

“Deportations ostensibly taken for military reasons rapidly radicalized monstrously into an opportunity to rid Anatolia once and for all of those peoples perceived to be an imminent existential threat to the future of the Empire.”

They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else" | Princeton University Press

For decades, Turkish school textbooks did not mention Armenians as part of Ottoman history.

More recently, textbooks have acknowledged that Armenians were subjected to mass deportation, but claimed that this action was justified, emphasizing Armenian violence.

Acknowledgment of the Genocide is punishable under Article 301 of the Penal Code, which prohibits insulting the Turkish nation and state institutions.

(I wonder where the line is drawn between criticism and insult.)

Monday's Monument: Monument to Humanity, Kars, Turkey | peaceCENTER — Above: Monument to Humanity

(Created by Turkish artist Mehmet Aksoy in 2009, intended to commemorate all war victims,, the 30 m (98 ft) tall monument stood atop Kazıktepe, across from the ancient Castle of Kars. Visible from neighboring Armenia, the statue depicted two halves of a man, each reaching to hold the other’s hand. The monument was demolished in April 2011, only months after being criticized by then–Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a “freak” or “monstrosity“.)

Most Turkish citizens support the state’s policies of denial, and the word “Armenian” has become one of the worst insults in the Turkish language.

(Of that I do not know, as I have yet to find a reason to insult anyone or be insulted by anyone.)

Many Kurds, however, who themselves have felt they have suffered political repression in Turkey, have recognized and condemned the Genocide.

On 19 January 2007, Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink (1954 – 2007), who had worked to promote reconciliation and acknowledgment of the Genocide, was assassinated.

Turkey’s century-long effort to prevent any recognition or mention of the Genocide in foreign countries has included millions of dollars in lobbying, as well as intimidation and threats.

The country set up multiple agencies to counter Armenian claims about the Genocide.

Historian Donald Bloxham recognizes that since “denial has always been accompanied by rhetoric of Armenian treachery, aggression, criminality, and territorial ambition, it actually enunciates an ongoing if latent threat of Turkish ‘revenge'”, threatening the security of Armenia.

The Great Game of Genocide - Bloxham, Donald - Dussmann - Das Kulturkaufhaus

This deportation business, as you know, has put the whole world in an uproar, and has branded us all as murderers.

We knew even before this was done that the Christian world would not stand for it, and that they would turn their fury and hatred on us because of it.

But why should we call ourselves murderers?

These things that were done were to secure the future of our homeland, which we hold more sacred and dear than our very lives.

Hasan Fehmi, speaking to the 1920 Turkish Parliament

Hasan Fehmi Ataç.jpg — Above: Hasan Fehmi (1879 – 1961)

Turkish historian Dogan Gürpinar says that acknowledging the Genocide would “be tantamount to casting doubt on the credibility of the foundational axioms of Kemalism and the Turkish nation-state“.

Conspiracy Theories in Turkey: Conspiracy Nation: Amazon.de: Gurpinar, Dogan: Bücher

One factor in explaining denial is the Sevres Syndrome, a popular belief that Turkey is besieged by implacable enemies.

The term originates from the Treaty of Sevres of the 1920s, which partitoned the Ottoman Empire between the Kurds, Armenia, Greece, Britain, France and Italy, leaving a small unaffected area around Ankara under Turkish rule.

However, it was never implemented since it was left unratified by the Ottoman Parliament and due to Turkish victory on all fronts during the subsequent Turkish War of Independence.

Turkish historian Taner Akcam describes this attitude as an ongoing perception that “there are forces which continually seek to disperse and destroy us, and it is necessary to defend the state against this danger.”

The term has been used in the scope of the Kurdish conflict in Turkey, the accession of Turkey into the European Union in 1987 by Turkish nationalist circles and the recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

Despite the unlikelihood that recognition would lead to any territorial changes, many Turkish officials believe that genocide recognition is part of a plot to partition Turkey or extract other reparations.

Acknowledgement of the Genocide is perceived by the state and national security establishment as a threat to Turkey’s national security and Turks who do so are seen as traitors.

A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility Tom Thorne Novels: Amazon.de: Akcam, Taner: Fremdsprachige Bücher

During his fieldwork in an Anatolian village in the 1980s, anthropologist Sam Kaplan found that “a visceral fear of Armenians returning and reclaiming their lands still gripped local imagination“.

The Pedagogical State: Education and the Politics of National Culture in Post-1980 Turkey | Sam Kaplan

I am simply a Canadian teacher with no ambitions whatsoever to question the existence or non-existence of the Armenian Question.

I am only repeating what others have said.

I have not personally seen the evidence for or against the Armenian Question.

It is said that it is a crime documented in a large body of evidence and affirmed by the vast majority of scholars.

It is said that the perpetrators denied the Genocide as they carried it out, claiming Armenians were resettled for military reasons, not exterminated.

It is said that in the Genocide’s aftermath incriminating documents were systematically destroyed, and denial has been the policy of every government of the Republic of Turkey as of 2021.

Armenia's genocide: death and denial | Financial Times

Borrowing the arguments used by the CUP to justify its actions, denial rests on the assumption that the “relocation” of Armenians was a legitimate state action in response to a real or perceived Armenian uprising that threatened the existence of the empire during wartime.

Deniers assert the CUP intended to resettle Armenians rather than kill them.

Above: Logo of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)

They claim the death toll is exaggerated or attribute the deaths to other factors, such as a purported civil war, disease, bad weather, rogue local officials, or bands of Kurds and outlaws.

Therefore, the main argument is that “There was no genocide, and the Armenians were to blame for it.“

Denial is usually accompanied by “rhetoric of Armenian treachery, aggression, criminality, and territorial ambition“.

The Armenian genocide – the Guardian briefing | Armenian genocide | The Guardian

It is said that since the 1920s, Turkey has worked to prevent official recognition or even mention of the Genocide in foreign countries.

It is said that these efforts have included millions of dollars spent on lobbying, the creation of research institutes, and intimidation and threats.

Bundestag passes Armenia ′genocide′ resolution unanimously, Turkey recalls ambassador | News | DW | 02.06.2016

Denial also affects Turkey’s domestic policies and is taught in Turkish schools.

Some Turkish citizens who acknowledge the Genocide have faced prosecution for “insulting Turkishness“.

Above: Seal of the Turkish Parliament

(Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code currently reads as follows:

A person who publicly denigrates the Turkish nation, the State of the Turkish Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and the judicial institutions of the State shall be punishable by imprisonment from 6 months to 2 years.
A person who publicly denigrates the military and police organizations of the State will too receive the same punishment.
Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.
The prosecution under this Article will require the approval of the Minister of Justice.)

Above: Logo of the Turkish Ministry of Justice

(Which does beg the question of what precisely is meant by “Turkishness“.)

The century-long effort by the Turkish state to deny the Genocide sets it apart from other cases of genocide in history.

Azerbaijan also denies the genocide and campaigns against its recognition internationally.

Most Turkish citizens and political parties in Turkey support the state’s denial policy.

The Memorial and Museum of Martyred Turks Massacred by Armenians (Turkish: Ermeniler Tarafından Katledilen Şehit Türkler Anıt ve Müzesi) or the Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum (Turkish: Iğdır Soykırım Anıt-Müzesi) is a memorial-museum complex to commemorate alleged massacres of Turks by Armenians during World War I and the Turkish – Armenian War (24 September – 2 December 1920).

Photograph of the Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum in Turkey — Above: The Igdir Genocide Memorial and Museum promotes the view that Armenians committed genocide against Turks, rather than vice versa.

Photograph of dead people — Above: In the 1916 book **The Armenian Aspirations and Revolutionary Movements**, many photographs claimed to depict Armenian atrocities against Muslims, such as this one, were published.

The construction for the memorial started on 1 August 1997 and it was dedicated on 5 October 1999 in Igdir, Turkey.

Its height is 43.5 metres, making it the tallest monument in Turkey.

Minister of State Ramazan Mirzaoğlu claimed in his address during the monument’s opening ceremony that, between 1915 and 1920, Armenians killed almost 80,000 people in Iğdır.

Ramazan Mirzaoğlu Kimdir? Eşi Kim? Biyografi Sitesi - Kimoneo — Above: Ramazan Mirzaoglu

Turkish President Süleyman Demirel was also present.

Suleyman Demirel 1998.jpg — Above: Suleyman Demirel (1924 – 2015)

In fact, the entire population of the Surmali district (which included Igdir) by the beginning of the 20th century was 89,055 people, of which Turks (“Tatars“) were only 46%, while in the city of Igdir itself, Armenians accounted for 84% of the population.

As such, it is said that the claim is a mathematical impossibility.

The memorial was built to further Armenian Genocide denial and the disproven narrative that, during World War I, it was Armenians who killed Turks rather than vice versa.

Above: A mass grave excavation in the town of Yeşilyayla, Erzurum

French journalists Laure Marchand and Guillaume Perrier call the monument “the ultimate caricature of the Turkish government’s policy of denying the 1915 genocide by rewriting history and transforming victims into guilty parties“.

Amazon.com: Turkey and the Armenian Ghost: On the Trail of the Genocide eBook: Marchand, Laure, Perrier, Guillaume, Blythe, Debbie: Kindle Store

Bilgin Ayata on Armenian Weekly criticized the memorial “aggressive, nationalistic, and outright hostile.”

The European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy announced that the Memorial is designed to deny the Armenian Genocide and demanded its closure.

EuropeanArmenianFederationforJusticeandDemocracyLogo.jpg

It is said that the denial of the Genocide contributes to the ongoing (since 20 February 1988) Nagorno – Karabakh conflict as well as ongoing violence against Kurds in Turkey.

Above: General view of the Kurdish – Turkish conflict

(The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is an ethnic and territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno – Karabakh, inhabited mostly by ethnic Armenians, and seven surrounding districts, inhabited mostly by Azerbaijanis until their expulsion during the First Nagorno – Karabakh War (20 February 1988 – 12 May 1994), which are de facto controlled by the self-declared Republic of Artsakh, but are internationally recognized as de jure part of Azerbaijan.

The conflict has its origins in the early 20th century, though the present conflict began in 1988, when the Karabakh Armenians demanded that Karabakh be transferred from Soviet Azerbaijan to Soviet Armenia.

The conflict escalated into a full-scale war in the early 1990s.

A ceasefire (the Bishkek Protocol) signed in 1994 provided for two decades of relative stability, which significantly deteriorated along with Azerbaijan’s increasing frustration with the status quo, at odds with Armenia’s efforts to cement it.

A four-day escalation from 1 to 5 April 2016 became the deadliest ceasefire violation until the 2020 conflict (27 September to 10 November).

The fighting stopped with a ceasefire agreement on 10 November 2020, by which most of the territories lost by Azerbaijan during the First Nagorno – Karabakh War were returned to Azerbaijan.

The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, has claimed that the conflict has ended.)

I neither wish to question the Armenian nor the Turkish peoples, though if the claims made by the Armenians are valid (and there seems to be enough plausibility in these claims to suggest they might be), then I can certainly understand the difficulty that the questioning of conscience requires upon the consciousness of a nation, as recognition would contradict Turkey’s founding mythos.

Who am I to question a nation’s mythos?

Türk Kurtuluş Savaşı - kolaj.jpg — Above: Images of the Turkish War of Independence

My sole purpose for mentioning the Armenian Question at all is in reference to Georgetown and children…..

The Georgetown Boys, or Canada’s Noble Experiment, was the first humanitarian act on an international scale by the country.

This effort was spearheaded by the Armenian Relief Association of Canada.

At this time Canada started to take in orphaned children from the Middle East.

The first 50 came in 1923.

On 1 July 1923, the first 50 orphans of the Armenian Genocide arrived in Georgetown to be educated and trained for farming at the Cedarvale Farm, now known as Cedarvale Park, operated by the Armenian Canadian Relief Fund.

The following year another 40 boys came.

By the end of the project, a total of 110 came to Georgetown, and eventually came to be called the Georgetown Boys.

The Armenian orphans lived, worked and were educated on Cedarvale Farm near Georgetown.

The boys were largely trained for farming.

By 1927 a total of 91 of the original boys were placed on farms throughout Ontario.

By 1928, most of the orphans originally at the farm had homes on farms.

The majority became Canadian citizens.

In 1929 the farm home of the boys was renamed the Cedarvale School for Girls.

In addition to boys, about 40 girls and women were taken in by the Canadian government.^[1]

The original farm is now part of Cedarvale Park in Halton Hills.

An Ontario Provincial Plaque was erected in Cedarvale Park on 26 June 2010, designating it a municipal historic site honouring the Armenian boys who lived there.

An Ontario Heritage Trust plaque was added in 2011.

THE ARMENIAN BOYS' FARM HOME, GEORGETOWN - Ontario Provincial Plaques on Waymarking.com

Aris Alexanian was a teacher and assistant superintendent at the school.

Alexanian helped the boys start a newsletter called Ararat.

The newsletter was written and published by the boys and used as a tool to improve their English skills.

He went on to open an Oriental rug store in Hamilton, Ontario, which has grown throughout Ontario and is now known as Alexanian Carpet and Flooring.

A comprehensive book on the life of the Armenian orphans in Georgetown was written by Jack Apramian in 1976.

The Georgetown Boys is written in the first person since Apramian himself was a Georgetown boy who arrived with the first group in 1923.

The Armenian children retained some of their Armenian heritage while facing pressure to assimilate.

Jack Apramian’s original self-published book was revised by Lorne Shirinian (including the addition of some mistakes) and republished by the Zoryan Institute in 2009.

Aram’s Choice, a children’s book written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch and illustrated by Muriel Wood, was published in 2006 by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Canada.

This was the first work of commercial fiction on the subject of the Georgetown Boys.

This illustrated chapter book follows the journey of the first group of boys from their exile in Corfu all the way to the Georgetown Boys’ farm.

In 2009, the sequel, Call Me Aram, also written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch and illustrated by Muriel Wood was published.

This book was about the Boys’ first few months in Canada and their quest to retain their own Armenian names.

Both of these books received high critical acclaim.

Aram’s Choice was shortlisted for the Canadian Library Association Children’s Book of the Year Award, as well as the Ontario Library Association’s Silver Birch Express Award and their Golden Oak Award.

Call Me Aram was also shortlisted for the Silver Birch Express and Golden Oak.

How easily we forget that it is the most vulnerable members of our society who pay for our mistakes, whether those mistakes are war, persecution, poverty or pandemic.

It is the young who pay the price.

It is the young who pay for the inquities of their elders.

The Georgetown area had no early history of a concentration of French Canadians, but that changed after World War II.

First, in 1947, a boys’ orphan farm relocated from St. Catherines to Georgetown.

This orphanage was operated by Father Clovis Beauregard and his niece, Therese St. Jean.

The Acadian boys from the orphanage decided to remain here in adulthood.

The boys had learned apple farming and other Acadian families moved here to assist them with their apple business.

Photos — Allison's Farm Market | Georgetown Halton Hills

Second, in 1957 a French-Canadian Association was formed.

By 1966, about 150 French-speaking Catholic families created their own parish when the old Holy Cross Church was rededicated as L’Eglise Sacre Coeur.

In the mid-1940s, the population of Georgetown was close to 4,000 and began to grow more quickly in the 1950s when Rex Heslop bought farms and developed the Delrex subdivision.

The Hotel McGibbon was still operating although Sam McGibbon had died in 1940.

A daughter, Gladys, and a son, Jack, took over the business until 1962 when it was sold to Isaac Sitzer Investments and later to George and Nick Markou purchased the hotel in 1978 and operated it until the property was sold to a condominium developer in 2015.

Buyers blame developer, town in Georgetown condo cancellation | The Star — Above: Hotel McGibbon condo project

In 1962, the Moore Park subdivision started construction and would attract more residents to town.

By that time, Georgetown had its own hospital.

Apologize for the inconvenience': Georgetown COVID-19 testing centre temporarily closed

The GO (Government of Ontario) train arrived in Georgetown in 1974.

The service has since expanded with a great deal of available parking at the Georgetown GO Station and frequent commuter trains on weekdays.

On 1 January 1974, Georgetown became part of the Town of Halton Hills when it amalgamated with the Town of Acton and most of the Township of Esquesing.

Together with the Town of Milton, the Town of Oakville and the City of Burlington, the Regional Munnicipality of Halton was formed, replacing Halton County.

Halton Hills is well known for its terrain including slopes and inclines.

In 1932, Bill Gauser proposed the idea to change the name from Halton to Halton Hills.

One of most significant changes since then included the Georgetown South residential expansion that started in 1989.

The two paper companies, Provincial Papers and Georgetown Coated Paper Company closed in 1991 and 1977 respectively.

Major industries with head offices and facilities in Georgetown include Mold Masters Limited (now Milacron), CPI Canada, Eastwood Guitars, and Saputo.

Other major industrial concerns include Cooper Standard, ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) Cocoa (was Ambrosia Chocolate), Howmet Georgetown Casting, a division of Alcoa Power and Propulsion and Kingsbury Technologies (Canada) Inc.

The community also serves as the Canadian headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Pin by Dawn Rowland on Branches | Kingdom hall, Watch tower, Place of worship — Above: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Canadian headquarters, Georgetown

Jehovah’s Witnesses is a millenarian (change is coming) restorationist (a return to that ol’ time religion) Christian denomination with nontrinitarian (disbelief in the trinity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit) beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity.

The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved in evangelism (preaching) and an annual Memorial attendance of over 17 million.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are directed by the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a group of elders in Warwick (NY), which establishes all doctrines based on its interpretations of the Bible.

They believe that the destruction of the present world system at Armageddon is imminent, and that the establishment of God’s kingdom over the Earth is the only solution for all problems faced by humanity.

9 things you likely didn't know about Jehovah's Witnesses

It is usually easy to spot a Canadian in a foreign clime, for often they are sprouting something on their person that shouts:

“I am Canadian, eh?“

(Or the diehard Québecois nationalist with an omnipresent fleur-de-lis that shouts just as loudly:

“Je viens de Québec, hein?“)

The reason is not so much that we are proud to be Canadian as we know that it is easy for us to be mistaken for Americans (until we discuss politics or universal healthcare).

What does not help the mistaken misidentification is our inability to keep Americans from spreading their notions across our borders.

And international notions are something my train journey from London to Toronto made me consider, from Pentecostals and baseball in St. Marys to Communists in Guelph.

I tend to think of myself as a fairly tolerant fellow, but I must confess Jehovah’s Witnesses make me question that tolerance.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are best known for their door-to-door preaching, distributing literature such as The Watchtower and Awake!, and for refusing military service and blood transfusions.

They consider the use of God’s name vital for proper worship.

They reject Trinitarianism, inherent immortality of the soul, and hellfire, which they consider to be unscriptural doctrines.

They do not observe Christmas, Easter, birthdays, or other holidays and customs they consider to have pagan origins incompatible with Christianity.

If there ever were a more irreverant song (or a more irreverant singer) than Australia’s Kevin “Bloody” Wilson’s Festival of Life, I have yet to encounter it.

In his song he……

Well, brace yourself….

Kevin Bloody Wilson signing an autograph after a performance on the 2005 DILLIGAF Tour

Above: Kevin “Bloody” Wilson

CHORUS

Ah, the Festival of Life is ‘in’ to save my f’in’
soul

They don’t want me drinkin’ piss or screwin’ round no
more

But they’ve got f’in’ Buckley’s (no) chance I’m giving you
the score

Still the Festival of Life keeps tryin’ to save my
f’in’ soul

It’s Saturday afternoon at last, it’s what you’ve
waited for all week

Relax and put the feet up, turn the footy (soccer) on TV

You’re expecting Vern and Bluey round, they’ll probably
stay all night

A coupla mates (pals) and a coupla beers – aw, Christ, this is
the life

Well, here they are already, you just heard the car
door slam

You wedge yourself out of your chair, get up to let ’em
in

But it’s some wanker that you’ve never met, with a
briefcase in his hand

Some prick just out of Bible School, who thinks he’s
God’s right hand

Enterprising Missionaries, Introverted Farmers

(Halleluiah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah)

CHORUS

Ah, the Festival of Life keeps tryin’ to save my
f’in’ soul

They don’t want me drinkin’ piss or screwin’ round no
more

But they’ve got f’in’ Buckley’s chance I’m giving you
the score

Still the Festival of Life keeps tryin’ to save my
f’in’ soul

William Buckley portrait.jpg — Above: William Buckley (1780 – 1856)

‘I’m Elder Robbins ‘n’ he’s Elder Pike ‘n’ we’d like to
talk to y’all

‘Bout eternal salvation, won’t take but a minute or
more

We got a book we think y’aII should read, ’bout how
y’all should live

My, what a charmin’ home y’all have – y’all mind it we
come in?’

(Insert off-colour lyrics here…..)

Writing Tips: when bad language is Not a four-letter word | PR Matters: The Blog

‘Good morning, sir, did I get you up?

Sorry, I’m David and this is Pam

We’re missionaries who’ve come to talk of Man’s eternal
plan

And to discuss the holy future and reflect the holy
past.’

Repeat CHORUS

Chorus Royalty Free Cliparts, Vectors, And Stock Illustration. Image 47525193.

(Insert more off-colour lyrics here….)

Well it’s not like it’s just once or twice, it’s every
damn weekend

Now how d’ya think they’d like it if we done the same
to them?

You know, turn up on their doorstep at a time they
least expect

Try and ram our way of life down their f’in’ necks!

Just imagine for a minute the reception that you’d get

With a couple of stick books (porno mags) in your hand and a carton
on the steps

And your missus chewin’ chewin’ gum in a really low-cut
dress

And you in thongs (sandals) and overalls – you know, your f’in’
Sunday best!

How to Style Low Cut Dress: 15 Beautiful & Sexy Outfit Ideas - FMag.com

(What a yobbo (young offensive bloke), what a yobbo, what a yobbo)

Definitions of yobbo: Synonyms, Antonyms and Pronunciation

Repeat CHORUS

Gidday, we’re pissed-up testes-costacals, I’m Kevin and
this is Shirl

We’ve come to introduce you c—-s to a whole new
f’in’ world

We’ve come to preach the Good News, we think it’s what
you need to hear

We’ll show you more fun in five minutes than you’ve had
all f’in’ year!

Don't they get it? Those once mocked are having the last laugh

Now, you, sweetheart, you come with me and I’ll teach
you how to sin

And Sister Shirl, old sort, ‘ll (obscenity) until
your ‘ead caves in

Aw, shit, your missus just fainted, so we won’t bother
comin’ in

We’ll just piss off back to our place – just drop ten
bucks in the tin

‘Nother carton, ‘nother carton, ‘nother carton

Repeat CHORUS twice

Review: 'A Chorus Line,' Still High-Stepping but Showing Its Age - The New York Times

Despite the irreverance and the off-colour language, Wilson does raise a valid point about how religion is foisted upon us while it is not exactly welcoming to opposing points of view.

Medieval illustration of a battle during the Second Crusade

As for the distribution of literature I am more saddened than inspired by seeing Jehovah’s Witnesses standing on a street corner in Ottawa, Montréal, Perth, or wherever I have wandered in Christian-claiming countries, in whatever God-awful weather there is.

And it seems invariably that these poor sods are ancient and sickly.

How goodly, how Godly, can a belief system be that forces the aged to stand out in all kinds of climate distributing religious bumpf few wish to read?

Jehovahs High Resolution Stock Photography and Images - Alamy

For refusing military service; I cannot really be cross with any faith that does not want its members to kill others in the name of nationalism.

Why Don't Jehovah's Witnesses Go to War?

That being said, I find it inhumane to suggest that a person needing a blood transfusion should die rather than violate the tenets of the faith.

I have no problem with saying whom you are worshipping, nor questioning the plausibility of a three-in-one God, nor doubting an immortal soul or the concept of Hell.

For it is difficult to attack the strength of belief or the doubt one may have in believing that which cannot be proven.

Difference Between Irish Shamrocks and 4-Leaf Clovers

As for the holidays we claim are holy days there is a feeling of not so much paganism as there is profiteering.

Is it truly a coincidence, an accident, that Christmas and Easter are as commercialized as they are?

There is a kind of refreshing honesty in denying the holidays that seem so far removed from how they were intended.

Wouldn’t it be remarkably wonderful if the faithful of a faith were actually following with fidelity the facets and fundamentals of their faith?

Nave and chancel arch screen of St Mary's Church, in Ilkeston, Derbyshire.jpg

A kind of putting Christ in Christianity, Buddha back in Buddhism, the words and writing on the wall written on the hearts and minds of believers and made manifest in behaviour.

Practising what is preached instead of parroting a parody and pretending a pantomine more real in spectacle than realized in spirit.

(I wonder if Islam has its venture capital shadows.)

Jehovah’s Witnesses prefer to use their own Bible translation, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, although their literature occasionally quotes and cites other Bible translations.

Adherents commonly refer to their body of beliefs as “The Truth” and consider themselves to be “in the Truth“.

They consider secular society to be morally corrupt and under the influence of Satan, and most limit their social interaction with non-Witnesses.

Certanly secular society is rife with corruption and strife, but comprised of humans as they are, are our religious institutions any less troubled?

light, architecture, shadows, church, pillars, baroque | Pikist

Congregational disciplinary actions include disfellowshipping, their term for formal expulsion and shunning, a last resort for what they consider serious offenses.

Baptized individuals who formally leave are considered disassociated and are also shunned.

Disfellowshipped and disassociated individuals may eventually be reinstated if deemed repentant.

The group’s position regarding conscientious objection to military service and refusal to salute state symbols (like national anthems and flags) has brought it into conflict with some governments.

Consequently, some Jehovah’s Witnesses have been persecuted and their activities are banned or restricted in some countries.

Persistent legal challenges by Jehovah’s Witnesses have influenced legislation related to civil rights in several countries.

The organization has received criticism regarding biblical translation, doctrines, and alleged coercion of its members.

I cannot criticise interpretation of holy writ, for the path to salvation, the road to redemption, is one trod by the individual who decides for themselves wherein lies the truth of what is understood and what is appropo for one’s life.

We believe what we choose to believe within ourselves, regardless of what pressure may be put to bear upon our beliefs.

An enforced belief is not a truly felt belief.

The Watch Tower Society has made various unfulfilled predictions about major biblical events such as Christ’s Second Coming, the advent of God’s kingdom, and Armageddon.

If the Jehovah Witnesses could predict winning lottery ticket numbers, then I too might believe in the accuracy of their prophecies.

Turkey`s National Lottery. Turkish Lottery Tickets On White Background Editorial Photo - Image of business, capital: 154565441

Their policies for handling cases of child sexual cases have been the subject of various formal inquiries.

(More on this below….)

The denomination was banned in Canada in World War I, and in Germany, the Soviet Union, Canada and Australia during World War II.

Members suffered widespread persecution and mob violence in some of those countries and in the United States.

The group initiated dozens of high-profile legal actions in the United States and Canada between 1938 and 1955 to establish the right of members to sell literature from door to door, abstain from flag salute ceremonies and gain legal recognition as wartime conscientious objectors.

Members of the denomination suffered persecution in some African countries in the 1960s and 1970s.

Since 2004 the group has suffered a series of official bans in Russia.

Above: (in red) Countries where Jehovah’s Witnesses’ activities are banned

Here is where the dividing line between tolerance and judgment becomes less clear.

There are aspects of the Jehovah’s Witnesses I find abhorent, but whether disagreement with their tenets justifies persecution and mob violence to my fellow humans (as wrong-minded and pig-headed as they might be) are acts too extreme for contemplation.

Denying those who do an injustice the opportunity to repeat their questionable deeds by banning their activities is one thing that a moral society can consider.

Advocation violence upon those with whom we disagree is not justice but rather tyranny.

Jehovah's witnesses website.png — Above: Website of the Jehovah’s Witnesses

Various individuals, courts and the media around the world have raised concerns about the manner in which cases of child sexual abuse are handled when they occur in congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

An independent 2009 study in Norway was critical of how Jehovah’s Witnesses dealt with cases of child sexual abuse but stated there is no indication that the rate of sexual abuse among Jehovah’s Witnesses is higher than found in general society.

The organization officially “abhors” child sexual abuse, and states “the incidence of this crime among Jehovah’s Witnesses is rare.”

The Jehovah’s Witnesses cannot call themselves moral or responsible if cases of sexual abuse are permitted or hidden by their congregations.

I expect those of a religious persuasion to live by a higher moral code than secular society rather than using their faith to hide from violations of the rules of secular civilization.

I expect not only cases of sexual improprietry to be no higher than found in the general populace but rather much lower or non-existent in those groups professing to be the faithful of a holy creed.

Be the Change You Wish To See in the World Gandhi Sqaure | Etsy in 2021 | Inspirational quotes for students, Environmental quotes, Earth quotes

The Society’s child abuse policies have been published in Jehovah’s Witnesses’ publications, although more specific guidelines are only made available to elders, or on request.

Press releases issued by the Watch Tower Society’s Office of Public Information state that if a person accused of molestation repeatedly denies the charges of his victim, and there is no other witness to the incident, “the elders cannot take action within the congregation at that time“, but would report to authorities if required by local laws.

In 2015, it was disclosed that the Australia Branch of Jehovah’s Witnesses had records of 1,006 alleged perpetrators of child sexual abuse, relating to more than 1,800 victims since 1950, none of which were reported to police by the group.

Certainly I understand how damning and damaging such a slander of child molestation is upon the accused, but the harming of a child is not merely a sin, it is also a felony and should be exposed and treated as such.

I am doubtful that the numbers of children brave enough to accuse an adult of moral improperity are replete with kids eager to falsely slander adult reputations.

On the contrary, I believe too many victims remain silent out of fear of retribution for speaking out against the crimes committed to their person.

Some media and courts have reported that Jehovah’s Witnesses employ organizational policies, which the group says are “Bible-based“, that make the reporting of sexual abuse difficult for members.

Some victims of sexual abuse have said they were ordered by local elders to maintain silence to avoid embarrassment to both the accused and the organization.

Members are told they have every right to report crimes to secular authorities separately to reporting the “sin” to congregation elders.

(Hush, hush, keep it down now, voices carry…..)

I know what I am about to say will not sit well with some of my gentle readers, but perhaps embarrassment can best be avoided by not committing acts of which one might feel ashamed.

As for embarrassment to the faith, if the faith is strong and true, the inquities of some its members will not diminish the veracity of the faith.

Are we to judge entire institutions by the actions of those few not truly representative of the institutions tenets?

Don't let one rotten apple spoil the whole bunch | Grace Century Blog

The Roman Catholic faith has taken much criticism for allegations of its priests molesting young male children, but are these priests a testament to what the faith actually means to its believers?

No, aberrations are not examples of an institution, but rather the exceptions that every society has within its ranks.

Secular or holy, every group has its saints, and its sinners.

And as terrible and tragic and undesirable as the appearance and behaviour of the sinners in our midst are perhaps the sole value they possess is the realization that some of us are more fallible than others and that their anti-role is a necessary model of how people should not behave.

Don't be like me! Don't you be like me! - YouTube — Above: Jack Nicholson tells dog “***Don’t you be like me!***” , ***As Good As It Gets***

In 2002, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Office of Public Information published its policy for elders to report allegations of child abuse to the authorities only where required by law to do so, even if there was only one witness.

The organization says individuals known to have sexually abused a child are generally prohibited from holding any position of responsibility, and that, unless considered by the congregation elders to demonstrate repentance, such a person is typically disfellowshipped.

In 2016 a UK judge upheld a ruling against the Jehovah’s Witnesses for failing to protect a victim of child sexual abuse, and the Supreme Court rejected an attempt by the Watch Tower Society to block a Charity Commission inquiry into how the organisation’s charity handles allegations of abuse.

This was the culmination of two years of legal proceedings in five different courts and tribunals.

The commission’s attorney said “WTBTS has at every stage relentlessly challenged the legal basis and scope of the Charity Commission’s inquiry“.

In 2019, elders in New Zealand were told to destroy documents, causing survivors of child sex abuse to fear that cases will be covered up.

The organization maintained that documents relevant to cases of abuse would not be destroyed.

It is a sad signal that is sent when doing the right thing must be compelled by law rather than confessed naturally through attrition, the acknowledgement of wrongdoing and immorality as felt by one’s conscience.

Immorality and illegality, though often boon companions, remain nevertheless separate issues.

Just because one can (legally do a thing) does not mean that one (morally) should (do a thing).

Just because the law does not compel molesters to confess their crimes does not mean that it is morally correct to conceal those crimes.

The Watch Tower Society has published information on how to protect children from sexual molestation, such as the articles, Protect Your Children in the 8 October 1993 edition of Awake!, Help Your Children to Thrive in Awake! of 8 August 1997, the series, Keep Your Children Safe, in the October 2007 edition of Awake!, and in the book, Learn from the Great Teacher.

These articles focus on prevention, and do not specifically state that a child or its parents should contact the police in the event of molestation.

They also suggest that, in some countries, “the legal system may offer little hope of successful prosecution.”

Whether or not a victim seeks professional treatment from psychiatrists, psychologists or therapists is suggested as being the personal decision of the victim (or the victim’s parents), but such ones are warned to “make sure that any such professional will respect your religious views.”

If a church is solely supposed to protect children from immorality, who protects children from immorality in the church?

Institutional Sex Abuse of Children: Part 1: The Scope of the Problem - Focus for Health

Jehovah’s Witnesses’ congregational judicial policies require the testimony of two material witnesses to establish a perpetrator’s serious sin in the absence of confession.

The organization considers this policy to be a protection against malicious accusations of sexual assault.

The Society maintains that this two-witness policy is applied solely to congregational discipline and has no bearing on whether a crime is reported to the authorities in countries where this is mandatory.

The Society states that it is not necessary for both witnesses to have observed the same instance of child molestation to establish guilt.

Since 1991, statements by two victims of separate incidents by the same perpetrator may be deemed sufficient to take action and impose internal sanctions

However, critics argue that such an approach to determining guilt overlooks the seriousness of the initial abuse, and effectively allows a pedophile to go unpunished until he or she has been caught abusing two or more different victims.

DNA evidence, medical reports, or information from forensic experts or police that proves sexual abuse may possibly be accepted as a valid “second witness“, however critics argue that, without mandatory reporting for all accusations of abuse regardless of the local laws, such evidence could remain undetected.

In cases where there is only one eyewitness—the victim—to an allegation of child abuse, elders may monitor the accused individual closely, or even suspend any conspicuous congregation duties—but only if there is evidence based on the testimony of more than one witness to suggest that the alleged perpetrator has abused children.

In some instances where there is only one witness to molestation, elders may discreetly inform parents in a congregation not to allow their children to spend time with someone accused of child abuse provided such a person has been deemed a “predator” by the local branch office based on the elders’ observations.

As much as I value the concept of a person’s being judged innocent until proven guilty, what about a victim’s right to be deemed truthful until proven false?

Restorative Justice - Child Sexual Abuse

Elders are instructed to investigate every allegation of child sexual abuse, questioning the victim if necessary, and to do what they reasonably can to help parents to protect their children from further abuse.

Elders are also instructed that they are only “spiritual shepherds” whose aim should be to provide spiritual assistance and encouragement to victims of child sexual abuse and their families, without taking on a role similar to that of a mental health professional or therapist.

Are spiritual shepherds more motivated to protect the lambs or the entire flock?

Being religious leaders, does that qualify them to act in the roles of criminal investigators, mental health professionals or therapists?

As comforting as Catholicism’s practice of confession to a priest is, there seems something amiss with the notion of a mere man with the power to absolve the sinner from guilt and responsibility for his misdeeds, especially when the sanctity of confession forbids the repetition of what is said to be told to others – including the authorities.

Above: In Roman Catholic settings, the traditional style of confessional allows the priest, seated in the center, to hear from penitents on alternating sides.

A Watch Tower Society representative testified that the organization does not consider itself responsible for the “physical protection” of children in the community.

Victims of abuse are required to provide details of their abuse to a group of male elders, which may cause additional trauma.

New research shows parents are major producers of child sexual abuse material

Here is where my hackles rise:

These guardians of our moral behaviours claim that they are neither responsible for those who violate their moral codes nor for the victims of these violations.

While simultaneously these victims are subjected to cross-examination to justify their accusation as if the victim is on trial for the crime rather than the accused.

In 2018, the policy was updated to specify that a victim may provide details of the abuse in writing rather than verbally.

A victim may bring a confidant for support when approaching elders to present a case of abuse verbally.

Elders are directed that a victim must not be required to face their abuser to present an accusation, however adult victims may do so if they wish.

Testimony based on repressed memories is not considered reliable enough to form the basis for internal action.

Elders are encouraged to treat persons reporting this type of memory with kindness, but not to pursue the case unless further proof is found.

Child sex abuse survivors are five times more likely to be the victims of sexual assault later in life - Parents - The Jakarta Post

Here is where I tread upon uncertain ground.

It is my limited understanding that the trauma of an attack upon a person affects each victim differently and that each victim responds to an attack in the manner in which they are best able to cope.

Certainly the added trauma of being interrogated, of being demanded to prove the assault upon their person was committed by those whom are accused is such that one can understand the desire to recover from the trauma of the attack first before submitting oneself to the agony of defending one’s victimhood and vulnerability.

The problem is the more time passes between the assault and the accusation, the less plausible the assault appears to the outsider seeking justice in this case.

One sees this sort of instinctive reluctance to automatically trust the truthfulness of the victim if the victim only speaks up when the perpetrator has risen to a position of prominence.

This is not at all my being dismissive of a victim’s pain or the veracity of their claims, but those who defend the perpetrator can use the timing of the accusation to diminish the reputation of the victim.

I cannot even begin to imagine the psychological trauma, that endures far beyond the physical assault, that the victim of such an attack must somehow survive.

In an ideal world a crime should be reported as soon as possible after it has been committed, but the courage needed to accuse another of such a crime is not a courage every victim immediately possesses.

The younger the victim, it seems, the more difficult it is to prove the culpability of the perpetrator, for it is difficult for mature adults to fully trust the testimony produced by immature minds.

And the wait for a victim’s maturity then undermines the veracity and accuracy of their repressed memories.

Local Resources for Child Sexual Abuse Victims | Taylor & Ring

I feel such impotent rage that there remain perpetrators of such horrible violations of the innocent, that these perpetrators are protected by the very system whose morality they so brutally broke to satisfy their beastly natures.

It is a terrible thing to accuse a man of such a deed and therefore we cannot casually condemn a man to such a devastating destruction of his character, but, that being said, the very gravity and magnitude of such a charge should ensure that the victim’s voice is not too easily dismissed.

Staufen child sex abuse case: Spanish national sentenced to 10 years in prison | News | DW | 06.08.2018

If allegations of child abuse satisfy the organization’s religious tenets, an internal judicial committee is formed, and the accused individual may potentially be relieved of positions of responsibility in the congregation.

Anyone found to have sexually molested a child, based upon the criteria established by the organization, and deemed by the elders to not demonstrate sufficient repentance is disfellowshipped from the congregation and shunned.

The elders are instructed to gauge the abuser’s repentance based upon their subsequent visible support of congregation activities, such as attending congregation meetings, and actively supporting the denomination’s door-to-door work.

The sustained participation in the group’s activities has resulted in sexual predators remaining in good standing in the congregation.

Child Sexual Abuse Treatment—Lauren Hufnagel—Asheville, NC — Lauren Hufnagel, LCSW

How very Protestant to think that good deeds erase the magnitude of the evil that men do.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” | Derrick Garland Coy

There is something unsettling in the notion that a crime might be permissible if it falls within the guidelines of the church’s moral parameters.

Disfellowshipped status would comfort me were the Jehovah’s Witnesses as powerful as the Catholic Church was prior to the Reformation when excommunication meant that the entire Catholic world would punish the rejected even to the point of denying them sustenance or shelter, but like the Amish practice of shunning someone who violates the tenets of the community there is no real effect to the rejected beyond the community.

It is disturbing to think that a church would allow a perpetrator to remain in good standing after being accused of such horrors.

Salvation by Works? | Pastor Ray's blog: rayliu1

An abuser who is judged repentant by a committee of elders is given a ‘public reproof‘, wherein it is announced to the congregation that the named individual “has been reproved“, though the nature of their crime is not stated.

Such a person is automatically debarred from serving in any appointed position in the congregation, however privileges can be restored in the future depending on whether he or she is deemed by the branch office to be a “known molester“.

A few weeks later, a talk may be given to the congregation, discussing the type of sin and the need to be on guard against it, but the reproved individual is not named in connection with this talk.

It is the intention that the talk about the type of sin, and the previously made announcement of reproof, should allow other congregation members to interpret what type of sin had been committed.

When reprimanded, sex offenders may not offer public prayers, read paragraphs during congregation studies, or be given even minor responsibilities in the congregation, such as handling microphones or distributing literature in the Kingdom Hall.

Sex offenders are still permitted to participate in the congregation’s house-to-house preaching.

Salvation by Works or Grace? | Hoshana Rabbah BlogHoshana Rabbah Blog

Perhaps I am confused, but isn’t the point of justice the prevention of the lawless from continuing their lawlessness?

Isn’t the point of justice to remind us that there are consequences for immoral acts?

When did religion decide for itself that the institution’s self-protection matters more than the commission of crimes upon the innocent?

The Menace of Immorality in Church and State; Messages of Wrath and Judgment: Straton, John Roach 1875-1929: 9781371274344: Amazon.com: Books

According to the Watch Tower Society’s spokesperson, J. R. Brown, such ones are only allowed to preach when accompanied by a responsible adult.

In 2016, a convicted child sex offender was filmed going door-to-door for the denomination.

For a considerable period of time, a reproved individual is not permitted to participate in meetings by commenting in group discussions or making presentations from the platform.

Perhaps my scales of justice are malfunctioning, but how does refusing participation in meetings measure up to the trauma of a child’s molestation?

A 1997 issue of The Watchtower article stated:

“For the protection of our children, a man known to have been a child molester does not qualify for a responsible position in the congregation.

Moreover, he cannot be a pioneer or serve in any other special, full-time service.”

Elders are advised to give “kindly cautions” to the abuser in regards to “not being alone with children,” “refraining from holding children or displaying other forms of affection for them,” and “not allowing children (other than his own) to spend the night in his home, not working in field service with a child, not cultivating friendships with children, and the like.“

Former child molesters, including those who molested children before becoming Jehovah’s Witnesses, those eventually reinstated into the congregation after being disfellowshipped, and those who were deemed repentant, are subject to a number of restrictions.

How wonderful it must be to be welcomed back to the congregation despite a history of child violation!

Truly Jehovah is a forgiving God!

A God for whom the repentant can remain immune from secular punishment as only He can judge the “faithful“?

A Liar from the Beginning | Religious Studies Center

Commenting on the effect of these restrictions, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ legal representative, Mario Moreno, stated that these restrictions alert members that the individual “lacks spiritual maturity.”

Privileges’ may be restored to known child sex offenders if “considerable time has passed,” at the discretion of local elders.

In 1995, elders were instructed that if a former child abuser moved from their congregation to another, they must send a letter to the body of elders in the new congregation outlining the offender’s background and whether the abuser is still subject to ‘restricted privileges‘.

However the 1997 Letter of Introduction of Jonathan Kendrick who was later convicted for child abuse failed to mention his confession of abuse, it even stated that ‘he had helped young ones from veering off course.’

Jonathan Kendrick deposition - YouTube — Above: Jonathan Kendrick

Such moral leadership in our troubled times!

The Watchtower has outlined the following policy:

“Depending on the law of the land where he lives, the molester may well have to serve a prison term or face other sanctions from the State.

The congregation will not protect him from this.”

A 2002 memo to all congregations stated:

“Our position is that secular authorities deal with crime while elders deal with sin.”

Why we all need to come together to end child sexual abuse

I am confused.

Is there not a Biblical passage that admonishes Christians to “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Render unto God that which is His.“?

Am I wrong in interpreting that to mean that a sin can, in many cases, also be considered a crime, and thus should be dealt with firstly by secular authorities?

Is a church above the law of the land wherein it sits?

Does the sanctity of the faith protect the faithful from the prosecution of the law?

SIN CITY "Cardinal Roark" - Sin City Wallpaper (1920x1088) (90683)

(I grant that there are times that which is legal is not always just or moral.)

Even where there is no mandatory reporting requirement, victims or others having knowledge of an incident of sexual abuse must not be discouraged from reporting it.

The New York Times commented:

The shape of the scandal in Jehovah’s Witnesses is far different than in the Catholic church, where most of the people accused of abuse are priests and a vast majority of the victims were boys and young men.
In the Jehovah’s Witnesses, where congregations are often collections of extended families and church elders are chosen from among the laypeople, some of those accused are elders, but most are congregation members.
The victims who have stepped forward are mostly girls and young women, and many accusations involve incest.

In some cases, members of Jehovah’s Witnesses have been prevented or deterred from reporting child molestation to civil authorities.

Particularly since around 2000, the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization has been accused of covering up cases of child molestation committed by its members.

In March 2001, Christianity Today printed an article reporting allegations that Jehovah’s Witnesses’ policies made reporting sexual abuse difficult for members, and did not conform to typical treatment of such cases.

The article also included a response by representatives of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The Australian Royal Commission heard that an elder discouraged an abuse victim from going to the Commission by saying:

“Do you really want to drag Jehovah’s name through the mud?”

There is a certain symmetry to the notion that those who represent reflect on whom they represent, but just as we should not judge a nation based on those who represent it, neither should we judge a faith based on the actions of its faithless.

In Ireland in 2016, two Jehovah’s Witness elders were removed from their positions as punishment for reporting a child molester to the police after the London branch legal department told them not to.

Apparently reporting a child molester is considered worse than being a child molester?

Child Sexual Abuse Statistics: Princess Madeleine of Sweden | Time

The BBC reported allegations of a cover-up in July 2002, in an episode of Panorama entitled “Suffer the Little Children“.

The report revealed that the headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Watch Tower Society, requires all congregations to submit details of child abuse allegations and maintains an internal database on all cases of child abuse reported to them.

It described one case where a child came forward to the elders of her congregation to report sexual abuse by her father, but was sent home, despite their having known for three years that her father was an abuser.

When the girl eventually went to the police, her father was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.

It took years to convict him and he was sentenced to only five years in prison.

I wonder how many years of trauma did the young girl experience, perhaps still experiences as a result of Daddy’s attentions.

According to Witness spokesman J. R. Brown, Jehovah’s Witnesses are not required to report crimes to elders before calling civil authorities.

Victims and their families are free to call police, he said, although some don’t choose to.

The Watch Tower Society maintains a policy with no explicit requirement for elders to report all child abuse cases where such is not required by law.

Elders are instructed to “leave matters in Jehovah’s hands” if an abuser denies the accusations and there is no second witness available.

A spiritually mature attitude?

I wonder how comforting all this is for the people of Georgetown wherein the Jehovah’s Witnesses Canadian headquarters sits.

Georgetown Farmers Market - Downtown Georgetown BIA

Georgetown has seen an explosion of population growth in the south.

This has caused new businesses to appear including Tim Hortons, Sherwin-Williams, Metro, and others.

The Georgetown Marketplace is Georgetown’s mall.

It has roughly 63 stores, including major companies such as WalMart.

The mall is home to stores such as: Peoples Jewelers, Coles, Winners & Home Sense, Sport Chek, Marks Work Wearhouse, and Ardene.

New Georgetown ServiceOntario office set to open this summer

The Bruce Trail (parts of which I have walked) goes through Halton Hills, passing north of Georgetown.

The Bruce Trail Conservancy - Home | Facebook

The town is developing a multi-purpose trail system in Hungry Hollow, on old railbeds and various other locations.

A citizens group called the Hungry Hollow Old Rail Bed Association (HHORBA) is trying to work with the Town in planning and constructing the trails to be as environmentally friendly, safe for hikers and enjoyable for bicyclists as possible.

The HHORBA helped construct one trail and three bridges with members of the Bruce Trail.

Perfect for the boy inside the man or for the young Anne Shirley inside the woman.

Like any Canadian community, Georgetown has produced its share of athletes, innovators, authors and entertainers, with at least nine notable residents who were / are, in typical Canadian fashion, connected with the sport of ice hockey.

The notable resident that captured my attention is the writer P.J. Haarsma, who similar to the impulses of Ms. Montgomery and with the same spirit that aided the Georgetown Boys, is a Georgetown-born producer and science fiction author best known for his creation of the Rings of Orbis universe, which encompasses The Softwire series of books. Haarsma created a free, online role-playing game, also called the Rings of Orbis, set in the same universe.

Both the book-series and the game target young, often reluctant readers in an attempt to encourage them by rewarding them for reading.

Haarsma developed a school presentation program in which he discusses The Software books, astronomy, and other science fiction and science fact topics.

He is also one of the co-founders of Kids Need to Read, a US tax exempt public charity that purchases books to donate to underfunded schools and libraries.

At the age of 38, Haarsma was not satisfied with his professional life.

He began to keep a daily journal, writing about anything (and everything) that came to his mind — until eventually “Johnny T came onto his page.”

Johnny T is the main character, Johnny Turnbull, of Haarsma’s The Softwire series.

Haarsma chose to give The Softwire a sci-fi setting due to a love of science fiction, and to target a young adult audience with his novels so that children could discover and learn to enjoy the genre.

The Softwire is actually a story that Haarsma began imagining in his childhood.

As a teenager, he worked at his parents’ ceramic factory during the summers, hauling fifty-pound molds around in the extreme heat of a kiln room.

To Haarsma, it felt similar to what the children of his books might feel as slaves.

In addition to these experiences, there is a more prominent influence on the premise of The Softwire—that is, there is a mystery of a journey to a new, unknown place to start a new life.

Growing up, Haarsma dreamed of moving to the US, and in his twenties, he actually did.

While there, living in New York, Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Haarsma witnessed immigrants struggling to get by.

He tried to imagine what caused them to risk everything, and to move to another country, and to have a chance at something better.

It is this journey (and struggle) that is prevalent in The Softwire.

In The Softwire, a group of human children are orphaned in outer space.

They are forced into indentured servitude on the Rings of Orbis, four planet-like rings around a wormhole.

They must spend four years as slaves or knudniks before they are eligible to become Citizens.

Each year they are the property of a new owner on a separate ring: Orbis 1, Orbis 2, Orbis 3, and Orbis 4.

They are forced into labour to do whatever task their new owner requires.

The Softwire: Awakening on Orbis 4 (9780763627126): Haarsma, PJ: Books - Amazon.com

When the children arrive, they soon discover that thirteen-year-old Johnny Turnbull (JT), is the first human softwire, a boy who has the ability to enter any computer with just his mind.

To the older Citizens, a slave who can enter at will the massive computer which controls the Rings of Orbis makes JT very valuable and drives the Rings to the brink of war.

As the central computer begins to malfunction, the Citizens connive, conspire, and even kill to own JT and his sister.

Access ringsoforbis.com. Rings of Orbis - Are You A Master Of Sci Fi Games? Master this top science fiction game based on the...

While there are other humans besides the children on the Rings, the majority of the inhabitants are of alien species.

The Keepers are an intelligent species of two-headed beings who act as the overseers.

Other species encountered include Belarans, Choi, Solinns, and Trefaldoors, all of which become interesting roles for young players to choose from in the game, Rings of Orbis.

The Rings of Orbis a science fiction fantasy RPG in a virtual Alien world · Michelle Harris

Haarsma’s novels are accompanied by a free, online, role-playing game called Rings of Orbis which acts as a visual companion to the books and is set in the same universe.

Players are sometimes required to use information from the books in order to solve puzzles and to unlock areas within the game.

Pairing a video game with a novel for young readers, Haarsma says, “brings the book into their world, as opposed to going the other way around.”

Virus on Orbis 1 (The Softwire #1) by P.J. Haarsma

Haarsma and a team of artists also created many different alien races specifically for the game.

The team includes Haarsma’s wife Marisa Grieco, Igor Knezevic, Stephan Martiniêre, Dwayne Harris, and Neil Blevins.

The game works to encourage reluctant readers, especially boys, by giving them an interactive game through which to relate to the mysteries found within the books themselves.

Players complete quests and earn in-game currency which they can then spend on in-game items designed by Haarsma, all the while they compete to become the best Citizen of the Rings of Orbis.

In 2008, the game was featured in a front page New York Times article about encouraging reluctant readers with video games.

The Softwire: Virus on Orbis 1 - YouTube

While speaking at schools across the United States, Haarsma noticed how some school librarians were having trouble finding funds to purchase The Softwire books after a demand had been created by Haarsma’s visit.

Many of the librarians were struggling to fill their shelves with books.

In June 2007, Haarsma and a friend, actor Nathan Fillion, approached a group of Fillion’s fans with the idea for a project that would work to purchase books for underfunded schools, as well as non-profit institutions which gave books directly to children.

The group took to the idea and focused their energies into getting the project off the ground.

The Kids Need to Read Project went public in August 2007.

In January 2008, the process to transform the project into a legal foundation began, and the fan group was separated from the developing organization.

On 22 May 2008, The Kids Need to Read Foundation (KNTR) was incorporated in the state of California.

KNTR became a tax exempt public charity on 18 September 2008.

The organization is supported by a global volunteer base.

Funds were initially raised through eBay auctions of Firefly and Serenity autographed memorabilia, and The Softwire books and items, and other science fiction and literary themed items.

Fundraising efforts have since expanded and all funds are used to purchase books from the foundation’s official book list, a list which is continually updated by a professional children’s book buyer.

The titles chosen are well-reviewed and many are recommended for children who are reluctant readers.

KNTR has made book donations to forty-one schools and libraries in addition to three multiple library systems.

KNTR facilitated a substantial donation of three thousand books by the Phoenix Book Company to the Friends of the New Orleans Public Library, to help with recuperation after Hurricane Katrina.

Friends of New Orleans Public Library | Join Friends and support a lifelong love of reading and learning.

The Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic in Seattle was the recipient of a donation amounting to four hundred forty books in February 2008.

This clinic, as well as the North Public Health Clinic in Seattle, have received recurring donations from KNTR.

Haarsma remains on the KNTR Advisory Board as founder and consultant for literacy-based activities.

By using his position as a young-adult fiction author, Haarsma helps bring attention, support, and funds to the organization.

PJ captures any audience with his energy.

He begins a presentation on Earth and everyone in the audience lands on Orbis with him.

Students and teachers continue to ask questions long afterwards.

Priceless reading motivation!

Francine Bard, 8th grade reading teacher – Mesa Jr. High, Mesa, Arizona

School board votes to close Mesa, Brimhall junior highs | East Valley Education News | eastvalleytribune.com

Haarsma takes part in school visits to promote his book and encourage imagination and reading in the school children.

His presentation lasts fifty minutes, and discussions center around space travel, exploration, The Rings of Orbis universe, and other interactive topics, thus allowing for questions from the students at the conclusion.

To help illustrate the scientific topics, NASA supplied Haarsma with space related information to present.

“PJ Haarsma was inspirational.

He visited my school and made my imagination soar.

I’ve already filled up a couple notebooks of stories thanks to him!“, said one child whose school Haarsma visited.

Children's Story Writing Activity Notebook - Little Active People

During his presentation, Haarsma involves the children in various interactive activities.

These include a Hollywood-style acting audition, an alien ghost story, and a demonstration of the vast distances in space.

The activities are designed to engage the children’s imaginations and to make them feel a part of the presentation.

The responses to his visits from both students and teachers are positive.

The majority of the feedback involves praise and thanks.

Haarsma has received many stories of previously reluctant readers being observed reading The Softwire books during school recess.

15 Exciting and Fun Reading Games & Activities for Kids

The author visit by PJ Haarsma was a lot of fun.

He knows astronomy, technology, and how to get young adults interested in what he’s talking about.

Librarians, a warning — you’ll need to order more books.

Mine are all checked out and on hold.

Brian Griggs – Highland Junior High, Gilbert, Arizona

I am tempted to disembark from the train, but the two attractions that Wikivoyage recommends seeing are closed: the Old Seed House Gardens, for it is winter, and Devereaux House, for it is a guesthouse and not a museum (which were it a museum would be closed any way it being Monday).

Friends of The Old Seed House Garden - Halton Hills — Above: Old Seed House Gardens, Halton Hills

Friends of Devereaux House - Historical Antique Classical 1860's Home Community Owned Heritage Auction Donations Halton Hills Georgetown Ontario .ca 19th 18th century homes agricultural history organization

One thing is certain, if viewed through the eyes of a child, Georgetown is, despite the encroaching urban sprawl that is Greater Toronto, as Ms. Montgomery suggested, “one of the prettiest villages in all Ontario.”

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / “Second shot at hope: Turkey starts new round of Covid-19 vaccines“, Daily Sabah, 11 February 2021 / Elif Shafak, “After years of silence, Turkey’s women are going into battle against oppression“, The Guardian, 17 February 2015 / Frank Miller, Sin City

Trabzon Turkey - children playing - GLOBOsapiens

Swiss Miss and the Bright Spirit Legacy

Posted on April 6, 2021 by canadaslim

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Monday 10 February 2021

A day is what we make it.

For many of us one day blends into another with no real distinction one from the other, but if history teaches us anything at all, each day can be remembered for something of significance.

But significance must be noticed, must be noted.

Otherwise, change will occur without our noticing it.

Until it is too late to do anything about it.

Take, for example, the fall of Baghdad.

No, not the Iraqi War (9 April 2003), further back.

In a span of less than 200 years (1206 – 1405), horsemen swept across Eurasia from Mongolia to Poland in the west, to Korea in the southeast, creating history’s largest contiguous empire, spreading the bubonic plague across much of the recorded world, and killing as many as 57 million people in continuous conquest, including battles, sieges, early biological warfare, and massacres.

In a span of less than two weeks (29 January to 10 February 1258), the Siege of Baghdad, laid by Mongol forces and allied troops, surrounded, captured, and sacked Baghdad, which was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate at that time.

The Mongols were under the command of Hulagu Khan who had been instructed by his brother Möngke to further extend his rule into Mesopotamia but not to directly overthrow the Caliphate.

Möngke, however, had instructed Hulagu to attack Baghdad if the Caliph Al-Musta’sim refused Mongol demands for his continued submission to the khagan and the payment of tribute in the form of military support for Mongol forces in Persia.

Hulagu marched on Baghdad, demanding that Al-Musta’sim accede to the terms imposed by Möngke on the Abbasids.

Although the Abbasids had failed to prepare for the invasion, the Caliph believed that Baghdad could not fall to invading forces and refused to surrender.

Hulagu subsequently besieged the city, which surrendered after 12 days.

During the next week, the Mongols sacked Baghdad, committing numerous atrocities.

There is debate among historians about the level of destruction of library books and the Abbasids’ vast libraries.

The Mongols executed Al-Musta’sim and massacred many residents of the city, which was left greatly depopulated.

The siege is considered to mark the end of the Islamic Golden Age (8th century to the 14th century), during which the caliphs had extended their rule from the Iberian Peninsula to Pakistan, and which was also marked by many cultural achievements in diverse fields.

If the Siege of Baghdad has anything to teach us at all, it is that nothing lasts forever.

Even today, the nations of the world are convinced that they cannot fail, they cannot fall, that they are all-powerful, but short of total nuclear annihiliation where nobody wins, even the greatest nations can be defeated by enemies that one cannot seriously believe could beat us.

We prepare for enemies we see as equals and disregard those who in desperation will fight against all odds for that which they believe in.

How soon we forget how Vietnam stood up against the French, the Americans and the Chinese.

Above: Flag of Vietnam

How soon we forget how Afghanistan has been invaded by the British, the Russians and the Americans, and has never truly surrendered and never truly will.

If this day in history has anything to teach us, it is that bloodshed can arise from the most minor of incidents.

The St Scholastica Day riot took place in Oxford, England, on 10 February 1355, Saint Scholastica’s Day.

The disturbance began when two students from the University of Oxford complained about the quality of wine served to them in the Swindlestock Tavern, which stood in the centre of the town.

The students quarrelled with the taverner.

The argument quickly escalated to blows.

The inn’s customers joined in on both sides, and the resulting melee turned into a riot.

The violence started by the bar brawl continued over three days, with armed gangs coming in from the countryside to assist the townspeople.

University halls and students’ accommodation were raided and the inhabitants murdered.

There were some reports of clerics being scalped.

Around 30 townsfolk were killed, as were up to 63 members of the university.

Artists impression of two groups of individuals fighting; a black flag is flying above one group, and some people are bearing cudgels

I think of my experience as a student and of how quickly violence could erupt among us.

I think of my career as a teacher and I recall moments of anger that arose without any warning at all from students suddenly disgruntled over one thing or another, usually trivialities like the use of mobile phones in class or the quality of photocopies received or homework assignments not completed.

Could anger erupt in the school where I teach in Eskisehir (1 March to 1 September 2021)?

Certainly, I have already borne witness to challenging students forever dissatisfied and sensitive staff one needs to navigate one’s way around.

What sparks tempers?

Often and simply, a bad day, finally frustrating to a point of no return where a person can no longer keep silent, no longer remain calm and uncomplaining.

Could anger turn violent?

We believe this is highly unlikely.

But then it was once believed that Rome will never be conquered, Constantinople will never fall, Baghdad will never burn.

We are diplomatic, patient and passionate professionals, and it is assumed that those who choose to pay hard-earned money for instruction in English are not the type to react in rage to those moments of disappointment that we may unconsciously fuel.

And yet all it takes is something as trivial as a glass of bad wine and one complaint too many and the spark is lit…..

From Ungava Bay in northern Québec to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico, from Saskatchewan to Nova Scotia, the French dominated the North American continent.

The British held a strip of land, a mere Thirteen Colonies, along the American Eastern Seaboard, from Maine to Georgia.

The Spanish, who held the Americas from Chile to Kansas, including Florida and the Caribbean, would be a matter for another day, another series of wars.

It was a war between a swimmer and a swordsman.

The French, with their powerful army, preferred fighting in Europe and then devoting their resources to their oversea possessions.

The British, with their almighty navy, preferred fighting abroad to clashing on the Continent.

Again, arrogance would be the downfall.

The French never imagined that this day would come when they would cede their mighty empire to the maudit Anglais in the Treaty of Paris of 10 February 1763.

The British never imagined that a mere Thirteen Colonies would defy the mighty Empire in a bid for independence only a decade later.

If history teaches us anything it is that life is rarely what we think it will be.

When Queen Victoria (1819 – 1901) married her beloved Prince Albert (1819 – 1861), on 10 February 1840, little did she imagine that she would outlive him by nearly another half century.

When Jefferson Davis (1808 – 1889) accepted the Presidency of the Confederate States of America on 10 February 1861, little did he imagine that the South would lose the Civil War a mere four years and massive numbers of deaths later.

Little did the French realize that their brutal suppression of the failed Yen Bai Mutiny of 10 February 1930 designed to prevent further insurrection would eventually be the pyre upon which their colonial ambitions in Vietnam would burn two decades later.

Early in 1953, the French asked US President Eisenhower (1890 – 1969) for help in French Indochina against the Communists, supplied from China, who were fighting the First Indochina War.

Eisenhower sent Lt. General John W. “Iron Mike” O’Daniel (1894 – 1975) to Vietnam to study and assess the French forces there.

John W. O'Daniel.jpg — Above: John W. O’Daniel

Chief of Staff Matthew Ridgway (1895 – 1993) dissuaded the President from intervening by presenting a comprehensive estimate of the massive military deployment that would be necessary.

Matthew B. Ridgway.jpg — Above: Matthew Ridgway

Eisenhower warned against American intervention in Vietnam stated prophetically on 10 February 1954 that “this war would absorb our troops by divisions.“

He was right.

Ultimately, estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed were 3,812,000.

The conflict resulted in 58,318 US fatalities.

Above: Images of the Vietnam War (1955 – 1975)

Between 1953 and 1975, the United States was estimated to have spent $168 billion on the war (equivalent to $1.38 trillion in 2019).

This resulted in a large federal budget deficit.

Other figures point to $138.9 billion from 1965 to 1974 (not inflation-adjusted),10 times all education spending in the US and 50 times more than housing and community development spending within that time period.

General record-keeping was reported to have been sloppy for government spending during the war.

It was stated that war-spending could have paid off every mortgage in the US at that time, with money leftover.

More than 3 million Americans served in the Vietnam War, some 1.5 million of whom actually saw combat in Vietnam.

James E. Westheider wrote that:

“At the height of American involvement in 1968, for example, 543,000 American military personnel were stationed in Vietnam, but only 80,000 were considered combat troops.“

Conscription in the United States had been controlled by the President since World War II, but ended in 1973.

As of 2013, the US government is paying Vietnam veterans and their families or survivors more than $22 billion a year in war-related claims.

By the war’s end, 58,220 American soldiers had been killed, more than 150,000 had been wounded, and at least 21,000 had been permanently disabled.

The average age of the US troops killed in Vietnam was 23.11 years.

According to Dale Kueter:

“Of those killed in combat, 86.3% were white, 12.5% were black and the remainder from other races.”

Vietnam Sons: For some the war never Ended by Dale Kueter, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®

Approximately 830,000 Vietnam veterans suffered some degree of posttraumatic stress disorder (“shell shock“)(PTSD).

Vietnam veterans suffered from PTSD in unprecedented numbers, as many as 15.2% of Vietnam veterans, because the US military had routinely provided heavy psychoactive drugs, including amphetamines, to American servicemen, which left them unable to process adequately their traumas at the time.

An estimated 125,000 Americans left for Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft, and approximately 50,000 American servicemen deserted.

In 1977, US President Jimmy Carter granted a full and unconditional pardon to all Vietnam-era draft dodgers with Proclamation 4483.

Official portrait, 1977 — Above: Jimmy Carter

As the Vietnam War continued inconclusively and became more unpopular with the American public, morale declined and disciplinary problems grew among American enlisted men and junior, non-career officers.

Drug use, racial tensions, and the growing incidence of fragging—attempting to kill unpopular officers and non-commissioned officers with grenades or other weapons—created severe problems for the US military and impacted its capability of undertaking combat operations.

By 1971, a US Army colonel writing in the Armed Forces Journal declared:

“By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and non commissioned officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near mutinous.

The morale, discipline, and battle-worthiness of the US Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any time in this century and possibly in the history of the United States.”

Armed Forces Journal cover July August 2013.jpg

Between 1969 and 1971 the US Army recorded more than 900 attacks by troops on their own officers and NCOs with 99 killed.

The Vietnam War called into question the US Army doctrine.

Marine Corps General Victor H. Krulak heavily criticised Westmoreland’s attrition strategy, calling it “wasteful of American lives with small likelihood of a successful outcome.“

In addition, doubts surfaced about the ability of the military to train foreign forces.

Furthermore, throughout the war there was found to be considerable flaws and dishonesty by officers and commanders due to promotions being tied to the body count system touted by Westmoreland and McNamara.

And behind the scenes Secretary of Defense McNamara wrote in a memo to President Johnson his doubts about the war:

“The picture of the world’s greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one.“

Failure of the war is often placed at different institutions and levels.

Some have suggested that the failure of the war was due to political failures of US leadership.

Above: The White House, Washington DC (USA)

The official history of the US Army noted that:

“Tactics have often seemed to exist apart from larger issues, strategies, and objectives.

Yet in Vietnam the Army experienced tactical success and strategic failure.

Success rests not only on military progress but on correctly analysing the nature of the particular conflict, understanding the enemy’s strategy, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of allies.

A new humility and a new sophistication may form the best parts of a complex heritage left to the Army by the long, bitter war in Vietnam.“

Others point to a failure of US military doctrine.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stated that:

“The achievement of a military victory by US forces in Vietnam was indeed a dangerous illusion.“

The inability to bring Hanoi to the bargaining table by bombing also illustrated another US miscalculation, and demonstrated the limitations of US military abilities in achieving political goals.

As Army Chief of Staff Harold Keith Johnson noted:

“If anything came out of Vietnam, it was that air power couldn’t do the job.“

Above: Harold Keith Johnson (1912 – 1983)

Even General William Westmoreland admitted that the bombing had been ineffective.

As he remarked:

“I still doubt that the North Vietnamese would have relented.”

US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in a secret memo to President Gerald Ford that:

“In terms of military tactics, we cannot help draw the conclusion that our armed forces are not suited to this kind of war.

Even the Special Forces who had been designed for it could not prevail.”

Hanoi had persistently sought unification of the country since the Geneva Accords, and the effects of US bombings had negligible impact on the goals of the North Vietnamese government.

The effects of US bombing campaigns had mobilised the people throughout North Vietnam and mobilised international support for North Vietnam due to the perception of a superpower attempting to bomb a significantly smaller, agrarian society into submission.

The Vietnam War POW /MIA issue, concerning the fate of US service personnel listed as missing in action, persisted for many years after the war’s conclusion.

The costs of the war loom large in American popular consciousness.

A 1990 poll showed that the public incorrectly believed that more Americans lost their lives in Vietnam than in World War II.

President Ronald Reagan coined the term “Vietnam Syndrome” to describe the reluctance of the American public and politicians to support further military interventions abroad after Vietnam.

According to a 2004 Gallup poll, 62% of Americans believed it was an unjust war.

US public polling in 1978 revealed that nearly 72% of Americans believed the war was “fundamentally wrong and immoral.”

Nearly a decade later, the number fell to 66%.

In the past three decades, surveys have consistently shown that only around 35% of Americans believe that the war was fundamentally wrong and immoral.

When surveyed in 2000, one third of Americans believed that the war was a noble cause.

The Vietnam stab-in-the-back myth asserts that the United States’ defeat in the Vietnam War was caused by various American groups, such as civilian policymakers, the media, anti-war protesters, the US Congress, political liberals, or the Democratic Party.

Used primarily by right-wing warhawks, the name “stab-in-the-back” is analogous to the German stab-in-the-back myth, which claims that internal forces caused the German defeat in World War I.

Unlike the German myth, the American variant lacks an antisemitic aspect.

Jeffrey Kimball wrote that the US defeat “produced a powerful myth of betrayal that was analogous to the archetypal Dolchstoss legend of post-World War I Germany“.

To Reason Why: The Debate about the Causes of U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War: Kimball, Jeffrey P.: 9781597523875: Amazon.com: Books

The myth was a “stronger version of the argument that antiwar protest encouraged the enemy, suggested that the antiwar movement might in the end commit the ultimate act of treachery, causing the loss of an otherwise winnable war“.

During the War, hearings were held in the US Senate regarding the progress of the War.

At hearings of the Senate Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee (SPIS), generals testified that the failure of the War in 1967 was caused by excessive civilian restraint on target selection during the bombing of North Vietnam, which the subcommittee agreed with.

Joseph A. Fry contends that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and SPIS, by blaming the media and antiwar protesters for misrepresenting the war, cultivated the stab-in-the-back myth.

Although much of the American public had never supported the War, General William Westmoreland blamed the American media for turning the country against the war after the 1968 Tet Offensive.

That narrative was followed by later writers such as Guenther Lewy and Norman Podhoretz.

One study estimated that until the Offensive, American pundits supported their government’s war policy four to one and afterward, they switched to being two to one against it.

Many history textbooks state that the Offensive was followed by public opinion turning against the War, and some accounts mention media coverage.

Another element of the myth relates to the 1973 Paris Peace Accords in which the stab-in-the-back interpretation holds that obstruction in Congress prevented the United States from enforcing the accords.

According to Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, that interpretation of the accords has “more or less been rejected by most scholars in the field,” but it is alive in popular discourse.

In 1978 and 1979, Nixon and Kissinger respectively published best-selling memoirs based on access to still-classified documents that suppressed the decent interval theory and “propped up the Dolchstoßlegende,” according to the historian Ken Hughes.

Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, the Vietnam War, and the Casualties of Reelection (Miller Center Studies on the Presidency): Hughes, Ken: 9780813939353: Amazon.com: Books

In 1982, Harry G. Summers Jr. wrote that the idea that internal forces caused the defeat in Vietnam was “one of the more simplistic explanations for our failure… this evasion is rare among Army officers.

A stab-in-the-back syndrome never developed after Vietnam.“

American Strategy in Vietnam eBook by Col. Harry G Summers Jr. - 9780486121550 | Rakuten Kobo United States

However, according to Ben Buley, Summers’ book is actually one of the most significant exponents of the myth although Summers proposes a more subtle version in which the military is criticized, but the primary responsibility for the defeat lies with civilian policymakers.

In his 1998 book, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam, Jerry Lembcke compared the stab-in-the-back myth with the myth that returning veterans were spat upon by and insulted by antiwar protesters, but no spitting incident has ever been proven to have occurred.

According to Lembcke, the stab-in-the-back myth was more popular during the war, and the spitting myth gained prominence only in the 1980s.

By Jerry Lembcke - The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam: 1st (first) Edition: Jerry Lembcke: 8580000995657: Amazon.com: Books

In his 2001 book The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning and Recovery, Wolfgang Schivelbusch denied the existence of a Vietnam stab-in-the-back myth comparable to the German one.

Although he wrote that some US rhetoric was “quite similar to that voiced by right-wing Germans during the Weimar Republic,” he argued that the Vietnam War “did not entail national collapse, was not followed by a humiliation like that of the Versailles Treaty, and did not polarize the nation or lead to civil war“.

The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery by Wolfgang Schivelbusch

Jeffrey Kimball wrote that Schivelbusch “was incorrect on virtually every count.”

To Reason Why by Jeffrey P. Kimball 9780075571322 | eBay

Kimball writes that the stab-in-the-back charge was resurrected in the 2004 US presidential campaign as the Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, was criticized for opposing the war after he had returned from Vietnam.

John Kerry official Secretary of State portrait.jpg — Above: John Kerry

In 2004, Charles Krauthammer wrote in The New Republic that broadcaster Walter Cronkite had caused the US to be defeated:

“Once said to be lost, it was.”

Charles Krauthammer.jpg — Above: Charles Krauthammer (1950 – 2018)

In 2017, David Mikics wrote that “the Vietnam stab-in-the-back argument is now largely dead.”

Slow Reading in a Hurried Age: Amazon.de: Mikics, David: Fremdsprachige Bücher

Personally, I think all warhawks should be immediately placed at the front of the battlelines with nothing more than the protection afforded to the civilian population of the place they wish to see invaded.

I think the resulting war will be one of the shortest ever seen.

In the post-war era, Americans have struggled to absorb the lessons of the military intervention.

As General Maxwell Taylor, one of the principal architects of the war, noted:

“First, we didn’t know ourselves.

We thought that we were going into another Korean War, but this was a different country.

Secondly, we didn’t know our South Vietnamese allies.

And we knew less about North Vietnam.

Who was Ho Chi Minh?

Nobody really knew.

So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we’d better keep out of this kind of dirty business.

It’s very dangerous.“

Eskisehir, Turkey, Thursday 1 April 2021

As followers of my Facebook posts know, on Saturday 20 March 2021, I made a daytrip to the Turkish capital, Ankara.

Clockwise, from top: Söğütözü skyline, Anıtkabir, Gençlik Parkı, Kızılay Square, Kocatepe Mosque, Atakule — Above: Images of Ankara

And, without planning to, I visited the Anit Kabir – the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881 – 1938) Mausoleum.

Atatürk’s monumental mausoleum sits high above the city with an abundance of marble and an air of veneration and sanctity.

Anit Kabir (6526103103).jpg — Above: The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), lies in the Anıtkabir Mausoleum

The memorial straddles a hill in a park about 1.2 km south of Tandogan, the closest Ankaray-line metro station to the entrance.

It is said that there is a free shuttle that regularly zips up and down the hill from the entrance, but I didn’t see it.

I ended up walking from the main train station to Anit Kabir and later took a cab from there to the city quarter of Gaziosmanpasa.

The main entrance to the Anit Kabir complex, after you are scanned for explosives and weaponry and all unnecessary gear is locked away for safekeeping by security, and after a short walk along the sole access avenue allowed, is via the Lion Road, a 262-metre walkway lined with 24 lion statues – Hittite symbols of power used to strength of the Turkish nation (or at least its government).

The path leads to a massive courtyard, framed by colonnaded walkways, with steps leading up to the huge tomb on the left.

Road Of Lions In Anitkabir, Ankara Editorial Image - Image of mustafa, ataturk: 83447735

To the right of the tomb, the extensive museum is said to display Atatürk memorablia, personal effects, gifts from famous admirers, and recreations of his childhood home in Salonika, Greece, and school in Bitola, North Macedonia (both then part of the Ottoman Empire).

It is said that just as revealing as all the rich artefacts are his simple rowing machine and huge multilingual library, which includes tomes he wrote.

Downstairs, in the Museum, it is said, there are extensive exhibits about the Turkish War of Independence (1919 – 1922) and the formation of the Republic, moving from battlefield murals with sounnd effects to overdetailed explanations (in English and Turkish) of post-1921 reforms.

(I write “it is said” as the Museum, like much of Turkey’s tourist infrastructure, remains closed during these pandemic times.)

(Atatürk initiated a rigorous program of political, economic, and cultural reforms with the ultimate aim of building a modern, progressive and secular nation-state.

He made primary education free and compulsory, opening thousands of new schools all over the country.

He also introduced the Latin-based Turkish alphabet, replacing the old Ottoman Turkish alphabet.

Turkish women received equal civil and political rights during Atatürk’s presidency.

In particular, women were given voting rights in local elections by Act #1580 on 3 April 1930 and a few years later, in 1934, full universal suffrage.

His government carried out a policy of Turkification, trying to create a homogeneous and unified nation.

Under Atatürk, non-Turkish minorities were pressured to speak Turkish in public, while non-Turkish toponyms (names) and last names of minorities had to be changed to Turkish renditions.)

(I wonder what my Turkified name would be…..Adem Solak?

Kerr, a Scottish clan toponym, means “left-handed” in the original Gaelic, which is in Turkish “solak“.)

As you approach the tomb itself, to the left and right are gilded inscriptions, which are quotations from Atatürk’s 1932 speech celebrating the Republic’s 10th anniversary.

Local Guides Connect - Anıtkabir in Çankaya, Ankara, Turkey - Local Guides Connect

(Another speech, his five-day address on the Turkish War of Independence, in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey between the 15th and the 20th of October 1927, is available in English at the gift shop to the right of the tomb as one leaves the courtyard.)

A Speech: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: 9786052957776: Amazon.com: Books

The visitors remove their hats as they enter this Holy of Holies and necks bend to view the ceiling of the lofty hall, lined in marble and sparingly decorated with 15th and 16th-century Ottoman mosaics.

At the northern end of the hall stands a mighty marble cenotaph, cut from a single piece of stone weighing 40 tonnes.

The actual tomb is in a chamber beneath it.

Like myself, many Western travellers remark on the Turks’ devotion to Atatürk.

In response, the Turks reply that the Turkish state is a result of his energy and vision.

Without him there would be no Turkey.

From the era of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini, Atatürk stands as a beacon of statesmanship and proves that radical reform, deftly handled, can be hugely successful.

The Turks’ gratitude to Atatürk manifests itself throughout the country, including in Eskesehir and other places I have visited in Turkey.

He appears on stamps, banknotes and statues across the country.

His name is affixed to innumerable bridges, airports and highways.

And seemingly every house in which he spent a night from the southern Aegean to the Black Sea is now a museum.

Turkish schoolchildren learn by rote and can dutifully recite Atatürk’s life story.

I have already had students quote something he has said to me.

But might his history be more complex than the reality of who he was?

For example, though he was an avowed champion of Turkish culture, he preferred opera to Turkish music.

The problem is the reality of the man and the strength of the legend are a fine line to tread, a balancing act requiring great dexterity, for foreigners like me, where one must be extremely sensitive and cautious to not create the slightest perceived insult to his memory or legacy.

In fact, any shadow upon his visage is considered not only inappropriate but can also be judged by the authorities as illegal.

I have mentioned my visit to Anit Kabir and my cautious attempts to comprehend this father of revolution as Heidi Hoi found herself in a similar delicate balancing act trying to comprehend another legendary personage…..

Hanoi, Vietnam, Tuesday 19 March 2019

Heidi comes from Switzerland and is young enough to be my daughter.

This means that she comes from a nation that has not been directly involved in a military conflict since Napoleonic times and being born a half century after the Vietnam War this conflict has no real resonance with her except for being a war with a well-known name because the Americans were involved.

(Americans are blessed and cursed with the ability to publicize themselves perhaps better than any other nation on the planet.)

As followers of my blog know, I have been recounting the ongoing travel adventures of Heidi Hoi aka Swiss Miss for quite some time.

So far, I have written of her travels in Myanmar and Sri Lanka and I have recently begun a series of her travels in Vietnam.

When we last met up with our hardy heroine she was exploring the wonders and mysteries of Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital…..

The Imperial Citadel of Thang Long is an intriguing relic of Vietnam’s history and, signifying its historical and cultural importance, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Standing 40 metres high, the central flag tower is the most recognizable feature of the Imperial Citadel and is often used as a symbol of Hanoi.

This was the centre of ancient Hanoi and served as the political centre for eight centuries.

Located in Ba Dinh, the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long is close to many other tourist attractions.

The Imperial Citadel of Thang Long, is an intriguing relic of Vietnam’s history and, signifying its historical and cultural importance, was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2010.

Also known as the Hanoi Citadel, many artefacts and items dating back to between the 6^th and 20^th centuries were excavated in 2004, including foundations of old palaces, ancient roads, ponds and wells.

On top of these discoveries, archaeologists also found bronze coins, ceramics and pottery from China and many places in Asia, all of which demonstrate a close trading relationship in the area.

Visitors should head for the display room that features interesting excavated items and mock-ups of the citadel itself.

Perhaps because both Heidi and I have travelled the globe our views regarding nationalism may differ from folks with little travelling experience.

I think it is normal and healthy to have a love of country, a heart for your homeland, because the land that raised you normally remains significant to your life.

Heidi is Swiss and Switzerland is her home.

I am Canadian and will always think of Canada as home.

Where nationalistic fervor fails is when love of country is used to justify any and all actions committed in the name of a nation.

The attitude that bellows at persons of conscience to “love it or leave it” when they object to what a government is doing.

Love It or Leave It': Resurrecting the Worst of America's Political Legacy | by David Hinckley | Medium

It seems so perverse that a person is condemned as unpatriotic when they insist that their nation act in a manner that is morally correct while those who march to the beat of jingoistic rheotric that screams “my country right or wrong” are hailed as heroes.

If you love your country, shouldn’t you expect the government of that country to act in a moral and responsible way that makes a person proud to be from that country?

Carl Schurz quote: Tis not, 'my country right or wrong'; tis, 'my country...

Being patriotic does not mean blindly whitewashing all the nation’s mistakes of the past, but instead it means taking responsibility for those errors and learning from them for the benefit of everyone.

There is not one single nation that doesn’t have blood on its hands for one reason or another.

Canada’s past, though perhaps not as bloody as many other nations, has had moments of shame to atone for: its treatment of First Nations, its involvement in questionable military conflicts, its spotty environmental record….

Switzerland’s past as well is not blemish-free despite its neutrality stance: the caches of questionable monies from nations hiding the source of their inquitious gains, the sale and manufacture of arms to nations whose morality has been less than admirable at times, its questionable compliance with the policies of certain WW2 atrocities…..

Location of Switzerland (green) in Europe (green and dark grey)

I find myself feeling more and more cynical about a nation when its enthusiasm for flag-waving is blatantly exuberant.

Too many flags seems to me to be too little thought of the significance of a nation’s actions.

When a flag becomes more significant than the people it is supposed to represent than that flag loses its significance.

For example, when standing at attention when the flag is flown and the national anthem is sung becomes more important than the lives and rights of its citizens than that flag and that anthem do not represent its people as they should.

What Colin Kaepernick Started - The New York Times — Above: Colin Kaepernick US national anthem protest

In national capitals one does expect a certain amount of flag-waving if for no other reason than they are capitals of nations.

I expect to see more American flags per square mile in Washington DC than I do in Washington State.

So, it is no wonder that the tallest flag in Vietnam is in Hanoi.

The Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long (Vietnamese: Hoàng thành Thăng Long) is a complex of historic imperial buildings located in the centre of Hanoi, first constructed in 1011 under the reign of Emperor Ly Thai To of the Ly dynasty.

The royal enclosure was first built during the Ly dynasty (1010) and subsequently expanded by the Tran, Lê and Nguyen dynasties.

It remained the seat of the Vietnamese court until 1810, when the Nguyen dynasty chose to move the capital to Hué.

The ruins roughly coincide with the Hanoi Citadel today.

The royal palaces and most of the structures in Thăng Long were in varying states of disrepair by the late 19th century with the upheaval of the French conquest of Hanoi.

By the 20th century many of the remaining structures were torn down.

Only in the 21st century are the ruin foundations of Thăng Long Imperial City systematically excavated.

In mid-1945 the Citadel was used by the Imperial Japanese Army to imprison over 4,000 French colonial soldiers captured during the Japanese coup d’état in French Indochina in March 1945.

The central sector of the imperial citadel was listed in UNESCO’s World Heritage Site on 31 July 2010 at its session in Brazil, as “The Central Sector of the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long – Hanoi”.

The royal palaces and edifices were largely destroyed in the late 19th century.

The few remaining structures within the royal compound are the Doan Mon Gate, marking the southern entrance to the royal palace, the Flag Tower, the steps of Kinh Thiên Palace and the Hậu Lâu (Princess’ Palace).

Remains of the Imperial City were discovered on the site of the former Ba Dinh Hall when the structure was torn down in 2008 to make way for a new parliament building.

Various archaeological remains unearthed were brought to the National Museum to be exhibited.

Thus far only a small fraction of Thăng Long has been excavated.

Among the structures related to the Imperial City is the Flag Tower of Hanoi (Cột cờ Hà Nội).

Rising to a height of 33.4 m (41 m with the flag), it is frequently used as a symbol of the city.

Built in 1812 during the Nguyên dynasty, the tower, unlike many other structures in Hanoi, was spared during the French colonial rule (1885–1954) as it was used as a military post.

The Flag Tower (Cột cờ) is composed of three tiers and a pyramid-shaped tower with a spiral staircase leading to the top inside it.

The first tier is 42.5 m wide and 3.1 m high; the second – 25 m wide and 3.7 m high and the third – 12.8 m wide and 5.1 m high.

The second tier has four doors.

The words “Nghênh Húc” (English: “To welcome dawn’s sunlight“) are inscribed on the eastern door, the words “Hồi Quang” (“To reflect light“) – on the western door and “Hướng Minh” (“Directed to the sunlight“) – on the southern door.

The tower is lighted by 36 flower-shaped and 6 fan-shaped windows.

The national flag of Vietnam is on top of the tower.

From 1954 to 1975, the People’s Army of Vietnam, had its headquarters within the Citadel, coded D67.

A connecting tunnel allowed for emergency evacuation in case of an attack.

The house and tunnel are situated to the north of Kinh Thien Hall.

To visit this historic site, tourists need to buy an entrance ticket of VND 30,000.

Students and elderly people pay VND 15,000.

D67 house was built in 1967, with modern architectural style, 60-centimeter wall and good soundproofing system.

At this place, exhibits are tools that comrades in the Politburo and the Central Military Commission, the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff used in the resistance war against the US.

Another issue that causes world travellers a conundrum in trying to decide the proper attitude to display is the notion of a nation’s military and its proper role. in protecting its people.

We read of headlines of Myanmar’s military coup and wonder at the motivations of those who have taken power from those who had democratically been chosen by the people.

Are these soldiers truly defending their country from the corruption of leaders who failed in their duty to serve their country, or is the military simply using the excuse of corruption to seize control of a nation powerless to resist them?

We think of nations that came into being because of a revolution – even Switzerland revolted against the Hapsburgs to become the Confederation it is today – and we wonder whether reform is even possible without the violence and bloodshed of a military solution.

Could Atatürk have become the Father of Turkey without his military skills?

Would Turkey have existed without Atatürk?

Could Ho Chi Minh have become the Father of Vietnam without his violent resistance?

Would Vietnam have existed without Uncle Ho?

The One Pillar Pagoda is a modest temple is constructed from wood based on a single stone pillar crafted into the shape of a lotus blossom and has been rebuilt several times, most recently in 1955 when the base was destroyed during the French evacuation.

The pagoda is often used as a symbol for Hanoi and remains one of the city’s most revered sights in a beautifully tranquil garden setting with benches provided for comfortable contemplation.

The shrine inside the pagoda is dedicated to the Vietnamese Buddhist deity Quan Am with her effigy nestled inside the tiny three square metres temple.

Rising from one pillar in the centre of an elegantly square shaped lotus pond, the One Pillar Pagoda is said to represent a lotus flower growing up out of the water.

Built between the years of 1028 and1054 during the reign of Emperor Ly Thai Tong of the Ly Dynasty, the One Pillar Pagoda is one of Vietnam’s most iconic temples.

The One Pillar Pagoda (Vietnamese: Chùa Một Cột) formally belongs to an architecture complex called Diên Hựu tự (Extended Blessing Pagoda).

The pagoda is a historic Buddhist temple in the central Ba Dinh district (near the Thang Long Citadel).

The most famous part of this architecture complex is Liên Hoa Đài (Lotus Station), a temple with special structure: a building laid on one pillar.

The original pagoda was built in 1049, had some additions and was perfected in 1105.

It is regarded alongside the Perfume Temple, as one of Vietnam’s two most iconic temples.

The One Pillar Pagoda was built by Emperor Ly Thái Tóng (1000 – 1054), who ruled from 1028 to 1054.

According to the court records, Lý Thái Tông was childless and dreamt that he met the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, who handed him a baby son while seated on a lotus flower.

Lý Thái Tông then married a peasant girl that he had met and she bore him a son.

The Emperor constructed the temple in gratitude for this in 1049, having been told by a monk named Thiền Tuệ to build the temple, by erecting a pillar in the middle of a lotus pond, similar to the one he saw in the dream.

LýTháiTông.jpg — Above: A statue of emperor Lý Thái Tông

The temple was located in what was then the Tây Cấm Garden in Thạch Bảo, Vĩnh Thuận district in the capital Thăng Long (now known as Hanoi).

Before the pagoda was opened, prayers were held for the longevity of the monarch.

During the Lý dynasty era, the temple was the site of an annual royal ceremony on the occasion of Vesak, the birthday of Gautama Buddha (480 – 400BC).

A Buddha-bathing ceremony was held annually by the monarch, attracting monks and laymen alike to the ceremony.

The monarch would then free a bird, which was followed by the people.

