The 105-Year-Old Blogger

My family’s 1974 summer vacation happened because of a geography book that was lying around the house. Our book about Ontario included several pages on the Bruce Trail , and we decided to give it a try.   We had done lots of camping already but had never attempted a long hike. My siblings and I pored over the book, estimating speed and distance, coming to the optimistic conclusion that we could get close to the end of the trail at Tobermory . We even equipped ourselves with a snake-bite kit, in case we made it to the Bruce Peninsula and encountered one of those fearsome Massasauga Rattlers . This just goes to show how little non-hikers really know about distance. It’s just as well that we weren’t really determined to finish the trail. In our three-week vacation, we barely made it off the Niagara Peninsula.   My family and I set off on this adventure in our usual fashion, which was by walking to the Longueuil Metro station. Fully equipped with knapsacks and hiking boo...

On April 29, 1967, my family took its first expedition to the newly opened Expo 67.   Soon after, my mom wrote an account of the day.   Here is that account.   I was five years old.   My grandparents weren’t there that day.   This photo was taken some other year (not sure which) when they came to visit.  My grandmother must have taken the picture.   Left to right: me, Mom, Mary, Grandpa, Murray (behind Grandpa), Kathleen, Dad     High excitement and a few howls at breakfast and dressing and leaving activities. But we got away bright and early for us--9:15. Drove over Victoria Bridge with dire warnings from Murray and Kathleen that you can't get to Expo from Victoria Bridge. They proved right—they and the map. We had to first get into Montreal and pretend we didn't come from the South Shore, and get ourselves onto the new express highway that rolls down beside Expo and under the Victoria Bridge. There, we kept getting waved ...

When my family went to the west coast in 1975, we spent a day at the Pacific National Exhibition.   There were rides, cows, and a demolition derby…all in the pouring rain. I was in heaven.   These big-city events are one way for urbanites to get a taste of the county fair: the exhibitions, the rides, and maybe a circus.   As a Canadian, I got to enjoy all of these on a national level.   But I had to wait. The Exhibition When my siblings and I were very small, my parents took the family on short expeditions after church every Sunday.   I clearly remember hanging out at the St. Lambert locks, watching ships rise and fall.   One Sunday we ended up on a hill beside the Saint Lawrence river, looking at a pair of islands.   They were crawling with machinery.   Even though I was only five, I must have been listening to my parents’ conversation, because I know, all these years later, that these were the Expo islands.   We had fun at Expo 67...

Image by 1239652 from Pixabay  I grew up in an interesting place. Quebec had parties , politics , sports , and some cutting-edge schooling .   It also saw a little bit of trouble , which we could all have done without.   But something else was going on in Quebec while I grew up there: a revolution. I was in the middle of it but didn’t see it; it was too quiet.   My family’s day-to-day life was lived in the worlds of the Protestant school and the Anglican church. We knew our Francophone classmates and neighbours, and we heard lots of French spoken at the public swimming pool (I once ended up in an all-boys swimming class because the registrar thought I was Jean-the-French-boy, not Jean-the-English-girl).   But we didn’t know the Francophone world well enough to be party to the profound shift in culture that was pulsating around us. But I can look back and see that it was there.   The revolution was already underway when my family arrived in St. Lamb...

When I moved to Ottawa in 1981, I liked to ride my bicycle along the Ottawa River . I lived in the west-end suburb of Nepean and rode from Andrew Haydon Park to downtown. I often stopped on a hillside near Woodroffe Beach and enjoyed the view of the Gatineau Hills. Now, married with four grown children, I live in the east-end suburb of Orleans. I like to ride my bicycle along the Ottawa River from Petrie Island to the Aviation Museum . I often stop on a hillside at the mouth of Green’s Creek and enjoy the view of the Gatineau Hills.   This is where 30 years has taken me: 25 Kilometres down the Ottawa river.   I loved Montreal, and I loved living at home. I would have stayed. But I wanted to learn a trade, and I was too insecure in my language skills to attend a French cooking school. The Baking Techniques course at Algonquin College in Ottawa was only one year long. Moving to another city was an exciting idea, as long as it wasn’t too far from home. And Ottawa had a...

In a blog about Canada, there has to be at least one post with this title.   Cold is the dominant theme this winter.   There was a day in December 2013 when it was colder in Winnipeg than on Mars.   By Christmas 2013, we in Ottawa had already had a nasty cold snap, and the snowbanks were already up to our waists.   My husband calls this an “old-fashioned winter.”   It’s very telling that full-on winter by Christmas is considered a thing of the past. During the winter of 1975/1976, my two sisters and I were all in high school together.   A mere three or four years previous to that, our teachers had pulled the rug out from under our elementary school education by eliminating everything we had been taught about pounds and ounces, feet and inches, and Fahrenheit.  In  1975, metric became the officially-used measurement system in Canada .   Those of us who had not been learning metric since Kindergarten were given lots of help.   The...

Salle de la Reformation. The official opening of the League of Nations.  Photo obtained on Wikimedia Commons: “ This file is a digital replica of a document or a part of a document available at the National Library of Norway under the URN  no-nb_nansen_2488 . ” The new League of Nations held its first General Assembly in Geneva on November 15, 1920.   My great uncle Loring Christie was there as part of the Canadian delegation , and wrote about it in letters to his parents.   Below are some excerpts, written in December, 1920. "I am writing this in the Assembly Hall & I hope you will forgive the pencil.   The speeches are not very inspiring this morning and I seize the moment to send love & Christmas greetings … The Assembly has now been going since Nov. 15; people are getting fed up & tired of each other; there is a general determination to bring the thing to an end, and I think it certain that we shall be through by the end of next wee...