The temple was renovated in 1105 by Emperor Ly Nhân Tông (1066 – 1128), a bell was cast, and an installation was attempted in 1109.

However, the bell, which was regarded as one of the four major capital works of Vietnam at the time, was much too large and heavy, and could not be installed.

Since it could not be tolled while left on the ground, it was moved into the countryside and deposited in farmland adjacent to Nhất Trụ Temple.

This land was widely inhabited by turtles, so the bell came to be known as Chuông Quy Điền, which means Bell of the Turtle Farmland.

At the start of the 15th century, Vietnam was invaded and occupied by China’s Ming dynasty.

In 1426, the future Emperor Lê Loi attacked and dispersed the Chinese forces, and while the Ming were in retreat and low on weapons, their commanding general ordered that the bell be smelted, so that the copper could be used for manufacturing weaponry.

During the Nguyên dynasty, the pagoda was restored and rebuilt in 1850 and 1922.

In 1954, the French destroyed the pagoda.

In 1955, the Ministry of Culture of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam restored the pagoda and the Lotus Station based on the architectural style that the Nguyên dynasty had left.

More puzzling for travellers to ponder are questions that revolve around religion and the importance of it in people’s lives.

I believe that for all its human failings religion does serve the function of lending significance to the important stages of individuals: birth, maturity, marriage, death.

The symbolism and the ceremony that religion lends to these events make these moments meaningful.

Religion, if a faith is truly followed as its tenets were meant to be, makes us reflect on the morality of our actions and advocates proper respect and reverence for all of Creation and for one another.

Those who kill in the name of faith are not faithful to their faith at all.

Religion is the foundation of law and order and justice, but part of the conflict that religion poses is whether adherence to the tenets of faith should be compelled upon our citizens to ensure their correct and moral behaviour.

And here is where the water gets murky.

For faith is a personal belief, an individual’s choice.

And one must wonder how real a person’s faith is when it is compelled rather than chosen.

Above: “**Three laughs at Tiger Brook**“, a Song dynasty (12th century) painting portraying three men representing Confucianism, Taoism (Daoism) and Buddhism laughing together.

This question lurks beneath the surface of many a nation’s politics and can be seen muddying the waters of US affairs, dividing opinions across Turkey and eroding away personal liberty in theocracies like Iran.

Even nations who shie away from identification as religious rest stops still cannot deny their peoples’ rights to practice (or not) a faith that matters to them.

Canada is in no way as blatant in professing religious zeal as our American cousins claim to be, but to deny the presence and strength of religion in Canada is to deny much of the compassion and courtesy that is part of the Canadian character.

Switzerland too, despite its reputation as a land of silent banking gnomes, is tolerant of differing denominations of Christianity within its borders and struggles with its national insecurities as to how accepting it should be of faiths outside the Christian Church, a church, whether Reformed or Roman Catholic, that still matters to many.

Vietnam, as Communist in practice as democracy in America is, should be all accounts void of religion, as love of nation should not be superseded by love of notions of hope beyond ourselves.

And yet here, even in the capital, temples and pagodas and shrines still matter to the people.

Ba Đình Square (Vietnamese: Quảng trường Ba Đình) is the name of the square in Hanoi where President Hô Chi Minh read the Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on 2 September 1945.

It is named after the Ba Dinh Uprising, an anti-French rebellion that occurred in Vietnam in 1886–1887 as part of the Cân Vuong movement.

When Hô Chi Minh died, the granite Hô Chi Minh Mausoleum was built here to display his embalmed body.

It remains a major site of tourism and pilgrimage.

Ba Dinh Square is in the center of the Ba Dinh district, with several important buildings located around it, including the President’s Palace, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Planning and Investment, and the National Assembly Building.

Hô Chi Minh Mausoleum in Ba Dinh Square is one of the most visited attractions in Hanoi.

It is the final resting place of Hô Chi Minh, the most iconic and popular leader of Vietnam, known to his people as ‘Uncle Ho’.

His body is preserved here in a glass case at the Hô Chi Minh Mausoleum in central Hanoi (albeit against his wishes).

Security is tight and visitors should dress with respect (no shorts, sleeveless shirts and miniskirts) and everyone has to deposit their bags and cameras before getting in.

For visitors, a trip to Uncle Hô’s final resting place can be an extraordinary experience as it is not just an average attraction:

It’s a part of a unique history.

Above: Changing of the Guards, Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

(I saw a similar Changing of the Guards at Anit Kabir.)

Started in 1973, the construction of the mausoleum was modeled on Lenin’s Mausoleum in Russia and was first open to the public in 1975.

The granite building means a great deal for many locals as it ensures that their beloved leader ‘lives on forever’.

Security is tight and visitors should dress with respect (no shorts, sleeveless shirts and miniskirts) and everyone has to deposit their bags and cameras before getting in.

Visitors are not allowed to stop and hold the constant queue up as the place is constantly busy.

Uncle Hô’s remains are sent yearly to Russia for maintenance, therefore the mausoleum is closed usually from October onwards.

It’s best to recheck with your hotel tour desk before visiting.

Admission is free but donations are accepted.

Though it was inspired by its Russian predecessor, Uncle Hô’s Mausoleum incorporates distinct Vietnamese architectural elements, such as the sloping roof.

The exterior is made of grey granite, while the interior is grey, black and red polished stone.

The Mausoleum’s portico has the words “Chủ tịch Hồ-Chí-Minh” (President Hô Chi Minh) inscribed across it.

The banner beside says “Nước Cộng Hòa Xã Hội Chủ Nghĩa Việt Nam Muôn Năm” (“Long live the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam“).

The structure is 21.6 meters (70.9 feet) high and 41.2 meters (135.2 feet) wide.

Flanking the Mausoleum are two platforms with seven steps for parade viewing.

The plaza in front of the Mausoleum is divided into 240 green squares separated by pathways.

The gardens surrounding the mausoleum have nearly 250 different species of plants and flowers, all from different regions of Vietnam.

The materials that constitute the building, from exterior granite to interior wood, were contributed by people from all over the country.

Even the garden that surrounded the Mausoleum has a collection of plants and bonsais donated from all regions in Vietnam.

This shows the Vietnamese’s wish to forever keep their dear father/grandfather company.

In fact, the construction of the Mausoleum was against Ho Chi Minh’s will. As he passed away, he wished to be cremated and his cremation to be scattered all over the country, so that land can be saved for agricultural production.

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum: How to visit the sacred site in Vietnam | CNN Travel

Despite his wishes, the embalmed body of President Hô Chi Minh is preserved in the cooler, central hall of the mausoleum, which is protected by a military honour guard.

The body lies in a glass case with dim lights.

The mausoleum is generally open to the public.

Arriving at the Mausoleum, Heidi is surprised to find a line up to hundreds of metres long with thousands queuing to pay their respects.

Meanwhile, tour buses of Westerners began arriving from the big hotels in Hanoi to be ushered into the Mausoleum by immaculately presented guards in white uniforms, gloves and braided caps.

An elderly father in poor health wishes to see the resting place of Ho Chi Minh, the Communist leader who fought for the unification of Vietnam and died before it was realised.

Looking around, Heidi sees other elderly and frail people leaning on the arms of a son or daughter, some being pushed in village-made wheelchairs.

For war veterans it means a lot to visit Ho Chi Minh before infirmity overtakes them.

For many it is their first time visiting the capital city.

A security guard patrolling the queue comes over to usher her to the front of the file.

Foreigners are not expected to stand in the sun for hours as the rural poor have to.

Many elderly people travel to pay their respects at the mausoleum

By then, Heidi had caught the mood.

This was more than a tourist jaunt.

It needs to be done authentically by queuing in sun or rain, with relatives or strangers, sharing food and stories.

Queuing is a small price to pay for this privilege.

It is an experience not to rushed, but to be sensed and remembered while memory lasts.

The queue of people whose lives had been spent toiling in paddy fields and factories, under the rule of foreign powers, have come to pay respect to the man who had led them to change all that.

What were two hours queuing in the heat compared to that?

The line shuffles forwards, while veterans share mangoes and drinks with one another.

For two hours no one queue-jumps as tour groups do.

At the entrance everyone is instructed to walk briskly around the humidity-controlled glass cabinet Uncle Ho lies in, not to talk or make any noise, no hands in pockets, no photography, phones turned off.

Reverently under subdued lighting, the visitors walk around Uncle Ho for one silent minute.

Emerging into the bright sunlight is seen older citizens with tears on their cheeks.

Some have saved for years, travelled two days and queued two hours to pay their respects and be in his presence for that one silent minute, and then a rush to catch the night train back to their villages.

It is difficult for a Canadian or a Swiss to fully comprehend such reverence paid to a person one probably never met in person.

I wonder:

Would I queue for hours to view the embalmed bodies of John A. Macdonald (Canada’s first Prime Minister) or Terry Fox (the marathon runner who ran across half of Canada on an artificial leg, ultimately sacificing his life to raise money for cancer research)?

Photograph of Macdonald circa 1875 by George Lancefield. — Above: John A. Macdonald (1815 – 1891)

Would Heidi patiently line up for hours to catch a glimpse of Swiss folk hero William Tell?

I wonder why the Russians and the Vietnamese insist that the bodies of their great leaders be on display.

Is the love and reverence that Turks have for Atatürk somehow diminished by his body being hidden from public view?

Is the idea behind this morbid display of mortal remains to remind people that Lenin and Uncle Ho actually existed?

Is there a notion that seeing their bodies means that their spirits continue to guide and guard their homelands?

Hồ Chí Minh (1890 – 1969), né Nguyễn Sinh Cung, also known as Nguyễn Tất Thành, Nguyễn Ái Quốc, Bác Hồ, or simply Bác (‘Uncle‘) was a Vietnamese revolutionary and politician.

He served as Prime Minister of North Vietnam (1945 -1955) and President (1945 – 1969).

Ideologically a Marxist-Leninist, he served as Chairman and First Secretary of the Workers’s Party of Vietnam.

Hồ Chí Minh led the Viêt Minh independence movement from 1941 onward, establishing the Communist-ruled Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 and defeating the French Union in 1954 at the Battle of Diên Biên Phú, ending the First Indochina War.

He was a key figure in the People’s Army Of Vietnam and the Viêt Công during the Vietnam War, which lasted from 1955 to 1975.

The Democratic Republic of Vietnam was victorious against the United States and the Republic of Vietnam, reunified with the Republic of South Vietnam in 1976.

Saigon, the former capital of South Vietnam, was renamed Ho Chi Ming City in his honour.

Ho officially stepped down from power in 1965 due to health problems, and died in 1969.

The details of Hồ Chí Minh’s life before he came to power in Vietnam are uncertain.

He is known to have used between 50 and 200 pseudonyms.

Information on his birth and early life is ambiguous and subject to academic debate.

At least four existing official biographies vary on names, dates, places and other hard facts while unofficial biographies vary even more widely.

Aside from being a politician, Hô was also a writer, a poet and a journalist.

He wrote several books, articles and poems in Chinese, French and Vietnamese.

Far away across the ocean
Far beyond the sea’s eastern rim
Lives a man who is father of the Indochinese people
And his name, it is Ho Chi Minh

[Chorus]
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh

Lời dịch - The Ballad Of Ho Chi Minh - Ewan MacColl

Hồ Chí Minh was born as Nguyễn Sinh Cung in 1890 in the village of Hoàng Trù (the name of the local temple near Làng Sen), his mother’s village.

Although 1890 is generally accepted as his birth year, at various times he used four other birth years: 1891, 1892, 1894 and 1895.

From 1895, he grew up in his father Nguyên Sinh Sac‘s village of Làng Sen, Kim Liên, Nam Dàn and Nghê An Province.

He had three siblings:

his sister Bạch Liên (Nguyễn Thị Thanh), a clerk in the French Army
his brother Nguyên Sinh Khiêm, a geomancer and traditional herbalist
another brother (Nguyễn Sinh Nhuận), who died in infancy.

As a young child, Cung (Hô) studied with his father before more formal classes with a scholar named Vuong Thuc Do.

He quickly mastered Chinese writing, a prerequisite for any serious study of Confucianism, while honing his colloquial Vietnamese writing.

In addition to his studies, he was fond of adventure and loved to fly kites and go fishing.

Following Confucian tradition, his father gave him a new name at the age of 10:

Nguyễn Tất Thành (“Nguyễn the Accomplished“).

His father was a Confucian scholar and teacher and later an imperial magistrate in the small remote district of Binh Khe (Qui Nhon).

He was demoted for abuse of power after an influential local figure died several days after having received 102 strokes of the cane as punishment for an infraction.

His father was eligible to serve in the imperial bureaucracy, but he refused because it meant serving the French.

This exposed Thành (Hô) to rebellion at a young age and seemed to be the norm for the province.

Nevertheless, he received a French education, attending the Collège Quôc Hoc in Huê.

His disciples, Pham Van Dông and Vo Nguyên Giáp, also attended the school, as did Ngô Dinh Diêm, the future President of South Vietnam (and political rival).

From the Viet Bac to the Saigon Delta
From the mountains and the plains below
Young and old workers, peasants and the toiling tenant farmers
Fight for freedom with Uncle Ho

[Chorus]
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh

Because his father had been dismissed, he no longer had any hope for a governmental scholarship and went southward, taking a position at Dục Thanh school in Phan Thiêt for about six months, then traveled to Saigon.

"Phan Thiết Water Tower": symbol of Phan Thiết — Above: Images of Phan Thiet

He worked as a kitchen helper on a French steamer, the Admiral de Latouche-Tréville, using the alias Văn Ba.

The steamer departed on 5 June 1911 and arrived in Marseille on 5 July 1911.

The ship then left for Le Havre and Dunkirk, returning to Marseille in mid-September.

There, he applied for the French Colonial Administrative School, but his application was rejected.

He instead decided to begin traveling the world by working on ships and visited many countries from 1911 to 1917.

While working as the cook’s helper on a ship in 1912, Thành (Hô) traveled to the United States.

[Verse 3]
Ho Chi Minh was a deep sea sailor
He served his time out on the seven seas
Work and hardship were part of his early education
Exploitation, his ABC

[Chorus]
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh

Above: The ***Admiral Latouche-Tréville***

From 1912 to 1913, he may have lived in New York City (Harlem) and Boston, where he claimed to have worked as a baker at the Parker House Hotel.

The only evidence that he was in the United States is a letter to French colonial administrators dated 15 December 1912 and postmarked New York City (he gave as his address Poste Restante in Le Havre and his occupation as a sailor) and a postcard to Phan Chu Trinh in Paris where he mentioned working at the Parker House Hotel.

Inquiries to the Parker House management revealed no records of his ever having worked there.

Boston Omni Parker House Hotel,Boston:Photos,Reviews,Deals — Above: Parker House Hotel, Boston (USA)

Among a series of menial jobs, he claimed to have worked for a wealthy family in Brooklyn between 1917 and 1918 and for General Motors as a line manager.

It is believed that while in the US he made contact with Korean nationalists, an experience that developed his political outlook.

Sophie Quinn-Judge states that this is “in the realm of conjecture“.

Ho Chi Minh: The Missing Years: Amazon.de: Quinn-Judge, Sophie: Fremdsprachige Bücher

Some documents in the French and Russian archives show that during his time living in the United States, Nguyen Tat Thanh came to hear Marcus Garvey give a speech in New York Ciyt’s Harlem district and consult with activists for Korean independence.

(Garvey was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, the UNIA-ACL, commonly known as the UNIA.

Emphasising unity between Africans and the African diaspora, he campaigned for an end to European colonial rule across Africa and the political unification of the continent, and was committed to the belief that black people needed to secure financial independence from white-dominant society.)

At various points between 1913 and 1919, Thành (Hô) claimed to have lived in London’s West Ealing and later in Crouch End, Hornsey.

He reportedly worked as either a chef or dishwasher (reports vary) at the Drayton Court Hotel in West Ealing.

The Drayton Court Hotel - Fuller's Pub and Hotel in Ealing — Above: Drayton Court Hotel, Ealing (London)

Claims that he trained as a pastry chef under Auguste Escoffier at the Carlton Hotel in Haymarket, Westminster are not supported by documentary evidence.

The wall of New Zealand House, home of the New Zealand High Commission which now stands on the site of the Carlton Hotel, displays a blue plaque.

During 1913, Thành was also employed as a pastry chef on the Newhaven–Dieppe ferry route.

Ferries from Newhaven to Dieppe | Ferries to France | DFDS

From 1919 to 1923, Thành (Hô) began to show an interest in politics while living in France, being influenced by his friend and Socialist Party of France comrade Marcel Cachin.

Thành claimed to have arrived in Paris from London in 1917, but the French police only had documents recording his arrival in June 1919.

In Paris he joined the Groupe des Patriotes Annamites (the Group of Vietnamese Patriots) that included Phan Chu Trinh and Nguyên An Ninh.

They had been publishing newspaper articles advocating for Vietnamese independence under the pseudonym Nguyễn Ái Quốc (“Nguyễn the Patriot“) prior to Thành’s arrival in Paris.

The group petitioned for recognition of the civil rights of the Vietnamese people in French Indochina to the Western powers at the Versailles peace talks, but they were ignored.

Citing the principle of self-determination outlined prior to the peace accords, they requested the allied powers to end French colonial rule of Vietnam and ensure the formation of an independent government.

Prior to the conference, the group sent their letter to allied leaders, including Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and President Woodrow Wilson.

They were unable to obtain consideration at Versailles, but the episode would later help establish the future Hồ Chí Minh as the symbolic leader of the anti-colonial movement at home in Vietnam.

Georges Clemenceau par Nadar.jpg — Above: Georges Clemenceau (1841 – 1929)

Since Thành was the public face behind the publication of the document (although it was written by Phan Văn Trường), he soon became known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, and first used the name in September during an interview with a Chinese newspaper correspondent.

Many authors have stated that 1919 was a lost “Wilsonian moment“, where the future Hồ Chí Minh could have adopted a pro-American and less radical position if only President Wilson had received him.

However, at the time of the Versailles Conference, Hồ Chí Minh was committed to a socialist program.

While the conference was ongoing, Nguyễn Ái Quốc was already delivering speeches on the prospects of Bolshevism in Asia and was attempting to persuade French socialists to join Lenin’s Communist International (Comintern).

In December 1920, Quốc (Hô) became a representative to the Congress of Tours of the Socialist Party of France, voted for the Third International and was a founding member of the French Communist Party.

Taking a position in the Colonial Committee of the party, he tried to draw his comrades’ attention towards people in French colonies including Indochina, but his efforts were often unsuccessful.

While living in Paris, he reportedly had a relationship with a dressmaker named Marie Brière.

As discovered in 2018, Quốc also had relations with the members of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea like Kim Kyu-sik while in Paris.

During this period, he began to write journal articles and short stories as well as running his Vietnamese nationalist group.

In May 1922, he wrote an article for a French magazine criticizing the use of English words by French sportswriters.

The article implored Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré to outlaw such Franglais as le manager, le round and le knock-out.

His articles and speeches caught the attention of Dmitry Manuilsky, who would soon sponsor his trip to the Soviet Union and under whose tutelage he would become a high-ranking member of the Soviet Comintern.

Dmitry Manuilsky.PNG — Above: Dmitry Manuilsky (1883 – 1959)

In 1923, Quốc (Hô) left Paris for Moscow carrying a passport with the name Chen Vang, a Chinese merchant, where he was employed by the Comintern, studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East and participated in the Fifth Comintern Congress in June 1924 before arriving in Canton (present-day Guanghhou), China in November 1924 using the name Ly Thuy.

In 1925 – 1926, he organized “Youth Education Classes” and occasionally gave socialist lectures to Vietnamese revolutionary young people living in Canton at the Whampoa Military Academy.

陸軍軍官學校大門.jpg — Above: Main gate of the Whampoa Military Academy

These young people would become the seeds of a new revolutionary, pro-communist movement in Vietnam several years later.

Above: The book of lectures, ***The Line of Destiny (Revolutionary Road)***, Ho Chi Minh

According to William Duiker, he lived with a Chinese woman, Zeng Xueming, whom he married on 18 October 1926.

When his comrades objected to the match, he told them:

“I will get married despite your disapproval because I need a woman to teach me the language and keep house”.

Zeng Xueming in the 1920s — Above: Zeng Xueming

She was 21 and he was 36.

They married in the same place where Zhou Enlai had married earlier and then lived in the residence of a Comintern agent, Mikhail Borodin.

國共內戰時期周恩來.jpg — Above: Zhou Enlai, the first Premier of China (1898 – 1976)

Hoâng Van Chi argued that in June 1925 Ho betrayed Phan Bôi Châu, the famous leader of a rival revolutionary faction and his father’s old friend, to French Secret Service agents in Shanghai for 100,000 piastres.

A source states that he later claimed he did it because he expected Châu’s trial to stir up anti-French sentiment and because he needed the money to establish a communist organization.

PhanBoiChau memory.JPG — Above: Phan Bôi Châu (1867 – 1940)

In Hô Chi Minh: A Life, William Duiker considered this hypothesis, but ultimately rejected it.

Other sources claim that Nguyễn Thượng Huyện was responsible for Chau’s capture.

Chau, sentenced to lifetime house arrest, never denounced Quốc.

Ho Chi Minh: A Life: Amazon.de: Duiker, William J: Fremdsprachige Bücher

After Chiang Kai-shek’s 1927 anti-Communist coup, Quốc (Hô) left Canton again in April 1927 and returned to Moscow, spending part of the summer of 1927 recuperating from tuberculosis in the Crimea before returning to Paris once more in November.

He then returned to Asia by way of Brussels, Berlin, Switzerland and Italy, where he sailed to Bangkok, arriving in July 1928.

“Although we have been separated for almost a year, our feelings for each other do not have to be said to be felt“, he reassured Minh in an intercepted letter.

In this period, he served as a senior agent undertaking Comintern activities in Southeast Asia.

Quốc (Hô) remained in Thailand, staying in the Thai village of Nachok until late 1929, when he moved on to India and then Shanghai.

In Hong Kong in early 1930, he chaired a meeting with representatives from two Vietnamese Communist parties to merge them into a unified organization, the Communist Party of Vietnam.

In June 1931, he was arrested by British Colonial Authorities in Hong Kong, with a likelihood of being deported back to Vietnam and sentenced to death.

However, he was approached by left-wing British solicitor Frank Loseby who defended his case.

Eventually, after appeals to the Privy Council in London, Quốc (Ho) was reported as dead in 1932 and it was ruled that, though he would be deported as an undesirable, it would not be to a French destination port.

Quốc (Hô) was eventually released and, disguised as a Chinese scholar, boards a ship to Shanghai.

He subsequently returned to the Soviet Union and in Moscow studied and taught at the Lenin Institute.

In this period he reportedly lost his positions in the Comintern because of a concern that he had betrayed the organization.

However, according to Ton That Thien’s research, he was a member of the inner circle of the Comintern, a protégé of Dmitry Manuilsky and a member in good standing of the Comintern throughout the Great Purge.

Above: People looking for relatives among repressed in Vinnytsia

(The Great Purge or the Great Terror (Russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of ’37 (37-ой год, Tridtsat sedmoi god) and the Yezhovschina (‘period of Yezhov’), was Stalin’s campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union that occurred from 1936 to 1938.

It involved a large-scale repression of relatively wealthy peasants (kulaks); ethnic cleansing operations against ethnic minorities; a purge of the Communist Party of government officials, and of the Red Army leadership; widespread police surveillance; suspicion of saboteurs; counter-revolutionaries; imprisonment; and arbitrary executions.^[7]

Historians estimate the total number of deaths due to Stalinist repression in 1937 – 1938 to be 1.2 million.

The “Kulak Operation” and the targeting of national minorities were the main components of the Great Terror.

Together these two actions accounted for nine-tenths of the death sentences and three-quarters of Gulag prison camp sentences.)

In 1938, Quốc (Ho) returned to China and served as an advisor to the Chinese Communist armed forces.

He was also the senior Comintern agent in charge of Asian affairs.

He worked extensively in Chungking and travelled to Guiyang, Kunming and Guilin.

He was using the name Hồ Quang during this period.

In 1941, Hồ Chí Minh returned to Vietnam to lead the Viêt Minh independence movement.

The Japanese occupation of Indochina that year, the first step toward invasion of the rest of Southeast Asia, created an opportunity for patriotic Vietnamese.

The “men in black” were a 10,000 member guerrilla force that operated with the Việt Minh.

Hô oversaw many successful military actions against the Vichy France and Japanese occupation of Vietnam during World War II, supported closely yet clandestinely by the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and later against the French bid to reoccupy the country (1946–1954).

He was jailed in China by Chiang Kai-shek’s local authorities before being rescued by Chinese Communists.

Following his release in 1943, he returned to Vietnam.

[Verse 4]
Ho Chi Minh came back from sailing
And he looked on his native land
Saw the want and the hunger of the Indochinese people
Foreign soldiers on every hand

[Chorus]
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh

It was during this time that he began regularly using the name Hồ Chí Minh, a Vietnamese name combining a common Vietnamese surname (Hồ) with a given name meaning “Bright spirit” or “Clear will“.

His new name was a tribute to General Hou Zhiming, Chief Commissar of the 4th Military Region of the National Revolutionary Army, who helped releasing him from KMT prison in 1943.

In April 1945, he met with OSS agent Archimedes Patti and offered to provide intelligence, asking only for “a line of communication” between his Viet Minh and the Allies.

The OSS agreed to this and later sent a military team of OSS members to train his men and Hồ Chí Minh himself was treated for malaria and dysentery by an OSS doctor.

What were Archimedes Patti's major accomplishments? - Quora — Above: Archimedes Patti (centre foreground)

Above: Hồ Chí Minh (third from left, standing) with the OSS in 1945

Following the August Revolution (1945) organized by the Việt Minh, Hồ Chí Minh became Chairman of the Provisional Government (Premier of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and issued a Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

Above: The uprising in Hanoi on 19 August 1945

(The August Revolution (Vietnamese: Cách mạng tháng Tám), also known as the August General Uprising (Vietnamese: Tổng Khởi nghĩa tháng Tám), was a revolution launched by Ho Chi Minh’s Viêt Minh (League for the Independence of Vietnam) against French and Japanese Empire colonial rule in Vietnam, on 14 August 1945.

Within two weeks, forces under the Việt Minh had seized control of most rural villages and cities throughout the North, Central and South Vietnam, including Hanoi, where President Ho Chi Minh announced the formation of the Provisional Democratic Republic, Hué, Saigon, exception in townships Móng Cái, Vĩnh Yên, Hà Giang, Lào Cai, Lai Châu.

However, according to Vietnamese documents, the Việt Minh had, in fact, seized control of Vietnam.)

On 2 September 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese Independence.

The text of the Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam:

Compatriots of the entire nation assembled:

All people are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.

Among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776.

In a broader sense, this means:

All the peoples on the Earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of the French Revolution made in 1791 also states:

All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights.

Those are undeniable truths.

Nevertheless, for more than 80 years, the French imperialists, in the name of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow citizens.

They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice.

In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty.

They have enforced inhuman laws.

They have set up three distinct political regimes in the North, Center, and South of Vietnam in order to destroy our national unity and prevent our people from being united.

They have built more prisons than schools.

They have mercilessly slaughtered our patriots.

They have drowned our uprisings in bloodbaths.

They have fettered public opinion.

They have practiced obscurantism against our people.

(Obscurantism is the practice of deliberately presenting information in an imprecise, abstruse manner designed to limit further inquiry and understanding.)

To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol.

In the field of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people and devastated our land.

They have robbed us of our ricefields, our mines, our forests and our raw materials.

Viet Nam's Vow for Forest Protection - UN-REDD Programme Collaborative Online Workspace

They have monopolized the issuing of banknotes and the export trade.

Vietnamese Dong, Money and Costs - Ho Chi Minh City Highlights

They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people, especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty.

They have hampered the prospering of our national bourgeoisie.

They have mercilessly exploited our workers.

In the autumn of 1940, when the Japanese fascists violated indochina’s territory to establish new bases in their fight against the Allies, the French imperialists went down on their bended knees and handed over our country to them.

Thus, from that date, our people were subjected to the double yoke of the French and the Japanese.

Their sufferings and miseries increased.

The result was that, from the end of last year to the beginning of this year, from Quang Tri Province to northern Vietnam, more than two million of our fellow citizens died from starvation.

On 9 March 1945, the French troops were disarmed by the Japanese.

The French colonialists either fled or surrendered, showing that not only were they incapable of “protecting” us, but that, in the span of five years, they had twice sold our country to the Japanese.

On several occasions before 9 March, the Viêt Minh League urged the French to ally themselves with it against the Japanese.

Instead of agreeing to this proposal, the French colonialists so intensified their terrorist activities against the Việt Minh members that before fleeing they massacred a great number of our political prisoners detained at Yen Bai and Cao Bang.

Notwithstanding all this, our fellow citizens have always manifested toward the French a tolerant and humane attitude.

Even after the Japanese Putsch of March 1945, the Việt Minh League helped many Frenchmen to cross the frontier, rescued some of them from Japanese jails, and protected French lives and property.

From the autumn of 1940, our country had in fact ceased to be a French colony and had become a Japanese possession.

After the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our whole people rose to regain our national sovereignty and to found the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and not from the French.

The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated.

Our people have broken the chains which for nearly a century have fettered them and have won independence for the Fatherland.

Our people at the same time have overthrown the monarchic regime that has reigned supreme for dozens of centuries.

In its place has been established the present Democratic Republic.

For these reasons, we, the members of the Provisional Government, representing the whole Vietnamese people, declare that from now on we break off all relations of a colonial character with France.

We repeal all the international obligation that France has so far subscribed to on behalf of Viet-Nam, and we abolish all the special rights the French have unlawfully acquired in our Fatherland.

The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer the country.

We are convinced that the Allied nations, which at Tehran and San Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam.

Tehran Conference, 1943.jpg — Above: “*The Big Three*” (Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill) at the Tehran Conference (28 November – 1 December 1943)

Above: The United Nations Charter Logo from the United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO), commonly known as the San Francisco Conference (25 April to 26 June 1945)

A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the fascists during these last years, such a people must be free and independent!

For these reasons, we, the members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, solemnly declare to the world that:

Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent country—and in fact it is so already. And thus the entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty.

Above: The ***Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam***

The August Revolution sought to create a Việt Minh unified regime for the entire country.

Although he convinced Emperor Báo Dai to abdicate, his government was not recognized by any country.

He repeatedly petitioned President Harry S. Truman for support for Vietnamese independence, citing the Atlantic Charter, but Truman never responded.

(The Atlantic Charter was a statement issued on 14 August 1941 that set out American and British goals for the world after the end of World War II (1939 – 1945).

The joint statement, later dubbed the Atlantic Charter, outlined the aims of the US and the UK for the postwar world as follows: no territorial aggrandizement, no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people (self-determination), restoration of self-government to those deprived of it, reduction of trade restrictions, global co-operation to secure better economic and social conditions for all, freedom from fear and want, freedom of the seas, and abandonment of the use of force, and disarmament of aggressor nations.

The charter’s adherents signed the Declaration of the United Nations on 1 January 1942, which was the basis for the modern United Nations.

The charter inspired several other international agreements and events that followed the end of the War.

The dismantling of the British Empire, the formation of NATO, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) all derived from the Atlantic Charter.

(GATT is a legal agreement, a multilateral treaty, between many countries, whose overall purpose was to promote international trade by reducing or eliminating trade barriers such as tariffs or quotas, signed in Geneva, Switzerland, on 30 October 1947.)

Above: Logo of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

In 1946, future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Hồ Chí Minh became acquainted when they stayed at the same hotel in Paris.

He offered Ben-Gurion a Jewish home-in-exile in Vietnam.

Ben-Gurion declined, telling him:

“I am certain we shall be able to establish a Jewish government in Palestine“.

In 1946, when Hô traveled outside of the country, his subordinates imprisoned 2,500 non-Communist nationalists and forced 6,000 others to flee.

Hundreds of political opponents were jailed or exiled in July 1946, notably members of the Nationalist Party of Vietnam and the Dai Viet National Party after a failed attempt to raise a coup against the Viet Minh government.

All rival political parties were hereafter banned and local governments were purged to minimize opposition later on.

However, it was noted that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s first Congress had over two-thirds of its members come from non-Việt Minh political factions, some without an election.

Nationalist Party of Vietnam leader Nguyên Hãi Thân was named vice president.

They also held four out of ten ministerial positions.

Lâm-thời Liên-hiệp Chính-phủ Việt-nam Dân-chủ Cộng-hòa ra mắt Quốc-hội ngày 02 tháng 03 năm 1946.jpg — Above: The National People’s Congress in Hanoi on 2 March 1946. From left: Truong Dinh Tri, Dang Thai Mai, Chu Ba Phuong, ***Nguyen Tuong Tam***, Huynh Thuc Khang, ***Ho Chi Minh***, Vinh Thuy, Le Van Hien, Phan Anh, Vu Dinh Hoè, Tran Dang Khoa, Bo Xuan Luat.

Following Emperor Bảo Đại’s abdication on 2 September 1945, Hồ Chí Minh read the Declaration of Independence of Vietnam under the name of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

Above: Hồ Chí Minh (right) with Vo Nguyen Giáp (left) in Hanoi, 1945

(Võ Nguyên Giáp (1911 – 2013) was an army general in the Vietnam People’s Army and a politician.

Võ Nguyên Giáp has been called one of the greatest military strategists of the 20th century.)

In Saigon, with violence between rival Vietnamese factions and French forces increasing, the British commander, General Sir Douglas Gracey, declared martial law.

On 24 September, the Việt Minh leaders responded with a call for a general strike.

Gracey Douglas David.jpg — Above: Douglas Gracey (1894 – 1964)

In September 1945, a force of 200,000 Republic of China Army troops arrived in Hanoi to accept the surrender of the Japanese occupiers in northern Indochina.

Above: Emblem of the Army of the Republic of China

Hồ Chí Minh made a compromise with their general, Lu Han, to dissolve the Communist Party and to hold an election which would yield a coalition government.

Lu Han.jpg — Above: General Lu Han (1895 – 1974)

When Chiang forced the French to give the French concessions in Shanghai back to China in exchange for withdrawing from northern Indochina, he had no choice but to sign an agreement with France on 6 March 1946 in which Vietnam would be recognized as an autonomous state in the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.

The agreement soon broke down.

The purpose of the agreement, for both the French and the Viet Minh, was for Chiang’s army to leave North Vietnam.

Fighting broke out in the North soon after the Chinese left.

Historian Professor Liam Kelley of the University of Hawaii at Manoa on his Le Minh Khai’s SE Asian History Blog challenged the authenticity of the alleged quote where Hồ Chí Minh said he “would rather smell French shit for five years than eat Chinese shit for a thousand,” noting that Stanley Karnow provided no source for the extended quote attributed to him in his 1983 Vietnam: A History and that the original quote was most likely forged by the Frenchman Paul Mus in his 1952 book Vietnam: Sociologie d’une Guerre.

Vietnam: A History: Karnow, Stanley: 9780670746040: Amazon.com: Books

Viêt-Nam: Sociologie D'Une Guerre by Paul Mus

Mus was a supporter of French colonialism in Vietnam and Hồ Chí Minh believed there was no danger of Chinese troops staying in Vietnam (although this was the time when China invaded Tibet).

The Vietnamese at the time were busy spreading anti-French propaganda as evidence of French atrocities in Vietnam emerged while Hồ Chí Minh showed no qualms about accepting Chinese aid after 1949.

The Việt Minh then collaborated with French colonial forces to massacre supporters of the Vietnamese nationalist movements in 1945–1946, and of the Trotskyists.

photographs of Trotsky from the 1920s — Above: Leon Trotsky (1879 – 1940)

Trotskyism in Vietnam did not rival the Party outside of the major cities, but particularly in the South, in Saigon-Cochinchina, they had been a challenge.

From the outset, they had called for armed resistance to a French restoration and for an immediate transfer of industry to workers and land to peasants.

The French Socialist leader Daniel Guerin recalls that when in Paris in 1946 he asked Hồ Chí Minh about the fate of the Trotskyist leader Ta Thu Thâu, Hồ Chí Minh had replied, “with unfeigned emotion,” that “Thâu was a great patriot and we mourn him“, but then a moment later added in a steady voice “All those who do not follow the line which I have laid down will be broken.“

Ta-Thu-Thau-Vietnamlı-Troçkist-önder-Troçkist.jpg — Above: Ta Thu Thau (1906 – 1945)

The Communists eventually suppressed all non-Communist parties, but they failed to secure a peace deal with France.

In the final days of 1946, after a year of diplomatic failure and many concessions in agreements, such as the Dalat and Fontainebleau Conferences, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam government found that war was inevitable.

The bombardment of Haiphong by French forces at Hanoi only strengthened the belief that France had no intention of allowing an autonomous, independent state in Vietnam.

The bombardment of Haiphong reportedly killed more than 6000 Vietnamese civilians.

Haiphong incident | Military Wiki | Fandom

French forces marched into Hanoi, now the capital city of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

(The Haiphong Incident or the Haiphong Massacre occurred on 23 November 1946, when the French cruiser Suffren bombarded the Vietnamese coastal city of Haiphong, killing some 6,000 Vietnamese people.

The incident, also known as the Shelling of Haiphong, is thought of as the first armed clash in a series of events that would lead to the Battle of Hanoi (19 December 1946 to 18 February 1947), and with it the official outbreak of the First Indochina War.)

On 19 December 1946, after the Haiphong Incident, Ho Chi Minh declared war against the French Union, marking the beginning of the Indochina War.

The Vietnam National Army, mostly armed with machetes and muskets immediately attacked.

They assaulted the French positions, smoking them out with straw bundled with chili pepper, destroying armored vehicles with “lunge mines” (a hollow-charge warhead on the end of a pole, detonated by thrusting the charge against the side of a tank; typically a suicide weapon) and Molotov cocktails, holding off attackers by using roadblocks, landmines and gravel.

After two months of fighting, the exhausted Việt Minh forces withdrew after systematically destroying any valuable infrastructure.

Vietnamese soldier holding the Lunge Mine at Hàng Đậu Street on December 1946.jpg

Hô was reported to be captured by a group of French soldiers led by Jean-Étienne Valluy at Viêt Bac in Operation Lea.

The person in question turned out to be a Việt Minh advisor who was killed trying to escape.

JeanÉtienneValluyImage.jpg — Above: Jean Étieene Valluy (1899 – 1970)

[Verse 5]
Ho Chi Minh went to the mountains
And he formed a determined band
Heroes all sworn to free the Indochinese people
Drive invaders from the land

[Chorus]
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh

Above: Hồ Chí Minh holding his god-daughter, baby Elizabeth (*Babette*) Aubrac, with Elizabeth’s mother, Lucie (1912 – 2007), 1946

According to journalist Bernard Fall, Hô decided to negotiate a truce after fighting the French for several years.

When the French negotiators arrived at the meeting site, they found a mud hut with a thatched roof.

Inside they found a long table with chairs.

In one corner of the room, a silver ice bucket contained ice and a bottle of good champagne, indicating that Ho expected the negotiations to succeed.

Street without Joy : Bernard Fall : 9780811736541

One demand by the French was the return to French custody of a number of Japanese military officers (who had been helping the Vietnamese armed forces by training them in the use of weapons of Japanese origin) for them to stand trial for war crimes committed during World War II.

Hồ Chí Minh replied that the Japanese officers were allies and friends whom he could not betray, therefore he walked out to seven more years of war.

In February 1950, after the successful removal of the French border blockade, Hô met with Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong in Moscow after the Soviet Union recognized his government.

They all agreed that China would be responsible for backing the Việt Minh.

Stalin Full Image.jpg — Above: Joseph Stalin (1878 – 1953)

Mao Zedong’s emissary to Moscow stated in August that China planned to train 60,000–70,000 Viet Minh in the near future.

The road to the outside world was open for Việt Minh forces to receive additional supplies which would allow them to escalate the fight against the French regime throughout Indochina.

Mao Zedong in 1959 (cropped).jpg — Above: Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976)

At the outset of the conflict, Ho reportedly told a French visitor:

“You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and I will win“.

[Verse 6]
Forty men became a hundred
A hundred thousand and Ho Chi Minh
Forged and tempered the army of the Indochinese people
Freedom’s Army of Viet Minh

[Chorus]
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh

[Verse 7]

Every soldier is a farmer

Comes the evening, he grabs his hoe

Comes the morning, he swings his rifle on his shoulder

That’s the army of Uncle Ho

[Chorus]
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh

[Verse 8]
From the mountains and the jungles
From the rice lands and the Plain of Reeds
March the men and the women of the Indochinese Army
Planting freedom with victory seeds

[Chorus]
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh

[Verse 9]
From the Viet Bac to the Saigon Delta
Marched the armies of Viet Minh
And the wind stirs the banners of the Indochinese people
Peace and freedom and Ho Chi Minh

[Chorus]
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh
Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh

[Outro]
Ho!

In 1954, the First Indochina War came to an end after the decisive Battle of Dien Bien Phu, where more than 10,000 French soldiers surrendered to the Viet Minh.

Victory in Battle of Dien Bien Phu.jpg — Above: Victory in Battle of Dien Bien Phu

The subsequent Geneva Accords peace process partitioned North Vietnam at the 17th parallel.

Arthur Dommen estimates that the Việt Minh assassinated 100,000 civilians during the war.

Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam: Amazon.de: Dommen, Arthur J.: Fremdsprachige Bücher

By comparison to Dommen’s calculation, Benjamin Valentino estimates that the French were responsible for 250,000 civilian deaths.

Amazon.com: Benjamin A. Valentino: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle

The 1954 Geneva Accords concluded between France and the Việt Minh, allowing the latter’s forces to regroup in the North whilst anti-Communist groups settled in the South.

His Democratic Republic of Vietnam relocated to Hanoi and became the government of North Vietnam, a Communist-led one-party.

Above: The Geneva Accords Conference (26 April to 20 July 1954)

Following the Geneva Accords, there was to be a 300-day period in which people could freely move between the two regions of Vietnam, later known as South Vietnam and North Vietnam.

During the 300 days, Diệm and CIA adviser Colonel Edward Lansdale staged a campaign to convince people to move to South Vietnam.

The campaign was particularly focused on Vietnam’s Catholics, who were to provide Diệm’s power base in his later years, with the use of the slogan “God has gone south“.

1,000,000 people migrated to the South, mostly Catholics.

At the start of 1955, French Indochina was dissolved, leaving Diệm in temporary control of the South.

All the parties at Geneva called for reunification elections, but they could not agree on the details.

Recently appointed Việt Minh acting foreign minister Pham Van Dong proposed elections under the supervision of “local commissions“.

The United States, with the support of Britain and the Associated States of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, suggested United Nations supervision.

This plan was rejected by Soviet representative Vyacheslav Molotov, who argued for a commission composed of an equal number of communist and non-communist members, which could determine “important” issues only by unanimous agreement.

The negotiators were unable to agree on a date for the elections for reunification.

North Vietnam argued that the elections should be held within six months of the ceasefire while the Western allies sought to have no deadline.

Molotov proposed June 1955, then later softened this to any time in 1955 and finally July 1956.

The Diem government supported reunification elections, but only with effective international supervision, arguing that genuinely free elections were otherwise impossible in the totalitarian North.

By the afternoon of 20 July, the remaining outstanding issues were resolved as the parties agreed that the partition line should be at the 17th parallel and the elections for a reunified government should be held in July 1956, two years after the ceasefire.

The Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam was only signed by the French and Việt Minh military commands, with no participation or consultation of the State of Vietnam.

THE VIETNAM AGREEMENT AND PROTOCOLS - The New York Times

Based on a proposal by Chinese delegation head Zhou Enlai, an International Control Commission (ICC) chaired by India, with Canada and Poland as members, was placed in charge of supervising the ceasefire.

Because issues were to be decided unanimously, Poland’s presence in the ICC provided the Communists with effective veto power over supervision of the treaty.

Forces in Philately: 1968 International control Commission overprinted ICC

The unsigned Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference called for reunification elections, which the majority of delegates expected to be supervised by the ICC.

The Việt Minh never accepted ICC authority over such elections, insisting that the ICC’s “competence was to be limited to the supervision and control of the implementation of the Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities by both parties“.

Of the nine nations represented, only the United States and the State of Vietnam refused to accept the declaration.

Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith delivered a “unilateral declaration” of the United States position, reiterating:

“We shall seek to achieve unity through free elections supervised by the United Nations to ensure that they are conducted fairly“.

Three-quarter length portrait of seated man in uniform. He is bare-headed and wearing his medal ribbons. He is wearing the SHAEF shoulder sleeve insignia. — Above: Walter Bedell Smith (1895 – 1961)

Between 1953 and 1956, the North Vietnamese government instituted various agrarian reforms, including “rent reduction” and “land reform“, which were accompanied by significant political repression.

During the land reform, testimonies by North Vietnamese witnesses suggested a ratio of one execution for every 160 village residents, which if extrapolated would indicate a nationwide total of nearly 100,000 executions.

Because the campaign was mainly concentrated in the Red River Delta area, a lower estimate of 50,000 executions was widely accepted by scholars at the time.

However, declassified documents from the Vietnamese and Hungarian archives indicate that the number of executions was much lower than reported at the time, although it was likely greater than 13,500.

As early as June 1956 the idea of overthrowing the South Vietnamese government was presented at a politburo meeting.

North and South Vietnam from 1954 to 1975.

In 1959, Hồ Chí Minh began urging the Politburo to send aid to the Viêt Công in South Vietnam and a “people’s war” on the South was approved at a session in January 1959 and this decision was confirmed by the Politburo in March.

North Vietnam invaded Laos in July 1959 aided by the Pathet Lao and used 30,000 men to build a network of supply and reinforcement routes running through Laos and Cambodia that became known as the Hô Chi Minh Trail.

Above: The Ho Chi Minh Trail from the very beginning was using Vietnamese and Laotian people as seen in a captured Vietcong’s photo, circa 1959

It allowed the North to send manpower and material to the Việt Cộng with much less exposure to South Vietnamese forces, achieving a considerable advantage.

To counter the accusation that North Vietnam was violating the Geneva Accord, the independence of the Việt Cộng was stressed in Communist propaganda.

North Vietnam created the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam in December 1960 as a “united front“, or political branch of the Viet Cong intended to encourage the participation of non-Communists.

At the end of 1959, conscious that the national election would never be held and that Diem intended to purge opposing forces (mostly ex Việt Minh) from the South Vietnamese society, Hồ Chí Minh informally chose Lê Duân to become the next party leader.

Mr. Le Duan.jpg — Above: Le Duan (1907 – 1986)

This was interpreted by Western analysts as a loss of influence for Hồ, who was said to actually have preferred the more moderate Võ Nguyên Giáp for the position.

From 1959 onward, the elderly Hô became increasingly worried about the prospect of his death, and that year he wrote down his will.

Lê Duẩn was officially named party leader in 1960, leaving Hồ to function in a secondary role as head of state and member of the Politburo.

He nevertheless maintained considerable influence in the government.

Lê Duẩn, Tô Hiru, Truõng Chinh and Pham Van Dông often shared dinner with Hồ, and all of them remained key figures throughout and after the war.

To Huu.jpg — Above: To Huu (1920 – 2002)

In the early 1960s, the North Vietnamese Politburo was divided the “North first” faction who favored focusing on the economic development of North Vietnam, and the “South first” faction, who favored a guerrilla war in South Vietnam to reunite Vietnam in the near future.

Between 1961 and 1963, 40,000 Communist soldiers infiltrated into South Vietnam from the North.

In 1963, Hồ purportedly corresponded with South Vietnamese President Diem in hopes of achieving a negotiated peace.

Ngo Dinh Diem - Thumbnail - ARC 542189.png — Above: Ngo Dinh Diem (1901 – 1963)

During the “Maneli Affair” of 1963, a French diplomatic initiative was launched with the aim of achieving a federation of the two Vietnams, which would be neutral in the Cold War.

The four principle diplomats involved in the “Maneli affair” were:

Ramchundar Goburdhun, the Indian Chief Commissioner of the ICC
Mieczyslaw Maneli, the Polish Commissioner to the ICC
Roger Lalouette, the French ambassador to South Vietnam
Giovanni d’Orlandi, the Italian ambassador to South Vietnam

Maneli reported that Hô was very interested in the signs of a split between President Diem and President Kennedy and that his attitude was:

“Our real enemies are the Americans.

Get rid them, and we can cope with Diem and Nhu afterward“.

At a meeting in Hanoi held in French, Hô told Goburdhun that Diem was “in his own way a patriot“, noting that Diem had opposed French rule over Vietnam, and ended the meeting saying that the next time Goburdhun met Diem “shake hands with him for me“.

The North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dông, speaking on behalf of Hô, told Maneli he was interested in the peace plan, saying that just as long as the American advisers left South Vietnam “we can come to an agreement with any Vietnamese“.

On 2 September 1963, Maneli met with Ngô Dinh Nhu, the younger brother and right-hand man to Diem to discuss the French peace plan.

It remains unclear if the Ngo brothers were serious about the French peace plan or were merely using the possibility of accepting it to blackmail the United States into supporting them at a time when the Buddhist crisis had seriously strained relations between Saigon and Washington.

Supporting the latter theory is the fact that Nhu promptly leaked his meeting with Maneli to the American columnist Joseph Alsop, who publicized it in a column entitled “Very Ugly Stuff“.

Joseph Alsop 1974-12-17.jpg — Above: Joseph Alsop (1910 – 1989)

The mere possibility that the Ngo brothers might accept the peace plan helped persuade the Kennedy administration to support the coup against them.

Mieczyslaw Maneli: Người Ba Lan suýt ngăn được Cuộc chiến VN - Tài liệu - Nhật Báo Văn Hóa Online

On 1 November 1963, a coup overthrew Diem, who was killed the next day together with his brother.

Diem had followed a policy of “deconstructing the state” by creating a number of overlapping agencies and departments who were encouraged to feud with one another in order to disorganize the South Vietnamese state to such an extent that he hoped that it would make a coup against him impossible.

When Diem was overthrown and killed, without any kind of arbiter between the rival arms of the South Vietnamese state, South Vietnam promptly disintegrated.

The American Defense Secretary Robert McNamara reported after visiting South Vietnam in December 1963 that “there is no organized government worthy of the name” in Saigon.

At a meeting of the plenum of the Politburo in December 1963, Lê’ Duẩn’s “South first” faction triumphed with the Politburo passing a resolution calling for North Vietnam to complete the overthrow of the regime in Saigon as soon as possible while the members of the “North first” faction were dismissed.

As South Vietnam descended into chaos, whatever interest Hô might had in the French peace plan ended as it become clear it was possible for the Viet Cong to overthrow the government in Saigon.

A CIA report from 1964 stated the factionalism in South Vietnam had reached “almost the point of anarchy” as various South Vietnamese leaders fought one another, making any sort of effort against the Viet Cong impossible, which was rapidly taking over much of the South Vietnamese countryside.

As South Vietnam collapsed into factionalism and in-fighting while the Viet Cong continued to win the war, it became increasingly apparent to President Lyndon Johnson that only American military intervention could save South Vietnam.

Though Johnson did not wish to commit American forces until he had won the 1964 election, he decided to make his intentions clear to Hanoi.

In June 1964, the “Seaborn Mission” began as J. Blair Seaborn, the Canadian commissioner to the ICC, arrived in Hanoi with a message from Johnson offering billions of American economic aid and diplomatic recognition in exchange for which North Vietnam would cease trying to overthrow the government of South Vietnam.

Seaborn also warned that North Vietnam would suffer the “greatest devastation” from American bombing, saying that Johnson was seriously considering a strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam.

Little came of the back channel of the “Seaborn Mission” as the North Vietnamese distrusted Seaborn, who pointedly was never allowed to meet Hô.

Canadian diplomat Blair Seaborn carried out a secret mission during the Vietnam War - The Globe and Mail — Above: J. Blair Seaborn (1924 – 2019)

In late 1964, People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) combat troops were sent southwest into officially neutral Laos and Cambodia.

By March 1965, American combat troops began arriving in South Vietnam, first to protect the airbases around Chu Lai and Da Nang later to take on most of the fight as “more and more American troops were put in to replace Saigon troops who could not, or would not, get involved in the fighting“.

As fighting escalated, widespread aerial and artillery bombardment all over North Vietnam by the United States Air Force and Navy began with Operation Rolling Thunder.

On 8 – 9 April 1965, Hô made a secret visit to Beijing to meet Mao Zedong.

It was agreed that no Chinese combat troops would enter North Vietnam unless the United States invaded North Vietnam, but that China would send support troops to North Vietnam to help maintain the infrastructure damaged by American bombing.

There was a deep distrust and fear of China within the North Vietnamese Politburo, and the suggestion that Chinese troops, even support troops, be allowed into North Vietnam, caused outrage in the Politburo.

Hô had to use all his moral authority to obtain the Politburo’s approval.

According to Chen Jian, during the mid-to-late 1960s, Lê Duẩn permitted 320,000 Chinese volunteers into North Vietnam to help build infrastructure for the country, thereby freeing a similar number of PAVN personnel to go south.

There are no sources from Vietnam, the United States, or the Soviet Union that confirm the number of Chinese troops stationed in North Vietnam.

However, the Chinese government later admitted to sending 320,000 Chinese soldiers to Vietnam during the 1960s and spent over $20 billion to support Hanoi’s regular North Vietnamese Army and Việt Cộng guerrilla units.

Amazon.com: Mao's China and the Cold War (The New Cold War History) (9780807849323): Chen, Jian: Books

To counter the American bombing, the entire population of North Vietnam was mobilized for the war effort with vast teams of women being used to repair the damage done by the bombers, often at a speed that astonished the Americans.

The bombing of North Vietnam proved to be the principle obstacle to opening peace talks as Hô repeatedly stated that no peace talks would be possible unless the United States unconditionally ceased bombing North Vietnam.

Like many of the other leaders of the newly independent states of Asia and Africa, Hô was extremely sensitive about threats, whatever perceived or real, to his nation’s independence and sovereignty.

Hô regarded the American bombing as a violation of North Vietnam’s sovereignty, and he felt that to negotiate with the Americans reserving the right to bomb North Vietnam should he not behave as they wanted him to do, would diminish North Vietnam’s independence.

In March 1966, Canadian diplomat Chester Ronning arrived in Hanoi with an offer to use his “good offices” to begin peace talks.

However, the Ronning mission foundered upon the bombing issue, as the North Vietnamese demanded an unconditional halt to the bombing, an undertaking that Johnson refused to give.

Folio: New Augustana centre honours Chester Ronning | March 31, 2006 — Above: Chester Ronning (1894 – 1994)

In June 1966, Janusz Lewandowski, the Polish Commissioner to the ICC, was able, via d’Orlandi. to see Henry Cabot Lodge Jr, the American ambassador to South Vietnam, with an offer from Hô.

Hô’s offer for a “political compromise” as transmitted by Lewandowski included allowing South Vietnam to maintain its alliance with the US instead of becoming neutral, having the Viet Cong “take part” in negotiations for a coalition government, instead being allowed to automatically enter a coalition government, and allowing a “reasonable calendar” for the withdrawal of American troops instead of an immediate withdrawal.

Operation Marigold as the Lewandowski channel came to be code-named almost led to American-North Vietnamese talks in Warsaw in December 1966, but collapsed over the bombing issue.

Janusz Lewandowski (@J_Lewandowski) | Twitter — Above: Janusz Lewandowski (1931 – 2013)

In January 1967, General Nguyên Chí Thanh, the commander of the forces in South Vietnam, returned to Hanoi, to present a plan that became the genesis of the Tet Offensive a year later.

Thanh expressed much concern about the Americans invading Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and to preempt this possibility, urged an all-out offensive to win the war with a sudden blow.

Lê’ Duẩn supported Thanh’s plans, which were stoutly opposed by the Defense Minister, General Võ Nguyên Giáp, who preferred to continue with a guerrilla war, arguing that the superior American firepower would ensure the failure of Thanh’s proposed offensive.

With the Politburo divided, it was agreed to study and debate the issue more.

Above: Nguyen Chi Thanh (1914 – 1967) (hand on map)

In July 1967, Hồ Chí Minh and most of the Politburo of the Communist Party met in a high-profile conference where they concluded the war had fallen into a stalemate.

The American military presence forced the PAVN to expend the majority of their resources on maintaining the Hồ Chí Minh trail rather than reinforcing their comrade’s ranks in the South.

Hô seems to have agreed to Thanh’s offensive because he wanted to see Vietnam reunified within his lifetime, and the increasingly ailing Hô was painfully aware that he did not have much time left.

Political Map of Vietnam - Nations Online Project

With Hô’s permission, the Việt Cộng planned a massive Tet Offensive that would commence on 31 January 1968, with the aim of taking much of the South by force and dealing a heavy blow to the American military.

The offensive was executed at great cost and with heavy casualties on Việt Cộng’s political branches and armed forces.

The scope of the action shocked the world, which until then had been assured that the Communists were “on the ropes“.

The optimistic spin that the American military command had sustained for years was no longer credible.

The bombing of North Vietnam and the Hồ Chí Minh trail was halted, and American and Vietnamese negotiators held discussions on how the war might be ended.

From then on, Hồ Chí Minh and his government’s strategy, based on the idea of avoiding conventional warfare and facing the might of the United States Army, which would wear them down eventually while merely prolonging the conflict, would lead to eventual acceptance of Hanoi’s terms materialized.

In early 1969, Hô suffered a heart attack and was in increasingly bad health for the rest of the year.

Above: Hồ Chí Minh watching a football game in his favorite fashion, with his closest comrade Prime Minister Pham Van Dong seated to Ho’s left

In July 1969, Jean Sainteny, a former French official in Vietnam who knew Hô secretly transmitted a letter to him from President Richard Nixon.

Nixon’s letter proposed working together to end this “tragic war“, but also warned that if North Vietnam made no concessions at the peace talks in Paris by 1 November, Nixon would resort to “measures of great consequence and force“.

Hô’s reply, which Nixon received on 30 August 1969 made no concessions, as Nixon’s threats apparently made no impression on him.

In addition to being a politician, Hồ Chí Minh was also a writer, journalist, poet and polyglot.

His father was a scholar and teacher who received a high degree in the Nguyên dynasty imperial examination.

Hồ was taught to master classical Chinese at a young age.

Before the August Revolution, he often wrote poetry in Chù Hán (the Vietnamese name for the Chinese writing system).

One of those is Poems from the Prison Diary, written when he was imprisoned by the police of the Republic of China.

This poetry chronicle is Vietnam National Treasure #10 and was translated into many languages.

It is used in Vietnamese high schools.

The Prison Diary of Ho Chi Minh by Hồ Chí Minh

After Vietnam gained independence from France, the new government exclusively promoted Ch`Quôc Ngu (Vietnamese writing system in Latin characters) to eliminate illiteracy.

Hồ started to create more poems in the modern Vietnamese language for dissemination to a wider range of readers.

From when he became President until the appearance of serious health problems, a short poem of his was regularly published in the newspaper Nhân Dân Têt (Lunar New Year) edition to encourage his people in working, studying or fighting Americans in the New Year.

Because he was in exile for nearly 30 years, Hồ could speak fluently as well as read and write professionally in French, English, Russian, Cantonese and Mandarin as well as his mother tongue Vietnamese.

In addition, he was reported to speak conversational Esperanto.

In the 1920s, Ho was bureau chief/editor of many newspapers which he established to criticize French colonial government of Indochina and serving Communist propaganda purposes.

Examples are Le Paria (The Pariah) first published in Paris 1922 or Thanh Nien (Youth) first published on 21 June 1925.

(21 June was named by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam government as Vietnam Revolutionary Journalism Day).

In many state official visits to Soviet Union and China, Hô often talked directly to Communist leaders without interpreters especially about top secret information.

While being interviewed by Western journalists, he used French.

His Vietnamese had a strong accent from his birthplace in the central province of Nghê An, but could be widely understood throughout the country.

As President, he held formal receptions for foreign heads of state and ambassadors at the Presidential Palace, but he personally did not live there.

He ordered the building of a stilt house at the back of the palace, which is today known as the Presidential Place Historical Site.

His hobbies (according to his secretary Vu Ky) included reading, gardening, feeding fish, and visiting schools and children’s homes.

He is believed by some to have married Zeng Xueming, although only being able to live with her for less than a year.

Hồ Chí Minh remained in Hanoi during his final years, demanding the unconditional withdrawal of all non-Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam.

By 1969, with negotiations still dragging on, his health began to deteriorate from multiple health problems, including diabetes which prevented him from participating in further active politics.

However, he insisted that his forces in the South continue fighting until all of Vietnam was reunited regardless of the length of time that it might take, believing that time was on his side.

With the outcome of the Vietnam War still in question, Hồ Chí Minh died of heart failure at his home in Hanoi at 9:47 on the morning of 2 September 1969.

He was 79 years old.

His embalmed body is currently on display in a mausoleum in Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi despite his will which stated that he wanted to be cremated.

Wer eine Mumie live sehen will .. - Ho-Chi-Minh-Mausoleum, Hanoi Reisebewertungen - Tripadvisor

The North Vietnamese government originally announced Hô’s death as 3 September.

A week of mourning for his death was decreed nationwide in North Vietnam from 4 to 11 September 1969.

His funeral was attended by about 250,000 people and 5,000 official guests, which included many international mourners.

Representatives from 40 countries and regions were also presented.

During the mourning period, North Vietnam received more than 22,000 condolences letters from 20 organizations and 110 countries across the world, such as France, Ethiopia, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Zambia and many others, mostly Socialist countries.

It was said that Hô’s body was hidden, and carried a long way among forests and rivers in a special-designed coffin until the Hô Chi Minh Mausoleum was built.

State funeral held for legendary general of Hồ Chí Minh Trail - VietNamNet

Hô was not initially replaced as President.

Instead a “collective leadership” composed of several ministers and military leaders took over, known as the Politburo.

During North Vietnam’s final campaign, a famous song written by composer Huy Thuc was often sung by PAVN soldiers:

“Bác vẫn cùng chúng cháu hành quân” (“You are still marching with us, Uncle Ho“).

Bác đang cùng chúng cháu hành quân (Có lời) Nhạc cách mạng hay - YouTube

During the Fall of Saigon in April 1975, several PAVN tanks displayed a poster with those same words on it.

The day after the battle ended, on 1 May, veteran Australian journalist Denis Warner reported:

“When the North Vietnamese marched into Saigon yesterday, they were led by a man who wasn’t there”.

Above: A member of the CIA helps evacuees up a ladder onto an Air America helicopter on the roof of 22 Gia Long Street, 29 April 1975, shortly before Saigon fell to advancing North Vietnamese troops.

Ho Chi Minh remains a major figure in modern contemporary history.

The Vietnamese Socialist Republic has sustained the personality cult of Uncle Ho (Bác Hồ), the Bringer of Light (Chí Minh).

It is comparable in many ways to that of Mao Zedong in China and of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il in North Korea.

There is the embalmed body on view in a massive mausoleum, the ubiquity of his image featured in every public building and schoolroom, and other displays of reverence, some unofficial, that verge on “worship“.

(Ho Chi Minh’s image appears on some family altars, and there is at least one temple dedicated to him, built in then-Viêt Công-controlled Vinh Long shortly after his death in 1970).

In The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (1982) Duiker suggests that the cult of Ho Chi Minh is indicative of a larger legacy, one that drew on “elements traditional to the exercise of control and authority in Vietnamese society.”

Duiker is drawn to an “irresistible and persuasive” comparison with China.

The Communist Road To Power In Vietnam: Second Edition Nations of the Modern World : Asia: Amazon.de: Duiker, William J: Fremdsprachige Bücher

As in China, leading party cadres were “most likely to be intellectuals descended [like Ho Chi Minh] from rural scholar-gentry families” in the interior (the protectorates of Annam and Tonkin).

Conversely, the pioneers of constitutional nationalism tended to be from the more “Westernised” coastal south (Saigon and surrounding French direct-rule Cochinchina) and to be from “commercial families without a traditional Confucian background“.

In Vietnam, as in China, Communism presented itself as a root and branch rejection of Confucianism, condemned for its ritualism, inherent conservatism and resistance to change.

Once in power, the Vietnamese Communists may not have fought Confucianism “as bitterly as did their Chinese counterparts“, but its social prestige was “essentially destroyed.”

In the political sphere, the puppet son of heaven (which had been weakly represented by the Bâo Dai) was replaced by the people’s republic.

Orthodox materialism accorded no place to heaven, gods, or other supernatural forces.

Socialist collectivism undermined the tradition of the Confucian family leader (gia truong).

The socialist conception of social equality destroyed the Confucian views of class.

Yet Duiker argues many were to find the new ideology “congenial” precisely because of its similarities with the teachings of the old Master: “the belief in one truth, embodied in quasi-sacred texts“; in “an anointed elite, trained in an all-embracing doctrine and responsible for leading the broad masses and indoctrinating them in proper thought and behaviour“; in “the subordination of the individual to the community“; and in the perfectibility, through corrective action, of human nature.

All of this, Duiker suggests, was in some manner present in the aura of the new Master, Chi Minh, “the bringer of light,” “Uncle Hô” to whom “all the desirable qualities of Confucian ethics” are ascribed.

A to Z of Vietnam (Taschenbuch), Bruce M Lockhart, William J Duiker

Under Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese Marxism developed, in effect, as a kind of “reformed Confucianism” revised to meet “the challenges of the modern era” and, not least among these, of “total mobilisation in the struggle for national independence and state power.”

This “congeniality” with Confucian tradition was remarked on by Nguyen Khac Vien, a leading Hanoi intellectual of the 1960 and 70s.

In Confucianism and Marxism in Vietnam Nguyen Khac Vien, saw definite parallels between Confucian and party discipline, between the traditional scholar gentry and Ho Chi Minh’s party cadres.

Nguyễn Khắc Viện, chân dung một con người - Văn Học Sài Gòn — Above: Nguyen Khac Vien (1913 – 1997)

A completely different form of the cult of Hồ Chí Minh (and one tolerated by the government with some uneasiness) is his identification in Vietnamese folk religion with the Jade Emperor, who supposedly incarnated again on earth as Hồ Chí Minh.

Today Hồ Chí Minh as the Jade Emperor is supposed to speak from the spirit world through spiritualist mediums.

The first such medium was one Madam Lang in the 1990s, but the cult acquired a significant number of followers through another medium, Madam Xoan.

She established on 1 January 2001 Đạo Ngọc Phật Hồ Chí Minh (the Way of Hồ Chí Minh as the Jade Buddha) also known as Đạo Bác Hồ (the Way of Uncle Hồ) at đền Hòa Bình (the Peace Temple) in Chí Linh-Sao Đỏ district of Hai Duong province.

She then founded the Peace Society of Heavenly Mediums (Đoàn đồng thiên Hòa Bình). Reportedly, by 2014 the movement had around 24,000 followers.

Cái gọi là đạo Ngọc Phật Hồ Chí Minh - YouTube — Above: Madam Lang

Yet even when the Vietnamese government’s attempt to immortalize Ho Chi Minh was also met with significant controversies and opposition.

The regime is sensitive to anything that might question the official hagiography.

This includes references to Hô Chi Minh’s personal life that might detract from the image of the dedicated “the father of the revolution“, the “celibate married only to the cause of revolution“.

William Duiker’s Hô Chi Minh: A Life (2000) was candid on the matter of Hô Chi Minh’s liaisons.

The government sought cuts in a Vietnamese translation and banned distribution of an issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review (1946 – 2009) which carried a small item about the controversy.

Hồ Chí Minh is considered one of the most influential leaders in the world.

Time magazine listed him in the list of 100 most influential people of the 20th century in 1998.

His thought and revolution inspired many leaders and people on a global scale in Asia, Africa and Latin America during the decolonization movement which occurred after World War II.

TIME Magazine Cover: Ho Chi Minh - Nov. 22, 1954 - Ho Chi Minh - Vietnam

As a Communist, he was one of the international figures who were highly praised in the Communist world.

Various places, boulevards and squares are named after him around the world, especially in Socialist states and former Communist states.

In Russia, there is a Hô Chi Minh Square and monument in Moscow, Hô Chi Minh Boulevard in St. Petersburg and Hồ Chí Minh square in Ulvanovsk (the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin, a sister city of Vinh, the birthplace of Hồ Chí Minh).

Памятник Хо Ши Мину в Москве — Above: Ho Chi Minh Monument, Moscow

Webcam at the intersection of Prosvescheniya Avenue and Ho Chi Minh Street in St. Petersburg — Above: Intersection of Prosvescheniya Avenue and Ho Chi Minh Street in St. Petersburg (Russia)

Uncle Ho's statue inaugurates in Lenin's hometown | Vietnam Times — Above: Ho Chi Minh Monument, Ulyanovsky (Russia)

During the Vietnam / American War, the then West Bengal government renamed Harrington Street to Hô Chi Minh Sarani, which is also the location of the Consulate General of the United States of America in Kolkata.

According to the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affiars, as many as 20 countries across Asia, Europe, America and Africa have erected statues in remembrance of President Hồ Chí Minh.

Busts, statues and memorial plaques and exhibitions are displayed in destinations on his extensive world journey in exile from 1911 to 1941, including France, Great Britain, Russia, China and Thailand.

Many activists and musicians wrote songs about Hồ Chí Minh and his revolution in different languages during the Vietnam War to demonstrate against the United States.

Spanish songs were composed by Félix Pita Rodriguez, Carlos Puebla and Ali Primera.

Félix Pita.jpg — Above: Félix Pita Rodriguez (1909 – 1990)

In addition, the Chilean folk singer Victor Jara referenced Hồ Chí Minh in his anit-war song “El derecho de vivir en paz” (“The right to live in peace“).

Víctor Jara.jpg — Above: Victor Jara (1932 – 1973)

In English, Ewan MacColl wrote “The Ballad of Hồ Chí Minh” and Pete Seeger wrote “Teacher Uncle Ho”.

Portrait photograph of Ewan MacColl.jpg — Above: Ewan MacColl (1915 – 1989)

Russian songs about him were written by Vladimir Fere and German songs about him were written by Kurt Demmler.

In 1987, UNESCO officially recommended that its member states “join in the commemoration of the centenary of the birth of President Hồ Chí Minh by organizing various events as a tribute to his memory“, considering “the important and many-sided contributions of President Hồ Chí Minh to the fields of culture, education and the arts” who “devoted his whole life to the national liberation of the Vietnamese people, contributing to the common struggle of peoples for peace, national independence, democracy and social progress“.

The Presidential Palace, established in 1900 by French architect Auguste Henri Vildieu, was intended to be Hô Chi Minh’s official residence but the Vietnamese leader had opted for a traditional Vietnamese stilt-house instead.

The three-storey, mustard yellow building features 30 rooms built in colonial French architectural style, an orchard, carp pond, and a 91-metre long boulevard surrounded by lush gardens.

As political gatherings are still held at the Presidential Palace, visitors are only allowed to explore the gardens and Ho Chi Minh’s stilt home.

The three-storey, mustard yellow building features 30 rooms built in colonial French architectural style, an orchard, carp pond, and a 91-metre long boulevard surrounded by lush gardens.

As political gatherings are still held at the Presidential Palace, visitors are only allowed to explore the gardens and Hô Chi Minh’s stilt home with an entrance fee of VND 25,000.

The peaceful grounds surrounding the palace are home to well-kept botanical gardens and lush fruit groves, making it an ideal place for those looking to escape the bustling Old Quarter during their holiday.

Located in Ba Ding District, the Presidential Palace is about 15 minutes from Hanoi Old Quarter via taxi.

Like most French colonial architecture, the palace is pointedly European.

The only visual cues that it is located in Vietnam at all are mango trees growing on the grounds.

The yellow palace stands behind wrought iron gates flanked by sentry boxes.

It incorporates elements of Italian Renaissance design, including:

aedicules
a formal piano nobile reached by a grand staircase
broken pediments
classical columns
quoins

When Vietnam achieved independence in 1954, Hô Chi Minh was claimed to have refused to live in the grand structure for symbolic reasons, although he still received state guests there, he eventually built a traditional Vietnamese stilt house and carp pond on the grounds.

His house and the grounds were made into the Presidential Palace Historical Site in 1975.

The palace hosts government meetings.

It is not open to the public, although one may walk around the grounds for a fee.

I began this post by reminding you, gentle readers, that it is difficult to predict the future, that the decisions we make have consequences and that ultimately our character sometimes determines our fate but not always.

I then discussed the cult of personality, how noteworthy men have been held up not only in esteem but often in adoration as incorruptible paragons of how we mere mortals should be guided by their untarnishable examples.

Religion takes this adoration of personality to the point of assigning divinity to humanity (making gods out of men) or assigning humanity to divinity (making gods more like men).

The Abrahamic religions insist that man was made in the image of God, but in my darkest hours of doubt I find myself wondering if these human authors of these holy writs actually made God in the image of man to make religion more relatable, more palatable for those they wished to dominate through their fears of death and their hopes of meaning to life.

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Muhammad, (peace be upon him), though mortal as a man, is forbidden to be pictured as a man, but only as an idea or an ideal.

The Prophet, a mortal such as we, is never mentioned as capable of being fallible and error-prone as the rest of us, for if this were so, would he then be worthy of our respect?

The One adored by the Jews was for centuries never mentioned directly by name as if the very name was too glorious for mere men to mutter and yet mere men determined what that name is and granted themselves the authority to destroy those committing the same sacrilege of naming the divine.

Christians have struggled for centuries over the question of how Christ is to be portrayed.

It is astonishing to me that the portrayal of Christ is seldom as Aramic-looking as an ancient Jew would have appeared at the time when it is said that the divine assumed human form.

It is also a source of puzzlement that those who claim association with the divine seem divinely more Photoshopped in description than the rest of us.

Is a holy man less divine if he has warts, scars, physical imperfections, handicaps and human failings?

Isn’t the whole point of religion that we can rise from who and what we are to become better than we are?

Consider the Hindus, for whom the gods are aspects of the characteristics of the ultimately divine.

Somehow, the line between ancient paganism and modern practices does not always seem as thin as pretense suggests.

And let us take up the cause of men who have never sought to be venerated.

phat catholic apologetics: Hearing and Praying to God | Quotes about god, Inspirational quotes, Spiritual quotes

The Buddha never sought to be more than a teacher and never intended to be worshipped as his followers do.

Atatürk never claimed to be infallible nor sought to be a source of constant gaze throughout the Turkish realm.

His successors elevated his life from noteworthy to untouchable and inviolate.

Ho Chi Minh had wanted his body to be cremated and not put on display for the entire existence of the Vietnamese nation.

I am in no way suggesting that religion is without value.

Religion acknowledges that there is much that is beyond human control and that our human responses are choices that we make and that there are consequences with those choices.

Religion offers the solace of tradition and consolation that the choice to be decent human beings with Creation and one another gives our lives and deaths meaning.

The respect shown to those who have risen above their origins and inspired people by their vision and determination to become more than they were is a respect well-deserved.

But I believe that esteem should not be taken to extremes, for when we raise mere men to levels of incorruptability, when we suggest that they were and shall always be our betters, then we deny the possibility of progress in ourselves and we allow the unscrupulous to use our role models to restrain our enthusiasm for independent thought and development.

I am in no way suggesting that good names should be besmirched, but neither should they be denied the fallibility, the humanity, that these mere men rose above to create the reputations by which they are now known.

These remarkable men should not be remarkable because they were perfect, but rather because they weren’t, but nonetheless achieved remarkable accomplishments.

These mere men remind us that we as mere men can be more than we are, that we too as mere men can make our world (the dimensions of which we draw) a better place for our having existed.

Outdoor Sculpture Bronze Self Made Man Statue Sculpture - Buy Bronze Eigenbau Mann Statue,Selbst Gemacht Mann Skulptur,Selbst Gemacht Mann Statue Product on Alibaba.com

I find myself wondering how Atatürk and Ho would have handled a pandemic had it struck Turkey and Vietnam during their reigns.

Certainly, there is little doubt that the reputations that they had would have shown themselves in responsible reactions to such a crisis.

But, here’s the thing…..

Atatürk isn’t here anymore.

Ho’s body may be lingering, but his ability to command has been silenced.

We need to look to ourselves for the world that we wish to live in.

Be the Change You Want to See in the World | by Malak Taieb | Medium

We seek examples of Atatürk in today’s Ankara, and, Inshallah, perhaps Atatürk’s example may inspire the leadership needed to survive this pandemic by the Turkish nation.

We seek examples of Uncle Ho in today’s Hanoi and it is hoped that there remains a legacy of wisdom needed to combat Covid-19 across Vietnam.

I am not in Ankara nor is Heidi in Hanoi.

Vietnamese National Assembly in Hanoi / gmp architekten | ArchDaily — Above: Vietnamese National Assembly, Hanoi

I am in Eskisehir and Heidi is in St. Gallen (Switzerland).

No one in Ankara is calling for my advice.

No one in Bern (the Swiss capital) is calling Heidi for hers.

Bundeshaus Bern 2009, Flooffy.jpg — Above: Federal Palace, Bern

We have to believe that those chosen to reign over us have more knowledge, more experience in dealing with matters of a national nature than I a teacher and Heidi a student have.

But neither Heidi nor I have any illusions about the uncertainty of this belief, for we know that the powers that be, as well-intended as they may be, are as human, as fallible, as error-prone, as anyone, for they, despite their pretense and protestations to the contrary, are as we are.

It is my hope that they look to their better natures as the great men before them did, as Heidi and I look to our better natures to be the best that we can be.

Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying – Running Through Grief

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Lonely Planet Vietnam / Lonely Planet Turkey

Canada Slim and the Place of Problem Perception

Posted on March 26, 2021 by canadaslim

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Monday 8 February 2021

Sometimes the words pour out off of my fingertips into the keyboard of my computer like raging rivers that shrug their shoulders impervious to any notion of resistance.

Other times they seep slowly out of an unremitting rock steadfast set against release.

This latter condition is my present plight as I attempt to weave a tapestry of images between events of the past and present moments.

As always I seek a theme, a common skein, that runs through times and places universally intertwined with the human condition.

Some dates and destinations write themselves.

Others require coaxing, prodding, prising from beneath a surface of amphorous lack of definition.

Tapestries are not easy to weave and the first threads do not immediately reveal the tableau complete.

Above: A portion of the Bayeux Tapestry

He who would write a symphony must first hear the music from within.

I can only hope I strike the proper chords as the tune is coaxed into composition.

Above: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)

As I did my research of this day and sought to graft it to the Canadian town I am trying to evoke for you, my gentle reader, the common denominator upon which what follows seemed to rest is the idea of perception, the notion that we see something the way we are determined to see it and not necessarily the reality of what something truly is.

Take, for example, two commemorations that are traditionally celebrated on this calendar date.

Propose Day is celebrated in India on 8 February as a day to propose to your significant other, a day when large numbers of young people give roses to propose to their prospective girlfriend or boyfriend.

It is the second day of Valentines Week.

Although Valentine’s Day (14 February) is celebrated across the whole world, Valentines Week is something celebrated in India only, marked by various festivities across India.

Perception is everything on Propose Day, for how your prospective life partner is perceived determines the outcome of the proposal.

Perhaps a more apt description might be “misperception“, seeing what we want to see and denying the real evidence before us.

To further complicate appearances is the distortion that time plays upon the surface of images.

How something is seen today might not be how that same something is seen tomorrow.

Travel in your mind’s eye with me to another place, another time.

Prešeren Day (Slovene: Prešernov dan), full name Prešeren Day, the Slovene Cultural Holiday (Slovene: Prešernov dan, slovenski kulturni praznik), is a public holiday celebrated in Slovenia on 8 February.

It is marking the anniversary of the death of the Slovene national poet France Prešeren on 8 February 1849 and is the celebration of the Slovenian culture.

It was established in 1945 to raise the cultural consciousness and the self-confidence of the Slovene nation, and declared a work-free day in 1991.

On 7 February, the eve of the holiday, the Prešeren Awards and the Prešeren Fund Awards, the highest Slovenian recognitions for cultural achievements, are conferred.

Prešeren Day continues to be one of the most widely celebrated Slovene holidays.

During the holiday all state and municipal museums and galleries offer free entry, and various other cultural events are held.

The holiday is celebrated not only in Slovenia, but also by Slovene communities all around the world.

Above: France Prešeren (1800 – 1849)

The anniversary of Prešeren’s death first became a prominent date during World War II in 1941, when 7 February was celebrated as the day of all-Slavic unity.

The proposal to celebrate 8 February as the Slovene cultural holiday was put forward in January 1945, in Crnomeli by the Slovene Liberation Front’s cultural worker Bogomil Gerlanc.

It was officially proclaimed a cultural holiday with a decree passed by the Presidency of the Slovne national Liberation Council on 28 January 1945 and published in the newspaper Slovenski porocevalec on 1 February 1945.

It remained a public holiday during the era of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia within the Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia and was celebrated also by the Carinthian Slovenes (living in the Austrian state of Carinthia) and Slovenes in Italy (many near Venice).

It was marked with many cultural festivals and remembrances and with school excursions to culturally significant institutions.

The declaration of Prešeren Day as a work-free day in 1991 was opposed by many, claiming it would bring the banalisation of a holiday designed to be dedicated to cultural events.

As a result, 3 December, the anniversary of the poet’s birth, has also become widely celebrated as an alternative holiday.

Today both days are almost equally celebrated, with no antagonism between the two, although only Prešeren Day in February is officially recognised as a national holiday.

Since it became a work-free day, it has become even more highly valued.

But what of the man for whom this day was named?

Why is he perceived as pride in Slovene heritage?

Above: Flag of Slovenia

France Prešeren (3 December 1800 – 8 February 1849) was a 19th-century Romantic Slovene poet whose poems have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Slovak, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Bengali, as well as to all the languages of former Yugoslavia, and in 2013 a complete collection of his Poezije (Poems) was translated into French.

He has been generally acknowledged as the greatest Slovene classical poet and has inspired virtually all later Slovene literature.

He wrote some high quality epic poetry, for example the first Slovene ballad and the first Slovene epic.

After his death, he became the leading name of the Slovene literary canon.

He tied together the motifs of his own unhappy love with that of an unhappy, subjugated homeland.

Especially after World War II in the Slovene lands, one of Prešeren’s motifs, the “hostile fortune“, has been adopted by Slovenes as a national myth, and Prešeren has been described being as ubiquitous as the air in Slovene culture.

During his lifetime, Prešeren lived in conflict with both the civil and religious establishment, as well as with the provincial bourgeoisie of Ljubljana.

He fell victim to severe drinking problems and tried to take his own life on at least two occasions, facing rejections and seeing most of his closest friends die tragically.

His lyric poetry dealt with the love towards his homeland, the suffering humanity, as well as his unfulfilled love towards his muse, Julija Primic.

Above: France Prešeren

France Prešeren was born in the village of Vrba, Slovenia, as the third of eight children and the first son in the family of a well-off farmer and an ambitious and better educated mother who taught her children to write and read and soon sent them to their uncles who were Roman Catholic priests.

Already as a child, France showed considerable talent, and so his parents decided to provide him with a good education.

At the age of eight, he was sent to elementary schools in Grosuplje and Ribnica, run by the local Roman Catholic clergy.

In 1812, he moved to Ljubljana, where he attended the State Gymnasium (high school).

Already at a very young age, he learned Latin, Ancient Greek, and German, which was then the language of education, administration, and high culture in most areas inhabited by Slovenes.

Counterclockwise from top: Ljubljana Castle in the background and Franciscan Church of the Annunciation in the foreground; Kazina Palace at Congress Square; one of the Dragons on the Dragon Bridge; Visitation of Mary Church on Rožnik Hill; Ljubljana City Hall; Ljubljanica with the Triple Bridge in distance — Above: Images of modern Ljubljana

In Ljubljana, Prešeren’s talent was spotted by the poet Valentin Vodnik, who encouraged him to develop his literary skills in Slovene.

Franz Kurz zum Thurn und Goldenstein - Valentin Vodnik (cropped).jpg — Above: Valentin Vodnik (1758 – 1819)

As a high school student, Prešeren became friends with the future philologist (a person who studies literary texts) Matija Cop, who would have an extremely important influence on the development of Prešeren’s poetry.

Above: Matija Kop (1797 – 1835)

In 1821, Prešeren enrolled at the University of Vienna, where he studied law, against the wishes of his mother, who wanted him to become a priest.

In Vienna, he became acquainted with the western canon from Homer (800 – 701 BC) to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832), but he was most fascinated by Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321) and the Italian trecentists (of the 14th century), especially Petrarch (1304 – 1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 1375).

He also read contemporary Romantic poets.

He was even fired from a teaching post at missionary Joseph von Klinkowström (1813 – 1876)’s Jesuit institute for having loaned a booklet of banned poetry to his friend Anastasius Grün (1806 – 1876).

Above: Logo of the University of Vienna

Prešeren’s first serious poetic attempts date from his student years in Vienna.

In 1824, he wrote some of his most popular poems, still under the influence of Valentin Vodnik and the rich tradition of Slovene folk poetry.

In 1825, he completed a collection of Carniolan poems, which he showed to the philologist Jernej Kopitar (1780 – 1844).

Kopitar was very critical of the young man’s literary attempts, and so Prešeren destroyed the entire collection.

Kopitar’s rejection hindered the development of Prešeren’s creativity.

Above: Coat of arms of Carniola

Preseren did not publish anything more until 1827, when his satirical poem Dekletom (To Maidens) was published by the German language journal Illyrisches Blatt (Illyrian Paper).

After acquiring a law degree in 1828, he returned to Ljubljana, where he was employed as an assistant in the firm of the lawyer Leopold Baumgartner.

He constantly strove to become an independent lawyer, filing as many as six applications, but he was not successful.

In 1828, Prešeren wrote his first important poem, “A Farewell to Youth“.

However, it was published only in 1830, in the literary almanac Krajinska cbelica (The Carniolan Bee), established the same year by the librarian Miha Kastelic in Ljubljana.

The journal published another well-known poem by Prešeren that year, the first Slovene ballad.

It was titled “Povodni moz” (the water man) and was a narration about Urška, a flirt from Ljubljana that ended in the hands of a handsome man who happened to be a water man (a male water spirit).

In 1830, his friend from high school, Matija Čop, returned to Ljubljana and re-established contacts with Prešeren.

Čop soon recognized his friend’s poetic talent and persuaded him to adopt Romantic poetic forms.

Following Čop’s advice, Prešeren would soon become a master of the sonnet.

His poems were noticed by the Czech scholar Frantisek Celakovsky, who published several highly positive critiques of it. Čelakovský’s praise was extremely important for Prešeren’s self-esteem and gave him the strength to continue in the path on which Čop had orientated him.

Portrait of František Ladislav Čelakovský by Jan Vilímek

Above. František Ladislav Čelakovský (1799 – 1852)

In 1832, Preseren briefly moved to Klagenfurt in the hope of furthering his career, but returned to Ljubljana after less than a year.

In the spring of 1833, he met Julija Primic, the daughter of a rich merchant, who would become the unfulfilled love of his life.

In 1833, Preserin became a member of the Ljubljana high society’s social club, called the Casino Society (Slovene: Kazinsko društvo, German: Casino-Gesellschaft), and met Julija in 1834 and 1835 at the theatre and at the dances in Kazina, but did not have the courage to directly show her his feelings towards her.

In 1834, he began working as an assistant to his friend Blaž Crobath, who gave Prešeren enough free time to engage in his literary activities.

In the same year, he met the Czech romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha (1810 – 1836) and the Slovene-born Croatian poet Stanko Vraz (1810 – 1851) and had long and fruitful discussions on poetry with them.

Between 1830 and 1835, Prešeren composed his esthetically most accomplished poems, which were inspired by the setbacks in his personal life, especially by his unrequited love for Julija Primic.

Prešeren followed Čop’s advice and transformed Julija into a poetic figure, reminiscent of Dante’s Beatrice and Petrarch’s Laura.

Sonetni venec (A Wreath of Sonnets) is Prešeren’s most important poem from his early period.

It is a crown of 15 sonnets.

It was published on 22 February 1834 in the Illyrisches Blatt.

In it, Prešeren tied together the motifs of his own unhappy love with that of an unhappy, subjugated homeland.

The poem was recognized as a masterpiece by Matija Čop, but it did not gain much recognition beyond the small circle around the journal Krajnska čbelica.

Moreover, Julija was unimpressed.

Understandably, Prešeren moved to more bitter verses.

Another important work from this period are the Sonetje nesreče (sonnets of misfortune), which were first drafted already in 1832, but were published in the 4th volume of Krajnska čbelica only in July 1834, with some changes.

They are the most pessimistic of Prešeren’s works.

This is a group of six (initially seven) sonnets expressing the poet’s despair over life.

In the first sonnet, titled “O Vrba“, Prešeren reflects on what his life could have been like, had he never left his home village.

The other sonnets from the circle have not gained such a widespread popularity, but are still considered by scholars to be among Prešeren’s most genuine and profound works.

1835 was Prešeren’s annus horribilis.

His closest friend Matija Čop drowned while swimming in the Sava River, Julija Primic married a wealthy merchant, and Prešeren became alienated from his friend and editor of the literary journal Krajnska čbelica, Miha Kastelic.

Following his best friend’s death, Prešeren wrote the epic-lyric poem Krst pri Savici (the baptism on the Savica), dedicating it to Čop.

Set during the forced Christianization of the predecessors of Slovenes, the Carantanians, in the late 8th century, the poem addresses the issues of collective identity and faithfulness to the ancestors’ ways, as well as the issue of individual and his hope and resignation.

The philosopher Slavoj Zizek interpreted the poem as an example of the emergence of modern subjectivity.

Around 1836, Prešeren finally realized that his love for Julija would never become mutual (she had married another man the previous year).

The same year, he met Ana Jelovšek, with whom he entered into a permanent relationship.

They had three children, but never married.

Prešeren supported Ana financially and treated her as his rightful mate, but engaged in several other love affairs at the same time.

He also spent a lot of time travelling throughout Carniola, especially to Lake Bled, from the scenery of which he drew inspiration for his poems.

Above: Lake Bled

In 1837, Prešeren met Emil Korytko, a Polish political activist from Galicia, confined by the Austrian authorities to Ljubljana.

Korytko introduced to Prešeren the work of Adam Mickiewicz, which had an important influence on his later works.

The two even jointly translated one of Mickiewicz’s poems (“Resygnacja“) from Polish to Slovene and started collecting Slovene folk songs in Carniola and Lower Styria.

Adam Mickiewicz według dagerotypu paryskiego z 1842 roku.jpg — Above: Adam Mickiewicz (1798 – 1855)

In 1839, Korytko died, leaving Prešeren without an important interlocutor after Čop’s death.

Above: The gravestone of Emil Korytko at Navje, with the German verses written by France Prešeren

In the autumn of the same year, Andrej Smole, one of Prešeren’s friends from his youth, returned home after many years of living and travelling abroad.

Smole was a relatively rich young intellectual from a well-established merchant family, who supported the development of Slovene culture.

The two spent much of the winter of 1839 – 1840 on Smole’s estate in Lower Carniola, where they planned several cultural and literary projects, including the establishment of a daily newspaper in the Slovene language and the publishing of Anton Tomaz Linhart’s comedy Matiček’s Wedding which had been prohibited as “politically inappropriate” in 1790, due to the outbreak of the French Revolution.

Above: Prezek Castle, where the friends often met

Both projects failed:

The planned journal Ilirske novice was blocked by the Viennese censorship, and Linhart’s play would be staged only in 1848, without Prešeren’s assistance.

Above: Anton Tomaz Linhart (1756 – 1795)

Smole died suddenly in 1840, literally in Prešeren’s arms, while celebrating his 40th birthday. Prešeren dedicated a touching, yet unexpectedly cheerful and vitalist poem to his late friend.

After 1840, Prešeren was left without any interlocutor who could appreciate his works, but continued to write poetry, although much less than in the 1830s.

Portret — Above: Andrej Smole (1800 – 1840)

Preseren gradually departed from the typical romantic trend, adopting an increasingly diverse and innovative style.

In 1843, an important breakthrough for Prešeren happened:

Janez Bleiweis started publishing a new daily journal in the Slovene language and invited Prešeren to participate in its cultural section.

The two men came from rather different backgrounds:

Bleiweis was a moderate conservative and staunch supporter of the ecclesiastical and imperial establishments and alien to the Romantic culture.

He nevertheless established a fair relationship with the poet.

Prešeren’s participation in Bleiweis’ editorial project was the closest he would come to public recognition during his lifetime.

In 1844, Preseren wrote the patriotic poem “Zdravlijca” (A Toast), the most important achievement of his late period.

In 1847, a volume of his collected poems was published under the simple title Poezije Dr. Franceta Prešerna (Poems of Dr. France Prešeren).

In 1846, Prešeren was finally allowed to open his own law firm and moved to Kranj with his family.

Prešeren spent the last two years of his life occupied with private life and his new job as a lawyer in Kranj.

According to some accounts, he was planning several literary projects, including a novel in the realistic style and an experimental play, but he was struck with liver disease caused by his excessive drinking in prior years.

The revolution of 1848 left him rather indifferent, although it was carried out by the young generation who already saw him as an idol of democratic and national ideals.

Before his death, he did however redact his Zdravljica, which was left out from the 1847 volume of poems, and made some minor adjustments for a new edition of his collected poems.

He died in Kranj on 8 February 1849.

Upon his deathbed he confessed that he had never forgotten Julija.

In general, Prešeren’s life was an unhappy one.

View of Kranj with St. Cantianus and Companions Parish Church (left) and Our Lady of the Rosary Church (right) — Above: Kranj

Today, Prešeren is still considered one of the leading poets of Slovene literature, acclaimed not only nationally or regionally, but also according to the standards of developed European literature.

Prešeren was one of the greatest European Romanticists.

His fervent, heartfelt lyrics, intensely emotional but never merely sentimental, have made him the chief representative of the Romantic school in Slovenia.

Nevertheless, recognition came slowly after his death.

It was not before 1866 that a real breakthrough in the reception of his role in Slovene culture took place.

In that year, Josip Jurcic and Josip Stritar published a new edition of Prešeren’s collection of poems.

In the preface, Stritar published an essay which is still considered one of the most influential essays in Slovene history.

In it, he showed the aesthetic value of Prešeren’s work by placing him in the wider European context.

From then on, his reputation as the greatest poet in the Slovene language was never endangered.

Prešeren’s legacy in Slovene culture is enormous.

He is generally regarded as the national poet.

In 1905, his monument was placed at the central square in Ljubljana, now called Preseren Square.

By the early 1920s, all his surviving work had been catalogued and numerous critical editions of his works had been published.

Several scholars were already dealing exclusively with the analysis of his work and little was left unknown about his life.

In 1945, the anniversary of his death, called Preseren Day, was declared as the Slovene cultural holiday.

In 1989, his Zdravljica was declared the national anthem of Slovenia, replacing the old Naprej zastava slave.

In 1992, his effigy was portrayed on the Slovene 1000 tolar banknote, and since 2007, his image is on the Slovene €2 coin.

The highest Slovene prize for artistic achievements, the Preseren Award, is named after him.

By many standards, Preseren had a good life and yet his perception of his life was anything but positive.

He defined his life, his nation, his sense of self, through his failed relationship with Julija, granting her power over him that she neither sought nor deserved.

Fast forward with me to another time, another place, another life.

Neal Leon Cassady (8 February 1926 – 4 February 1968) was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s.

He was prominently featured as himself in the “scroll” (first draft) version of Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, and served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in the 1957 version of that book.

In many of Kerouac’s later books, Cassady is represented by the character Cody Pomeray.

Cassady also appeared in Allen Ginsberg’s poems, and in several other works of literature by other writers.

Cassady was born to Maude Jean (née Scheuer) and Neal Marshall Cassady in Salt Lake City, Utah.

His mother died when he was 10, and he was raised by his alcoholic father in Denver, Colorado.

Cassady spent much of his youth either living on the streets of skid row, with his father, or in reform school.

As a youth, Cassady was repeatedly involved in petty crime.

He was arrested for car theft when he was 14, for shoplifting and car theft when he was 15, and for car theft and fencing stolen property when he was 16.

In 1941, the 15-year-old Cassady met Justin W. Brierly, a prominent Denver educator.

Brierly was well known as a mentor of promising young men and was impressed by Cassady’s intelligence.

Over the next few years, Brierly took an active role in Cassady’s life. Brierly helped admit Cassady to East High School where he taught Cassady as a student, encouraged and supervised his reading, and found employment for him.

Cassady continued his criminal activities, however, and was repeatedly arrested from 1942 to 1944; on at least one of these occasions, he was released by law enforcement into Brierly’s safekeeping.

In June 1944, Cassady was arrested for possession of stolen goods and served 11 months of a one-year prison sentence.

Brierly and he actively exchanged letters during this period, even through Cassady’s intermittent incarcerations.

This correspondence represents Cassady’s earliest surviving letters.

In October 1945, after being released from prison, Cassady married 16-year-old Lu Anne Henderson.

In 1946, the couple traveled to New York City to visit their friend, Hal Chase, another protégé of Brierly’s.

While visiting Chase at Columbia University, Cassady met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

Although Cassady did not attend Columbia, he soon became friends with them and their acquaintances, some of whom later became members of the Beat Generation.

While in New York, Cassady persuaded Kerouac to teach him to write fiction.

Cassady’s second wife, Carolyn, has stated:

“Neal, having been raised in the slums of Denver amongst the world’s lost men, was determined to make more of himself, to become somebody, to be worthy and respected.

His genius mind absorbed every book he could find, whether literature, philosophy, or science.

Jack had a formal education, which Neal envied, but intellectually he was more than a match for Jack, and they enjoyed long discussions on every subject.”

Jack Kerouac by Tom Palumbo circa 1956 — Above: Jack Kerouac (1922 – 1969)

Carolyn Robinson met Cassady in 1947, while she was studying for her master’s in theater arts at the University of Denver.

Five weeks after Lu Anne’s departure, Neal got an annulment from Lu Anne and married Carolyn, on 1 April 1948.

Carolyn’s book, Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg (1990), details her marriage to Cassady and recalls him as, “the archetype of the American man“.

Cassady’s sexual relationship with Ginsberg lasted off and on for the next 20 years.

During this period, Cassady worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad and kept in touch with his “Beat” acquaintances, even as they became increasingly different philosophically.

The couple eventually had three children and settled down in a ranch house in Monte Sereno, California, 50 miles south of San Francisco, where Kerouac and Ginsberg sometimes visited.

This home, built in 1954 with money from a settlement from Southern Pacific Railroad for a train-related accident, was demolished in August 1997.

In 1950, Cassady entered into a bigamous marriage with Diane Hansen, a young model who was pregnant with his child, Curtis Hansen.

Cassady traveled cross-country with both Kerouac and Ginsberg on multiple occasions, including the trips documented in Kerouac’s On the Road.

Following an arrest in 1958 for offering to share a small amount of marijuana with an undercover agent at a San Francisco nightclub, Cassady served a two-year sentence at California’s San Quentin State Prison in Marin County.

After his release in June 1960, he struggled to meet family obligations, and Carolyn divorced him when his parole period expired in 1963.

Carolyn stated that she was looking to relieve Cassady of the burden of supporting a family, but “this was a mistake and removed the last pillar of his self-esteem“.

After the divorce, in 1963, Cassady shared an apartment with Allen Ginsberg and Beat poet Charles Plymell, at 1403 Gough Street, San Francisco.

Cassady first met author Ken Kesey during the summer of 1962.

Cassady eventually became one of the Merry Pranksters, a group that formed around Kesey in 1964, who were vocal proponents of the use of psychedelic drugs.

During 1964, Cassady served as the main driver of the bus named Furthur on the iconic first half of the journey from San Francisco to New York, which was immortalized by Tom Wolfe’s book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968).

Cassady appears at length in a documentary film about the Merry Pranksters and their cross-country trip, Magic Trip (2011), directed by Alex Gibney.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a 1968 nonfiction book by Tom Wolfe.

The book is a popular example of the New Journalism literary style.

Wolfe presents a firsthand account of the experiences of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters, who travelled across America in a colorfully painted school bus, the Furthur, whose name was painted on the destination sign, indicating the general ethos of the Pranksters.

Kesey and the Pranksters became famous for their use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD in order to achieve expansion of their consciousness.

The book chronicles the Acid Tests (parties with LSD-laced Kool-Aid), encounters with notable figures of the time (Hells Angels, the Grateful Dead, Allen Ginsberg) and describes Kesey’s exile to Mexico and his arrests.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is remembered as an accurate and “essential” book depicting the roots and growth of the hippie movement.

The use of New Journalism yielded two primary responses:

Amazement or disagreement.

While The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was not the original standard for New Journalism, it is the work most often cited as an example for the revolutionary style.

Wolfe’s descriptions and accounts of Kesey’s travel managed to captivate readers and permitted them to read the book as a fiction piece rather than a news story.

Those who saw the book as a literary work worthy of praise were amazed by the way Wolfe maintains control.

Despite being fully engulfed in the movement and aligned with the Prankster’s philosophy, Wolfe manages to distinguish between the realities of the Pranksters and Kesey’s experiences and the experiences triggered by their paranoia and acid trips.

Wolfe is in some key ways different from the Pranksters, because despite his appreciation for the spiritual experiences offered by the psychedelic, he also accepts the importance of the physical world.

The Pranksters see their trips as a breach of their physical worlds and realities.

Throughout the book Wolfe focuses on placing the Pranksters and Kesey within the context of their environment.

Where the Pranksters see ideas, Wolfe sees Real World objects.

As proponents of fiction and orthodox nonfiction continued to question the validity of New Journalism, Wolfe stood by the growing discipline.

Wolfe realized that this method of writing transformed the subjects of newspapers and articles into people with whom audiences could relate and sympathize.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test received praise from some outlets.

Others were not as open to its effects.

A review in The Harvard Crimson identified the effects of the book, but did so without offering praise.

The review, written by Jay Cantor, who went on to literary prominence himself, provides a more moderate description of Kesey and his Pranksters.

Cantor challenges Wolfe’s messiah-like depiction of Kesey, concluding that:

“In the end the Christ-like robes Wolfe fashioned for Kesey are much too large.

We are left with another acid-head and a bunch of kooky kids who did a few krazy things.”

Cantor explains how Kesey was offered the opportunity by a judge to speak to the masses and curb the use of LSD.

Kesey, who Wolfe idolizes for starting the movement, is left powerless in his opportunity to alter the movement.

Cantor is also critical of Wolfe’s praise for the rampant abuse of LSD.

Cantor admits the impact of Kesey in this scenario, stating that the drug was in fact widespread by 1969, when he wrote his criticism.

He questions the glorification of such drug use however, challenging the ethical attributes of reliance on such a drug, and further asserts that:

“LSD is no respecter of persons, of individuality”.

In January 1967, Cassady traveled to Mexico with fellow prankster George “Barely Visible” Walker and Cassady’s longtime girlfriend Anne Murphy.

In a beachside house just south of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, they were joined by Barbara Wilson and Walter Cox.

All-night storytelling, speed drives in Walker’s Lotus Elan, and the use of LSD made for a classic Cassady performance — “like a trained bear,” Carolyn Cassady once said.

Cassady was beloved for his ability to inspire others to love life, yet at rare times he was known to express regret over his wild life, especially as it affected his family.

At one point, Cassady took Cox, then 19, aside and told him:

“Twenty years of fast living — there’s just not much left, and my kids are all screwed up.

Don’t do what I have done.“

During the next year, Cassady’s life became less stable, and the pace of his travels more frenetic.

He left Mexico in May, travelling to San Francisco, Denver, New York City, and points in between.

Cassady then returned to Mexico in September and October (stopping in San Antonio, on the way to visit his oldest daughter, who had just given birth to his first grandchild), visited Ken Kesey’s Oregon farm in December, and spent the New Year with Carolyn at a friend’s house near San Francisco.

Finally, in late January 1968, Cassady returned to Mexico once again.

On 3 February 1968, Cassady attended a wedding party in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico.

After the party, he went walking along a railroad track to reach the next town, but passed out in the cold and rainy night wearing nothing but a T-shirt and jeans.

In the morning, he was found in a coma by the tracks, reportedly by Anton Black, later a professor at El Paso Community College, who carried Cassady over his shoulders to the local post office building.

Cassady was then transported to the closest hospital, where he died a few hours later on 4 February, four days short of his 42nd birthday.

The exact cause of Cassady’s death remains uncertain.

Those who attended the wedding party confirm that he took an unknown quantity of secobarbital, a powerful barbiturate sold under the brand name Seconal.

The physician who performed the autopsy wrote simply, “general congestion in all systems.”

When interviewed later, the physician stated that he was unable to give an accurate report because Cassady was a foreigner and there were drugs involved.

“Exposure” is commonly cited as his cause of death, although his widow believes he may have died of kidney failure.

Cassady is credited with helping Kerouac break with his Thomas Wolfe-influenced sentimental style, as seen in The Town and the City (1950).

After reading Cassady’s letters, Kerouac was inspired to write his story in Cassady’s communication style:

“In a rush of mad ecstasy, without self-consciousness or mental hesitation”.

This fluid writing style, reading more like a stream of consciousness or hypermanic rapid-fire conversation than written prose, is best demonstrated within Cassady’s letters to family and friends.

In a letter to Kerouac from 1953, Cassady begins with the following fervent sentence:

Well, it’s about time you wrote, I was fearing you farted out on top that mean mountain or slid under while pissing in Pismo, beach of flowers, food and foolishness, but I knew the fear was ill-founded, for balancing it in my thoughts of you, much stronger and valid if you weren’t dead, was a realization of the experiences you would be having down there, rail, home, and the most important, climate, by a remembrance of my own feelings and thoughts (former low, or more exactly, nostalgic and unreal, latter high) as, for example, I too seemed to spend time looking out upper floor windows at sparse, especially night times, traffic in females — old or young.

On the Road became a sensation.

By capturing Cassady’s voice, Kerouac discovered a unique style of his own that he called “spontaneous prose“, a stream of consciousness prose form.

Cassady’s own written work was never formally published in his lifetime, and he left behind only a half-written manuscript and a number of personal letters.

Cassady admitted to Kerouac in a letter from 1948:

“My prose has no individual style as such, but is rather an unspoken and still unexpressed groping toward the personal.

There is something there that wants to come out.

Something of my own that must be said.

Yet, perhaps, words are not the way for me.”

I am in no way condoning nor condemning the use of recreational drugs, though I never relished the notion of experimenting with substances I could not predict.

I cannot claim to comprehend the Beat Generation nor its epitome Neal Cassady.

On some levels, Cassady inspired others.

On other levels, he was the antithesis of what a good man could be.

As is inevitable when writing of the lives of those such as Preseren and Cassady, my mind compares my life with theirs.

Unlike Preseren, I don’t want to be reduced to relying on the good graces of a relationship to define who I am.

Unlike Cassady and Kesey, I appreciate the spiritual within the Real World without feeling the need to escape from the latter in a Quixotic quest for the former.

I confess that writing in a stream of consciousness is not something that appeals to me, for within myself there runs a conservative cautious man who, though unafraid of what others may think of him (or so I tell myself), senses the power of prose to influence others and does not see the value in illuminating the darker nature of my thoughts.

I try to write as I try to teach:

life-affirming and compassionate
welcoming people on their merits, regardless of their sex, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, religious, or political and personal beliefs, even if they differ from my own
to support, motivate, advise, and never judge or criticize, unless harm is being done to others
respecting the significant investment made by others to assimilate what I might wish to impart

There is a certain appeal for me in the type of New Journalism that Wolfe espouses, but intermingled with a kind of reflective travel writing where I try to humanize the places I describe.

It is this mix that I am trying to emulate in this year’s blogposts, though the works that, as yet, have seen no other eyes but my own, seek to express myself in other ways.

As I sit myself down at my laptop computer and seek to capture the essence of yet another place encountered in my travels, I find myself wondering how Preseren and Cassady might have perceived them…..

St. Thomas, Ontario to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Monday 13 January 2020

Another day, another station, a halt between where I was and where I wanted to be.

Another town that is at first glance like any other town, seen by a man who at first glance appears to be a man like any other man.

The traveller, that brave intrepid soul with courage to spontaneously disembark, looks around and wonders where to begin.

There is no inkling of what might be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, touched, known, enjoyed and felt.

Guelph (population 131,794) is just another city in southwestern Ontario.

Like Kingston or Regina or Victoria or any number of Anglo communities in Canada, Guelph is a Royal City, roughly 28 km (17 mi) east of Kitchener and 100 km (62 mi) west of downtown Toronto, at the convergence of Highway 6, Highway 7 and Wellington County Road 124.

It is the seat of Wellington County, but is politically independent of it, which already hints that there may be something different about the place.

The city is built on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

Naming a First Nation “Credit” seems as uninspiring as naming a community “Guelph“, for neither “Credit” nor “Guelph” evoke any images that excite the imagination.

“Guelph” comes through the Italian Guelfo from the Bavarian-Germanic Welf, in reference to the House of Welf and chosen to honour King George IV — the reigning British monarch at the time of the city’s founding—whose family, the Hanoverians, descended from the Welfs.

It is for this reason that the city has the nickname The Royal City.

The only “royals” to actually visit were John Campbell, the Marquis of Lorne, and his wife was Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, one of Queen Victoria’s daughters.

Downtown Guelph is situated above the confluence of the Speed River and the Eramosa River, which have numerous tributaries.

The Speed River enters from the north and the Eramosa River from the east.

The two rivers meet below downtown and continue southwest, where they merge with the Grand River.

There are also many creeks and smaller rivers creating large tracts of densely forested ravines, providing ideal sites for parks and recreational trails.

The city is built on several drumlins and buried waterways, the most notable being an underground creek flowing below the Albion Hotel, once the source of water used to brew beer.

This region of Ontario has cold winters and warm, humid summers.

It is generally a couple of degrees cooler here than in lower elevation regions on the Great Lakes shorelines, especially so in winter.

Above: Speed River, Guelph

Eramosa River in Guelph Ontario early spring.jpg — Above: Eramosa River, Guelph

By European standards south of Scandanavia or beneath Alpine heights, Guelph has cold winters.

By much of the standards of the rest of Canada, Guelph’s complaints of the cold are laughable.

Before colonization, the area was considered by the surrounding indigenous communities to be a “neutral zone” and was inhabited by the Neutral Nation.

According to the University of Guelph, “the area was home to a First Nations community called the Attawandaron who lived in longhouses surrounded by fields of corn“.

The majority of this Nation, about 4,000 people, lived in a village near what is now the Badenoch area of Puslinch, near Morriston, just south of downtown Guelph.

There is an odd mindset regarding the First Nations that all was love and roses amongst these peoples before white Europeans came along like serpents in Eden to create an animosity that had not previously existed.

I don’t subscribe to this point of view.

I think that rivalries existed before the white man came a-knockin’ and that their arrival simply intensified pre-existing conflicts.

A remarkable man would begin to colonize this remarkable place.

John Galt (1779 – 1839) was a Scottish novelist, entrepreneur, and political and social commentator.

Galt has been called the first political novelist in the English language, due to being the first novelist to deal with issues of the Industrial Revolution.

Galt was the first superintendent of the Canada Company (1826-1829).

The company had been formed to populate a part of what is now southern Ontario (then known as Upper Canada) in the first half of the 19th century.

It was later called “the most important single attempt at settlement in Canadian history“.

In 1829, Galt was recalled to Great Britain for mismanagement of the Canada Company (particularly incompetent bookkeeping), and was later jailed for failing to pay his son’s tuition.

Galt’s Autobiography, published in London in 1833, includes a discussion of his life and work in Upper Canada.

Above: Bust of John Galt, downtown Guelph

There is another equally bizarre mindset among too many European-descended North Americans that this land is their land and should be defended against foreign usurpers.

The obvious irony of this belief is never acknowledged.

Born in Irvine, in Ayrshire, Scotland, Galt was the son of a naval captain involved in the West Indies trade.

John was educated at Irvine Grammar School.

Galt spent a few months with the Greenock Custom House, at age 17, then became an apprentice and junior clerk under his uncle, Mr. Ewing, also writing essays and stories for local journals in his spare time.

He moved to London in 1804 to join his father and seek his fortune.

In 1809 he began studying law at Lincoln’s Inn (one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers (lawyers) of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar).

During a subsequent trip to Europe, Galt met and befriended Lord Byron in Gibraltar.

He travelled with Byron and his companion, John Hobhouse, 1st Baron Broughton to Malta.

He met them again in Greece.

John Cam Hobhouse.jpg — Above: John Hobhouse (1786 – 1869)

Lord Byron is one of those individuals for whom I have difficulty knowing how to evaluate him, in the sense that I appreciate the talent but I am uncertain if I would have liked the person.

As he himself described:

“I am such a strange mélange of good and evil that it would be difficult to describe me.“

I have no opinion about his bisexuality, but a casual glance at his life seems to suggest he went through people’s lives like a scythe through chaff.

Certainly I sympathize with his club foot and his early death, but I find myself pondering why so many artists find it difficult to live more upright lives than they do.

We admire their courage to be themselves and yet we disparage their character for having the audacity of being different.

Portrait of Byron — Above: Lord Byron (1788 – 1824)

Parting company, Galt continued alone to Constantinople (Istanbul), Adrianople (Edirne) and then Sophia (Sofia).

He returned to his family home in Greenock (Scotland) via Ireland.

He then embarked to London to pursue business plans, but these did not come to fruition and he took to writing.

Galt wrote an account of his travels, (Voyages and Travels, 1812) which met with moderate success.

Can the world and humanity be ever understood without exploring as much of them as we can?

Decades later, Galt would also publish the first full biography of Lord Byron (The Life of Lord Byron, 1830).

He also published the first biography of the painter Benjamin West, The Life and Studies of Benjamin West (1820).

In 1813, Galt attempted to establish a Gibraltaran trading company, in order to circumvent Napoleon’s embargo on British trade.

However, Wellington’s victory in Spain made this no longer necessary.

I think Galt was attracted to the lives of self-determining men.

West, for example, succeeded as an artist even though he was entirely self-taught.

Galt then returned to London and married Elizabeth Tilloch.

They had three boys.

Let me cautiously wonder whether getting married automatically makes for a good spouse or whether being a father or mother automatically ensures being good parents.

In 1815, Galt became Secretary of the Royal Caledonian Asylum in London.

He also privately consulted in several business ventures.

The way Wikipedia places Galt’s asylum position in the same context as his other business ventures makes me wonder if the electronic encyclopedia is suggesting that Galt’s motives as asylum secretary were more mercantile than humanitarian.

Above: Logo of Wikipedia

Galt started to submit articles to Blackwood’s Magazine in late 1819, and in March 1829 he sent Blackwood the publishers the plan for The Ayrshire Legatees.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine XXV 1829.jpg

Concentrating on his writing for the next several years, Galt lived at times in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and elsewhere, writing fiction and a number of school texts under the pseudonym Reverend T. Clark.

Pseudonyms puzzle me.

I can understand the need for noms de plume when wishing to express opinions that run contrary to the politics or morals of the reigning classes, but I wonder if writers such as Mark Twain would have been any less popular had their own names, like Samuel Clemens, been used to market their works.

Twain in 1907 — Above: Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) (1835 – 1910)

Around 1821, Galt moved his family from Greenock to Eskgrove near Musselburgh.

In addition to moving his residence frequently during this period, he also switched publishers several times, moving from Blackwood’s Magazine to Oliver and Boyd and then back again.

In 1821 Annals of the Parish was published as were two installments of The Steam Boat and he started work on the novel Sir André Wylie.

Annals of the Parish established Galt’s reputation overnight.

Few folks achieve the fame of Shakespeare or Goethe beyond their lifetimes.

Few writers see the entirety of their works garner fame within their lifetimes.

Annals of the Parish (full title: Annals of the parish: or, The chronicle of Dalmailing; during the ministry of the Rev. Micah Balwhidder, written by himself) is an 1821 novel of Scottish country life by John Galt.

Micah Balwhidder, considered to be the finest character created by Galt, reveals himself in the fictional first-person account to have human failings including conceit and vanity, as well as a keen interest in how the economy prospers.

The book provides a humorous and realistic account of a typical parish minister of the late 18th and early 19th century, the way of life in rural Scotland, and the social changes of the Industrial Revolution.

As Balwhidder proudly notes in his introduction, the Annals begin with Balwhidder’s appointment as minister on 25 October 1760, the same day that King George III came to the throne, and end with 1810 when the King “was set by as a precious vessel which had received a crack or a flaw, and could only be serviceable in the way of an ornament”, and Balwhidder’s ministry ends.

Annals of the Parish, written in Scots and English, is part of a series of Scottish stories written by Galt in the 1820s, which he referred to as ‘theoretical histories’ or ‘Tales of the West’.

Perhaps the success of Galt’s Annals of the Parish can be attributed to that human need to see ourselves in the literature we read?

In his entry for 1793, Balwhidder recalls having a remarkable dream on the first night of the year, in which dead nobles and commoners rose from a graveyard to witness a mighty battle, the scene of the fighting then changing to a wasteland with a distant city around a tower with the fiery letters “Public Opinion“, a perplexing vision which appeared prophetic when he heard of the execution of Louis XVI (1754 – 1793).

In 1794, people of the parish favouring radical Jacobins emulating the reforms of the French Revolution become insolent and divided from the gentry, whose pride prevented them from showing any affability to these democrats.

Revolutions have always been difficult for me to embrace, for so much bloodshed and destruction is done in the name of freedom while the tyrants toppled are often merely replaced by equally repugnant successors.

Concerned by this division, Balwhidder noted:

“A bruit and a sound about universal benevolence, philanthropy, utility, and all the other disguises with which an infidel philosophy appropriated to itself the charity, brotherly love, and welldoing inculcated by our holy religion“.

He preached to his congregation that he “thought they had more sense than to secede from Christianity to become Utilitarians, for that it would be a confession of ignorance of the faith they deserved, seeing that it was the main duty inculcated by our religion to do all in morals and manners to which the new-fangled doctrine of utility pretended.“

The term utilitarian was taken up by John Stuart Mill, whose 1861 book Utilitarianism included a footnote that, though “believing himself to be the first person who brought the word utilitarian into use, he did not invent the term, but adopted it from a passing expression in Mr. Galt’s Annals of the Parish.”

Taking the notion of utilitarianism to its extreme, dare we ask whether God made man or man made God, for dark designs under the heavens?

Sir Andrew Wylie was published in 1822.

In 1824, Galt was appointed Secretary of the Canada Company, a charter company established to aid in the colonization of the Huron Tract in Upper Canada along the eastern shore of Lake Huron.

Even in days of yore the notion of escape to a better life was used as a lure to generate profits.

The area, known as the Huron Tract on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, was 1,100,000 acres (4,500 km²) in size and had been acquired from the Ojibwe (Chippewa) by the British government.

The company surveyed and subdivided this massive area, built roads, mills, and schools and advertised it at affordable prices to buyers in Europe.

The company then assisted in the migration of new settlers, bringing them to the area by means of a boat, which the company also owned.

New World hopes, Old World greed?

After the Canada Company was incorporated by royal charter on 19 August 1826, Galt traveled across the Atlantic on the man-of-war HMS Romney, arriving at New York City and then travelling by road.

Sadly, soon after arriving, word was sent that his mother had suffered a stroke.

He returned to her (in Musselburgh) in 1826.

She died a few months later.

He returned to Canada in 1826.

While in Canada, Galt lived in York in Upper Canada, but located the headquarters of the Canada Company at Guelph, a town he founded in 1827.

Later that year, he co-founded the town of Goderich with Tiger Dunlop.

The community of Galt (ON) was named after him.

No one seems to found communities anymore.

Galt’s three sons played prominent roles in Canadian politics:

One of them, Alexander, later became one of the ‘Fathers of Confederation‘, and Canada’s first Minister of Finance.

Sir Alexander Galt.jpg — Above: Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt (1817 – 1893)

Think of Canada as a North American British United Provinces.

Today it is difficult to imagine Canada and the United States not being the identities they are today instead of the hodge-podge of territories they once were.

During his tenure with the Canada Company, Galt ran afoul of several colonial authorities.

He was heavily criticised by his employers for his lack of basic accounting skills and failure to carry out their established policies.

This resulted in his dismissal and recall to Great Britain in 1829.

Soon after his return to Great Britain, he spent several months in King’s Bench Prison (London) for failure to pay his debts.

Kings Bench Prison Microcosm edited.jpg — Above: Kings Bench Prison

One of Galt’s last novels, The Member, has political corruption as its central theme.

john galt - autobiography - First Edition - AbeBooks

It remains saddening to me that the value of a man is still too often judged by the size of his assets and his management of them, rather than his character or accomplishments beyond his financial acumen.

In 1831, Galt moved to Barn Cottage in Old Brompton (London).

Despite failing health (following a trip over a tree root whilst in Canada), Galt was involved in another colonial business venture, the British American Land Company, which was formed to develop lands in the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada (Québec).

Galt served as secretary but was forced to resign in December 1832 because of his health.

By this stage his spinal injury was not only crippling him but also affecting his speech and handwriting.

In 1834, he moved to Edinburgh following the publishing of his two-volume Autobiography in 1833.

The Autobiography of John Galt by John Galt: Very Good (1833) 1st Edition. | Tarrington Books

It is an obsession with us mere mortals in that we wished to be remembered beyond the span of our lives.

The reality is, despite all our efforts, that if most of us are remembered at all, it shan’t be for long.

Galt here met the travel writer Harriet Pigott (1775 – 1846).

Pigott persuaded Galt to edit her Records of Real Life in the Palace and the Cottage.

She received some criticism for this as it was suspected that she was just taking advantage of Galt.

However, her unfinished biography of him which is in the Bodleian Library (Oxford) implies that it was more of mutual respect than her critics allowed.

Records of Real Life in the Palace and the Cottage had an introduction by Galt, and this three-volume work was published in 1839.

Records of Real Life in the Palace and the Cottage, Revised by J. Galt: Amazon.co.uk: Pigott, Harriet Henriette: 9781149788370: Books

Sadly, Pigott is better remembered for suspiciously seeking Galt’s help than for the quality work she produced.

Harriet Pigott - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia — Above: Harriet Pigott

Galt retired to his old home in Greenock in August 1834 following the departure of three of his sons to Canada.

Finding the accommodation unsuitable he lived temporarily in Gourock before returning to a more comfortable house in December 1834.

Galt died on 11 April 1839.

He was buried in the family tomb of his parents in the New Burying Ground in Greenock (now called the Inverkip Street Cemetery).

It is an odd hobby for some to seek out the final resting places of the celebrated deceased.

Honestly, I cannot decide what respect, if any, is truly manifested by a visit to a gravesite of someone who never knew you.

And yet untold numbers flock to ghostly Gracelands and tumbledown tombs seeking some symbiosis with the Zeitgeist of the past by standing on the graves of the senseless dead.

Galt designed the town to attract settlers and farmers to the surrounding countryside.

His design intended the town to resemble a European city centre, complete with squares, broad main streets and narrow side streets, resulting in a variety of block sizes and shapes which are still in place today.

The street plan was laid out in a radial street and grid system that branches out from downtown, a technique which was also employed in other planned towns of this era, such as Buffalo, New York.

I have never been a fan of the grid or the radial planning of a place.

Perhaps this is what lured me out of North America:

The random chaos of the evolving Eurasian community.

Certainly there is a fear and a danger in the uncertainty of winding ways and archaic alleys, but this same fear, this same risk, offers an excitement and a serendipity that no organized metropolis can ever truly emulate.

15 Most Beautiful Cities in Europe | She Wanders Abroad — Above: Paris

Galt constructed what was one of the first buildings in the community to house early settlers and the Canada Company office, “The Priory” (built 1828), located on the banks of the Speed River near the current River Run Centre for Performing Arts and could house up to 100 people.

The Fate of the Priory — Guelph Historical Society — Above: The Priory

The building eventually became the Canadian Pacific Railway Priory Station on the Guelph Junction Railway before it was eventually torn down and removed.

A historical plaque commemorates John Galt’s role.

I would never classify myself as a train spotter, but I cannot deny that there is within me a great affection for train stations that no bus terminal has ever successfully imitated.

The Guelph Junction Railway is a shortline railway owned by the City of Guelph and serves the city’s northwest industrial park.

The railway was the first federally chartered railway in the Commonwealth of Nations to be owned by a municipality.

It is one of only two in all of Canada, the other being the Greater Winnipeg Water District Railway in Manitoba.

It never ceases to amuse me how we view the modern world as something that always was and always will be.

So many of us cannot imagine a world without highways carving swathes across the landscape.

So many of us cannot imagine a world before and without computers.

Perhaps this inability to picture the past handicaps our ability to imagine the future?

From the Past, I Seek the Future! : zardoz

By the fall of 1827, 70 houses had been built, though some were primitive.

In that year, the community had hired its first police constable.

The first police station would be opened in 1856 at the Town Hall.

It was moved in 1900 to the Annex building behind the Court House.

There is a question that I, as a Canadian living abroad, am often asked:

That of what distinguishes Canadians from Americans.

Of the many long and ponderous distinctions that I could list, one that stands out revolves around law and order.

From this Canadian’s perspective, when I view how “the West was won” in our distinct nations, American settlers expanded out and the law followed, while in Canada the law went out first and settlement followed.

This one distinction, coupled with the idea of revolution versus evolution wherein the US revolted against Britain while Canada over time evolved its own self-determination, might explain our different values and attitudes towards law and order and government.

Is Canada Bigger Than the United States? - WorldAtlas

Also in 1827, the first Guelph Farmers’ Market was built.

The Market House was located in the downtown area.

The Guelph Farmers’ Market has served as a cultural and commercial anchor in downtown Guelph since the first Market House was built in 1827.

After 180 years it is still going strong and remains a popular stop on Saturday mornings for both locals and visitors.

The Guelph Farmers’ Market’s website proclaims “Buy Local – Buy Fresh“, reflecting the growing trend to “eat where you live” which is supported by local, national, international organizations and popular opinion.

The Farmers Market occupies a single building and surrounding outdoor space, housing approximately 60 vendors in winter, with numbers swelling to over 120 vendors during the summer and early fall.

Vendors at the market offer a variety of products and services, including fresh produce, baked goods, crafts, personal care products, clothing, photography and a collection of works by local artists.

The venue also plays host to a number of charitable events throughout the year.

The market currently stands at the corner of Gordon St and Waterloo Ave in what was previously the show horse barn.

It was relocated to this location in 1968.

I like farmers’ markets and bazaars, for there is something far more communal than any modern shopping mall or supermarket can offer.

As I write these words here in Eskisehir, Turkey (18 – 26 March 2021), I smile at one aspect of the little street where I have been living these past three weeks.

Every Monday, from dawn to dusk, my wee street is transformed into a farmers’ market, necessitating my squeezing between market stalls to exit my apartment building as I once again walk to work.

A two-block length is filled with the cacophony and clamour of vendors hawking their wares.

I do not know, because of my present inability to converse in Turkish, whether or not buyers and sellers barter and bargain over the prices on display.

May be an image of one or more people and fruit — Above: My street’s Monday market, Esksehir, Turkey

Nonetheless, there is a sense of the primal and the pleasurable in seeing fruit and vegetables stacked upon unsteady wooden tables that evokes pleasant memories of other farmers’ markets I have seen, from that of Lachute (Québec) where I spent much of my youth to the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul visited in the summer of a Turkish wedding four years ago.

Vintage Antique Shows & Markets: Lachute Flea Market — Above: Lachute Market

In my Canadian trip of 2020 I would later find myself visiting one of Canada’s largest malls, the (in)famous West Edmonton Shopping Mall, and I remember how sterile, how inhuman, everything felt.

I am no “Robin Sparkles” of How I Met Your Mother fame.

I will never sing “Let’s Go to the Mall“.

Robin Sparkles - Let's go to the Mall OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO *HQ* - YouTube — Above: Cobie Smulders (centre) (as *Robin Sparkles*)

There is a shopping mall (ES Park), a mere five minutes’ walk away from my apartment, I frequent, as little language fluency in Turkish is required to shop at the Migros supermarket there and where the Hürriyet Daily News is the only English language daily I can find in Eskisehir.

But I visit ES Park as an engineer visits a hardware store.

I go in, I find my desired purchase, I go out.

My curiosity is not drawn to the latest or the newest wares on display.

I linger not in the valley of the shadow of consumerism, for I do not feel that it is there where I belong.

Founded in 1827, James Hodgert’s brewery was managed by John Sleeman until he bought a property and opened the Silver Creek Brewery in 1851.

(In 1843, there were nine breweries serving the 700 people living in Guelph.)

Here begins a quirk about Guelph that becomes curiouser and curiouser over time.

One would think that a place with so many breweries would be a far more turbulent town than it has been and yet Guelph unexpectedly defies this kind of preconception.

The first Board of Commerce also started in 1827, to stimulate economic growth.

In 1866, it would be renamed the Board of Trade, and in 1919, it became the Chamber of Commerce.

In order to eliminate the need for farmers to take their grain to Galt or Dundas for grinding, the Canada Company built the first grist mill.

The Guelph Mill was sold to William Allen in 1832.

Waxing poetic about a mill is a skill I have yet to acquire.

The Mills of the Gods by Ada Alden | Charm by Ada… | Poetry Magazine

Allan’s Mill was a mill located on both banks of the Speed River in Guelph.

Part of the site is now listed under the Ontario Heritage Act.

The first industrial establishment in Guelph, the original wooden mill was built in 1830 for the Canada Company by Horace Perry, who sited it on the west (right) bank of the Speed River.

Allan's Mill Ruins: Ontario's Old Mills | Nature Notes — Above: Allan’s Mill

(Lest there be confusion, let us not imagine that the Speed River is a misplaced Parisian Seine!)

Guelph's Speed River may turn pink amid testing: city - Guelph | Globalnews.ca — Above: Speed River, Guelph

The mill was sold to William Allan in 1832, who operated it as a grist and flour mill.

By 1836, the mill complex was expanded on both sides of the river to include a distillery, a brewery, and a woolcarding house operated by William and his son David Allan.

Around 1850, the original wooden structure was removed and replaced with one made of limestone, and a bridge was added across the river, connecting the two halves of the mill.

Old reports state that the new grist mill building had cylindrical turrets, such as those found in Scotland.

The distillery sold large quantities of whisky and other spirits.

Around 1877, the Allan family sold the mill to David Spence of Brantford.

It remained in operation as a flour mill until a series of fires gutted the building.

File:Allan's mill, Guelph, historic plaque.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Everything burns.

The site on the west bank of the River later became home to several industries, including the Flexible Conduit Company (later the Dalyte Electric Co.) which occupied the site between 1909 and 1929.

In the 1960s, the site was home to a feed and seed business and a plastics firm, until the buildings were destroyed by fire in 1966.

The ruins of the stone building are now a part of Guelph’s Heritage Park.

Yes, everything burns.

On the east bank of the river, the Arthur Street building which had previously housed the distillery became home to a variety of companies:

It first housed the McCrae Woollen Company until 1900 when the A.R. Woodyatt (later Taylor-Forbes) foundry purchased the site.

Taylor-Forbes occupied the site until its 1955 bankruptcy.

The site was sold to the W. C. Wood Company and was then used to manufacture appliances until the business was shut down in 2010.

After a period of brownfield restoration, construction began in 2014 on The Metalworks, a new condominium apartment complex on the site of the old W. C. Wood factory.

In 2019, as part of the Metalworks development, the Spring Mill Distillery was opened on the site, occupying the same building originally built for the Allan Distillery nearly two centuries before.

Historic designation sought for Guelph's first industrial site - GuelphToday.com

A sawmill was erected in 1833 by Charles Julius Mickle, originally from Scotland, on the Marden Creek which runs into the Speed River.

Its ruin survives today.

The Mickle family also built a home nearby, a year earlier.

Both properties were off what is now Highway 6, an area that was Guelph Township at the time.

Rural Routes - City of Guelph (Single Tier Wellington)

In 1831, Guelph had approximately 800 residents.

For several years, the economy of the village suffered and some residents moved away.

Relief came in the form of wealthy immigrants from England and Ireland who arrived in 1832.

The Smith’s Canadian Gazetteer of 1846 indicates that the town had a jail and court house made of cut stone, a weekly newspaper, five churches/chapels and a population of 1,240 – most were from England and Scotland with a few from Ireland.

In addition to many tradesmen, the community had 15 stores, seven taverns, and some industry, tanneries, breweries, distilleries and a starch factory.

The Post Office was receiving mail daily.

Smith's Canadian gazetteer : comprising statistical and general information respecting all parts of the upper province, or Canada West ... With a map of the upper province

And now we live in an age where the Post Office is becoming increasingly obsolete.

Guelph was incorporated as a town in 1855 and the first mayor elected was John Smith.

Poets of 19th century Guelph | Historically Guelph — Above: Mayor John Smith?

Despite optimism, the population growth was very slow until the Grand Trunk Railway reached it from Toronto, en route to Sarnia, in 1856.

The town was also served soon thereafter by the Great Western Railway branch from Harrisburg.

Great Western Railway of Canada: Southern Ontario's Pioneer Railway: Guay, David R.P.: 9781459732827: Amazon.com: Books

It is pure folly the way the name of John Smith makes me think of David Tennant’s time as the BBC Doctor Who character, especially the episodes where he travels to Scotland of Queen Victoria’s day and England just prior to WW1 (Tooth and Claw / Human Nature – The Family of Blood).

John Smith was often the Tenth Doctor’s alias.

I can somehow picture Tennant as the Town of Guelph’s first mayor.

Tenth Doctor (Doctor Who).jpg — Above: David Tennant as the Doctor

In 1856, the village of Guelph became a town.

Two years later, the population was estimated at 4,500, up from 2,000 in 1853.

The first city hall, now called the Old City Hall, was built in 1856 of Guelph stone.

The building contained a market house, offices and an assembly hall.

Modifications were made in 1870, 1875 and 1961.

The building is now used as the Provincial Offences Courthouse, which handles matters such as traffic tickets, trespassing and liquor license violations.

The new Guelph City Hall opened in 2009 beside the older building, which was declared a National Historic Site in 1984.

The national document refers to the historic building as being “in the Italian Renaissance Revival style“.

City of Guelph lays off 601 employees amid coronavirus pressure — Above: New City Hall, Guelph

Two very successful major mills operated in Guelph for many years in the 1800s.

The first was the aforementioned Allan’s Mill.

In 2019, the current John Sleeman reinstated the Spring Mill Distillery on the site which also includes a condominium apartment complex.

SPRING MILL DISTILLERY - 39 Photos - Distilleries - 43 Arthur Street S, Guelph, ON - Phone Number

Though my days of drinking gluten-laden beer are past me now, I still vividly and warmly recall the taste of a Sleeman’s beer.

The more recent business, a sawmill known as the Goldie Mill, was also on the Speed.

This building was constructed in 1866 by James Goldie, replacing an earlier mill known as the Wellington Mill and later as the People’s Mill.

The property, a ruin, was listed on the Canadian Register as a historic place in 2009.

Goldie was a perennial Conservative candidate for the riding of Wellington South and his son Thomas Goldie was mayor of Guelph from 1891 to 1892.

James Goldie (1824-1912) - Find A Grave Memorial — Above: James Goldie (1824 – 1912)

The limestone Goldie mill structure was damaged by fire in 1953 and a part of it was removed in 1969.

The remaining part still stands today, in Goldie Mill Park at Cardigan Street and London Road East.

The ruins, owned by the Grand River Conservation Authority, were stabilized in 2020 to solve a problem created by sinkholes.

Nature is always baying at the door.

The Grand River provided transportation, water supply, and waterpower attracting settlement to the valley in the 19th century.

The combined deforestation and urban settlement aggravated flood and drought conditions.

Map Your Property - Grand River Conservation Authority

Perhaps as man creates his own hell, there is also hope that he may one day create his own heaven?

Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin US promotional single.png

A main part of the Grand River’s course flows through the Carolinian life zone, which contains a southern type of forest that is found only in this area of Canada.

A wide variety of rare plants and animals are found here.

Which mostly go unnoticed as we rush past them in our automobiles and train wagons….

Growth for Guelph Junction Railway - Railway Age

The water quality in the river started to deteriorate to the point where it was a major public health concern.

To deal with these problems, a group of eight municipalities came together in 1934 to form the Grand River Conservation Commission.

The Commission completed the Shand Dam, the first multi-purpose dam in Canada, in 1942.

It was built for flood control and the low flow augmentation to improve water quality during the dry summer months.

The Commission also started planting trees to re-vegetate the landscape along the river.

Prior to World War II, renewable natural resources were exploited to encourage economic and industrial expansion and growth.

As a result of public concern over the state of the environment in Ontario, the Province passed the Conservation Authorities Act, 1946.

The Act was based on three main principles:

Initiative for the establishment and support of a conservation authority must come from the local people (all watershed municipalities).
The best unit for dealing with renewable resource conservation is the watershed.
If initiative and support were shown locally, the Ontario government would provide technical advice and financial assistance in the form of grants.

The Grand River Conservation Authority is a corporate body established to enable municipalities to jointly undertake water and natural resource management on a watershed basis – for the benefit of all.

The broad goal of all conservation authorities in Ontario is specified in Section 20 of the Conservation Authorities Act:

The objects of the Authority are to establish and undertake in the area over which it has jurisdiction, a program designed to further the conservation, restoration, development and management of natural resources other than gas, oil, coal and minerals.

Under the terms of the Act, the Grand Valley Conservation Authority was formed in 1948.

This allowed all watershed municipalities to work collaboratively to address a broad range of resource management issues.

The practicality of two conservation organizations operating in the same watershed was closely scrutinized in the 1960s.

To avoid potential conflict over roles and responsibilities and to eliminate duplication of programs the Grand River Conservation Authority was established in 1966 through the amalgamation of the Grand River Conservation Commission and the Grand Valley Conservation Authority.

Maps and data - Grand River Conservation Authority

I am reminded of the 1990s Canadian group Moxy Früvous’s song River Valley:

Moxy Früvous, 1993 (left to right: Dave Matheson, Jian Ghomeshi, Murray Foster, Mike Ford) — Above: Moxy Früvous (1989 – 2001) (left to right: Dave Matheson, Jian Ghomeshi, Murray Foster, Mike Ford)

Who will save the river valley? That’s my drinking water
This was once a sacred place, now look at what we’ve got here
I’ll pretend there isn’t any problem, just do my job
And if I don’t like the standard of living, go move to Russia

Me and Pete went swimming last night, he’s my friend from Boy Scouts
All the fish were floating upright, we got scared, and we got out
Mother says don’t play down where your father does his job
He’s got to make a living, or move to Russia

This is my world, this is my world, don’t let it go away
Is it a crime, spending my time, dreaming of yesterday?

Meet me in the river valley, you can tell me stories
‘Bout a time before pinstripe suits, dippers, Grits and Tories

My mother sang the songs her mother taught her
And we’d be swimming off in cool, cool water
And when she’d call us from the yard
Running home it felt like God

This is my world
Don’t take it away

Is your favourite place controlled by developing ambitions?
Do you think you’ll have some power signing a petition?
Are you fine with your surroundings? Are they gonna crumble?
I’m living in the river valley, come and join me for a tumble

High up above, see the cars up on the viaduct
From sunrise to the last call – they push their luck
And that would be fine
If the world was yours, and you were mine

Who will save the river valley? (this is my world)
Who will save the river valley? (this is my world)
Who will save the river valley? (this is my world)

Who will save the river valley?

The board of the Guelph General Hospital was incorporated in 1861, with James Massie as the chairman.

The building was completed in 1875, at the cost of $9,869, and opened on August 16, 1875, with 2 beds, a small infectious room and a dispensary.

Guelph General Hospital is a medical care facility, a 165-bed facility employing 224 doctors among a total staff of about 1,200.

Prior to cutbacks in the 2008/2009 fiscal year, the hospital operated 181 beds.

This hospital rated as one of the safest in Canada in terms of the hospital standardized mortality ratio (the lower the better) at 78 in 2017, compared to the national average of 91.

By comparison, Cambridge Memorial Hospital had a score of 95.

Also in 2017, the facility was among the best in Ontario in terms of wait times at the emergency department.

Vaccination plans for Guelph General Hospital staff stalled due to Pfizer shortage - GuelphToday.com

Which, of course, begs the question why is the Guelph General Hospital so much safer than other hospitals?

The Question Is What Happened to the Question Mark? - Proof That Blog

St. Joseph’s Health Centre was previously a hospital, but is now a 240-bed long-term care home with a 91-bed specialty unit for complex continuing, rehabilitation and palliative care.

Various outpatient services are also provided at this facility.

St. Joseph's Hospital, Guelph, Ont. : Digital Archive : Toronto Public Library

Another major facility, Homewood Health Centre offers treatment for mental health and addiction issues.

The facility was founded in 1883 by the Homewood Retreat Association of Guelph as “a private asylum for the Insane and an Asylum for Inebriates” on a 19-acre property which included the Donald Guthrie house.

The first patients were admitted in December of that year.

Homewood grew to a 312-bed mental and behavioural health facility and also formed a partnership with R.B. Schlegel Holdings Inc.to operate Oakwood Retirement Communities Inc., a long-term care facility.

COVID-19 outbreak declared at Guelph's Homewood Health Centre - Guelph | Globalnews.ca

Keep this mental health and addiction info in your mind…..

The Gothic Revival style Roman Catholic church on Norfolk Street, called the Basilica of Our Lady Immaculate since 8 December 2014, was built between 1876 and 1888.

When John Galt founded Guelph on 23 April 1827, he allocated the highest point in the centre of the newly founded town to Roman Catholics as a compliment to his friend, Bishop Alexander Macdonell, who had given him advice in the formation of the Canada Company.

A road was also later cleared leading up to the hill and named after the Bishop, called Macdonell Street.

According to the Guelph Public Library archives, Galt wrote the following statement in the deed transferring the land on which the Church of Our Lady would one day stand:

“On this hill would one day rise a church to rival St. Peter’s in Rome.”

Is there a prize for such a competiton?

Less time spent in Purgatory?

Better mansions in Heaven if better churches on Earth?

The Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady Immaculate is the 3rd church to stand on this site, high above the streetscape, overlooking the city of Guelph.

The first church, a framed wooden church named St. Patrick’s, had been built on the hill by 1835 and was the first structure in Guelph that was painted on both its interior and exterior.

It burned to the ground on 10 October 1844.

Construction on St. Bartholomew’s Church began shortly after St. Patrick’s was destroyed.

The new building was completed in 1846.

The following inscription appeared on the cornerstone of St. Bartholomew’s Church:

“To God, the best and greatest.

The faithful of Guelph, of the diocese of Toronto have built this new Church, in honour of the blessed Apostle Bartholomew, the first church having been consumed in flames.”

Construction of the new church, based on the Cologne Cathedral, was accomplished between 1876 and 1888 by architect Joseph Connolly and is considered Connolly’s best work.

The monumental church contains decorative carving and stained glass executed by skilled craftsmen.

The design was inspired by the medieval cathedrals of France, and includes twin towers, a large rose window, pointed windows and an interior design where the chapels radiate from the polygonal apse.

Matthew Bell, a well-known Guelph artisan, was responsible for some of the carvings on the exterior as well as on the interior pillars of the church.

He died in 1883 as a result of injuries sustained in a fall while working on the building.

In 1888, almost 12 years after construction commenced, the church was dedicated to Our Lady Immaculate.

The twin towers, which rise to a height of over 200 feet (61 m), were not completed until 13 November 1926.

The completed church stands at the head of MacDonell Street as an imposing view terminus.

In 1958, the parish added a new entrance from Macdonell Street, but aside from this, the exterior appearance has changed little since 1926.

The complete construction of the church took more than 50 years, probably qualifying it as the longest construction project in the city’s history.

The 100th anniversary was celebrated on 10 October 1988.

The Church of Our Lady is one of the 122 parishes in the Diocese of Hamilton and currently has 2,600 families in the congregation.

In 1990, the Church was designated a National Historic Site of Canada.

Pope Francis designated the Church a Basilica on 8 December 2014.

I confess to some confusion.

If God created the heavens and the Earth in all their majesty, then isn’t it a wee bit arrogant to believe that God can be contained within a manmade structure regardless of its garishness?

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth | Devotions

The city of Guelph is mostly Christian (61.8%), almost evenly split among Protestants and Roman Catholics.

The largest non-Christian religion is Islam (2.6%), followed by Buddhism (1.9%), Hinduism (1.5%) and Sikhism (1.0%).

In 2017, Scientology Canada announced it would move its Canadian headquarters to Guelph.

Some residents protested the plan.

The facility was opened in the autumn of the year at 40 Baker Street.

Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement.

It has been variously defined as a cult, a business and a new religious movement.

Hubbard initially developed a set of ideas, which he represented as a form of therapy, called Dianetics.

This he promoted through various publications, and through the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation, which he established in 1950.

The foundation soon entered bankruptcy, and Hubbard lost the rights to his book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health in 1952.

He then recharacterized the subject as a religion and renamed it Scientology, retaining the terminology, doctrines, and the practice of “auditing” (a process whereby the auditor takes an individual through times in their current or past lives with the purpose of ridding the individual of negative influences from past events or behaviours).

I agree with Canadian comedian Lorne Elliot who found it fascinating that those who claim to be descended from or previously lived former lives tend to say that they are descended from royalty, while no one rushes to claim their genetic or spiritual heritage as that as Clive the Goat Boy or Karen the Camp Follower of the War Of Jenkin’s Ear.

Do we really need relics of the past to define who we are today?

Lorne Elliot's folk-style comedy career is no joke | The Star — Above: Lorne Elliott

Within a year, Hubbard regained the rights to Dianetics and retained both subjects under the umbrella of the Church of Scientology.

Scientology followers believe that a human is an immortal, spiritual being (Thetan) that is resident in a physical body.

The Thetan has had innumerable past lives and it is observed in advanced (and – within the movement – secret) Scientology texts that lives preceding the Thetan’s arrival on Earth were lived in extraterrestrial cultures.

Is this really more far-fetched than the Christian notion of Heaven and Hell or the Indian idea of reincarnation?

Above: Illustration of reincarnation in Hindu art

Scientology doctrine states that any Scientologist undergoing auditing will eventually come across and recount a common series of events.

Church of Scientology building in Los Angeles, Fountain Avenue.jpg — Above: Church of Scientology, Los Angeles

Perhaps the idea that we all share a common humanity?

Rosa Parks: I believe there is only one race - the human race. - rosa parks, civil rights activist | Race quotes, Rosa parks quotes, Park quotes

Hubbard described the etymology of the word “Scientology” as coming from the Latin word scio, meaning “know or distinguish“, and the Greek word logos, meaning “the word or outward form by which the inward thought is expressed and made known“.

Hubbard wrote that “Scientology means knowing about knowing, or the science of knowledge“.

Sadly, I don’t know what it is that I don’t know.

Socrates quote: You don't know what you don't know.

From soon after their formation, Hubbard’s groups have generated considerable opposition and controversy, in some instances due to their illegal activities.

In January 1951, the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners brought proceedings against the Dianetic Research Foundation on the charge of teaching medicine without a license.

During the 1970s Hubbard’s followers engaged in a program of criminal infiltration of the US government, resulting in several executives of the organization being convicted and imprisoned for multiple offenses by a US Federal Court.

In 1992, a court in Canada convicted the Scientology organization in Toronto of spying on law enforcement and government agencies, and criminal breach of trust, later upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

The Church of Scientology was convicted of fraud by a French court in 2009, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in 2013.

The Church of Scientology has been described by government inquiries, international parliamentary bodies, scholars, law lords, and numerous superior court judgements as both a dangerous cult and a manipulative profit-making business.

Germany classifies Scientology groups as an “anti-constitutional sect“, while in France the government classify the group as a dangerous cult.

Apparently, it is easier to found a religion than a community these days.

I cannot say that I have ever been remotely curious about Scientology, but I think I can comprehend a community’s reluctance to have this contentious congregation as part of its religious ranks.

Guelph quest: Scientology sets up temporary shop in Canadian town and faces stiff opposition | The Underground Bunker — Above: Scientology Canada HQ, Guelph

For those keeping track, we have an inordinate amount of breweries, mentally unwell and addicts, and Scientologists in Guelph…..

Guelph, Ontario is a mighty fine looking city : canada — Above: Guelph

By 1869, the community’s manufacturing companies were served by both the Grand Trunk Railway and the Great Western Railway.

The first section of the Wellington, Grey & Bruce Railway, between Guelph and Elora, opened in 1870.

The line would eventually run as far as Southampton (ON), with stations in communities such as Palmerston, Harriston, Listowel and Wingham.

The company was not very successful, and never did reach Owen Sound as planned, partly because of stiff competition from the Northern Railway of Canada as well as the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway.

By the mid 1870s, the Wellington, Grey & Bruce Railway was in financial trouble.

It eventually became part of the Grand Trunk system, and later, the Canadian National Railway.

By January 1871, some residents of the town had access to gas, provided by the Guelph Gas Company via pipes, initially to about 100 homes.

Electricity would not become commonly available until the early 1900s, from the Guelph Light and Heat Commission.

Image from page 93 of "Electrical news and engineering" (1… | Flickr

An 1877 plan to start the Guelph Street Railway, using horse-drawn vehicles to deliver freight and passengers within Guelph, never came to fruition.

How the world forgets that the railroad was once an amazing innovation in its day before the automobile became part and parcel of our civilization!

A poor house with a farm, the Wellington County House of Industry and Refuge, opened in December 1877 in a rural area near Guelph.

Many orphans from Guelph were admitted.

The building still stands, as the Wellington County Museum and Archives.

Wellington County Museum and Archives - Guelph Arts Council — Above: Wellington County Museum and Archives, Guelph

Along with breweries, Scientologists, the mentally ill and the addicted, Guelph has also had the destitute and the orphan, and yet…..

City of Guelph - City of Guelph — Above: Guelph

Guelph was incorporated as a city in 1879 with a Special Act of the Ontario Legislature.

At this time, Guelph became politically separated from Wellington County and was no longer represented on the Wellington County Council.

At separation, the population was about 10,000.

Another Guelphian quirk:

The seat of the County is in the City, which is not considered part of the County.

By 1886, telephones were quite common in the city.

An April news article described the situation as follows.

“Telephones are rapidly being introduced into private homes, where they prove a great convenience.

Ladies order their groceries, consult their medical advisers, call their husbands home from the club and gossip with their friends by telephone.”

Some things change over time, some things do not.

Woman talking on mobile phone at home ⬇ Video by © ridofranz Stock Footage #84190314

In 1903 the City purchased the Guelph Light & Power Company, and four years later created the Board of Light and Heat Commissioners.

Guelph was one of 13 municipalities that helped to create the provincial entity that became Ontario Hydro.

Above: Logo of Ontario Hydro (1906 – 1999)

“Let there be light!“

Old-fashioned light bulbs could be set for comeback after 'light recycling' breakthrough | The Independent | The Independent

The Canadian Communist Party began as an illegal organization in a barn behind a farmhouse on Metcalfe Street in Guelph in 1921.

CommunistPartyofCanadalogo 2018.png — Above: Logo of the Communist Party of Canada

The Communist Party of Canada (French: Parti communiste du Canada) is a communist party in Canada founded in 1921 under conditions of illegality.

Although it is now a federal political party without any parliamentary representation, the party’s candidates have been elected to the Parliament of Canada, the Ontario Legislature, the Manitoba Legislature and various municipal governments across the country.

The party has also contributed significantly to trade union organizing and labour history in Canada, peace and anti-war activism, and many other social movements.

The Communist Party of Canada is the second oldest active party after the Liberal Party of Canada.

In 1993 the party was de-registered and had its assets seized, forcing it to begin a successful thirteen-year political and legal battle to maintain registration of small political parties in Canada.

The campaign culminated with the final decision of Figueroa v. Canada, changing the legal definition of a political party in Canada.

Despite its continued presence as a registered political party, the CPC places the vast majority of its emphasis on extra-parliamentary activity that it calls “the labour and people’s movements“, as reflected in its programme “Canada’s future is socialism“.

The Canadian Communist Party began as an illegal organization in a barn behind a farmhouse (owned by Elizabeth Farley) at Metcalf Street, then in the “outskirts” of the city of Guelph, during meetings held between 23 May and 25 May 1921.

An RCMP officer, working undercover, attended the meetings.

His report states that delegates attended from “Winnipeg, Vancouver, Hamilton, Toronto, Montreal, Sudbury and Regina” and that Russia had offered to provide funding for the group.

In addition to Guelph resident Fred Farley, a member of the United Communist Party of America, the attendees named in the RCMP report included Thomas J. Bell (a lithographer born in Ireland), Lorne Cunningham (an alderman), Trevor Maguire (one of the few in the group who was born in Canada) and Florence Custance (a teacher from Toronto).

The group was “incessantly praising the Soviet government of Russia, and urging the overthrow of the government of Canada“, according to the police report.

Communist Party of Canada founded at secret convention in Guelph barn 99 years ago — Above: The first meeting place of the Communist Party of Canada

Many of its founding members had worked as labour organizers and as anti-war activists and had belonged to groups such as the Socialist Party of Canada, One Big Union, the Socialist Labour Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and other socialist, Marxist or Labour parties or clubs and organizations.

Russian Revolution - Causes, Timeline & Definition - HISTORY

The first members felt inspired by the Russian Revolution, and radicalized by the negative aftermath of World War I and the fight to improve living standards and labour rights, including the experience of the Winnipeg General Strike (15 May – 26 June 1919).

Above: Winnipeg General Strike, 21 June 1919

The Comintern accepted the party affiliation as its Canadian section in December 1921, and thus it adopted a similar organizational structure and policy to Communist parties around the world.

The party alternated between legality and illegality during the 1920s and 1930s.

Because of the War Measures Act in effect at its time of creation, the party operated as the “Workers’ Party of Canada” in February 1922 as its public face, and in March began publication of a newspaper, The Worker.

When Parliament allowed the War Measures Act to lapse in 1924, the underground organization was dissolved and the party’s name was changed to the Communist Party of Canada.

Above: Logo of the Comintern

The party’s first actions included establishing a youth organization, the Young Communist League of Canada, and solidarity efforts with the Soviet Union.

Above: Logo of the Young Communist League of Canada

By 1923 the party had raised over $64,000 for the Russian Red Cross, a very large sum of money at that time.

It also initiated a Canadian component of the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) which quickly became an organic part of the labour movement with active groups in 16 of 60 labour councils and in mining and logging camps.

Above: March 1923 issue of **The Labor Herald**, official organ of the Trade Union Educational League

By 1925 party membership stood at around 4,500 people, composed mainly of miners and lumber workers, and of railway, farm, and garment workers.

Most of these people came from immigrant communities like Finns and Ukrainians.

The party, working with the TUEL, played a role in many bitter strikes and difficult organizing drives, and in support of militant industrial unionism.

From 1922 to 1929, the provincial wings of the WPC/CPC also affiliated with the Canadian Labour Party, another expression of the CPC’s “united front” strategy.

The CLP operated as a federated labour party.

The CPC came to lead the CLP organization in several regions of the country, including Quebec, and did not run candidates during elections.

Labour Party Canada (@LabourCanada) | Twitter — Above: Logo of the Canadian Labour Party

The CLP itself, however, never became an effective national organization.

The Communists withdrew from the CLP in 1929 following a shift in Comintern policy, as the organization folded.

From 1927 to 1929, the party went through a series of policy debates and internal ideological struggles in which advocates of the ideas of Leon Trotsky, as well as proponents of what the party called “North American Exceptionism“, were expelled.

Expellees included Maurice Spector, the editor of the party’s paper The Worker and party chairman, and Jack MacDonald (who had supported Spector’s expulsion) who resigned as the party’s general secretary for factionalism, and was expelled.

Maurice Spector, James P. Cannon, and the Origins of Canadian Trotskyism — Above: Maurice Spector (1898 – 1968)

Jack MacDonald (Communist) : Emory Christer : 9786138272120

The Secretary of the Women’s Bureau and later, general editor of the Woman Worker (1926–1929) Florence Custance was only saved from expulsion from the Party due to her untimely death in 1929.

Her feminism and advocacy of birth control, for example, were well known to the mainstream press, but her radical contemporaries questioned her political sympathies and gave her few chances to shine.

The Woman Worker - Athabasca University Press | Athabasca University Press

MacDonald, also sympathetic to Trotskyist ideas, joined Spector in founding the International Left Opposition (Trotskyist) Canada, which formed part of Trotsky’s so-called Fourth International Left Opposition.

The party also expelled supporters of Nikolai Bukharin and of Jay Lovestone’s Right Opposition, such as William Moriarity (1890 – 1936).

Bucharin.bra.jpg — Above: Nikolai Bukharin (1888 – 1938)

The communists disagreed over strategy, tactics, the socialist identity of the Soviet Union, and over Canada’s status as an imperialist power.

While some communists like J.B. Salsberg expressed sympathy with these positions, after debates that dominated party conventions for a couple of years by the early 1930s, the vast majority of members had decided to continue with the party.

J.B. Salsberg's life explored in Tulchinsky's First-Class Biography – SHELDON KIRSHNER JOURNAL

The stock market crash in late 1929 signalled the beginning of a long and protracted economic crisis in Canada and internationally.

Crowd outside nyse.jpg — Above: A solemn crowd gathers outside the New York Stock Exchange after the crash, 25 October 1929

The crisis quickly led to widespread unemployment, poverty, destitution, and suffering among working families and farmers.

The general election of 1930 brought to power the R.B. Bennett Conservative government who attacked the labour movement and established “relief camps” for young unemployed men.

The CPC was the only party to make a systemic critique of the Depression as an alleged crisis of capitalism.

It was also the first political party in Canada to call for the introduction of unemployment insurance, a national health insurance scheme, making education universally accessible, social and employment assistance to youth, labour legislation including health and safety regulations, regulation of the working day and holidays, a minimum wage for women and youth, and state-run crop insurance and price control for farmers.

In 1931, eight of the CPC’s leaders were arrested and imprisoned under Section 98 of Canada’s Criminal Code, which outlawed advocacy of force or violence to bring about political change.

The party continued to exist, but was under the constant threat of legal harassment, and was for all intents and purposes an underground organization.

In 1934 a massive campaign pushed back against the imprisonment, which many characterized as political repression of the party.

The prisoners were released.

On the release of Tim Buck (1891 – 1973) from prison, a mass rally attended by an overflow crowd of over 17,000 supporters and sympathizers was held in Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens.

Above: Tim Buck (left) and others, Dominion Communist – Labour Total War Committee meeting, Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, 13 October 1942

Although the party was banned, it organized large mass organizations such as the Workers’ Unity League (WUL), and the Canadian Labour Defence League that played an important role in historic strikes like that of miners in Estevan, Saskatchewan.

Raising the Workers' Flag: The Workers' Unity League of Canada, 1930-1936 eBook: Endicott, Stephen: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

From 1933 to 1936, the WUL led 90% of the strikes in Canada.

1929 – “Workers' Unity League formed” | evelyn hart

Already, conditions had taught social democrats, reformists, and the communists important lessons of cooperation.

In 1934, in accordance with the re-examined position of the Comintern, the CPC adopted a strategy and tactics based on a united front against fascism.

In the prairies, Communists organized the Farmers Unity League, which mobilized against farm evictions.

They rallied hundreds or thousands of farmers into demonstration Hunger Marches that encountered police brutality.

In 1936, James Litterick was elected as an MLA for Winnipeg, the first CPC member to be elected to Manitoba’s legislature.

James Litterick.jpg — Above: James Litterick (1901 – 1943?)

Party members were also active in the Congress of Industrial Organizations’ (CIO) attempt to unionize the auto and other industrial sectors including Steelworkers, the Canadian Seamen’s Union, the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union, the International Woodworkers of America, and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.

Among the poor and unemployed, Communists organized groups like the left-wing Workers Sports Association, one of the few ways that working-class youth had access to recreational programmes.

The Relief Camp Workers’ Union and the National Unemployed Workers Association played significant roles in organizing the unskilled and the unemployed in protest marches and demonstrations and campaigns, such as the “On to Ottawa Trek” and the 1938 Vancouver Post Office sit-down strike.

Above: Relief Projects No. 62: Road construction at Kimberly-Wasa, British Columbia

Above: Strikers of the On-to-Ottawa Trek

File:Post Office 1938.jpg - Wikipedia — Above: 1938 Vancouver Post Office Sit-Down Strike

Internationally, the party initiated the mobilization of the over 1,500-person Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion (1937 – 1938) to fight in the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939) as part of the International Brigade.

Collage guerra civile spagnola.png — Above: Images of the Spanish Civil War

Among the leading Canadian Communists involved in that effort was Dr. Norman Bethune (1890 – 1939), who is known for his invention of a mobile blood transfusion unit, early advocacy of Medicare in Canada, and work with the Communist Party of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 – 1945).

Above: Dr. Norman Bethune (left) in China

Above: Canadian Blood Transfusion Unit which operated during the Spanish Civil War. Dr Norman Bethune is to the right

Solidarity efforts for the Spanish Civil War and many labour and social struggles during the Depression resulted in much cooperation between members of the CPC and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF).

After 1935, the CPC advocated electoral alliances and unity with the CCF on key issues.

The proposal was debated in the CCF, with the 1936 BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan conventions generally supporting cooperation while the Ontario convention opposed.

While the motion was defeated at that Parties third federal convention, the Communists continued to call for a united front.

The call was particularly urgent in Quebec, where in 1937 the Duplessis government passed “an act to protect Québec against communist propaganda” giving the police the power to padlock any premises used by “communists” (which was undefined in the legislation).

Maurice Duplessis.jpg — Above: Maurice Duplessis (1890 – 1959)

Although the Communist Party had worked hard to warn Canadians about what it considered to be a growing fascist danger, after some debate the Party saw the opening of World War II not as an anti-fascist war but a battle between capitalist nations.

Most likely this conclusion was supported by the policies of the big powers.

Many voices in the British establishment, for example, called loudly for support of Adolf Hitler against the USSR.

Hitler portrait crop.jpg — Above: Adolf Hitler

Meanwhile, having failed in reaching agreement with Britain and other world powers, the USSR signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, to bide time before an inevitable war between the two.

Above: Russia’s Vyacheslav Molotov and Germany’s Joachim von Ribbentrop after the Pact was signed, 23 August 1939

The Communist Party’s opposition to World War II led to it being banned under the Defence of Canada Regulations of the War Measures Act in 1940 shortly after Canada entered into the war.

In many cases Communist leaders were interned in camps, long before fascists.

As growing numbers of Communist Party leaders were interned, some members went underground or exile in the United States.

Conditions in the camps were harsh.

A civil rights campaign was launched by the wives of many of the interned men for family visits and their release.

Internment in Canada | The Canadian Encyclopedia

With Germany’s 1941 invasion of the USSR and the collapse of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact the party argued that the nature of the war had changed to a genuine anti-fascist struggle.

The CPC reversed its opposition to the war and argued the danger to the working class on the international level superseded its interests nationally.

During the Conscription Crisis of 1944, the banned CPC set up “Tim Buck Plebiscite Committees” across the country to campaign for a “yes” vote in the national referendum on conscription.

Following the vote, the committees were renamed the Dominion Communist-Labour Total War Committee and urged full support for the war effort, a no-strike pledge for the duration of the war and increased industrial production.

Tim Buck - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia

The National Council for Democratic Rights was also established with A.E. Smith as chair in order to rally for the legalization of the Communist Party and the release of Communists and anti-fascists from internment.

Above: Albert Edward (A.E.) Smith (1871 – 1947)

The party’s first elected Member of Parliament (MP) was Dorise Nielsen (1902 – 1980).

Nielsen was elected in North Battleford, Saskatchewan in 1940 under the popular front Progressive Unity label, with the support of many CCF individuals.

Nielsen kept her membership in the party a secret until 1943.

The Communist Party remained banned, but with the entry of the Soviet Union into the war and the eventual release of the Canadian party’s interned leaders, Canadian Communists founded the Labour-Progressive Party (LPP) in 1943 as a legal front and thereafter ran candidates under that name until 1959.

At its height in the mid-1940s, the party had 14 sitting elected officials at the federal, provincial and municipal level.

In 1945, Igor Gouzenko (1919 – 1982), a cipher clerk at the Soviet Embassy, defected to Canada alleging several Canadian communists were operating a spy ring which provided the Soviet Union with top secret information.

Remembering Gouzenko, the defector who triggered the Cold War | intelNews.org

The (Justice Roy) Kellock- (Justice Robert) Taschereau Commission was called by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to investigate the matter.

This led to the convictions of Fred Rose and other communists.

R.L. Kellock ~ Canada's Human Rights History — Above: Roy Kellock (1893 – 1975)

Robert Taschereau.png — Above: Robert Tascherau (1896 – 1970)

Above: William Lyon Mackenzie King (1875 – 1950)

Fred Rose standing.jpg — Above: Fred Rose (1907 – 1983)

Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 Secret Speech exposing the crimes of Joseph Stalin and the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary shook the faith of many Communists around the world.

Above: Nikita Khrushchev (1894 – 1971) on ***Time*** 1953 magazine cover

As well, the party was riven by a crisis following the return of prominent party member J.B. Salsberg from a trip to the Soviet Union where he found rampant party-sponsored antisemitism.

Salsberg reported his findings but they were rejected by the party, which suspended him from its leading bodies.

The crisis resulted in the departure of the United Jewish Peoples’ Order (UJPO), Salsberg, Robert Laxer and most of the party’s Jewish members in 1956.

Many, perhaps most, members of the Canadian party left, including a number of prominent party members.

In the mid-1960s the US State Department estimated the party membership to be approximately 3,500.

The Soviet Union’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia caused more people to leave the Canadian Communist Party.

Many women were likewise deterred from engaging with Canadian Communism as the Party was somewhat resistant to their politics.

The Party may have countered that the discussions of sex, gender, and women’s politics held the potential to veer away from the overarching goal of class revolution, for example, many radical women recalled the hypocrisy of Party men who refused to discuss sex despite carrying on numerous extramarital affairs.

The party was also active in indigenous people’s struggles.

For example, James P. Brady and Malcom Norris were founders of the Metis Associations of Saskatchewan and Alberta in the 1940s and 1950s.

Métis Nation - Saskatchewan Takes Legal Action Against the Province of Saskatchewan

Métis Nation Alberta (@AlbertaMetis) | Twitter

In common with most communist parties, the CPC went through a crisis after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and subsequently split.

Under then general secretary George Hewison (1988–1991), the leadership of the CPC and a segment of its general membership began to abandon Marxism–Leninism as the basis of the Party’s revolutionary perspective, and ultimately moved to liquidate the Party itself, seeking to replace it with a left, social democratic entity.

George Hewison speaking at the 1982 UFAWU (United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union) Convention] | SFU Digitized Collections — Above: George Hewison

The protracted ideological and political crisis created much confusion and disorientation within the ranks of the Party, and paralysed both its independent and united front work for over two years.

The Hewison-led majority in the Central Committee (CC) of the party voted to abandon Marxism–Leninism.

An orthodox minority in the CC, led by Miguel Figueroa, Elizabeth Rowley and former leader William Kashtan, resisted this effort.

At the 28th Convention in the fall of 1990, the Hewison group managed to maintain its control of the Central Committee of the CPC, but by the spring of 1991, the membership began to turn more and more against the reformist policies and orientation of the Hewison leadership.

Elizabeth Rowley, October 2019.jpg — Above: Elizabeth Rowley

Key provincial conventions were held in 1991 in the two main provincial bases of the CPC — British Columbia and Ontario.

At the BC convention, delegates threw out Fred Wilson, one of the main leaders of the Hewison group.

A few months later in June 1991, Ontario delegates rejected a concerted campaign by Hewison and his supporters, and overwhelmingly reelected provincial leader Elizabeth Rowley and other supporters of the Marxist–Leninist current to the Ontario Committee and Executive.

The Hewison group moved on 27 August 1991 to expel 11 of the key leaders of the opposition, including Rowley, Emil Bjarnason, and former central organizer John Bizzell.

The Hewison-controlled Central Executive also dismissed the Ontario provincial committee.

The vast majority of local clubs and committees of the CPC opposed the expulsions, and called instead for an extraordinary convention of the party to resolve the deepening crisis in a democratic manner.

There were loud protests at the CC’s October 1991 meeting, but an extraordinary convention was not convened.

With few remaining options, Rowley and the other expelled members threatened to take the Hewison group to court.

After several months of negotiations between the Hewison group and the opposition “All-Canada Negotiating Committee“, an out-of-court settlement resulted in the Hewison leadership agreeing to leave the CPC and relinquish any claim to the party’s name, while taking most of the party’s assets to the Cecil-Ross Society, a publishing and educational foundation previously associated with the party.

Following the departure of the Hewison-led group, a convention was held in December 1992 at which delegates agreed to continue the Communist Party (thus the meeting was titled the 30th CPC Convention).

Delegates rejected the reformist policies instituted by the Hewison group and instead reaffirmed the CPC as a Marxist–Leninist organization.

Since most of the old party’s assets were now the property of the Hewison-led Cecil Ross Society, the CPC convention decided to launch a new newspaper, the People’s Voice (“the news the corporate media won’t print“), to replace the old Canadian Tribune.

The convention elected a new central committee with Figueroa as Party Leader.

The convention also amended the party constitution to grant more membership control and lessen the arbitrary powers of the Central Committee, while maintaining democratic centralism as its organizational principle.

Meanwhile, the former Communists retained the Cecil-Ross Society as a political foundation to continue their political efforts.

They also sold off the party’s headquarters at 24 Cecil Street, having earlier liquidated various party-related business such as Eveready Printers (the party printshop) and Progress Publishers.

The name of the Cecil-Ross Society comes from the intersection of Cecil Street and Ross Street in Toronto where the headquarters of the party was located.

The Cecil-Ross Society took with it the rights to the Canadian Tribune, which had been the party’s weekly newspaper for decades, as well as roughly half of the party’s assets.

The Cecil-Ross Society ended publication of the Canadian Tribune and attempted to launch a new broad-left magazine, New Times which failed after a few issues and then Ginger which was only published twice.

The renovated party, although with a much smaller membership and resources (such as the former headquarters at 24 Cecil Street in Toronto and party printing press) now faced further challenges and threats to its existence.

Changes to the Canada Elections Act, introduced by the Mulroney Conservative government and passed by Parliament in the spring of 1993, required that any political party which failed to field 50 candidates in a general federal election would be automatically de-registered and its assets seized.

The CPC was not in a position to run 50 candidates in the 1993 federal election (it fielded only eight candidates during that election), and therefore its assets were seized and the party was de-registered.

The CPC had sought an interim injunction to prevent its imminent de-registration, but this legal action failed.

A prolonged ten-year political and legal battle, Figueroa v. Canada ensued, which won the support of widespread popular opinion, reflected in a number of members of parliament openly supporting the challenge and other small political parties joining the case, most notably the Green Party.

Never before had a single court challenge resulted in legislative action on three separate occasions to amend a standing law.

Bill C-2 (2000) amended the Canada Elections Act to (among other things) remove the unconstitutional seizure of party assets for failure to field 50 candidates in a general election and provided for the full refund of candidates’ deposits.

The party had its deregistration overturned and its seized assets restored.

Bill C-9 (2001) reduced the threshold from 50 to 12 candidates for the party identifier to appear on the ballot.

After the Supreme Court of Canada ruled unanimously to strike down the 50-candidate threshold as unconstitutional, the Chretien government was forced to introduce and pass Bill C-3 (2003), which scrapped the rule altogether for party registration.

This victory was celebrated by many of the other small parties – regardless of political differences – on the principle that it was a victory for the people’s right to democratic choice.

(Even if that choice is sometimes the wrong one…..)

During this time the CPC began to publish a fortnightly newspaper called People’s Voice.

Its Quebec section, le Parti communiste du Québec (PCQ), was reorganized.

The CPC also began periodically publishing a theoretical/discussion journal Spark!.

In 2001 the party adopted a comprehensive update to its party programme and renamed it “Canada’s future is socialism“.

The CPC re-invigorated its long-standing involvement in and contribution to the labour movement and support of trade union organizing and campaigns, in the civic reform movement, and in a number of social justice, anti-war and international solidarity groups and coalitions.

Communism (Latin: communis, ‘common, universal’) is a philosophical, social, political and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money, and the state.

Communism includes a variety of schools of thought which broadly include Marxism and anarcho-communism as well as the political ideologies grouped around both, all of which share the analysis that the current order of society stems from capitalism, its economic system and mode of production, namely that in this system there are two major social classes, conflict between these two classes is the root of all problems in society and this situation can only ultimately be resolved through a social revolution.

The two classes are the proletariat (the working class), who make up the majority of the population within society and must work to survive; and the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class), a small minority who derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production.

According to this analysis, revolution would put the working class in power and in turn establish social ownership of the means of production which is the primary element in the transformation of society towards communism.

Along with social democracy, communism became the dominant political tendency within the international socialist movement by the 1920s.

The emergence of the Soviet Union as the world’s first nominally communist state led to communism’s widespread association with Marxism – Leninism and the Soveit economic model.

Almost all communist governments in the 20th century espoused Marxism–Leninism or a variation of it.

Some economists and intellectuals argue that, in practice, the model under which these nominally communist states operated was in fact a form of state capitalism or a non-planned administrative or command economy and not an actual communist economic model in accordance with most accepted definitions of “communism” as an economic theory.

If communism the theory could actually work creating a harmonious society where everyone was equal I believe there are aspects of it worth considering, but like some dictatorships add the name “Democratic” to their nation’s title creating a place that is anything but a democracy, the same can be said about so-called Communist nations.

Just as I have never been and nor shall ever likely be a believer in Scientology, I have never been and nor shall ever be a Communist.

But even those we disagree with have, on occasion, an idea or two worth listening to that may contain a kernel of wisdom we can use.

Communism – an equality of everyone – may sound great in theory, but is impracticable in practice, but the notions of human rights and human dignity regardless of economic status that communism claims to espouse are worth considering and adapting to our own imbalanced systems.

Breweries, the mentally unwell, addicts, orphans, the destitute, Scientologists and the birthplace of Canadian communism, Guelph clearly cannot be called conventional, and yet…..

4,818 Guelph Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images — Above: Guelph

Guelph was the home of North America’s first cable TV system.

Fredrick T. Metcalf created MacLean Hunter Television (now part of Rogers Communications) and their first broadcast was Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953.

Elizabeth II & Philip after Coronation.JPG — Above: Official Coronation photo of Queen Elizabeth II with Prince Philip, 2 June 1953

Cable television is a system of delivering TV programmes to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre optic cables.

This contrasts with broadcast television (also known as terrestrial television), in which the television signal is transmitted over the air by radio waves and received by a TV antenna attached to the TV; or satellite television, in which the TV signal is transmitted over the air by radio waves from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth, and received by a satellite dish antenna on the roof.

FM radio programming, high speed Internet, telephone services, and similar non-television services may also be provided through these cables.

Analog television was standard in the 20th century, but since the 2000s, cable systems have been upgraded to digital cable operation.

A “cable channel” (sometimes known as a “cable network“) is a television network available via cable television.

When available through satellite television, including direct broadcast satellite providers, this is referred to as a “satellite channel“.

Alternative terms include “non-broadcast channel” or “programming service“, the latter being mainly used in legal contexts.

Examples of cable/satellite channels/cable networks available in many countries are HBO, Cinemax, MTV, Cartoon Network, AXN, E!, FX, Discovery Channel, Canal+, Eurosport, NBC Sports, Fox Sports, PBS Sports, Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, CNN International, PSN and ESPN.

The abbreviation CATV is often used for cable television.

It originally stood for Community Access Television or Community Antenna Television, from cable television’s origins in 1948.

In areas where over-the-air TV reception was limited by distance from transmitters or mountainous terrain, large “community antennas” were constructed, and cable was run from them to individual homes.

In 1968, 6.4% of Americans had cable television.

The number increased to 7.5% in 1978.

By 1988, 52.8% of all households were using cable.

The number further increased to 62.4% in 1994.

Look
If you had
One shot
To sit on your lazy butt
And watch all the TV you ever wanted
Until your brain turned to mush
Would you go for it?
Or just let it slip?
Yo

Weird Al Yankovic - Couch Potato - YouTube — Above: “Weird” Al Yankovic

Remote is ready
Eyes wide, palms are sweaty
There’s Flintstones on the TV already
Wilma ‘n’ Betty
No virgin to channel surfin’
And I’m HD-ready
So I flip
Garbage is all I’m getting…..

Above: The Flintstones

“You’re gonna lose your mind watchin’ TV” They told me, they’d scold me
But I’d still tune in every show (show)
My cable gets C-SPAN, TV-Land, and HBO
The Travel Channel, Discovery, and Lifetime (yo)

“You’re gonna lose your mind watchin’ TV”
They told me, cajoled me, “Turn off those music videos” (no)
I’m gonna watch C-SPAN, TV-Land, and HBO
The History Channel and QVC and Lifetime (yo)…..

“You’re gonna lose your mind watching TV”
They told me, they’d scold me
But I’d still tune in every show (show)
My cable gets C-SPAN, TV-Land, and HBO
The Disney Channel and A&E and Lifetime (yo)

“You’re gonna lose your mind watching TV”
They told me, cajoled me
But I still love Lisa Kudrow (drow)
I’m looking at C-SPAN, TV-Land, and HBO
The Playboy Channel and Court TV and Lifetime (yo)…..

Lisa Kudrow at TIFF 2009.jpg — Above: Lisa Kudrow

I love shows with or without a plot
I’ll stare ’til my legs are numb, my eyes bloodshot
Because I only have got
One brain to rot
I’m gonna spend my life watching television a lot

Watching Spanish TV Online: The Couch Potato's Guide to Fluency

“You’re gonna lose your mind watching TV”
They told me, they’d scold me
But I’d still tune in every show (show)
My cable gets C-SPAN, TV-Land, and HBO
The Sci-Fi Channel and AMC and Lifetime (yo)

“You’re gonna lose your mind watching TV”
They told me, cajoled me, “Turn off that Oprah Winfrey show” (no)
I got it on C-SPAN, TV-Land, and HBO
The Learning Channel and MTV and Lifetime (yo)

Above: Logo of the Oprah Winfrey Show (1986 – 2011)

You can watch anything you want to, man

A man is standing in the middle of a subway car, wearing a suit. He is surrounded by seemingly normal people (e.g. commuters); however, the man has a poodle sitting atop his head.

Add couch pototoes to the already ecletic Guelph list…..

Knowledge and innovation excellence: Guelph Ontario - Perspective — Above: Guelph

Other news-making items include the fact that the jockstrap was invented here, in 1922, by the Guelph Elastic Hosiery Company and that the man who invented five pin bowling in 1909, Tom Ryan, was originally from Guelph.

A jockstrap (also known as a jock, strap, cup, groin guard, supporter, or athletic supporter) is an undergarment for protecting the testes and penis during contact sports, or other vigorous physical activity.

A jockstrap consists of a waistband (usually elastic) with a support pouch for the genitalia and two elastic straps affixed to the base of the pouch and to the left and right sides of the waistband at the hip.

The pouch, in some varieties, may be fitted with a pocket to hold an abdominal guard (impact resistant cup, box) to protect the testicles and the penis from injury.

The word jockstrap has purportedly been in use at least since 1891, a likely contraction of “jockey strap“, as the garment was first designed for bicycle-riding messengers and deliverymen, or ‘bike jockeys‘.

The Bike Jockey Strap was the first jockstrap manufactured in America in 1874.

Jockey meaning ‘rider’, primarily a race horse rider, has been in use since 1670.

Jockey itself is the diminutive form of the Scots nickname Jock (for John) as Jackie is for the English nickname Jack.

The nicknames Jack and Jackie, Jock and Jockey have been used generically for ‘man, fellow, boy, common man‘.

From 1650 to 1850, ‘jock’ was used as slang for penis.

The more recent American slang term ‘jock‘, meaning an athlete, is traced to 1959 and is itself derived from ‘jockstrap‘.

The Americans claim it is they who invented the jockstrap, in 1874 by C. F. Bennett of a Chicago sporting goods company, Sharp & Smith, to provide comfort and support for bicycle jockeys working the cobblestone streets of Boston.

In 1897, Bennett’s newly-formed Bike Web Company patented and began mass-producing the Bike Jockey Strap.

The Bike Web Company later became known as the Bike Company.

(I wonder how long it took for them to come up with the name.)

Bike, until 2003, was a stand-alone company.

In that year, the company and its trademarks were purchased by Russell Athletic.

Russell Athletic continued to produce jockstraps using the Bike brand and logos until 2017 when they retired the brand.

Russell had become a Fruit-of-the-Loom subsidiary, and Fruit-of-the-Loom is owned by and part of Berkshire Hathaway.

The jockstrap was also influential in early 20th-century medicine with the invention of the Heidelberg Electric Belt, a low-voltage electric powered jockstrap that claimed to cure kidney disorders, insomnia, erectile dysfunction and other ailments.

Today, jockstraps are still worn mostly by adolescent and adult men for sports, weightlifting, medical purposes, and for recovery from injury or surgery for such conditions as hematocele, inguinal hernia, hydrocele or spermatocele.

According to Wikipedia, jockstraps have also become popular as a form of lingerie for men, particularly among gay and bisexual men.

I will just have to take their word on this.

Five-pin bowling is a bowling variant which is played in Canada, where many bowling alleys offer it, either alone or in combination with ten pin bowling.

It was devised around 1909 by Thomas F. Ryan (1872 – 1961) at the Toronto Bowling Club, in response to customers who complained that the ten pin game was too strenuous.

He cut five tenpins down to about 75% of their size, and used hand-sized hard rubber balls, thus inventing the original version of five pin bowling.

Other noteworthy items: the city’s covered bridge (now part of a walking trail), built by the Timber Framers’ Guild in 1992, is one of only two of its type in Ontario, using wooden pins to hold it together.

File:Guelph covered bridge.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Note too that the Yukon Gold potato was first bred at the University of Guelph in 1966.

It became available on the market in 1981.

Yukon Gold is a large cultivar of potato most distinctly characterized by its thin, smooth, eye-free skin and yellow-tinged flesh.

This potato was developed in the 1960s by Garnet (“Gary“) Johnston in Guelph, with the help of Geoff Rowberry at the University of Guelph.

The official cross was made in 1966 and ‘Yukon Gold‘ was finally released into the market in 1980.

In 1953, Johnston was a lab technician in the potato development laboratory at the Ontario Agriculture College and he led a team that cross-bred two varieties to create the new type.

In 1959, one of Johnston’s graduate students, a young man originally from Peru, told him of a small, rough, deep-yellow-fleshed potato (Solanum goniocalyx, known as papa amarilla, Spanish for “yellow potato“) that was grown by the many indigenous communities in the Peruvian Andes.

In Lima, this cultivar is considered a delicacy for its bright colour and distinct flavour.

After trying these Peruvian potatoes, Johnston set out to breed a potato with the same colour and flavor characteristics, but larger in size and with a smoother shape, similar to the potatoes being grown in that part of southwestern Ontario.

In 1966, the development team made their first cross between a W5289-4 (2× cross between ‘Yema de huevo‘ and 2× Katahdin) and a ‘Norgleam‘ potato native to North Dakota.

After the 66th cross that year, true breeding seed was produced, and the G6666 was created.

The early name for the new cultivar was “Yukon“, for the Yukon River and gold rush country in northern Canada.

Charlie Bishop, or Walter Shy according to some sources, suggested adding “Gold” to describe the colour and appearance.

“It was a revolutionary concept.

He was a pioneer.

Johnston had the vision for yellow-fleshed potatoes“, said Hielke De Jong, a potato breeder with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

Johnston also developed and brought 15 other potato varieties to market while at the Ontario Agriculture College lab, where he had been seconded by his employer, Agriculture Canada.

A University publication states that:

“Yukon Gold was the first Canadian-bred potato variety to be promoted, packaged and marketed with its name right on the pack.”

Organic Certified Yukon Gold Seed Potatoes | Wood Prairie Family Farm

Guelph’s police force had Canada’s first municipal motorcycle patrol.

Chief Ted Lamb brought back an army motorcycle he used during the First World War.

Motorcycles were faster and more efficient than walking.

Canada's First Police Motorcycle — Guelph Heritage

Guelph has several buildings on the National Historic Sites of Canada register:

the Basilica of Our Lady Immaculate
McCrae House
the Old City Hall

The McCrae House, located in Guelph, is the birthplace of John McCrae (1872 – 1918), doctor, soldier and author of the famous First World War poem “In Flanders Fields“.

The house is a National Historic Site of Canada.

This small limestone cottage, built in 1858, was owned by the McCrae family from 1870 to 1873.

Other families occupied the house until 1966, when a group of Guelph citizens purchased the building with the intention of preserving it as a museum.

This group formed the Lt. Col. John McCrae Birthplace Society and began to raise money for its restoration.

The federal government through the Historic Sites and Monuments Board designated both John McCrae as a person of national significance, and the house as a place of national significance.

Above: McCrae House – John McCrae’s medals

McCrae House contains both permanent and temporary exhibition space that interprets the life and times of John McCrae.

Yearly themes are offered.

Summer activities include Poppy Push, Canada Day, Teddy Bear Picnic, History Camp and special teas in the garden.

The gardening volunteers have worked to create an award-winning garden reflecting the time period of the mid-to-late 19th century.

In 2019, Guelph Museums announced that the House would again host a Backyard Theatre in July 2020, with a show that would not be a “literal telling of McCrae’s story” but would contain a “significant amount of McCrae-specific content.”

Revenue from ticket sales would cover at least part of the cost of the production.

A one-person show was presented in summer 2019 dramatizing the life of McCrae and the 2018 show was a love story set during WW I.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (November 30, 1872 – January 28, 1918) was a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier during World War I, and a surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres, in Belgium.

He is best known for writing the famous war memorial poem “In Flanders Fields“.

McCrae died of pneumonia near the end of the war.

John McCrae in uniform circa 1914.jpg — Above: John McCrae

McCrae was born in McCrae House in Guelph to Lieutenant-Colonel David McCrae and Janet Simpson Eckford.

McCrae attended the Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute, but took a year off his studies due to recurring problems with asthma.

Among his papers in the John McCrae House in Guelph is a letter he wrote on 18 July 1893, to Laura Kains while he trained as an artilleryman at Tête-de-Pont Barracks, today’s Fort Frontenac, in Kingston (ON):

“I have a manservant.

Quite a nobby place it is, in fact.

My windows look right out across the bay, and are just near the water’s edge.

There is a good deal of shipping at present in the port and the river looks very pretty.”

Fort Frontenac.JPG — Above: Fort Frontenac, Kingston

He was a resident master in English and Mathematics in 1894 at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph.

McCrae returned to the University of Toronto and completed his BA, then returned again to study medicine on a scholarship.

At medical school, McCrae had tutored other students to help pay his tuition.

Two of his students were among the first female doctors in Ontario.

McCrae graduated in 1898.

Above: Painting of University College, University of Toronto

He was first a resident house-officer at the Toronto General Hospital, then in 1899 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

Above: Logo of John Hopkins School of Medicine

In 1900, McCrae served in South Africa as a lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Artillery (RCA) during the Second Boer War (1899 to 1902), and upon his return was appointed professor of pathology at the University of Vermont, where he taught until 1911.

Crest of the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery.png — Above: Crest of the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery

He also taught at McGill University in Montréal.

In 1902, he was appointed resident pathologist at the Montréal General Hospital and later became assistant pathologist to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montréal.

In 1904, he was appointed an associate in medicine at the Royal Victoria Hospital.

Above: Royal Victoria Hospital, Montréal

Later that year, he went to England where he studied for several months and became a member of the Royal College of Physicians.

In 1905, McCrae set up his own practice although he continued to work and lecture at several hospitals.

The same year, he was appointed pathologist to the Montreal Foundling and Baby Hospital.

In 1908, he was appointed physician to the Alexandria Hospital for Contagious Diseases.

In 1910, he accompanied Lord Grey, the Governor General of Canada, on a canoe trip to Hudson Bay to serve as expedition physician.

Albert Grey.jpg — Above: Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey (1851 – 1917)

McCrae was the co-author, with J.G. Adami, of a medical textbook, A Text-Book of Pathology for Students of Medicine (1912).

When Britain declared war on Germany because of the latter’s invasion of neutral Belgium at the beginning of WWI (1914), Canada, as a Dominion within the British Empire, was at war as well.

McCrae was appointed as Medical Officer and Major of the 1st Brigade CFA (Canadian Field Artillery).

Above: McCrae House – John McCrae’s officer’s cap badge

He treated the wounded during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, from a hastily dug, 8-by-8-foot (2.4 m × 2.4 m) bunker dug in the back of the dyke along the Yser Canal about 2 miles north of Ypres.

McCrae’s friend and former militia pal, Lt. Alexis Helmer, was killed in the battle, and his burial inspired the poem, “In Flanders Fields“, which was written on 3 May 1915, and first published in the magazine Punch.

A sculpture in the form of an open book. The text of the poem "In Flanders Fields" is written within and a small red poppy lies on top.

From 1 June 1915, McCrae was ordered away from the artillery to set up No. 3 Canadian General Hospital at Dannes-Camiers near Boulogne sur Mer, northern France.

C.L.C. Allinson reported that McCrae “most unmilitarily told me what he thought of being transferred to the medicals and being pulled away from his beloved guns.

His last words to me were:

‘Allinson, all the goddamn doctors in the world will not win this bloody war:

What we need is more and more fighting men.'”

Above: Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps button

“In Flanders Fields” appeared anonymously in Punch on 8 December 1915, but in the index, to that year McCrae was named as the author.

The verses swiftly became one of the most popular poems of the war, used in countless fund-raising campaigns and frequently translated (a Latin version begins In agro belgico…).

“In Flanders Fields” was also extensively printed in the US, whose government was contemplating joining the war, alongside a ‘reply’ by R.W. Lillard:

(“Fear not that you have died for naught, / The torch ye threw to us we caught“).

For eight months the hospital operated in Durbar tents, but after suffering from storms, floods, and frosts it was moved in February 1916 into the old Jesuit College in Boulogne sur Mer.

McCrae, now “a household name, albeit a frequently misspelt one“, regarded his sudden fame with some amusement, wishing that “they would get to printing ‘In F.F.’ correctly: it never is nowadays“; but (writes his biographer) “he was satisfied if the poem enabled men to see where their duty lay.“

A general view from the Brecquerecque Quarter: The modern lighthouse, the medieval bell tower and the English Channel — Above: Boulogne sur Mer

On 28 January 1918, while still commanding No. 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) at Boulogne, McCrae died of pneumonia with “extensive pneumococcus meningitis” at the British General Hospital in Wimereux, France.

He was buried the following day in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission section of Wimereux Cemetery, just a couple of kilometres up the coast from Boulogne, with full military honours.

His flag-draped coffin was borne on a gun carriage and the mourners – who included Sir Arthur Currie and many of McCrae’s friends and staff – were preceded by McCrae’s charger, “Bonfire“, with McCrae’s boots reversed in the stirrups.

Bonfire was with McCrae from Valcartier (Québec) until his death and was much loved.

McCrae’s gravestone is placed flat, as are all the others in the section, because of the unstable sandy soil.

A collection of his poetry, In Flanders Fields and Other Poems (1918), was published after his death.

“In Flanders Fields“

     In Flanders Fields, the poppies grow
     Between the crosses, row on row,
     That mark our place; and in the sky
     The larks, still bravely singing, fly
     Scarce heard amid the guns below.

     We are the dead, short days ago
     We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
     Loved and were loved, and now we lie
     In Flanders fields.

    Take up our quarrel with the foe:
    To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high.
    If ye break faith with us who die
    We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
    In Flanders fields.

–John McCrae

A soldier looking down at a grave marked by a cross surrounded by poppies.

Though various legends have developed as to the inspiration for the poem, the most commonly held belief is that McCrae wrote “In Flanders Fields” on 3 May 1915, the day after presiding over the funeral and burial of his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who had been killed during the Second Battle of Ypres.

The poem was written as he sat upon the back of a medical field ambulance near an advance dressing post at Essex Farm, just north of Ypres.

The poppy, which was a central feature of the poem, grew in great numbers in the spoiled earth of the battlefields and cemeteries of Flanders.

An article by Veterans Administration Canada provides this account:

The day before he wrote his famous poem, one of McCrae’s closest friends was killed in the fighting and buried in a makeshift grave with a simple wooden cross.
Wild poppies were already beginning to bloom between the crosses marking the many graves.

The Canadian government has placed a memorial to John McCrae that features “In Flanders Fields” at the site of the dressing station which sits beside the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Essex Farm Cemetery.

The Belgian government has named this site the “John McCrae Memorial Site“.

The Cloth Hall of the city of Ieper (Ypres in French and English) in Belgium has a permanent war museum called the “In Flanders Fields Museum“, named after the poem.

There are also a photograph and a short biographical memorial to McCrae in the St George Memorial Church in Ypres.

Institutions that have been named in McCrae’s honour include John McCrae Public School in Guelph, John McCrae Public School in Markham, John McCrae Senior Public School in Toronto, and John McCrae Secondary School in Ottawa.

A bronze plaque memorial dedicated to Lt. Col. John McCrae was erected by the Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute.

McCrae House was converted into a museum.

The current Canadian War Museum has a gallery for special exhibits, called The Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae Gallery.

In May 2015, a statue of McCrae was erected on Green Island in the Rideau River in Ottawa.

McCrae is dressed as an artillery officer and his medical bag nearby, as he writes.

The statue shows the destruction of the battlefield and, at his feet, the poppies – a symbol of Remembrance of World War I and all armed conflicts since.

A copy of that statue was erected at the Guelph Civic Museum in 2015.

The street next to the cemetery where he is buried is named in his honour, although the street is called “Rue Mac Crae“.

Mount McCrae in British Columbia, is named for him.

A few comments…..

Why wasn’t the story of McCrae literally told by the Museum which honours him?

There is something unsettling in the notion that a man who devoted his life to the Hippocratic Oath, the physicians’ creed to “Do no harm.” advocated the recruitment of more men to replace those who had fallen in warfare.

There is something essentially amiss in the use of poetry to advocate bloodshed, even if it is in the name of duty or honour.

Perhaps the discrepancy is connected to the poppies…..

One species of this plant is the source of that powerful narcotic, opium.

The city is home to:

the University of Guelph, established in 1964
Sleeman Breweries Ltd

The Ontario Agricultural College (OAC), the oldest part of the Univesity of Guelph, began in 1874 as an associate agricultural college of the University of Toronto.

According to Macleans (Canada’s national news magazine), the current University of Guelph, founded in 1964, “grew out of three founding colleges: the Ontario Agricultural College (1874), the Ontario Veterinary College (1862) and the Macdonald Institute (1903)”.

The Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute (GCVI), established in the 1840s, is one of the province’s oldest high schools.

The former Canadian National Railways (VIA Rail/GO Transit) Station at 79 Carden Street was listed in 1992.

The city of Guelph’s diversified economy helped Guelph obtain the country’s lowest unemployment rate at 4.2% in 2011 and at 3.9% in February 2016.

The great diversity in the types of employers is a significant factor too.

The city is not dependent on a single industry.

The workforce participation rate of 72% was the best in Canada in December 2015, according to BMO senior economist Robert Kavcic.

The job growth of more than 9% at the same time was also of great value to the community.

At the time, the BMO economist also rated Guelph as the top city in Canada for those looking for work.

Over subsequent months, the rate increased steadily and the jobless rate was at a more typical 5.9% by October 2017, compared to 5.1% in nearby Kitchener-Waterloo.

The rate in June 2018 had decreased to 4.5%.

By December 2018, StatsCan was indicating an unemployment rate of only 2.3%, down from 4% in November, and the lowest in Canada at that time.

The overall economy of the Guelph region (including the city and the townships of Eramosa and Puslinch) grew at an average of 3.5% per year over the previous five years and was expected to be 2.1% in 2019 and also in 2020, according to the Conference Board of Canada’s August 2019 report.

Guelph’s real gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 3.6% per cent in 2018, the highest among medium-sized cities in Canada.

“Although economic growth is poised to moderate in 2019, Guelph will maintain its place as one of Canada’s economic growth leaders,” the report predicted.

Manufacturing is the leading sector of the economy of the city with the most significant sector being auto parts manufacturing.

The Conference Board of Canada’s August 2019 report stated that the Guelph region’s manufacturing was experiencing significant growth, averaging 5.9% over the past five years and expected to be 4.2% in 2019.

Linamar is the city’s leader in this sector, with 22 manufacturing plants.

The company has received government funding for expansion that would create additional jobs, most recently in 2015 ($101 million) and in 2018 ($99 million).

The latter would create 1,500 additional jobs and maintain 8,000 others in the Canadian operation.

According to research completed by the City of Guelph in 2010, fabricated metal product manufacturing accounted for 26.1% of the types of industries, followed by machinery manufacturing for 12.8% and miscellaneous manufacturing for 10.4%.

The city’s Economic Development Strategy identified life science, agri-food and biotechnology firms, environmental management and technology companies as growth industries on which to focus economic development activities.

The city also touts the importance of advanced manufacturing which is its largest employer.

The roughly 360 businesses of this type employ approximately 14,755 people (roughly 25% of Guelph’s labour force).

The category includes “high precision manufacturing and auto parts assembly to plastic injection moulding machines manufacturing and automation devices. This enables advanced manufacturing to be a strong driver of the local economy.“

The second largest industry is educational services, accounting for 11.3%.

Guelph is very attractive to the agri-food and biotechnology market sector, according to the city.

It was ranked as the top cluster in Ontario and one of the top two in Canada.

This sector includes over 90 companies in Guelph-Wellington, employing approximately 6,500 people.

Here is a place that should be by all accounts be a far worse place than it is.

So, how should one perceive Guelph?

Perhapy, gentle reader, you have already seen Guelph and didn’t know it…..

The City encourages movie and television filming.

Parts of several productions have been filmed here, including:

Agnes of God (1985) is about a novice nun who gives birth and insists that the dead child was the result of a virginal conception. A psychiatrist (Jane Fonda) and the mother superior (Anne Bancroft) of the convent clash during the resulting investigation.

Dream House (2011) is an American psychological thriller film, starring Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts and Marton Csokas.

Two girls holding hands, their dresses match the wallpaper behind them.

Total Recall (2012)

Episodes of Murdoch Mysteries (2013 / 2015), a Canadian television drama series, which takes place in Toronto starting in 1895 and follows Detective William Murdoch of the Toronto Constabulary, who solves many of his cases using methods of detection that were unusual at the time, including fingerprinting, blood testing, surveillance, and trace evidence.

11.22.63 (2016) is an American science fiction thriller miniseries starring James Franco as a recently divorced English teacher, who is presented with the chance to travel back in time to 1960, in an attempt to prevent the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

Dead Rush (2016), a cancelled video game where a massive earthquake has destroyed most of humanity and the world is now overflowing with zombies.

American Gods (2017) is an American fantasy drama television series a hidden world where magic is real.

The Heretics (2017) is a feature-length, documentary film that focuses on a group of New York-based feminist artists called the Heresies Collective and their influential art journal, Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, which was published from 1977 to 1992.

Heresies (journal) no 7 Women Working Together.jpg

According to the Bank of Montréal’s fourth quarterly 2018 report, Guelph was the leading city in Canada in terms of job growth and low unemployment.

In January 2019, the city had the lowest unemployment rate in Canada.

The top five occupations in Guelph in terms of numbers are:

Sales and service (16,195)
Education, law and social, community and government services (10,205)
Business, finance and administration (10,150)
Trades, transport and equipment operators and related occupations (9,170)
Manufacturing and utilities (8,205)

The City of Guelph’s published 2016 data sorts occupations in a different manner:

Professional, scientific and technical jobs employed 39,141
Advanced manufacturing employed 20,735
Retail and services employed 11,345
Agri-Innovation employed 11,345
Culture and entertainment employed 7,711
Distribution, warehousing and wholesale employed 5,909

The largest private enterprise employers in Guelph (2016) include:

Linamar Corporation
Cargill Meat Solutions
Polycon Industries
The Co-operators
Guelph Manufacturing Group Inc.
Blount Canada Ltd.

The Cooperators was one of the Platinum Winners in Canada’s Best Employers 2017 report.

The company has been on this list for 14 years.

The largest public sector employers (2016) include:

the Upper Grand District School Board
the University of Guelph
the City of Guelph
the Wellington Catholic District School Board
Guelph General Hospital
Homewood Health Centre

The University’s staffing fell into three categories in 2015:

2,600 regular full-time faculty and staff
1,890 temporary (full-time and part-time)
3,690 student employees.

The University was among Canada’s Best Employers in 2016 according to Forbes magazine, making the top 20 in the list.

Reid’s Heritage Group of Companies, a home builder with 212 full-time employees, “supports employees who are new mothers with maternity leave top-up payments provides flexible work hours, helps employees balance work and their personal commitments with up to 10 paid personal days and offers referral bonuses for staff hires.”

Sleeman Breweries Limited, with 991 full-timers, offers “generous tuition subsidies, opportunities for the next generation to gain meaningful experience through summer employment and co-op placements, as well as retirement planning assistance and phased-in work options” and bonuses for salaried staff and profit-sharing for those who are unionized.

For many years, Guelph ranked at or near the bottom of Canada’s crime severity list.

The national average for the crime severity index was 70.96 per 100,000 people in 2016 while Guelph’s was much lower at 55 per 100,000 people according to a study published by Maclean’s.

Violent crime severity index: 49 per 100,000 people compared to 75.25 for the national index.
Homicide rate: The city had only one homicide in 2016 for a rate of 0.76 per 100,000 people, compared to the national average of 1.68.
Assault rate: Guelph was at 181.87 versus the national average of 370
Sexual assault rate: This aspect was quite high with 64.22 per 100,000 people compared to the national rate of 56.6.
Robbery rate: Guelph had 21.91 per 100,000 people, much lower than the national average of 60.9.
Fraud: This aspect has increased notably since 1996; it was at 260.67 per 100,000 people in 2016, versus the national rate of 299.05.
Drug offences: The city is well below the national average in all categories.
Youth Criminal Justice Act offences: The rate was 8.31 per 100,000 in Guelph, substantially lower than the national average of 16.74.

The Wellington County Jail (in Late Gothic Revival Style) and the Governor’s Residence (in Georgian style) at 74 Woolwich Street were built in 191.

They were designated by the city for “historic and architectural value” and as a National Historic Site in 1983.

The property is now an Ontario Court of Justice.

The ghosts of Guelph's first jail and gallows (14 photos) - GuelphToday.com — Above: the former Wellington County Jail, Guelph

Guelph was home to a major correctional institution from 1911 until 2001, originally the Ontario Reformatory with subsequent names including Wellington Detention Centre and, after 1972, Guelph Correctional Centre.

The first inmates had been transferred to the Guelph reformatory from Toronto’s Central Prison when it closed in 1915.

By 1910 however, a prison farm beside the Eramosa River had begun receiving prisoners.

The farm inmates constructed a concrete bridge, a spur line to the CPR and a wooden trestle bridge.

The official opening of the farm was 25 September 1911.

By 1912, the various buildings on the site housed 300; the correctional operations on the site were fully operational by 1914.

Between 1911 and 1915, prisoners had built the administration building, the cell blocks, ponds and waterways, dry stone walls, stairs, gates, bridges and terraced gardens.

By 1916, this was the largest correctional facility in Ontario, housing 660.

During World War I, the property served as the Guelph Military Convalescent Hospital a convalescent hospital for over 900 veterans, from 1917.

The prisoners returned in January 1921.

The farm and reformatory were used to teach inmates useful skills, including agriculture, dry cleaning, metalworking, and other trades.

By the late 1940s the facility produced food for all of Ontario’s prisons, and also made blankets, wood and metal products.

There was a stone quarry stone on site.

By 1962 the prison farm accommodated a dairy, piggery, horses, cattle and vegetable farming.

The farm area eventually included barns, a woolen mill, abattoir, tailor shop, laundry, bakery, metal shop, broom shop and other facilities.

The prison abattoir was eventually sold off and became the privately owned company, later known as Better Beef (purchased by Cargill Canada in 2005), a massive meat processing plant.

In 2001, the Ministry of Correctional Services closed the entire facility; the remaining inmates were transferred to larger jails.

Afterwards, the property was used for some film shoots and for training emergency personnel.

Guelph Correctional Centre on fast track to be sold under new provincial plan - GuelphToday.com — Above: the former Guelph Correctional Centre

The University of Guelph, (with approximately 25,300 students) is one of Canada’s top comprehensive universities, and home to the Ontario Agriculutral Collega and the Ontario Veterinary College.

Conestoga College operates a small campus in Guelph but in late 2019, the College advised the news media that a major expansion was planned.

“Within five or six years, we will have at least 5,000 students there with full-service programming,” said College President John Tibbits.

At the time, the Guelph campus had approximately 1,000 students.

Guelph was the first municipality in Canada to have its own federally chartered railway, the Guelph Junction Railway.

This 25-kilometre (16-mile) link to the CPR is still municipally owned.

Built in 1911, the Guelph Central Station (still in use), was constructed by the Grand Trunk Railway which had arrived in Guelph in 1856.

Years later, it was taken over by the Canadian National Railway.

It is a classic example of early 20th century Canadian railway station design and has been designated as a heritage structure under the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act.

The Romanesque Revival building, with its Italianate tower, has been listed on the Canadian Register since 2006 and was formally recognized as one of Canada’s Historic Places in November 1992.

A renovation project in 2017 provided various benefits, including repairs to maintain and restore heritage aspects.

Guelph Central Station is currently an Intermodal Transit Terminal that includes bus and railway services in one facility.

The following is a summary of its purpose from an April 2017 report:

“Guelph Central Train Station is a busy transit hub that accommodates Guelph Transit, GO Transit and Via Rail operations.

Each weekday, more than 5,000 passengers board Guelph Transit, to travel on one of the 15 different routes that operate out of the bus bays adjacent to the train station.“

Guelph is the 3rd fastest-growing city in Ontario with a 5-year growth of 8.3% from 2011 to 2016.

According to the Ontario Places to Grow Plan, Guelph’s population is projected to be about 144,500 by the year 2021 and 175,000 by 2031.

The actual number of residents varies throughout the year because of variations in the University of Guelph student population.

The most common mother tongue in 2016 was English at 77.2%, followed by Chinese at 2.7%, Italian at 1.7%, Vietnamese at 1.3%, French at 1.3%, Punjabi at 1.2%, Tagalog at 1.2%, Spanish at 1.1%, and Polish at 1%.

1.5% claimed both English and a non-official language as their first languages.

Approximately 78.2% of residents were European Canadians in 2016, whereas 18.8% were visible minorities and 3% were aboriginal.

The largest visible minority groups in Guelph were South Asian (5%), Chinese (3.2%), Black (2.2%), Filipino (2.2%), Southeast Asian (1.9%), West Asian (1.2%), and Latin American (1.0%).

The 2016 Census indicated that 14,430 Italian Canadians lived in Guelph.

Many Italians from the south of Italy, particularly from Monforte San Giorgio, had immigrated to the area in the early 1900s, and also in later years.

Historically however, Guelph’s population has been principally British in origin, with 92% in 1880 and 87% in 1921.

Heffernan Street Footbridge, spanning the Speed River behind St. George’s Anglican Church, was built in 1913, and replaced an earlier steel bridge.

The Footbridge was designated a heritage site and was restored in 1991 to more closely resemble its original design.

From a bell organ factory to the opera singer Edward Johnson, Guelph has been a source of musical contribution.

Bell Pump Organ Company - Pump Organ Restorations

Above: Edward Johnson (1878 – 1959)

Today, Guelph has a thriving indie rock scene, which has spawned some of Canada’s more well-known indie bands, many of which are highlighted in the annual Kazoo Festival.

Kazoo! Fest 2019 Lineup Announced! - Kazoo!

Guelph is also home to the Hillside Festival, a hugely popular music festival held at nearby Guelph Lake during the summer, as well as the Guelph Jazz Festival.

Guelph is also home to the Guelph Symphony Orchestra and two yearly classical music festivals.

Guelph Symphony (@GuelphSymphony) | Twitter

The Kiwanis Music Festival of Guelph showcases students from Guelph and surrounding areas, while the Guelph Musicfest offers performances by local professional classical musicians.

Guelph Musicfest (@guelphmusicfest) | Twitter

The Sleeman Centre is a sports and entertainment venue in Guelph.

The large, modern facility allows for a variety of events such as concerts, sporting and family events, trade shows and conferences, and it is home to the local hockey team, the Guelph Storm.

Notable Guelph personalities (at least those I personally find interesting)(besides those already mentioned):

Edward Robert Armstrong (1876–1955) was a Guelph-born engineer and inventor who in 1927 proposed a series of “seadrome” floating airport platforms for airplanes to land on and refuel for transatlantic flights.

While his original concept was made obsolete by long-range aircraft that did not need such refueling points, the idea of an anchored deep-sea platform was later applied to use for floating oil rigs.

Above: Edward Robert Armstrong and a scale model of his seadrome

Neve Adrianne Campbell is a Guelph-born Canadian actress and producer,

Campbell has had starring roles in films such as the neo-noir film Wild Things (1998), the crime films Drowning Mona and Panic (both 2000), the drama films The Company (2003) and When Will I Be Loved (2004), the comedy films Churchill: The Hollywood Years (2004) and Relative Strangers (2006), the romantic-drama film Closing the Ring (2007), the comedy-drama film Walter (2015), the action film Skyscraper (2018), and the biographical film Clouds (2020).

Campbell also appeared in the action drama series The Philanthropist (2009) and starred in the Netflix political thriller series House of Cards.

James Cockman (1873 – 1947) was a third baseman in Major League Baseball who played for the New York Highlanders in 1905.

He stood at 5′ 6″ and weighed 145 lbs.

He was born and died in Guelph.

James 'Jim' Cockman (1873-1947) - Find A Grave Memorial — Above: Jim Cockman

Arthur William Cutten (1870 – 1936) was a businessman who gained great wealth and prominence as a commodity speculator in the United States.

He was called to appear before the Banking and Currency Committee in regard to the causes of the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

He was under indictment for tax evasion upon his death in Chicago in 1936.

He was born and is buried in Guelph.

Ken Danby (1940 – 2007) was a Canadian painter in the realist style.

Danby is best known for creating highly realistic paintings that study everyday life.

Ken Danby: Artist (Ken Danby Public School) — Above: Ken Danby

His 1972 painting At the Crease, portraying a masked hockey goalie defending his net, is widely recognized and reproduced in Canada.

Early in his career, Danby experimented with abstract expressionism.

In August 1961, Danby participated in the first Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition (TOAE) in the parking lot of the Four Seasons hotel, located at that time on Jarvis Street in Toronto.

Danby won the “Best of Exhibition” prize with an untitled abstract, currently in the collection of the artist.

Danby later focused on realism in most of his work, and developed his skill with watercolour.

His first solo exhibition in 1964 sold out.

At the Crease (Classic Goalie) by Ken Danby Official Large-Size Art Pr – Sports Poster Warehouse

He designed three coins for the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

Coins and Canada - Montréal - Olympic Games canadian coins

He also received the Jessie Dow Prize, the 125th Anniversary Commemorative Medal of Canada, the City of Sault Ste. Marie’s Award of Merit and both the Queen’s Silver and Golden Jubilee Medals.

In the 1980s, Danby painted a number of watercolours about the America’s Cup and portrayed Canadian athletes at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.

Ken Danby - Olympics | Canvas giclee, Danby, Canadian artists

In 1999 Danby had a studio near Guelph.

A school on Grange Road in Guelph was named after Danby.

In 2016, the Art Gallery of Hamilton organized a retrospective of Danby’s work, entitled Beyond the Crease.

For approximately three decades until his death, Danby lived and painted in a rural property near Guelph and spent years restoring the historic Armstrong Mill.

Some of his art work features the property.

Restored mill was artist's dream home | TheSpec.com

Above: Armstrong Mill

From November 2016 to January 2017, the Guelph Civic Museum exhibited examples of Danby’s work including his Wayne Gretzky portrait, The Great Farewell.

The Great Farewell | Picture This! framing & gallery

On 23 September 2007, Danby collapsed while on a canoe trip in Algonquin Park near North Tea Lake with his wife Gillian Danby and friends.

The party summoned help, but paramedics were unable to revive him.

Danby is the second famous Canadian artist to die in Algonquin Park.

Tom Thomson (1877 – 1917) died on Canoe Lake in the Park.

Above: Thomson fishing in Algonquin Park: Enamoured with the Park, many of his works were painted in the area.

Canadian writer Blair Frazer also drowned in the Park on the Petawawa River’s Rollaway Rapids in May 1968.

Blair Fraser Memorial, Petewawa River (Rollaway Raps)

Victor Davis (1964 – 1989) was a Canadian Olympic and world champion swimmer who specialized in the breast stroke.

He also enjoyed success in the individual medley and the butterfly.

Driver who killed Guelph's Victor Davis facing new manslaughter charge: Report — Above: Victor Davis

Victor Davis was born in Guelph.

As a boy, Davis learned how to swim in the lakes around his home.

He then joined the Guelph Marlin Aquatic Club at the age of 12.

During his career, Davis held several world records as the winner of 31 national titles and 16 medals in international competition.

At the 1982 world championships in Guayaquil, Ecuador, he set his first world record while winning the gold medal in the 200-metre breast stroke.

At the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, he won a silver medal in the 100-meter breaststroke event, then captured the gold medal in the 200-metre breast stroke, in the process establishing another world record.

In recognition of his accomplishments, Davis was named Swimming Canada’s Athlete of the Year three times.

A star of Canada’s national swim team for nine years, he retired from competitive swimming in July 1989.

He was voted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame (Toronto) in 1985, and posthumously into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame (Calgary) in 1990, and the International Swimming Hall of Fame (Fort Lauderdale) in 1994.

A few months after his retirement, on 11 November 1989 while outside a nightclub in the Montréal suburb of Sainte Anne de Bellevue, Davis was struck by a car driven by Glen Crossley, who fled the scene.

Crossley told police he hit Davis while trying to avoid a juice bottle Davis threatened to throw at the vehicle and didn’t realize he made contact with the swimmer.

However, other testimony showed that Davis was actually hit from behind and thrown 14 meters in the air before hitting his head on a parked car and a street curb.

Two days later, the 25-year-old swimmer died of a severe skull fracture as well as brain and spinal hemorrhage in hospital.

In February 1992, Crossley was found guilty of leaving the scene of an accident and sentenced to ten months in prison, ultimately serving four months.

In January 2017, Crossley was charged in the death of 70-year-old Albert Arsenault after an altercation at the Station 77 bar in September 2016.

Crossley pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Arsenault’s death.

Man who killed Olympian Victor Davis pleads guilty to killing 70-year-old bar patron — Above: Glenn Crossley

Davis’s parents fulfilled his express wish that his organs be donated to help save the lives of others.

The swimmer’s heart, liver, kidneys and corneas were transplanted.

Each year since his death, awards are made by the Victor Davis Memorial Fund to help young Canadian swimmers continue their education while training.

Thirteen recipients of this award participated in the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.

In 2002, Victor Davis was inducted into the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame (Toronto).

In Guelph, the city named the 50-metre swimming pool in honour of Victor Davis.

Guelph Dolphins Practice, Victor Davis Memorial Pool, Guelph, September 13 2019 | AllEvents.in — Above: Victor Davis Memorial Pool, Guelph

Robert Daniel Emslie (1859 – 1943) was a Canadian pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB) who went on to set numerous records for longevity as an umpire.

Bob Emslie baseball photo.jpg — Above: Bob Emslie

Born in Guelph, Emslie had a brief professional playing career with the Baltimore and Philadelphia clubs in the American Association.

His professional umpiring career began in 1888, and after spending a couple of seasons in the minor leagues, he was promoted to the major leagues as an umpire in 1890.

Emslie was nicknamed “Wig” due to his premature receding hairline, which was a result of the stress of umpiring games single-handedly in the rough-and-tumble 1890s.

He was derisively called “Blind Bob” by the New York Giants following his role in the infamous “Merkle’s Boner” play during the 1908 National League pennant race.

The play involved a force out when a Giants player stopped running to second base upon seeing that the game’s winning run would score.

When “Merkle’s Boner” occurred, Emslie had already worked more major league games than any umpire in MLB history, then later served as the National League’s chief of umpires upon retiring from active umpiring.

He retired to St. Thomas, Ontario and died there on Monday, 26 April 1943.

In 1946 he was included in the Honor Rolls of Baseball (Cooperstown, NY).

In 1986 he was named to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame (St. Marys, ON).

Emslie was the base umpire on 23 September 1908, when controversy erupted at the end of the NY Giants – Chicago Cubs game at the Polo Grounds.

With the score tied and two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, the Giants had Moose McCormick on third base and Fred Merkle on first base.

Above: Fred Merkle (1888 – 1956)

Al Bridwell smashed a single to center to drive home McCormick with the apparent winning run, but Merkle failed to touch second base.

Cubs second baseman Johnny Evans noticed this error, and tagged second base and appealed to Emslie.

Emslie claimed that he had to duck out of the way of Bridwell’s line drive and did not see the play, and home plate umpire Hank O’Day declared Merkle out and the game a tie.

New York manager John McGraw, with whom Bob had a long and tempestuous history, bestowed upon Emslie his nickname “Blind Bob” after the controversy.

The incident is often referred to as “Merkle’s Boner.“

Notably, Emslie and O’Day were the two most experienced umpires in Major League Baseball history at that point, with Emslie having worked nearly 2,500 games and O’Day nearly 1,700.

Later, Emslie showed up at a Giants’ practice with a rifle, placed a dime on the pitching mound and shot it from behind home plate, sending the coin spinning into the outfield.

Reportedly, McGraw never again challenged his eyesight.

Charles William Fox (1920 – 2008) was a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) in WW2.

Born in Guelph, Fox attended Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute.

Fox, the son of an Irish immigrant, joined the RCAF in 1939 at the beginning of the war.

He graduated near the top of his class in 1941 and was offered a job as a flight instructor in Dunnville (ON).

He remained in this position until 1943 when he began combat training in Bagotville (QB).

He flew Spitfires over Europe, destroying or damaging 153 enemy vehicles (mostly trains), and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

In 1944, he began his tour of duty with the Canadian 412 Squadron.

On D-Day (6 June 1944), he flew three patrols off the coast of France.

On 17 July 1944, he flew from the Allied air base at Beny sur Mer in Normandy and strafed an unknown black car.

He later learned that one of the passengers was German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who was seriously injured in the attack.

As Rommel was soon afterwards implicated in the assassination plot against Adolf Hitler, he was allowed to commit suicide and his death was announced as a result of injuries from the air attack.

In 2004, Fox was officially credited with injuring Rommel, although he has expressed some regret about the attack, as Rommel was supposedly planning to secretly negotiate an earlier end to the war with the Allies.

Fourteen of Fox’s planes were judged to be no longer usable after returning from missions due to excessive damage from enemy fire.

Charles Fox was noted as an educator of youth and spokesperson for veterans.

He founded Torch Bearers, a non-profit organization aimed at educating young people about Canadian military exploits.

He regularly took on speaking engagements to keep veterans’ stories alive and fought with school boards to ensure Remembrance Day ceremonies were held annually.

According to Fox’s family, he spent his life wondering why he survived numerous dates with death and was in the process of telling his story and those of other veterans in a book titled Why Not Me?, which the family hopes to finish.

“It did give him a purpose in life and he was searching for that,” according to his son.

Fox ended his tour of duty in January 1945, and served in the 420 Reserve after the war.

He retired in 1956 and began to work at a shoe factory, from which he retired in 1998.

On 30 April 2004, he was named honorary colonel of 412 Squadron in Ottawa, ultimately belonging to 8 Wing/CFB Trenton.

For his long service in the RCAF, he was awarded the Canadian Forces Decoration.

He died in a car accident near Tillsonburg (ON) on 18 October 2008.

Jessica Marie (J.M.) Frey is a Guelph-born science fiction and fantasy author.

While she is best known for her debut novel Triptych, Frey’s 2011 work encompasses poetry, academic and magazine articles, screenplays, and short stories.

The novel follows three narrators as they recount the events surrounding major turning points in the life of Gwen Pierson, (a languages specialist): Evvie Pierson (Gwen’s mother a housewife in rural southern Ontario), Kalp, an alien refugee from a dead planet living in England and Gwen’s lover), and Basil Grey (a Welsh computer engineer).

Triptych has been described as both science fiction and as literary fiction, and has been praised for blending both genres.

It has also been praised for the distinctive voices of the narrators, and for its structure:

The novel, rather than chapters, is segmented into three novella-length parts (each narrated by a different character – Evvie, Kalp, and Basil) which hinge together to tell the whole story.

Frey deliberately chose this structure to mimic the artistic triptych technique (art in three parts).

Frey calls herself a “professional geek“.

Frey has appeared at Toronto-area science fiction conventions and is involved with charity and community fan groups and initiatives.

She regularly appears on radio shows, television talk shows, and podcasts discussing fandom and genre works.

About J.M. Frey | J.M. Frey — Above: Ms. Frey

Guelph resident Gregory Gallant, better known by his pen name Seth, is a Canadian cartoonist.

He is best known for his series Palookaville and his mock-autographical graphic novel It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken (1996).

Seth draws in a style influenced by the classic cartoonists of The New Yorker.

His work is highly nostalgic, especially for the early-to-mid-20th Century period, and of southern Ontario.

His work also shows a great depth and breadth of knowledge of the history of comics and cartooning.

Beth Goobie is a Canadian poet and fiction writer.

Goobie grew up in Guelph.

After working one year in Holland as an au pair, she spent the next four years earning a BA in English Literature from the University of Winnipeg and a BA in Religious Studies from the Mennonite Brethren Bible College.

She then worked as a front line residential treatment worker in both Winnipeg and Edmonton.

Her work has appeared in many Canadian literary journals, including Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, The Antigonish Review, Event, Grain, Prairie Fire and The Prairie Journal.

As of 2017, she has 25 published books to her credit, including the genres of young adult fiction (18 books), children’s (one book), one adult novel, two collections of short fiction and three collections of poetry.

She lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Beth Goobie (Author of The Pain Eater) — Above: Beth Goobie

Paddy Johnson is a New York-based art critic, blogger, curator and writer.

Johnson was born in Guelph.

She was educated at Mount Allison University in Sackville (NB) and continued her education at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ).

She has slowly gained notoriety as an art critic in the New York art scene.

She is also known for her live coverage of major art fairs such as the Armoury Show (NYC), Venice Biennale, Frieze Art Fair (Miami) and Art Basel (Switzerland).

Johnson is the founder and editor of the art blog Art F City.

Art F City publishes an annual calendar titled “Nude Artists as Pandas“, featuring naked artists dressed up in panda costumes.

She pens a regular column for L Magazine in New York.

Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Art Review, Art & Australia, Art in America, artkrush, The Daily Beast, Flash Art, Flavorpill, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, More Intelligent Life, New York Press, NYFA Current, Print Magazine, The Reeler, Time Out NY.

She has worked with Location One as a visiting critic and attended the 2007 iCommons conference in Croatia as a blogger.

In 2008, she served on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowships and became the first blogger to earn a Creative Capital Arts Writers grant from the Creative Capital Foundation, which is part of the Andy Warhol Foundation.

She has also served on a panel for Art Prize.

She contributed to the book what’s the deal with all the peanut centric aeroplane snacks? published by Paper Monument.

In November 2010, Johnson released an LP called “Now That’s What You Call Net Art“, a DJ battle record that compiles mixes based from sounds recorded in art spaces, galleries, and museums in Manhattan and Brooklyn, pitting the neighboring boroughs against each other.

Johnson raised over $11,000 with a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project, calling upon sound art lovers and a cadre of collectors, even offering a dinner with herself and artist Glass Popcorn , a former art critic, to the highest bidder.

Johnson predicts the project will spawn follow-up records, including East Coast vs. West Coast, and Canada vs. USA.

Johnson told WNYC’s Carolina Miranda that the Brooklyn recordings sound more DIY.

In December 2011, Johnson was named in a federal libel lawsuit in US District Court for a May, 2011 article she published in Art F City, which suggested an art restorer was a forger and committed crimes.

Paddy Johnson - Founding Editor of Art F City - Art Frankly — Above: Paddy Johnson

Thomas King, who was born in Sacramento on 24 April 1943, self-identifies as being of Cherokee, German, and Greek descent.

King says his father left the family when the boys were very young, and that they were raised almost entirely by their mother.

In his series of Massey Lectures, eventually published as a book The Truth About Stories (2003), King tells that after their father’s death, he and his brother learned that their father had two other families, neither of whom knew about the third.

(The Massey Lectures is an annual five-part series of lectures given in Canada by distinguished writers, thinkers and scholars who explore important ideas and issues of contemporary interest.

Created in 1961 in honour of Vincent Massey, the former Governor General of Canada, it is widely regarded as one of the most acclaimed lecture series in the country.

The Truth About Stories: King, Thomas: 9780887846960: Books - Amazon.ca

As a child, King attended grammar school in Roseville, California, and both private Catholic and public high schools.

After flunking out of Sacramento State University, he joined the US Navy for a brief period of time before receiving a medical discharge for a knee injury.

Following this King worked several jobs, including as an ambulance driver, bank teller, and photojournalist in New Zealand for three years.

King eventually completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Chico State University in California.

He moved to Utah, where he worked as a counselor for aboriginal students before completing a PhD program in English at the University of Utah.

His 1971 MA thesis was on film studies.

His 1986 PhD dissertation was on native studies, one of the earliest of works to explore the oral storytelling tradition as literature.

Around this time, King became interested in aboriginal oral traditions and storytelling.

He left the reservation in 1980.

After moving to Canada in 1980, King taught native studies at the University of Lethbridge (Alberta) in the early 1980s.

He also served as a faculty member of the University of Minnesota’s American Indian studies department.

He is currently an English professor at the University of Guelph and lives in Guelph.

Above: Johnston Clock Tower, University of Guelph

King was chosen to deliver the 2003 Massey Lectures, entitled The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative.

King was the first Massey lecturer of self-identifying aborginal descent.

King explored the native experience in oral stories, literature, history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest in order to make sense of North America’s relationship with its aboriginal peoples.

The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative (Indigenous Americas): King, Thomas: 9780816646272: Amazon.com: Books

King has criticized policies and programs of both the United States and Canadian governments in many interviews and books.

He is worried about aboriginal prospects and rights in North America.

He says that he fears that aboriginal culture, and specifically aboriginal land, will continue to be taken away from aboriginal peoples until there is nothing left for them at all.

In his 2013 book The Inconvenient Indian, King says:

“The issue has always been land.

It will always be land, until there isn’t a square foot of land left in North America that is controlled by native people.”

The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King | Penguin Random House Canada

King also discusses policies regarding aboriginal status.

He noted that legislatures in the 1800s withdrew aboriginal status from persons who graduated from university or joined the army.

King has also worked to identify North American laws that make it complicated to claim status in the first place, for example, the US Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 or Canada’s 1985 Bill C-31.

Bill C-31 amended the Indian Act in 1985 to allow aboriginal women and their children to reclaim status, which the Act had previously withdrawn if the woman married a non-status man.

King claims that the amended act, though progressive for women who had lost their status, threatens the status of future generations because of its limitations.

The Inconvenient Indian Author Thomas King Says He Can't Be All Things to All People | MONTECRISTO — Above: Thomas King

King has been writing novels, and children’s books, and collections of stories since the 1980s.

His notable works include A Coyote Columbus Story (1992) and Green Grass, Running Water (1993).

A Coyote Columbus Story: King, Thomas, Monkman, William Kent: 9780888998309: Amazon.com: Books

King’s writing style incorporates oral storytelling structures with traditional Western narrative.

He writes in a conversational tone.

For example, in Green Grass, Running Water, the narrator argues with some of the characters.

In The Truth About Stories (2003), King addresses the reader as if in a conversation with responses.

Green Grass, Running Water: A Novel: King, Thomas: 9780553373684: Amazon.com: Books

King uses a variety of anecdotes and humorous narratives while maintaining a serious message in a way that has been compared to the style of trickster legends in Native North American culture.

Within this story, King also integrates the recently popularized idea of turtles all the way down in an anecdote introducing this narrative, calling into the relevancy of this ideology in Native history.

(“Turtles all the way down” is an expression of the problem of infinite regress.

The saying alludes to the mythological idea of a World Turtle that supports the flat earth on its back.

It suggests that this turtle rests on the back of an even larger turtle, which itself is part of a column of increasingly large world turtles that continues indefinitely (hence, “turtles all the way down“).

The exact origin of the phrase is uncertain.)

Three turtles of varying sizes stacked on top of each other with the largest at the bottom

Henry Kock (1952 – 2005) was a noted horticulturalist, eco-activist, and founder of the Elm Recovery Project in Ontario.

Born in Sarnia (ON), Kock grew up working for the family business, Huronview Nurseries.

A graduate of the University of Guelph in 1977 with an emphasis on horticulture, he stayed connected to the University until his death.

Affectionately known as “Mr. Arboretum“, he was diagnosed with brain cancer in July 2004.

He finally succumbed to the disease on Christmas Day 2005 at the age of 53.

Weekend ride a tribute to late Guelph horticulturalist Henry Kock — Above: Henry Kock

After the devastating effects of Dutch elm disease on the provincial elm population, Kock created the Elm Recovery Project, collecting scions from the survivors, developing a breeding program and raising the young trees for eventual restoration of DED-tolerant elms in the wild.

Another notable legacy left by Kock is the guelph Hillside Festival, which he co-founded.

Celebrated every year in July at Guelph Lake, just north of the city, folk and other musical acts gather for a three-day weekend event attended by hundreds of people.

Kock was also known for his many activist activities, especially those regarding plants.

He helped to organize the first Guelph Organic Conference, which has increased in popularity each year.

He rallied for peace in Iraq, renewable energy, public transit and urban cycling, as well as being a regular attendee of the International Women’s Day in Toronto each year with his wife.

At the time of his death he was working on a book on growing native trees from seed, a project which some of his botany colleagues at the University of Guelph Arboretum completed.

Additionally, Kock often travelled the province with talks and slide shows about protecting wild placing, propagating native plant species, and alternatives to garden pesticides.

Most notably, however, Kock is recognized for establishing gene banks for rare native plants, including elms.

Things to See & Do: Overview | The Arboretum — Above: Guelph Arboretum

Jean Little (1932 – 2020) was born in Formosa, the daughter of Flora (Gauld), a doctor, and John Llewellyn Little, a physician.

Her parents were Canadian doctors serving as medical missionaries under the United Church of Canada.

The Little family came home to live in Canada in 1939, moving to Guelph in 1940.

After teaching disabled children for several years, Little wrote her first children’s novel, Mine for Keeps, about a child with cerebral palsy.

It won the Little, Brown Canadian Children’s Book Award and was published in 1962.

She has subsequently written over 50 published works, which include novels, picture books, poetry, short stories, and two autobiographical books.

Mine for Keeps by Jean Little (1995-05-25): Amazon.com: Books

Her novel His Banner Over Me is based on her mother’s childhood.

His Banner over Me: Amazon.de: Little, Jean: Fremdsprachige Bücher

Little won literary awards for her work and has been published internationally.

Little taught Children’s Literature at the University of Guelph, where she was an Adjunct Professor in the Department of English.

Jean Little Public School in Guelph is named in her honour.

Tears of joy for young Guelph cancer survivor

She journeyed widely talking to both adults and children themselves about the joys to be found through reading and writing.

In March 2004, she went to India and in November 2006 to Bulgaria.

Little gave the 2016 Margaret Lawrence Lecture at the Canadian Writers Summit in June.

As of 2016, Little resided in Guelph with her sister Pat deVries, her great-niece Jeanie, and her great-nephew Ben.

She continued to write through the aid of a voice-activated computer and travelled with her guide dog Honey.

Jean Little was her family's poet and a pioneer in the Canadian kidlit community | Quill and Quire

Several of Little’s books, such as Mine for Keeps and From Anna, focus on children who have a disability or are affected by a person with a disability.

From Anna: Amazon.de: Little, Jean, Sandin, Joan: Fremdsprachige Bücher

As many of her books were written several decades ago, they now serve as examples of how children with disabilities were previously raised and treated by society.

Another frequent theme is adoption and foster care, as shown in Home from Far and Willow and Twig.

Children often find homes and families throughout the course of the novel, whether it consists of rediscovering the importance of their family, being reunited with family or creating a new family in their new situation.

While the novels often touch on very sad events, ranging from serious illness, abuse and death, the endings are usually positive and show the resilience of children.

Home from far: Little, Jean: 9780316528023: Amazon.com: Books

Douglas Grant Lochhead (pronounced Lock–heed)(1922 – 2011) was a Guelph-born poet, academic librarian, bibliographer and university professor who published more than 30 collections of poetry over five decades, from 1959 to 2009.

Lochhead’s best-known book, High Marsh Road, a collection of 122 short poems chronicling his daily walks across the Tantramar Marshes in southeastern New Brunswick, earned him a nomination for a Governor General’s Award in 1980.

The first 30 poems in High Marsh Road are posted on telephone poles leading from Sackville’s main downtown intersection toward the marshes that so often stirred “the red sea of his singing“.

“I think Douglas thought of poetry as a form of resistance,” his friend and fellow poet Pete Sanger told The Globe and Mail following Lochhead’s death in 2011.

“A form of resistance to non-poetic thinking, to tyranny, to unimaginative views of the world.“

Amazon.com: High Marsh Road: Lines for a Diary (Goose Lane Editions Poetry Books) (9780864921925): Lochhead, Douglas: Books

Lucy Christiana, Lady Duff-Gordon (née Sutherland) (1863 – 1935) was a leading British fashion designer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who worked under the professional name Lucile.

The first British-based designer to achieve international acclaim, Lucy Duff-Gordon was a widely acknowledged innovator in couture styles as well as in fashion industry public relations.

In addition to originating the “mannequin parade“, a precursor to the modern fashion show, and training the first professional models, she launched slit skirts and low necklines, popularized less restrictive corsets, and promoted alluring and pared-down lingerie.

Opening branches of her London house, Lucile Ltd, in Chicago, New York City, and Paris, her business became the first global couture brand, dressing a trend-setting clientele of royalty, nobility, and stage and film personalities.

Duff-Gordon is also remembered as a survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, and as the losing party in the precedent-setting 1917 contract law case of Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, in which Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo wrote the opinion for New York’s highest court, the New York Court of Appeals, upholding a contract between Duff-Gordon and her advertising agent that assigned the agent the sole right to market her name.

It was the first case of its kind, clothes labeled and sold at a lowered cost in a cheaper market under an expensive “brand name“.

The daughter of civil engineer Douglas Sutherland (1838 – 1865) and his Anglo-French-Canadian wife Elinor Saunders (1841 – 1937), Lucy Christiana Sutherland was born in London, England, and raised in Guelph, after her father’s death from typhiod fever.

When her mother remarried in 1871 to the bachelor David Kennedy (d. 1889), Lucy moved with them and her sister, the future novelist Elinor Glyn, to Saint Helier on the Channel Isle of Jersey.

Portrait of Elinor Glyn — Above: Elinor Glyn (1864 – 1943)

Lucy acquired her love of fashion through dressing her collection of dolls, by studying gowns worn by women in family paintings, and by later making clothes for herself and Elinor.

Returning to Jersey, after a visit to relatives in England in 1875, Lucy and Elinor survived the wreck of their ship when it ran aground in a gale.

In 1884, Lucy married for the first time, to James Stuart Wallace, with whom she had a child, Esme (1885–1973).

Wallace was an alcoholic and regularly unfaithful, and Lucy sought consolation in love affairs, including a long relationship with the famous surgeon Sir Morell Mackenzie.

The Wallaces separated circa 1890 and Lucy started divorce proceedings in 1893.

In 1900, Lucy Sutherland Wallace married a Scottish baronet, landowner and sportsman Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon.

In order to support herself and her daughter after the end of her first marriage, Lucy Duff-Gordon began working as a dressmaker from home.

In 1893, she opened Maison Lucile at 24 Old Burlington St., in the heart of the fashionable West End of London, having worked for a year previously from her mother’s flat at 25 Davies Street.

In 1897, Lucy Duff-Gordon opened a larger shop at 17 Hanover Square, Westminster, before a further move (1904) to 14 George Street, Oxford.

In 1903, the business was incorporated as “Lucile Ltd” and the following year moved to 23 Hanover Square, where it operated for the next 20 years.

Duff-Gordon was eventually bankrupted after she revealed in the American press that she was not designing much of the clothing that was attributed to her name.

She spent her later years selling imported clothing and smaller collections in a succession of unsuccessful small ‘boutiques‘.

Lucile Ltd served a wealthy clientele including aristocracy, royalty, and theatre stars.

The business expanded, with salons opening in New York City in 1910, Paris in 1911, and Chicago in 1915, making it the first leading couture house with full-scale branches in three countries.

Lucile was most famous for its lingerie, tea gowns and evening wear.

Its luxuriously layered and draped garments in soft fabrics of blended pastel colors, often accentuated with sprays of hand-made silk flowers, became its hallmark.

However, Lucile also offered simple, smart tailored suits and daywear.

The dress illustrated below typifies the classically draped style often found in Lucile designs.

Lucy Duff-Gordon originally designed it in Paris, for Lucile Ltd’s spring 1913 collection, and later specially adapted it for London socialite Heather Firbank (1888 – 1954) and other well-known clients, including actress Kitty Gordon and dancer Lydia Kyasht of the Ballets Russes.

The example illustrated below was worn by Miss Firbank and is preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Kitty Gordon 1900s.jpg — Above: Actress Kitty Gordon (1878 – 1974)

Above: Dancer Lydia Kyasht (1885 – 1959)

Above: Lucile evening dress, 1913

Lucy Duff-Gordon is also widely credited with training the first professional fashion models (called mannequins) as well as staging the first runway or “catwalk” style shows.

These affairs were theatrically inspired, invitation-only, tea-time presentations, complete with a stage, curtains, mood-setting lighting, music from a string band, souvenir gifts, and programmes.

Another innovation in the presentation of her collections was what she called her “emotional gowns“.

These dresses were given descriptive names, influenced by literature, history, popular culture and her interest in the psychology and personality of her clients.

Some well-known clients, whose clothing influenced many when it appeared in early films, on stage, and in the press, included: Irene Castle, Lily Elsie, Gertie Millar, Gaby Desyls, Billie Burke and Mary Pickford.

Above: Dancer Irene Castle (1893 – 1969) in a Lucile dress for ***Watch Your Step*** (1914)

Above: Actress / singer Lily Elsie (1886 – 1962) in Lucile dress, ***The Merry Widow*** (1907)

Above: Actress / singer Gaby Deslys (1881 – 1920)

Lucile costumed numerous theatrical productions, including the London première of Franz Lehár’s operetta The Merry Widow (1907), the Ziegfield Follies revues on Broadway (1915 – 1921), and the D.W. Griffith silent movie Way Down East (1920).

Lucile creations were also frequently featured in Pathé and Gaumont newsreels of the 1910s and 1920s, and Lucy Duff-Gordon appeared in her own weekly spot in the British newsreel “Around the Town” (1919 – 1921).

Early Lucile Ltd sketches, archived at the Victoria and Albert Museum, provide evidence that in 1904 the salon employed at least one sketch artist to record Lucy Duff-Gordon’s designs for in-house use.

As demands grew on her time, especially in the US during WW1, she was aided by various sketch artists who created ideas based on the “Lucile look“.

In her memoir, Lucy Duff-Gordon credited her corps of assistants for their contributions to the success of the New York branch of Lucile Ltd.

Many of these assistants’ drawings were published in the press and signed “Lucile“, though occasionally the signature of the artist appeared.

It was general practice for couture houses to use professional artists to execute drawings of designs as they were being created, as well as of the artist’s own ideas for each season’s output and for individual clients.

These drawings were overseen by Lucy Duff-Gordon, who often critiqued them, adding notes, instructions, dates, and sometimes her own signature or initials, indicating she approved the design.

Like many couturiers, Lucy Duff-Gordon designed principally on the human form.

Her surviving personal sketchbooks indicate her limited technical ability as a sketch artist, but a skill at recording colour.

Surviving Lucile Ltd sketches reveal numerous artists of varying talent levels, and these are often mis-attributed to herself.

Howard Greer admitted in his autobiography that the sketches he and his colleagues executed were often confused interpretations of the Lucile style that did not match their employer’s vision.

Moreover, he claimed customers were not always pleased by the actual dresses created from the sketches he and the other assistants submitted.

Unprecedented for a leading couturière, Lucy Duff-Gordon promoted her collections journalistically.

In addition to a weekly syndicated fashion page for the Hearst newspaper syndicate (1910–22), she wrote monthly columns for Harper’s Bazaar and Good Housekeeping (1912 – 1922).

Kate Winslet June-July 2014 HB Cover.jpg

A Hearst writer ghost wrote the newspaper page after 1918, but the designer herself penned the Good Housekeeping and Harper’s Bazaar features throughout their duration, although the responsibility of producing a regular piece proved difficult, and she missed several deadlines.

Good Housekeeping January 2015 issue.jpg

Lucile fashions also appeared regularly in Vogue, Femina, Les Modes, L’art et la Mode, and other leading fashion magazines (1910 – 1922).

Along with Hearst publications, Lucile contributed to Vanity Fair, Dress, The Illustrated London News, The London Magazine, Pearson’s Magazine and Munsey’s.

In addition to her career as a couturière, costumier, journalist, and pundit, Lucy Duff-Gordon took significant advantage of opportunities for commercial endorsement, lending her name to advertising for brassieres, perfume, shoes, and other luxury apparel and beauty items.

Among the most adventurous of her licensing ventures were a two-season, lower-priced, mail-order fashion line for Sears, Roebuck & Co. (1916 –1917), which promoted her clothing in special de luxe catalogues, and a contract to design interiors for limousines and town cars for the Chalmers Motor Co., later Chrysler Corporation (1917).

In 1912, Lucy Duff-Gordon travelled to America on business in connection with the New York branch of Lucile Ltd.

She and her husband, Sir Cosmo, booked first class passage on the ocean liner RMS Titanic under the alias “Mr. and Mrs. Morgan“.

Her secretary, Laura Mabel Francatelli, nicknamed “Franks“, accompanied the couple.

Above: The RMS Titanic leaving Southampton harbour

On 14 April, at 11:40 pm the Titanic struck an iceberg and began to sink.

"Untergang der Titanic", a painting showing a big ship sinking with survivors in the water and boats

During the evacuation, the Duff-Gordons and Francatelli escaped in Lifeboat #1.

Although the boat was designed to hold 40 people, it was lowered with only 12 people aboard, seven of them male crew members.

Some time after the Titanic sank, while afloat in Lifeboat #1, Lucy Duff-Gordon reportedly commented to her secretary:

“There is your beautiful nightdress gone.”

A fireman, annoyed by her comment, replied that while the couple could replace their property, he and the other crew members had lost everything in the sinking.

Sir Cosmo then offered each of the men £5 (equivalent to £499 in 2019) to aid them until they received new assignments.

While on the RMS Carpathia, the Cunard liner that rescued Titanic‘s survivors, Sir Cosmo presented the men from Lifeboat #1 with cheques drawn on his bank, Coutts.

This action later spawned gossip that the Duff-Gordons had bribed their lifeboat’s crew not to return to save swimmers out of fear the vessel would be swamped.

These rumours were fuelled by the tabloid press in the US and, eventually, in the UK.

On 17 May, Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon testified at the London hearings of the British Board of Trade inquiry into the disaster.

On 20 May, Lady Duff-Gordon took the stand.

The couple’s testimony attracted the largest crowds during the inquiry.

While Sir Cosmo faced tough criticism during cross-examination, his wife had it slightly easier.

Dressed in black, with a large, veiled hat, she told the court she remembered little about what happened in the lifeboat on the night of the sinking, due to seasickness, and she could not recall specific conversations.

Lawyers did not seem to have pressed her very hard.

Lucy Duff-Gordon noted that for the rest of her husband’s life he was brokenhearted over the negative coverage by the “yellow press“, during his cross-examination at the inquiry.

The final report by the inquiry determined that the Duff-Gordons did not deter the crew from any attempt at rescue through bribery or any other method of coercion.

In 2012, a box of documents and letters concerning the Titanic sinking belonging to the Duff-Gordons was rediscovered at the London office of Veale Wasborough Vizards, the legal firm that merged with Tweedies, which had represented the couple.

Among the papers was an inventory of the possessions Lucy Duff Gordon had lost, the total value listed as £3,208 3s 6d.

One letter detailed what she wore when leaving the ship:

two dressing gowns “for warmth“
a muff
her “motor hat“.

(A faded grey silk kimono with typical Fortuny-style black cord edging, for some time thought to have been worn by her that night, is now understood to have belonged to her daughter Esme, Countess of Halsbury, as its distinctive print dates the item to post World War 1)

An apron said to have been worn by Francatelli can be seen at the Maritime Museum in Liverpool.

Her life-jacket was sold, along with correspondence about her experiences in the disaster, at Christie’s auction house, London, in 2007.

Lucy Duff-Gordon had another close call three years after surviving the Titanic, when she booked passage aboard the final voyage of the RMS Lusitania.

It was reported in the press that she cancelled her trip due to illness.

The Lusitania was sunk by a German torpedo on 7 May 1915.

In 1917, Lucy Duff-Gordon lost the New York Court of Appeals case of Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, in which Judge Benjmin N. Cardozo established precedent in the realm of contract law when he held the designer to a contract that assigned the sole right to market her professional name to her advertising agent, Otis F. Wood, despite the fact that the contract lacked explicit consideration for her promise.

Cardozo noted that:

“A promise may be lacking, and yet the whole writing may be ‘instinct with an obligation'” and, if so, “there is a contract.”

Cardozo famously opened the opinion with the following description of the designer:

The defendant styles herself “a creator of fashions.”
Her favor helps a sale.
Manufacturers of dresses, millinery, and like articles are glad to pay for a certificate of her approval.
The things which she designs, fabrics, parasols, and what not, have a new value in the public mind when issued in her name.

Although the term “creator of fashions” was part of the tagline in ‘Lucile’s‘ columns for the Hearst papers, some observers have claimed that Cardozo’s tone revealed a certain disdain for her position in the world of fashion.

Others accept that he was merely echoing language used by the defendant in her own submissions to the court as well as in her publicity.

Lucy Duff-Gordon’s connection to her design empire began to disintegrate following a restructuring of Lucile, Ltd in 1918–19.

An acrimonious battle emerged in the press, culminating in her public acknowledgement that many Lucile dresses were not designed by her.

Lucy Duff-Gordon’s autobiography acknowledges that this had been the case since at least 1911.

By September 1922, she had ceased designing for the company, which effectively closed.

A completely new ‘Lucile’ was formed, using the same premises in Paris, and different designs, but it gradually failed.

Meanwhile, its founder (who continued to be known as ‘Lucile‘) worked from private premises designing personally for individual clients.

She was briefly associated with the firm of Reville, Ltd., maintained a ready-to-wear shop of her own and lent her name to a wholesale operation in America.

Lucy Duff-Gordon also continued as a fashion columnist and critic after her design career ended, contributing to London’s Daily Sketch and Daily Express (1922 – 1930), and she penned her best-selling autobiography Discretions and Indiscretions (1932).

Discretions and Indiscretions: Edwardian Couturier, It Girl & Titanic Survivor by Lucy Duff-Gordon

Dorothy Maclean (1920 – 2020) was a Canadian writer and educator on spiritual subjects who was one of the original three adults at what is now the Findhorn Foundation in northeast Scotland.

Maclean was born in Guelph.

From 1941 onwards she worked for the British Security Coordination (BSC) in New York City.

(The BSC was a covert organisation set up in New York City by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in May 1940 upon the authorisation of the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

Its purpose was to investigate enemy activities, prevent sabotage against British interests in the Americas, and mobilise pro-British opinion in the Americas.

As a ‘huge secret agency of nationwide news manipulation and black propaganda‘, the BSC influenced news coverage in the Herald Tribune, the New York Post, the Baltimore Sun and radio New York Worldwide.

The stories disseminated from the organisation’s offices at Rockefeller Center would then be legitimately picked up by other radio stations and newspapers, before being relayed to the American public.

Through this, anti-German stories were placed in major American media outlets to help turn public opinion.)

After being posted to Panama, she met and married John Wood, though the couple would divorce in 1951.

On her way to New York City in 1941, Maclean had met spiritual teacher Sheena Govan, and it was through her that she would later meet Peter Caddy.

Living in England in the 1950s, Maclean became involved in the spiritual practices of Govan and Caddy and eventually Peter’s wife Eileen Caddy.

When the Caddys were appointed to manage a hotel in Scotland, Maclean joined them as the hotel’s secretary.

After the Caddys became unemployed in 1962, they moved into a caravan near the village of Findhorn.

In 1963, an annex was built so that Maclean could continue to work with them.

A community eventually grew up around the Caddys and Maclean, and this community has since 1972 been known as the Findhorn Foundation.

The Findhorn Foundation and the surrounding community have no formal doctrine or creed.

The Foundation offers a range of workshops, programmes and events in the environment of a working ecovillage.

The programmes are intended to give participants practical experience of how to apply spiritual values in daily life.

Approximately 3,000 participants from around the world take part in residential programmes each year.

Above: The Findhorn Foundation community

Maclean was known for her work with devas, said to be intelligences overseeing the natural world.

Her book To Hear the Angels Sing gives an overview of this work and also provides autobiographical materials.

To Hear the Angels Sing: An Odyssey of Co-Creation with the Devic Kingdom: Amazon.de: Secrest, Freya, Maclean, Dorothy: Fremdsprachige Bücher

A full-length biography, Memoirs of an Ordinary Mystic was published in 2010.

Maclean left Findhorn in 1973 and subsequently founded an educational organization in North America with David Spangler.

Her childhood home, Woodside, at 40 Spring Street, Guelph has since been designated a heritage property under the Ontario Heritage Act.

Maclean retired from public life in 2010 and lived again at Findhorn.

She turned 92 years old during Findhorn Foundation’s 50-year anniversary celebration in 2012.

She turned 100 in January 2020 and died shortly after on 12 March 2020, in Findhorn.

Memoirs of an Ordinary Mystic (English Edition) eBook: Maclean, Dorothy: Amazon.de: Kindle-Shop

Robert Munsch was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

He graduated from Fordham University in 1969 with a Bachelop of Arts degree in history and from Boston University in 1971 with a Master of Arts degree in anthropology.

He studied to become a Jesuit priest, but decided he would rather work with children after having jobs at orphanages and daycare centres.

In 1973, he received a Master of Education in Child Studies from Tufts University.

In 1975, he moved to Canada to work at the preschool at the University of Guelph.

He also taught in the College of Family and Consumer Studies at the University of Guelph as a lecturer and as an assistant professor.

Munsch signs autograph for a young fan at Guelph, Ontario, Canada in 1997 — Above: Munsch signing an autograph for a young fan

In Guelph, he was encouraged to publish the many stories he made up for the children he worked with.

One of Munsch’s best-known books, Love You Forever, was listed 4th on the 2001 Publishers Weekly All-Time Bestselling Children’s Books list for paperbacks at 6.97 million copies (not including the 1.049 million hardcover copies).

It has since sold more than 30 million copies and has been featured on the episode “The One With the Cake” from the TV show Friends, as well as being mentioned by Oprah Winfrey on Late Night with David Letterman as being her favorite children’s book.

Munsch, R: Love You Forever: Amazon.de: Munsch, Robert N., McGraw, Sheila: Fremdsprachige Bücher

His other famous book The Paper Bag Princess has sold more than seven million copies and is considered to be a feminist story, as well as a literary classic.

The Paper Bag Princess (Munsch for Kids): Amazon.de: Munsch, Robert, Martchenko, Michael: Fremdsprachige Bücher

Munsch and his wife Ann discovered they couldn’t have biological children after two pregnancies ended with still-birth.

They have three adopted children.

Munsch has publicly talked about his bipolar disorder and addiction issues.

In August 2008, Munsch suffered a stroke that affected his memory.

He has since retired; however, he continues to publish two previously written books each year.

On 15 May 2010, Munsch revealed that he has been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive and manic-depressive disorder, and that he had a cocaine addiction that started in 2005 and was an alcoholic.

At the time, he had been clean for four months, and had regularly attended Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) for the previous 25 years and Narcotics Anonymous meetings more recently.

75 things you might not know about Robert Munsch | CBC Books — Above: Robert Munsch (pre-beard)

Munsch is known for his exuberant storytelling methods, with exaggerated expressions and acted voices.

He makes up his stories in front of audiences and refines them through repeated tellings.

His stories do not have a recurring single character.

Instead, the characters are based on the children to whom he first told the story, including his own children.

He often performs at children’s festivals and appears at elementary schools, sometimes unannounced.

In 1991, some of his books were adapted into the cartoon series A Bunch of Munsch.

He is also the most stolen author at the Toronto Public Library.

Born in Guelph, Brendan Myers was raised in Elora, a small village north of Guelph in Wellington County.

He was born the eldest son of an Irish-Canadian family and completed a bachelor’s degree in drama and philosophy in 1996 and then a master’s degree in philosophy in 1999, both from the University of Guelph.

While at university, he became more involved in ethics and environmentalism and he converted from Catholicism to paganism, becoming an activist member of the neo-pagan community.

Myers continued his academic career in Ireland, and eventually completed a doctoral dissertation entitled “Time and the Land” at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Normative in their conception, Myers’ works fundamentally examine ideas regarding the interconnectedness of creation and emphasize the importance of strong moral character as vital to the health and well-being of the world and society.

Myers criticizes utilitarian views, especially “negative” utilitarianism, which holds that ethics require nothing more than the minimization of harm, and of deontological views, which emphasize social duties and adhering to social norms, i.e. rules.

As an alternative to utilitarianism and deontology, Myers explores the ethics of character and identity, self-knowledge and shared life.

Interview with Brendan Cathbad Myers | Paganism — Above: Brendan Myers

In 1848, George Pirie (1799 – 1870) became the publisher of the Guelph Herald newspaper after his attempt at farming in the Bon Accord community.

The farm was sold and the family moved to Guelph where he ran the Guelph Herald publishing and printing office on Wyndham Street.

The elder Pirie was a staunch conservative and Scottish Canadian poet.

As a young man, Alexander Fraser Pirie (1849 – 1903) assisted at his father’s newspaper office.

The paper struggled to maintain circulation and relied upon job printing work. Imprint magazine later described these early days in a profile of Pirie:

“He first saw the light of publication day in his father’s office, the Guelph Herald, in 1849, and was brought up to the sound of the mallet and planer, the hammering of wooden quoins in the chases and the incessant cry of “Colour!” on the part of the man who pulled the lever of the Washington press.
The principal event of his early life was stirring the glue and molasses over a hot fire when the foreman decided to cast a new roller, the making of a new roller being at that time regarded as an epoch in the history of all well-regulated country printing offices.“

A F Pirie 1870s portrait age 20s.jpg — Above: A.F. Pirie

At 21 years of age, after his father’s death in 1870, Pirie became publisher of The Herald.

During this time he took on the numerous duties of a local newspaper which included the issuing of marriage licenses.

At this time he received a letter from Prime Minister John A. Macdonald authorizing him as the local agent for these licenses.

However, Pirie had a great desire to work as a journalist in a larger city, and two years later moved on to Toronto.

In 1924, The Herald was absorbed by the Guelph Mercury (1853 – 2016).

By 1874, Pirie was working at The Toronto Sun as a columnist.

From a circa 1876 article:

“The Sun still retains one of the most fertile humorists in Canada in the person of Mr. Alexander Pirie, commonly known as the “Sun Skit Urchin”.
This gentleman, who is still very young, finds plenty of work for the scissors of his contemporaries in a daily column of “Sun Skits.”
They abound in reckless humor, sparing no one, and have just the pleasant bitterness of a dry curacoa.
They have now flowed forth in an uninterrupted stream for nearly two years, and neither the supply nor quality shows any signs of falling off“.

A caricature of Pirie as the “Sun Skit Urchin” appeared in Grip magazine at this time.

Grip magazine was Canada’s version of the satirical British magazine Punch.

While Pirie was also a contributor to Grip, these contributions were submitted anonymously.

He also penned several articles for Saturday Night (1887 – 2005).

“Rambles About Rimouski” was a story of the history of Rimouski (QB).

Skyline of Rimouski with the St. Lawrence River in the background — Above: Rimouski

Pirie was a popular editorial columnist, as well as social figure and public speaker.

During the 1870s, he lived with his mother and other family members on Mutual Street in Toronto.

This house, now demolished, was in the vicinity of where Ryerson University now stands.

Ryerson University Crest.png — Above: Crest of Ryerson University, famous for its joiurnalism programme

He was in demand as a public speaker, and known for his use of political humour.

Throughout his years in Toronto Pirie was present at many of the city’s social events, such as an 1885 reading by Robert Kirkland “the Khan” Kernighan (1854 – 1926).

His speaking engagements ranged from reviews of his European travels to speeches in support of Liberal political candidates.

Above: The Khan lecture

In 1876, Pirie joined the Toronto Telegram (1876 – 1971).

He was best known as the second editor of the Telegram, a role he held until 1888.

The Telegram was founded in 1876 by John Ross Robertson (1841 – 1918) as a paper devoted to Toronto’s interests, and, as Robertson described it, devoted to “today’s news today“.

Toronto Telegram (front page).jpg — Above: Last edition of the ***Toronto Telegram***

Pirie spent his first year at the Telegram working under the historian John Charles Dent (1841 – 1888).

After that he took on the role of editor which he held until 1888.

Toronto Telegram Building (Toronto, Ont.) : Digital Archive : Toronto Public Library

A 1923 review of the history of Toronto newspapers commented on Pirie’s time at the Telegram:

“Then came Mr. A. F. Pirie, one of the wittiest and most companionable of men, whose paragraphs, straight-flung and barbed at the point, enlarged public interest in the enterprise“.

TORONTO TELEGRAM TIN RACK TOPPER SURFACE SCRATCHES LOCATION: LOWER BACKROOM

In 1886, Pirie participated in a literary debate relating to Canada’s role in North America and her relationship with the United States.

Articles under the heading “Canadian Prospects and Politics” were submitted to The North American Review for the January 1886 issue (Volume 142, Issue 350) by the Marquis of Lorne and A. F. Pirie with a brief note from Sir John A. Macdonald.

North American Review - 1st issue - William Tudor's copy.gif — Above: 1st issue of the ***North American Review***, the first literary magazinne in the United States

In February 1893, Pirie was elected president of the Canadian Press Association.

In this capacity he spoke on behalf of Canadian interests at the World Press Conference in Chicago.

In a 29 May 1893, article from the Toronto Mail (1872 – 1895), “Good Words for Canada: Plain Talk at the Press Convention“, it was reported that Canada had the “honor of closing the proceedings of the 9th annual convention of the National Editorial Association” with the last address delivered by A. F. Pirie.

Mr. Pirie also represented the Canadian Press Association at the World’s Press Congress.

The reporter felt that:

“He said some good words for Canada, reminding his hearers that there were a hundred thousand Canadians in Chicago alone.”

Also, that Pirie had noted the role women had been taking in the press congress and stated that as the public journals were made for men and women, “there seemed to be no good reason that women as well as men should not bear a part in making them”.

Finally, he made a strong plea for closer trade relations between the U.S. and Canada:

“Holding it to be a shame and an outrage that Canadian workmen should be shut out of the United States, and Canadian products subjected to a high duty, after all the Canadians had done for the United States at the time of the civil war, when 40,000 took up arms for the union, and all that Canadians in the States are still doing in building up that country“.

He appealed to the journalists of America for fair play for Canada.

Pirie’s work attracted many admirers.

Imprint magazine, in profiling the new President of the Canadian Press Association wrote in reference to his 1889 William Notman portrait which was published within the article:

“The portrait does not do justice to its subject:

To do so it would require to be a “speaking likeness”, for our friend is just as handy with his tongue as he is with his pen — he is a born orator as well as journalist.”

William Notman.jpg — Above: Photographer / businessman William Notman (1826 – 1891)

Commenting on his career, Imprint noted:

“Mr. Pirie is a writer of great versatility, a capital speaker, one of the best-natured men in the profession, and publishes a model country weekly.”

And on his popularity:

“He is one of the most popular of our Canadian journalists, a believer in his country and its future, and is a good representative of the men who make Canadian newspapers.“

Alexander Fraser Pirie (1849-1903) - Find A Grave Memorial — Above: A.F. Pirie

He married Hester Emma McCausland (1858 – 1901) in Toronto on 12 June 1889, at her father’s home on Jarvis Street.

Miss McCausland’s father Joseph McCausland had been in Toronto since the 1820s and was a native of Armagh, Ireland, and founder of a successful Toronto stained glass window firm.

The newly married couple moved to Montreal where Pirie briefly worked as an Editor at the Montreal Star.

At this time, they were photographed by Canada’s top portrait photographer William Notman.

Hester Emma McCausland Pirie (1858-1901) - Find A Grave Memorial — Above: Alex and Hester

By 1889, they returned to Dundas (ON) and purchased a home on Sydenham Street that they named “Sydenham Lodge”.

Four children were born in Dundas during the 1890s: Russell Fraser, Elsie Gowan, Jean Booth and Goldwin McCausland.

In recent years, this home was used for the filming of one episode in Season Six of The West Wing.

In 1895, Pirie lost his mother, Jane (Booth) Pirie, who fell ill after a visit to Dundas from her Toronto home.

Jane Pirie had actively assisted in her husband’s publishing and printing business in Guelph, and in the 1890s had drafted an account of her travels to Western Canada which Mr. Pirie published in the Dundas Banner.

Above: Downtown Dundas, 2005

Pirie was interested in politics and during the Parliamentary session of 1888 he had represented the Montreal Star (1869 – 1979) in the press gallery at Ottawa.

Above: Parliamentary Press Gallery, 1917

In the Provincial General Election of 1898, Pirie had received a Reform nomination as a candidate for North Wentworth.

This was not successful, and afterwards he worked for the Liberal Party of Canada, often appearing as a public speaker, or editing work destined for publication.

He appeared in Brantford (ON), on behalf of the Honourable William Paterson for the election of 1900.

At that time, the audience rose to its feet in a standing ovation.

Pirie began his speech noting that his reputation as a humorist preceded him, however, in this case, he had some serious issues to cover.

Clockwise from top: Flowerbed outside RBC Building, Statue of Joseph Brant, Bell Homestead, Grand River, City Hall, Colborne Street in Downtown Brantford — Above: Images of modern Brantford

Pirie’s wife died of pneumonia in 1901 after a brief illness.

She was only 43 years old.

After this time, Pirie’s health broke down and he limited his public engagements.

He continued some of his work for the Liberal Party of Canada and public speaking engagements.

According to newspaper accounts after his death, his relatives noted that he began to stay indoors for much of the time.

His cousin, Robinson Pirie of Hamilton, began to visit him to urge him to get out.

In 1901, he attended a conference for the Canadian Press Association held in Charlottetown (PEI), Pirie wrote to his sister-in-law in Toronto (Mrs. Boyce Thompson) that many events had lost their lustre.

He told her that he and his wife had always dreamt of returning to Toronto after the children grew up.

He described the regular visits he made to his wife’s grave on Sundays.

In July 1903, Pirie visited relatives in Brandon (MB), in conjunction with some work for the Liberal party.

Relatives hoped that this trip might improve his state of mind.

Above: ***Burlington Gazette***, 3 August 1903

After his return to Dundas, he died at home on 15 August 1903.

This event shocked the community.

In a letter preserved at the Whitehern Museum Archives, Mrs. McQuesten wrote to her son Reverend Calvin McQuesten in Montreal about the event.

Pirie’s pallbearers included John Ross Robertson of the Toronto Telegram.

He was buried in Grove Cemetery next to his wife.

Four children were left without parents.

The children’s guardian was their paternal aunt, Ada L. Pirie (Mrs. Walpole Murdoch), who had been assisting Pirie since the death of her sister-in-law.

In 1918, The Hamilton Review published an article on Pirie by Sir John Willison (of The Globe) who had been profiling political and public personalities from Canada’s past.

He wrote:

“But Mr. Pirie was more than a jester.
He had qualities of heart and mind which were seldom revealed and only to those who had his affection and confidence.
These were few, for beneath an apparent openness and spontaneity there was a reserve which was not easily penetrated.

He got much out of life, but not all that he desired.
Happy but often anxious and foreboding.
When I think of Pirie I recall what was said of Shelley:
‘He passed through life like a strange bird upon a great journey, singing always of the paradise to which he was travelling, and suddenly lost from the sight of men in the midst of his song.‘ “

Sandra Sabatini is a Canadian writer.

Born in Guelph, Sabatini is a graduate of the doctoral program in English Literature at the University of Waterloo.

She also has a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Guelph where she currently teaches.

blog — sandra sabatini — Above: Sandra Sabatini

Her first collection of short stories, The One with the News (2000), a collection of linked stories exploring the impact of Alzheimer’s disease on a family, was shortlisted for the McClelland Stewart Writers Trust Journey and for the Upper Canada Writers’ Craft Award.

The One With the News: Sabatini, Sandra: 9780889842175: Amazon.com: Books

Sabatini’s second book, Making Babies: Infants in Canadian Fiction (2004), explored how babies are becoming more predominant in contemporary Canadian fiction and developing their own literary identity.

Making Babies: Infants in Canadian Fiction by Sandra Sabatini (2003-10-01): Amazon.com: Books

Her second collection of short stories, The Dolphins at Sainte-Marie (2006), explores small town living in southern Ontario and the curiosities of youth and inexperience.

The Dolphins at Sainte-Marie: Amazon.co.uk: Sabatini, Sandra: 9780143017608: Books

Her latest book, Dante’s War, a novel, is about an Italian soldier stationed in Africa during the Second World War.

It is said to be the first novel written in English to present the Italian point of view on World War II.

Amazon.com: Dante's War (9781554701131): Sabatini, Sandra: Books

Joe Sawyer (né Joseph Sauers)(1906 – 1982) was a Canadian film actor.

He appeared in more than 200 films between 1927 and 1962, and was sometimes billed under his birth name.

He was born in Guelph.

Sawyer gained acting experience in the Pasadena Playhouse.

Popular roles that he portrayed included Sergeant Biff O’Hara in the Rin Tin Tin TV program, a film, and on radio.

On Stories of the Century in 1954, he portrayed Butch Cassidy, a role which he repeated in the 1958 episode “The Outlaw Legion” of the syndicated western series Frontier Doctor.

Sawyer also appeared on ABC’s Maverick, Sugarfoot, Peter Gunn and Surfside 6, as well as NBC’s Bat Masterson.

Sawyer died 21 April 1982, in Ashland, Oregon from liver cancer.

He was 75.

David Troy Somerville (1933 – 2015) was a Canadian singer operating primarily in the United States, best known as the co-founder, and original lead singer, of The Diamonds, one of the most popular vocal groups of the 1950s.

David Somerville, interviewed in 1993, the day after his return to the stage as the original lead singer of The Diamonds - Pop, Rock & Doo Wopp Live! — Above: Dave Somerville

Born in Guelph, Somerville grew up in a musical family in the nearby farming village of Rockwood, 50 miles west of Toronto.

In 1947, at the age of 14, he moved to Toronto with his parents and brother Marc, where he entered Central Tech to study architecture and building construction.

He changed the focus of his studies to radio, and in 1952, at the age of 19, secured a position at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in the engineering department as a radio operator while concurrently studying voice at the University of Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music.

In 1953, Somerville, while working as a sound engineer for the CBC in Toronto, met three other young singers: Ted Kowalski, Phil Levitt and Bill Reed.

They decided to form a stand-up quartet called The Diamonds.

The group’s first performance was in the basement of St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Toronto singing in a Christmas minstrel show.

The audience’s reaction to the Somerville-led group was so positive that they decided that night they would turn professional.

After 18 months of rehearsal, they drove to New York and tied for 1st place on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.

The prize of being guest artist for a week on Godfrey’s show led to a recording contract with Coral Records.

Professional musician Nat Goodman became their manager.

Coral released four songs, the most notable being “Black Denim Trousers & Motorcycle Boots“, written by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller.

The next big step was an audition with Cleveland radio disc jockey Bill Randle, who had aided in the success of some popular groups, such as The Crew Cuts.

Randle was impressed with The Diamonds and introduced them to a producer at Mercury Records who signed the group to a recording contract.

The Diamonds’ first recording for Mercury was “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” (originated by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers), which reached #12 in the US as their first hit, and their follow-up hit single, “The Church Bells May Ring” (originally by The Willows), reached #14 in the US.

The Diamonds – Why Do Fools Fall In Love (1956, Vinyl) - Discogs

The Diamonds‘ biggest hits were 1957’s “Little Darlin’” (originally recorded by The Gladiolas, written by Maurice Williams) and “The Stroll” (1957), an original song written for the group by Clyde Otis, from an idea by Dick Clark.

Album Little Darlin', The Diamonds | Qobuz: download and streaming in high quality

Although they were signed to do rock and roll, Mercury also paired them with jazz composer and arranger Pete Rugolo, in one of his Meet series recordings.

The album, entitled The Diamonds Meet Pete Rugolo, allowed them to return to their roots and do some established standards.

The group sang “Little Darlin’” and “Where Mary Go” in the film The Big Beat.

The Big Beat (1958) starring William Reynolds, Andra Martin & Jeffrey Stone | Lobby cards, Movie memorabilia, Vintage movies

They sang the theme song to the 1958 film, Kathy O’.

Their television appearances included the TV shows of Steve Allen, Perry Como, Vic Damone, Tony Bennett, Eddy Arnold and Paul Winchell.

They also appeared on American Bandstand.

In the late 1950s, Reed, Kowalski and Levitt left the group and were replaced by Mike Douglas, John Felten, and Evan Fisher.

There were no more hit records by The Diamonds after Somerville left.

Despite the ever-changing style of rock & roll and their Mercury contract expiring, The Diamonds continued touring the country.

After Dave Somerville left the group in 1961 to pursue a folk singing career as “David Troy“, he was replaced by Jim Malone.

After leaving the Diamonds, Somerville married Judy Corns of Evansville (IN) and began a six-year solo career as a folk artist, using the stage name David Troy.

During this period, Somerville also studied acting, with Leonard Nimoy as his teacher, and made numerous guest-starring appearances, often credited as “David Troy“, on various television programs.

David Somerville was born October 2, 1933. | The Real Nerd Herd

Around this time, he became one of the clients of the William Morris Agency, which has since merged with the Endeavor Talent Agency to become the present-day William Morris – Endeavor Agency.

As such, he did extensive voiceover work and was heard in hundreds of radio, television and cable advertisements.

Above: William Morris monogram on fireplace

In 1967, Dave joined The Four Preps as a replacement for Ed Cobb, the original bass singer.

In 1969, he and Bruce Belland, the Four Preps‘s original lead singer, concentrated on a folk/comedy act as the duo of Belland & Somerville.

FOUR PREPS - Capitol Collectors Series: The Four Preps - Amazon.com Music

As such, they appeared in concert with Henry Mancini and Johnny Mathis and were regulars on The Tim Conway Show, a CBS-TV prime-time comedy series.

The Tim Conway Show (TV Series 1980–1981) - IMDb

As songwriters, Bruce and Dave co-wrote “The Troublemaker“, which became the title track of two Willie Nelson albums.

The duo sang in a later roster of the Four Preps with Jim Pike of The Lettermen.

Willie Nelson at Farm Aid 2009 - Cropped.jpg — Above: Willie Nelson

In 1972, Somerville formed the group WW Fancy, which also included Keith Barbour and Gail Jensen as members.

In the late 1980s, he again sang with original members of The Diamonds and also returned to The Four Preps with Bruce Belland, Ed Cobb and Jim Yester of The Association.

In 1972, Somerville sang background vocals along with The Blossoms in B.J. Thomas’ version of “Rock and Roll Lullaby“.

B.J. Thomas in 1972 — Above: B. J. Thomas

Somerville’s song “The Ballad of the Unknown Stuntman“, jointly written and composed with Jensen, inspired Glen Larson, who had been the Four Preps‘s original baritone vocalist, to create the central characters and develop the core format of The Fall Guy, starring Lee Majors, for 20th Century Fox Television, which became a highly successful television series for ABC TV.

With additional lyrics which Larson wrote for it, “The Unknown Stuntman” became the theme for The Fall Guy.

Somerville’s own home in the Hollywood Hills was used as the set for the home of Majors’ character, Colt Seavers.

His first children’s album was titled The Cosmic Adventures of Diamond Dave.

It contained many original songs and characters and received critical acclaim in the US and Canada.

Diamond Dave Somerville - The Cosmic Adventures of Diamond Dave – Snailworx

The Diamonds have been honored and inducted into The Vocal Group Hall of Fame, The Doo Wop Hall of Fame, The Rockabilly Hall of Fame and are recipients of Canada’s Juno Award.

Somerville’s last stage show, On The 1957 Rock & Roll Greyhound Bus, was based on rock and roll’s first major tour.

In it, he told road stories and sang the songs of such pioneer jukebox giants as Buddy Holly & The Crickets, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, and Chuck Berry.

Drifters Medley - Under the Boardwalk / Save the Last Dance for Me - song by Diamond Dave Somerville | Spotify

Ned Sparks was born in Guelph, but moved to St. Thomas, where he grew up.

Sparks left home at age 16 and attempted to work as a gold prospector on the Klondike Gold Rush.

After running out of money, he won a spot as a singer on a traveling musical company’s tour.

At age 19, he returned to Canada and briefly attended a Toronto seminary.

After leaving the seminary, he worked for the railroad and worked in theater in Toronto.

In 1907, he left Toronto for New York City to try his hand in the Broadway theatre, where he appeared in his first show in 1912.

While working on Broadway, Sparks developed his trademark deadpan expression while portraying the role of a desk clerk in the play Little Miss Brown.

His success on the stage soon caught the attention of Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) studio head Louis B. Mayer who signed Sparks to a six-picture deal.

Sparks began appearing in numerous silent films before finally making his “talkie” debut in the 1928 film The Big Noise.

In the 1930s, Sparks became known for portraying dour-faced, sarcastic, cigar-chomping characters.

He became so associated with the type that, in 1936, The New York Times reported that Sparks had his face insured for $100,000 with Lloyd’s of London.

The market agreed to pay the sum to any photographer who could capture Sparks smiling

(Sparks later admitted that the story was a publicity stunt and he was only insured for $10,000).

Sparks was also caricatured in cartoons including the Jack-in-the-Box character in the Disney short Broken Toys (1935), and the jester in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood (1938), a hermit crab in both Tex Avery’s Fresh Fish (1939) and Bob Clampett’s Goofy Groceries (1941), a chicken in Bob Clampett’s Slap Happy Pappy (1940), Friz Freleng’s Warner Brothers cartoon Malibu Beach Party (1940), and Tex Avery’s Hollywood Steps Out (1941).

Sparks also voiced the cartoon characters Heckle and Jeckle from 1947 to 1951.

Sparks appeared in ten stage productions on Broadway and over 80 films.

He retired from films in 1947, saying that everyone should retire at 65.

Donna Theo Strickland is a Canadian optical physicist and pioneer in the field of pulsed lasers.

She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, together with Gérard Mourou, for the practical implementation of chirped pulse amplification.

She is a professor at the University of Waterloo.

Strickland was born in Guelph, to Edith J. (née Ranney), an English teacher, and Lloyd Strickland, an electrical engineer.

After graduating from Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute, she decided to attend McMaster University because its engineering physics program included lasers and electro-optics, areas of particular interest to her.

At McMaster, she was one of three women in a class of twenty-five.

Strickland graduated with a degree in engineering physics in 1981.

Strickland studied for her graduate degree in the Institute of Optics, receiving a Ph.D degree from the University of Rochester in 1989.

She conducted her doctoral research at the associated Laboratory for Laser Energetics, supervised by Gérard Mourou.

Strickland and Mourou worked to develop an experimental setup that could raise the peak power of laser pulses, to overcome a limitation, that when the maximal intensity of laser pulses reached gigawatts per square centimetre, self-focusing of the pulses severely damaged the amplifying part of the laser.

Their 1985 technique of chirped pulse amplification stretched out each laser pulse both spectrally and in time before amplifying it, then compressed each pulse back to its original duration, generating ultrashort optical pulses of terawatt to petawatt intensity.

Using chirped pulse amplification allowed smaller high-power laser systems to be built on a typical laboratory optical table, as “table-top terawatt lasers“.

The work received the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Charles Tatham is a Canadian screenwriter and TV producer best known for his work on Arrested Development, How I Met Your Mother and Modern Family.

Tatham was born in Listowel (ON).

He grew up in Guelph and later lived in Waterloo, London (ON) and Toronto.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1991 with his brother Jamie to pursue a career in writing in the film and television industry after working in the advertising business for fifteen years in Toronto.

Chuck Tatham to Executive Produce 'Children Ruin Everything' Comedy for Canada's Bell Media | Hollywood Reporter — Above: Chuck Tatham

Tatham’s first writing job was in 1992 on the sitcom Full House, for which he wrote eight episodes with his brother and writing partner, Jamie, who later quit and returned to Vancouver, while Chuck went on to become a producer in 1994.

He then went on to a number of simultaneous writer-producer jobs on sitcoms including Suddenly Susan, Oh, Grow Up, Less Than Perfect, The Jake Effect and Andy Barker, P.I., the latter four of which he served as a co-executive producer.

His most notable (and acclaimed) role, however, has been as a writer and co-executive producer for the comedy series Arrested Development from 2005 to 2006.

He was nominated for two Emmys in 2006; the first shared with the show’s other producers in the category of Outstanding Comedy Series, and the second shared with three other writers of the episode “Development Arrested” in the Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series category.

He has also, with the rest of the Arrested Development writing crew, been nominated for two Writers guild of America Awards, in 2005 and 2006, both in the Comedy Series category.

He fully supported the 2007 – 2008 Writers Guild of America strike, which stalled a project he had with Ron Howard developing a new series, The Church of Reggie, about a man who starts his own religion on his porch.

In 2020, he signed on as an executive producer on the forthcoming Canadian sitcom Children Ruin Everything.

He is married to Joanne Tatham, a jazz singer, with whom he has two sons.

He enjoys hockey and slow marathons and is allergic to bananas.

Percy Algernon Taverner (1875 – 1947) was a Canadian ornithologist and architect.

He was born Percy Algernon Fowler in Guelph.

When his parents separated and his mother remarried, he took on his new parent’s surname, Tavernier, which he later changed to Taverner.

Taverner, a self-taught naturalist, was the first ornithologist at the National Museum of Canada, now the Canadian Museum of Nature, from 1912 to 1942.

Above: The Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa

Taverner was in correspondence with Alberta’s first female naturalist and ‘keen observer‘ of birdlife Elsie Cassels.

Taverner was one of a handful of federal bureaucrats who convinced the Canadian government to sign the 1916 Canada – US Migratory Birds Convention.

He helped establish Point Pelee National Park and a number of bird sanctuaries across Canada, including Bonaventure Island.

As an architect, Taverner designed in Chicago, Detroit and Ottawa, including homes on Rosedale Avenue and Leonard Avenue in Ottawa.

A pillar of the Ottawa naturalist community, he was president of the Ottawa Field Naturalists’ Club in the 1930s and was substantially responsible for the survival of this organization and its journal, The Canadian Field-Naturalist, which he founded.

Taverner is the subject of a biography titled “A Life With Birds: Percy A. Taverner, Canadian Ornithologist“.

The Canadian Field Naturalist 1996, Percy Taverner, Ornithology birds nature | eBay

What is the visitor to Guelph supposed to think?

How can the place be defined?

The answer is a combination of France Preseren and Neal Cassady.

Things are not as bad as they first look: breweries, mental health and addiction patients, orphans, Scientologists, communists, tax evading criminals, largest correctional institutes…..

They can be seen as they are.

We can judge Guelph by its wealth, by its reputation (low unemployment, low crime, best employers, safest hospitals).

And between the bad and the good that Guelph is, there are the folks who are themselves contradictions that make this place so difficult to pigeon-hole, so difficult to define, so problematic to perceive.

Guelph is an author rejected for his financial acumen and forgotten for his talent.

Guelph is a place that accommodates Scientologists and Communists, philosophers, poets and prophets.

This is a city that brought the world cable TV, the jockstrap, five-pin bowling, Yukon Gold potatoes, the nation’s first motorcycle patrol, floating platforms, high calibre athletes in baseball and swimming, a doctor who advocated war and a pilot mystified that he survived a war that so many didn’t, Hollywood stars too few remember and a writer who has brought entertainment to the couch potatoes that cable TV seduced, a remarkable woman who survived sinking ships and scandal and brought the world fashion and its models, a man struggling through his personal demons to bring children joy and a woman who despite her blindness could see the strength of children, men who saw the beauty and fragility of the world and sought to preserve it, music that still moves us decades after it was released, and a man gifted with words that could not save him from his sorrow.

Guelph is the living embodiment of the realization that some places defy description and that folks will define a place the way that they want to.

Nothing before and since Guelph has completely defined the town for me and I doubt anything will.

It is the ultimate Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test town and how you see Guelph says little about what Guelph is and volumes about who you are.

Swiss Miss and the Temple of Literature

Posted on March 12, 2021 by canadaslim

Sunday 7 February 2021, Landschlacht, Switzerland

A bonfire of the vanities (Italian: falò delle vanità) is a burning of objects condemned by religious authorities as occasions of sin.

The phrase usually refers to the bonfire of 7 February 1497, when supporters of Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola collected and burned thousands of objects such as cosmetics, art, and books in Florence, Italy on the Shrove Tuesday festival.

Above: Bernardino of Siena organising the vanities bonfire, Perugia, The Oratorio di San Bernardino

Francesco Guicciardini’s The History of Florence gives a first-hand account of the bonfire of the vanities that took place in Florence in 1497.

Above: Francesco Guicciardini (1483 – 1540)

The focus of this destruction was on objects that might tempt one to sin, including vanity items such as mirrors, cosmetics, fine dresses, playing cards, and musical instruments.

Other targets included books which Savonarola deemed to be immoral (such as works by Boccaccio), manuscripts of secular songs, and artworks, including paintings and sculpture.

Fra Girolamo Savonarola was a Dominican friar who was assigned to work in Florence in 1490, at the request of Lorenzo de’ Medici – although within a few years Savonarola became one of the foremost enemies of the Medici house and helped to bring about their downfall in 1494.

Savonarola campaigned against what he considered to be the artistic and social excesses of Renaissance Italy, preaching with great vigor against any sort of luxury.

His power and influence grew so that with time, he became the effective ruler of Florence, and had soldiers for his protection following him around.

Above: Girolamo Savonarola (1452 – 1498)

Starting on 7 February 1495, during the time in which the festival known as Carnival occurred, Savonarola began to host his regular “bonfire of the vanities“.

He collected various objects that he considered to be objectionable: irreplaceable manuscripts, ancient sculptures, antique and modern paintings, priceless tapestries, and many other valuable works of art, as well as mirrors, musical instruments, and books of divination, astrology, and magic.

He obtained the cooperation of contemporary artists such as Sandro Botticelli and Lorenzo di Credi, who consigned some of their own works to his bonfires.

Above: Self-portrait, Sandro Botticelli (1445 – 1510)

Above: Portrait of Lorenzo di Credi (1456 – 1537)

Anyone who tried to object found their hands being forced by teams of Savonarola supporters.

These supporters called themselves Piagnoni (Weepers) after a public nickname that was originally intended as an insult.

Savonarola’s influence did not go unnoticed by the higher church officials, however, and his actions came to the attention of Pope Alexander VI.

He was excommunicated on 13 May 1497.

The charges were heresy and sedition at the command of Pope Alexander VI.

Above: Pope Alexander VI (né Roderigo de Borja) (1431 – 1503)

Savonarola was executed on 23 May 1498, hung on a cross and burned to death.

His death occurred in the Piazza della Signoria, where he had previously held his bonfires of the vanities.

Then the papal authorities gave word that anyone in possession of the friar’s writings had four days to turn them over to a papal agent to be destroyed.

Anyone who failed to do so faced excommunication.

Above: Painting (1650) of Savonarola’s execution in the Piazza della Signoria

The idea of a bonfire of the vanities suggests that the bad moments that affect us are caused by our attachment to what isn’t good for us.

So, what vanities led to the troubles of Myanmar, Liechtenstein, Haiti, Iran, Vietnam, India, the Sudan, to anyone, anywhere?

Tens of thousands of people rallied across Myanmar on Sunday to denounce last week’s coup and demand the release of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in the biggest protests since the 2007 Saffron Revolution that helped lead to democratic reforms.

Above: Flag of Myanmar

In a second day of widespread protests, crowds in the biggest city, Yangon, sported red shirts, red flags and red balloons, the colour of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy Party (NLD).

“We don’t want military dictatorship! We want democracy!” they chanted.

On Sunday afternoon, the junta ended a day-long blockade of the Internet that had further inflamed anger since the coup last Monday that has halted the Southeast Asian nation’s troubled transition to democracy and drawn international outrage.

Pope Francis expressed “solidarity with the people” on Sunday and asked Myanmar’s leaders to seek “democratic” harmony.

Above: Pope Francis

Huge crowds from all corners of Yangon gathered in townships, filling streets as they headed towards the Sule Pagoda at the heart of the city, also a rallying point during the Buddhist monk-led 2007 protests and others in 1988.

Above: Sule Pagoda, Yangon

A line of armed police with riot shields set up barricades, but did not try to stop the demonstration. Some marchers presented police with flowers.

One officer was photographed giving a surreptitious three-finger salute.

Protesters gestured with the three-finger salute that has become a symbol of protest against the coup.

Drivers honked their horns and passengers held up photos of Suu Kyi.

“We don’t want a dictatorship for the next generation,” said 21-year-old Thaw Zin.

“We will not finish this revolution until we make history. We will fight to the end.”

Meanwhile, Europe’s most powerful monarch still lives in a towering hilltop castle and has the power to dissolve parliament and veto legislation.

He is referred to as His Serene Highness.

H.S.H. Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein and his wife H.S.H. Princess Marie of Liechtenstein receive a tree as a gift for their Golden Wedding by the government.

Above: H.S.H. Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein and his wife H.S.H. Princess Marie of Liechtenstein

Decades, or indeed centuries, after Europe’s kings and queens were forced to relinquish their political power to national parliaments, Liechtenstein’s Prince Hans-Adam II and his son, Crown Prince Alois have only seen their grip on the tiny Alpine nation tighten.

And the people of Liechtenstein, for the most part at least, seem to love them for it.

Above: Flag of Liechtenstein

In 2003, after a series of disputes between Prince Hans-Adam II and Liechtenstein’s parliament, a referendum was held – not on whether to reduce his power over parliamentary politics, but to increase it.

Liechtenstein’s 40,000 people voted overwhelmingly in favour.

Then in 2012, after the Prince, a staunch Catholic, threatened to veto a law that would have legalised abortion, pro-democracy campaigners organised a referendum that would have reduced the monarchy’s power.

Over 75% of Liechtenstein’s citizens voted against it.

It didn’t hurt that the Prince threatened to leave the country if the vote went against him.

Above: Prince Hans-Adam II

So as the country went to the polls on Sunday, it goes without saying that the monarchy – Europe’s last, at least in terms of political power – will not be an electoral issue.

Even the tiny ‘Free List’ grouping, which was originally republican, no longer speaks out against the Prince.

“The form of government enjoys great support in Liechtenstein and has hardly been politicised in recent years,” said Christian Frommelt, director and head of research politics at the Liechtenstein Institute.

Above: Coat of arms of Liechtenstein

Two parties have ruled Liechtenstein, which borders Switzerland and Austria, since World War Two: the Progress Citizens Party (FBP) and the Patriotic Union (VU), known as ‘the blacks’ and ‘the reds’.

The Free List, which rarely gets more than 15% of the vote, is known as ‘the whites’.

Liechtenstein’s right-wing populists the Independents (known as the DU) increased their vote share in 2013 and 2017, but the country’s election on Monday will – as it has always been – be a two-horse race, with only marginal differences, policy-wise, between the horses.

Above: Parliament, Vaduz, Liechtenstein

Liechtenstein, a mountainous and largely rural country, was neutral during World War Two, but emerged from the conflict with little in the way of industry.

Over the next few decades, it rebranded itself as a finance centre, luring companies with rock-bottom corporate tax rates while its banking secrecy laws made it a popular destination for wealthy individuals to avoid taxes – and criminals looking for a place to launder their money.

Above: Hilti headquarters, Schaan, Liechtenstein

The latter – and to a certain extent the former, too – landed the tiny country on a blacklist of tax havens drawn up by the European Union.

It was a decade before it enacted sufficient regulations to get it removed from the list in 2018.

Location of Liechtenstein (green) in Europe (agate grey) – [Legend]

That hasn’t done much to hit the people of Liechtenstein in the pocket:

In 2018, per capita income in the principality was €150,000, the highest in the world, even beating Luxembourg and Qatar.

Prince Hans-Adam II himself is worth €3.6 billion.

Above: Vaduz Castle, home to Prince Hans-Adam II and his family

Like Switzerland, with which it shares a currency and a language, Liechtenstein is not a member of the European Union, but it is a member of the European Economic Area, which regulates issues such as energy and financial services but not immigration, over which it retains control.

As elsewhere in Europe, immigration is an issue that does get voters’ juices flowing, despite the fact that Liechtenstein has an exceedingly restrictive policy on foreign labour, often not even permitting workers who take jobs with local companies to live in the Principality.

Above: Flag of the European Union

It is still the issue where the DU has found the most support, although, in the four years since the party won its largest vote share (18%), the populists have had an internal quarrel and split in two.

That has ensured that it will be a struggle for the DU to reach the 8% threshold required to take seats in parliament.

Its other half, the Democrats pro Liechtenstein (DpL), is expected to do far better, says Frommelt, perhaps winning as much as 20% of the vote.

But right-wing populism in Liechtenstein is not the same as in Switzerland or Austria, he says, and while the DpL and DU are critical about migration and European integration, those issues do not dominate their manifestos.

DpL and DU voters could, however, have been influenced by populist politics by parties in neighbouring countries, he added.

“Populism in Liechtenstein is therefore mainly imported and then cultivated through letters to the editor or in the social media. In parliament itself and also in the election programmes, one finds rather little populist rhetoric,” he said.

The FBP have held a majority in parliament in Liechtenstein for the last eight years, and so it may be that voters opt for the VU in order to change things up, although both parties are broadly the same: pro-business, sound fiscal policy, pro-family and environmentalist.

The only difference this time around is that the FBP have a female candidate for prime minister, which would mark the first time in history that a woman has held that role in Liechtenstein.

A significant milestone for any European nation, but particularly one where the monarchial line of succession is only passed on to sons and where women didn’t get the vote until 1984.

Andres Arauz claimed victory in Ecuador’s presidential election on Sunday, but urged supporters to wait for the official results, which are expected to be out tonight, before celebrating.

Andres Arauz, who is running for president with the United for Hope alliance, holds his closing campaign rally in Quito, Ecuador

Above: Andres Arauz

Arauz’s celebration was short-lived, as an official projection by Ecuador’s National Electoral Council revealed that Arauz would have to face off indigenous candidate and lawyer Yaku Perez in the election run-off.

Yaku perez guartambel foto (cropped).jpg

Above: Yaku Perez

The Council based its estimate on 90.4% of the results from 2,425 polling stations selected for a quick count.

According to estimates, Arauz has 31.5% of the vote, with Perez trailing behind at 20.04%.

Guillermo Lasso, who was initially expected to face Arauz in the runoff, received 19.97% of the vote, according to the first count.

Above: Guillermo Lasso

To win the election in Ecuador, a candidate has to win 50% plus one vote or 40% and a 10-point lead over the rival.

Failing this, the election goes to a run-off round.

Above: Flag of Ecuador

Arauz is a protégé of Rafael Correa, the former president of Ecuador, who is currently living in Belgium.

An Ecuadorian court convicted Correa in absentia on corruption charges and sentenced him to eight years in prison, but he has so far managed to evade the sentence by staying out of the country.

He remains popular in his home country for presiding over economic prosperity driven by an oil boom and loans from China which funded social programs.

His conviction barred him from running as Arauz’s vice-presidential running mate.

Above: Rafael Correa

Ecuador is suffering from an economic downturn, made worse by the impact of the corona virus pandemic.

A record number of 16 candidates are standing for election.

Arauz, who was pursuing a PhD in Economics in Mexico, left his degree mid-way to stand for the election.

Arauz’s main rival, the conservative candidate and ex-banker Guillermo Lasso, has a hard sell given the population’s distaste for austerity politics.

The socialist candidate follows in the footsteps of former president Rafal Correa and has promised $1 billion (€836 million) in direct payments to families and to overturn the conditions of the $6.5 billion aid package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“We have to continue convincing people, so that our victory, the victory of hope, will be in a single round,” Arauz wrote on his Facebook page on Friday.

“Let’s do this right away.”

Lawyer Yaku Perez trailed third in the exit polls, representing an environmental and indigenous movement that is aligned with the anti-Correa left.

Pollsters expect a runoff vote as no candidate has polled more than 50% in the run-up to the election.

However, a low turnout was expected to help the leftwing candidate.

Voting is mandatory by law in Ecuador and abstention is punished with a $40 fine.

(Ecuador, like Liechtenstein, uses another nation’s currency as its own, the US dollar.)

It is expected that middle-class voters are more likely to pay the fine to avoid catching corona virus.

Working-class voters, who cannot afford to pay the fine, are more likely to vote for Arauz.

Voters also face fines of up to $100 for failing to wear a mask to the polling stations.

Outgoing President Moreno is leaving a devastated economy behind him — two million people are sliding into poverty and unemployment has doubled to around 13%.

Correa fled the country under the presidency of his former ally Moreno after being accused of corruption for which he was convicted in absentia.

He remains popular in his home country for presiding over economic prosperity driven by an oil boom and loans from China which funded social programs.

Above: Lenin Moreno

Haitian authorities said Sunday they had foiled an attempt to murder President Jovenel Moise and overthrow the government, as a dispute rages over when his term ends.

Above: Haitian President Jovenel Moise

The plot was an “attempted coup d’etat,” according to Justice Minister Rockefeller Vincent, with authorities saying at least 23 people have been arrested, including a top judge and an official from the national police.

“I thank my head of security at the palace. The goal of these people was to make an attempt on my life,” Moise said.

“That plan was aborted,” he added, speaking on the tarmac at Port-au-Prince airport, accompanied by his wife and Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe.

Jouthe said plotters had contacted police officials at the presidential palace who were planning to arrest Moise and then help install a “transition” president.

Above: Haitian Prime Minister Joseph Jouthe

Moise has been governing without any checks on his power for the past year and says he remains President until 7 February 2022 — in an interpretation of the Constitution rejected by the opposition, which has led protests asserting that his term ends Sunday.

Above: Flag of Haiti

Leon Charles, the director of Haiti’s national police force, said officers had seized documents, cash and several weapons, including assault rifles, an Uzi submachine gun, pistols and machetes.

Jouthe added that among the documents was a speech from the judge who had planned on becoming interim leader in a transition government.

The US on Friday accepted the President’s claim to power, with State Department spokesman Ned Price saying Washington has urged “free and fair legislative elections so that Parliament may resume its rightful role.”

Above: Ned Price

The dispute over when the President’s term ends stems from Moise’s original election:

He was voted into office in a poll subsequently canceled on grounds of fraud, and then elected again a year later, in 2016.

After the latter disputed election, demonstrations demanding his resignation intensified in the summer of 2018.

Voting to elect deputies, senators, mayors and local officials should have been held in 2018, but the polls have been delayed, triggering the vacuum in which Moise says he is entitled to stay for another year.

In recent years, angry Haitians have demonstrated against what they call rampant government corruption and unchecked crime by gangs.

In a letter Friday to the United Nations mission in Haiti, several human rights and women’s advocacy groups faulted it for providing technical and logistical support for Moise’s plans to hold a constitutional reform referendum in April followed by presidential and legislative elections.

“The United Nations must under no circumstances support President Jovenel Moise in his anti-democratic plans,” the letter stated.

Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince on Sunday saw sparse demonstrations and sporadic clashes with police.

Above: Flag of the United Nations

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday that Tehran’s “final and irreversible” decision was to return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal only if Washington lifts sanctions on the Islamic Republic, Iranian state TV reported.

Above: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni

The comment, as well as US President Joe Biden’s separate statement that the United States would not lift sanctions simply to get Iran back to the negotiating table, appeared to be posturing by both sides as they weigh whether and how to revive the pact.

Above: US President Joe Biden

The deal between Iran and six major powers limited Iran’s uranium enrichment activity to make it harder for Tehran to develop nuclear arms – an ambition Iran has long denied having – in return for the easing of U.S. and other sanctions.

But former US President Donald Trump abandoned the deal in 2018, denouncing it as one-sided in Iran’s favour, and reimposed sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.

Above: Donald Trump

“Iran has fulfilled all its obligations under the deal, not the United States and the three European countries.

If they want Iran to return to its commitments, the United States must in practice lift all sanctions,” state TV quoted Khamenei as saying during a meeting with Air Force commanders.

“Then, after verifying whether all sanctions have been lifted correctly, we will return to full compliance.

It is the irreversible and final decision and all Iranian officials have consensus over it.”

While Iran has insisted the United States first drop its sanctions before it resumes compliance, Washington has demanded the reverse.

Above: Flag of Iran

In a segment of a CBS News interview taped on Friday and broadcast on Sunday, Biden said “no” when asked whether Washington would lift sanctions to get Tehran to the negotiating table.

Asked if Iran had to stop enriching uranium first, Biden nodded.

It was not clear exactly what he meant, since Iran was allowed to enrich uranium to 3.67% under the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

A senior US official later said Biden meant Iran had to stop enriching beyond the deal’s limits, not that it had to stop enriching entirely before the two sides might talk.

“They have to stop enriching beyond the limits of the JCPOA,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“There is nothing changed in the US position.

The United States wants Iran to come back into compliance with its JCPOA commitments and if it does, the United States will do the same.”

Iran in January said it has resumed 20% uranium enrichment at its underground Fordow nuclear site, well above the deal’s limit but far short of the 90% that is weapons-grade.

In response to Trump’s withdrawal, Tehran has breached the deal’s key limits by building up its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, refining uranium to a higher level of purity and using advanced centrifuges for enrichment.

Biden has said if Tehran returned to strict compliance, Washington would follow suit and use that as a springboard to a broader agreement on other areas of concern for Washington including Iran’s missile development and regional activities.

Those activities include support for proxies in conflicts roiling countries such as Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

Iran has said it could quickly reverse its JCPOA violations if US sanctions are removed but has ruled out talks on its missile programme and its influence in the Middle East, where Iran and Saudi Arabia have fought proxy wars for decades.

Vietnam has reported 2,001 COVID-19 infections since the corona virus pandemic first hit the country more than a year ago, the Ministry of Health said on Sunday.

More than 1,100 of the cases are locally transmitted, while the rest are imported, the ministry said in a statement.

It recorded 20 new cases on Sunday, all linked to a new outbreak that began on 27 January in the northern province of Hai Duong and has spread to at least 12 cities and provinces.

Above: Flag of Vietnam

Sunday’s disaster below Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest peak, swept away the small Rishiganga hydro-electric project and damaged a bigger one further down the Dhauliganga river being built by state firm NTPC.

Above: Nanda Devi

Eighteen bodies had been recovered so far, officials said.

Most of the missing were people working on the two projects, part of the many the government has been building deep in the mountains of Uttarakhand state as part of a development push.

“As of now, around 203 people are missing,” state chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said.

Mohd Farooq Azam, assistant professor, glaciology & hydrology at the Indian Institute of Technology in Indore, said a hanging glacier fractured.

“Our current hypothesis is that the water accumulated and locked in the debris-snow below the glacier was released when the glacier-rock mass fell,” he said.

Pekka Haavisto, Special European Envoy and Finnish Foreign Minister, arrived in the Sudan to consult on tensions in the region.

Above: Flag of the Sudan

The Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Sudan is proud to announce the arrival of His Excellency Mr. Pekka Haavisto, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland.

Above: Flag of Finland

Mr. Haavisto was mandated by His Excellency Mr. Josep Borrell, High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union to visit Sudan and Ethiopia as Special EU envoy, to help reduce the tensions between Sudan and Ethiopia and to see how the international community could provide support in finding peaceful solutions to the current crises facing the region.

Mr. Haavisto was expected to be in Khartoum from 7 to 8 February and will then travel onwards to Ethiopia.

It is expected that Mr. Pekka Haavisto will hold meetings with their excellencies Dr. Abdalla Hamdok, Prime Minister, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, Chairman of the Sovereignty Council, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo Deputy Chairman of the Sovereignty Council, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources.

He is also expected to visit a camp where Ethiopians fleeing the violence in the Tigray region have sought refuge.

Above: Flag of Ethiopia

In August 2019, Mr. Haavisto participated in the signing of the Constitutional Document as Special Representative of the European Union.

Earlier, he served as Special Representative of the European Union for Darfur.

Mr. Haavisto is 62 years old.

He has worked before as Minister of the Environment and International Cooperation, was a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic of Finland twice and was a member of the Finnish Parliament before being appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2019.

Mr. Haavisto also worked extensively for the UN Environmental Programme.

Above: Pekka Haavisto

The universal link between all these stories is the question:

What have I done to deserve this?

What am I doing here?

Looking at the land of Vietnam it is a question that isn’t far from the traveller’s mind…..

Hanoi, Vietnam, Tuesday 19 March 2019

It seemed to be a day favouring women and punishing men.

Above: Venus symbol

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters awarded 2019’s Abel Prize to Karen Uhlenbeck for “her pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory and integrable systems.”

Uhlenbeck is the first woman to win this prize.

Above: Karen Uhlenbeck

A Guatemalan judge has ordered the arrest of former attorney general and presidential candidate Thelma Aldana on charges including embezzlement, the police said on Tuesday, amid an escalating campaign on high-profile corruption and rights cases.

Above: Flag of Guatemala

Aldana, who helped lead investigations into top politicians, including the current President, is seeking the presidency in a June election.

The warrant for her arrest, issued by Judge Victor Cruz, cited charges of embezzlement, lying and tax fraud.

Aldana has denied wrongdoing.

Aldana, who was in El Salvador on Tuesday for a meeting, planned to return to Guatemala by Thursday, she said in an appearance on CNN.

She added that her presidential candidacy, approved by electoral authorities on Tuesday, had granted her immunity and that she would not take action against the arrest order.

“We’re not going to do anything.

They know that I’m going to keep up the fight against corruption, and lots of people in Guatemala are trembling because of that,” she said.

Above: Thelma Aldana

President Jimmy Morales has fought back against a UN-backed anti-corruption body that, along with Aldana, sought to impeach him in a campaign financing investigation.

In January, he expelled the head of the corruption body, known as CICIG, from the country and has declined to renew its mandate.

President Trump and the First Lady Welcome the President and First Lady of Guatemala (49238996191) (cropped).jpg

Above: Guatamalan President Jimmy Morales

Aldana and CICIG’s investigation of former President Otto Perez Molina led to his impeachment and cut short his presidency.

He remains in custody on charges of involvement in a customs corruption ring.

Above: Otto Pérez Molina

Morales’ party is seeking to pass a law to free military officials convicted of human rights crimes during the Central American country’s 36-year civil war.

Lawmakers were set to review changes to the law on Wednesday, but dropped it from the agenda amid an onslaught of criticism from local and international rights groups, including the United Nations.

Instead, they have scheduled a discussion on modifying the criminal procedure code.

The proposed changes would limit jail time for accused people awaiting verdicts, which could allow the release of at least 100 people facing corruption charges, as well as others accused of war crimes.

FIFA announced Tuesday that South Korea and North Korea have formally expressed their interest in co-hosting the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

In a press release, FIFA said it has received a record nine expressions of interest for the top global event in women’s football.

Joining the Koreas in the ring are Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Japan, New Zealand and South Africa.

The Women’s World Cup was first contested in 1991.

The eighth edition of the quadrennial tournament will take place in France from June 7 to July 7 this year.

Previous hosts were China (twice), Sweden, the United States (twice), Germany and Canada.

FIFA said all interested countries had until 16 April 2019 to submit their bidding registration, and the deadline to send the bid book to FIFA was 4 October 2019.

FIFA added that it expected to name the host of the 2023 event in March 2020.

The possibility of a joint Korean bid for the tournament surfaced on 4 March, when FIFA President Gianni Infantino told the Associated Press:

“I have been hearing for the Women’s World Cup in 2023, the two Koreas. It would be great.“

South Korean officials at the time explained that FIFA had first approached them about the joint bid and that they were carefully considering the proposal.

The two Koreas, which remain technically at war because the Korean War ended with an armistice, rather than a peace treaty, are also trying to co-host the 2032 Summer Olympics.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved Zulresso (brexanolone) injection for intravenous (IV) use for the treatment of postpartum depression (PPD) in adult women.

This is the first drug approved by the FDA specifically for PPD.

“Postpartum depression is a serious condition that, when severe, can be life-threatening.

Women may experience thoughts about harming themselves or harming their child.

Postpartum depression can also interfere with the maternal-infant bond.

This approval marks the first time a drug has been specifically approved to treat postpartum depression, providing an important new treatment option,” said Tiffany Farchione, M.D., acting director of the Division of Psychiatry Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

“Because of concerns about serious risks, including excessive sedation or sudden loss of consciousness during administration, Zulresso has been approved with a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) and is only available to patients through a restricted distribution program at certified health care facilities where the health care provider can carefully monitor the patient.“

PPD is a major depressive episode that occurs following childbirth, although symptoms can start during pregnancy.

As with other forms of depression, it is characterized by sadness and/or loss of interest in activities that one used to enjoy and a decreased ability to feel pleasure (anhedonia) and may present with symptoms such as cognitive impairment, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, or suicidal ideation.

Zulresso will be available only through a restricted program called the Zulresso REMS Program that requires the drug be administered by a health care provider in a certified health care facility.

The REMS requires that patients be enrolled in the program prior to administration of the drug.

Zulresso is administered as a continuous IV infusion over a total of 60 hours (2.5 days).

Because of the risk of serious harm due to the sudden loss of consciousness, patients must be monitored for excessive sedation and sudden loss of consciousness and have continuous pulse oximetry monitoring (monitors oxygen levels in the blood).

While receiving the infusion, patients must be accompanied during interactions with their child(ren).

The need for these steps is addressed in a boxed warning in the drug’s prescribing information.

Patients will be counseled on the risks of Zulresso treatment and instructed that they must be monitored for these effects at a health care facility for the entire 60 hours of infusion.

Patients should not drive, operate machinery, or do other dangerous activities until feelings of sleepiness from the treatment have completely gone away.

The efficacy of Zulresso was shown in two clinical studies in participants who received a 60-hour continuous intravenous infusion of Zulresso or placebo and were then followed for four weeks.

One study included patients with severe PPD and the other included patients with moderate PPD.

The primary measure in the study was the mean change from baseline in depressive symptoms as measured by a depression rating scale.

In both placebo controlled studies, Zulresso demonstrated superiority to placebo in improvement of depressive symptoms at the end of the first infusion.

The improvement in depression was also observed at the end of the 30-day follow-up period.

The most common adverse reactions reported by patients treated with Zulresso in clinical trials include sleepiness, dry mouth, loss of consciousness and flushing.

Health care providers should consider changing the therapeutic regimen, including discontinuing Zulresso in patients whose PPD becomes worse or who experience emergent suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

The FDA granted this application priority review and breakthrough therapy designation.

Approval of Zulresso was granted to Sage Therapeutics, Inc.

The FDA, an agency within the US Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices.

The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products.

Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev unexpectedly resigned on Tuesday after three decades in power, in what appeared to be the first step in a choreographed political transition that will see him retain considerable sway.

Known as “Papa” to many Kazakhs, the 78-year-old former steel worker and Communist party apparatchik has ruled the vast oil and gas-rich Central Asian nation since 1989, when it was still part of the Soviet Union.

Bestowed by parliament with the official title of “the Leader of the Nation”, he was the last Soviet-era leader still in office and oversaw extensive market reforms while remaining widely popular in his country of 18 million people.

“I have taken a decision, which was not easy for me, to resign as president,” Nazarbayev said in a nationwide TV address, flanked by his country’s blue and yellow flags, before signing a decree terminating his powers from 20 March.

“As the founder of the independent Kazakh state I see my task now in facilitating the rise of a new generation of leaders who will continue the reforms that are underway in the country.”

Nursultan Nazarbayev (2020-03-10) (cropped).jpg

Above: Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev

But Nazarbayev, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said he would retain key security council and party leader positions and hand over the presidency to a loyal ally for the rest of his term, which ends in April 2020.

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, speaker of the Upper House of Parliament, will take over as Kazakhstan’s acting president for the remainder of his term in line with the Constitution, Nazarbayev said.

Nazarbayev has no apparent long-term successor.

His decision hit the price of Kazakh bonds, while the London-listed shares of Kazakhstan’s biggest bank, Halyk Bank, tumbled 5%.

The news also appeared to weigh on the Russian rouble.

Moscow is Kazakhstan’s main trade partner.

The Kremlin said Nazarbayev and Putin had spoken by phone on Tuesday, but gave no details of their conversation.

Above: Flag of Kazakhstan

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are now in control of an ISIS encampment in Baghouz after weeks of operations and attacks on the village.

But isolated gun battles are continuing in the area, seen as ISIS’ last remaining redoubt.

“This is not a victory announcement, but a significant progress in the fight against Daesh,” said Mustafa Bali, the head of the SDF press office.

In a tweet, he added:

“Clashes are continuing as a group of ISIS terrorists who are confined into a tiny area still fight back.“

Above: Smoke rises in the Islamic State’s last remaining position on the eastern banks of the Euphrates River in the Syrian village of Baghouz. The Syrian Democratic Forces say they have taken control of the village after weeks of offensives and surrenders by ISIS fighters.

The last holdouts of ISIS have been largely confined to Baghuoz since last month.

The Kurdish-led SDF launched a new offensive on 10 March after slowing its push to allow civilians to flee — and to let thousands of ISIS fighters and their families surrender.

In the final push to control Baghouz, the SDF blew up an ammunition storage area and slowly pried positions away from ISIS.

Above: Fighters with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces hold a position on a hilltop overlooking the last ISIS enclave in the village of Baghouz.

On Tuesday, the SDF captured hundreds of sick or injured ISIS militants and sent them to nearby hospitals, Bali said.

“This is the slow unraveling of Baghouz, the last ISIS holdout, whose capture will mark the end of the group’s territory, which once spanned hundreds of miles across Iraq and Syria,” NPR’s Ruth Sherlock reports for our Newscast unit.

“More than 60,000 people have poured out of this area in the past two months. Most of them have been ISIS fighters, supporters, and their children, but there have also been ISIS victims – Yazidi children and women who were taken by the group from Iraq and used as slaves.”

Ms. Sherlock added:

“It’s believed more hostages – Yazidis, westerners and others – are still trapped inside.”

Above: Logo of National Public Radio (NPR)

Separately, Bali said the SDF had captured 157 people he described as experienced terrorists — including more than 100 foreign nationals who had flocked to join the extremist group in its heyday.

Baghouz sits along the Euphrates River at the Iraqi border in eastern Syria.

As of February 2019, US intelligence officials said they believed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may be hiding out in Iraq.

ISIS, which once produced elaborate propaganda and shocking videos of violence and abuse, has largely fallen silent as it has lost territory and oil-related revenue.

But recently, the group’s spokesman, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, reacted to the mass shooting at two mosques in New Zealand, calling for the group’s followers to take up a religious war.

Muhajir, whose true identity remains unknown, also mocked the US and President Trump — particularly the president’s very public claim of victory over ISIS at the end of 2018.

And he spoke about Baghdadi in a way that implies the leader is still alive.

This day finds Swiss Miss / Heidi Hoi wandering around Hanoi’s Ba Dinh District.

Ba Dinh District is a big open space that is easily accessible from Hanoi’s Old Quarter and Hoan Kiem Lake.

Ba Đình is one of the four original urban districts (quận) of Hanoi.

The district currently has 14 wards, covering a total area of 9.21 square kilometers.

As of 2019, there were 221,893 people residing in the district, the population density is 24,000 inhabitants per square kilometer.

Ba Đình District has a large number of monuments, landmarks and relics, including Hô Chi Minh Mausoleum, the One Pillar Pagoda, the Flag Tower of Hanoi and the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long.

Above: Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

Above: The One Pillar Pagoda

Above: The Flag Tower of Hanoi

Above: The Imperial Citadel of Thang Long

Ba Đình is the political center of Vietnam.

Most of the government offices and embassies are located here.

It was formerly called the “French Quarter” (Khu phố Pháp) because of a high concentration of French-styled villas and government buildings built when Hanoi was the capital of French Indochina.

This name is still used in travel literature.

The wreckage of a B-52 bomber shot down during the Vietnam / American War can be seen in Hữu Tiệp Lake in the Ngọc Hà neighborhood.

The southern half of Hoân Kiêm district is also called the “French Quarter“, also because of numerous French-styled buildings, most of which are now used as foreign embassies.

It has been Vietnam’s political nucleus since the French occupation and was where Ho Chi Minh declared independence in 1945.

In 1901, the Presidential Palace was built here.

Above: The Presidential Palace

On 2 September 1945, Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence at Ba Dinh Square to approximately 500,000 people.

Following his death in 1969, the preserved body of Hô Chi Minh was put on display in the Hô Chi Minh Mausoleum, located in Ba Dinh Square, in 1975.

Above: Ho Chi Minh (1890 – 1969)

To fully understand the impact of the attraction described below had on Heidi, it is important to remember the events that preceded her visit to Vietnam.

Before returning to Switzerland for a number of weeks, Heidi‘s relationship with her Mumbai-based boyfriend was in trouble.

Heidi returned to travelling after her grandmother died in Switzerland.

Thus her mind set was clouded by the realization that life, that love, can be impermanent things.

The Temple of Literature, on the other hand, is all about lost-lasting legacy.

Above: Main entrance of the Temple of Literature

The Temple of Literature is often cited as one of Hanoi’s most picturesque tourist attractions.

Originally built as a university in 1070 dedicated to Confucius, scholars and sages, the building is extremely well preserved and is a superb example of traditional-style Vietnamese architecture.

This ancient site offers a lake of literature, the Well of Heavenly Clarity, turtle steles (stone tablets), pavilions, courtyards and passageways that were once used by royalty.

Visiting the Temple of Literature, you discover historic buildings from the Ly (1009 – 1225) and Tran (1225 – 1400) dynasties in a revered place that has seen thousands of doctors’ graduate in what has now become a memorial to education and literature.

Above: Thien Quang (“Heaven Light“) Well, also known as Literature Well

Originally the university only accepted aristocrats, the elite and royal family members as students before eventually opening its doors to brighter ‘commoners’.

In many nations this still seems to hold true, only the wealthy can truly afford a quality education.

Successful graduates had their names engraved on a stone stele, which can be found on the backs of stone turtles.

There is something primal, something spiritual, in seeing graduates’ names immortalized for as long as stone endures.

The Temple of Literature is a place of study rather than just a religious landmark.

There are five courtyards at the temple, two brimming with landscaped gardens, the third is home to a large pond known as the Well of Heavenly Clarity, the fourth courtyard is called the Sage Courtyard and features a statue of Confucius and a house of ceremonies, and the last courtyard is Thai Hoc in which stands a large drum and bell tower.

This historic site is ranked as one of Hanoi’s most important cultural places and is steeped in Vietnamese history.

The layout of the temple is based upon the birthplace of Confucius with a magnificent main entrance and a path, once reserved solely for the King, running through the centre.

The immaculate gardens are rich in ancient trees and are considered a serene place in which students can relax.

There are stone statues and inscriptions dotted throughout the temple which has retained many of its original features as the most renowned landmark of academia in Vietnam.

Above: The main gate to the Temple

Sliders is an American science fiction and fantasy TV series, which was broadcast for five seasons between 1995 and 2000.

The series follows a group of travellers as they use a wormhole to “slide” between different parallel universes.

I recall a Season 1 episode (“Eggheads“) where the Sliders slid to a world where being an intellectual is more prestigious than being a professional athlete or movie star.

It is refreshing to see a place in our universe that honours achievements of the mind rather than the accomplishments of the young and beautiful, a place where beauty is less important than intelligence, where character matters more than appearance.

A temple of Confucius or Confucian temple is a temple for the veneration of Confucius and the sages and philosophers of Confucianism in Chinese folk religion and other East Asian religions.

They were formerly the site of the administration of the imperial examination in China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam, often housing schools and other studying facilities.

I like this idea: the veneration of the wise.

Above: Hall of Great Perfection (Dacheng Hall) of the Confucius temple in Qufu, China

Confucius (Chinese; Kong Fuzi / Master Kǒng); (551–479 BC) was a Chinese philosopher and politician, traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages.

The philosophy of Confucius — Confucianism — emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, kindness, and sincerity.

Character.

Above: Portrait of Confucius (551 – 479 BC)

Confucianism was part of the Chinese social fabric and way of life;

To Confucians, everyday life was the arena of religion.

It is difficult to define what is meant by this last sentence above.

Perhaps it is meant to imply that daily life can be controlled by religion.

I choose to see this another way, that there is something divine in daily life.

His followers competed successfully with many other schools during the Hundred Schools of Thought era (6th century to 221 BC) only to be suppressed during the Qin dynasty (221 – 206 BC).

Following the collapse of Qin, Confucius’s thoughts received official sanction in the new government.

During the Tang (618–690 / 705–907) and Song (960 – 1279) dynasties, Confucianism developed into a system known in the West as Neo-Confucianism, and later New Confucianism.

Confucius’s principles have commonality with Chinese tradition and belief.

Above: Another portrait of Confucius

With filial piety, he championed strong family loyalty, ancestor veneration and respect of elders by their children and of husbands by their wives, recommending family as a basis for ideal government.

He espoused the well-known principle “Do not do unto others what you do not want done to yourself“, the Golden Rule.

Confucius is widely considered as one of the most important and influential individuals in human history.

His teaching and philosophy greatly affected people around the world and remain influential today.

Above: Tomb of Confucius, Kong Lin Cemetery, Qufu

I would take this a step further….

Every person is my superior in that I may learn from them and I am superior to everyone in that they may learn from me.

In 1070, Emperor Ly Thanh Tong (1023 – 1072) opened the first Confucius university in Hanoi named Van Mieu (the Temple of Literature).

Above: Statue of Lý Tháng Tông

The Lý Trần court expanded the Confucianism influences in Vietnamese Mandarin through year examinations, continued the model of Tang dynasty until being annexed by the Ming invaders in 1407.

In 1460, Emperor Lê Thanh Tông of the Lê dynasty adopted Neo-Confucianism as Đại Việt’s basic values.

Above: Royal standard of Da Viet (Annam)(Great Nam) (968 – 1407 / 1428 – 1804)

Basic values.

It had suddenly become a point worth pondering.

What did Heidi value?

What was important to her?

Above: Flag of Switzerland

Văn Miếu is a temple devoted to Confucius in Hanoi.

The temple also hosts the Imperial Academy (Quốc Tử Giám), Vietnam’s first national university.

The temple is located to the south of the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long.

The various pavilions, halls, statues and stelae of doctors are places where offering ceremonies, study sessions and the strict exams of the Dai Viet took place.

The temple is featured on the back of the 100,000 Vietnamese dong banknote.

I like the idea of education being valued so much that it is featured on the money that people use everyday, as a reminder of the importance of learning, that the traditions that define once began with problems that demanded wisdom to resolve them.

Just before the Vietnamese New Year celebration Têt, calligraphists assemble outside the temple and write wishes in Han characters.

The art works are given away as gifts or are used as home decorations for special occasions.

Somehow it seems fitting that wishes are expressed at the Temple of Literature, for it begs the question:

What do you want out of life?

Above: Prayer plaques

For nearly two centuries, despite wars and disasters, the Temple has preserved ancient architectural styles of many dynasties as well as precious relics.

Major restorations have taken place in 1920, 1954 and 2000.

“In the autumn of the year Canh Tuat, the second year of Than Vu (1070), in the 8th lunar month, during the reign of King Ly Thanh Tông, the Văn Miếu was built.

The statues of Confucius, his four best disciples: Yan Hui, Zengzi, Zisi, and Mencius, as well as the Duke of Zhou, Chu Công, were carved and 72 other statues of Confucian scholars were painted.

Ceremonies were dedicated to them in each of the four seasons.

The Crown Princes studied here.“

Above: Yan Hui (521 – 481 BC)

Above: Zengzi (505 – 435 BC)

Above: Zisi (481 – 402 BC)

Above: Mencius (372 – 289 BC)

Above: Duke Zhou Gong (r. 1042 – 1035 BC)

Above: Altars to Confucius and his disciples, Temple of Literature

Sometimes I wonder whether basing so many calendars on religion rather than the years in which someone has reigned hasn’t somehow diminished the role of mere mortals as compared to divinites whose existence we can neither prove nor disprove.

Perhaps the date of Heidi‘s visit could be described as:

“In the spring of the year of Chemistry,…

(2019 was designated as the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements by the United Nations General Assembly, given that it coincides with the 150th anniversary of its creation by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869.)

Above: Dmitri Mendeleev (1834 – 1907)

….the third year of Guterres,….

(António Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations, began his reign on 1 January 2017.)

Above: United Nations Secretary General António Guterres

….on the 19th day of the 3rd solar month, during the reign of Nguyễn Phú Trọng, Heidi Hoi visited Van Mieu, the Temple of Literature.”

(Nguyễn Phú Trọng is the current President of Vietnam, the most powerful person in Vietnam.)

Above: Vietnamese President Nguyen Phu Trong

In 1076, Vietnam’s first university, the Quốc Tử Giám (Imperial Academy), was established within the temple to educate Vietnam’s bureaucrats, nobles, royalty, and other members of the elite.

The university remained open from 1076 to 1779.

In 1802, the Nguyen dynasty monarchs founded the capital at Hué where they established a new Imperial Academy.

Above: Entrance of the Imperial Academy in Huế

The Academy at the Hanoi temple lost its prominence and became simply a school of the Hoai Duc District.

Under the French protectorate, Văn Miếu was registered as a Monument historique in 1906.

During the period of 1945 – 1954, the French demolished parts of the temple to make additional room for the Saint Paul Hospital since hospital capacity was full during times of war.

Above: Logo of Saint Paul Hospital, Hanoi

Campaigns of restoration were pursued in 1920 and 1947 under the responsibility of the École Francaise d’Extrême Orient (the French School of the Far East).

Above: Original headquarters of the École Francaise d’Extrême Orient, now the National Museum of Vietnamese History, Hanoi

I think universities and institutions of higher education are important, but I wonder whether there is true learning being accomplished for the benefit of the individual.

Too often, in too many countries, it seems that what is learned and how it is learned has become less important than the piece of paper rewarded to the student after much time, effort and wealth has been sacrificed.

Shouldn’t education be more than the qualifications?

Shouldn’t education be an experience that enhances a life rather than just employment opportunities?

I agree, to a point, that a job is judged by the standards it accomplishes, but I nonetheless find myself asking whether we are more than the jobs that we do, whether our education should be more than simply the fulfillment of professional goals.

Shouldn’t life be more than simply existing until a goal is reached?

The temple layout is similar to that of the Temple at Qufu, Shandong, China, Confucius’ birthplace.

The Temple of Literature covers an area of over 54,000 square metres (580,000 sq ft), including Văn Lake, Giám Park and the interior courtyards which are surrounded by a brick wall.

In front of the Great Gate are four tall pillars.

On either side of the pillars are two stelae commanding horsemen to dismount.

Perhaps even here there is a message.

That true education cannot be hurried.

The gate opens onto three pathways which continues through the complex.

The centre path was reserved for the monarch and above the center path there is a big bronze bell,

The path to the left is for the administrative Mandarins and the path to the right is for military Mandarins.

The interior of the site is divided into five courtyards.

The first two courtyards are quiet areas with ancient trees and trimmed lawns, where scholars would relax away from the bustle of the outside world.

In all this hustle and bustle, what are we learning?

The bell located above the main gate was used to signify that an important person was coming through and was added to the Văn Miếu in the 19th century.

The bell was made out of bronze and could only be touched by monks.

On the bell several patterns can be found including an outline of a phoenix, which represents beauty, and a dragon, which represents power.

Both of these symbols are used to represent the Emperor and Queen.

A bell can be found in all of the pagodas in Vietnam.

A bell serves a dual purpose.

It can celebrate and it can warn.

Should we celebrate the powerful or take heed of them?

I lean towards the latter.

Above: The Liberty Bell, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

The first courtyard extends from the Great Portico to the Dai Trung (Đại Trung), which is flanked by two smaller gates: the Dai Tai gate (Đại Tài Môn) and the Thanh Duc gate (Thành Đức Môn).

The second courtyard is known as the great central courtyard or sometimes the Courtyard of Great Success.

It features the Khue Van pavilion (Khuê Văn Các), a unique architectural work built in 1805 and a symbol of present-day Hanoi.

The Khue Van pavilion is built on four white-washed stone stilts.

At the top is a red-coloured with two circular windows and an elaborate roof.

Inside, a bronze bell hangs from the ceiling to be rung on auspicious occasions.

That is an interesting question….

When do we consider an occasion “auspicious”?

By what it is supposed to represent for the future?

Or is an event auspicious only in consideration of the moment’s impact on the future that followed after the moment has passed?

The idea that a moment’s significance is only realized in reflection?

Many beautiful poetic phrases preserved on the pavilion glorify Vietnamese traditional culture.

Beside the Khue Van pavilion are the Suc Van gate (Súc Văn Môn) and the Bi Van gate (Bi Văn Môn).

These two gates are dedicated to the beauty of literature, both its content and its form.

Here is where literature seems to differ from ordinary conception of beauty.

Is beauty only in form?

Can something, someone, more attractive in character than form be considered beautiful?

Can something, someone, more attractive in form than character be worthy of being named beautiful?

I think herein lies my conundrum with women and fashion.

Is there more to a woman than just her appearance?

Is there more to a person than the wardrobe they sport?

In the first and second courtyards there are topiaries (bushes that are cut into particular shapes) that represent the 12 zodiac animals.

Do the positions of the stars and planets affect our fates or is it easier to believe that someone / something has our lives organized and predictable for us?

One enters the third courtyard from the Khue Van pavilion.

In the third courtyard is the Thien Quang Well (Thiên Quang Tỉnh).

On either side of the well stand two great halls which house the treasures of the temple.

Does not the well itself possess more value that the two great halls?

Can one drink treasure?

The construction of the stone stelae began in 1484 under Emperor Le Thang Tông.

He erected 116 steles of carved blue stone turtles with elaborate motifs to honour talent and encourage study.

The Turtle (Quy) is one of the nation’s four holy creatures – the others are the Dragon (Long), the Unicorn (Ly) and the Phoenix (Phượng).

The turtle is a symbol of longevity and wisdom.

The shape and size of the turtle have changed with the passage of time.

The doctors’ steles are a valuable historical resource for the study of culture, education and sculpture in Vietnam.

82 stelae remain.

They depict the names and birth places of 1,307 graduates of 82 triennial royal exams.

Between 1442 and 1779, eighty-one exams were held by the Lê dynasty and one was held by the Mac dynasty.

The ancient Chinese engravings on each stele praise the merits of the monarch and cite the reason for holding royal exams.

They also record the mandarins who were tasked with organising the exams.

It used to be common to rub the stone turtles’ heads, but now there is a fence that is meant to prevent people from doing this in order to preserve the turtles.

They are a valuable historical resource for the study of philosophy, history, culture, education, society and sculpture in Vietnam.

The stelae were inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2011.

There is something both sad and glorious about these names inscribed on the backs of stone turtles.

Their names endure, yet beyond the memory of those that knew them when they lived, there is no hint of the people they once were.

One enters the fourth courtyard through the Dai Thanh gate (Đại Thành Môn).

On either side are two smaller gates: Kim Thanh gate (Kim Thanh Môn) and the Ngoc Chan gate (Ngọc Chấn Môn).

This courtyard is the ceremonial heart of the complex.

On each side of the ceremonial fourth courtyard stand two halls.

Their original purpose was to house altars to the 72 most honoured disciples of Confucius and Chu Van An (a rector of the Imperial Academy).

In the centre of the fourth courtyard is the House of Ceremonies (Đại Bái Đường).

The next building is the Thượng Điện, where Confucius and his four closest disciples Yanhui, Zengshen, Zisi and Mencius are honoured.

The sanctuary also hosts altars to ten honoured philosophers.

These pavilions reflect the style of the early 19th century.

A small museum displays ink wells, pens, books and personal artefacts belonging to some of the students that studied at the temple.

There is something striking about travelling, as contrasted with tourism, that, if done with consequence, causes the voyager to ponder the significance of existence.

The impermance of love, the limited lease on life, causes a person to ponder one’s reason for living in a universe vast beyond our imagination.

The death of her grandmother and the dying of her bond with her Mumbai boyfriend made Heidi consider, perhaps for the first time that year, perhaps for the first time since her travels began, why she was travelling and what she hoped her travels would accomplish.

In this Temple of Literature, in this sanctuary of scholars, the realization of what compelled these ancient learners to apply themselves to years of study, gave Heidi pause.

Has mankind really evolved that much from Confucian applications?

Are not our fates still tied to qualifications deeming us worthy to compete with others for a piece of the pie?

Certainly in Switzerland, this is so.

The lowliest of positions, perhaps even that of beggar, all require documentation of one form or another in Switzerland.

I will be the last to suggest that education doesn’t have its uses.

But I do wonder if the standardizations used to evaluate a person’s worthiness can ever take into consideration the uniqueness of the individual.

There is this unspoken prejudice surrounding academia that the sole route to success is through its halls, through its groves.

Certainly education is an aide to a person’s development, but it is not the sole determination of a person’s fate, and nor should it be.

Above: Plato’s Academy, mosaic from Pompeii

I think of my own experience as a foreigner in Switzerland.

Before I came to Switzerland, a decade ago, my qualifications were deemed sufficient to teach, for example, legal English at the University of Osnabrück in Germany.

In Switzerland, I dare not darken the doorway of any academic institution, save those of a private “cowboy school” nature, even if the courses I taught in Germany differ not at all from those being taught in Switzerland.

My character and my experience matter less here than pieces of paper (and, more significantly, qualifications obtained in Switzerland) to potential employers.

My complaint is one well-known and experienced by other expats.

There is an unspoken prejudice that Swiss quality is superior to all others, and, of course, this quality (and Swiss jobs) must be maintained and protected,

I understand the thinking, but I dislike the result.

So, I had to decide whether I wanted to pay for expensive further education in Switzerland to do a job in which I already have decades of experience or try to cope without this.

From being a man who once was teaching 60 hours a week in Germany’s Freiburg im Breisgau I was reduced to teaching six hours a month (if lucky) in Switzerland.

From being a man in demand I have been reduced to a teacher barely remembered, from a workaholic teaching professional to a part-time Starbucks barista.

The blame is not Switzerland’s entirely.

I certainly should have marketed myself more aggressively and creatively, but I cannot deny how stinging it feels to not find employment as easily as I once did.

I eventually came to the conclusion that if I wanted to follow my chosen profession, without bankrupting myself for further education, I could not do so in Switzerland.

But, I digress, this is not my story.

This is Heidi‘s.

Heidi Hoi is called Swiss Miss for a reason:

She is Swiss, born and raised.

Switzerland, for better and for worse, is her home.

The death of her grandmother and the strangeness of being a stranger in strange lands brought home to her the importance of home for her.

These scholars in the Temple of Literature, their names inscribed on the backs of stone turtles, strove to get their education in the hopes of succeeding in their homeland.

Heidi wants recognition of her talents as a musician, but recognition, unless gifted through ideal networks, often requires evidence of an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the profession one wishes to enter.

Chance favours the prepared and an in-depth education is part of that preparation.

If Heidi wishes to be respected in Switzerland, qualifications can be part of that path.

I don’t know whether Heidi‘s eventual decision to return to Switzerland to study music at the University of Zürich was made at the Temple of Literature, but perhaps it was subtly influenced by the Temple’s presence.

Above: Logo of the University of Zürich

In 1076, Emperor Ly Nhan Tong ordered the construction of an Imperial Academy as a fifth courtyard.

Literate mandarins were selected as students.

In 1236, the Academy was enlarged and named Quốc Tử Viện and later Quốc Học Viện.

In the Lê dynasty it was called Thái Học Viện and was developed further.

This development included the Minh Luân House, west and east classrooms, a storehouse for wooden printing blocks and two sets of three 25-room dormitories.

The Khải Thánh Shrine was built to honour the parents of Confucius.

There is, I think, a misconception that Buddhists and Hindus, and similar religions, whose followers prostrate themselves before altars of images, worship the Buddha, or, in the case of the Temple of Literature, worship ancestors or sages of the past.

But this is not the impression I have, at least in this enlightened modern age in which we live.

I think images inspire the faithful, but I don’t think that the rational actually expect these images to intercede on their behalf beyond inspiration.

I think these faithful adherants believe that the spirit of the honoured somehow remains and perhaps whispers to the Fates the faithful’s desires.

But images are often no more than mere manifestations of aspects of the divine rather than objects of worship themselves.

We honour the past by seeking inspiration from it.

We honour the past by realizing that it shaped events that followed,

We honour the past by acknowledging that the spirit of those times still stirs us.

In 1946, the courtyard was destroyed during the First Indochina War.

In the year 2000, the fifth courtyard was reconstructed on grounds of the original “Imperial Academy“.

It honours the talents, the national traditions and the culture and education of Vietnam.

Above: Emblem of Vietnam

There is something so appealing about this!

Above: Uniforms of students of the Imperial Academy

The design of the new fifth courtyard was based on the traditional architecture in harmony with the surrounding sights of the temple.

Several buildings were constructed including the front building, the rear building, the left and right buildings, a bell house and a drum house.

Shouldn’t education set the tone and rule the rhythm of society?

The Thái Học courtyard occupies 1,530 square metres of the temple’s total area of 6,150 square metres.

The front building has a number of functions.

Ceremonies in memory of cultural scholars are organised from the front building as are scientific activities and cultural events.

Again, I find myself asking does a ceremony really compensate for all the time, energy and money sacrificed to get there?

The rear building has two levels.

The ground floor has a statue of Chu Văn An (a rector of the academy) and shows exhibits of the temple and the academy with a display on Confucian education in Vietnam.

The upper floor is dedicated to the three monarchs who contributed most to the foundation of the temple and the academy:

Lý Thánh Tông (1023–1072), who founded the temple in 1070
Lý Nhân Tông (1066–1127), who founded the Imperial Academy
Lê Thánh Tông (1442–1497), who ordered the erection of the turtle stone stelae of doctor laureates in 1484.

Above: Altar to Chu Van An, Rector of the Imperial Academy

Can there be academic freedom if a school is government-supported?

Can there be academic equality if a student must spend a fortune to attend?

On either side of the rear building are square buildings which hold a drum and a bronze bell.

The drum is 2.01 metres (6 ft 7 in) wide, 2.65 metres (8 ft 8 in) high, has a volume of 10 m³ and weighs 700 kilograms (1,500 lb).

The bell was cast in 2000, with dimensions of 2.1 X 0.99 metres (6 ’11” X 3′ 3″).

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be.

Ah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
The signs were sent:
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
Of every government —
Signs for all to see.

I can’t run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
A thundercloud
And they’re going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring …
You can add up the parts
But you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march

There is no drum
Every heart, every heart
To love will come
But like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Frederick Harris’ painting, The Red Door, is a watercolor of Văn Miếu.

There are sometimes water puppet performances that tell about the history of Vietnam.

Visitors can also buy water puppets and other objects such as stamps and wooden masks at the souvenir stores.

They can see and buy miniature statues of famous Vietnamese historical people in the temple.

They can see people playing traditional Vietnamese musical instruments in the temple as well.

Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business.

When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables.

And He said to those who sold doves:

“Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!”

The Amazing Race is a reality television competition, typically involving eleven teams of two, in a race around the world.

The race cycle is divided into a number of legs, normally twelve;

Each episode generally covers the events of one leg.

Each leg ends with a Pit Stop, where teams are given a chance to rest and recover before starting the next leg twelve hours later.

The first team to arrive at a Pit Stop is often awarded a prize such as a trip, while the last team is normally eliminated from the race.

Some legs are non-elimination legs, where the last team to arrive may be penalized in the following leg.

Some races have featured double-length legs, where the teams meet the host at what appears to be a Pit Stop, only to be told to continue to race.

The final leg of each race is run by the last three remaining teams, and the first to arrive at the final destination wins the show’s prize, US$1 million.

The average length of each race is approximately 21 to 30 days.

[Verse 1]
Just a little more time is all we’re asking for
‘Cause just a little more time could open closing doors
Just a little uncertainty can bring you down

[Pre-Chorus]
And nobody wants to know you now
And nobody wants to show you how

[Chorus]
So if you’re lost and on your own
You can never surrender
And if your path won’t lead you home
You can never surrender
And when the night is cold and dark
You can see, you can see light
‘Cause no one can take away your right
To fight and to never surrender

[Verse 2]
With a little perseverance
You can get things done
Without the blind adherence
That has conquered some

[Pre-Chorus]
And nobody wants to know you now
And nobody wants to show you how

[Chorus]
And when the night is cold and dark
You can see, you can see light
No one can take away your right
To fight and to never surrender
To never surrender

[Outro]
Oh, time is all we’re asking for
To never surrender
Oh, you can never surrender
Time is all you’re asking for
Stand your ground, never surrender
Oh, I said you never surrender, oh

The Amazing Race 22 is the 22nd installment of the American reality television show The Amazing Race.

It featured eleven teams of two, each with a pre-existing relationship, in a race around the world.

The season premiered on 17 February 2013, at 8:00 p.m. EST / PST on CBS in the United States and CTV in Canada, with the two-hour season finale broadcast on 5 May 2013.

In Leg 5 (Indonesia – Vietnam / “Your tan is totally cool.“), one team member had to watch a performance of a Vietnamese patriotic song.

After the performance, the performers would reveal the phrase “Vinh quang thay thế hệ thanh niên chúng ta” (“Glory to our young generation“) to the racers, who would be given five minutes to search the nearby gallery without any notes for one of several political posters with the correct phrase hidden among many with misleading phrases.

Once team members found the correct poster, they would receive their next clue.

If team members were unable to identify the poster within the allotted time, they had to watch the performance again.

I have climbed the highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you

I have run, I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her finger tips
It burned like fire
(I was)
Burning inside her

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone

But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for

I believe in Kingdom Come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
But yes, I’m still running

You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross of my shame
Oh my shame, you know I believe it

But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for

Then there was a choice between Make Your Move or Make Your Meal.

In Make Your Move, teams had to set up a human chess board at the Temple of Literature.

Using a local co tuong board as a reference, teams had to find four human chess pieces that had symbols matching the pieces on the board, and then set them up with four staffs in position on the human chess board to receive their next clue from the chess master.

One town’s very like another
When your head’s down over your pieces, Brother

It’s a drag, it’s a bore, it’s really such a pity
To be looking at the board, not looking at the city

Whaddya mean?
Ya seen one crowded, polluted, stinking town

But thank God, I’m only watching the game, controlling it

I don’t see you guys rating
The kind of mate I’m contemplating
I’d let you watch, I would invite you
But the queens we use would not excite you….

In Make Your Meal, teams had to prepare Vietnam’s national dish pho.

Teams had to pick up four baskets (two empty and two with live chickens) at the Ngoc Son Temple, then they had to navigate at the street market to pick up the rest of the ingredients on a shopping list of specific weights or amounts.

After acquiring the ingredients, teams had to find a cooking station to cook two phở soups to chef’s approval to receive their next clue.

At Công Viên Thống Nhất, teams had to correctly complete a traditional Vietnamese bamboo dance known as múa sạp to receive their next clue.

The visitor to the Temple of Literature learns that the complex is divided into three main parts:

the Garden Courtyard
the Reflecting Pool Courtyard
the University buildings

Simply stated, the Garden Courtyard serves as a place for students to relax after all their stressful lessons.

The Reflecting Pool Courtyard is best known for its Khue Van Pavilion, an international symbol of the city of Hanoi, from which the Academy teachers would read and comment on any good student essays.

To become an Academy teacher, one had to know a great many things about literature, history, geography and mathematics.

It is in this Courtyard that the visitor sees the thousands of names upon 116 steles upon the back of stone turtles.

To be one of the inscribed required three testing levels, not so different from those of modern days.

These three levels of testing were done every three years.

The first level of testing, comprised of three examinations, was done in the student’s hometown and was equivalent to today’s high school leaving examinations.

The second level of testing, comprised of four examinations, done at Van Mieu, was equivalent to today’s university examinations, though far more difficult, as on average only nine students in each group of eight provinces ever successfully passed these exams.

The third and final level of testing, comprised of three examinations on literature, history and theocracy, done at Van Mieu, was equivalent to today’s doctorate (PhD), and was by far the most difficult testing of them all, as generally only three students successfully passed this level.

Testing was truly stressful as each candidate would sit on the ground with a sun shelter over each head while their test papers and writing implements lay on the ground before them, while professor-proctors would walk around and around each student denying any possibility of cheating.

The examination professor at the side of the courtyard would shout out the questions the students had to answer in writing.

The successful graduating trio would be rewarded with a job offer to serve the King directly as a mandarin, a large special, hand-drawn calligraphed certificate written in Chinese but read in Vietnamese, and a hand-woven silk robe with a dragon design on its back.

(The dragon design was allowed to have four toes on each foot, but never five, as five-toed dragon designs were exclusively used by the King.)

The youngest person to successfully pass the third level of testing was only 10 years old, the oldest was 60.

The candidates were exclusively male.

Many students lived and studied at the Temple.

Most students (Giám sinh) had passed the regional exam (Hương Examination – Thi Hương) before enrolling at the academy.

During the course of study at the Academy, the students focused on discussion of literature and wrote poetry as well.

The students learned Chinese, Chinese philosophy, and Chinese history.

They had textbooks printed on paper which were in both Chinese and Vietnamese.

They read The Four Books (The Great Study, The Golden Means, The Analects, and Mencius), Five Pre-Confucian Classics (Book of Odes, Book of Annals, Book of Rites, Book of Change, and Book of Spring and Autumn), ancient poetry and Chinese history among others.

The students enrolled for three to seven years.

They had minor tests each month and four major tests per year.

Success in the exams, certified by the Ministry of Rites, qualified them to sit the national exam (Hội Examination).

Success at the Hội Examination qualified the student to sit the royal exam, the Đình Examination (Thi Đình), held at court.

At this exam, the monarch himself posed the questions, responded to the candidate’s answer and then ranked those who passed into different grades.

The Imperial Academy was the largest centre in the country.

The courses, examinations and graduation ceremonies were all accomplished within and without the university buildings.

Still today, the freshly-graduated high school and university graduates, male and female, assemble here for picture-taking and celebration.

The visitor is shown the drum which an old man would beat to announce the start of classes, the roof upon which coins were tossed (If the coin stayed on the roof, exams would be passed.), the students’ ancient “backpacks” with which they carried their writing materials to class, the silent shrine where the petitioner would think his request for academic success as spoken words would disturb the calm….

And here the guide would speak in trembling whispers of Vietnam’s most revered teacher, Chu Van An.

Above: Portrait of Chu Van An

Chu Văn An (1292 – 1370) (né Chu An) was a Confucian, teacher, physician and high-ranking mandarin of the Tran dynasty in Dai Viêt (Great Viet or Annam was a Vietnamese kingdom: 968 – 1407 / 1428–1804).

He was born in Văn Thôn village, Quang Liệt commune, present day Thanh Tri district, Hanoi.

In his youth, An was famous as a straightforward man who passed the doctoral examination, but refused to become a mandarin.

Instead, he opened a school and began his career as a Confucian teacher in Huỳnh Cung village in Thanh Tri.

An’s teaching played an important role in spreading Confucianism into a Buddhist Vietnam at this time.

Under the reign of Tran Minh Tong (1314–1329), he became a teacher at the Imperial Academy, where he was responsible for teaching Crown Prince Vuong, the future emperor Tran Hien Tong.

Under the reign of Emperor Tran Du Tong, An was raised to a high-ranking mandarin.

Later, he resigned and return to his home village, because Tran Du Tong refused his request of beheading seven other mandarins who he accused of corruption.

The Seven Decapitations Petition was a document written by Chu Văn An and presented to King Trần Dụ Tông to propose the beheading of seven officials he considered corrupted.

Initially, as Dụ Tông was still a little child, the King’s father – King Trần Minh Tông – was in charge of the court.

After King Trần Minh Tông passed away in 1357, Dụ Tông Trần Hạo took charge.

However, he was incapable of ruling.

During Trần Dụ Tông’s reign, the social situation was disturbing.

Dụ Tông loved drinking, having fun with pretty women and music.

Officials were incompetent, pampering the King so that they could abuse their power.

Famine was widespread.

The King’s loyal and dutiful subjects were killed.

The court’s historians, whose job was to dissuade the King, tried, but Dụ Tông did not listen.

Chu Văn An was a righteous and straightforward official highly respected in the court.

He bravely submitted a petition to behead seven corrupted officials.

The petition has been lost thus now its content is unknown.

Even at that time though, few people knew who were on his list.

Still, the petition shook the country.

As the King did not listen to his petition, Chu Văn An resigned and returned to his home village in Phoenix Mountain, Chí Linh, Hải Dương.

For the rest of his life, An continued his teaching career and wrote books.

He died of illness in 1370.

An altar was erected in his honour in the Temple of Literature in Hanoi, where he is still revered.

“As I’ve gotten older, I realize I’m certain of only two things:

Days that begin with rowing on a lake are better than days that do not.
Second, a man’s character is his fate.

EMPERORS CLUB - Measuring the Worth of a life - character - destiny - YouTube

And as a student of history, I find this hard to refute.

For most of us our stories can be written long before we die.

There are exceptions among the great men of history, but they are rare, and I am not one of them.

I am a teacher – simply that.

I taught for 34 years.

One day I stopped teaching.

Those were the facts of my life’s chronicle.

The last chapter had been written.

My book was closed.“

I like to believe that there is more than one path to success and that success can be measured in more than one way.

That said, I try to follow the Socratic advice, in my own limited fashion, that suggests it is not living that is important, but living properly.

Above: Statue of Socrates (470 – 399 BC), Academy of Athens

William Hundert: Excuse me?

Louis Masoudi: Huh? Who, me?

William Hundert: Yes, sir. What is your name?

Louis Masoudi: Uh, Louis.

William Hundert: Just Louis?

Louis Masoudi: Louis Masoudi, sir.

William Hundert: Mr. Masoudi, could you define the word “path” for me?

Louis Masoudi: Well, there are several definitions, I suppose.

William Hundert: Would “a route along which someone or something moves” be among them?

Louis Masoudi: Yeah. Oh, yeah. No. Yeah. I’m s-sorry, sir.

William Hundert: Follow the path, Mr. Masoudi. Walk where the great men before you have walked.

Louis Masoudi: Yes, sir. It’s, uh – It’s better for the grass.

William Hundert: It’s better for you.

The Emperor's Club ( 2002 ) watch online in best quality

To become recognized and respected in any profession in Switzerland, the path where great persons before Heidi have walked has often been through Academia, and her decision to follow this path would eventually curtail the extent of globetrotting adventures.

Above: Main building of the University of Zürich

As I write these words (11 March 2021) in my small apartment in the city of Esksehir in Turkey, I have returned to teaching full-time.

May be an image of 1 person and outdoors

As I write these words, Heidi studies in her St. Gallen apartment for her University of Zürich courses.

Above: Old houses, St. Gallen, Switzerland

I, like “William Hundert“, will probably never be remembered beyond my students’ experience, but I believe that Heidi‘s combination of determination, perseverance, talent and training will find her excelling in her studies and beyond in her career.

I can only hope that her travels (and my description of them) has enhanced that eventuality.

Sources: Wikipedia / Microsoft Bing Images / Google Images / Lonely Planet Vietnam / Rough Guide to Vietnam / The Emperor’s Club / Leonard Cohen, “Anthem” / Corey Hart, “Never Surrender” / Luna Oi, YouTube, 15 October 2018 / U2, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”

Canada Slim and the Canadian Berlin

Posted on February 26, 2021 by canadaslim

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Friday 5 February 2021

When I was young there were many things they tried to teach me

Son, you must be grounded, find some strong stability

Be rooted and secure to live long and endure

Don’t seek out chance or circumstance and never try if you’re not sure

There was a harmony I heard when I shut my eyes

Like advice from some strange voice I seemed to recognize

Build dreams or chase behind their shadows in your mind

You can choose to give or lose, take what you get or seek to find

Live Life Like a Traveller by Dawud Wharnsby on Amazon Music - Amazon.com

Live like a traveller, only passing through

Don’t let your baggage weigh you down through all you need to do

Faith, Friends, and Freedom, they will always be with you

If you live like a traveller, only passing through

Friday Night's Lights Ep. 7 - Dawud Wharnsby - Live Life Like a Traveller - YouTube

I looked out from the windows of my school and parents’ home

There was so much new to learn,

I got an itch to roam

It wasn’t long before I unlocked the old back door

And I was roving in the world to learn and to explore

Dawud Wharnsby Shares His Eco-Life From Pakistan | @TheEcoMuslim

Live like a traveller only passing through

Don’t let your baggage weigh you down through all you need to do

Faith, Friends, and Freedom, they will always be with you

If you live like a traveller, only passing through

I look back in all honesty, my parents weren’t all wrong

It’s important to know who you are and where you best belong

Roots don’t grow in boxes, dreams wither out of range

Cash in the bank can’t buy success if you’re afraid of change

And that old world stability must mean something else to me

Because I feel it underfoot each step I take when I am free

Interview: Eco-Muslim Dawud Wharnsby In Pakistan Says "Live With Less" | @TheEcoMuslim

Live like a traveller only passing through

Don’t let your baggage weigh you down through all you need to do

Faith, Friends, and Freedom, they will always be with you

If you live like a traveller, only passing through

Every once in a while a story idea generates from actual events and other sources to intrigue my imagination with possibilities.

Begin with an actual event.

On 5 February 1958, the United States Air Force (USAF) lost a 7,600-pound (3,400 kg) Mark 15 nuclear bomb in the waters off Tybee Island near Savannah, Georgia.

During a practice exercise, an F-86 fighter plane collided with the B-47 bomber carrying the bomb.

To protect the aircrew from a possible detonation in the event of a crash, the bomb was jettisoned.

Following several unsuccessful searches, the bomb was presumed lost somewhere in Wassaw Sound off the shores of Tybee Island.

The B-47 bomber was on a simulated combat mission from Homestead Air Force Base in Florida.

It was carrying a single 7,600-pound (3,400 kg) bomb.

At about 2:00 a.m., an F-86 fighter collided with the B-47.

The F-86 crashed after the pilot ejected from the plane.

The damaged B-47 remained airborne, plummeting 18,000 feet (5,500 m) from 38,000 feet (12,000 m) when the pilot, Colonel Howard Richardson, regained flight control.

The crew requested permission to jettison the bomb, in order to reduce weight and prevent the bomb from exploding during an emergency landing.

Permission was granted, and the bomb was jettisoned at 7,200 feet (2,200 m) while the bomber was travelling at about 200 knots (370 km/h).

The crew did not see an explosion when the bomb struck the sea.

They managed to land the B-47 safely at the nearest base, Hunter Air Force Base.

Colonel Richardson was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross after this incident.

Some sources describe the bomb as a functional nuclear weapon, but others describe it as disabled.

If it had a plutonium nuclear core installed, it was a fully functional weapon.

If it had a dummy core installed, it was incapable of producing a nuclear explosion but could still produce a conventional explosion.

The 12-foot (4 m) long Mark 15 bomb weighs 7,600 pounds (3,400 kg) and bears the serial number 47782.

It contains 400 pounds (180 kg) of conventional high explosives and highly enriched uranium.

The Air Force maintains that its nuclear capsule, used to initiate the nuclear reaction, was removed before its flight aboard the B-47.

As noted in the Atomic Energy Commission “Form AL-569 Temporary Custodian Receipt (for maneuvers)“, signed by the aircraft commander, the bomb contained a simulated 150-pound cap made of lead.

However, according to 1966 Congressional testimony by Assistant Secretary of Defense W.J. Howard, the Tybee Island bomb was a “complete weapon, a bomb with a nuclear capsule” and one of two weapons lost that contained a plutonium trigger.

Nevertheless, a study of the Strategic Air Command documents indicates that Alert Force test flights in February 1958 with the older Mark 15 payloads were not authorized to fly with nuclear capsules on board.

Such approval was pending deployment of safer “sealed-pit nuclear capsule” weapons, which did not begin deployment until June 1958.

Starting on 6 February 1958, the Air Force 2,700th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Squadron and 100 Navy personnel equipped with hand-held sonar and galvanic drag and cable sweeps mounted a search.

On 16 April, the military announced the search had been unsuccessful.

Based on a hydrologic survey, the bomb was thought by the Department of Energy to lie buried under 5 to 15 feet (1.5 to 4.6 m) of silt at the bottom of Wassaw Sound.

In 2004, retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Derek Duke claimed to have narrowed the possible resting spot of the bomb down to a small area approximately the size of a football field.

He and his partner located the area by trawling in their boat with a Geiger counter in tow.

Secondary radioactive particles four times naturally occurring levels were detected and mapped, and the site of radiation origination triangulated.

Subsequent investigations found the source of the radiation was natural, originating from monazite deposits.

As of 2007, no undue levels of unnatural radioactive contamination have been detected in the regional Upper Floridan aquifer by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (over and above the already high levels thought to be due to monazite, a locally occurring mineral that is naturally radioactive).

Above: Flag of Georgia

Aside from the “what if the Tynbee bomb had exploded” scenario, the conflicting reports as to whether the lost bomb (“broken arrow“) was indeed nuclear capable does raise a number of questions.

Why the discrepanices between the reports?

Did someone lie?

If so, why?

In February 2015, a satirical news web site ran an article stating that the bomb was found by vacationing Canadian divers and that the bomb had since been removed from the bay.

The fake story spread widely via social media.

On 12 February 2015, the entertainment web site World News Daily Report published an article claiming that a couple of amateur scuba divers had discovered a long-lost nuclear warhead off the coast of Georgia:

A couple of tourists from Canada made a surprising discovery while scuba diving in Wassaw Sound, a small bay located on the shores of Georgia.

Jason Sutter and Christina Murray were admiring the marine life of the area when they stumbled upon a Mark 15 thermonuclear bomb that had been lost by the United States Air Force more than 50 years ago.

The couple from London in Ontario, was on a two week vacation in Georgia and Florida to practise their favorite hobby, scuba diving, when they decided to dive near the shores of Tybee Island.

While admiring the plants and fishes near the sea floor, they noticed a large cylindrical item partially covered by sand.

They investigated the object and found out that it was actually a sort of bomb or missile, so they decided to contact the authorities.

“I noticed an object that looked like a metal cylinder, which I thought was an oil barrel” says Jason Sutter.

“When I dug it up a bit, I noticed that it was actually a lot bigger and that there was some writing on the side.

When I saw the inscription saying that it was a Mk-15 nuclear bomb, I totally freaked out.

I caught Christina by the arm and made signs to tell her we had to leave.

We made an emergency ascent, went back to shore and then we called 911.”

Savannah – Wassaw Sound | Island Laser Design

However, World News Daily Report is an fake news web site that does not publish factual news material.

A disclaimer on the site states that all of the information contained therein is for “entertainment purposes only.”

This is not an interview with Banksy - The Washington Post

Still there is some poignancy in a memory I have of the movie Men in Black….

In upstate New York, an alien illegally crash-lands on Earth, kills a farmer named Edgar, and uses his skin as a disguise.

Tasked with finding a device called “The Galaxy“, the Edgar alien goes into a New York restaurant and finds two aliens (disguised as humans) who are supposed to have it in their possession.

He kills them and takes a container from them but is angered to find only diamonds inside.

After learning about the incident in a tabloid magazine, K investigates the crash landing and concludes that Edgar’s skin was taken by a “bug“, a species of aggressive cockroach-like aliens.

Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones): Anything about that seem unusual to you?….Let’s check the hot sheets.

Agent J (Will Smith)(looking at K buying a newsstand’s row of tabloids): These are the hot sheets?

Agent K: Best investigative reporting on the planet. Go ahead, read the New York Times if you want to. They get lucky sometimes.

Agent J: I can’t believe you are looking for tips in the supermarket tabloids.

Agent K: Not looking for. Found.

brandchannel: Men in Black 3 Re-Teams with Weekly World News for Viral Movie Promotion

Now, gentle readers, don’t panic.

I am not suggesting that tabloids should be trusted or conspiracy theories believed.

The fact that many actually do take tabloids and theories seriously causes me great concern, for there are those who may believe and act accordingly to their belief that the parody, that the conspiracies, are real.

There are disturbingly too many Americans, for example, who firmly believe (still) that Donald Trump was cheated out of his re-election and should still be President.

They choose to believe the lie, which conforms to and confirms their preferred world view, than the facts of unpleasant reality.

Though I don’t fully subscribe to all of American George Carlin’s viewpoints, there are certain validities in the philosophies he espoused.

“I live by certain rules.

First rule.

I don’t believe anything the government tells me.

Nothing.

Zero.

And I don’t take very seriously the media and the press in this country, who are nothing more than the unpaid employees of the government and who most of the time function as a public relations branch of the government….

And all you ever hear about are our differences, what separates us, what keeps us apart from one another.

That is the way the ruling class operates in any society.

They try to divide the rest of the people, keep us fighting with each other, so that they can run off with all the money.

Fairly simple concept.

Happens to work.

Anything different, that’s what they are going to talk about: race, religion, national background, job, income, social status, sexuality….

Anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other.

This is why the wealthy don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking.

They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people aware of how the System has failed them.”

Above: George Carlin (1937 – 2008)

Generally, I believe that we are born to love, but taught to hate.

This is how wars work.

Convince the populace that the enemy is less worthy than they are, that the enemy must be perceived as a threat which threatens our very survival.

Talk about the flag, religion or our children and watch the masses scramble to the recruiting stations, dehumanize the enemy and hate those they neither know nor care to know.

In times of war, even the hint that you may sympathize with the enemy – because they too are human beings – may cause countries to ban or imprison other groups and may even find communities denying their own heritage to be deemed more acceptable to the nationalist spirit.

Canada is considered to be a very liberal and cosmopolitan country, but this has not always been so……

St. Thomas, Ontario to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Monday 13 January 2020

One thing you have to understand about Canada is that it exists, for the most part, because not all Americans wanted to abandon being British.

Certainly, there was a small minority of English speakers who remained to govern and settle in Canada after France ceded Nouveau France to Britain in the 1763 Treaty of Paris.

But the population of English speakers in Canada greatly increased with the influx of United Empire Loyalists from an America that no longer tolerated them.

Part of that loyalty to Queen and country is evident in the choice of names these Loyalists gave to the communities they founded:

Victoria (BC) after Queen Victoria

Above: Images of Victoria

Queen Charlotte Islands (BC)

Regina (SK) after Queen Victoria

Above: Images of Regina

London (ON) after London, England

Above: Images of London

Stratford (ON) after Stratford upon Avon, England

Above: Stratford City Hall

Kingston (ON), the King’s town

Above: Kingston City Hall

These are just a tiny sample of the many places across Canada that are named after England or the English monarchy.

And though Canada has evolved into a nation of its own after Confederation (1867) and especially after WW2 (1939 – 1945), the Head of State of Canada still remains the British monarch, represented by the Governor General when the monarchy isn’t upon Canadian soil or if a major constitutional change requires a signature from the Crown.

Above: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

I have always advocated that a place name should either reflect its original settlers or geography, so Kitchener‘s original Anglicized name of Sandhills is quite acceptable to me.

In 1784, the land that would develop into the town of Kitchener, was a 240,000-hectare area given to the Six Nations by the British as a gift for their allegiance during the American Revolution.

Above: Flag of the Iroquois Confederacy

Between 1796 and 1798, the Six Nations sold 38,000 hectares of this land to Loyalist Colonel Richard Beasley.

The portion of land that Beasley purchased was remote, but of great interest to German Mennonite farming families from Pennsylvania.

They wanted to live in an area that would allow them to practice their beliefs without persecution. Eventually, the Mennonites purchased all of Beasley’s unsold land, creating 160 farm tracts.

Many of the first farms were least 400 acres in size.

The payment to Beasley, in cash, arrived from Pennsylvania in kegs, carried in a wagon surrounded by armed guards.

By 1800, the first buildings in Berlin had been built, and over the next decade, several families made the difficult trip north to what was then known as the Sandhills.

One of these Mennonite families, arriving in 1807, was the Schneiders, whose restored 1816 home (the oldest building in the city) is now a museum in the heart of Kitchener.

Above: Schneider House

Other families whose names can still be found in local place names were the Bechtels, the Ebys, the Erbs, the Weavers (better known today as the Webers), the Cressmans, and the Brubachers.

In 1816, the government of Upper Canada designated the settlement the Township of Waterloo.

Much of the land, made up of moraines and swampland interspersed with rivers and streams, was converted to farmland and roads.

Wild pigeons, which once swarmed by the tens of thousands, were driven from the area.

Apple trees were introduced to the region by John Eby in the 1830s, and several gristmills and sawmills (most notably Joseph Schneider’s 1816 sawmill, John and Abraham Erb’s grist- and sawmills, and Eby’s cider mill) were erected throughout the area.

Schneider built Berlin’s first road, from his home to the corner of King Street and Queen Street (then known as Walper Corner).

The settlers raised $1,000 to extend the road from Walper Corner to Huether Corner, where the Huether Brewery was built and the Huether Hotel now stands in the city of Waterloo.

A petition to the government for $100 to assist in completing the project was denied.

Later named the founder of Berlin, Benjamin Eby (made Mennonite preacher in 1809, and bishop in 1812) arrived from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1806, and purchased a large tract of land consisting of much of what would become the village of Berlin (named about 1830).

The settlement was initially called Ebytown, and was at the southeast side of what later became Queen Street.

BISHOP BENJAMIN EBY" - Kitchener - Ontario Provincial Plaques on Waymarking.com

Eby was also responsible for the growth of the Mennonite church in Waterloo County.

By 1811, Eby had built a log Mennonite meeting house first used as a school house, but later also housing religious services.

Benchi' — Bishop Benjamin Eby was a builder and Berlin booster | Toronto.com

A new meeting house, known as Eby’s Versammlungshaus (gathering house), near Stirling Avenue, replaced the log house in 1834, while a schoolhouse was built on Frederick Street about the same time.

Benchi' — Bishop Benjamin Eby was a builder and Berlin booster

Benjamin Eby encouraged manufacturers to Ebytown.

Jacob Hoffman came in 1829 and started the first furniture factory.

John Eby, druggist and chemist, arrived from Pennsylvania in about 1820, and opened a shop to the west of what would later be Eby Street.

At the time, settlers commonly formed a building “bee” to help newcomers erect a log home.

Immigration from Lancaster County continued heavily in the 1820s because of a severe agricultural depression there.

Joseph Schneider, from that area, built a frame house in 1820 on the south side of the future Queen Street after clearing a farm and creating a rough road.

A small settlement formed around “Schneider’s Road“, which became the nucleus of Berlin.

The home was renovated over a century later and still stands.

The village centre of what would become Berlin (Kitchener) was established in 1830 by Phineas Varnum, who leased land from Joseph Schneider and opened a blacksmith shop on the site where a hotel would be built many years later, the Walper House.

Walper Hotel | Dubbeldam Architecture + Design | Archello

A tavern was also established here at the same time, and a store was opened.

At the time, the settlement of Berlin was still considered to be a hamlet.

Immigration to Berlin increased considerably from 1816 until the 1870s, many of the newcomers being of German (particularly Lutheran, and Mennonite) extraction.

Some were from Switzerland, like the founder of the Arthur Pequegnat Clock Company.

In 1833, the town was rededicated Berlin because of then-prevalent German immigration from the Breuckmann family, and in 1853, Berlin became the county seat of the newly created County of Waterloo, elevating it to the status of village.

The Smith’s Canadian Gazetteer of 1846 describes Berlin as:

“Berlin contains about 400 inhabitants, who are principally Germans.

A newspaper is printed here, called the “German Canadian” and there is a Lutheran meeting house, a post office, post twice a week.

Professions and Trades.—One physician and surgeon, one lawyer, three stores, one brewery, one printing office, two taverns, one pump maker, two blacksmiths.”

Berlin (Kitchener) Ontario 1875 - Vintage City Maps, Restored City Maps

The Township of Waterloo (smaller than Waterloo County) consisted primarily of Pennsylvanian Mennonites and immigrants directly from Germany who had brought money with them.

At the time, many did not speak English.

There were eight grist and twenty saw mills in the township.

In 1841, the township population count was 4,424.

The first cemetery in the city was the one next to Pioneer Tower in Doon.

The first recorded burial at that location was in 1806.

The cemetery at First Mennonite Church is not as old, but contains the graves of some notable citizens, including Bishop Benjamin Eby, who died in 1853, Joseph Schneider, and Reverend Joseph Cramer, founder of the House of Friendship social service agency.

Above: Pioneer Tower

Previously part of the United County of Waterloo, Wellington, and Grey, Waterloo became a separate entity in 1853 with Berlin as county seat.

Some contentious debate had existed between Galt and Berlin as to where the seat would be located.

One of the requirements for founding was the construction of a courthouse and jail.

When local merchant Joseph Gaukel donated a small parcel of land he owned (at the current Queen and Weber Streets), this sealed the deal for Berlin, which was still a small community compared to Galt.

The courthouse at the corner of the later Queen Street North and Weber Street and the Gaol were built within a few months.

The first county council meeting was held in the new facility on 24 January 1853, as the county officially began operations.

The Waterloo County Gaol is the oldest government building in the Region of Waterloo.

The Governor’s House, home of the “gaoler“, in a mid-Victorian Italian Villa style, was added in 1878.

Both have been extensively restored and are on the Canadian Register of Historic Places.

Above: Waterloo County Jail and Governor’s House

The extension of the Grand Trunk Railway from Sarnia to Toronto (and hence through Berlin) in July 1856 was a major boon to the community, helping to improve industrialization in the area.

Immigrants from Germany, mostly Lutheran and Catholic, dominated the city after 1850, and developed their own newer German celebrations, and influences, such as the Turner societies, gymnastics, and band music.

A new streetcar system, the Galt, Preston and Hespeler electric railway (later called the Grand River Railway) began to operate in 1894 connecting Preston and Galt.

In 1911, the line reached Hespeler, Berlin, and Waterloo.

The electric rail system ended passenger services in April 1955.

In 1869, Berlin had a population of 3,000.

On 9 June 1912, Berlin was designated a city.

historic photos of berlin ontario | Canada history, Waterloo ontario, Ontario

It was renamed Kitchener in 1916, after Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, a British Empire field marshal killed during the First World War.

Kitchener was the first city in Ontario to get hydroelectric power in long-distance transmission lines from Niagara Falls, on 11 October 1910.

Because citizens with a German heritage were viewed as a threat by some in Canada during the First World War, many in the city, particularly its business people, feared a backlash against the name Berlin.

A 2016 news report summarized the situation as:

“Some questioned the loyalty of a city with strong German roots, and business leaders worried about a potential boycott of goods stamped Made in Berlin“.

A referendum was held on 19 May 1916 as to whether the city name should be changed.

That passed with a small majority and another referendum led to the name change from Berlin ro Kitchener, effective on 1 September 1916.

Prior to the War of 1812, the township of Waterloo was predominantly settled by German speaking Mennonites from Pennsylvania.

German-speaking immigrants from Europe began arriving in Waterloo County during the 1820s, bringing with them their language, religion and cultural traditions.

Berlin and Waterloo County soon became recognized throughout Canada for their German heritage.

These German immigrants became Berlin’s industrial and political leaders, and created a German-Canadian society unlike any other found in Canada at the time.

They established German public schools and German language churches.

A section of "Busy Berlin", Berlin, Ontario. : Digital Archive : Toronto Public Library

In a speech given by the Governor General of Canada, the Duke of Connaught, while visiting Berlin in May 1914, said:

“It is of great interest to me that many of the citizens of Berlin are of German descent.

I well know the admirable qualities – the thoroughness, the tenacity, and the loyalty of the great Teutonic Race, to which I am so closely related.

I am sure that these inherited qualities will go far in the making of good Canadians and loyal citizens of the British Empire“.

Above: Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (1850 – 1942)

The 1871 Canadian Census reveals that 73% of Berlin’s 2,743 residents were of German ethnic origin and almost 30% had been born in Germany.

Berlin at this time was a bilingual town with German being the dominant language spoken.

More than one visitor commented on the necessity of speaking German in Berlin.

These German-Canadians had strong ties to Europe, and on 2 May 1871 held a Friedensfest (peace festival) to celebrate the victory of Germany over France in the Franco-Prussian War.

More than 10,000 – mainly German – people attended the celebration.

This was one of the earliest German festivals for which Waterloo County became known – Saengerfest, Kirmes, and Oktoberfest would soon follow.

Above: Images of the Franco-Prussian War (1870 – 1871)

Frequently unknown to some Kitchenerites now is that their German names actually came from Alsace-Lorraine in Eastern France which was ceded to Germany in 1871.

It switched again in both world wars but has been part of France since 1945.

Above: Flag of Alsace- Lorraine (1871 – 1918)

Some roots of nearby Maryhill, Ontario, for example, lie in Soufflenheim and other parts of Alsace, France.

Immigration from continental Germany slowed in the 1880s and 1890s.

First and second-generation descendants now comprised most of the local German population, and while they were proud of their German roots, most considered themselves loyal British subjects.

The 1911 Census indicates that of the 15,196 residents in Berlin, about 70% were identified as ethnic German but only 8.3% had been born in Germany.

By the beginning of the First World War in 1914, Berlin and Waterloo County were still considered to be predominantly German by people across Canada.

This would prove to have a profound impact on local citizens during the war years.

The fact that many of the original settlers of Berlin were not directly German but were Mennonites from Pennsylvania did not help, as their refusal to join the war effort (because of their pacifism) only increased tensions.

The slow pace of recruitment for the local 118 Battalion led to suspicions of disloyalty.

A bust of Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, set up in Victoria Park long before the War, was thrown into Victoria Lake in August 1914 (the main lake in the park), and then vanished forever on 15 February 1916, after the 118th Battalion broke into the Concordia club, taking the statue with them.

Above: Kaiser Wilhelm I (1797 – 1888)

History professor Mark Humphries summarized the situation as:

Before the war, most people in Ontario probably didn’t give the German community a second thought.
But it’s important to remember that Canada was a society in transition – the country had absorbed massive numbers of immigrants between 1896 and the First World War, proportionately more than at any other time in our history.
So there were these latent fears about foreigners.
It becomes very easy to stoke these racist, nativist fires and convince people there really is a threat.
War propaganda is top-down driven, but it’s effective because it re-enforces tendencies that already exist.

Above: The Oktoberfest Timeteller, a traditional display in Waterloo

In 1916, a movement began to change the name of the city.

Two groups formed in Berlin in 1916 – those in support of the name change and those opposed to it.

The British League was in favour of changing the name Berlin and included city councillors and members of the Berlin Board of Trade.

Many manufacturers also supported the name change as they claimed it was difficult to sell goods labelled “Made in Berlin” during the War.

Soldiers from the 118th Battalion championed the British League as a matter of patriotism.

100 years ago today we said 'no' to Berlin | TheRecord.com

The Citizens’ League was organized to promote the best interests of the community.

This committee also included manufacturers and city councillors but they felt that the name change was being pushed through for purely financial reasons.

Members of the Citizens’ League were highly critical of the methods used to bring about the name change.

A referendum was held in May 1916.

On 19 May 1916, 3,057 residents of the town cast their vote, with 1,569 favouring a change to 1,488 voting to keep the current name.

W. H. Breithaupt the following day lamented in a letter:

“We had a citizens vote yesterday on the question of changing the name of our city, a name it has had for nearly a hundred years, and I regret to say that those who want to change won by a small majority.

No new name is as yet selected.”

A special committee was set-up by the city council with the express purpose to suggest possible names.

A nationwide contest to choose a new name for the city was launched in May 1916.

A $300 prize was offered for a new name.

Names like “Bercana” (a mash-up of “Berlin” and “Canada“) and “Hydro City“, a nod to the city’s connection to hydroelectric were offered.

Some of the proposed names, such as Huronto, Dunard, Renoma (which means famous in Esperanto), Agnoleo (an obscure Italian masculine name), prompted humorous newspaper stories around the continent.

Editorials in several Ontario newspapers outside Berlin were critical of the unusual names:

One newspaper asserted that it seemed like someone had chosen letters from a hat at random.

In the face of scrutiny, a committee of 99 people was created to come up with a shortlist to create the final six names that appeared on the ballot.

Just weeks after the vote to change the name of the city from Berlin, on 5 June 1916, British war leader Lord Kitchener was killed when his ship hit a German mine and sank off the coast of Scotland.

Kitchener had been popular among the general public, but was a controversial military figure, due to his creation of deadly concentration camps during the Boer War.

Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (1850 – 1916) was an Irish-born senior British Army officer and colonial administrator who won notoriety for his imperial campaigns, most especially his scorched earth policy against the Boers and his expansion of Lord Roberts’ internment camps during the Second Boer War (1899 – 1902) and later played a central role in the early part of the First World War (1914 – 1918).

Kitchener was credited in 1898 for winning the Battle of Omdurman (2 September) and securing control of the Sudan for which he was made Baron Kitchener of Khartoum.

As Chief of Staff (1900–1902) in the Second Boer War he played a key role in Lord Roberts’ conquest of the Boer Republics, then succeeded Roberts as commander-in-chief – by which time Boer forces had taken to guerrilla fighting and British forces imprisoned Boer civilians in concentration camps.

His term as Commander-in-Chief (1902 – 1909) of the Army in India saw him quarrel with another eminent proconsul, the Viceroy Lord Curzon, who eventually resigned.

Kitchener then returned to Egypt as British Agent and Consul-General (de facto administrator).

In 1914, at the start of the First World War, Kitchener became Secretary of State for War, a Cabinet Minister.

One of the few to foresee a long war, lasting for at least three years, and with the authority to act effectively on that perception, he organised the largest volunteer army that Britain had seen, and oversaw a significant expansion of materials production to fight on the Western Front.

Despite having warned of the difficulty of provisioning for a long war, he was blamed for the shortage of shells in the spring of 1915 – one of the events leading to the formation of a coalition government – and stripped of his control over munitions and strategy.

On 5 June 1916, Kitchener was making his way to Russia on HMS Hampshire to attend negotiations with Tsar Nicholas II when the ship struck a German mine 1.5 miles (2.4 km) west of Orkney, Scotland, and sank.

Kitchener was among 737 who died.

Above: Horatio Herbert Kitchener (1850 – 1916)

Kitchener’s name was placed on the final list, leaving Brock, Kitchener, Adanac (Canada spelled backwards), Benton, Corona, Keowana as the city’s choices.

The vote to choose a new name was held on 28 June 1916.

“Kitchener” received a total of 346 votes, and it was declared the winner.

Berlin and the First World War | Special Collections & Archives | University of Waterloo

On 1 September 1916, the name of Kitchener was officially adopted.

Berlin was not the only place in Canada to change its name during the First World War.

In Saskatchewan, Kaiser became Peebles.

In Alberta, Carlstadt was changed to Alderson.

Berlin Street in Calgary was renamed 2nd Avenue.

6 reasons why Calgary is Canada's best city for shopping – Vacay.ca

A similar trend existed in Australia, where dozens of “German sounding” towns had their names changed.

The California town of Genevra, whose original name was Berlin, got its present name under the same circumstances.

However, at other locations in the US, more than 20 towns called “Berlin” or “New Berlin” retained their names through both World Wars.

Kitchener is one of the few names that persisted beyond the period of anti-German sentiment.

When the city was building its new city hall early in the 1990s, a small movement to change the city’s name back to Berlin was unsuccessful.

There was a great deal of anti-German sentiment, not limited to local ruffians.

Anti-German sentiment was widespread in the local 118th Battalion, for instance.

Clashes between local citizens and soldiers in the 118th Battalion increased in early 1916.

There was a belief that the intimidation would not end after the name was changed.

Four incidents in particular increased tensions in the city:

Rev. Tappert:

On 5 March 1916, Reverend C. Reinhold Tappert was dragged from his home and beaten by a group of soldiers from the 118th Battalion.

Tappert, an American, was the pastor at Berlin’s St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church.

His numerous pro-German remarks – “I am not ashamed to confess that I love the land of my fathers – Germany” – caused a great uproar in the city.

Two soldiers, Sergeant Major Granville Blood and Private Schaefer – received suspended sentences for the assault.

Tappert resigned from St. Matthew’s and returned to the United States.

During the first few months of the war, services and activities at Lutheran churches in Waterloo County continued as they always had.

However, as anti-German sentiment increased throughout Waterloo County, many of the churches decided to stop holding services in German.

2. The Concordia Raid:

The Concordia Singing Society was founded as a choral group in 1873 by German immigrants.

The group was instrumental in organizing the Sangerfests (singing festivals) for which Waterloo County had become famous in the late 1800s.

In May 1915, members of the Concordia Club unanimously decided to close their doors for the duration of WWI.

Stored in their hall was the bust of Kaiser Wilhelm I which had been retrieved after being thrown in the lake at Victoria Park in August 1914.

On the evening of 15 February 1916, members of the 118th Battalion broke into the club, stole the bust and smashed many of the club’s possessions.

Furniture, German flags, sheet music and pictures were all destroyed in a large bonfire on the street.

On 16 February 1916, members of the 118th stole the medallions from the base of the Peace Monument in Victoria Park, where the bust of Kaiser Wilhelm I had previously been.

Antique Painted Wood Sign "Concordia Singing Society" Ca. 1900 Lancaster, Pa | eBay

3. Waterloo’s Acadian Club:

During the summer of 1916, the 118th soldiers were at it again.

After a recruiting rally held in Waterloo’s town square, about 30 members of the battalion broke into the Acadian Club on King Street in Waterloo.

The Acadian was a social club for single and married men of German background.

Acadian Club Halloween Celebration, Waterloo, Ontario: Waterloo Public Library Digital Collections

Once again, the club’s possessions were damaged or destroyed.

Club president, Norman Zick, seemed particularly shocked – by July 1916 roughly half of the club’s members had already enlisted, many in the 118th.

He also stated that the Club, since the beginning of the War had been very patriotic, always welcoming soldiers in their midst, and never giving cause for offense to anyone.

Both raids on these local German clubs were investigated by military authorities.

The clubs asked for damages – around $300 in each case – to be paid by the army.

The court found that the Concordia Club had not been closed as claimed and that conditions were allowed to prevail in Berlin that loyal British citizens found impossible to tolerate.

It concluded that since both soldiers and civilians were equally responsible for damages, members of the 118th who participated in the raid would not be charged.

The Acadian Club did not receive much better news.

The court found that the 118th soldiers were responsible for the damage but that the battalion should not pay in case further ill-feeling might be engendered.

The bill for the damages was ultimately sent to the Department of Justice who replied that the claim could not be entertained.

Similar claims in Calgary, Winnipeg and others were also not entertained, as the Minister of Justice viewed that there was no legal responsibility on the part of the Crown.

The final incident occurred during the newly named Kitchener municipal election held on 1 January 1917.

The majority of the newly elected council had been opposed to the city’s name change and rumours spread that they would try to change “Kitchener” back to “Berlin“.

Soldiers from the 118th were in the city on Christmas leave during the election and did not take kindly to the rumour of reverting to the name Berlin.

A riot broke out, led by Sergeant Major Blood.

The Berlin News Record newspaper office was broken into and damaged.

Two aldermen-elect – Nicholas Asmussen and H.M. Bowman – were beaten up.

Members of the battalion were allegedly hunting for the new mayor, David Gross, throughout the city.

Around 100 men from the 122nd Battalion stationed in Galt quickly arrived and stopped the riot.

They escorted the 118th soldiers to the train station and remained on guard in Kitchener for the next few days as calm eventually returned.

The Kitchener Train Station | Old train station, Railroad photos, Train station

A city wide petition was launched in the summer of 2020 to initiate a referendum on changing the city’s name once more.

The petition drew parallels with the original changing of the city’s name, a possible return to the name Berlin, and additionally played upon sentiments within the city highlighting various controversity that have painted the legacy of Lord Kitchener.

In conjunction with the Black Lives Matter movement, the element of racism associated with the controversial figure has coloured this referendum on changing the name of the city once more.

The main organizer of the petition, Nicholas Roy, has highlighted that the main purpose of the petition is not necessarily to demand a rename, but to generate conversation around the possibility of said option, contrary to fears of forcing the erasure of history.

In an official response, the city of Kitchener initially responded with the statement of:

It is not surprising that recent world events have us contemplating the origin of our city’s name.
While we in no way condone, diminish, or forget his actions, Kitchener has become so much more than its historic connection to a British field marshal.
Our name is not a celebration of an individual leader’s hurtful legacy.

Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic touched on the topic during an interview on “Staying At Home with Bourke and Farwell“.

I think what’s more important than what the name was, and the reason it was chosen back then, is really what our city has become.
The fact that it’s a modern city at the western end of Canada’s innovation corridor, one that over many decades, has been very resilient in terms of responding to changes in the global economy, has been home to hundreds of thousands of residents over the years, and has a proud history of being a great community.

Councillor Berry Vrbanovic - Region of Waterloo

Above: Berry Vrbanovic

A document in the Archives of Canada makes the following comment:

“Although ludicrous to modern eyes, the whole issue of a name for Berlin highlights the effects that fear, hatred and nationalism can have upon a society in the face of war.“

Above: National Library and Archives of Canada

On this Monday 13 January 2020, nine days before the first case of the corona virus pandemic was diagnosed in Canada, the Toronto Star (bought earlier at the London train station) was focused on:

memorials of the crash of Flight 752

protesters in Iran who see the shooting of Flight 752 as another example of military incompetence

Protests against Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 shot down by Sepah in Tehran 6.jpg

the confusion and anger over the false alarm at the Pickering nuclear plant

the Ontario government considered e-learning optional until 2024

Above: Flag of Ontario

Uber’s premium service drivers filed an application to unionize in Ontario.

Oakville family Dr. Clarence Clottey was barred from certain exams for women and his MD licence suspended for his “callous disregard” for some of his female patients’ dignity with his “careless” physical exams.

Doctor Acquitted of Sexual Assault Charges - CHCH

the 10th anniversary of the Haitian earthquake (4:53 pm, 12 January 2010) with over 200,000 deaths, 300,000 injured (including 58 Canadians) was commemorated in a ceremony in Montréal (home to more than 165,000 people of Haitian origin)

Above: Flag of Haiti

the start of the race for leadership of the federal Conservatives today, which former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced he would not take sides of any candidate.

(As of 24 August 2020, Erin O’Tool is the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.)

British Columbia’s Human Rights Commissioner Kasari Govender wants Canada to stop building the contentious natural gas pipeline from northeastern BC to Kitimat on the Pacific coast until the affected Indigenous groups (Wet’suwet’en and Secwepemc peoples) consent to the construction.

Northern Gateway Pipeline approved: B.C. reacts | CBC News

Philippine villagers were evacuated from ash-blanketed southern provinces in the wake of the eruption of the Taal volcano.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he would call for a high level government inquiry into the response of the nation’s devastating bushfires.

2019-20 Australia Bushfires season montage.png

Above: Images of 2019 – 2020 Australian bushfire season

Hong Kong authorities barred the head of Human Rights Watch (Kenneth Roth) from entering the territory as he had planned to focus on China’s efforts to “deliberately undermine the international human rights system“.

Above: Flag of Hong Kong

Trump tweeted that he doesn’t understand being saddled with the stigma of impeachment when he did nothing wrong. (Who knew that this impeachment would only be the first of two?)

As the world considers doing away with Daylight Savings Time (“spring forward, fall back“), Brazilians aren’t happy that daybreak is at 0430 since their President Jair Bolsano called off the clock adjustment in a decision made last year.

Still much talk about Prince Harry, his wife Meghan, and their son Archie leaving England

Prince Harry & Meghan Markle Prioritize Archie in Their Post-Royal Lives

By 1912, Kitchener’s City Hall was in the two-story building at King and Frederick Streets that had also been used as the Berlin town hall, completed in 1869.

During its tenure, the structure was also used as a library, theatre, post/telegraph office, market, and jail.

That building was demolished in 1924 and replaced by a new structure behind it, featuring a classical-revival style and a large civic square in front.

Demolished in 1973, and replaced by an office tower and shopping mall, the old City Hall’s clock tower was later (1995) erected in Victoria Park.

The building was not replaced by the current Kitchener City Hall on King Street until 1993.

Above: The old City Hall clock tower in Victoria Park

In 1869, the County built a very large so-called poorhouse with an attached farm, the House of Industry and Refuge that accommodated some 3,200 people before being closed in 1951.

The building was later demolished.

Home - Waterloo County House of Industry and Refuge

It was on Frederick St. in Kitchener, behind the now Frederick Street Mall, and was intended to minimize the number of people begging, living on the streets, or being incarcerated at a time before social-welfare programmes.

A 2009 report by the Toronto Star explains:

“Pauperism was considered a moral failing that could be erased through order and hard work.”

A research project by the Laurier School of Social Work has amassed all available data about the house and its residents, digitized it, and made the archive available online.

According to Sandy Hoy, a director of research projects, the “inmates” included not only the poor, but also those with disabilities, women, and children.

Some were single women who had been servants and became pregnant.

Since there were no social services, they were sent to the House.

“We saw a lot of young, single mothers in the records,” said Laura Coakley, a research co-ordinator.

The archives also indicate that in addition to food and shelter for “inmates“, in return for labour in the house and on the attached farm, the house also donated food, clothing, and money for train tickets to enable the poor to reach family that might be able to support them.

Two cemeteries for the poor also were nearby, including “inmates” of the house who had died.

Waterloo County House of Industry and Refuge - Waterloo County House of Industry and Refuge

The Waterloo Pioneer Memorial Tower built in 1926 commemorates the settlement by the Pennsylvania ‘Dutch’ (actually Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch, or German) of the Grand River area of Waterloo County.

The Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest is a remembrance of the region’s German heritage.

The event includes beer halls and German entertainment.

The second largest Oktoberfest in the world, the event is based on the original German Oktoberfest and is billed as “Canada’s Greatest Bavarian Festival“.

It attracts an average of 700,000 people to the county.

During the 2016 Oktoberfest parade, an estimated 150,000 people lined the streets along the route.

It is held every October, starting on the Friday before Canadian Thanksgiving and running until the Saturday after.

It is the largest Bavarian festival outside of Germany.

While its best-known draws are the beer-based celebrations, other family and cultural events also fill the week.

The best-known is the Oktoberfest Thanksgiving Day Parade held on Thanksgiving Day.

As it is the only major parade on Canadian Thanksgiving, it is televised nationally.

Another icon of the festival is Miss Oktoberfest.

This festival ambassador position is selected by a closed committee of judges from a panel of local applicants; community involvement and personal character are the main selection criteria.

Some people do not consider Oktoberfest to be indicative of German culture in general.

“The fact is, Oktoberfest in Germany is a very localized festival.

Oktoberfest in Kitchener really is a Munich festival, celebrating only a ‘tiny aspect’ of German culture [Bavarian]”, according to German studies professor James Skidmore of the University of Waterloo.

Kitchener’s economic heritage is rooted in manufacturing.

Industrial artifacts are in public places throughout the city as a celebration of its manufacturing history.

While the local economy’s reliance on manufacturing has decreased, in 2012, 20.36% of the labour force was employed in the manufacturing sector.

Above: Downtown Kitchener

The city is home to four municipal business parks: the Bridgeport Business Park, Grand River West Business Park, Huron Business Park and Lancaster Corporate Centre.

The largest, the Huron Business Park, is home to a number of industries, from seat manufacturers to furniture components.

Kitchener’s economy has diversified to include new high-value economic clusters.

In addition to Kitchener’s internationally recognized finance and insurance and manufacturing clusters, digital media and health science clusters are emerging within the city.

Above: Market Square, Kitchener

Beginning in 2004, the City of Kitchener launched several initiatives to re-energize the downtown core.

These initiatives included heavy investment, on behalf of the city and its partners, and the creation of a Downtown Kitchener Action Plan.

Above: Aerial view of downtown Kitchener

The modern incarnation of its historic farmers’ market, opened in 2004.

The Kitchener Market is one of the oldest consistently operating markets in Canada.

The Kitchener Market features local producers, international cuisine, artisans, and craftspeople.

This famous market enlivens Kitchener on Saturday mornings (as well as Wednesday mornings in the summer), where one can find arrays of sausages, cheese, eggs, poultry, fruit, vegetables and flowers, and such Mennonite dishes as shoofly (molasses) pie, Kochkase (processed curd cheese) and Kimmel Kirsche (pickled cherries).

The Kitchener Stock Yards Farmers’ Market, just northeast of the city, is held Thursday afternoons.

The Kitchener-Waterloo Stockyards and outdoor market, Waterloo, Ontario, Can... / HipPostcard

In 2009, the City of Kitchener began a project to reconstruct and revitalize the main street in Kitchener’s downtown core, King Street.

In the reconstruction of King Street, several features were added to make the street more friendly to pedestrians.

New lighting was added to the street, sidewalks were widened, and curbs were lowered.

Movable bollards were installed to add flexibility to the streetscape, accommodating main street events and festivals.

In 2010, the redesigned King Street was awarded the International Community Places Award for its flexible design intended to draw people into the downtown core.

In 2009, Tree Canada recognized King Street as a green street.

The redesigned King Street features several environmentally sustainable elements such as new street trees, bike racks, planter beds that collect and filter storm water, street furnishing made primarily from recycled materials, and an improved waste management system.

The street was reconstructed using recycled roadway and paving stones.

Region's top doctor issues instructions for businesses, workplaces to slow spread of COVID-19 | CTV News

In September 2012, the City of Toronto government used Kitchener’s King Street as a model for Celebrate Yonge – a month-long event which reduced Yonge Street to two lanes, widening sidewalks to improve the commercial street for businesses and pedestrians.

Celebrate Yonge' Gives Pedestrians More Of Toronto's Main Street | UrbanToronto

The groundbreaking ceremony for the University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy and downtown health sciences campus took place on 15 March 2006, and the facility opened in spring 2009.

The building is on King Street near Victoria Street, on the site of the old Epton plant, across the street from the Kaufman Lofts (formerly the Kaufman shoe factory).

Hamilton’s McMaster University later opened a satellite campus for its Michael G. DeGroote Scholl of Medicine next to the University of Waterloo’s School of Pharmacy.

The Health Sciences Campus has been central to the emergence of Kitchener’s health science cluster.

School of Pharmacy / Hariri Pontarini Architects | ArchDaily

Above: University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy

In 2007, Cadan Inc., a Toronto-based real estate development company, bought what had been the Lang Tannery for $10 million.

Supported by the local government, Cadan repurposed the building for use by commercial firms.

Since its refurbishment, the Tannery has become a hub for digital media companies, both large and small.

Desire2Learn, an e-learning company, in the Tannery as the company expanded.

In 2011, Communitech moved into the Tannery.

Home to over 800 companies, Communitech is a hub for innovative high-tech companies in the fields of information technology, digital media, biomedical, aerospace, environmental technology and advanced manufacturing.

Also in 2011, high-tech giant Google Inc. became a tenant of the Tannery, furthering its reputation as a home for leading high-tech companies.

The Kitchener office is a large hub for the development for Google’s Gmail application.

In 2016, the University of Waterloo-sponsored startup hub Velocity Garage relocated to the building, bringing over 100 additional startup companies into the Tannery.

Above: the Lang Tannery building

The Province of Ontario built a new provincial courthouse in downtown Kitchener, on the block bordered by Frederick, Duke, Scott and Weber streets.

The new courthouse created new jobs, mainly for the courthouse, but also for other businesses, especially law offices.

Above: Waterloo County Courthouse

In the downtown area, several factories have been transformed into upscale lofts and residences.

In September 2010, construction began on the ‘City Centre’ redevelopment project in downtown Kitchener.

This redevelopment project includes condominium units, new retail spaces, private and public parking, a gallery, and a boutique hotel.

The former Arrow shirt factory has been converted into a luxury, high-rise apartment building, featuring loft condominiums.

In 2012, Desire2Learn, in downtown Kitchener, received $80 million in venture capitalist funding from OMERS Ventures and New Enterprise Associates.

The downtown area was in a boom phase by late 2017, with $1.2 billion in building permits for 20 new developments completed by the end of February 2019.

That added 1,000 apartments and 1,800 condominium units.

The City indicated that the development would be a “mixture of high-density residential buildings with ground-floor retail, and office buildings with ground-floor retail“.

Since the Ion rapid transit (light rail) system, operated by Grand River Transit, was approved in 2009, “the region has issued $2.4 billion in building permits within the LRT corridor“.

Kitchener’s cultural highlights, many of which are free to the public, include:

KOI Music Festival is a three-day festival held annually in downtown Kitchener each September.

The festival was started in 2010 and has since expanded to include a free concert on Friday and a full day of performance Saturday and Sunday. KOI features more than 100 rock bands every year, with a large focus on local, independent musicians.

KOI Music Festival at Downtown Kitchener (Kitchener) on 19 Sep 2014 | Last.fm

Notable past performers include:

Every Time I Die

Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker

Chiodos

Walk Off the Earth

Four Year Strong

Protest the Hero

Protest the Hero live at Southern Ontario Metal Festival, August 2011[1]

Mad Caddies

Monster Truck

Treble Charger

Cute Is What We Aim For

the Planet Smashers

Bayside

…..and several hundred more.

Kultrun is an annual festival of world music, food, culture, and art that takes place in Victoria Park each July. Music from various cultures is performed on two stages, and the rest of the park is covered with vendors selling their goods. A key part of the festival is the large number of food stands selling foods from all different ethnic backgrounds.

Kultrun Festival kicks off with Friday night concert - KitchenerToday.com

CAFKA

Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener + Area (CAFKA) - Artguide – Artforum International

the Open Ears Festival

IMPACT Theatre Festival

the Multicultural Festival is a two-day event in Victoria Park commencing usually on the first weekend of the summer. Run by the Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Centre, the festival features foods, dance and music from around the world. The festival also showcases several vendors that sell artifacts and crafts from around the world. This festival has been ongoing for well over 40 years. Well over 50,000 attend every year.

Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Festival — Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Centre

the Kitchener Blues Festival is a four-day festival in downtown Kitchener dedicated to blues music, always held in August on the weekend following the civic holiday. The festival has expanded to four stages and two workshop stages throughout the downtown area, with over 90 performances. It has grown from a one-day event with an attendance of 3,000 to a four-day event with over 150,000 attending. In 2014 the Kitchener Blues Festival celebrated its 14th year.

Kitchener Blues Festival 2019 Lineup - Aug 8 - 11, 2019

Kids World

Kidzone to shut down over dispute with landlord | CTV News

Winterfest in January is highlighted by a Sno-do 100, a 100-mile endurance race for snowmobilers.

Kitchener is also home to venues such as:

Homer Watson House & Gallery

Homer Ransford Watson (1855 – 1936) was a Canadian landscape painter.

He has been characterized as the painter who first painted Canada as Canada, rather than as a pastiche of European painting.

He was a member and president (1918–1922) of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, as well as a founding member and first president (1907–1911) of the Canadian Art Club.

Although Watson had almost no formal training, by his mid-1920s he was well known and admired by Canadian collectors and critics, his rural landscape paintings making him one of the central figures in Canadian art from the 1880s until the First World War.

Homer Watson House National Historic Site of Canada is located in the hamlet of Doon, which is now part of Kitchener, Ontario.

This modest, 19th-century, one-and-a-half-storey house that sits within a generous property, was the home and studio of Canadian landscape artist Homer Watson.

The house was designated for its dramatic gallery and studio addition that contains works of art and creative spaces associated with Watson’s career.

The designation refers to the original house with its Watson-era additions on its legal property as of 1980.

He purchased this house when he married in 1881, and lived in it until he died in 1936.

Although the house is a typical 19th-century brick farmhouse built in 1834, Watson personalized its facilities to pursue his art, and made two additions: a studio addition on the rear of the house (1893) and a gallery (1906).

Particular value lies in those rooms and places associated with his art, his studio and gallery spaces, viewscapes and features of the surrounding site associated with his paintings, and location of the residence within the historic community of Doon.

Some of Watson’s most respected works are views of the surrounding countryside from various vantage points of the property.

The house later became the Doon School of Fine Arts and a privately maintained memorial to Watson.

Since that time it has been operated by the City of Kitchener.

Kitchener–Waterloo Art Gallery

Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery to close temporarily for renovations | Toronto.com

This is a permanent collection of about 200 works of art, including oil paintings and sketches by Homer Watson. Among the works on permanent loan from the National Gallery of Canada are Split Rock Georgian Bay by Tom Thomson and Winter Moonlight by A.Y. Jackson.

Above: Split Rock Georgian Bay, Tom Thomson

Deny Fear on Twitter: "A reminder that "A.Y. Jackson" and "A. Y. Jackson" are two different searches on Twitter. They both stand for Alexander Young. Winter Moonlight 1921 @NatGalleryCan #GroupOfSevenAt100… https://t.co/CHBjrAVLHn"

Above: Winter Moonlight, A.Y. Jackson

THE MUSEUM

Formerly the Waterloo Regional Children’s Museum, THE MUSEUM opened to the public in September 2003 following eight years of planning and fundraising.

The Museum, as it was renamed in 2010, offers a range of permanent interactive exhibits and rotating temporary exhibits designed for all ages to touch and enjoy.

JM Drama Alumni

JM Drama – Supporting the development of the performing arts in the Region of Waterloo

Centre in the Square

Centre In The Square - Event Venues in Canada | Event, Canada, Event venues

Doon Heritage Village

Doon Heritage Village (Kitchener) - Aktuelle 2021 - Lohnt es sich? (Mit fotos)

Woodside National Historic Park

William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874 – 1950), commonly known as Mackenzie King or WLMK, was a Canadian statesman and politician who served as the 10th Prime Minister of Canada for three non-consecutive terms (1921–1926 /1926–1930 /1935–1948).

A Liberal, he was the dominant politician in Canada during the interwar period from the 1920s through the 1940s.

He is best known for his leadership of Canada throughout the Second World War (1939–1945) when he mobilized Canadian money, supplies and volunteers to support Britain while boosting the economy and maintaining morale on the home front.

With a total of 21 years and 154 days in office, he remains the longest serving prime minister in Canadian history.

Trained in law and social work, he was keenly interested in the human condition – As a boy, his motto was “Help those that cannot help themselves“. – and played a major role in laying the foundations of the Canadian welfare state.

King acceded to the leadership of the Liberal Party in 1919.

Taking the helm of a party bitterly torn apart during the First World War, he reconciled factions, unifying the Liberal Party and leading it to victory in the 1921 election.

His party was out of office during the harshest days of the Great Depression of Canada (1930 – 1935).

He returned when the economy was on an upswing.

He personally handled complex relations with the Prairie Provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta) while his top aides Ernest Lapointe and Louis St. Laurent skillfully met the demands of French Canadians.

Above: Ernest Lapointe (1876 – 1941)

Above: Louis St. Laurent (1882 – 1973)

During the Second World War, King carefully avoided the battles over conscription, patriotism and ethnicity that had divided Canada so deeply in the First World War.

Though few major policy innovations took place during his premiership, he was able to synthesize and pass a number of measures that had reached a level of broad national support.

Scholars attribute King’s long tenure as party leader to his wide range of skills that were appropriate to Canada’s needs.

He understood the workings of capital and labour.

Above: King, while writing Industry and Humanity, 1917

Keenly sensitive to the nuances of public policy, he was a workaholic with a shrewd and penetrating intelligence and a profound understanding of the complexities of Canadian society.

A modernizing technocrat who regarded managerial mediation as essential to an industrial society, he wanted his Liberal Party to represent liberal corporatism to create social harmony.

King worked to bring compromise and harmony to many competing and feuding elements, using politics and government action as his instrument.

He led his party for 29 years, and established Canada’s international reputation as a middle power fully committed to world order.

King’s biographers agree on the personal characteristics that made him distinctive.

He lacked the charisma of such contemporaries as Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill or Charles de Gaulle.

He lacked a commanding presence or oratorical skill.

Above: King (far right) together with (from left to right) Governor General the Earl of Athlone (1874 – 1957), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 – 1945) and Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965) at the Octagon Conference, Québec City, September 1944

Above: Charles de Gaulle (1890 – 1970)

King’s best writing was academic, and did not resonate with the electorate.

Cold and tactless in human relations, he had many political allies but very few close personal friends.

He never married and lacked a hostess whose charm could substitute for his chill.

He kept secret his beliefs in spiritualism and use of mediums to stay in contact with departed associates and particularly with his mother, and allowed his intense spirituality to distort his understanding of Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945) throughout the late 1930s.

A survey of scholars in 1997 by Maclean’s magazine ranked King first among all Canada’s prime ministers including Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

As historian Jack Granatstein notes:

“The scholars expressed little admiration for King the man but offered unbounded admiration for his political skills and attention to Canadian unity.”

On the other hand, political scientist Ian Stewart in 2007 found that even Liberal activists have but a dim memory of him.

Woodside, a large gray brick house in which Prime Minister Mackenzie King lived as a boy, is set in 11.5 acres of park grounds.

It was leased by King’s father from 1886 to 1893.

A group of citizens purchased it in 1943 and undertook to restore it to the condition in which King had known it as a boy.

It was deeded to the government of Canada in 1954 and designated as a National Historic Park.

The L-shaped house is a good example of Victorian English country style transplanted to Canada and is in many ways typical of upper middle class Ontario homes of that period.

The house has ornamental gables and bargeboard with an intricate feleur-de-lis pattern.

It was heated by stoves – there were no fireplaces – and had no basement, although one has been added and contains displays relating to King’s life.

One is a document he treasured: a government proclamation putting a price of 1,000 pounds on the head of his grandfather, William Lyon Mackenzie, leader of the 1837 rebellion in Upper Canada.

A portrait of William Lyon Mackenzie, depicted sitting in a chair with papers in his hands.

Above: William Lyon Mackenzie (1795 – 1861)

The rest of the ten-room house is furnished in the cluttered comfortable fashion of the Victorian era.

It has the look of a home, not a museum.

CNHS - "WOODSIDE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE" - Kitchener - Ontario - Canadian National Historic Sites on Waymarking.com

Among the highlights are a marbletop table that belonged to King’s grandfather, a fine old kitchen cookstove, a white timber wolf rug, a Royal Doulton washstand set, a gleaming brass bed and a grand piano that King willed to be returned to Woodside.

There are also brass spittoons, scores of doilies, various bric-a-brac and a stereopticon, a picture-viewing device giving a three-dimensional image.

Paper and shoemaker’s wax is provided for visitors to make rubbings of a brass plaque of King.

Kitchener is also home to independent music label, Busted Flat Records, which features the music of many Kitchener–Waterloo based musicians.

Various locations in Kitchener and Waterloo were used to portray the fictional Ontario town of Wessex in the filming of Canadian television sitcom Dan for Mayor.

A local folk group, Destroy All Robots, wrote a tongue-in-cheek song jibing the city of Kitchener, “Battle Hymn of the City of Kitchener, Ontario“.

Destroy All Robots – “Battle Hymn of the City of Kitchener, Ontario” – YouTube

Kitchener’s oldest outdoor park is Victoria Park, in the heart of downtown Kitchener.

Numerous events and festivities are held in this park.

A cast-bronze statue of Queen Victoria is in Victoria Park, along with a cannon.

The statue was unveiled in May 1911, on Victoria Day (the Queen’s birthday) in the 10th year after her death.

Another significant beauty spot in the city is Rockway Gardens.

Adjacent to the Rockway golf course, the gardens occupy a long narrow strip of land alongside King Street as it rushes down to meet the Conestoga Parkway and becomes Highway 8.

Here there are many fountains, ponds, waterfalls and rock grottoes.

It is a popular site for wedding photos in the summer.

gardenKitchener | Kitchener Horticultural Society | Rockway Gardens :: Home

Kitchener has an extensive and safe community trail system.

The trails, which are controlled and run by the city, are hundreds of kilometres in length.

Due to Kitchener’s close proximity to the Grand River, several community trails and paths border the river’s shores.

This convenient access to the Grand River has drawn nature-seeking tourists to the city.

However, Kitchener’s trails and especially natural areas remain underfunded by city council and as a result, many are not adequately maintained.

Regional Trail Tour: Walter Bean Trail at Pioneer Tower - Run Waterloo

In 2011, a bike park at the newly constructed McLennan Park, in the city’s south end, was hailed as one of the best city-run bike parks in southern Ontario by BMX nad mountain biking enthusiasts.

The bike park offers a four-cross (4X) section, a pump track section, a jump park, and a free ride course.

McLennan Park also features an accessible play area, a splash pad, basketball courts, beach volleyball courts, a leash-free dog area, and a toboggan hill.

MCLENNAN PARK - Parks - 901 Ottawa St S, Kitchener, ON - Phone Number

Chicopee Ski Club is also within the city limits.

Skigebiet Chicopee Ski Club • Skiurlaub • Skifahren • Testberichte

Kitchener is home to sports teams:

the Kitchener-Waterloo Titans (National Basketball League)

the Kitchener Rangers (Ontario Hockey League)

the Kitchener Panthers (Intercounty Baseball)

the Kitchener-Waterloo Braves / Kodiaks (Lacrosse)

K-W Jr. A Braves (@KW_JrA_Braves) | Twitter

Kitchener and District Soccer League

Tri-City Roller Derby (Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby Association)

Kitchener has produced a number of world-class athletes in the fields of basketball, darts, ice hockey, blind lawn bowling, swimming, golf, lacrosse, soccer, pole vaulting, judoka, boxing, football, wrestling and skiing.

Family Day activities in Kitchener, Cambridge and Waterloo - Kitchener | Globalnews.ca

Kitchener Station lies a short distance west along the track from the junction with the Waterloo Spur.

The current station building dates from 1897 and is a heritage structure which is owned by Via Rail, Canada’s national passenger railway.

Via Rail service consists of two trains per day in each direction along the Toronto–London–Sarnia route.

One westbound train terminates at Sarnia while another terminates at London, while both eastbound trains terminate at Toronto Union Station.

KITCHENER, Ontario rail station | Ontario, House styles, Kitchener

As the train idles by the station, I search my mind for memories of Kitchener and none come, save that I had preferred Waterloo and the Mennonites communities in the region more.

Kitchener, for me, is not a place to immediately be smitten by, but rather it seems like a place that over time could grow in favour for the long-term resident.

When I see Kitchener in my mind’s eye I see a film noir with hard-living private eyes scouring the violent city for clues, for Kitchener was the boyhood home of Keith Millar (1915 – 1983) (better known as Ross Macdonald of the Lew Archer series) and the birthplace of Keith’s wife, mystery-suspense writer Margaret Millar (née Sturm) (1915 – 1994), the “Master Gatherer” John Robert Colombo renowned for his reference works on all things Canadian especially Mysterious Canada, novelist David Morrell (whose First Blood would spawn the Rambo movie franchise) and cartoonist Dave Sim of the Cerberus graphic novel series.

Above: John Robert Colombo

Macdonald’s works (particularly the Archer novels) have received attention in academic circles for their psychological depth, sense of place, use of language, sophisticated imagery and integration of philosophy into genre fiction.

Tom Nolan in his Ross Macdonald, A Biography, wrote:

“By any standard he was remarkable.

His first books, patterned on Hammett and Chandler, were at once vivid chronicles of a postwar California and elaborate retellings of Greek and other classic myths.

Gradually he swapped the hard-boiled trappings for more subjective themes: personal identity, the family secret, the family scapegoat, the childhood trauma, how men and women need and battle each other, how the buried past rises like a skeleton to confront the present.

He brought the tragic drama of Freud and the psychology of Sophocles to detective stories, and his prose flashed with poetic imagery.“

In a 2017 book review, the Wall Street Journal provided this summary of the author’s style:

“It is the sheer beauty of Macdonald’s laconic style—with its seductive rhythms and elegant plainness—that holds us spellbound.
‘Hard-boiled,’ ‘noir,’ ‘mystery,’ it doesn’t matter what you call it.
Macdonald, with insolent grace, blows past the barrier constructed by Dorothy Sayers between “the literature of escape” and “the literature of expression.”
These novels, triumphs of his literary alchemy, dare to be both.”

Margaret Millar’s books are distinguished by depth of characterization.

Often we are shown the rather complex interior lives of the people in her books, with issues of class, insecurity, failed ambitions, loneliness or existential isolation or paranoia often being explored.

Unusual people, mild societal misfits or people who don’t quite fit into their surroundings are given much interior detail.

In some of the books (for example in The Iron Gates) we are given insight into what it feels like to be losing touch with reality and evolving into madness.

In general, she is a writer of both expressive description and economy, often ambitious in conveying the sociological context of the stories.

Millar often delivers “surprise endings,” but the details that would allow the solution of the surprise have usually been subtly included, in the best genre tradition.

Her books focus on subtleties of human interaction and rich psychological detail of individual characters as much as on plot.

Millar was a pioneer in writing about the psychology of women.

Even as early as the ’40s and ’50s, her books have a mature and matter-of-fact view of class distinctions, sexual freedom and frustration, and the ambivalence of moral codes depending on a character’s economic circumstances.

Read against the backdrop of Production Code-era movies of the time, they remind us that life as lived in the ’40s and ’50s was not as black-and-white morally as Hollywood would have us believe.

The Iron Gates (Inspector Sands #2) by Margaret Millar

The theme of violence is indirectly reflected in the performance of one Kitchener actor:

Lois Ruth Maxwell (née Hooker) (1927 – 2007) was a Canadian actress, best known for her portrayal of Miss Moneypenny in all the first 14 Eon-produced James Bond films (1962–1985).

She was the first actress to play the part.

Pictures & Photos of Lois Maxwell | Bond girls, Bond women, James bond

The films in which she played Miss Moneypenny were:

Dr. No (1962)

In the foreground, Bond wears a suit and is holding a gun; four female characters from the film are next to him.

From Russia with Love (1963)

The upper centre of the poster reads "Meet James Bond, secret agent 007. His new incredible women ... His new incredible enemies ... His new incredible adventures ..." To the right is Bond holding a gun, to the left a montage of women, fights, and an explosion. On the bottom of the poster are the credits.

Goldfinger (1964)

On a black background, a woman in underwear painted gold stands on the left. An image of Bond and a woman is projected on the right side of the woman's body. On the left is a phrase of the tagline: "James Bond Back in Action". Below is the title and credits.

Thunderball (1965)

You Only Live Twice (1967)

Cinema poster showing Sean Connery as James Bond sitting in a pool of water and being attended to by eight black-haired Japanese women

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

A man in a dinner jacket on skis, holding a gun. Next to him is a red-headed woman, also on skis and with a gun. They are being pursued by men on skis and a bobsleigh, all with guns. In the top left of the picture are the words FAR UP! FAR OUT! FAR MORE! James Bond 007 is back!

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Diamonds Are Forever - UK cinema poster.jpg

Live and Let Die (1973)

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

A man in a dinner jacket holding a pistol is in the centre of the picture. Various scenes and images surround him, including two women in bikinis, a midget with a pistol, a car stunt and explosions. At the bottom right, oversized and pointing towards the man in the dinner jacket, is a golden gun, with a hand holding a bullet, about to load the gun. The top of the picture has the words "ROGER MOORE as JAMES BOND 007". At the bottom are the words "THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN".

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The Spy Who Loved Me (UK cinema poster).jpg

Moonraker (1979)

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

A graphic, taking up three-quarters of the image, on black background with the bottom quarter in red. Above the picture are the words "No one comes close to JAMES BOND 007". The graphic contains a stylised pair of women's legs and buttocks in the foreground: a pair of bikini bottoms cover some of the bottom. The woman wears high heels and is carrying a crossbow in her right hand. In the distance, viewed between her legs, a man in a dinner suit is seen side on, carrying a pistol. In the red, below the graphic, are the words: "Roger Moore as Ian Fleming's James Bond 007 in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY".

Octopussy (1983)

A View to a Kill (1985)

Maxwell began her film career in the late 1940s, and won the Golden Globe award for most promising newcomer for her performance in That Hagen Girl (1947).

Following a number of small film roles, she became dissatisfied and travelled to Italy, where she worked in film from 1951 to 1955.

After her marriage, she moved to the United Kingdom, where she appeared in several television productions.

As Maxwell’s career declined, she lived in Canada, Switzerland and the UK.

In 2001, she was diagnosed with bowel cancer and moved to Perth, Western Australia, where she lived with her son until her death, aged 80, in 2007.

Above: Perth

Mel Brown (1939 – 2009) was an American-born blues guitarist and singer.

He is best remembered for his decade long backing of Bobby Bland, although in his own right, Brown recorded over a dozen albums between 1967 and 2006.

He died in Kitchener.

Courage My Love is a three-piece rock band from Kitchener.

Formed in 2009, the band consists of twin sisters Mercedes and Phoenix Arn-Horn, in addition to bassist Brandon Lockwood.

Synesthesia (Courage My Love album) cover.jpg

Glennon Ricketts Jr. (professionally known as Glenn Lewis) is a Canadian neo-soul singer-songwriter.

Lewis earned a Grammy Award nomination in 2004 and has also won a Juno Award.

Messenjah are a Canadian-based reggae group that flourished to become one of the most successful and popular reggae groups in the history of Canadian music

Danny Michel is a Canadian songwriter and producer.

Between 2006 & 2015 Michel performed over 70 times as the musical guest on Stuart McLean’s The Vinyl Café.

In 2008 “Feather, Fur & Fin” landed on the Playlist for the Planet released by the David Suzuki Foundation.

Michel performed on Suzuki’s Blue Dot Tour as well as his 75th birthday party in 2011.

In 2019, Michel performed for Dr. Jane Goodall at her 85th birthday party in Toronto.

Steve Strongman is a Canadian blues guitarist, singer and songwriter.

He has released several full length blues albums, Honey, Blues in Colour, Live at the Barn A Natural Fact, Let Me Prove it to You and No Time Like Now.

Tasha the Amazon (née Tasha Schumann) is a Canadian rapper, singer-songwriter, and hip hop producer.

She is best known for her debut EP Die Every Day, which was nominated at the 2017 Juno Awards for rap recording of the year.

Tasha The Amazon Aims To Blow Out Of Toronto Like You-Know-Who | HipHopDX

Dawud Wharnsby (né David Howard Wharnsby) is a Canadian Universalist Muslim singer-songwriter, poet, performer, educator and television personality.

A multi-instrumentalist, he is best known for his work in the musical/poetic genre of English language nasheed and spoken word.

Dawud Wharnsby - Don't talk to me about Muhammad | MuslimFest 2016 - YouTube

JJ Wilde (born 1992) is a Canadian rock singer from Kitchener.

She is most noted for her single “The Rush“, which simultaneously reached #1 on Canada’s modern rock, active rock and mainstream rock charts in May 2020.

JJ Wilde – The Rush (Just for Zoners!) #MicroVirtualZoneShow | The Zone @ 91-3

Despite the variety of genres of music to be found in Kitchener, it is difficult to image a genre of literature from Kitchener that isn’t hard-boiled as Macdonald, Millar, Morrell or Sim….

The poet William Wilfred Campbell was born in Kitchener (then Berlin), the second son of the Reverend Thomas Campbell, an Anglican minister.

A national historical plaque at Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate commemorates Campbell’s birth and honours him as the author of several of post-Confederation Canada’s most influential volumes of poetry, including Lake Lyrics (1889), The Dread Voyage (1893), Beyond the Hills of Dream (1899) and Collected Poems (1905).

When Campbell was only a year old, his family moved from Kitchener to Wiarton.

He is often classed as one of the country’s Confederation poets, a group that included fellow Canadians Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carmen, Archibald Lampman and Duncan Campbell Scott.

Campbell was a colleague of Lampman and Scott.

By the end of the 19th century, he was considered the “unofficial poet laureate of Canada.”

Although not as well known as the other Confederation poets today, Campbell was a “versatile, interesting writer” who was influenced by Robert Burns, the English Romantics, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Carlyle and Alfred Tennyson.

Inspired by these writers, Campbell expressed his own religious idealism in traditional forms and genres.

Above: William Wilfred Campbell (1860 – 1918)

“How One Winter Came in the Lake Region” by William Wilfred Campbell

For weeks and weeks the autumn world stood still,

Clothed in the shadow of a smoky haze;

The fields were dead, the wind had lost its will,

And all the lands were hushed by wood and hill,

In those grey, withered days.

Behind a mist the blear sun rose and set,

At night the moon would nestle in a cloud;

The fisherman, a ghost, did cast his net;

The lake its shores forgot to chafe and fret,

And hushed its caverns loud.

Far in the smoky woods the birds were mute,

Save that from blackened tree a jay would scream,

Or far in swamps the lizard’s lonesome lute

Would pipe in thirst, or by some gnarlèd root

The treetoad trilled his dream.

From day to day still hushed the season’s mood,

The streams stayed in their runnels shrunk and dry;

Suns rose aghast by wave and shore and wood,

And all the world, with ominous silence, stood

In weird expectancy:

When one strange night the sun like blood went down,

Flooding the heavens in a ruddy hue;

Red grew the lake, the sere fields parched and brown,

Red grew the marshes where the creeks stole down,

But never a wind-breath blew.

That night I felt the winter in my veins,

A joyous tremor of the icy glow;

And woke to hear the north’s wild vibrant strains,

While far and wide, by withered woods and plains,

Fast fell the driving snow.

Amazon.com: William Wilfred Campbell (Canadian Author Studies series) (9780920763476): Wicken, George: Books

Kitchener is probably worth a daytrip, but a day in Kitchener is not something I can afford at this time.

The train whistle makes a mournful sound as we pull away from the station.

An undiscovered town will have to remain an undiscovered town.

But curious feet sometimes return….

Train from Kitchener to Toronto | VIA Rail

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Reader’s Digest Explore Canada / Albert and Theresa Moritz, The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to Canada / Toronto Star, 13 January 2020 / Dawud Wharnsby, “Live Like a Traveller”

Swiss Miss and the Foreign Quarter

Posted on February 23, 2021 by canadaslim

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Thursday 4 February 2021

I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.

It may be a beautiful day today, but I spend it indoors.

I make phone calls, I write, I organize and de-clutter.

The beauty of the moment is lost in the fears of the future.

I look at my face in the mirror this morning while shaving.

Getting older, but I am not suffering (as far as I know) from any fatal disease (except aging), on this World Cancer Day, an international day marked on 4 February to raise awareness of cancer and to encourage its prevention, detection and treatment.

World Cancer Day is led by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) to support the goals of the World Cancer Declaration, written in 2008.

The primary goal of World Cancer Day is to significantly reduce illness and death caused by cancer and is an opportunity to rally the international community to end the injustice of preventable suffering from cancer.

The day is observed by the United Nations.

World Cancer Day targets misinformation, raises awareness, and reduces stigma.

Multiple initiatives are run on World Cancer Day to show support for those affected by cancer.

One of these movements are #NoHairSelfie, a global movement to have “hairticipants” shave their heads either physically or virtually to show a symbol of courage for those undergoing cancer treatment.

Images of participants are then shared all over social media.

Hundreds of events around the world also take place.

World Cancer Day was established on 4 February 2000 at the World Cancer Summit Against Cancer for the New Millenium, which was held in Paris.

The Charter of Paris Against Cancer, which was created to promote research, prevent cancer, improve patient services, also included an article establishing the anniversary of the document’s official signing as World Cancer Day, was signed at the Summit by the then General Director of UNESCO, Koichiro Matsuura, and then French President Jacques Chirac in Paris on 4 February 2000.

World Cancer Day, India - Home | Facebook

The 2019 – 2021 campaign theme is ‘I Am and I Will‘.

The theme seeks to counter the negative attitude and fatalistic belief that nothing can be done about cancer, and instead promotes how our personal actions can be powerful and impactful.

World Cancer Day is marked by the international cancer community, governments and individuals around the world.

Each year, more than 900 activities take place in over 100 different countries, with the day itself a trending topic on Twitter.

In recent years, cities have begun to support the day by lighting up important landmarks in orange and blue.

In 2019, 55 landmarks in 37 cities participated in the landmark lighting initiative.

At least 60 governments officially observe World Cancer Day.

Negative and fatalistic is certainly an emotion I often feel when I consider the world so much larger than myself.

Cancer is a very personal issue for me.

My biological mother died from cancer as did the foster parents who raised me.

Classmates have died from the disease.

And it is my genetic predisposition to cancer and life experience with cancer that made me resolve that a person really doesn’t know how long they can expect to have a healthy life and that, as far as we know for certain, each of us have only one life to live, that where our lives are is the result of choice and circumstance, that we cannot take for granted that the health we enjoy today will be ours tomorrow.

My foster folks had sworn that later on in their lives they would travel.

But cancer came sooner rather than later and they never did.

Cancer is also part of the Canadian identity through the legendary life of Terry Fox.

Terrance Stanley Fox (July 28, 1958 – June 28, 1981) was a Canadian athlete, humanitarian, and cancer research activist.

In 1980, with one leg having been amputated due to cancer, he embarked on an east to west cross-Canada run to raise money and awareness for cancer research.

Although the spread of his cancer eventually forced him to end his quest after 143 days and 5,373 kilometres (3,339 mi), and ultimately cost him his life, his efforts resulted in a lasting, worldwide legacy.

The annual Terry Fox Run, first held in 1981, has grown to involve millions of participants in over 60 countries and is now the world’s largest one-day fundraiser for cancer research.

Above: A happy moment at the Terry Fox Run 2014 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Over C$750 million has been raised in his name as of January 2018.

Fox was a distance runner and basketball player for his Port Coquitlam high school, now named after him, and Simon Fraser University.

His right leg was amputated in 1977 after he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, though he continued to run using an artificial leg.

He also played wheelchair basketball in Vancouver, winning three national championships.

In 1980, he began the Marathon of Hope, a cross-country run to raise money for cancer research.

He hoped to raise one dollar from each of Canada’s 24 million people.

He began with little fanfare from St. John’s, Newfoundland, in April and ran the equivalent of a full marathon every day.

Fox had become a national star by the time he reached Ontario.

He made numerous public appearances with businessmen, athletes, and politicians in his efforts to raise money.

He was forced to end his run outside Thunder Bay when the cancer spread to his lungs.

Statue of a runner with an artificial leg looking skyward.

His hopes of overcoming the disease and completing his run ended when he died nine months later.

Considered a national hero, he has had many buildings, statues, roads, and parks named in his honour across the country.

I would even go so far as to suggest that the one guaranteed way of riling a Canadian would be to besmirch the name of Fox in any way whatsoever.

Fox was a good man with the very best of intentions.

Money is raised in the hope that it is wisely being spent on cancer research, but the average person is completely oblivious as to how that research is being done.

Meanwhile, every year cancer affects more than 90 million people worldwide and kills about 10% of those with the disease within five years of first contracting it.

Above: Cancers are caused by a series of mutations. Each mutation alters the behavior of the cell somewhat.

There are no words to describe the feelings of helplessness when watching those you love struggle with cancer.

And in the darkest of moods, one wonders if Fox’s martyrdom made a difference in the fight.

We put so much faith and hope in science, that most of us will never understand, believing that mere humans like ourselves will one day astonish us with a cure, believing that science will one day save us.

And one day it might.

In the meantime, we remain the playthings of fate, victims of mortality that stalks each one of us, striking us down we know not when.

Foolishly, we believe that we are masters of our own fate and are frustrated when life does not follow our lead or meet our expectations.

Mystically Breathtaking Famous Quotes About Fate and Its Ways - Quotabulary

The Yemeni Civil War is an ongoing multi-sided civil war that began in late 2014 mainly between the Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi-led Yemeni government and the Houthi armed movement, along with their supporters and allies.

Both claim to constitute the official government of Yemen.

Above: Flag of Yemen

The civil war began in September 2014 when Houthi forces took over the capital city Sana’a, which was followed by a rapid Houthi takeover of the government.

Above: Sana’a

On 21 March 2015, the Houthi-led Supreme Revolutionary Committee declared a general mobilization to overthrow Hadi and expand their control by driving into southern provinces.

The Houthi offensive, allied with military forces loyal to Saleh, began fighting the next day in Lahij Governorate.

Above: Emblem of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee

By 25 March, Lahij fell to the Houthis and they reached the outskirts of Aden, the seat of power for Hadi’s government.

Hadi fled the country the same day.

Above: Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi

Concurrently, a coalition led by Saudi Arabia launched military operations by using air strikes to restore the former Yemeni government.

Above: Flag of Saudi Arabia

Although there was no direct intervention by Iran, who support the Houthis, the conflict has been widely seen as an extension of the Iran-Saudi Arabia proxy conflict (much like the Vietnam War was a proxy war between China and America) and as a means to combat Iranian influence in the region.

Above: Flag of Iran

Above: the Iran – Saudi Arabia Proxy Conflict (aka the Middle Eastern Cold War): (green) Iran / (orange) Saudi Arabia / (red) areas of proxy conflict

Houthi forces currently control the capital Sana’a and all of North Yemen except the Ma’rib Governorate.

They have clashed with Saudi-backed pro-government forces loyal to Hadi.

Since the formation of the Southern Transitional Council in 2017 and the subsequent capture of Aden by the STC in 2018, the anti-Houthi coalition has been fractured, with regular clashes between pro-Hadi forces backed by Saudi Arabia and southern separatists backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Above: Flag of the United Arab Emirates

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have also carried out attacks against both factions, with AQAP controlling swathes of territory in the hinterlands, and along stretches of the coast.

Above: Flag of Al-Qaeda

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), over 100,000 people have been killed in Yemen, including more than 12,000 civilians, as well as estimates of more than 85,000 dead as a result of an ongoing famine due to the War.

In 2018, the United Nations warned that 13 million Yemeni civilians face starvation in what it says could become “the worst famine in the world in 100 years.“

Famine in Yemen could become one of worst in living memory, UN says | Yemen | The Guardian

The crisis has only begun to gain as much international media attention as the Syrian Civil War in 2018.

The international community has sharply condemned the Saudi Arabian-led bombing campaign, which has included widespread bombing of civilian areas.

According to the Yemen Data Project, the bombing campaign has killed or injured an estimated 17,729 civilians as of March 2019.

Why the hell is the US helping Saudi Arabia bomb Yemen? A brief guide. - Vox

The US provided intelligence and logistical support for the Saudi-led campaign.

In March 2019, both houses of Congress voted to pass a resolution to end US support to the Saudi Arabia war effort.

It was vetoed by then-President Donald Trump.

In May, the Senate failed to override the veto.

However, in January 2021, newly elected President Joe Biden froze arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Today, US President Biden announced that the US would end their support for Saudi Arabia in their intervention in Yemen, though Al-Qaeda operations in Yemen will continue to be targeted.

CNN reported on 8 April 2015 that almost 10,160,000 Yemenis were deprived of water, food, and electricity as a result of the conflict.

The report also added per source from UNICEF officials in Yemen that within 15 days, some 100,000 people across the country were dislocated, while Oxfam said that more than 10 million Yemenis did not have enough food to eat, in addition to 850,000 half-starved children.

Yemen's Famine: Not Enough Food, and Plenty of Blame

Over 13 million civilians were without access to clean water.

A medical aid boat brought 2.5 tonnes of medicine to Aden on 8 April 2015.

A UNICEF plane loaded with 16 tonnes of supplies landed in Sana’a on 10 April.

The UN announced on 19 April 2015 that Saudi Arabia promised to provide $273.7 million in emergency humanitarian aid to Yemen.

The UN appealed for the aid, saying 7.5 million people had been affected by the conflict and many were in need of medical supplies, potable water, food, shelter, and other forms of support.

On 12 May 2015, Oxfam warned that the five days a humanitarian ceasefire was scheduled to last would not be sufficient to fully address Yemen’s humanitarian crisis.

It has also been said that the Houthis are collecting a war tax on goods.

The political analyst Abdulghani al-Iryani affirmed that this tax is: “an illegal levy, mostly extortion that is not determined by the law and the amount is at the discretion of the field commanders“.

As the war dragged on through the summer and into the fall, things were made far worse when Cyclone Chapala, the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane, made landfall on 3 November 2015.

According to the NGO Save the Children, the destruction of healthcare facilities and a healthcare system on the brink of collapse as a result of the war will cause an estimated 10,000 preventable child deaths annually.

Some 1,219 children have died as a direct result of the conflict thus far.

Edward Santiago, the NGO’s Yemen director, asserted in December 2016:

Even before the war tens of thousands of Yemeni children were dying of preventable causes.
But now, the situation is much worse and an estimated 1,000 children are dying every week from preventable killers like diarrhea, malnutrition, and respiratory tract infections.

In March 2017, the World Food Programme reported that while Yemen was not yet in a full-blown famine, 60% of Yemenis, or 17 million people, were in “crisis” or “emergency” food situations.

In June 2017 a cholera epidemic resurfaced which was reported to be killing a person an hour in Yemen by mid June.

News reports in mid June stated that there had been 124,000 cases and 900 deaths and that 20 of the 22 provinces in Yemen were affected at that time.

UNICEF and WHO estimated that, by 24 June 2017, the total cases in the country exceeded 200,000, with 1,300 deaths.

77.7% of cholera cases (339,061 of 436,625) and 80.7% of deaths from cholera (1,545 of 1,915) occurred in Houthi-controlled governorates, compared to 15.4% of cases and 10.4% of deaths in government-controlled governorates, since Houthi-controlled areas have been disproportionately affected by the conflict, which has created conditions conducive to the spread of cholera.

On 7 June 2018, it was reported that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had pulled 71 of its international staff out of Yemen, and moved the rest of them to Djibouti, with some 450 ICRC employees remaining in the country.

The partial evacuation measure came on the eve of an ICRC worker, a Lebanese national, being killed on 21 April by unknown gunmen in the southwestern city of Taiz.

The ICRC stated:

“Our current activities have been blocked, threatened and directly targeted in recent weeks, and we see a vigorous attempt to instrumentalize our organization as a pawn in the conflict.”

In light of the serious security deterioration for ICRC personnel, the international organization has called for all parties of the conflict “to provide it with concrete, solid and actionable guarantees so that it can continue working in Yemen.”

Since the beginning of the conflict, more than 10,000 people have been killed and at least 40,000 wounded, mostly from air raids.

The International Rescue Committee stated in March that at least 9.8 million people in Yemen were acutely in need of health services.

The closure of Sana’a and Riyan airports for civilian flights and the limited operation of civilian airplanes in government-held areas, made it impossible for most to seek medical treatment abroad.

The cost of tickets provided by Yemenia, Air Djibouti and Queen Bilqis Airways, also put travelling outside Yemen out of reach for many.

The UN Development Programme published a report in September 2019 that said if the war continues,

Yemen will become the poorest country in the world, with 79% of the population living below the poverty line and 65% in extreme poverty by 2022.

On 3 December, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Amnesty International released a report highlighting how the almost five-year old Yemen war has left millions of people living with disabilities and excluded from medical attention.

The armed conflict led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE as part of the former’s coalition in the Arab nation against Houthis and terror groups, has given birth to the worst humanitarian crisis, as stated by the United Nations.

Humanitarian aid provided to Houthi-controlled Yemen will be scaled-down in March 2020 because donors doubt if it’s actually reaching the people in need, UN official said.

In June 2020, the UNHCR said that following more than five years of war in Yemen, more than 3.6 million people have been forced to flee their homes, while 24 million are in dire need of aid.

The group also informed that a significant gap in funding has been recorded with only US$63 million received thus far, while at least US$211.9 million is needed to run the operations in 2020.

On 2 July 2020, Human Rights Watch reported that detainees at Aden’s Bir Ahmed facility were facing serious health risks from the rapidly spreading corona virus pandemic.

The informal detention facility, controlled by Yemeni authorities affiliated with the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council, is grossly overcrowded and was deprived of health care facilities.

Yemeni refugee women and children are extremely susceptible to smuggling and human trafficking.

NGOs report that vulnerable populations in Yemen were at increased risk for human trafficking in 2015 because of ongoing armed conflict, civil unrest, and lawlessness.

Migrant workers from Somalia who remained in Yemen during this period suffered from increased violence, and women and children became most vulnerable to human trafficking.

Prostitution on women and child sex workers is a social issue in Yemen.

Citizens of other Gulf states are beginning to be drawn into the sex tourism industry.

The poorest people in Yemen work locally and children are commonly sold as sex slaves abroad.

While this issue is worsening, the plight of Somalis in Yemen has been ignored by the government.

Yemen's Forgotten Victims - Children Sold as A Commodity Of War - Citizen Truth

Children are recruited between the ages of 13 and 17, and as young as 10 years old, into armed forces despite a law against it in 1991.

The rate of militant recruitment in Yemen increases exponentially.

According to an international organization, between 26 March and 24 April 2015, armed groups recruited at least 140 children.

According to the New York Times report, 1.8 million children in Yemen are extremely subject to malnutrition in 2018.

Yemen is on the brink of a horrible famine – here's how things got so bad | The Spokesman-Review

Both the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis were blacklisted by the UN over the deaths of children during the war.

In 2016 Saudi Arabia was removed from the list after alleged pressure from Gulf countries who threatened to withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to the UN, the decision was criticized by human rights groups and the coalition added again in 2017 and was accused of killing or injuring 683 children, and attacking many of schools and hospitals in 38 confirmed attacks, while the Houthis were accused of being responsible for 414 child casualties in 2016.

In mid-May 2019, a series of Saudi/Emirati-led airstrikes hit Houthi targets on the outskirts of Sana’a.

One of the airstrikes destroyed several homes, killing five civilians and injuring more than 30.

According to the ACLED, while 4,800 of about 7,000 civilian fatalities have been caused by the Saudi-led coalition since 2016, the Houthis are accountable for 1,300 civilian deaths.

Map of the Middle East With Facts, Statistics and History

According to UNICEF, two million children have dropped out of school in Yemen since the conflict began in March 2015.

The education of other 3.7 million children is uncertain as the teachers have not received salaries in the last two years.

On 9 October 2019, children’s advocacy group, Save the Children warned of a significant rise in cholera cases in northern Yemen.

The crisis caused by increase in fuel shortages has affected several thousand children and their families.

In Yemen, children's education devastated after three years of escalating conflict

Between October 2016 and August 2019, over 2,036,960 suspected cholera cases were reported in Yemen, including 3,716 related deaths (fatality rate of 0.18%).

The seasonal flu virus in Yemen has claimed more than 270 lives since October 2019.

Poor medical facilities and widespread poverty in Yemen due to the war waged by Saudi-led coalition and Houthis have led to the deaths of many infected patients in their homes.

Fresh Yemen hospital attack raises risk of new cholera epidemic | | UN News

On 15 June 2020, the Saudi-led coalition killed 13 civilians including four children.

An airstrike struck a vehicle carrying civilians in Saada.

US-made bomb used in deadly Saudi-led air raid in Yemen | Humanitarian Crises News | Al Jazeera

On 16 June 2020, the UN removed the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen war from an annual blacklist of parties violating children’s rights.

The decision was taken despite the UN finding that the coalition operations killed or injured nearly 222 children in Yemen, in 2019.

The Saudi-led coalition’s removal from the blacklist leaves Yemeni children vulnerable to future attacks.

The Yemeni quality of life is affected by the civil war and people have suffered enormous hardships.

Although mines are banned by the government, Houthi forces placed anti-personnel mines in many parts of Yemen including Aden.

Thousands of civilians are injured when they accidentally step on mines.

Many lose their legs and injure their eyes.

It is estimated that more than 500,000 mines have been laid by Houthi forces during the conflict.

The pro-Hadi Yemen Army was able to remove 300,000 Houthi mines in recently captured areas, including 40,000 mines on the outskirts of Marib province, according to official sources.

HRW: Houthi rebels, allies using banned landmines in Yemen | News | DW | 20.04.2017

In addition, the nine-country coalition led by Saudi Arabia launched many airstrikes against Houthi forces; between March 2015 and December 2018 more than 4,600 civilians have been killed and much of the civilian infrastructure for goods and food production, storage, and distribution has been destroyed.

Factories have ceased production and thousands of people have lost their jobs.

Due to decreased production, food, medicines, and other consumer staples have become scarce.

The prices of these goods have gone up and civilians can no longer afford them for sustenance.

Above: 1,000 Yemeni rial note

I speak of Yemen in the same blogpost as Vietnam to show just how horrific war is and how the involvement of other nations in a domestic conflict can almost destroy a country.

The fact that Vietnam has not only survived but as well has thrived does bring hope that perhaps Yemen may one day follow the Vietnamese example.

What remains after foreign involvement may look nostalgic and quaint when viewed by tourists, but beneath the veneer of civilization are stories almost too tragic to tell.

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) / Useful data / Tools for journalists / Home - edjnet

Above: ACLED map of Eurasia and Africa

Hanoi, Vietnam, Monday 18 March 2019

It was a partly cloudy and warm morning that greeted Heidi Hoi.

She was feeling jetlagged but did not want to spend too much time abed when there was an entire country out there to explore.

She had already discovered the weekend night market last night in the heart of the Old Quarter where her hostel was and though the Market seemed to be mostly Vietnamese youngsters snapping up fashion accessories like mobile phone covers, there was happily places for her to eat an inexpensive supper.

Beyond the Old Quarter the traveller finds the French Quarter, where much that is beautiful and much that is horrible lie shadows over the streets.

French Quarter Hanoi - Everything You Need to Know About Hanoi French Quarter

The earliest evidence of human activity in Vietnam can be traced back to a paleolithic culture that existed since 500,000 years ago.

These hunter-gatherers slowly developed agricultural techniques, but the most important step came about 4,000 years ago when farmers began to cultivate irrigated rice in the Red River Delta.

The communal effort required to build and maintain the system of dykes and canals spawned a stable, highly organized society, held to be the original Vietnamese nation.

This embryonic kingdom, Van Leng, emerged sometime around 2000 BC and was ruled over the semi-mythological Hung kings from their capital near Viet Tri, northwest of Hanoi.

Archeological finds indicate that by the first millennium BC, these people, the Lac Viet, had evolved into a sophisticated Bronze Age culture whose influence spread as far as Indonesia.

Undoubtedly their greatest creations were the ritualistic bronze drums, discovered in the 1920s near Dong Son, and revered by the Vietnamese as the first hard evidence of an indigenous, independent culture.

In the mid-3rd century BC, a Chinese warlord conquered Van Leng to create a new kingdom, Au Lac, with its capital at Co Loa, near present day Hanoi.

For the first time the lowland Lac Viet and the hill peoples were united.

After only 50 years, around 207 BC, Au Lac was itself invaded by a Chinese potentate, and became part of Nam Viet, an independent kingdom occupying much of southern China.

For a while the Lac Viet were able to maintain their local traditions and an indigenous aristocracy.

Then in 111 BC the Han emperors annexed the whole Red River Delta and began a thousand years of Chinese domination.

Above: Flag of modern China

A millennium under Chinese rule had a profound effect on all aspects of Vietnamese life, notably the social and political spheres.

With the introduction of Confucianism came the growth of a rigid, feudalistic hierarchy dominated by a mandarin class.

Above: Portrait of Confucius (551 – 479 BC)

This innately conservative elite ensured the long term stability of an administratvie system that continued to dominate Vietnamese society until well into the 19th century.

The Chinese also introduced tehnological advances, such as writing, silk production and large scale hydraulic works, while Mahayana Buddhism first entered Vietnam from China during the 2nd century AD.

At the same time, however, the Viet people were forging their national identity in the continuous struggle to break free from their powerful northern neighbour.

On at least three occasions the Vietnamese ousted their masters.

The first and most celebrated of these short-lived independent kingdoms was established by the Trung sisters in 40 AD.

After the Chinese murdered Trung Trac’s husband, she and her sister rallied the local lords and peasant farmers in the first popular insurrection against foreign domination.

The Chinese fled, leaving Trung Trac ruler of the territory from Hue to southern China until the Han emperor dispatched 20,000 troops and a fleet of 2,000 junks to quell the rebellion three years later.

The sisters chose to drown themselves in a river rather than be captured.

The Chinese quickly set about removing the local lords.

Though subsequent uprisings also failed, the sisters had demonstrated the fallibility of the Chinese and earned their place in Vietnam’s pantheon of heroes.

Over the following centuries Vietnam was drawn closer into the political and cultural realm of China.

The 7th and 8th centuries were particularly bleak as the powerful Tang dynasty tightened its grip on the province it called Annam, “the pacified South“.

As soon as the dynasty collapsed in the early 10th century a series of major rebellions broke out culminating in the Battle of the Bach Deng River in 938 AD.

Ngo Quyen declared himself ruler of Nam Viet and set up court at the historic citadel of Co Loa, heralding what was to be nearly ten centuries of Vietnamese independence.

Map showing the territorial expansion of Vietnam between 1009 and 1834

The period immediately following independence from Chinese rule in 939 AD was marked by factional infighting.

Having ousted the declining Ly clan in 1225, the following Tran dynasty won spectacular military victories against the Mongol invasions of 1257, 1284 and 1288.

In the confusion that marked the end of the Tran dynasty, an ambitious court minister, Ho Qui Ly, usurped the throne in 1400.

Though the Ho dynasty lasted only seven years, its two progressive monarchs launched a number of important reforms.

Just as the Ho were getting into their stride, the new Ming dynasty in China were beginning to look south across the border.

Under the pretext of restoring the Tran, Ming armies invaded in 1407 and imposed direct Chinese rule of Vietnam a few years later.

The Chinese tried to undermine Viet culture by outlawing local customs and destroying Vietnamese literature, works of art and historical texts.

Map of South-East Asia - Nations Online Project

This time, however, the Chinese occupation force faced a much tougher problem as the Viet people were now a relatively cohesive force.

Vietnamese resistance gravitated towards the mountains of Thanh Hoa, south of Hanoi, where a local landlord and mandarin Le Loi was preparing for a war of national liberation.

For ten years Le Loi’s well-disciplined guerilla force harassed the enemy until he was finally able to defeat the Chinese army in open battle in 1427.

The first Western visitors to the Vietnamese peninsula were probably traders from ancient Rome, who sailed into the ports of Champa in the 2nd century AD.

Above: Ancient Roman ship

Marco Polo (1254 – 1324) sailed up the coast in the 13th century on his way to China, but more significant was the arrival of a Portuguese merchant, Antonio Da Faria, at the port of Fai Fo (today’s Hoi An) in 1535.

Above: Marco Polo in Tartar clothing

The Portuguese established their own trading post at Fai Fo, then one of Southeast Asia’s greatest ports, crammed with vessels from China and Japan.

They were soon followed by other European maritime powers.

With the traders came missionaries, who found a ready audience, especially among peasant farmers and others near the bottom of established Confucian hierarchy.

It did not take long before the ruling elite felt threatened by subversive Christian ideas.

Missionary work was banned after the 1630s and many priests were expelled or even executed.

But enforcement was erratic.

By the end of the 17th century the Catholic Church claimed several hundred thousand converts.

Above: Emblem of the Papacy

At this time Vietnam was breaking up into regional factions and the Europeans were quick to exploit growing tensions between the Nguyen and Trinh lords, providing weapons in exchange for trading concessions.

However, when the civil war ended in 1674 the merchants lost their advantage.

Gradually the English, Dutch and French closed down their trading ports.

Only the Portuguese remained in Fai Fo.

Above: Flag of modern Portugal

Towards the end of the 18th century, the remaining Catholic missions provided an opening for French merchants wishing to challenge Britain’s presence in the Far East.

When a large scale rebellion broke out in Vietnam in the early 1770s, these entrepreneurs saw their chance to establish a firmer footing on the Indochinese peninsula.

Above: Flag of modern France

As the 18th century progressed, insurrections flared up throughout the countryside.

Most were easily stamped out, but in 1771 three brothers raised their standard in Tay Son village, west of Quy Nhon, and ended up ruling the whole country.

The Tay Son rebellion gained broad support among dispossessed peasants, ethnic minorities, small merchants and townspeople attracted by the brothers’ message of equal rights, justice and liberty.

As rebellion spread through the south, the Tay Son army rallied even more converts when they seized land from the wealthy and redistributed it to the poor.

By the middle of 1786 the rebels had overthrown both the Trinh and Nguyen lords, again leaving the Le dynasty intact.

When the Le monarch called on the Chinese in 1788 to help remove the Tay Son usurpers, the Chinese happily obliged by occupying Hanoi.

At this the middle brother declared himself Emperor Quang Trung and quick-marched his army 600 km from Hue to defeat the Chinese at Dong Da, on the outskirts of Hanoi.

With Hue as his capital, Quang Trung set about implementing his promised reforms, but when he died prematurely in 1792, aged 39, his 10-year-old son was unable to hold onto power.

Above: Royal flag of Vietnam

One of the few Nguyen lords to have survived the Tay Son rebellion in the south was Prince Nguyen Anh.

The prince made several unsuccessful attempts to regain the throne in the mid-1780s.

After one such failure he fled to Phu Quoc Island where he met a French bishop, Pigneau de Béhaine.

With an eye on future religious and commercial concessions, the bishop offered to make approaches to the French on behalf of the Nguyen.

A treaty was eventually signed in 1787, promising military aid in exchange for territorial and trading concessions, though France failed to deliver the assistance due to a financial crisis preceding the French Revolution.

The bishop went ahead anyway, raising a motley force of 4,000 armed mercenaries and a handful of ships.

The expedition was launched in 1789 and Nguyen Anh entered Hanoi in 1802 to claim the throne as Emperor Gia Long.

Above: Emperor Gia Long (1762 – 1820)

Bishop de Béhaine did not live to see the victory or to enforce the treaty.

He died in 1799 and received a stately funeral.

Above: Bishop Pigneau de Behaine

Above: Vietnam at the end of the 16th century as divided by the Tay Son brothers

For the first time Vietnam, as the country was now called, fell under a single authority from the northern border all the way down to the point of Ca Mau.

In the hope of promoting unity, Gia Long established his capitol in the centre, at Hue, where he built a magnificent citadel in imitation of the Chinese emperor’s Forbidden City.

The choice of architecture was appropriate:

Gia Long and the Nguyen dynasty he founded were resolutely Confucian.

The new emperor immediately abolished the Tay Son reforms, reimposing the old feudal order.

Land confiscated from the rebels was redistributed to loyal mandarins, the bureaucracy was reinstated and the majority of peasants found themselves worse off than before.

Gradually the country was closed to the outside world and to modernising influences that might have helped it withstand the onslaught of French adventurers who had helped him to the throne.

He did, however, permit a certain amount of religious freedom, though his successors were far more suspicious of the missionaries’ intentions.

After 1825, several edicts were issued forbidding missionary work, accompanied by sporadic, occasionally brutal, persecutions of Christians, both Vietnamese converts and foreign priests.

Ultimately, this provided the French with the excuse they needed to annex the country.

French governments grew increasingly imperialists as the 19th century wore on.

In the Far East, as Britain threatened to dominate trade with China, France began to see Vietnam as a potential route into the resource-rich provinces of Yunnan and southern China.

Not that France had any formal policy to colonize Indochina.

Rather it came about in a piecemeal fashion, driven as often as not by private adventurers or the unilateral actions of French officials.

In 1847, two French naval vessels began the process when they bombarded Da Nang on the pretext of rescuing a French priest.

Reports of Catholic persecutions were deliberately exaggerated until Napoleon III was finally persuaded to launch an armada of 14 ships and 2,500 men in 1858.

After capturing Da Nang in September, the force moved south to take Saigon, against considerable opposition, and the whole Mekong Delta over the next three years.

Faced with serious unrest in the north, Emperor Tu Duc signed a treaty in 1862 granting France the three eastern provinces of the delta plus trading rights in selected ports and allowing missionaries the freedom to proselytize.

Five years later, French forces annexed the remaining southern provinces to create the colony of Cochinchina.

France became embroiled in domestic troubles and the French government was divided on whether to continue the enterprise, but their administrators in Cochinchina had their eyes on the north.

The first attempt to take Hanoi and open up the Red River into China failed in 1873.

A larger force was dispatched in 1882 and within a few months, France was in control of Hanoi and the lower reaches of the Red River Delta.

Spurred on by this success, the French parliament financed the first contingents of the French Expeditionary Force just as the Nguyen were floundering in a succession crisis following the death of Tu Duc.

In August 1883, when the French fleet sailed into the mouth of the Perfume River, near Hue, the new emperor was compelled to meet their demands.

Annam and Tonkin became protectorates of France, to be combined with Cochinchina, Cambodia and, later, Laos to form the Union of Indochina after 1887.

Despite much talk of the “civilizing mission” of imperial rile, the French were more interested in the economic potential of their new possession.

Governor General Paul Doumer launched a massive programme of infrastructural development, constructing railways, bridges and roads and draining vast areas of the Mekong Delta swamp, all funded by raising punitive taxes, with state monopolies on opium, alcohol and salt accounting for 70% of government revenues.

Above: The Presidential Palace, Hanoi, built between 1900 and 1906 to house the Governor-General of Indochina

During the Great Depression of the 1930s markets collapsed.

Peasants were forced off the land to work as indentured labour in the new rubber, tea and coffee estates or in the mines, often under brutal conditions.

Heavy taxes exacerbated rural poverty and any commercial or industrial enterprises were kept firmly in French hands, or were controlled by the commercial or industrial enterprises were kept firmly in French hands, or were controlled by the small minority of Vietnamese and Chinese who actually benefited under the new regime.

On the positive side, mass vaccination and health programmes did bring the frequent epidemics of cholera, smallpox and plague under control.

Education was a thornier issue overall, education levels deteriorated during French rule, particularly among unskilled labourers, but a small elite from the emerging urban middle class received a broader, French-based education and a few went to universities in Europe.

Not that it got them very far.

Vietnamese were barred from all but the most menial jobs in the colonial administration.

Ironically, it was this frustrated and alienated group, imbued with the ideas of Western liberalism and Chinese reformers, who began to challenge French rule….

Above: Emblem of the government of French Indochina

The first French concession was granted in 1874 and was a mosquito-infested plot of land on the banks of the Red River, southeast of where the Opera House stands today.

Once in full possession of Hanoi, after 1882, the French began to create a city appropriate to their new protectorate, starting with the area between the old concessions and the train station, 2 km to the west.

In the process they destroyed many ancient Vietnamese monuments, which were replaced with Parisian-style buildings and boulevards.

Elegant villas gradually filled plots along the grid of tree-lined avenues, then spread south from Hoan Kiem Lake in the 1930s and 1940s towards what is now Thong Nhat Park, a peaceful but rather featureless expanse of green marking the French Quarter’s southern boundary.

The streets south of Le Lai on the east side of Hoan Kiem Lake, which include the Metropole Hotel and the Government Guest House, are also generally considered part of the French Quarter because of their architectural features.

A grand example of the Parisian-style architecture for which the Quarter is famous, the stately Opera House (now officially known as the Municipal Theatre) is modelled on the neo-Baroque Paris Opera, complete with Ionic columns and grey slate tiles imported from France.

The theatre was erected on reclaimed land and opened in 1911 after ten years of construction.

It was regarded as the jewel in the crown of French Hanoi, the colonial town’s physical and cultural focus, until 1945 when the Viet Minh proclaimed the August Revolution from its balcony.

After Independence, audiences were treated to a diet of Socialist Realism and revolutionary theatre, but now the building has been restored to its former glory after a massive facelift.

Crystal chandeliers, Parisian mirrors and sweeping staircases of polished marble have all been beautifully preserved, although, unfortunately, there is no access to the public unless you attend a performance.

Otherwise, feast your eyes on the exterior, which is particularly stunning under evening floodlights or, better still, the soft glow of a full moon.

It was modeled on the Palais Garnier, the older of Paris’s two opera houses, and is considered to be one of the architectural landmarks of Hanoi, but with a smaller scale and using materials that are suitable with the environment.

The main architectural style of the Opera House is Neoclassicism.

The Hanoi Opera House provides the names for the neighboring Hilton Hanoi Opera Hotel which opened in 1999, as well as for the Gallery Hotel de l’Opera Hanoi, which opened in 2011.

For historical reasons associated with the Vietnam War, the Hilton Hanoi Opera Hotel was not named “the Hanoi Hilton“.

The opera house is described in the memoirs of Blanche Arral who performed in the new Hanoi Opera House in 1902 while waiting for the 1902 Exposition of Hanoi to open.

The opera had depended on touring artists performing French and Italian repertoire during the colonial period for a mainly French audience.

After the departure of the French the building was used for Vietnamese plays and musicals.

The return of Western opera, and the first major non-French or Italian opera, was a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin organised under Vietnam-Soviet cultural auspices in 1960, where the Russian vocal coach selected an untrained singer Quy Duong as a fit for the baritone title role.

Today the orchestra of the opera overlaps with the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra, and calls on the Hanoi Philharmonic Orchestra of the Hanoi Conservatory.

Classical fare from Vietnam - The Boston Globe

Famous singers of the company include the Tchaikovsky Conservatory-trained soprano Lê Dung, the youngest ever person to be awarded People’s Artist of Vietnam in 1993.

Người đàn bà hát' Lê Dung, tiếng hát mãi còn - VietNamNet

Above: Lê Dung (1951 – 2001)

The Opera has seen many premieres of operas and musicals by Vietnamese composers.

The operas of Dô Nhuân – Cô Sao (‘Miss Sao‘) 1965, Người tạc tượng (‘The Sculptor‘) 1971 and Nguyễn Trãi 1980, the works of Luu Huu Phuóc and the choral works of film composer Dâng Huu Phúc.

As well as works by returning émigré composers such as Nguyên Thiên Dao, a pupil of Messiaen in Paris.

The National Ballet is also part of the Opera House company and stages Western classics such as Swan Lake as well as traditional and modern Vietnamese dance productions.

(Blanche Arral (née Clara Lardinois)(1864 – 1945) was a Belgian soprano, born in Liège, the youngest of 17 children, she debuted in a small part in the 1884 Paris world premiere of Jules Massenet’s Manon.

Arral performed in various opera houses in Brussels, Paris and St. Petersburg before moving to the United States.

In 1901, she was with a touring company in Indochina, while waiting for the 1902 Exposition of Hanoi to open, performing at Haiphong and the Hanoi Opera House.

In October 1909 she debuted at Carnegie Hall and joined the Metropolitan Opera for the 1909–1910 season.

“Like so many theaters in remote places, the Hanoi Opera House was a small-scale model of the Paris Opera, new and with all the latest equipment for theatrical productions.

It was our plan to give performances in Haiphong until such time as the International Exposition at Hanoi opened, and then to alternate between the two cities.”

Arral was married to Hamilton Dwight Bassett, a journalist from Cincinnati.

Author Jack London based the character of Lucille Arral in his short story collection Smoke Bellew on Blanche Arral.

She died in Palisades Park, New Jersey.)

Above: Blanche Arral

After the hectic streets of the Old Quarter, the grand boulevards and wide pavements of Hanoi’s French Quarter are a welcome relief to Heidi.

It is the architecture that is the highlight, running the gamut of early 20th century European styles from elegant Neoclassical through to 1930s Modernism and Art Deco, with an occasional Oriental flourish.

One of the most splendid examples is the former residence of the Governor of Tonkin, now the Government Guest House, at the junction of Ngo Quyen and Le Thach.

Hanoi's French Quarter – Hanoi For 91 Days

Why I mention the Opera House in the context of Heidi is that Ms. Hoi has a talent – (actually as a typical woman she has many talents, but let’s focus on one at a time here) – she has an amazing singing voice that makes angels weep with envy, a voice meant for jazz.

And like anyone with such a talent there is a desire to be admired and respected for this talent.

As a budget traveller, Heidi does not relish spending a small fortune to see an opera just to get a glimpse inside, but a talented singer like Ms. Hoi has another gift:

Imagination.

Perhaps it is unlikely that jazz is ever performed in an opera house, but in Heidi‘s mind she is standing in front of a packed house, spotlight focused on her alone, jazz band invisible behind her, she is a vision of loveliness with a voice to match, and the crowd is mesmerized, their gaze locked upon her, their pulse pounding to the beat, their hearts light and breaths held, it is the magic of a moment, and she reminds them of the joy and passion of life.

Heidi does not hear the honking of horns around her or see the armies of scooters between her and the Opera House.

All she hears is the fanfare of an appreciative audience.

All she sees is a crowd upon its feet giving her a well-deserved standing ovation.

In that moment, she knows that she is going to live forever as part of the rich tapestry of human memory.

This is her moment and she owns the House.

One block east of the Opera House, the building that houses the National Museum of History is a fanciful blend of Vietnamese palace and French villa called “Neo-Vietnamese” style.

The Museum was founded in the 1930s by the École Francaise d’Extrême Orient, but after 1954 changed focus to reflect Vietnam’s evolution from paleolithic times to independence.

Exhibits, including many plaster reproductions, are arranged in chronological order across two floors, covering everything from prehistory to 1945, while the building across the streeet at 216 Tran Quang Khai covers the post-1945 era.

On the ground floor, the Museum’s prize exhibits are those from the Dong Son culture (1200 – 200 BC), including a rich variety of implements, from arrowheads to cooking utensils.

The finest examples of Dong Son creativity are several huge ceremonial bronze drums, which were played to bury the dead, invoke monsoons or celebrate fertility rites.

The remarkably well-preserved Ngoc Lu Drum is the highlight, where advanced casting techniques are evident in the delicate figures of deer, birds and musicians ornamenting the drum’s surface.

Also noteworthy on this floor are finds from excavations from Hanoi’s citadel, a willowy Amitabha Buddha of the 11th century, pale green celadon from the same era and a group of wooden stakes from the glorious 13th century Battle of the Bach Dang River.

National Museum of Vietnamese History bells, Hanoi National Museum of Vietnamese History Travel Photos, Images & Pictures of National Museum of Vietnamese History Vietnam - Easy Tour China

(The Vietnamese navy fought its two most glorious and decisive battles in the Bach Dang Estuary, east of Haiphong.

The first (938 AD) marked the end of a thousand years of Chinese occupation when General Ngo Quyen led his rebels to victory, defeating a vastly superior force by means of a brilliant ruse.

Waiting until high tide, General Ngo lured the Chinese fleet upriver over hundreds of iron-tipped stakes embedded in the Estuary mud, then counterattacked as the tide turned and drove the enemy boats back downstream to founder on the now-exposed stakes.

History repeated itself some three centuries later during the struggle to repel Kublai Khan’s Mongol armies.

This time it was the great Tran Hung Dao who led the Vietnamese in a series of battles culminating in that of the Bach Dang River in 1288.

The ingenious strategy worked just as well second time round when over 400 vessels were lost or captured, finally seeing off the ambitious Khan.)

Displays on the Museum’s second floor illustrate the great leap in artistic skill that took place in the 15th century following a period of Chinese rule.

Pride of place goes to a three-metre tall stele inscribed with the life story of Le Loi, who spearheaded the resistance against the Chinese and founded the Le dynasty, which ruled the country from 1428 to 1788.

Also on display is an extensive collection of ceramics and exhibits relating to the 19th century Nguyen dynasty and the period of French rule.

A series of ink-washes depicting Hue’s imperial court in the 1890s is particularly eye-catching, as are the embroidered silks and inlaid ivory furniture once used by the emperors cloistered in the citadel.

A Rare Look Inside the Hue Imperial Court in 1895 in Watercolor - Urbanist Hanoi | Vietnamese history, Ancient vietnam, Vietnam history

Across the street, the former Museum of Vietnamese Revolution is now a part of the History Museum and catalogues the “Vietnamese people’s patriotic and revolutionary struggle” from the first anti-French movements of the late 19th century to post-1975 reconstruction.

Much of the tale is told through documents, including the first clandestine newspapers and revolutionary tracts penned by Ho Chu Minh and illustrated with portraits of Vietnam’s most famous revolutionaries – among them are many photos you won’t see anywhere else.

There is good coverage of Dien Bien Phu and the War of Independence.

There is also a small but well-preserved exhibition on the American War (what the Vietnamese call the Vietnam War), a subject that is treated in greater depth at the Military History Museum in the Ba Dinh District.

Trang Tien, the main artery of the French Quarter, is still a busy shopping street where you will find bookshops and art galleries, as well as Trang Tien Plaza with its flash boutiques.

South of Trang Tien you enter French Hanoi’s principal residential quarter, consisting of a grid of shaded boulevards whose distinguished villas are much sought after for restoration as embassies and offices, or as desirable expat residences.

It is important that, as you sympathize with Vietnam’s troubled past and the burden of being occupied or attacked by empire after empire, we do not forget to feel remorse for foreigners who visit the Republic, for innocence is a kind of insanity.

Why would anyone leave that place where they belong, where everything is routine and understood, if not for some form of insanity?

Sometimes those with Wanderlust, those with Fernweh, envy those without these afflictions, but there are two types of person, are there not?

Those who fear the unknown and embrace the familiar.

And those who fear the familiar and embrace the unknown.

Each side thinks the other to be insane.

Both sides are right.

As Heidi passes the Museum of Vietnamese Women, she wonders whether women are happier or sadder in Vietnam as compared with the women of Switzerland.

The Museum is one of Hanoi’s most interesting attractions, with good audio-tours available as well as detailed video presentations on each floor about different aspects of the lives of Vietnamese women.

The tour begins with a look at street vendors, whose presence on the streets of the city with their baskets of goods suspended from bamboo poles is one of Vietnam’s most indelible icons.

The role of women in the country’s wars is the focus of the Museum’s second floor, while the third floor focuses on family life, and the top floor features an eye-catching display of ethnic minority costumes.

VIETNAMESE WOMEN'S MUSEUM IN HANOI | The Poor Traveler Itinerary Blog

The Museum shows how the role of women in Vietnam has been subject to many changes throughout the nation’s history.

Women have taken on varying roles in society, including warriors, nurses, mothers and wives.

There have been many advances in women’s rights in Vietnam, such as an increase in women representation in government, as well as the creation of the Vietnam Women’s Union in 1930.

Vietnam's Women Museum - Sehenswürdigkeiten in Hanoi - Vietnam

During the 19th century, Vietnam was dominated by French rule.

Some women were temporarily married to European men during this period, with both parties seeing the union as mutually beneficial.

Discover Inspiring History At The Vietnamese Women's Museum | Trip101

In the early 20th century, nationalist sentiments rose in Vietnam that eventually led to the end of French rule in 1954 and divided Vietnam into two along the 17th Parallel.

The role of women in warfare and outside the home continued to increase throughout the 20th century, especially during the Indochina Wars.

During and after the American / Vietnam War, the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam made efforts to increase women’s rights, equity, and representation in government.

This included the creation of job quotas during the 1960s, which required that women occupy a certain percentage of jobs in different sectors.

Women’s rights have continued to increase in contemporary Vietnam, and women have increasingly held leadership positions.

Vietnam has one of the highest female labour-force participation rates in the world and ranked the second most women in senior management among Asian countries.

Bold new posters of the Women's Museum Hanoi, Vietnam – International Association of Women's Museums

Currently, Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh is the first woman to be acting President of Vietnam, following the death of Trân Dai Quang.

Additionally, Nguyên Thi Kim Ngân was elected as Chairwoman of the National Assembly of Vietnam in March 2016, the first time a woman has ever held the position following Tòng Thi Phóng, a former Chairwoman.

In business, Nguyên Thi Phuong Thao is Vietnam’s first self-made female billionaire.

However, there is still an influence of gender roles and cultural influence in Vietnam today, which persists both inside the domestic home as well as outside in the socioeconomic sphere.

Tiểu sử Nguyễn Thị Phương Thảo - Nữ tỷ phú đô la đầu tiên của Việt Nam

Women occupy both the domestic and outside sector in contemporary Vietnam.

Women’s participation in the economy, government, and society has increased.

In the domestic sphere, little progress has been made to improve gender relations.

Traditional Confucian patriarchial values have continued to persist, as well as a continued emphasis on the family unit.

This has comprised the main criticism of Vietnam Women’s Union, an organization that works towards advancing women’s rights.

Furthermore, recent shifts in Vietnam’s sex ratio show an increased number of men outnumbering women, which many researchers have stated to in part be caused by the two-child policy in Vietnam.

Confucianism’s emphasis on the family still impacts Vietnamese women’s lives, especially in rural areas, where it espouses the importance of premarital female virginity and condemns abortion and divorce.

According to a 2006 study, over the past decades, little progression in gender relations have been made.

Household chores and labor are still primarily performed by Vietnamese women.

However, women in Vietnam have shown increased influence in familial decisions, such as household budgets and the education of the children.

In terms of childcare responsibility, men have shown an increased participation at the earlier ages of childcare, though women overall still bear the main responsibility.

Women are seen primarily as mothers, and are considered to have shown “respect” to their husband’s lineage if they give birth to a boy.

While patrilineal ancestor worship shows girls as “outside lineage” (họ ngoại), it consider boys to be “inside lineage” (họ nội).

Vietnamese society tends to follow the ancestral line through males, pushing women to the periphery.

Vietnam has a two child policy.

Some families want at least one boy, but would prefer two boys to two girls, so they use ultrasound machines to determine the baby’s sex to later abort female offspring.

The main religion in Vietnam are traditional folk beliefs.

This is not an organized religion, however it does adopt many Confucian views.

One of the main views that it takes from Confucius is the Patrilineal Society.

Men are the head of the family and more their lineage is to be protected.

Vietnam Family Festival 2020 to take place on June 26 – 28 - VNExplorer

As it pertains to motherhood, Vietnam women are seen as and used primarily as mothers.

Female virginity is of extreme importance, especially in rural areas, and the Society condemns abortion and female divorce.

If a woman wants to show respect to her husband, the best way she can do that is to bear him a son.

There are several patterns in birth rates amongst Vietnamese women.

In one 2008 study, most women were found to have given birth by the time they reached age 20.

However, the same study has found that the higher education level a woman received, the later the age at which she gives birth to her first child.

The issue of domestic violence has faced scrutiny in Vietnam.

In 2007, Vietnamese legislation passed the Law on Prevention and Control Domestic Violence, which reported that 32% of Vietnamese women have suffered sexual violence from their spouses, while 54% of women in Vietnam have suffered from emotional violence.

Speculation has rose on the viability of divorce as a solution to those in situations of domestic violence.

This is due to the prevalent local attitudes and measures taken towards preventing divorce in order to preserve the family unit, rather than helping victims escape domestic abuse.

Additionally, surveys have indicated that 87% of domestic violence victims in Vietnam do not seek support for their situation.

In a study comparing Chinese and Vietnamese attitudes towards women, more Vietnamese than Chinese said that the male should dominate the family and a wife had to provide sex to her husband at his will.

Violence against women was supported by more Vietnamese than Chinese.

Domestic violence was more accepted by Vietnamese women than Chinese women.

Some Vietnamese women from Lào Cai who married Chinese men stated that among their reasons for doing so was that Vietnamese men beat their wives, engaged in affairs with mistresses, and refused to help their wives with chores, while Chinese men actively helped their wives carry out chores and care for them.

Vietnamese women are traveling to China as mail order brides for rural Chinese men to earn money for their families and a rise in the standard of living, matchmaking between Chinese men and Vietnamese women has increased and has not been effected by troubled relations between Vietnam and China.

Vietnamese mail order brides have also gone to Taiwan and South Korea for marriage.

Several cases have occurred where Vietnamese women were abducted or deceived to be sold to Chinese men.

Totalling several thousands, in a significant number of cases the victims were underage.

The Plight of Vietnam's 'Mail-Order' Brides - The Atlantic

There is a gender gap in education, with males being more likely to attend school and sustain their education than females.

Women and men tend to be segregated into different jobs, with more women serving in educational, communications, and public services than men.

In contemporary Vietnam, there has been significant economic advancement for women, especially for middle-class Vietnamese women.

Middle-class women have increasingly become more involved in the workforce sector outside of the house, with 83% of “working-age women” being involved in the labour force.

These women have been taking on professions dealing with a variety of fields such as sales, marketing, and advertising.

Furthermore, women in the contemporary workforce and economy experience much higher wages than the generations before them.

However, research has shown that many inequalities for women still exist, with women still receiving uneven employment benefits compared to their male counterparts.

According to one study, 76% of women in the labour force are concentrated in the agricultural sector.

And although under 10% of women in the labour force work in textile industry, 80% of labourers in the textile industry are women.

Local credit associations do not feel secure giving loans to single mothers, which has resulted in a poverty increase for households that are led by a woman.

Who Run the World? Vietnamese Women Do (At Least on March 8) — Loa

The average wage in the country of Vietnam was US$1,540 in 2012.

In 2011, studies showed “that women earn 13% less than men.”

The 2012 survey on workers’ salaries carried out by the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL) in enterprises nationwide revealed that female workers’ salaries are only 70% – 80% of their male colleagues’.

The global average gender pay gap is hovering around 17%.

According to Nguyen Kim Lan, International Labour Organization (ILO) national project coordinator, the only two occupational fields where pay is equal is in logistics and household care.

One reason for the disparity is that companies view women as wanting to stay at home and perform more gender role duties.

More than 70% of labourers in Vietnam are women.

Since the 1980s, some women from Vietnam have become victims of kidnapping, the bride-buying trade, and human trafficking and prostitution in China, Taiwan, South Korea, and in the cases of human trafficking, prostitution and sexual slavery, Cambodia.

The present-day struggle of the Vietnamese female victims of “bride brokers” can be summarized by the larger-than-life poem known as “The Tale of Kieu“, which narrates the story of a female protagonist of Vietnam who was purchased by foreigners and was violated, yet kept fighting back against her captors and offenders.

(The Tale of Kiều is an epic poem in Vietnamese written by Nguyên Du (1765–1820), considered the most famous poem and a classic in Vietnamese literature.

The original title in Vietnamese is Đoạn Trường Tân Thanh (“A New Cry From a Broken Heart“), but it is better known as Truyện Kiều (“Tale of Kiều“).

In 3,254 verses, written in luc bát (“six–eight“) meter, the poem recounts the life, trials and tribulations of Thúy Kiều, a beautiful and talented young woman, who has to sacrifice herself to save her family.

To save her father and younger brother from prison, she sells herself into marriage with a middle-aged man, not knowing that he is a pimp and is forced into prostitution.

While modern interpretations vary, some post-colonial writers have interpreted it as a critical, allegorical reflection on the rise of the Nguyên dynasty.

Nguyễn Du made use of the plot of a 17th century Chinese novel, Jin Yún Qiào, known in Vietnamese pronunciation of Chinese characters as Kim Vân Kiều.

The original, written by an otherwise unknown writer under the pseudonym Qīngxīn Cáirén (“Pure-Hearted Man of Talent“), was a straightforward romance, but Nguyễn Du chose it to convey the social and political upheavals at the end of the 18th century in Vietnam.

Vietnam at that time was ruled nominally by the 300-year-old Lê dynasty, but real power rested in the Trinh lords in the north and the Nguyên lords in the south.

While the Trịnh and the Nguyễn were fighting against each other, the Tây Son rebels overthrew both the Nguyễn and then the Trịnh over the span of a decade.

Nguyễn Du was loyal to the Lê Dynasty and hoped for the return of the Lê king.

In 1802 the Nguyễn lord Nguyễn Ánh conquered all of Vietnam forming the new Nguyên dynasty.

Nguyễn Ánh, now Emperor Gia Long, summoned Nguyễn Du to join the new government and, with some reluctance, he did so.

Nguyễn Du’s situation in terms of conflicting loyalties between the previous Lê king and the current Nguyễn emperor is partially analogous to the situation of the main character in The Tale of Kiều who submitted to circumstances but her heart longed for her first love.

The Tale of Kieu – a story transcending time and space

The story takes place during the reign of the Jiajing Emperor in Ming China.

The entire plot in the Tale of Kiều spans over 15 years.

At the beginning of the story, Vuong Thúy Kiêu — a beautiful and educated girl — is visiting her ancestors’ graves with her younger sister Thuý Vân and brother Vương Quan.

On the way she meets and connects with the grave of a dead performer, Đạm Tiên, who was said to be as beautiful and talented as she is but lived a life full of grief.

There, she meets and later promises to marry Kim Trọng, a young and promising scholar, but their marriage is delayed because Kim has to go back home to mourn his uncle for half a year.

During that time misfortune begins to befall Kiều.

The Tale of Kieu: A Bilingual Edition of Nguyen Du's Truyen Kieu: Thong, Huynh Sanh: 9780300040517: Amazon.com: Books

Her family is framed by a silk dealer and has all their wealth taken away by the government, and her father and brother are facing imprisonment.

Kiều decides to sell herself to Scholar Mã to free her family, therefore showing her deeply rooted filial piety, while not forgetting the promise with Kim Trọng and has it resolved by asking her sister, Thúy Vân, to fulfill it.

Scholar Mã turns out to be a pimp who is in charge of finding girls for a brothel run by Madam Tú.

He rapes Kiều and takes her back to the brothel, but she refuses to serve any guest and attempts to commit suicide when she is forced to do so.

Madam Tú concocts a plan to crush Kiều’s dignity by hiring Sở Khanh, a playboy and con artist, to meet Kiều and coerce her into eloping with him, and then lead her into Tú’s trap.

With nothing left to hold on to, Kiều finally submits and becomes a prostitute.

Kiều’s beauty attracts many men, including Student Thúc, who uses his wealth to buy Kiều out of the brothel and marry her, although he already has a wife named Lady Hoạn, who is the daughter of Prime Minister Hoạn.

Upon learning of this, Hoạn burns with jealousy and secretly tells her henchmen to kidnap and force Kiều to become a slave in her house when Thúc is on the way to visit her.

Thúc is shocked at the sight of Kiều as a slave, but never dares to reach out to her in front of his first wife.

Kiều runs away from the estate, stealing some valuable decorations on the altar in the process.

She goes to a Buddhist temple, where nun Giác Duyên graciously accepts her.

The Tale of Kieu – a story transcending time and space | Culture - Sports | Vietnam+ (VietnamPlus)

However, after realizing that Kiều is carrying stolen property, Giác Duyên sends Kiều to Madam Bạc’s, whom Giác Duyên thinks Kiều will be safe with.

However it turns out that Madam Bạc runs a brothel, so Kiều gets tricked into the brothel again where she meets Tù Hài, leader of a revolution army.

Từ Hải and Kiều get married and live together for five years, together reigning over a temporary kingdom.

Later tricked by Hô Tôn Hiên, Kiều convinces her husband to surrender all in favor of amnesty.

This eventually leads to the invasion of Từ Hải’s kingdom, and the death of Từ Hải himself.

Mesmerized by Kiều’s beauty, Hồ Tôn Hiến forces her to perform in his victory banquet, where he rapes her.

To avoid bad rumors, he hurriedly marries Kiều off to a local official.

Feeling devastated, she throws herself into the Tiên Duong River.

Tale of Kieu to be translated into Russian - Life & Style - Vietnam News | Politics, Business, Economy, Society, Life, Sports - VietNam News

Once again, Giác Duyên saves her, as she knew about Kiều’s fate when she consulted with Tam Hợp, who is believed to be able to see into the future, long ago.

Meanwhile, Kim Trọng, Kiều’s first love, becomes an official and is providing housing for Kiều’s parents.

He has been searching for Kiều, and eventually finds her with the Buddhist nun Giác Duyên.

Kiều is reunited with her first love and her family, thus ending her cycle of bad Karma.

She is married to Kim Trọng, but refuses to have a physical relationship with him because she thinks she is no longer worthy.)

Kim Van Kieu [The Tale of Kieu]: Nguyen-Du (Le-Xuan-Thuy, Trans.): Amazon.com: Books

It’s an old story.

Good luck and good looks don’t always mix.

Dating Vietnamese Women - Quick Guide and Dating Tips

Tragedy is circular and infinite.

The plain never believe it, but good-looking people meet with hard times too.

Do Vietnamese Women Like Black Men? - Expat Kings

Women and girls from all ethnic groups and foreigners have been victims of sex trafficking in Vietnam.

The main human rights issue in Southeast Asia is human trafficking.

According to one study, Southeast Asia is a large source of human trafficking, with many individuals who fall victim to human trafficking being sent to Australia.

Vietnam, as well as other countries such as Cambodia, Laos, and the Philippines, are major source countries for human trafficking.

Southeast Asian countries preference for boys over girls is further tipping the balance between the sexes in the region, already skewed by a strong bias for boys.

The trend has led to increased trafficking of women.

While many of the victims that are a part of human trafficking are forced/kidnapped/enslaved, others were lured in under the assumption that they were getting a better job.

According to a policy brief on human trafficking in Southeast Asia, although victims include girls, women, boys, and men, the majority are women.

Women tend to be more highly targeted by traffickers due to the fact that they are seeking opportunity in an area of the world where limited economic opportunities are available for them.

Unskilled and poorly educated women are commonly led into human trafficking.

Human trafficking on rise in Vietnam, says government - The Peninsula Qatar

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report, the numbers for women and men in forced labor may be skewed due to the fact that only a few countries released the numbers for adult men.

However what is known is that women are trafficked the most.

The main causes of human trafficking in Southeast Asia are universal factors such as poverty and globalization.

Industrialization is arguably also another factor of human trafficking.

Many scholars argue that industrialization of booming economies, like that of Thailand and Singapore, created a draw for poor migrants seeking upward mobility and individuals wanting to leave war torn countries.

These migrants were an untapped resource in growing economies that had already exhausted the cheap labor from within its borders.

A high supply of migrant workers seeking employment and high demand from an economy seeking cheap labor creates a perfect combination for human traffickers to thrive.

The sex industry emerged in Southeast Asia in the mid 20th century as a way for women to generate more income for struggling migrants and locals trying to support families or themselves.

Sex industries first catered to military personnel on leave from bases but as military installations began to recede the industry turned its attention to growing tourism.

Even as the industry is looked down upon today there is still a large underground market that is demanding from traffickers.

Between 2005 and 2009, 6,000 women, as well as younger girls, were found to be in the human trafficking statistic.

The majority of the women and girls are trafficked to China, 30% are trafficked to Cambodia, and the remaining 10% are trafficked to the destinations across the world.

Being a woman is simultaneously to be both blessed and cursed.

Vietnamese women wear Ao in the rain. Ao dai is famous traditional custume for woman in Vietnam. Photograph by Huynh Thu

The Hanoi Towers complex looms over the sanitized remains of French-built Hoa Lo Prison, nicknamed “the Hanoi Hilton” by American prisoners-of-war (POWs) as a wry comment on its harsh conditions and brutal treatment.

The jail became famous in the 1960s when the POWs, mostly pilots and crew, were shown worldwide in televised broadcasts.

There is a heavy dose of propaganda in the two rooms dedicated to the POWs, peddling the message that they were well-treated, clothed and fed.

The Museum mostly concentrates on the pre-1954 colonial period, when the French incarcerated many nationalist leaders at Hoa Lo, including no fewer than five future General Secretaries of hte Vietnamese Communist Party.

Some of the cells – which were still in use up to 1994 – have been preserved, along with rusty shackles, a guillotine and instruments of torture.

Other rooms display photos and information on the more famous political prisoners.

The name Hỏa Lò, commonly translated as “fiery furnace” or even “Hell’s hole“, also means “stove“.

The name originated from the street name Phố Hỏa Lò, due to the concentration of stores selling wood stoves and coal-fire stoves along the street in pre-colonial times.

The prison was built in Hanoi by the French, from 1886 to 1901,^[3] when Vietnam was still part of French Indochina.

The French called the prison Maison Centrale, (‘Central House‘), which is still the designation of prisons for dangerous or long sentence detainees in France.

It was located near Hanoi’s French Quarter.

It was intended to hold Vietnamese prisoners, particularly political prisoners agitating for independence who were often subject to torture and execution.

A 1913 renovation expanded its capacity from 460 inmates to 600.

It was nevertheless often overcrowded, holding some 730 prisoners on a given day in 1916, a figure which rose to 895 in 1922 and 1,430 in 1933.

By 1954 it held more than 2,000 people.

With its inmates held in subhuman conditions, it had become a symbol of colonialist exploitation and of the bitterness of the Vietnamese towards the French.

The central urban location of the prison also became part of its early character.

During the 1910s through 1930s, street peddlers made an occupation of passing outside messages in through the jail’s windows and tossing tobacco and opium over the walls.

Letters and packets would be thrown out to the street in the opposite direction.

Within the prison itself, communication and ideas passed.

Many of the future leading figures in Communist North Vietnam spent time in Maison Centrale during the 1930s and 1940s.

Conditions for political prisoners in the “Colonial Bastille” were publicised in 1929 in a widely circulated account by the Trotskyist Phan Van Hum of the experience he shared with the charismatic publicist Nguyen An Ninh.

Above: Phan Van Hum (1902 – 1946)

Above: Nguyen An Ninh (1900 – 1943)

Following the defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and the 1954 Geneva Accords the French left Hanoi and the prison came under the authority of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

Thereafter the prison served as an education center for revolutionary doctrine and activity, and it was kept around after the French left to mark its historical significance to the North Vietnamese.

Above: Flag of North Vietnam

During the Vietnam War, the first US prisoner to be sent to Hỏa Lò was Lieutenant Everett Alvarez Jr., who was shot down on 5 August 1964.

From the beginning, U.S. POWs endured miserable conditions, including poor food and unsanitary conditions.

The prison complex was sarcastically nicknamed the “Hanoi Hilton” by the American POWs, in reference to the well-known Hilton Hotel chain.

There is some disagreement among the first group of POWs who coined the name but F8D pilot Bob Shumaker was the first to write it down, carving “Welcome to the Hanoi Hilton” on the handle of a pail to greet the arrival of Air Force Lieutenant Robert Peel.

Beginning in early 1967, a new area of the prison was opened for incoming American POWs.

It was dubbed “Little Vegas”, and its individual buildings and areas were named after Las Vegas Strip landmarks, such as “Golden Nugget“, “Thunderbird“, “Stardust“, “Riviera“, and the “Desert Inn“.

These names were chosen because many pilots had trained at Nellis Air Force Base, located in proximity to Las Vegas.

Welcome to Hanoi, Vietnam sign in classic las vegas style design . 3D Stock Photo - Alamy

American pilots were frequently already in poor condition by the time they were captured, injured either during their ejection or in landing on the ground.

The Hỏa Lò was one site used by the North Vietnamese Army to house, torture and interrogate captured servicemen, mostly American pilots shot down during bombing raids.

Although North Vietnam was a signatory of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, which demanded “decent and humane treatment” of prisoners of war, severe torture methods were employed, such as rope bindings, irons, beatings, and prolonged solitary confinement.

When prisoners of war began to be released from this and other North Vietnamese prisons during the Johnson administration, their testimonies revealed widespread and systematic abuse of prisoners of war.

In 1968, Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann from East Germany filmed in the prison the four-chapter series Pilots in Pyjamas (Piloten im Pyjama) with interviews with American pilots in the prison, that they claimed were unscripted.

The East Germans asked the pilots about the contradictions in their self image and their war behavior and between the Code of the United States Fighting Force and their behavior during and after capture.

Piloten im Pyjama [2 DVDs] von Walter Heynowski, Gerhard Scheumann. Filme | Orell Füssli

Regarding treatment at Hỏa Lò and other prisons, the North Vietnamese countered by stating that prisoners were treated well and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

During 1969, they broadcast a series of coerced statements from American prisoners that purported to support this notion.

The North Vietnamese also maintained that their prisons were no worse than prisons for POWs and political prisoners in South Vietnam, such as the one on Côn Son Island.

Mistreatment of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese prisoners and South Vietnamese dissidents in South Vietnam’s prisons was indeed frequent, as was North Vietnamese abuse of South Vietnamese prisoners and their own dissidents.

Beginning in late 1969, treatment of the prisoners at Hỏa Lò and other camps became less severe and generally more tolerable.

Following the late 1970 attempted rescue operation at Son Tây prison camp, most of the POWs at the outlying camps were moved to Hỏa Lò, so that the North Vietnamese had fewer camps to protect.

This created the “Camp Unity” communal living area at Hỏa Lò, which greatly reduced the isolation of the POWs and improved their morale.

Hanoi Hilton: North Vietnam's Torture Chamber For American POWs

Among the most notable inmates were:

Everett Alvarez Jr., US Navy pilot, imprisoned 8 years
Lee Ellis, USAF pilot, later motivational speaker and author

Ellis is an international speaker and consultant on the subjects of leadership and human performance, organizational integrity, operational effectiveness, and personal accountability.

He frequently consults with various organizations—from small businesses to Fortune 500 organizations on these subjects.

Ellis’ latest book, Leadership Behavior DNA: Discovering Natural Talents and Managing Differences was published in 2020 with co-author Hugh Massie.

Leadership Behavior DNA eBook by Lee Ellis - 9781733632218 | Rakuten Kobo United States

Engage with Honor: Building a Culture of Courageous Accountability published in 2016 and his last award-winning book, Leading with Honor: Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton published in 2012, share his POW experience and the leadership principles that helped him and his compatriots resist, survive, and return with honour.

(Hardcover Book 2nd Ed) Engage with Honor - Leading With Honor®

Leading with Honor: Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton: Lee Ellis: 9780983879329: Amazon.com: Books

His previous book, Leading Talents, Leading Teams, was published by Northfield Publishing and shares in-depth team concepts on how to lead and manage based on individual, innate gifts and talents.

Leading Talents, Leading Teams: Aligning People, Passions and - Ellis, Lee - Amazon.de: Bücher

Additionally, Lee has co-authored three additional books and workbooks on career planning.

After arriving in Vietnam, Ellis was assigned to execute bombing raids in North Vietnam, one of the heaviest guarded regions of the country.

On his 53rd mission, he and Aircraft Commander Captain Ken Fisher, received serious damage to their F-4C Phantom aircraft.

Both men had to eject from the fighter jet and were immediately captured on the ground when they landed with their parachutes.

After two weeks of traveling through various regions in a Vietnamese military vehicle, they arrived at the Hoa Loa Prison (the Hanoi Hilton).

Hoa Loa was an old French Bastille prison fortified strongly to keep prisoners from escaping.

For the next 9 months, Lee and three other comrades shared a 6′ x 7.5′ cell.

Over the next 5 ½ years, Ellis’ described his POW experience as “moments of boredom interrupted by stark moments of terror.”

In addition to physically torturing prisoners for information, the prison would broadcast anti-American propaganda several times a day throughout the entire camp as a means of breaking their spirit and confidence.

Ellis and his comrades began using several forms of subversive communication to stay in touch with each other without being caught.

Ellis became one of the key communicators in the camps using a tap code system used by American World War II POWs in Germany.

(This was also highlighted in Arthur Koestler’s book about the Soviet Gulags, Darkness at Noon).

The code uses a 5 x 5 matrix composed of the 26 letters of the alphabet, with K and C being the same tap code.

For example, the word “Hi” would two taps, then three taps for “H“; and two taps, then four taps for “I“.

The POWs tapped letters and words through the thick walls to form messages that each cell would pass along to the next.

The Flash' and Tap Codes: A Brief History of How Vietnam POWs Communicated

In the prison camps, frequently the senior-ranking officers received the first and most harsh treatment in an effort to obtain propaganda and information.

Much of the torture abuse was aimed at discouraging the senior officers from carrying out leadership duties.

Prisoners of war were released from the camps in order of capture through Operation Homecoming.

On 14 March 1973, Lee and several comrades, including future Senator John McCain, were flown from Vietnam to Clark Air Base, Philippines.

From there, Ellis and others eventually landed at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, where he was reunited with his family.

Ellis was single at the time of his capture.

Return to Vietnam: Inside the Hanoi Hilton

Guy Gruters, USAF pilot, motivational speaker and author, POW 5 years

Smitty Harris, USAF pilot, established the “tap code” through which the inmates communicated with each other, POW 8 years

Tap Code Carlyle Smitty Harris | Lemuria Books

Doug Hegdahl, inmate who played a fool to memorize all the names, personal information and capture dates of the prisoners there

On 6 April 1967, 20-year-old Hegdahl was knocked overboard by the blast from a five-inch gun mount from the USS Canberra in the Gulf of Tonkin, three miles off the coast.

He swam until he was picked up several hours later by Cambodian fishermen who treated him well.

Trying to cover for him, his shipmates did not report him missing for two days, so the commanding officer did not organise a search.

Hegdahl was handed over to Vietnamese militiamen who clubbed him repeatedly with their rifles before moving him to the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison.

The interrogators first believed that Hegdahl was a commando or an agent.

His story of being blown overboard seemed unbelievable to the interrogators.

Hegdahl thought he would be much better off if he pretended to be of low intelligence.

Hegdahl was physically maltreated for a few days before he was able to convince his captors that he was of little value to them.

His bumpkin demeanor and youthful appearance aided in his ability to convince them that he was no threat to them.

When asked to write statements against the United States, he agreed, but pretended to be unable to read or write, which was believable to his Vietnamese captors.

Thinking they had someone who would be easily turned to their cause, they assigned someone to teach Hegdahl to read.

After Hegdahl appeared to be incapable of learning to read and write, his captors gave up on him.

Later, he came to be known to the Vietnamese as “the incredibly stupid one”, and he was given nearly free rein of the camp.

Naval History Blog » Blog Archive » Dirt, Taps &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp; Nursery Rhymes: Vietnam POW Book Offers Insight into Captivity

With the help of Joseph Crecca, a USAF officer and fellow prisoner, Hegdahl memorized names, capture dates, method of capture, and personal information of about 256 other prisoners—to the tune of a nursery rhyme “Old MacDonald Had a Farm“.

Hegdahl is still able to repeat the information.

The Incredibly Stupid One at the Hanoi Hilton (Vietnam POW Story) | CherriesWriter - Vietnam War website

Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O!
And on his farm he had a cow, E-I-E-I-O!
With a moo-moo here and a moo-moo there,
Here a moo, there a moo,
Everywhere a moo-moo,
Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O!

According to his senior officer and cellmate, Lieutenant Commander Richard A. Stratton, Hegdahl also convinced his captors that he needed new glasses and memorized the route from the prison into the city of Hanoi, where he was taken to be fitted.

During his prison stay, Hegdahl disabled five trucks by putting dirt in their fuel tanks.

Hegdahl was one of three POWs (along with Navy Lieutenant Robert Frishman and Air Force Captain Wesley Rumble) who were released on 5 August 1969, as a propaganda move by the North Vietnamese.

Although the POWs had agreed that none would accept early release, they agreed that Hegdahl’s release should be an exception.

He was ordered by Stratton to accept an early release so that he could provide the names of POWs being held by the North Vietnamese and reveal the conditions to which the prisoners were being subjected.

After his discharge, Hegdahl was sent to the Paris Peace Talks in 1970 and confronted the North Vietnamese with his first-hand information about the mistreatment of prisoners.

John McCain (1936 – 2018), US Navy pilot, later Arizona Republican Senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee, POW 5.5 years

Robinson Risner (1925 – 2013), USAF fighter pilot, a Lieutenant Colonel when shot down and captured, he was the senior ranking POW, responsible for maintaining chain of command among his fellow prisoners, POW 1965 – 1973.

James Robinson Risner DD-ST-99-04334.JPEG

Howard Rutledge, US Navy pilot, later author of In the Presence of Mine Enemies: 1965 – 1973: Prisoner of War, POW 7.5 years

In the Presence of Mine Enemies Howard Rutledge book.jpg

Floyd Thompson (1933 – 2002), US Army Special Forces, the longest held US POW, spending almost 9 years in captivity

The bright, white Neoclassical facade of the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi opened in 1901 as the Grand Metropole Palace, and soon became one of Southeast Asia’s great hotels.

By 1916, the Métropole became the first venue in Indochina to show motion pictures.

An animated sequence showing a horse galloping, with a jockey on its back

In 1946, the French owners of the Métropole sold it to a Chinese businessman, Giu Sinh Hoi.

Ho Chi Minh used the Métropole on several occasions as a meeting place.

In 1946, he entertained talks at the conference room with General Étienne Valuie and Vietnamese politician Nguyên Hái Thâ’n, in the small wing where the lobby bar is located today.

Ho occasionally used the Hotel for meetings, officially again in 1960.

Above: Ho Chi Minh (1890 – 1969)

In 1964, with American air raids imminent, the management decides to construct a bomb shelter in the courtyard of the Hotel to protect guests.

It has a one-metre thick concrete ceiling and could accommodate 30 to 40 people.

During that time the hotel staff received a military training course.

In 2011, the Bunker, the Hotel’s air raid shelter, was rediscovered under the Bamboo Bar.

Blind light bulbs and yellowish paintd walls survived decades of flooding by ground water, restored to be visited by interested tourists.

In 2012, the bunker became an integral part of the Hotel’s guided history tour, “The Path of History“.

In 2013, the project ‘Lost Bomb Shelter of the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi, Vietnam‘ was recognized with the “Honourable Mention” in the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conversation programme.

By 2018, the Path of History passed the 25,000 visitors mark.

Honouring the extraordinary efforts of employees during shared hardships of wartime, today this space serves as a memorial to their courage and preseverance and to remember what should never be forgotten.

The words at its entrance were composed by writer Andreas Augustin:

“REMEMBER – FORGIVE – FOREVER“

The Luxury Suites at the Historic Sofitel Legend Metropole Hotel in Hanoi | Vietnam Travel & Visas for Indians

Even during the French War, Bernard Fall, a journalist killed by a landmine near Hue in 1967, described the Hotel as the “last really fashionable place left in Hanoi“, where the barman “could produce a reasonable facsimile of almost any civilized drink except water“.

Bernard Fall: Memories of a Soldier-Scholar: Amazon.de: Fall, Dorothy: Bücher

From 1969 to 1981, the Hotel was home to several embassies and UN agencies, due to reconstruction of almost all public buildings all over Hanoi, the Hotel accommodated different diplomatic representatives, including Sweden, Australia, Switzerland, Japan, Italy, Germany, Israel, Norway, Luxembourg, Finland and the Netherlands.

After independence, the Metropole re-emerged in 1954 as the Thong Nhat (“Reunification Hotel“), but otherwise stayed much the same, apart from the resident rats and lethal wiring, until 1990 when Sofitel transformed it into Hanoi’s first international class accommodation.

Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi | Traveller Made

The Hotel was also used as a venue for the second meeting US President Donald Trump and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un on 27 and 28 February 2019.

The Metropole remains the most sought after hotel in Hanoi despite increasingly fierce competition.

Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi, Hanoi (9.3/10) | Updated 2021 Prices

Though the 236 rooms and 19 suites in the modern Opera Wing exude international class luxury, they lack the old world charm of the original building, which has wooden floorboards and louvred shutters.

That being said, great care has been taken to respect the rich heritage of the site while incorporating state-of-the-art technology.

Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi • Hotel Review by TravelPlusStyle

Each guest space has been individually furnished in neo-classic style with exquisite fabrics, harmonious red, black and white décor.

The Grand Prestige Suite, stretching over 170 square metres, includes a spacious sitting room, a bedroom plus adjoining guestroom, a private mini-spa, two bathrooms and a large dining table.

In-house services include a business centre, a small open-air swimming pool, a fitness centre and a choice of bars and restaurants.

The Hotel includes 364 rooms, which are divided into two wings.

Luxury Five Star Hotel in Hanoi | Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi

The historic Metropole Wing dating back to 1901 was inspired by classic French architecture blended with local Vietnamese style, and has 106 guest rooms and three Legendary Suites – named after famous residents and visitors to the Hotel: Graham Greene, Charlie Chaplin, Somerset Maugham.

The 5th, 6th and 7th floors, the Club Métropole floors, are home to the Grand Premium Rooms, six Prestige Suites, and the Grand Prestige Suite – with exclusive luxuries and services, such as a personal butler, afternoon tea and evening cocktails.

Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi review: What to know and where to eat | escape.com.au

In 1916, Somerset Maugham travelled to the Pacific to research his novel The Moon and Sixpence, based on the life of Paul Gauguin.

Above: William Somerset Maugham (1874 – 1965)

This was the first of his journeys through the late-Imperial world of the 1920s and 1930s that inspired his novels.

He became known as a writer who portrayed the last days of European colonialism in India, Southeast Asia, China and the Pacific, although the books on which this reputation rests represent only a fraction of his output.

On this and all subsequent journeys, he was accompanied by Gerald Haxton, whom he regarded as indispensable to his success as a writer. Maugham was painfully shy, and Haxton the extrovert gathered human material which the author drew from for his fiction.

Frederick Gerald Haxton (1892-1944) - Find A Grave Memorial

Above: Gerald Haxton (1892 – 1944)

Maugham stayed at the Metropole in 1923, working on The Gentleman in the Parlour: A Record of a Journey from Rangoon to Haiphong.

Armchair Traveller Series - The Gentleman in the Parlour by W. Somerset Maugham. Illustrated by Margot Asahina. | Book design, Traveler series, Somerset maugham

Above: Images of Hai Phong

Throughout his life, Graham Greene travelled to what he called the world’s wild and remote places.

As a novelist Greene wove the characters he met and the places where he lived into the fabric of his novels.

Above: Graham Greene (1904 – 1991)

The Quiet American uses Graham Greene’s experiences as a war correspondent for The Times and Le Figaro in French Indochina from 1951 to 1954.

It was in 1951 that Greene worked on The Quiet American at the Hotel Métropole.

During the Christmas season 1972, singer Joan Baez joined a peace delegation travelling to North Vietnam, both to address human rights in the region, and to deliver Christmas mail to American POWs.

During her time there, she was caught in the US military’s “Christmas bombing” of Hanoi, North Vietnam, during which the city was bombed for eleven straight days and she took shelter in the bunker of the Metropole.

Above: Joan Baez

We gathered in the lobby celebrating Christmas Eve
The French, the Poles, the Indians, Cubans and Vietnamese
The tiny tree our host had fixed sweetened familiar psalms
But the most sacred of Christmas prayers was shattered by the bombs

So back into the shelter where two lovely women rose
And with a brilliance and a fierceness and a gentleness which froze
The rest of us to silence as their voices soared with joy
Outshining every bomb that fell that night upon Hanoi

With bravery we have sun
But where are you now, my son?

Between 1965 and 1972, almost 300 Americans – mostly civil rights activists, teachers, and pastors – travelled to North Vietnam to see firsthand the war situation with the Vietnamese.

News media in the United States predominantly provided a US viewpoint, and American travellers to Vietnam were routinely harassed upon their return to the States.

Jane Fonda also visited Vietnam, traveling to Hanoi in July 1972 to witness firsthand the bombing damage to the dikes.

After touring and photographing dike systems in North Vietnam, she said the United States had been intentionally targeting the dike system along the Red River.

Columnist Joseph Kraft (1924 – 1986), who was also touring North Vietnam, said he believed the damage to the dikes was incidental and was being used as propaganda by Hanoi, and that, if the US Air Force were “truly going after the dikes, it would do so in a methodical, not a harum-scarum way“.

Sweden’s ambassador to Vietnam, however, observed the bomb damage to the dikes and described it as “methodic“.

U.S. Bombing Of Vietnamese Dikes Shocks The World" | Digital Pitt

Other journalists reported that the attacks were “aimed at the whole system of dikes“.

Fonda was photographed seated on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun.

The photo outraged a number of Americans and earned her the nickname “Hanoi Jane“.

In her 2005 autobiography, she wrote that she was manipulated into sitting on the battery.

She had been horrified at the implications of the pictures.

In a 2011 entry at her official website, Fonda explained:

It happened on my last day in Hanoi.
I was exhausted and an emotional wreck after the two-week visit.
The translator told me that the soldiers wanted to sing me a song.
He translated as they sung.
It was a song about the day ‘Uncle Ho’ declared their country’s independence in Hanoi’s Ba Dinh Square.
I heard these words:
‘All men are created equal.
They are given certain rights.
Among these are life, liberty and happiness.’
These are the words Ho pronounced at the historic ceremony.
I began to cry and clap.
‘These young men should not be our enemy.
They celebrate the same words Americans do.‘
The soldiers asked me to sing for them in return.
I memorized a song called ‘Day Ma Di‘, written by anti-war South Vietnamese students.
I knew I was slaughtering it, but everyone seemed delighted that I was making the attempt.
I finished.
Everyone was laughing and clapping, including me.
Here is my best, honest recollection of what happened:
Someone (I don’t remember who) led me towards the gun, and I sat down, still laughing, still applauding.
It all had nothing to do with where I was sitting.
I hardly even thought about where I was sitting.
The cameras flashed.
It is possible that it was a set up, that the Vietnamese had it all planned.
I will never know.
But if they did I can’t blame them.
The buck stops here.
If I was used, I allowed it to happen.
A two-minute lapse of sanity that will haunt me forever.
But the photo exists, delivering its message regardless of what I was doing or feeling.
I carry this heavy in my heart.
I have apologized numerous times for any pain I may have caused servicemen and their families because of this photograph.
It was never my intention to cause harm.

Fonda made radio broadcasts on Hanoi Radio throughout her two-week tour, describing her visits to villages, hospitals, schools, and factories that had been bombed, and denouncing US military policy.

During the course of her visit, Fonda visited American POWs and brought back messages from them to their families.

When stories of torture of returning POWs were later being publicized by the Nixon administration,

Fonda said that those making such claims were “hypocrites and liars and pawns“, adding about the prisoners she visited,

“These were not men who had been tortured.

These were not men who had been starved.

These were not men who had been brainwashed.”

In addition, Fonda told the New York Times in 1973:

“I’m quite sure that there were incidents of torture but the pilots who were saying it was the policy of the Vietnamese and that it was systematic,

I believe that’s a lie.“

Her visits to the POW camp led to persistent and exaggerated rumors which were repeated widely, and continued to circulate on the Internet decades later.

Fonda, as well as the named POWs, have denied the rumors, and subsequent interviews with the POWs showed these allegations to be false—the persons named had never met Fonda.

In 1972, Fonda helped fund and organize the Indochina Peace Campaign, which continued to mobilize antiwar activists in the US after the 1973 Paris Peace Agreement, until 1975 when the United States withdrew from Vietnam.

Because of her tour of North Vietnam during wartime and the subsequent rumors, resentment against her persists among some veterans and serving US military.

Pin by GEORGE TILLOTSON on VIETNAM | Vietnam war, Vietnam war photos, Vietnam veterans

Besides Jane Fonda, other actors have also stayed at the Metropole during their filming of Vietnam-set movies:

Robert De Niro, The Deer Hunter (1978)

Robert De Niro, in character, points a pistol to his head. It is a black-and-white image with red highlighting his bandanna and the film credits below.

Catherine Deneuve, Indochine (1992)

Michael Caine, The Quiet American (2002)

Actors Paulette Goddard (1910 – 1990) and Charlie Chaplin (1889 – 1977) stayed here on their honeymoon in 1936.

Charlie was Paulette’s second husband.

Paulette was Charlie’s third wife.

“The bond between Paulette and me was loneliness.”

Pin by I r i n a on Paulette Goddard | Charlie chaplin, Classic film stars, Charles spencer chaplin

City Lights had been a success, but Chaplin was unsure if he could make another picture without dialogue.

He remained convinced that sound would not work in his films, but was also “obsessed by a depressing fear of being old-fashioned”.

In this state of uncertainty, early in 1931, the comedian decided to take a holiday and ended up travelling for 16 months.

He spent months travelling Western Europe, including extended stays in France and Switzerland, and spontaneously decided to visit Japan.

The day after he arrived in Japan, Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated by ultra-nationalists in the 15 May Incident.

Above: Inukai Tsuyoshi (1855 – 1932)

The group’s original plan had been to provoke a war with the United States by assassinating Chaplin at a welcome reception organised by the Prime Minister, but the plan had been foiled due to delayed public announcement of the event’s date.

In his autobiography, Chaplin recalled that on his return to Los Angeles:

“I was confused and without plan, restless and conscious of an extreme loneliness“.

Buy Modern Classics My Autobiography (Penguin Modern Classics) Book Online at Low Prices in India | Modern Classics My Autobiography (Penguin Modern Classics) Reviews & Ratings - Amazon.in

He briefly considered retiring and moving to China.

Chaplin’s loneliness was relieved when he met 21-year-old actress Paulette Goddard in July 1932, and the pair began a relationship.

Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard | Real Romances of the Silent Film Era | POPSUGAR Love & Sex Photo 6

He was not ready to commit to a film, however, and focused on writing a serial about his travels (published in Woman’s Home Companion).

The trip had been a stimulating experience for Chaplin, including meetings with several prominent thinkers, and he became increasingly interested in world affairs.

The state of labour in America troubled him, and he feared that capitalism and machinery in the workplace would increase unemployment levels.

It was these concerns that stimulated Chaplin to develop his new film.

Following the release of Modern Times, Chaplin left with Goddard for a trip to the Far East.

The couple had refused to comment on the nature of their relationship, and it was not known whether they were married or not.

Some time later, Chaplin revealed that they married in Canton during this trip.

By 1938, the couple had drifted apart, as both focused heavily on their work, although Goddard was again his leading lady in his next feature film, The Great Dictator.

She eventually divorced Chaplin in Mexico in 1942, citing incompatibility and separation for more than a year.

Paulette Goddard and Charles Chaplin | Charlie chaplin, Paulette goddard, Movie stars

The following politicians also stayed at the Metropole during their state visits:

Francois Mitterrand (1916 – 1996), President of France

Jacques Chirac (1932 – 2019), President of France

Francois Hollande, President of France

George H.W. Bush (1924 – 2018), US President

Bill Clinton, US President

Vladimir Putin, President of Russia

Vladimir Putin (2018-03-01) 03 (cropped).jpg

Fidel Castro (1826 – 2016), Prime Minister / President of Cuba

John Kerry, US Secretary of State

John McCain (1936 – 2018), US Senator

White-haired man speaking at podium, with group of people behind him, some holding blue "McCain" signs

Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland

Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General

Erna Solberg, Prime Minister of Norway

Queen Máxima of the Netherlands

With state visits in mind, it is fitting that Heidi‘s last tourist site she passed in the French Quarter was the Quan Su Pagoda, also known as the Ambassador’s Pagoda.

Quan Su was founded in the 15th century as part of a guesthouse for officials from neighbouring Buddhist countries, though the current building dates only from 1942.

Nowadays Quan Su is one of Hanoi’s most active pagodas.

On the 1st and 15th days of the lunar month, worshippers and mendicants throng its forecourt.

Inside, an iron lamp ornamented with sinous dragons hangs over the crowded prayer floor as ranks of crimson-lacquered Buddhas glow through a pungent haze of burning incense.

The compound, shaded by ancient trees, is the headquarters of the officially recognized Central Buddhist Congregation of Vietnam and is a centre of Buddhist learning, which explains the Pagoda’s well-stacked library and classrooms at the rear of the building.

Quan Su and the French Quarter could be seen as a symbol of the revenge of time.

They beg the question of the futility of human interaction.

Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husbannd, not a parent a child?

Perhaps this is why Quan Su seems so fitting in a quarter that houses a luxury hotel, a prison, a museum of women, a museum of national history and an opera house.

Perhaps the traveller is crazy to think they will understand a foreign country simply by visiting it.

Perhaps this inability to understand one another is why man invented God.

A being capable of understanding.

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Lonely Planet Vietnam / Rough Guide Vietnam / Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography / Graham Greene, The Quiet American / W. Somerset Maugham, The Gentleman in the Parlour / Irving Shepherd, Jack London Credo

Canada Slim and the Pretty City of Nirvana

Posted on February 17, 2021 by canadaslim

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Tuesday 2 February 2021

I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy….

Image result for james joyce ulysses movie

Well, it’s Groundhog Day….

Again.

Groundhog Day is a popular North American tradition observed in the United States and Canada on 2 February.

It derives from the Pennsylvania Dutch superstitution that if a groundhog emerging from its burrow on this day sees its shadow due to clear weather, it will retreat to its den and winter will persist for six more weeks.

But if it does not see its shadow because of cloudiness, spring will arrive early.

While the tradition remains popular in modern times, studies have found no consistent correlation between a groundhog seeing its shadow and the subsequent arrival time of springlike weather.

The weather lore was brought from German-speaking areas where the badger (German: Dachs) is the forecasting animal.

This appears to be an enhanced version of the lore that clear weather on the Christian festival of Candlemas forebodes a prolonged winter.

The Groundhog Day ceremony held at Punxsutawney in western Pennsylvania, centering on a semi-mythical groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil, has become the most frequently attended ceremony.

Grundsow Lodges in Pennsylvania Dutch Coutnry in the southeastern part of the state observe the occasion as well.

Other cities in the United States and Canada have also adopted the event.

This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.

Once again, the eyes of the nation have turned here to this tiny village in western Pennsylvania.

There is no way this winter is ever going to end, as long as this groundhog keeps seeing his shadow.

I don’t see any other way out.

He’s got to be stopped.

And I have to stop him.

The Pennsylvania Dutch were immigrants from Germanic-speaking areas of Europe.

The Germans already had a tradition of marking Candlemas (2 February) as “Badger Day” (Dachstag), where if a badger emerging found it to be a sunny day thereby casting a shadow, it foreboded the prolonging of winter by four more weeks.

I’ll give you a winter prediction:

It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.

What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

Candlemas is a primarily Catholic festival but also known in the German Protestant (Lutheran) churches.

In folk religion, various traditions and superstitions continue to be linked with the holiday, although this was discouraged by the Protestant Reformers in the 16th century.

Notably, several traditions akin to weather lores use Candlemas’ weather to predict the start of spring.

The weather-predicting animal on Candlemas usually was the badger, although regionally the animal was the bear or the fox.

The original weather-predicting animal in Germany had been the bear, another hibernating mammal, but when they grew scarce the lore became altered.

Similarity to the groundhog lore has been noted for the German formula “Sonnt sich der Dachs in der Lichtmeßwoche, so geht er auf vier Wochen wieder zu Loche” .

(If the badger sunbathes during Candlemas week, for four more weeks he will be back in his hole).

A slight variant is found in a collection of weather lore (Bauernregeln, lit. “farmers’ rules“) printed in Austria in 1823.

When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope.

Above: Anton Chekhov (1860 – 1904)

Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life.

But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.

So the same tradition as the Germans, except that winter’s spell would be prolonged for six weeks instead of four, was maintained by the Pennsylvanians on Groundhog Day.

In Germany, the animal was dachs or badger.

For the Pennsylvania Dutch, it became the dox which in Deitsch referred to “groundhog“.

The standard term for “groundhog” was grun′daks (from German dachs), with the regional variant in York County being grundsau, a direct translation of the English name, according to a 19th-century book on the dialect.

The form was a regional variant according to one 19th century source.

However, the weather superstition that begins “Der zwet Hær′ning is Grund′sau dåk. Wânn di grundau îr schâtte sent.” (“February second is Groundhog day. If the groundhog sees its shadow …)” is given as common to all 14 counties in Dutch Pennsylvania Country, in a 1915 monograph.

In The Thomas R. Brendle Collection of Pennsylvania German Folklore, Brendle preserved the following lore from the local Pennsylvania German dialect:

Wann der Dachas sei Schadde seht im Lichtmess Marye, dann geht er widder in’s Loch un beleibt noch sechs Woche drin.
Wann Ilchtmess Marye awwer drieb is, dann bleibt der dachs haus un’s watt noch enanner Friehyaahr.
(When the groundhog sees his shadow on the morning of February 2, he will again go into his hole and remain there for six weeks.
But if the morning of February 2 is overcast, the groundhog will remain outside and there will be another spring.)

The form grundsow has been used by the lodge in Allentown and elsewhere.

Well, we’re living here in Allentown
And they’re closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time
Filling out forms
Standing in line

Well, our fathers fought the Second World War
Spent their weekends on the Jersey shore
Met our mothers in the USO
Asked them to dance
Danced with them slow
And we’re living here in Allentown

But the restlessness was handed down
And it’s getting very hard to stay

Well we’re waiting here in Allentown

For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved

So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coke
And chromium steel

And we’re waiting here in Allentown

But they’ve taken all the coal from the ground
And the union people crawled away

Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face

Well I’m living here in Allentown
And it’s hard to keep a good man down
But I won’t be getting up today

And it’s getting very hard to stay
And we’re living here in Allentown

Official seal of Allentown, Pennsylvania

Brendle also recorded the name “Grundsaudag” (Groundhog Day in Lebanon County) and “Daxdaag” (Groundhog Day in Northampton County).

Victor Hugo, in “Les Misérables” (1864) discusses the day as follows:

Above: Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885)

“It was the second of February, that ancient Candlemas-day whose treacherous sun, the precursor of six weeks of cold, inspired Matthew Laensberg with the two lines, which have deservedly become classic:

‘Qu’il luise ou qu’il luiserne, l’ours rentre en sa caverne.‘

(Let it gleam or let it glimmer, the bear goes back into his cave.)“

Image result for victor hugo les miserables

Captain Sir Tom Moore has died with corona virus.

The 100-year-old, who raised almost £33m for NHS charities by walking laps of his garden, was admitted to Bedford Hospital on Sunday.

The Queen led tributes to Captain Sir Tom, “recognising the inspiration he provided for the whole nation and others across the world”.

His daughters said they “shared laughter and tears” with their father in their final few hours together.

Announcing his death, Hannah Ingram-Moore and Lucy Teixeira said the last year of their father’s life had been “nothing short of remarkable”.

He tested positive for Covid-19 last week.

His family said due to other medication he was receiving for pneumonia, he was unable to be vaccinated.

The Army veteran won the nation’s hearts by walking 100 laps of his garden in Marston Moretaine in Bedfordshire last year during the first lockdown, raising money for NHS Charities Together.

He was credited with lifting the nation’s spirits and his saying “Tomorrow will be a good day.” trended on social media.

He was knighted by the Queen in July in a special ceremony at Windsor Castle.

A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said:

“Her Majesty very much enjoyed meeting Captain Sir Tom and his family at Windsor last year.

Her thoughts, and those of the royal family, are with them, recognising the inspiration he provided for the whole nation and others across the world.”

Image result for tom moore knighted by queen

In a statement, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said:

“Captain Sir Tom Moore was a hero in the truest sense of the word.

In the dark days of the Second World War he fought for freedom and in the face of this country’s deepest post-war crisis he united us all, he cheered us all up, and he embodied the triumph of the human spirit.

“He became not just a national inspiration but a beacon of hope for the world. Our thoughts are with his daughter Hannah and all his family.”

The flag above 10 Downing Street has been flying at half-mast in tribute and Mr Johnson has spoken to Mrs Ingram-Moore to offer his condolences.

A tweet from the White House said:

“We join the United Kingdom and the world in honouring the memory of Captain Sir Tom Moore, who inspired millions through his life and his actions.”

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer tweeted:

“This is incredibly sad news.

Captain Tom Moore put others first at a time of national crisis and was a beacon of hope for millions. Britain has lost a hero.”

The daughters’ statement said:

“It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our dear father.

“We are so grateful that we were with him during the last hours of his life.

Hannah, Benjie and Georgia by his bedside and Lucy on FaceTime.

“We spent hours chatting to him, reminiscing about our childhood and our wonderful mother. We shared laughter and tears together.

“The last year of our father’s life was nothing short of remarkable. He was rejuvenated and experienced things he’d only ever dreamed of.

“Whilst he’d been in so many hearts for just a short time, he was an incredible father and grandfather, and he will stay alive in our hearts forever.“

Captain Sir Tom’s daughters said the care he received from the NHS was “extraordinary”.

They said staff had been “unfalteringly professional, kind and compassionate and have given us many more years with him than we ever would have imagined“.

Captain Sir Tom joined the Army at the beginning of World War Two, serving in India and Myanmar, then known as Burma.

He was originally from Keighley in West Yorkshire and among the local tributes being paid was Robbie Moore MP who said the town had “lost one of its finest today“.

Moore was made an honorary colonel of the Army Foundation College in Harrogate on his 100th birthday.

Captain Sir Tom had initially set out to raise £1,000 for NHS charities by walking 82ft (25m)-loops of his garden.

But he eventually raised £32,794,701 from more than 1.5 million supporters.

NHS Charities Together said that would rise to £39m when Gift Aid was taken into account.

Ellie Orton, chief executive, said the funds raised by Captain Sir Tom had “reached the length and breadth of the UK through every one of our 241 member charities”.

She said he was “a one-off and he leaves the world a better place”.

Ruth May, chief nursing officer for NHS England, said Captain Sir Tom Moore “has been the model of all that has been good about our country’s response to Covid-19”.

She said in a statement “for me his biggest achievement and most important contribution to helping my fellow nurses, doctors and all those in the NHS responding to corona virus, has been how he brought the country together and gave us all a boost when we most needed it”.

Fellow charity fundraiser Dabirul Choudhury, who was 100 years old when he raised more than GBP 150,000 for corona virus relief by walking while fasting for Ramadan, paid tribute to Captain Sir Tom.

“If you want to help mankind you should keep yourself very fit, fit, fit,” he said.

Mr Choudrey’s son Atique said Captain Sir Tom had “left a massive legacy that will follow on through for generations”, adding “even now, my father hasn’t actually eaten since he’s heard about the news of Captain Sir Tom’s death“.

Captain Sir Tom became the oldest person to have a UK #1 single when he recorded You’ll Never Walk Alone with Michael Ball last year.

The singer said on Twitter:

“A wonderful life so well lived and a hero and fighter to the very end.

So very sad“.

Image result for tom moore you'll never walk alone

Having served in Myanmar, I wonder if Captain Tom was aware of events happening there as he lay dying….

The 2021 Myanmar coup d’état began on the morning of 1 February 2021 when democratically elected members of Myanmar’s ruling party, the National League for Democracy, were deposed by the Tatmadaw — Myanmar’s military—which vested power in a stratocracy (government headed by military chiefs).

The Tatmadaw proclaimed a year-long state of emergency and declared power had been vested in Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services Min Aung Hlaing.

It declared the results of the November 2020 general election invalid and stated its intent to hold a new election at the end of the state of emergency.

The coup d’état occurred the day before the Parliament of Myanmar was due to swear in the members elected at the 2020 election, thereby preventing this from occurring.

President Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi were detained on 2 February, along with ministers and their deputies and members of Parliament.

Picture of Aung San Suu Kyi's face behind bars

China has blocked a UN Security Council statement condemning the military coup in Myanmar.

The military took power in the South East Asian nation on Monday after arresting political leader Aung San Suu Kyi and hundreds of other lawmakers.

The coup leaders have since formed a supreme council which will sit above the cabinet.

In Myanmar’s biggest city Yangon though, signs of resistance and civil disobedience have been growing.

Doctors and medical staff in dozens of hospitals across the country are stopping work in protest against the coup and to push for Ms Suu Kyi’s release.

Yangon General Hospital - medics wear red ribbons in protest, 3 February 2021

The United Nations Security Council met on Tuesday, but failed to agree on a joint statement after China did not support it.

China has the power of veto as one of five permanent members of the council.

Ahead of the talks, the UN’s Special Envoy on Myanmar, Christine Schraner, strongly condemned the military takeover which came after the army refused to accept the outcome of general elections held in November.

She said it was clear that “the recent outcome of the election was a landslide victory” for Ms Suu Kyi’s party.

In further criticism, the Group of Seven major economic powers said it was “deeply concerned” and called for the return of democracy.

“We call upon the military to immediately end the state of emergency, restore power to the democratically-elected government, to release all those unjustly detained and to respect human rights and the rule of law,” the statement released in London said.

The G7 comprises Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US.

China has been warning since the coup that sanctions or international pressure would only make things worse in Myanmar.

Beijing has long played a role of protecting the country from international scrutiny. It sees the country as economically important and is one of Myanmar’s closest allies.

Alongside Russia, it has repeatedly protected Myanmar from criticism at the UN over the military crackdown on the Muslim minority Rohingya population.

“Beijing’s stance on the situation is consistent with its overall scepticism of international intervention,” Sebastian Strangio, author and South East Asia editor at The Diplomat, told the BBC.

While China does benefit strategically from Myanmar’s alienation from the west, this does not mean that Beijing is happy with the coup, he cautions.

“They had a pretty good arrangement with the NLD and invested a lot to build a relationship with Aung San Suu Kyi.

The return of the military actually means that China now has to deal with the institution in Myanmar that historically is the most suspicious of China’s intentions.”

“Through this foreign policy equivalent of gaslighting, China seems to be signalling its tacit support, if not emphatic endorsement, for the generals’ actions,” Myanmar expert Elliott Prasse-Freeman, of the National University of Singapore, told the BBC.

“China seems to be proceeding as if this is Myanmar’s ‘internal issue’ in which what we are observing is a ‘cabinet reshuffle,’ as China’s state media put it.“

While he thinks a UN statement would not have made an immediate difference, it would still serve as “a first step for cohering an international response.

That appears to not be forthcoming“.

Above: Logo of the National University of Singapore

Aung San Suu Kyi, who led the now-ousted elected government, has not been seen since she was detained by the military on Monday morning.

Dozens of others also remain detained, including President Win Myint, members of her party’s central committee and her personal attorney.

They are reportedly being held under house arrest.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) demanded her immediate release on Tuesday.

It has also called upon the military to accept the results of the November election, which saw the NLD win more than 80% of the votes.

Meanwhile, the United States said it had been unsuccessful in contacting the Myanmar military and has formally declared the takeover to be a coup d’etat.

This means the US cannot directly assist the government, though most of its assistance goes to non-governmental entities.

The EU, UK, Australia and others have also condemned the takeover.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, was ruled by the armed forces until 2011, when a nominally civilian government was sworn in.

Power has been handed over to commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing.

Eleven ministers and deputies, including those in finance, health, the interior and foreign affairs, were replaced.

In the first meeting of his cabinet on Tuesday, Min Aung Hlaing repeated that the takeover had been “inevitable“.

The country was calm in the aftermath of the coup, with troops patrolling all major cities and a night-time curfew in force.

Myanmar has a long history of military rule and many people can still remember the terror of previous coups.

But on Tuesday evening, car horns and the banging of cooking pots could be heard in the streets of Yangon in a sign of protest.

Activist groups have called for civil disobedience campaigns, setting up a Facebook group to organise their efforts.

Image result for myanmar coup 2021 protests

Staff at 70 hospitals and medical departments across the country have reportedly stepped away from all non-emergency work.

Hundreds of healthcare workers, including senior doctors, have participated in the “Red Ribbon movement“, with many donning a red ribbon on their clothes to show they were against the coup.

Online, many changed their social media profile pictures to one of just the colour red.

Image result for myanmar coup red ribbon movement

Myanmar is a country of 54 million people in South East Asia which shares borders with Bangladesh, India, China, Thailand and Laos.

It was ruled by an oppressive military government from 1962 to 2011, leading to international condemnation and sanctions.

Aung San Suu Kyi spent years campaigning for democratic reforms.

A gradual liberalisation began in 2010, though the military still retained considerable influence.

A government led by Ms Suu Kyi came to power after free elections in 2015.

But a deadly military crackdown two years later on Rohingya Muslims sent hundreds of thousands fleeing to Bangladesh and triggered a rift between Ms Suu Kyi and the international community.

She has remained popular at home and her party won again by a landslide in the November 2020 election.

But the military have now stepped in to take control once more.

Above: Flag of Myanmar

The Myanmar military seems to be like a Burmese badger that once seen casts a dark shadow.

The first reported news of a Groundhog Day observance was arguably made by the Punxsutawney Spirit newspaper of Punxsawtawney, in 1886:

“Up to the time of going to press, the beast has not seen its shadow“.

However, it was not until the following year in 1887 that the first Groundhog Day considered “official” was commemorated there, with a group making a trip to the Gobbler’s Knob part of town to consult the groundhog.

People have gathered annually at the spot for the event ever since.

I was in the Virgin Islands once.

I met a girl.

We ate lobster, drank Piña Coladas.

At sunset we made love like sea otters.

That was a pretty good day.

Why couldn’t I get that day over and over and over?

Image result for groundhog day film i was in the virgin islands

At first, Selkirk remained along the shoreline of Juan Fernández.

During this time he ate spiny lobsters and scanned the ocean daily for rescue, suffering all the while from loneliness, misery and remorse.

Hordes of raucous sea lions, gathered on the beach for the mating season, eventually drove him to the island’s interior.

Once inland, his way of life took a turn for the better.

More foods were available there: feral goats — introduced by earlier sailors — provided him with meat and milk, while wild turnips, the leaves of the indigenous cabbage tree and dried Schinus fruits (pink peppercorns) offered him variety and spice.

Rats would attack him at night, but he was able to sleep soundly and in safety by domesticating and living near feral cats.

Shaded relief map of the Juan Fernández Islands with blue ocean he died on the island background

Selkirk proved resourceful in using materials that he found on the island:

He forged a new knife out of barrel hoops left on the beach, he built two huts out of pepper trees, one of which he used for cooking and the other for sleeping, and he employed his musket to hunt goats and his knife to clean their carcasses.

As his gunpowder dwindled, he had to chase prey on foot.

During one such chase he was badly injured when he tumbled from a cliff, lying helpless and unable to move for about a day.

His prey had cushioned his fall, probably sparing him a broken back.

Childhood lessons learned from his father, a tanner, now served him well.

For example, when his clothes wore out, he made new ones from hair-covered goatskins using a nail for sewing.

As his shoes became unusable, he had no need to replace them, since his toughened, calloused feet made protection unnecessary.

He sang psalms and read from the Bible, finding it a comfort in his situation and a prop for his English.

During his sojourn on the island, two vessels came to anchor.

Unfortunately for Selkirk, both were Spanish.

As a Scotsman and a privateer, he would have faced a grim fate if captured and therefore did his best to hide himself.

Once, he was spotted and chased by a group of Spanish sailors from one of the ships.

His pursuers urinated beneath the tree in which he was hiding but failed to notice him.

The would-be captors then gave up and sailed away.

Engraving of Selkirk sitting in the doorway of a hut reading a Bible

Selkirk’s long-awaited deliverance came on 2 February 1709 by way of Duke, a privateering ship piloted by William Dampier, and its sailing companion Duchess.

Thomas Dover led the landing party that met Selkirk.

After four years and four months without human company, Selkirk was almost incoherent with joy.

The Duke‘s captain and leader of the expedition was Woodes Rogers, who wryly referred to Selkirk as the governor of the island.

The agile castaway caught two or three goats a day and helped restore the health of Rogers’ men, who were suffering from scurvy.

Captain Rogers was impressed by Selkirk’s physical vigour, but also by the peace of mind that he had attained while living on the island, observing:

“One may see that solitude and retirement from the world is not such an insufferable state of life as most men imagine, especially when people are fairly called or thrown into it unavoidably, as this man was.“

Selkirk, seated in a ship's boat, being taken aboard Duke.

Selkirk’s experience as a castaway aroused a great deal of attention in England.

Fellow crewmember Edward Cooke mentioned Selkirk’s ordeal in a book chronicling their privateering expedition, A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World (1712).

Image result for a voyage to the south sea and round the world alexander selkirk

When Daniel Defoe published The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), few readers could have missed the resemblance to Selkirk.

An illustration on the first page of the novel shows “a rather melancholy-looking man standing on the shore of an island, gazing inland“, in the words of modern explorer Tim Severin.

He is dressed in familiar goatskins, his feet and shins bare.

Yet Crusoe’s island is located not in the mid-latitudes of the South Pacific but 4,300 km (2,700 mi) away in the Caribbean, where furry attire would hardly be comfortable in tropical heat.

This incongruity supports the popular belief that Selkirk was a model for the fictional character, though most literary scholars now accept that his was “just one of many survival narratives that Defoe knew about“.

Image result for the life and surprising adventures of robinson crusoe

To be exiled, abandoned, isolated for four years and four months, to have only one’s shadow as inconstant companion….

Clymer Freas (1867–1942) who was city editor at the Punxsutawney Spirit is credited as the “father” who conceived the idea of “Groundhog Day“.

It has also been suggested that Punxsutawney was where all the Groundhog Day events originated, from where it spread to other parts of the United States and Canada.

The Groundhog Day celebrations of the 1880s were carried out by the Punxsutawney Elks Lodge.

The lodge members were the “genesis” of the Groundhog Club formed later, which continued the Groundhog Day tradition.

But the lodge started out being interested in the groundhog as a game animal for food.

It had started to serve groundhog at the lodge, and had been organizing a hunting party on a day each year in late summer.

The chronologies given are somewhat inconsistent in the literature.

The first “Groundhog Picnic” was held in 1887 according to one source, but given as post-circa-1889 by a local historian in a journal.

The historian states that around 1889 the meat was served in the lodge’s banquet, and the organized hunt started after that.

Either way, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club was formed in 1899, and continued the hunt and “Groundhog Feast“, which took place annually in September.

The “hunt” portion of it became increasingly a ritualized formality, because the practical procurement of meat had to occur well ahead of time for marinating.

A drink called the “groundhog punch” was also served.

The flavor of groundhog meat has been described as a “cross between pork and chicken“.

The hunt and feast did not attract enough outside interest, and the practice discontinued.

The groundhog was not named Phil until 1961, possibly as an indirect reference to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Above: Prince Philip

To paraphrase Elvis Presley:

You ain’t nothin’ but a groundhog
Cryin’ all the time
You ain’t nothin’ but a groundhog
Cryin’ all the time
Well, you ain’t never caught a shadow
And you ain’t no friend of mine

Well, they said you was high class
Well, that was just a lie
Yeah, they said you was high class
Well, that was just a lie
Yeah, you ain’t never caught a shadow
And you ain’t no friend of mine

Image result for hound dog elvis presley

The River Thames frost fairs were held on the tideway of the River Thames in London, England in some winters, starting at least as early as the late 7th century until the early 19th century.

Most were held between the early 17th and early 19th centuries during the period known as the Little Ice Age, when the river froze over most frequently.

During that time the British winter was more severe than it is now, and the river was wider and slower, further impeded by the 19 piers of the medieval Old London Bridge which were removed in 1831.

Even at its peak, in the mid-17th century, the Thames in London froze less often than modern legend sometimes suggests, never exceeding about one year in ten except for four winters between 1649 and 1666.

From 1400 until the removal of the medieval London Bridge in 1835, there were 24 winters in which the Thames was recorded to have frozen over at London.

The Thames freezes over more often upstream, beyond the reach of the tide, especially above the weirs, of which Teddington Lock is the lowest.

The last great freeze of the higher Thames was in the winter of 1962 – 1963.

Frost fairs were a rare event even in the coldest parts of the Little Ice Age.

Some of the recorded frost fairs were in 695, 1608, 1683-4, 1716, 1739–40, 1789, and 1814.

Recreational cold weather winter events were far more common elsewhere in Europe, for example in the Netherlands.

These events in other countries as well as the winter festivals and carnivals around the world in present times can also be considered frost fairs.

However, very few of them have actually used that title.

(And, in these years of the Pandemic, few, if any, winter festivals or carnivals are being held.)

During the Great Frost of 1683 – 1684, the most severe frost recorded in England, the Thames was completely frozen for two months, with the ice reaching a thickness of 11 inches (28 cm) in London.

Solid ice was reported extending for miles off the coasts of the southern North Sea (England, France and the Low Countries), causing severe problems for shipping and preventing the use of many harbours.

(I have no idea if Candlemas foretellings were a comfort or a curse in those days, but each frozen day must have felt long indeed.)

In July 1900, Victoria’s second son Alfred (“Affie“) died.

“Oh, God! My poor darling Affie gone too“, she wrote in her journal.

“It is a horrible year, nothing but sadness and horrors of one kind and another.”

Above: Queen Victoria (1819 – 1901)

(According to one of her biographers, Giles St Aubyn, Victoria wrote an average of 2,500 words a day during her adult life.

From July 1832 until just before her death, she kept a detailed journal, which eventually encompassed 122 volumes.

After Victoria’s death, her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, was appointed her literary executor.

Beatrice transcribed and edited the diaries covering Victoria’s accession onwards, and burned the originals in the process.

Despite this destruction, much of the diaries still exist.

Victoria was physically unprepossessing—she was stout, dowdy and only about five feet tall—but she succeeded in projecting a grand image.

She experienced unpopularity during the first years of her widowhood, but was well liked during the 1880s and 1890s, when she embodied the empire as a benevolent matriarchal figure.

Only after the release of her diary and letters did the extent of her political influence become known to the wider public.)

Following a custom she maintained throughout her widowhood, Victoria spent the Christmas of 1900 at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

Rheumatism in her legs had rendered her lame, and her eyesight was clouded by cataracts.

Through early January, she felt “weak and unwell“, and by mid-January she was “drowsy,dazed and confused“.

She died on Tuesday 22 January 1901, at half past six in the evening, at the age of 81.

Above: Osborne House, Isle of Wight, England

Her son and successor, King Edward VII, and her eldest grandson, Emperor Wilhelm II, were at her deathbed.

Above: Edward VII (1841 – 1910)

Above: Wilhelm II (1859 – 1941)

Her favourite pet Pomeranian, Turi, was laid upon her deathbed as a last request.

In 1897, Victoria had written instructions for her funeral, which was to be military as befitting a soldier’s daughter and the head of the army, and white instead of black.

On 25 January, Edward, Wilhelm and her third son, the Duke of Connaught, helped lift her body into the coffin.

She was dressed in a white dress and her wedding veil.

An array of mementos commemorating her extended family, friends and servants were laid in the coffin with her, at her request, by her doctor and dressers.

One of Albert’s dressing gowns was placed by her side, with a plaster cast of his hand, while a lock of John Brown’s hair, along with a picture of him, was placed in her left hand concealed from the view of the family by a carefully positioned bunch of flowers.

Portrait photograph of Prince Albert aged 41

Above: Prince Albert (1819 – 1861)

John Brown ( Queen Victorias's servant).jpg

Above: John Brown (1826 – 1883)

Items of jewellery placed on Victoria included the wedding ring of John Brown’s mother, given to her by Brown in 1883.

Her funeral was held on Saturday 2 February 1901, in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.

After two days of lying-in-state, she was interred beside Prince Albert in the Royal Mausoleum, Frogmore, at Windsor Great Park.

With a reign of 63 years, seven months and two days, Victoria was the longest reigning British monarch and the longest reigning queen regnant in world history until her great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth II surpassed her on 9 September 2015.

Ulysses is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce (1882 – 1841), which he began in Trieste in 1914, the bulk of it written in Zürich (1915 – 1920), completed in Paris (1920).

Above: James Joyce (1882 – 1941)

It was first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920 and then published in its entirety in Paris on 2 February 1922, Joyce’s 40th birthday.

It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature and has been called “a demonstration and summation of the entire movement.”

According to Declan Kiberd:

“Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking“.

Ulysses chronicles the appointments and encounters of the itinerant Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904.

Ulysses is the Latinised name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey, and the novel establishes a series of parallels between the poem and the novel, with structural correspondences between the characters and experiences of Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus, in addition to events and themes of the early 20th-century context of modernism, Dublin, and Ireland’s relationship to Britain.

The book explores various areas of Dublin life, dwelling on its squalor and monotony.

Nevertheless, the book is also an affectionately detailed study of the city.

Joyce claimed that if Dublin were to be destroyed in some catastrophe, it could be rebuilt, brick by brick, using his work as a model.

To achieve this level of accuracy, Joyce used the 1904 edition of Thom’s Directory —a work that listed the owners and/or tenants of every residential and commercial property in the city.

He also bombarded friends still living there with requests for information and clarification.

The book consists of 18 chapters, each covering roughly one hour of the day, beginning around about 8 am and ending sometime after 2 am the following morning.

Each of the 18 chapters of the novel employs its own literary style.

Each chapter also refers to a specific episode in Homer’s Odyssey and has a specific colour, art, or science and bodily organ associated with it.

This combination of kaleidoscopic writing with an extreme formal, schematic structure represents one of the book’s major contributions to the development of 20th-century modernist literature.

Other contributions include the use of classical mythology as a framework for his book and the near-obsessive focus on external detail in a book in which much of the significant action is happening inside the minds of the characters.

The novel is highly allusive and also imitates the styles of different periods of English literature.

Since its publication, the book has attracted controversy and scrutiny.

The novel’s stream of consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose — replete with puns, parodies and allusions — as well as its rich characterisation and broad humour have led it to be regarded as one of the greatest literary works in history.

Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday.

(Truth be told, I find James Joyce neither a man easy to read nor easy to emulate.

One thing that makes him hard to follow is how he switches formats from part to part.

For example, part 11 (Sirens) is interspersed with techniques like onomatopeia, repetition, alliteration in imitation of a piece of music, part 12 (Cyclops) is a story with bizarre exaggerated interruptions. part 13 (Nausicaa) reads like a cheesy dimestore romance, part 14 (Oxen of the Sun) reproduces the evolution of English prose as its text, part 15 (Circe) is written in the form of a play, etc.

Despite Joyce’s protestation that “If Ulysses isn’t worth reading, then Life isn’t worth living.“, reading this terrible tome sorely tests those with ADD!)

Then there is a story that seems very appropo to our times:

In the winter of 1924–1925, Curtis Welch was the only doctor in Nome, Alaska, who served the town and the surrounding communities.

He was supported by four nurses at the 25-bed Maynard Columbus Hospital.

Image result for Maynard Columbus Hospital nome

Several months earlier, Welch had placed an order for more diphtheria antitoxin after discovering that the hospital’s entire batch had expired.

However, the replacement shipment did not arrive before the port was closed by ice for the winter, and more could not be shipped in to Nome until spring.

In December 1924, several days after the last ship left the port, Welch treated a few children for what he first diagnosed as sore throats or tonsillitis, initially dismissing diphtheria as it is extremely contagious, and he would have expected to see more symptoms in family members, or other cases around town, instead of a few isolated cases.

In the next few weeks, as the number of “tonsillitis” cases grew and four children died, whom Welch had not been able to autopsy, he became increasingly concerned about diphtheria.

By mid-January 1925, Welch officially diagnosed the first case of diphtheria in a three-year-old boy who died only two weeks after first becoming ill.

The following day, when a seven-year-old girl presented the same tell-tale symptoms of diphtheria, Welch attempted to administer some of the expired antitoxin to see if it might still have any effect, but the girl died a few hours later.

Realizing that an epidemic was imminent, that same evening, Welch called Mayor George Maynard to arrange an emergency town council meeting.

The council immediately implemented a quarantine.

The following day, on 22 January 1925, Welch sent radio telegrams to all other major towns in Alaska alerting them of public health risk and he also sent one to the US Public Health Services in Washington DC asking for assistance.

His message to the Public Health Service said:

AN EPIDEMIC OF DIPHTHERIA IS ALMOST INEVITABLE HERE
STOP
I AM IN URGENT NEED OF ONE MILLION UNITS OF DIPHTHERIA ANTITOXIN
STOP
MAIL IS ONLY FORM OF TRANSPORTATION
STOP
I HAVE MADE APPLICATION TO COMMISSIONER OF HEALTH OF THE TERRITORIES FOR ANTITOXIN ALREADY
STOP
THERE ARE ABOUT 3,000 WHITE NATIVES IN THE DISTRICT

Despite the quarantine, there were over 20 confirmed cases of diphtheria and at least 50 more at risk by the end of January.

Without antitoxin, it was expected that in the surrounding region’s population of around 10,000 people, the mortality rate could be close to 100%.

A previous influenza pandemic of the so-called “Spanish flu” had hit the area in 1918 and 1919 and wiped out about 50% of the native population of Nome and 8% of the native population of Alaska.

More than 1,000 people died in northwest Alaska, and double that across the state.

The majority were Alaska Natives who did not have resistance to either disease.

At the 24 January meeting of the board of health, superintendent Mark Summers of the Hammon Consolidated Gold Fields proposed a dogsled relay using two fast teams.

One would start at Nenana and the other at Nome, and they would meet at Nulato.

Above: Nulato

The trip from Nulato to Nome normally took 30 days, although the record was nine.

Welch estimated that the serum would only last six days under the brutal conditions on the trail.

Summers’ employee, the Norwegian Leonhard Seppala (1877 – 1967), was chosen for the 630 mile (1,014 km) round trip from Nome to Nulato and back.

He had previously made the run from Nome to Nulato in a record-breaking four days, won the All Alaska Sweepstakes three times, and had become something of a legend for his athletic ability and rapport with his Siberian huskies.

His lead dog, the 12 year-old Togo, was equally famous for his leadership, intelligence, and ability to sense danger.

Above: Musher Leonhard Seppala posing with six of his sled dogs, circa 1924-1925.

Dog’s names from left to right – Togo, Karinsky, Jafet, Pete, unknown dog, Fritz.

Mayor Maynard proposed flying the antitoxin by aircraft.

In February 1924, the first winter aircraft flight in Alaska had been conducted between Fairbanks and McGrath by Carl Eielson (1897 – 1929), who flew a reliable De Havilland DH-4 issued by the US Post Office on eight experimental trips.

The longest flight was only 260 miles (420 km), the worst conditions were −10 °F (−23 °C) which required so much winter clothing that the plane was almost unflyable.

The plane made several crash landings.

The only planes operating in Alaska in 1925 were three vintage Standard J biplanes belonging to Bennet Rodebaugh’s Fairbanks Airplane company (later Wien Air Alaska).

The aircraft were dismantled for the winter, had open cockpits, and had water-cooled engines that were unreliable in cold weather. Since both pilots were in the contiguous United States, Alaska Delegate Dan Sutherland attempted to get the authorization to use an inexperienced pilot, Roy Darling.

Above: Daniel Sutherland (1869 – 1955)

While potentially quicker, the board of health rejected the option and voted unanimously for the dogsled relay.

Seppala was notified that evening and immediately started preparations for the trip.

The US Public Health Service had located 1.1 million units of serum in West Coast hospitals which could be shipped to Seattle, and then transported to Alaska.

The Alameda would be the next ship north and would not arrive in Seattle until 31 January, and then would take another 6 to 7 days to arrive in Seward.

On 26 January, the Anchorage Railroad Hospital found 300,000 forgotten units, after the chief of surgery, John Beeson, heard of the need.

Image result for anchorage railroad hospital

The supply was wrapped in glass vials, then padded quilts, and finally a metallic cylinder weighing a little more than 20 pounds (9 kg).

At Governor Scott Bone’s order, it was packed and handed to conductor Frank Knight, who arrived in Nenana on 27 January.

Above: Scott Bone (1860 – 1936)

While not sufficient to defeat the epidemic, the 300,000 units could hold it at bay until the larger shipment arrived.

The temperatures across the Interior were at 20-year lows due to a high pressure system from the Arctic.

In Fairbanks the temperature was −50 °F (−46 °C).

A second system was burying the Alaskan Panhandle, as 25 mph (40 km/h) winds swept snow into 10-foot (3 m) drifts.

Travel by sea was hazardous, and across the Interior most forms of transportation shut down.

In addition, there were limited hours of daylight to fly, due to the polar night.

While the first batch of serum was traveling to Nenana, Governor Bone gave final authorization to the dog relay, but ordered Edward Wetzler, the US Post Office inspector, to arrange a relay of the best drivers and dogs across the Interior.

The teams would travel day and night until they handed off the package to Seppala at Nulato.

The decision outraged William Fentress “Wrong Font” Thompson, publisher of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and aircraft advocate, who helped line up the pilot and plane.

He used his paper to write scathing editorials.

Image result for fairbanks daily news miner

The mail route from Nenana to Nome spanned 674 miles (1,085 km) in total.

It crossed the barren Alaska Interior, following the Tanana River for 137 miles (220 km) to the village of Tanana at the junction with the Yukon River, and then following the Yukon for 230 miles (370 km) to Kaltag.

Above: Tanana River near Fairbanks

Above: Aerial view of the village of Kaltag and the Yukon

The route then passed west 90 miles (140 km) over the Kaltag Portage to Unalakleet on the shore of Norton Sound.

The route then continued for 208 miles (335 km) northwest around the southern shore of the Seward Peninsula with no protection from gales and blizzards, including a 42 miles (68 km) stretch across the shifting ice of the Bering Sea.

Wetzler contacted Tom Parson, an agent of the Northern Commercial Company, which contracted to deliver mail between Fairbanks and Unalakleet.

Telephones and telegraphs turned the drivers back to their assigned roadhouses.

The mail carriers held a revered position in the territory and were the best dog mushers in Alaska.

The majority of relay drivers across the Interior were native Athabaskans, direct descendants of the original dog mushers.

The first musher in the relay was “Wild Bill” Shannon, who was handed the 20 pounds (9 kg) package at the train station in Nenana on 27 January 27 at 9:00 at night.

Despite a temperature of −50 °F (−46 °C), Shannon left immediately with his team of 11 inexperienced dogs, led by Blackie.

The temperature began to drop and the team was forced onto the colder ice of the river because the trail had been destroyed by horses.

Despite jogging alongside the sled to keep warm, Shannon developed hypothermia.

He reached Minto at 3 am, with parts of his face black from frostbite.

The temperature was −62 °F (−52 °C).

After warming the serum by the fire and resting for four hours, Shannon dropped three dogs and left with the remaining 8.

The three dogs died shortly after Shannon returned for them, and a fourth may have died as well.

Half-Athabaskan Edgar Kalland arrived in Minto the night before and was sent back to Tolovana, travelling 70 mi (110 km) the day before the relay.

Shannon and his team arrived in bad shape at 11 am, and handed over the serum.

After warming the serum in the roadhouse, Kalland headed into the forest.

The temperature had risen to −56 °F (−49 °C), and according to at least one report the owner of the roadhouse at Manley Hot Springs had to pour water over Kallands’ hands to get them off the sled’s handlebar when he arrived at 4 pm.

No new cases of diphtheria were diagnosed on 28 January, but two new cases were diagnosed on 29 January.

The quarantine had been obeyed but lack of diagnostic tools and the contagiousness of the strain rendered it ineffective.

More units of serum were discovered around Juneau the same day.

While no count exists, the estimate based on weight is roughly 125,000 units, enough to treat 4 to 6 patients.

The crisis had become headline news in newspapers, including San Francisco, Cleveland, Washington DC and New York, and spread to the radio sets which were just becoming common.

The storm system from Alaska hit the contiguous United States, bringing record lows to New York, and freezing the Hudson River.

A fifth death occurred on 30 January.

Maynard and Sutherland renewed their campaign for flying the remaining serum by plane.

Different proposals included flying a large aircraft 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from Seattle to Nome, carrying a plane to the edge of the pack ice via Navy ship and launching it, and the original plan of flying the serum from Fairbanks.

Despite receiving headline coverage across the country, the support of several cabinet departments and from Arctic explorer Roald Amundsen, the plans were rejected by experienced pilots, the Navy, and Governor Bone.

Above: Roald Amundsen (1872 – 1928)

Thompson’s editorials waxed virulent against those opposing using airplanes.

In response, Bone decided to speed up the relay and authorized additional drivers for Seppala’s leg of the relay, so they could travel without rest.

Seppala was still scheduled to cover the most dangerous leg, the shortcut across Norton Sound, but the telephone and telegraph systems bypassed the small villages he was passing through, and there was no way to tell him to wait at Shaktoolik.

The plan relied on the driver from the north catching Seppala on the trail.

Summers arranged for drivers along the last leg, including Seppala’s colleague Gunnar Kaasen.

Above: Gunnar Kassen (1882 – 1960) and Balto

From Manley Hot Springs, the serum passed through largely Athabascan hands before George Nollner delivered it to Charlie Evans at Bishop Mountain on 30 January at 3 am.

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The temperature had warmed slightly, but at −62 °F (−52 °C), was dropping again.

Evans relied on his lead dogs when he passed through ice fog where the Koyukuk River had broken through and surged over the ice, but forgot to protect the groins of his two short-haired mixed breed lead dogs with rabbit skins.

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Both dogs collapsed with frostbite, with Evans having to take their place himself pulling the sled.

He arrived at 10 am.

Both dogs were dead.

Tommy Patsy departed within half an hour.

The serum then crossed the Kaltag Portage in the hands of Jack Nicolai aka “Jackscrew” and the Alaska Native Victor Anagick, who handed it to his fellow Alaska Native Myles Gonangnan on the shores of the Sound, at Unalakleet on 31 January at 5 am.

Gonangnan saw the signs of a storm brewing and decided not to take the shortcut across the dangerous ice of the Sound.

He departed at 5:30 am, and as he crossed the hills, “the eddies of drifting, swirling snow passing between the dog’s legs and under the bellies made them appear to be fording a fast running river.”

The whiteout conditions cleared as he reached the shore and the gale-force winds drove the wind chill to −70 °F (−57 °C).

At 3 pm he arrived at Shaktoolik.

Seppala was not there, but Henry Ivanoff was waiting just in case.

On 30 January, the number of cases in Nome had reached 27 and the antitoxin was depleted.

According to a reporter living in Nome:

“All hope is in the dogs and their heroic drivers.

Nome appears to be a deserted city.”

With the report of Gonangnan’s progress on 31 January, Welch believed the serum would arrive there in February.

Leonhard Seppala and his dog sled team, with his lead dog Togo, traveled 91 miles (146 km) from Nome from 27 January to 31 January into the oncoming storm.

They took the shortcut across the Norton Sound, and headed toward Shaktoolik.

The temperature in Nome was a relatively warm −20 °F (−29 °C), but in Shaktoolik the temperature was estimated at −30 °F (−34 °C), and the gale force winds causing a wind chill of −85 °F (−65 °C).

Henry Ivanoff’s team ran into a reindeer and got tangled up just outside Shaktoolik.

Seppala still believed he had more than 100 mi (160 km) to the original relay point in Nulato to go and had raced to get off the Norton Sound before the storm hit.

He was passing the team when Ivanoff shouted:

“The serum! The serum! I have it here!“

Seppala turned around and reached Ungalik with the serum after dark.

With the news of the worsening epidemic, he decided to brave the storm and once again set out across the 20 miles (32 km) of exposed open ice of the Norton Sound.

The temperature was estimated at −30 °F (−34 °C), but the wind chill with the gale force winds was −85 °F (−65 °C).

Togo led the team in a straight line through the dark and they arrived at the roadhouse in Isaac’s Point on the other side at 8 pm.

In one day, they had traveled 84 mi (135 km), averaging 8 mph (13 km/h).

The team rested and departed at 2 am into the full power of the storm.

During the night the temperature dropped to −40 °F (−40 °C), and the wind increased to storm force (at least 65 mph [105 km/h]).

The team ran across the ice while following the shoreline.

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They returned to shore to cross Little McKinley Mountain, climbing 5,000 feet (1,500 m).

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After descending to the next roadhouse in Golovin, Seppala passed the serum to Charlie Olsen on 1 February at 3 pm.

On 1 February, the number of cases in Nome rose to 28.

The serum en route was sufficient to treat 30 people.

With the powerful blizzard raging and winds of 80 mph (130 km/h), Welch ordered a stop to the relay until the storm passed, reasoning that a delay was better than the risk of losing it all.

Messages were left at Solomon and Point Safety before the lines went dead.

Olsen was blown off the trail and suffered severe frostbite in his hands while putting blankets on his dogs.

The wind chill was −70 °F (−57 °C).

He arrived at Bluff on 1 February at 7 pm in poor shape.

Gunnar Kaasen waited until 10 pm for the storm to break, but it only got worse and the drifts would soon block the trail so he departed into a headwind.

Kaasen traveled through the night, through drifts, and river overflow over the 600-foot (183 m) Topkok Mountain.

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Balto led the team through visibility so poor that Kaasen could not always see the dogs harnessed closest to the sled.

He was two miles (3 km) past Solomon before he realized it, and kept going.

The winds after Solomon were so severe that his sled flipped over and he almost lost the cylinder containing the serum when it fell off and became buried in the snow.

He also suffered frostbite when he had to use his bare hands to feel for the cylinder.

Kaasen reached Point Safety ahead of schedule on 2 February at 3 am.

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Ed Rohn believed that Kaasen and the relay was halted at Solomon, so he was sleeping.

Since the weather was improving, it would take time to prepare Rohn’s team, and Balto and the other dogs were moving well,

Kaasen pressed on the remaining 25 miles (40 km) to Nome, reaching Front Street at 5:30 am.

Not a single ampule was broken, and the antitoxin was thawed and ready by noon.

Together, the teams covered the 674 miles (1,085 km) in 127 ½ hours, which was considered a world record, done in extreme subzero temperatures in near-blizzard conditions and hurricane-force winds.

A number of dogs died during the trip.

Margaret Curran from the Solomon roadhouse was infected, which raised fears that the disease might spread from patrons of the roadhouse to other communities.

The 1.1 million units had left Seattle on 31 January and were not due by dog sled until February 8.

Welch asked for half the serum to be delivered by aircraft from Fairbanks.

He contacted Thompson and Sutherland, and Darling made a test flight the next morning.

With his health advisor, Governor Bone concluded the cases in Nome were actually going down, and withheld permission, but preparations went ahead.

The US Navy moved a minesweeper north from Seattle.

The Signal Corps were ordered to light fires to guide the planes.

Above: Logo of the US Signal Corps

By 3 February, the original 300,000 units had proved to be still effective, and the epidemic was under control.

A sixth death, probably unrelated to diphtheria, was widely reported as a new outbreak of the disease.

The batch from Seattle arrived on board the Admiral Watson on 7 February.

Acceding to pressure, Governor Bone authorized half to be delivered by plane.

On 8 February the first half of the second shipment began its trip by dog sled, while the plane failed to start when a broken radiator shutter caused the engine to overheat.

The plane failed the next day as well, and the mission was scrapped.

Thompson was gracious in his editorials.

The second relay included many of the same drivers, and also faced harsh conditions.

The serum arrived on 15 February.

Image result for 1925 serum run to nome map

The death toll from diphtheria in Nome is officially listed as seven, but Welch later estimated there were probably at least 100 additional cases among “the Inuit camps outside the city.

The Natives have a habit of burying their children without reporting the death.”

Forty-three new cases were diagnosed in 1926, but they were easily managed with the fresh supply of serum.

All participants in the dogsleds received letters of commendation from President Calvin Coolidge and the Senate stopped work to recognize the event.

The media largely ignored the Athabaskan and Alaska Native mushers, who covered two-thirds of the distance to Nome.

According to Edgar Kalland:

“It was just an everyday occurrence as far as we were concerned.“

Alaska, unlike the contiguous United States and Canada below the Arctic Circle, doesn’t hold Groundhog Day, for no one expects winter to end that soon.

This day in Russia is a bittersweet memory as on this day in 1943 the brutal Battle of Stalingrad ended in a Russian Pyrrhic victory and 1989 saw a defeated Afghanistan campaign end with the last Soviet soldiers leaving unsatisfied.

Above: The centre of Stalingrad after the Battle

RIAN archive 58833 Withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.jpg

Above: Last Soviet troop column crosses Soviet border after leaving Afghanistan

And on the opposite hemisphere, on this day in 1990, South African President F.W. de Klerk announced the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) and promised to release Nelson Mandela.

Above: F.W. de Klerk

Above: Nelson Mandela (1918 – 2013)

A new day dawning, apartheid diminishing.

It is this idea of ordinary places, of ordinary days repeated, that makes me think of Stratford (ON).

Above: Downtown Stratford (ON)

London, Ontario to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Monday 13 January 2020

Stratford, despite its English name, isn’t Stratford upon Avon, England.

Above: Historic Properties, Stratford upon Avon, England

It has seen no battles, will probably never reach the grandeur of New York nor ever be recognized as being as isolated as a Selkirk island or a Canadian Nome.

Above: Manhattan, New York City

Through the Shakespeare Festival actors cut their teeth in Stratford and afterwards shone brightly elsewhere.

Above: Festival Theatre

Alec Guinness (Star Wars), Christopher Plummer (The Sound of Music), Maggie Smith (Harry Potter), and William Shatner (Star Trek) are all Shakespeare Festival alumni.

Image result for alec guinness obi wan kenobi

Above: Alec Guinness (1914 – 2000)

Above: Christopher Plummer (1929 – 2021)

Above: Dame Maggie Smith

Above: Martha Henry

Above: William Shatner

Stratford has nurtured the talents of actors Colm Feore and Graham Greene, musicians Loreena McKennitt, Ron Sexsmith and Justin Bieber, journalists Peter Mansbridge, Cythnia Dale and Lloyd Robertson, as well as the first woman in Canada’s House of Commons (Agnes Macphail) and the first woman in Canada to become a licensed medical doctor (Jennie Kid Trout).

Above: Colm Feore

Above: Graham Greene

Above: Loreena McKennitt

Above: Ron Sexsmith

Above: Justin Bieber

Above: Peter Mansbridge

Above: Cynthia Dale

Above: Lloyd Robertson

Above: Agnes Macphail (1890 – 1954)

Above: Jennie Kidd Trout, MD (1841 – 1921)

American inventor Thomas Edison briefly worked as a telegraph operator in 1863 for the Grand Trunk Railway at Stratford’s railway station at age 16.

Above: Thomas Edison (1847 – 1931)

In the 1920s, one sixth of all furniture made in Canada was made in Stratford.

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In 1997, Nations in Bloom crowned Stratford the “Prettiest City in the World.”

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Stratford is also well known for its local swans, in 2013 it had 22 white swans and one black swan.

Every year, the swans are marched to the river with an accompanying bagpipe band.

(Haven’t they suffered enough?)

Image result for stratford ontario swans

The Stratford Shakespeare Festival began in 1953 when, on 13 July, actor Alec Guinness spoke the first lines of the first play produced by the festival.

The performances during the first four seasons took place in a concrete amphitheatre covered by giant canvas tent on the banks of the River Avon.

The first of many years of Stratford Shakespeare Festival production history started with a six-week season, opening on 13 July 1953, with Richard III and then All’s Well That Ends Well both starring Alec Guinness.

Image result for stratford festival alec guinness

The 1954 season ran for nine weeks and included Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and two Shakespeare plays, Measure for Measure and The Taming of the Shrew.

Young actors during the first four seasons included several who went on to great success in subsequent years, such as Douglas Campbell (Oedipus Rex), Don Harron (Charlie Farquharson), William Hutt (The Statement) and Douglas Rain (HAL).

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Image result for don harron charlie farquharson

Above: Don Harron (1924 – 2015), as Charlies Farquharson

Above: William Hutt (1920 – 2007)

Above: Douglas Rain (1928 – 2018)

(I find myself reminded of Tom Lehrer’s Oedipus Rex song…..

Above: Tom Lehrer

From the Bible to the popular song
There’s one theme that we find right along
Of all ideals they hail as good
The most sublime is motherhood

There was a man though, who it seems
Once carried this ideal to extremes
He loved his mother and she loved him
And yet his story is rather grim

There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex
You may have heard about his odd complex
His name appears in Freud’s index
‘Cause he loved his mother

His rivals used to say quite a bit
That as a monarch he was most unfit
But still in all they had to admit
That he loved his mother

Yes, he loved his mother like no other
His daughter was his sister and his son was his brother
One thing on which you can depend is
He sure knew who a boy’s best friend is

When he found what he had done
He tore his eyes out, one by one
A tragic end to a loyal son
Who loved his mother

So be sweet and kind to mother now and then have a chat
Buy her candy or some flowers or a brand new hat
But maybe you had better let it go at that

Or you may find yourself with a quite complex complex
And you may end up like Oedipus
I’d rather marry a duck-billed platypus
Than end up like old Oedipus Rex.

I digress, for that is what I do.)

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The new Festival Theatre was dedicated on 30 June 1957, with seating for over 1,800 people.

None are more than 65 feet from the thrust stage.

It has seven acting levels, nine major entrances, a balcony and trapdoors.

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(Pandemic paradise)

Hello
It’s me
I’m in California dreaming about going out to eat
Just a burger
With cheese
Or a shaken margarita, baby back ribs from Chili’s

Hello-o-o
Can you hear me?
I am shouting out to neighbours who I used to like to see
When we were outside
And free

Is there something else to watch
Besides the news and Finding Dory
There’s social distance between us
And I’m freaking out

Hello from the inside
It’s just me and myself and I
And a Stay Home order that’s breaking my heart
But it’s clearly what we should have done from the start

Hello from Corona life
I’ve FaceTime called a 1,000 times
To show you I’m sitting right here on the couch
What’s the point of putting on pants anyhow, anymore?

Image result for hello (from the inside) an adele parody by chris mann parole lyrics

Hello
How are you?
Do your fingers hurt from scrolling through
The cat memes on your iPhone?

I hope that you’re well
Did you ever make it out of that town
Before they closed the Costco?
It’s no secret that the both of us
Haven’t showered yet

Hello to Corona life (Corona life)
They’re saying stay home til July? (til July)
Jesus Christ, Almighty
Can you please send me strength?
I’m so sick and tired
Of my own Goddamned face

Hello from self quarantine (quarantine)
I’m begging Amazon to please (Amazon to please)
After sending more soap, can you please figure out
How to send a box of my friends to my house?

I’m so bored!
(Help! Help! Help! Help!)
Ooh, I’m so bored!
(Help! Help! Help! Help!)
Ooh, I’m so bored!
Ooh… I’m so bored! I’m so bored!
(Help! Help! Help! Help!)

Hello from the inside
It’s just me and myself and I (myself and I)
And a Stay Home order that’s breaking my heart
But it’s clearly what we should have done from the start

Hello from Corona life (Corona life)
I’ve FaceTime called a 1,000 times
To show you I’m sitting right here on the couch
What’s the point of putting on pants anyhow, anymore?

Over the years, additional theatrical venues were added: the Avon Theatre, the Tom Patterson Theatre (originally Shakespeare 3 Company) and the Studio Theatre.

Image result for stratford canada avon theatre

Above: Avon Theatre

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Above: The Tom Patterson Theatre

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The annual festival now draws hundreds of thousands of theatre goers and tourists to the area each year.

Acclaimed actors have performed at the Festival.

The Canadian novelist and playwright Timothy Findley performed in the first season, and had an ongoing relationship with the festival, eventually moving to Stratford in 1997.

Above: Timothy Findley (1930 – 2002)

Numerous visitors arrive in Stratford each week during the May to October Festival season, often by the busload.

National Geographic Traveler considers the theatres to be “nirvana” and also praises other aspects of the town.

“During the festival—which stages everything from Shakespeare to Sondheim to new Canadian plays—you can stay in theater-themed B&Bs, hang out with actors post-show at local bars like Down the Street, go on backstage tours, and attend dozens of other events with other theater-mad folk.

Stratford itself is the type of walkable wholesome town Rodgers and Hammerstein might write a musical about.”

Image result for national geographic traveler magazine

About 400,000 persons flock here every summer for the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, one of Canada’s premier theatre attractions.

They see performances not only of works by the Bard, but also of plays by such authors as Molière, Jonson, Chekhov and Ibsen.

Above: Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (aka Molière) (1622 – 1673)

Ben Jonson (c. 1617), by Abraham Blyenberch; oil on canvas painting at the National Portrait Gallery, London

Above: Ben Jonson (1572 – 1637)

Above: Henrik Ibsen (1828 – 1906)

(Molière was a favourite of Rita Hansen (Andie MacDowell), Chekhov a favourite of Phil Connors (Bill Murray) in the 1993 fantasy comedy film Groundhog Day.)

Image result for groundhog day film rita hansen

Above: Rita Hansen

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Above: Phil Connors

The Festival Exhibition, in the Stratford Town Hall, has displays dealing with the festival themes.

Above: Town Hall

At the Rothmans Art Gallery near the Festival Theatre are exhibits of contemporary paintings, prints and sculptures.

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The Minnie Thomson Memorial Museum has a steam calliope built in 1897, 20 antique automobiles (including a rare Pierce Arrow five-ton truck) and more than 7,000 pieces of farm machinery.

Image result for minnie thomson memorial museum stratford ontario

The Brocksden School Museum, 2.5 miles east of town centre, is in a school building that dates from 1853 – the last time I dated as well – with desks, slates and maps used in 19th century Ontario rural schools.

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The Museum’s collection of books includes a National School textbook (1835), one of a series of Irish texts.

Speaking of the printed page….

The poet and playwright James Reaney was born on 1 September 1926 on a farm near Stratford at South Easthope (not to be confused with Northwest Despair – they are two totally different places) in Perth County.

Reaney attended a one-room school at Elmhurst until the age of 14, when he entered Stratford Collegiate and Vocational Institute.

Throughout his childhood he went to church and Sunday school in the city.

He left the district to attend school in Winnipeg in 1949, but Stratford and the surrounding farm region recur in his work, including two poetry collections, A Suit of Nettles (1958) and Twelve Letters to a Small Town (1962), proving you can take the Reaney out of Stratford but not the Pretty City of Nirvana out of the Reaney.

Above: James Reaney (1926 – 2008)

(I find myself wondering if I were to write 12 letters to the hamlet of Landschlacht, what would I say?)

Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane
Ain’t got time to take a fast train
Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home
My baby, just a wrote me a letter

I don’t care how much money I gotta spend
Got to get back to my baby again
Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home
My baby, just-a wrote me a letter

Well, she wrote me a letter
Said she couldn’t live without me no more
Listen mister, can’t you see I got to get back
To my baby once-a more
Anyway, yeah

The Letter (The Box Tops single) coverart.jpg

Reaney’s play Colours in the Dark (1969) was staged in 1967 at the Festival.

Image result for colours in the dark james reaney

Other Canadian authors have staged plays here:

Tom Hendry (1929 – 2012) (Satyricon)(1969)

Roch Carrier (La Guerre, Yes Sir!)(1972)

Michael Ondaatje (The Collected Works of Billy the Kid)(1973)

Henry Beissel (Inook and the Sea)(1973)

Above: Henry Beissel

John Herbert (Fortune and Men’s Eyes)(1965)

Image result for john herbert playwright

Above: John Herbert (1926 – 2001)

In Hugh Hood’s (1928 – 2000) novel The Scenic Art (1948), Stratford’s first season provides the setting and basic situation.

The wife of the novel’s protagonist, Matt Goderich, is a member of the Festival’s design team.

Image result for hugh hood the scenic are

Stratford was the birthplace in the 19th century of Kathleen and Robina Lizars.

It was here that they wrote their three jointly authored books.

Two of these were graceful and amusing anecdotal histories:

In the Days of the Canada Company: The Story of the Settlement of the Huron Tract and a View of the Social Life of the Period 1825 – 1850 (1896)

Image result for Kathleen and Robina Lizars

Humours of ’37: Grave and Grim Rebellion Times in the Canadas (1897)

Their third book is a satirical novel, Committed to His Charge (1900), that pokes fun at Stratford society through its story of the conflict between a new Anglican rector and the entrenched, overbearing Ladies’ Auxiliary of his parish.

Did Stratford find the Lizars’ satire amusing?

I wonder.

Above: Perth County Court House, Stratford, Ontario

I have tried to like Stratford.

But there is a subtle undertone of superficiality and artificiality here, that its name entitles this most ordinary of Ontario towns to assume an air of superiority, but Paris (ON) is not Paree, nor Vienna (ON) Wien, nor London (ON) a surrogate city for Buckingham Palace II.

Above: Paris, Ontario

Above: Paris, France

Above: Vienna, Ontario

Above: Images of Vienna, Austria

Above: Images of London, Ontario

Above: London, England

Above: Buckingham Palace

Building a second Tour d’Eiffel in Paris (ON) would not fool anyone from France and yet the (to be fair, talented and noteworthy) Shakespeare Festival in Stratford has given the locals a rarified attitude that they are uniquely cultured.

Above: Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

Above: William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

Heaven forbid if the visitor to Stratford (ON) questions their claim to their English namesake.

Only an idiot would do such a thing.

Ask my wife.

I am an idiot.

From the Stratford Beacon-Herald, Saturday 10 January 1991

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Hitting the open road with a mind to match is the agenda for him during the next years.

There is no timespan that the affable and articulate 25-year-old, loosely based in Ottawa, has set for completing his adventure – a “walkabout” across Canada….

Still on the first leg of the journey he began last 14 May, his birthday, the backpack-laden traveller wandered into Stratford for a brief stay Friday.

He met with locals at the Blarney Stone Café for some coffee – the lifeblood of his trip.

Of Irish and Scottish ancestry (with American, English and Canadian to spice the pot), the talkative traveller could not have picked a more ironic place to stop and chat.

Stopping and talking with locals is what the bilingual former Montréal office manager’s trip is all about….

“The reason to travel is to meet people – people are what make a country,” he said of his adventure, inspired by the Peter Jenkins biography, A Walk Across America.

Image result for peter jenkins a walk across america

But in as much as his journey is an adventure, it is also a learning experience and a test of resilience.

“I was like a baby trying to make his first steps“, he explained….

He has had to learn to trust in people and read human nature.

“I don’t take ‘No’ personally any more.”

But ‘No’ is what he sometimes hears when he knocks on farmhouse doors looking for somewhere warm to sleep winter nights.

Although he carries a “supposedly” four-season two-man tent and down-filled sleeping bag, he said it can get cold.

The other night in Shakespeare, he got turned down almost everywhere he went, prejudicing his opinion against the hamlet.

“If you didn’t know who William Shakespeare was and you walked into Shakespeare (ON), you would think he was a truck-driving antique dealer“, he quipped.

As for Stratford, he frankly said he was disappointed.

He compared the east end up to Romeo Street to suburban Scarborough in Toronto.

Things improve after that, with Ontario Street conjuring up ideas of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.

Image result for stratford ontario winter

The County Courthouse and the City Hall also drew high praise.

“If the Ontario Municipal Board gods looked down, they would say ‘Bravo!’“, he said.

But his overall impression of Stratford trying to imitate its namesake in England is that it has failed in his opinion.

An aspiring writer, he has been recording his impressions, thoughts and ideas of everywhere he visits in pocket-sized notebooks.

His goal is to eventually write about his experiences….

He described his spirit as a blend of honour and insanity, similar to Miguel de Cervantes’ literary character Don Quixote.

But the bottom line is simple.

He just wants to be able to tell a good story.

The irony of a pretentious fool calling out an Ontario town for being pretentious is no longer lost on me.

Nor was it lost on the readers of the Stratford Beacon-Herald.

I was later informed that my remarks generated reactions, many of them angry.

And in hindsight I know I deserved them.

My sole defense is that I had spent a truly terrible night in the cold and was feeling disgruntled about it.

Instant Karma’s gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon you’re gonna be dead
What in the world were you thinking of
Laughing in the face of love
What on Earth were you tryin’ to do
It’s up to you, yeah you

Instant Karma’s gonna get you
Gonna look you right in the face
Better get yourself together darlin’
Join the human race
How in the world you gonna see
Laughin’ at fools like me
Who in the hell d’you think you are
A super star
Well, right you are

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Ev’ryone come on

Above: John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band

But my argument then remains my argument now.

We do judge places by our experience of them and so it is easy to criticize a place that is not as welcoming as you had hoped it would be.

And though a generation has passed since my visit there, as the train lingers at the station I half expect enraged townsfolk gathered with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, prepared to arrest me, handcuff me and string me up outside the Blarney Stone Café.

It is unlikely, but nonetheless I try not to draw too much attention to myself as I nervously glance out the train’s window.

It is simply another winter, another ordinary Ontario town, with shadows across it.

Another Day (Paul McCartney song) A-side label.png

DJ #1: Okay, campers, rise and shine and don’t forget your booties ’cause it’s cold out there today!

DJ #2: It’s cold out there every day! What is this, Miami Beach?

D.J. #1: Not hardly. And you know, you can expect hazardous travel later today with that, you know, that, uh, that blizzard thing.

D.J. #2: That blizzard – thing. That blizzard – thing. Oh, well, here’s the report! The National Weather Service is calling for a “big blizzard thing!”

D.J. #1: Yessss, they are. But you know, there’s another reason why today is especially exciting.

D.J. #2: Especially cold!

D.J. #1: Especially cold, okay, but the big question on everybody’s lips…

D.J. #2: On their chapped lips…

D.J. #1: On their chapped lips, right: Do ya think Phil is gonna come out and see his shadow?

D.J. #2: Punxsutawney Phil!

D.J. #1: That’s right, woodchuck-chuckers – it’s…

D.J. #1, D.J. #2: [in unison] GROUNDHOG DAY!

Image result for groundhog day movie clock radio

(2021 was the 135th, and for the first time, much of the Inner Circle members were required to wear a mask.

The groundhog was summoned at 7:25 am on 2 February and saw its shadow.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the ceremony was held behind closed doors, with no fans allowed to attend.)

Image result for groundhog day movie gobblers knob

Groundhog Day is observed with various ceremonies at other locations in North America beyond the United States.

Due to Nova Scotia’s Atlantic Time Zone, Shubenacadie Sam makes the first Groundhog Day prediction in North America.

Image result for shubenacadie sam groundhog

“Daks Day” (from the German Dachs) is Groundhog Day in the dialect of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

In French Canada, where the day is known as Jour de la marmotte, Fred la marmotte of Val d’Espoir has been the representative forecaster for the province of Québec since 2009.

A study also shows that in Québec, the marmot or groundhog (siffleux) are regarded as Candlemas weather-predicting beasts in some scattered spots, but the bear is the more usual animal.

Albino groundhog Wiarton Willie forecasts annually from Wiarton, Ontario.

Balzac Billy is the “Prairie Prognosticator“, a man-sized groundhog mascot who prognosticates weather on Groundhog’s Day from Balzac, Alberta.

(Canadian meteorologist Cindy Day has estimated that Nova Scotia’s Shubenacadie Sam has an accuracy rate of about 45% compared to 25% for Wiarton Willy in Ontario.

Phil has predicted 103 forecasts for winter and just 17 for an early spring.

Most assessments of Phil’s accuracy have given accuracy lower than would be expected with random chance, with Stormfax Almanac giving an estimate of 39%.)

In Croatia and Serbia, Orthodox Christians have a tradition that on 2 February (Candlemas) or 15 February (Sretenje – The Meeting of the Lord), the bear will awaken from winter dormancy, and if it sees (meets) its own shadow in this sleepy and confused state, it will get scared and go back to sleep for an additional 40 days, thus prolonging the winter.

Thus, if it is sunny on Sretenje, it is a sign that the winter is not over yet.

If it is cloudy, it is a good sign that the winter is about to end.

Similarly in Germany, on 27 June, they recognize the Seven Sleepers’ Day (Siebenschläfertag).

If it rains that day, the rest of summer is supposedly going to be rainy.

As well, in the United Kingdom, 15 July is known as St. Swithin’s Day.

It was traditionally believed that, if it rained on that day, it would rain for the next 40 days and nights.

(Old man, start building that boat.)

Shadows gather as they often do, whether they be in Stratford or in Landschlacht.

How we deal with them is the difference between us.

Predictions show a steady low.
You’re feeling just the same.
But seasons come and seasons go.
I’ll make you smile again.

If you don’t believe me,
Take me by the hand.
Can’t you feel you’re warming up?
Yeah, I’m your weatherman.

Cold winds blowin’.
Snow is drivin’ everyone insane.
Hard rain’s fallin’.
Pitter-patter down your windowpane.

If precipitation is spoilin’ all your plans,
Just call information up
Ask for the weatherman.

Ask for the weatherman.

They say it’s gone, say winter’s done.
That don’t mean a thing.
Cause I’m the one that moves the sun.
For you I’d turn it into spring.

So if you’re feeling lonely
Try to understand:
Baby, I can warm you up,
‘Cause I’m your weatherman.

Image result for groundhog day movie phil connors weatherman

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Brian Shypula, “Wanderer shambles into Stratford for brief stay“, Stratford Herald-Beacon, Saturday 10 January 1991 / Delbert McClinton, “Weatherman” / John Lennon, “Instant Karma” / The Boxtops, “The Letter” / James Joyce, Ulysses / Victor Hugo, Les Misérables / Chris Mann, “Hello (From the Inside)” / Tom Lehrer, “Oedipus Rex” / Billy Joel, Allentown

Swiss Miss and the 36 Streets

Posted on February 14, 2021 by canadaslim

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Monday 1 February 2021

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality
Open your eyes
Look up to the skies and see
I’m just a poor boy
I need no sympathy
Because I’m easy come, easy go
Little high, little low
Any way the wind blows doesn’t really matter to me, to me

The four members of the band sit together in front of a sandy-coloured background wearing predominantly black clothing. Mercury appears to be the dominant figure, sat in front of the other three members. From left to right, John Deacon, Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor. All four individuals are looking directly at the camera with a neutral expression on their faces. Above the band is some black text, printed in an elegant, italic font face. The word "Queen" is followed by "Bohemian Rhapsody", the latter of which is positioned under the band name in the same format yet smaller font.

Reality, when viewed through the prism of history, sucks.

So much bloodshed, so much needless heedless violence, that it is hard to see the silver lining in an overcast sky.

Image result for reality seen through a prism

Instead of celebrating:

Imbolc (the Gaelic festival celebrating the start of spring)

the signing of an amendment abolishing slavery (1865)

Above: Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865)

the anniversary of the first volume of the Oxford English Dictionary being published (1884)

the début of La Bohème being first performed (1896)

the completion of America’s first motion picture studio (1893)

Above: Thomas Edison’s Black Maria Studio

the Beatles’ first #1 hit being released (1964)….

….instead it is easier to be reminded of the dark side of this day.

A prism refracting white light into a rainbow on a black background

On this day:

a war (Second Schleswig War) began with an invasion (1864)

a king and his heir were simultaneously assassinated (1908)

Above: The Lisbon Regicide of King Carlos I and Prince Luis Filipe

a Nazi government assumed power (1942 – 1945) in a conquered land (1942)

Above: Norwegian Minister-President Vidkun Quisling (1887 – 1945)

racial equality is once again championed at great risk for the simple act of sharing a lunch counter (1960)

Above: Greensboro Sit-In (1 February – 25 July 1960)

a policeman killed a rebel soldier in front of the entire world on live camera (1968)

Above: Major General Nguyên Ngoc Loan (1930 – 1998) executes Viet Cong Captain Nguyên Van Lém (1931 – 1968)

a fire in Sao Paulo killed 189 (1974)

Above: Joelma Building, Sao Paulo, Brazil

a theocratic tyrant returned to his homeland after 15 years in exile (1979)

Above: Ruhollah Khomeini (1900 – 1989)

a decency law (Communications Decency Act) threatened freedom (1996)

a journalist was beheaded (2002)

Above: Daniel Pearl (1963 – 2002)

a space shuttle disintegrated (2003)

Above: Space Shuttle Columbia (1981 – 2003)

251 people were stampeded to death during holy pilgrimage (2004)

Above: The Hajj, Mecca, Saudi Arabia

folks rioted in an Egyptian stadium (2012)

Image result for 2012 port said disaster

Above: Port Said Stadium Disaster after-effect

outrage was expressed in Rochester (NY) after a nine-year-old is pepper-sprayed (2021)

Image result for nailah bey pepper sprayed

folks were arrested for insurrection in America and Turkey (2021)

More than 250 people have been charged in the Capitol insurrection so far. This searchable table shows them all.

Image result for bogazici university protest

it was apparently a good day for a coup d’état in Nepal (2005) and Myanmar (2021).

Above: Flag of the Kingdom of Nepal

Above: Flag of Myanmar

Sometimes it seems that becoming a Bohemian is more rational an act that the insanity that is normal.

Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people and with few permanent ties.

It involves musical, artistic, literary, or spiritual pursuits.

In this context, bohemians may or may not be wanderers, adventurers or vagabonds.

This use of the word in the English language was imported from French in the mid 19th century and was used to describe the non-traditional lifestyles of marginalized and impoverished artists, writers, journalists, musicians, and actors in major European cities.

Bohemians were associated with unorthodox or anti-establishment political or social viewpoints, which often were expressed through free love, frugality and — in some cases — simple living, van dwelling or voluntary poverty.

A more economically privileged, wealthy, or even aristocratic bohemian circle is sometimes referred to as haute bohème (literally “high Bohemia“).

The term bohemianism emerged in France in the early 19th century, when artists and creators began to concentrate in the lower-rent, lower class, Romani neighborhoods.

Bohémien was a common term for the Romani people of France, who were mistakenly thought to have reached France in the 15th century via Bohemia (the western part of the modern Czech Republic).

The term bohemianism and the description bohemian in this specific context may not be connected to the ethnic or geographic term Bohemian as it pertains to the historically indigenous people from the western part of the present day Czech Republic, although it may suggest something.

Above: Karlstein Castle, Bohemia, Czech Republic

Literary and artistic bohemians were associated in the French imagination with the roving Romani people.

Not only were Romani called bohémiens in French because they were believed to have come to France from Bohemia, but literary bohemians and the Romani were both outsiders, apart from conventional society and untroubled by its disapproval.

Use of the French and English terms to refer to the Romani is now old-fashioned and archaic, respectively, and both the French and English terms carry a connotation of arcane enlightenment (and are considered antonyms of the word philistine) and the less frequently intended, pejorative connotation of carelessness about personal hygiene and marital fidelity.

The title character in Carmen (1876), a French opera set in the Spanish city of Seville, is referred to as a “bohémienne” in Meilhac and Halévy’s libretto.

Her signature aria declares love itself to be a “gypsy child” (enfant de Bohême), going where it pleases and obeying no laws.

The term bohemian has come to be very commonly accepted in our day as the description of a certain kind of literary gypsy, no matter in what language he speaks, or what city he inhabits.

A Bohemian is simply an artist or “littérateur” who, consciously or unconsciously, secedes from conventionality in life and in art.

(Westminster Review, 1862)

Henri Murger’s collection of short stories Scènes de la vie de bohème (Scenes of Bohemian Life), published in 1845, was written to glorify and legitimize the bohemian lifestyle.

Above: Henri Mürger (1822 – 1861)

Above: Illustration from Scènes de la vie de bohème, Paris, 1921

Above: An illustration from Henri Mürger’s 1899 book Bohemian Life

Murger’s collection formed the basis of Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème (1896).

Above: Giacomo Puccini (1858 – 1924)

In England, bohemian in this sense initially was popularised in William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel, Vanity Fair, published in 1848.

1855 daguerreotype of William Makepeace Thackeray by Jesse Harrison Whitehurst (1819–1875)

Above: William Makepeace Thackeray (1811 – 1863)

Public perceptions of the alternative lifestyles supposedly led by artists were further molded by George du Maurier’s romanticized best-selling novel of Bohemian culture Trilby (1894).

Above: George du Maurier (1834 – 1896)

The novel outlines the fortunes of three expatriate English artists, their Irish model, and two colourful Central European musicians, in the artist quarter of Paris.

In Spanish literature, the Bohemian impulse can be seen in Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s play Luces de Bohemia, published in 1920.

Valle-Inclán, photographed by Pau Audouard in 1911

Above: Ramón Maria del Valle Inclán (1866 – 1936)

In his song La Bohème, Charles Aznavour described the Bohemian lifestyle in Montmartre.

Above: Charles Aznavour (1924 – 2018)

Above: Montmartre

The film Moulin Rouge! (2001) also imagines the Bohemian lifestyle of actors and artists in Montmartre at the turn of the 20th century.

In the 1850s, aesthetic bohemians began arriving in the United States.

In New York City in 1857, a group of 15 to 20 young, cultured journalists flourished as self-described bohemians until the American Civil War began in 1861.

This group gathered at a German bar on Broadway called Pfaff’s Beer Cellar.

Members included their leader Henry Clapp, Jr. (1814 – 1875), Ada Clare (1834 – 1874), Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892), Fitz Hugh Ludlow (1836 – 1870) and actress Adah Isaacs Menken (1835 – 1868).

Above: Henry Clapp, Jr.

Above: Ada Clare

Above: Walt Whitman

Above: Fitz Hugh Ludlow

Above: Adah Isaacs Menken

Similar groups in other cities were broken up as well by the Civil War and reporters spread out to report on the conflict.

During the war, correspondents began to assume the title bohemian, and newspapermen in general took up the moniker.

Bohemian became synonymous with newspaper writer.

In 1866, war correspondent Junius Henri Browne (1833 – 1902), who wrote for the New York Tribune and Harper’s Magazine, described bohemian journalists such as he was, as well as the few carefree women and lighthearted men he encountered during the war years.

San Francisco journalist Bret Harte first wrote as “The Bohemian” in The Golden Era in 1861, with this persona taking part in many satirical doings, the lot published in his book Bohemian Papers in 1867.

Harte wrote:

“Bohemia has never been located geographically, but any clear day when the sun is going down, if you mount Telegraph Hill, you shall see its pleasant valleys and cloud-capped hills glittering in the West.”

Above: Bret Harte (1836 – 1902)

A view of Telegraph Hill from a boat in the San Francisco Bay

Above: Telegraph Hill, San Francisco

Mark Twain included himself and Charles Warren Stoddard in the bohemian category in 1867.

By 1872, when a group of journalists and artists who gathered regularly for cultural pursuits in San Francisco were casting about for a name, the term bohemian became the main choice, and the Bohemian Club was born.

Plaque showing an owl, the moon, and text

Above: Bohemian Club owl

Club members who were established and successful, pillars of their community, respectable family men, redefined their own form of bohemianism to include people like them who were bons vivants, sportsmen, and appreciators of the fine arts.

Above: Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

Above: Charles Warren Stoddard (1843 – 1909)

Club member and poet George Sterling responded to this redefinition:

Any good mixer of convivial habits considers he has a right to be called a bohemian.

But that is not a valid claim.

There are two elements, at least, that are essential to Bohemianism.

The first is devotion or addiction to one or more of the Seven Arts. (being architecture, sculpture, painting, literature, music, performing and film)

The other is poverty.

Other factors suggest themselves:

For instance, I like to think of my Bohemians as young, as radical in their outlook on art and life, as unconventional, and, though this is debatable, as dwellers in a city large enough to have the somewhat cruel atmosphere of all great cities.

Despite his views, Sterling associated with the Bohemian Club, and caroused with artist and industrialist alike at the Bohemian Grove.

Sterling shortly before his death in 1926[1]

Above: George Sterling (1869 – 1926)

Canadian composer Oscar Ferdinand Telgmann (1856 – 1946) and Canadian poet George Frederick Cameron (1854 – 1885) wrote the song “The Bohemian” in the 1889 opera Leo the Royal Cadet.

The impish American writer and Bohemian Club member Gelett Burgess, who coined the word blurb, supplied this description of the amorphous place called Bohemia:

To take the world as one finds it, the bad with the good, making the best of the present moment—

To laugh at Fortune alike whether she be generous or unkind—

To spend freely when one has money, and to hope gaily when one has none—

To fleet the time carelessly, living for love and art—

This is the temper and spirit of the modern Bohemian in his outward and visible aspect.

It is a light and graceful philosophy, but it is the Gospel of the Moment, this exoteric phase of the Bohemian religion.

And if, in some noble natures, it rises to a bold simplicity and naturalness, it may also lend its butterfly precepts to some very pretty vices and lovable faults, for in Bohemia one may find almost every sin save that of Hypocrisy.

His faults are more commonly those of self-indulgence, thoughtlessness, vanity and procrastination, and these usually go hand-in-hand with generosity, love and charity.

For it is not enough to be one’s self in Bohemia, one must allow others to be themselves, as well.

What, then, is it that makes this mystical empire of Bohemia unique, and what is the charm of its mental fairyland?

It is this:

There are no roads in all Bohemia!

One must choose and find one’s own path, be one’s own self, live one’s own life.

Above: Gelett Burgess (1866 – 1951)

In New York City, pianist Rafael Joseffy formed an organization of musicians in 1907 with friends, such as Rubin Goldmark, called “The Bohemians New York Musicians’ Club“.

Above: Rafael Joseffy (1852 – 1915)

Near Times Square Joel Renaldo presided over “Joel’s Bohemian Refreshery” where the Bohemian crowd gathered from before the turn of the 20th century until Prohibition began to bite.

Jonathan Larson’s musical Rent, and specifically the song “La Vie Boheme” portrayed the postmodern Bohemian culture of New York in the late 20th century.

In May 2014, a story on NPR suggested, after a century and a half, some Bohemian ideal of living in poverty for the sake of art had fallen in popularity among the latest generation of American artists.

In the feature, a recent graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design related “her classmates showed little interest in living in garrets and eating ramen noodles.“

The term has become associated with various artistic or academic communities and is used as a generalized adjective describing such people, environs, or situations:

Bohemian (boho—informal) is defined in The American College Dictionary as “a person with artistic or intellectual tendencies, who lives and acts with no regard for conventional rules of behavior“.

Many prominent European and American figures of the 19th and 20th centuries belonged to the bohemian subculture, and any comprehensive “list of bohemians” would be tediously long.

Bohemianism has been approved of by some bourgeois writers such as Honoré de Balzac, but most conservative cultural critics do not condone bohemian lifestyles.

Above: Honoré de Balzac (1799 – 1850)

In Bohemian Manifesto: a Field Guide to Living on the Edge, author Laren Stover breaks down the bohemian into five distinct mind sets or styles:

Nouveau: bohemians that are rich who attempt to join traditional bohemianism with contemporary culture, harmonizes elements of traditional Bohemian ideology with contemporary culture without losing sight of the basic tenets — the glamour, art, and nonconformity.
Gypsy: the expatriate types, they create their own Gypsy ideal of nirvana wherever they go, folksy flower children, hippies, psychedelic travelers, fairy folk, dreamers, Deadheads (fans of the Grateful Dead), Phish fans, medievalists, anachronistic throwbacks to a more romantic time, they scatter like seeds on the wind, don’t own a watch, show up on your doorstep and disappear in the night, happy to sleep in your barn, and may have done so without your awareness.
Beat: also drifters, but non-materialist and art-focused, reckless, raggedy, rambling, drifting, down-and-out, Utopia-seeking. It may seem like they suffer for their ideals, but they have let go of material desire. They are free spirits. They believe in freedom of expression. They travel light but there’s always a book or a notebook in their pocket. They jam, improvise, extemporize, blow ethereal notes into the universe, write poetry, ramble and wreck cars. They live on the edge of ideas. They take the part and then make up their own lines.
Zen: “post-Beat“, focus on spirituality rather than art. No other Bohemians fathom the transient, green and meditative quality of life better than the Zens, even if they’re in a rock band, which they often are. They are Bohemians whose quest has evolved from the artistic, smoky, literary and spiritually wanderlustful to the spiritually lustful.
Dandy: no money, but try to appear as if they have it by buying and displaying expensive or rare items – such as brands of alcohol. A little seedy, a little haughty, slightly shredded or threadbare, Dandies are the most polished of all Bohemians, even when their clothes are tattered. The Dandy aspires to old money without the money. You are more likely to find unpopular liqueurs such as Chartreuse and Earl Grey brandy in the Dandy home than a six-pack of Budweiser.

Image result for bohemian manifesto a field guide to living on the edge

Aimée Crocker, an American world traveler, adventuress, heiress, and mystic, was dubbed the “Queen of Bohemia” in the 1910s by the world press for living an uninhibited, sexually liberated, and aggressively non-conformist life in San Francisco, New York, and Paris.

Above: Aimée Crocker (1863 – 1941)

She spent the bulk of her fortune inherited from her father Edwin B. Crocker, a railroad tycoon and art collector, on travelling all over the world (lingering the longest in Hawaii, India, Japan, and China) and partying with famous artists of her time such as Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, the Barrymores (Lionel / Ethel / John), Enrico Caruso, Isadora Duncan, Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin and Rudolph Valentino.

Above: Edwin B. Crocker (1818 – 1875)

Above: Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

Above: Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894)

Above: Lionel Barrymore (1878 – 1954)

Above: Ethel Barrymore (1879 – 1959)

Above: John Barrymore (1882 – 1942)

Above: Enrico Caruso (1873 – 1921)

Above: Isadora Duncan (1877 – 1927)

Above: Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954)

Above: Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917)

Above: Rudolph Valentino (1895 – 1926)

Crocker had countless affairs and married five times in five different decades of her life, each man being in his twenties.

She was famous for her tattoos and pet snakes and was reported to have started the first Buddhist colony in Manhattan.

Spiritually inquisitive, Crocker had a ten-year affair with occultist Aleister Crowley and was a devoted student of Hatha Yoga.

Above: Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947)

Maxwell Bodenheim, an American poet and novelist, was known as the King of Greenwich Village Bohemians during the 1920s and his writing brought him international fame during the Jazz Age.

Above: Maxwell Bodenheim (1892 – 1954)

In the 20th-century United States, the bohemian impulse was famously seen in the 1940s hipsters, the 1950s Beat Generation (exemplified by writers such as William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti), the much more widespread 1960s counterculture, and 1960s and 1970s hippies.

Above: Charlie “Bird” Parker (1920 – 1955)

Above: William S. Burroughs (1914 – 1997)

Above: Allen Ginsberg (1926 – 1997)

Above: Jack Kerouac (1922 – 1969)

Above: Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Rainbow Gatherings may be seen as another contemporary worldwide expression of the bohemian impulse.

An American example is Burning Man, an annual participatory arts festival held in the Nevada desert.

In 2001, political and cultural commentator David Brooks contended that much of the cultural ethos of well-to-do middle-class Americans is Bohemian-derived, coining the oxymoron “bourgeois Bohemians” or “Bobos“.

Above: David Brooks

A similar term in Germany is Bionade-Biedermeier, a 2007 German neologism combining Bionade (a trendy lemonade brand) and Biedermeier (an era of introspective Central European culture between 1815 and 1848).

The coinage was introduced in 2007 by Henning Sußebach, a German journalist, in an article that appeared in Zeitmagazin concerning Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg lifestyle.

The hyphenated term gained traction and has been quoted and referred to since.

(From the 1960s onward, Prenzlauer Berg (a Berlin district) was associated with proponents of East Germany’s diverse counterculture including Christian activists, Bohemians, state-independent artists, and the gay community.

It was an important site for the peaceful revolution that brought down the Berlin Wall in 1989.

In the 1990s the borough was also home to a vibrant squatting scene.

It has since experienced rapid gentrification.)

A German ARD TV broadcaster used the title Boheme and Biedermeier in a 2009 documentary about Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg.

The main focus was on protagonists, that contributed to the image of a paradise for the (organic and child-raising) well-to-do, depicting cafés where “Bionade-Biedermeier sips from Fair Trade“.

Is Swiss Miss, by definition, a Bohemian?

Is your humble blogger a Bohemian?

The Bohemian is “not easily classified like species of birds,” writes Stover, noting there are crossovers and hybrids.

By this assessment, I would say that we are in certain aspects of character and behaviour.

If I am compelled to fit Heidi and myself into Stover’s mindsets, I would say she is more Nouveau than I and I more Beat than she, (or do I mean the opposite?).

As Stover suggests there are no set moulds that we easily fit and it is debatable how accurate is my assessment in either direction.

What I do believe we share is an open-mindedness to the places where we travel.

Certainly Heidi (consciously or unconsciously) judges places through Swiss eyes as I see the world through Canadian eyes, though whether anyone would call us “typical” of our homelands is also debatable.

I think we nonetheless, despite our cultural backgrounds, tend to try and understand before assessing whether a place fits our personal philosophies.

Hanoi, Vietnam, Sunday 17 March 2019

“They say whatever you’re looking for, you will find here.

They say you come to Vietnam and you understand a lot in a few minutes, but the rest has got to be lived.

The smell:

That’s the first thing that hits you, promising everything in exchange for your soul.

And the heat.

Your shirt is straightaway a rag.

You can hardly remember your name, or what you came to escape from.

But at night, there’s a breeze.

The river is beautiful.

You could be forgiven for thinking there was no war, that the gunshots were fireworks, that only pleasure matters.

A pipe of opium, or the touch of a lover who might tell you they love you.

And then, something happens, as you knew it would.

And nothing can ever be the same again.”

After an eternity of preparation where Heidi was injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected, and selected….

After lugging luggage from home to station….

After crossing oceans and continents….

After nearly a full 24 hours, Heidi finally arrived at Noi Bai International Airport, the largest airport in Vietnam in terms of total capacity, the largest airport in the country for cargo transport and the second busiest airport for passenger traffic, 35 kilometres (21 miles) northeast of downtown Hanoi.

The chaos on arrival is always greater than anyone expects and it is a labour of Heracles to circumnavigate the complexity of passport control and luggage retrieval.

From Terminal One (domestic flights) Heidi hails a cab.

She is too tired to navigate through a foreign city, to decipher the possible ways to negotiate the 45-minute journey, but she is nevertheless wise enough to avoid the taxi touts that greet her upon arriving properly inside the airport.

She finds the taxi booking desk and then makes her away to the taxi stand.

The airport freeway is one of the most modern roads in Vietnam (or so her guidebook informed her), but it is curious to see oxen herded by farmers dressed in rags crossing it in the dark.

And the dark seems overwhelming and endless.

Lights flicker from faraway fields and hope springs that she was headed in the right direction.

It is also odd (and disconcerting) how the freeway abruptly ends in Hanoi’s ghastly northern suburbs.

But Heidi is, nevertheless, looking forward to exploring Hanoi over the next few days.

Heidi is too tired to sleep and too hungry to rest.

After 24 hours of motion and emotion, Heidi was hung down, brung down, hung up and all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things crowding her mind for attention.

Hanoi’s beguiling boulevards, belle époque architecture, its peaceful parks and pagodas were enough to recommend the city to her, but there is also the bonus of a vibrant, optimistic population and fantastic food.

Heidi wanted some of that….

Hanoi sprawls along the Red River (Song Hong) which is spanned by three bridges.

The city is divided into seven central districts (quan), surrounded by outlying neighbourhoods called hyyen.

Peaceful Hoan Kiem Lake lies between the imploding maze of the Old Quarter in the north and the architecturally elegant Ba Dinh Quan (French Quarter) to the south.

West of city centre is the monument-strewn former Imperial City.

To the north is the lovely West Lake.

Here two wheels are better (and more common) than four:

Motorbikes, bicycles and cyclos (pedicabs) beat the buses every time.

Image result for hanoi traffic rush hour

Ethnic Vietnamese (kihn) dominate Hanoi, though there are a small number of ethnic minorities from around Vietnam.

Second languages reflect the historical chronology of the residents and the city:

Those under 30 (almost 3/4 of the population) speak English, the middle-aged may have a smattering of Russian or German, the elderly are often fluent in French.

Above: Flag of Vietnam

Hanoi residents are known for their reserve and strength of character, coupled with energy and resourcefulness.

After a history of colonization, war and Communist rule, Hanoians tend to be suspicious both of authority and of outsiders but are also hospitable and incredibly adaptive to change.

Family values abound.

Beneath the nonchalant cool-kid-on-motorbike pop culture persona, there is usually a strong sense of Confucian responsibility and discipline.

The younger generation are well-educated and optimistic about the future.

This is the place to have your shoes shined at 5 am, while watching merchants setting up their stalls.

This is the place to stroll off to the flower market to buy blooms, padded bras and plastic baskets, followed by pho (beef noodle soup) for breakfast with ground pork and mushrooms at that little place next to the Binh Minh Hotel.

Hanoi is the energy drink of Asia, the secret Fountain of Youth.

Hanoi is the city of the Long Bien Bridge, the Temple of Literature, and Communist commemoratives that alternate between dull and drab to spectacular and inspirational.

Hanoi is city lights reflecting off of Hoan Kiem Lake, colonial architecture lovingly preserved yet stark reminders of self-determination denied.

Hanoi is tree-lined boulevards and wacky water puppets, Ga Tan (stewed chicken with medicinal herbs, dates and grilled baguettes) and strong sweet coffee.

Image result for hanoi water puppet show

It is also terrible terrifying traffic, bothersome bureaucracy, uncompromising censorship, the gaudiness of the newly wealthy, the grinding government surveillance searching to scratch away social evils which are everpresent even if you are unaware of the danger around you.

No one complains of the present but speaks only of the pleasant prospect of tomorrow.

Hanoi is:

t’ai chi practice at Hoan Kiem as day breaks.

fried squid with dill, tofu with tomatoes and grilled chicken at a bia hoi (beer tavern) as night falls.

xeo (rice wine) while hanging with the Minsk motorcycle club

a game of badminton in Lenin Park

Image result for hanoi lenin park badminton

the circus at Cong Vien Le Nin with bears, elephants and girls on roller skates – hopefully only the girls are on rollers….

bolts of silk and custom made shirts in stores along Pho Hang Gai

an after dark pop star performance at the Hanoi Opera House followed by a motorbike race around West Lake

the place of an urban myth

Hoan Kiem, the name of Hanoi’s enchanting lake, means “the returned sword“.

Legend has it that the 15th century King Le Loi had a magical sword that proved invaluable in driving back the Chinese.

One day as the King was boating on the Lake, a giant turtle rose from the depths and seized the sword, vowing to return it to the gods.

A turtle was found and preserved in the 1970s and it is thought that this turtle was 500 years old, making it enough to be the turtle of the legend.

There are still sightings of giant turtles in the Lake, the last in 1998, and scientists believe that they could be a unique species.

Everything considered, I prefer giant turtles in my Lake as opposed to monsters in my Loch (or under my bed) or alligators in the sewer.

Heidi’s bed, her budget hotel, is in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, 36 streets with over a thousand years of history, one of Vietnam’s most lively and unusual places, where you can buy anything from a gravestone to silk pyjamas.

Hanoi’s commercial quarter evolved alongside the Red River and the smaller To Lich River, which once flowed throught the city centre to create an intricate network of canals and waterways teeming with boats.

As the waters could rise as high as 8 metres during the monsoon season, dikes, still seen today along Tran Quang Khai, were constructed to protect the city from flooding.

Exploring the maze of back streets is fascinating.

Some streets open up while others narrow down into a warren of smaller alleys.

The Old Quarter is known for its tunnel / tube houses – small frontages hiding very long rooms – developed to avoid taxes based on the width of their street frontage.

Look for elegant carvings on the doors and balustrades as well as examples of traditional fine arts and handicrafts such as ceramics and silk paintings.

By feudal law, houses were also limited to two storeys, which out of respect to the King, could not be taller than the Royal Palace.

Of course, these days there are taller buildings in Hanoi, but there are no real highrise buildings to mar the atmosphere here.

In the 13th century, Hanoi’s 36 guilds established themselves here with each taking a different street (hence the name for the Old Quarter is 36 Pho Puong / 36 Streets).

“Hang” in Vietnamese means “merchandise” and is usually followed by the name of the product traditionally sold in that street.

Thus, “Hang Bac” translates as “Silk Street“, however these days the street name may not necessarily correspond to what is sold there now.

Image result for hanoi old quarter hang bac

Opportunities to lighten your load of dong (the currency of Vietnam) are almost endless and as you wander around you will find wool clothes, cosmetics, fake Rayban sunglasses, luxury foods, printed T-shirts, musical instruments, plumbing supplies, herbal medicines, gold and silver jewellery, religious offerings, spices, woven mats and much, much more.

Whether or not you wish to buy anything, your first encounter will likely be with the children who sell postcards and maps.

Of course, they are found all over the country, but in Hanoi many are orphans who have a special card to prove it, which they will immediately show to foreigners.

They are also the most notorious overchargers, asking almost triple the going price.

Steel your heart.

Walk on by.

Image result for hanoi postcard selling children

Navigating any Vietnamese urban area means dealing with chaotic traffic, lots of drunk people who increase in number as the sun sets, constant construction here, there and everywhere, spittle and rubbish litter the streets, animals are butchered in front of the customer, smells are strong and overpowering noise is neverending.

It is life lived raw and unapologetically.

Heidi is not intimidated by all of this, for she has travelled other Asian countries with similar scenes.

Over the next four days, she will have opportunities to explore her hotel’s neighbourhood.

Some of the streets are more specialized than others:

Hang Bac retains its own dinh (communal house) which has long been home of the silversmiths’ guild.

The entrance to Dinh Kim Ngan is similar to that of a temple, with huge walls and wooden gates leading on to a courtyard, where a large urn holding burning incense sticks.

The altar in the main hall is dedicated to the worship of Hien Vien, a legendary figure believed to be the founder of all crafts.

Here you will find some interesting books and pamphlets about Vietnamese architecture and crafts on sale.

There are performances of ca tru music here some evenings.

(Recognized by UNESCO in 2009 as an intangible heritage in need of safeguarding, ca tru music is performed by an ensemble consisting of just three musicians, one of whom is a female singer.

The haunting sounds are soothing and when you open your ears and your mind and close your eyes for an hour, the music is deeply moving.)

Tranh vẽ Cô đầu (kỹ nữ) thời Pháp thuộc.jpg

There is Hang Quat with its red candlesticks, flags, lacquerware for festivals and funerals, and other temple items.

Hang Gai is more glamourous with silk, embroidery, lacquerware, paintings and water puppets, and where silk sleeping bag liners and Vietnamese ao dai (traditional clothing) are very popular.

Hang Ma is where paper products have been made for over 500 years, Hang Vai specializes in bamboo ladders, Hang Thiec is tin goods and mirrors, Hang Hom is glue, paint and varnish, and so on.

Gaudy tinsel dances in the breeze above brightly coloured votive object, which include model TVs and cars to be offered to the ancestors.

Hang Buom is home to the Quarter’s oldest and most revered place of worship, the Bach Ma Temple.

The Temple was founded in the 9th century and later dedicated to the White Horse (Bach Ma), the guardian spirit of Thang Long (an ethereal site foreman who helped King Ly Thai To overcome a few problems with his citadel’s crumbling walls).

The present Temple dates largely from the 18th century and its most unusual features are a pair of charismatic, pot-bellied Cham guardians in front of the altar.

In front of them stands an antique palanquin, used each year to celebrate the Temple’s foundation on the 12th day of the 2nd lunar month.

On the eastern fringe of the city, running along the dyke that protects the city from flooding by the Red River, is the Ceramic Road, which was created as part of Hanoi’s 1,000 year celebrations in 2010.

The Road stretches for nearly four kilometres and adds a splash to the traffic-choked streets.

The Road also has a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest ceramic mosaic in the world.

It depicts scenes from Vietnam’s history, famous places in the country and the lifestyles of minority groups.

The attraction of the Long Bien Bridge is not so much looking at this historic bridge, but in walking across its mile-long span and gazing down at the chicken runs, pig pens, banana plantations and the Red River’s endless flow.

Under the Bridge, poor families live in boats on the Red River, coming from many rural areas of Vietnam.

As in many other developing countries, hunger and poverty in Vietnam has existed for a significant amount of time.

Until the 1920s, most of the Vietnamese population still lived under the poverty line.

However, thanks to the political and economic reform in 1986 and the government’s commitment, the status of poverty and hunger in Vietnam has been significantly improved.

From one of the poorest countries in the World with per capita income below US$100 per year, Vietnam is now a middle income country with per capita income of US$1,910 by the end of 2013.

Thereby, the poverty rate decreases gradually from 58% in 1993 to 28.9% in 2002, 14.5% in 2008 and 12% in 2011.

About 28 million people are estimated to have been lifted out of poverty over approximately two decades.

The 2014 Global Hunger Index (GHI) Report ranked Vietnam 15th amongst 81 nations suffering from hunger, with a GHI of 7.5 compared with 27.7 in 1990 (country with extremely alarming (GHI ≥ 30), alarming (GHI between 20.0 and 29.9) or serious (GHI between 10.0 and 19.9) hunger situation.

Achievements in poverty reduction and hunger eradication have been highly appreciated by the international community and viewed overall as successful in furthering economic development.

However, Vietnam still has many tasks ahead in fighting against poverty and hunger, particularly for vulnerable groups such as ethnic minorities and the disabled.

Based on a report from the Asian Development Bank, Vietnam has a total population of 91.70 million as of 2015, about one million people more compared to the previous year.

In 2016, 5.8% of the population lived below the national poverty line; in 2019, the unemployment rate was 2.0%.)

It is a sobering thought to think about how vulnerable the People under the Bridge truly are.

On this St. Patrick’s Day 2019, as 73 people die in Indonesian flash flooding and 84 die in Cyclone Idai in Mozambique, it is hard not to wonder how little would remain of this slum if a flood or a cyclone ever struck here.

The Bridge was built in 1899-1902 by the architects Daydé & Pillé of Paris, and opened in 1903.

Before North Vietnam’s independence in 1954, it was called the Paul Doumer Bridge, named after Paul Doumer – the Governor-General of French Indochina and then French President.

At 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi) in length, it was, at that time, one of the longest bridges in Asia.

For the French colonial government, the construction was of strategic importance in securing control of northern Vietnam.

From 1899 to 1902, more than 3,000 Vietnamese took part in the construction.

It was heavily bombarded during the Vietnam War (known as the American War here) due to its critical position (the only bridge at that time across the Red River connecting Hanoi to the main port of Haiphong).

The first attack took place in 1967, and the center span of the bridge was felled by an attack by 20 USAF F-105 fighter-bombers on 11 August.

CIA reports noted that the severing of the bridge did not appear to have caused as much disruption as had been expected.

The defence of Long Bien Bridge continues to play a large role in Hanoi’s self-image and is often extolled in poetry and song.

It was rendered unusable for a year when, in May 1972, it fell victim to one of the first co-ordinated attacks using laser-guided “smart bombs“.

Some parts of the original structure remain intact, while large sections have been built later to repair the holes.

Only half of the Bridge retains its original shape.

A project with support and loan from the French government is currently in progress to restore the bridge to its original appearance.

The Bridge is now a popular spot among Hanoians who like to take selfies against the Bridge’s distinctive background.

Today trains, mopeds, bicycles and pedestrians use the dilapidated Bridge, while all other traffic is diverted to other nearby bridges.

Here, like everywhere else in Hanoi, everywhere else in Nam, one must keep an eye out for mad motorcycle riders.

And finally no stroll through the Old Quarter is complete with a visit to the Dong Xuan Market, the city’s largest covered market, occupying a whole block behind its renovated facade.

Its three storeys are dedicated to clothes and household goods, while fresh foodstuffs spill out into a bustling street market stacked with multicoloured mounds of vegetables.

Nguyen Thien Thuat, running south from the Market’s southeast corner, is a great place to sample some unusual types of street food.

Image result for Nguyen Thien Thuat hanoi

Out in the street outside her budget hotel, Heidi steps around the little pavement fires, the small children, the piled dragon fruit, accustoming herself anew to the heavy odor of durian.

She breathes deeply, inhaling that scent of Asia that always excites.

She feasts somewhere on something at 30 minutes past midnight.

In her fatigue she has forgotten all that she had worried about.

In her hunger she has cast aside inhibitions.

There is a moment of clarity, a moment where she can almost sense the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

But the moment rushes through her in the space of a heartbeat, between blinks of weary eyes.

She does not know what the morrow has in store for her.

She does not know how to feel about the future, about anything.

Her appetite is sated and her senses saturated by the strangeness around her.

She is unaware of neither how she returned to her hotel or how she finds herself with heavy head on bed pillow.

“They say you come to Vietnam and understand a lot in a few minutes.

The rest has got to be lived.

They say whatever it was you were looking for, you will find here.

They say there is a ghost in every house, and if you can make peace with him, he will stay quiet.”

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Lonely Planet Vietnam / Rough Guide to Vietnam

The darkened theatre of life

Posted on February 13, 2021 by canadaslim

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Sunday 31 January 2021

I like the way you smile at me
I felt the heat that enveloped me
And what I saw I liked to see
I never knew where evil grew

I should have steered away from you
My friend told me to keep clear of you
But something drew me near to you
I never knew where evil grew

Evil grows in the dark
Where the sun it never shines
Evil grows in cracks and holes
And lives in people’s minds

Evil grew, it’s part of you
And now it seems to be
That every time I look at you
Evil grows in me

If I could build a wall around you
I could control the thing that you do
But I couldn’t kill the will within you
And it never shows
The place where evil grows

Evil grows in the dark
Where the sun it never shines
Evil grows in cracks and holes
And lives in people’s minds

Evil grew, it’s part of you
And now it seems to be
That every time I look at you
Evil grows in me

Image result for quotes about the theatre

Cinemas and theatres are closed.

Streets are bare past 8 pm.

The heart of the city is silent.

We are a world in hiding.

Everyone has the potential to kill us, with a sneeze, a cough, a kiss, a hug, a handshake.

Imagine a place without people.

<p value="<amp-fit-text layout="fixed-height" min-font-size="16" max-font-size="72" height="80">Considering how humans are prone to error, that ol' thing called free will, does seem to cause a number of problems, does make the notion of a place without pesky humans seem somewhat desirable at times.Considering how humans are prone to error, that ol’ thing called free will, does seem to cause a number of problems, does make the notion of a place without pesky humans seem somewhat desirable at times.

Image result for empty city street at night

Just the most casual of historical observations, a look at only one day in the calendar reveals the madness of Man.

This day saw the execution of a man (Guy Fawkes) who wished to worship as he chose (1606).

Above: Guy Fawkes (1570 – 1606)

This day saw the opening of the world’s first veneral disease clinic in London. (1747)

This day saw a man (John Frémont) who could barely control himself being forced to cede his power over others. (1848)

Above: John Frémont (1813 – 1890)

This day saw the beginning of the end of slavery in America as the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution is passed. (1865)

On this one single night five collisions occurred between eight vessels in the Firth of Forth off May Island in northern Scotland, 104 sailors needlessly killed by repetitive human error. (1918)

On this day one man (Leon Trotsky) who wanted Communism to be practised as Marx and Engel intended is exiled for his inability to remain silent. (1928)

Above: Leon Trotsky (1879 – 1940)

A 24-year-old soldier (Eddie Slovik) wishing to avoid his death by gunfire is executed for treason by gunfire. (1945)

Above: Eddie Slovik (1920 – 1945)

US President Harry S. Truman decides that the world needs more thermonuclear weapons and somehow the risk of total planetary annihilation becomes plausible. (1950)

Above: Harry S. Truman (1884 – 1972)

A foolish decision (Brexit) is now manifest as the UK is officially out of the EU. (2020)

5,000 are arrested across Russia for questioning the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.(2021)

400 are arrested in Brussels for protesting against pandemic lockdown in Belgium. (2021)

Brussels riot police hold down a protester

The UK passes a visa scheme allowing Hong Kong residents to obtain British citizenship. (2021)

Image result for hong kong british overseas passport

Considering the propensity to error around us, sometimes the only rational reaction is to practise resistance, to insist that responsbility is taken, that the solidarity of being human means uniformity of human rights.

This is how artists and playwrights make our globalized world a better place.

Theatre gathers speeches and essays, performance texts and manifestos, written by artists and activists, journalists and lawyers, bringing their diverse contributions, saying what needs to be said, reflecting what needs reflection, that analyses our racism, our imperialism, and accuses princes and powers and principalites of not behaving as they should towards those they claim to represent.

Theatre through the drama of human interaction is a call to action to follow our better natures.

Theatre is often understood as mere fiction, as “words, words, words” and acting “as if” fiction is fact and not mere fantasy.

But spaces of act are places where we enact our deepest desires, where we search for and rehearse alternatives, how much worse things could get, how much better things could be.

We should never underestimate the power of performance.

Speaking is a social action and mere written language never adequately describes the world in all of its nuances the way human voice and movement can.

The playwright creates the weapons of truth, theatre wields them.

To read of the injustice caused by imperialism and out-of-control capitalism is to easily ignore the evils inherent in these systems, but to witness injustice enacted before our eyes is to affect us on a very deep and emotional level.

Theatre puts into action the need for reflection, for consideration, of the folly of our world.

Theatre is a platform to voices that need to be heard, that reveals power to the powerless, that submission without permission is admission of defeat of all we could be, of all we should be.

The arts, literature and theatre do not just reflect society or Zeitgeist.

They create society.

They implement new thoughts and shape hearts and minds.

They decolonize, deconstruct and derail the illusions that those with power would have the powerless believe.

A theatrical performance is akin to marching into a new daybreak.

To see folks like ourselves show ourselves through their acts is to educate the world, by teaching us to feel and think and ultimately love the best within ourselves and reject that which diminishes us.

The actor’s desire to change the world is neither megalomania nor madness.

On stage, all are equal.

On stage, everything is possible.

A better reality is only achievable if Utopia is perceived.

Theatre offers that perception.

Theatre makes us question normality and whether that normality is desirable,

Theatre shows us different points of view, different ways of being in the world.

Theatre dances us on the edge of the volcano, makes us look into the abyss of what is ahead, makes us wonder who we are and how we got here.

We are not safe even though we grasp the familiar.

We are vulnerable and theatre shows us that we are dancing in the dark.

Theatre shows us the shipwreck of politics, the arrogance of the powerful, the kingdom of the false, the vulgarity of wealth, the cataclysms of industry, the rampant misery, the naked exploitation, the edge of apocalypse.

Theatre does not spare us from anything.

It is truthful and humble and curious.

The characters of a play are us.

They order, they demand, they plead, they yield, they challenge, they provoke, they dare, they claim, they name, they condemn, they disrupt, they disturb, they evoke, they initiate, they resist, they request us to ask what counts as a good life, they represent, they are us.

And it is this potential, these possibilities, that the pandemic denies us.

Agatha Christie’s murder mystery play “The Mousetrap” has been staged continuously in London since 1952, making it the world’s longest-running show, but the corona virus lockdown has brought the famous production to an abrupt halt.

Goodbye, Les Misérables, showing since 1985.

Farewell to the Phantom of the Opera, staged since 1986.

As the UK faces months (years?) of restrictions on social gatherings, there is no prospect of any of London’s West End hits opening any time soon.

Live theatre in the land of William Shakespeare now faces a crisis from which many in the theatre fear it might never fully recover.

When the lights went out at the end of a production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre on 14 March 2020, the actors did not know that it was for the last time, final curtain.

Image result for Coriolanus at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre

On 16 March 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Britons to avoid theatres.

“Our business model just stopped,” Sheffield Theatres Artistic Director Robert Hastie said.

“We lost nearly 90% of the money coming in and that is presenting us with enormous business problems.“

Image result for sheffield crucible theatre

The government’s 60-page strategy for getting the UK working again does not mention the country’s more than 1,000 theatres.

Even as the UK takes what Johnson called its first “baby steps” to get the economy moving, the virus makes it hard for theatres to host audiences.

Social distancing rules are “here to stay”, according to ministers.

Above: Boris Johnson

“If social distancing is maintained, theatres will not be able to open:

Simple as that.”, said Rebecca Kane Burton, Chief Executive Officer of LW Theatres, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s portfolio of venues.

The industry operates by packing strangers into cramped auditoriums, with actors in close contact on stage and support crews behind the scenes.

“A West End production can cost 5 to 7 million pounds before it even hits the stage,” Burton said.

“Theatre producers are already incredibly bold for doing this in a normal environment.

With social distancing in place, why would you take the risk with no prospect of breaking even, let alone any of the upside?“

Above: Rebecca Kane Burton

The pandemic poses a threat to venues from the smallest provincial theatres to London’s West End, which draws tourists from all over the world to see musicals such as “The Lion King“, “Wicked“, and “Mamma Mia!“.

According to Burton, musical theatres need to be at 70% capacity just to cover costs.

There are already casualities.

The Artrix Arts Centre in Bromsgrove stopped trading in April 2020.

Image result for Artrix Arts Centre in Bromsgrove

Nuffield Southampton Theatres went into administration on 6 May 2020.

Image result for nuffield southampton theatres

The Old Vic, one of London’s most prestigious theatres, is in a “seriously perilous” financial situation, Artistic Director Matthew Warchius told the Guardian.

“Progressively as you go through June, July, August and September, theatres just start having cash flow issues,” said Julian Bird, CEO of UK Theatre.

He said the industry will need government assistance not just for actors and theatres but for the “whole ecology” of the sector, including agents, lighting and sound designers, set builders, and costume and wig makers.

The performing arts and associated creative industry contributed 9.9 billion pounds to the UK economy in 2019, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Beyond the economic value, they improve the lives of millions of people….

Even if theatres are allowed to reopen, they will face major logistical difficulties.

Long-running shows may need new cast members as well as fresh marketing campaigns to drive ticket sales, according to Burton.

Venues without a show will need months to audition and rehearse, as well as to build sets and arrange costumes.

Then there is the question of how to make venues safe.

LW Theatres has bought hundreds of self-sanitizing door handles to test.

The company is also looking at taking temperatures, providing staff with protective equipment and encouraging the public to wear face masks.

In Sheffield, Hastie said the greatest concern is what happens at year-end, when the traditional programme of holiday pantomimes and musical would normally bring in a large proportion of annual income.

“The big fear that everybody has got is can Christman be made to work?” he said.

“If we can’t do Christmas, things will look bleaker.”

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a substantial impact on the film industry in 2020, mirroring its impacts across all arts sectors.

Across the world and to varying degrees, cinemas and movie theatres have been closed, festivals have been cancelled or postponed, and film releases have been moved to future dates or delayed indefinitely.

Due to cinemas and movie theaters closing, the global box office has dropped by billions of dollars, and streaming has become more popular, while the stock of film exhibitors has also dropped dramatically.

Many blockbusters originally scheduled to be released since mid-March of 2020 have been postponed or cancelled around the world, with film productions also halted.

The Chinese film industry had lost US$2 billion by March 2020, having closed all its cinemas during the Lunar New Year period that sustains the industry across Asia.

North America saw its lowest box office weekend since 1998 between 13 and 15 March.

Cineworld, the world’s second-largest cinema chain, closed its cinemas in October 2020.

The Eight Hundred, the highest-grossing film of 2020, earned $468 million worldwide.

It was the first time since 2007 that the top-grossing film of a given year had earned less than $1 billion and the first time a non-American film was the top-grossing film of the year.

One night in April, Queen’s University Professor Kelsey Jacobson found herself holding her cat up to her laptop, eagerly showing her off to a group of strangers on Zoom.

Above: Professor Kelsey Jacobson

She was, in fact, an audience member immersed in a production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest by Creation Theatre, based in Oxford, England.

Over the course of the show, produced entirely over Zoom, Kelsey was tasked with asking questions of the characters in a news conference, providing sound effects like bird squawks and stormy weather and holding up props (like her cat) when requested.

Given social distancing protocols that prohibit physical gatherings, theatre makers have responded creatively to the Covid-19 pandemic by turning to online, digital and lo-fi or “non-embodied” modes of performance that use radio and phone.

This change in how to perform theatre has required a reconsideration of longstanding ideas of what it means to be a theatre audience member:

How has access to theatre changed?

What etiquette is expected?

How have ideas of privacy and intimacy shifted?

Image result for Shakespeare’s The Tempest by Creation Theatre

Most obviously, streamed versions of pre-recorded theatrical productions have enjoyed great popularity.

#JaneEyre became a trending topic on Twitter in April 2020 after the National Theatre in London, aired a recording on YouTube, with more than 4,600 tweets in the seven days after it streamed.

Digital analytics by the company OneFurther about online viewing of One Man Two Guvnors by Richard Bean, based on the 18th-century Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni, count a staggering 2.6 million viewers over the course of one week.

Such views are far beyond the seating capacity of a regular theatre building.

This increased access is especially important in light of growing awareness of inaccessibility in theatre more broadly.

Some progress has been made to better welcome audience members with certain disabilities, especially in the advent of relaxed performances, which seeks to “relax” or loosen audience conventions in order to create more accessible theatre.

But systemic issues of racism, classism and ableism continue to exclude many potential spectators.

Shakespeare scholar Erin Sullivan cites the UK Arts Council’s report “From Live to Digital” to point to the potential of streamed performance to increase access to theatre:

“Streaming does appear to attract younger, less wealthy and more ethnically diverse members of the population.”

What’s also notable about online performances is that, as an audience member, I can choose when, where and how to watch.

Image result for Shakespeare scholar Erin Sullivan

Above: Erin Sullivan

Scholar Kirsty Sedgman, who studies theatre and performance audiences, has written extensively about audience etiquette and how such behavioural expectations are often exclusionary:

You must be quiet, immobile and have singular focus.

If you don’t, you need to leave.

Within the privacy of my own home, however, such rules are removed.

I can eat, drink, talk and be on my phone — or so one would think.

Above: Kirsty Sedgman

Actress Gillian Anderson asked audience members to stay off their phones while watching the National Theatre’s streamed version of A Streetcar Named Desire, which she starred in at the Young Vic in London.

She thereby tried to enforce public theatre behaviour in private.

Image result for gillian anderson a streetcar named desire

That live tweeting alongside performances is already a well-established practice means that expected audience behaviour must be renegotiated for online viewing.

Kelsey, for instance, eagerly read the comments of her fellow audience members during a YouTube livestream of Blind Date, a show from Toronto-based Spontaneous Theatre centred on a virtual first date between Mimi (a French clown played by Rebecca Northan) and actor Wayne Brady.

The ways in which audience members can connect with each other in the absence of shared physical space means that virtual sites of conversation — like Twitter and the YouTube comments section — become vital.

Image result for blind date toronto spontaneous theatre

Finally, questions of privacy are also important.

In The Tempest, Kelsey saw into several peoples’ homes, and watched them leave and return with snacks or get interrupted by their children and pets.

The boundaries between public and private lives were blurred and she had a deeper awareness of her fellow spectators.

In a cleverly customized theatrical experience from Toronto’s Outside the March Theatre, a “detective” attempted to solve her possibly paranormal printer problems over the course of six phone calls.

In this interactive performance experience called The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries, I was also asked to reveal aspects of her personal life: where she worked, what her hobbies were, and so on.

As an audience member of such performances, she was asked to contribute and reveal more than she might sitting in the quiet darkness of a traditional theatre.

This is not to say that audiences haven’t been active participants in theatre throughout history, but the visibility of such participation is made more evident by theatre’s move into private spaces.

Image result for the ministry of mundane mysteries

An article in the New York Times suggested that the current explosion of digital theatre is merely a way of holding space before we can return to “real” theatre.

But this ignores the inventive responses of theatre artists who have shown that theatre is patently not tied to theatres:

The presence of a public building is not a necessity for performance.

Indeed, many artists were creating innovative online work long before the pandemic.

With theatres thinking about a return to physical spaces, it is worth considering how the “digital turn” will impact future spectator conventions and expectations.

Renegotiated and re-imagined ideas of access, community and interactivity, borne out of necessity, are an opportunity to rethink theatre.

These should not be ignored when the return to public spaces happens:

Rather, they should inform theatre’s future.

Honestly, on screen theatre, which seems to me to be merely a close cousin of movie streaming and TV, worries me, for my mind is filled with three images:

I am reminded of Leonard Mead, Ray Bradbury’s short story, The Pedestrian.

Leonard Mead is a citizen of a television-centered world in November 2131.

In the city, sidewalks have fallen into decay.

Mead enjoys walking through the city at night, something which no one else does.

“In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not one in all that time.”

On one of his usual walks, he encounters a police car, which is possibly robotic.

It is the only police unit in a city of three million, since the purpose of law enforcement has disappeared with everyone watching television at night.

When asked about his profession, Mead tells the car that he is a writer, but the car does not understand, since no one buys books or magazines in the television-dominated society.

The police car and its occupants can neither of them understand why Mead would be out walking for no reason, and so they decide to take him to the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies and force him into the car.

As the car passes through his neighborhood, Leonard Mead in the locked confines of the back seat says, “That’s my house,” as he points to a house warm and bright with all its lights on, unlike all other houses.

There is no reply, and the story concludes.

Image result for the pedestrian ray bradbury

In Surrogates, the 2009 American science fiction action film, in the near future, widespread use of remotely controlled androids called “Surrogates” enables everyone to live in idealized forms from the safety of their homes.

Compared to their surrogates, the human operators are depicted as slovenly and homebound.

Protected from harm, a surrogate’s operator feels no pain when the surrogate is damaged, and can do acrobatics that a normal person wouldn’t.

In Boston, FBI agent Tom Greer has been estranged from his wife Maggie since their son’s death in a car crash several years before.

He never sees her outside of her surrogate and she criticizes his desire to interact via their real bodies.

In order to protect ourselves from contagion, what if we retreat into our individual isolated homes?

Can we learn how to interact with one another without social contact?

Image result for the boy in a plastic bubble

In the spirit of The Pedestrian this screen-centred existence allowing those who protect us to police us in an autocratic manner brings to mind an episode of the sci-fi series Sliders.

In Fever, Season One, Episode 3, Wade (Sabrina Lloyd) is infected with deadly pathogen on an Earth racked by an epidemic where Quinn’s double (Jerry O’Connell) is Patient Zero, Rembrandt (Cleavant Derricks) and Arturo (John Rhys-Davies) race to find a cure and free Quinn from a Gestapo-like health agency.

A pandemic gives the government an excuse to enforce its will in the name of securing the health of its citizens.

It is a repeated theme of live theatre in history that some performances have resulted in riots, for as I have said, live theatre creates a commonality of emotion directly experienced, enhanced to a far greater capacity than on screen can ever generate.

Individuals in their homes are far easier to handle than an entire auditorium of upset rioters.

As the creation of theatre is both time-consuming and expensive perhaps the premise of the 2013 film The Congress is not so far-fetched to imagine.

Robin Wright plays a fictionalized version of herself as an aging actress with a reputation for being fickle and unreliable, so much so that nobody is willing to offer her roles.

Her son, Aaron, suffers from Usher syndrome that is slowly destroying his sight and hearing.

With the help of Dr. Barker (Paul Giamatti), Robin is barely able to stave off the worst effects of her son’s decline.

Robin’s longtime agent Al (Harvey Keitel) takes her to met Jeff Green (Danny Huston), a representative of the film production company, Miramount Studios, who offer her to buy her likeness and digitize her into a computer-animated version of herself.

After initially turning down the offer, Robin reconsiders after realizing she may be unable to find work with the emergence of this new technology, and agrees to sell the film rights to her digital image to Miramount Studios in exchange for a hefty sum of money and she promises never to act again.

After her body is digitally scanned, the studio will be able to make films starring her, using only computer-generated characters.

By then, Robin’s virtual persona has become the star of a popular science-fiction film franchise, “Rebel Robot Robin“.

The notion of a world resembling The Congress, Fever, Surrogates, or The Pedestrian frightens me.

Culture, in my opinion, is not just the reserve of lofty institutions or private servers.

It should be available to all, with everyone interacting with each other and with the performers.

I fully support the preservation and protection of life, but fear of death shouldn’t keep us from living.

We need theatre and theatre needs us.

The pandemic has cost the lives of over two million people across the globe.

Will it also come at the cost of our souls?

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / The Poppy Family, “Evil Grows” / Alex Morales, “London’s West End faces existential crisis as theatres stay dark“, Bloomberg News, 17 May 2020 / Stefan Bläske, Luanda Casella, Milo Rau and Lara Staal, The Art of Resistance: On Theatre, Activitism and Solidarity / Kelsey Jacobson, “Theatre companies are pushing storytelling boundaries online audiences amid Covid-19“, http://www.theconversation.com, 21 July 2020

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