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I posted to this forum a little under a year ago a somewhat reflective missive entitled ‘Time Passes’. The subject of that post was this very journal; the trigger for my writing it the circumstance that the ninth anniversary of my very first blog post had then but recently occurred.

I pondered the actuality that I had certainly not set out to embark on a project that would shamble on for quite such a long time – its longevity having surprised me just as much as I imagine it would anyone else who devoted so much as a moment’s thought to the matter.

I wrapped up that epistle by musing that – having gotten so close – I really did feel inclined to keep things going for long enough that my efforts would have encompassed an entire decade!

And here we are! Hoorah!!

I can’t help thinking that some sort of celebration might be in order, though not – heaven forfend – anything that breaches Covid protocols (or indeed breaks the law). I am not sure what form that might sensibly take.

Last year I included some statistics – for them as likes such things. Here they are again – but updated (with last year’s figures in brackets).

In the nine ten years that I have been writing this blog I have written 1025 (925) posts (averaging just over 100 posts a year – approximately two a week). If the internal statistics are to be believed I have written a little over 401,000 (365,000) words in that time and uploaded some 2,845 (2,590) images – many of them my own photographs.

As I wrote last year – “Not bad, huh“?!

In last year’s post I toyed with the notion of it long being time to wind things up. In the light of some most kind and affirmative remarks from gentle readers I determined instead to keep things going.

My thought this year would be that I could perhaps reduce the frequency of my posts, from the current average of around two a week to just a single weekly post. It is not that I mind the discipline of knocking out regular posts but as I get older I do wonder if there is still enough of interest on which to report.

Do let me know what you think…

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Huzzah!

Hmmm! Interesting!!

So – today I received an email from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). It contained the following document (which I have redacted appropriately):

This – the first acknowledgement from IRCC that I have, indeed, applied for Canadian Citizenship – is the reason for the “Huzzah!” in the title of this missive.

The “Hmmm! Interesting!!” at the head of the post comes from the realisation – reinforced by a quick scan back over previous posts – that I did not actually report to this journal the fact that I had finally submitted said application back in July.

Given that I have logged exhaustively to this channel every other little detail concerning my odyssey to the New World – including last year’s renewals of both my Permanent Resident card and my UK passport – that is remiss and should be corrected immediately.

The final process of application for citizenship – having lived in Canada as a Permanent Resident for six years – was relatively straightforward. The first thing that one does is to check that one is eligible. This entails going through a checklist of requirements – including that of having been resident in Canada for at least 1,095 days over the 5 year period leading up to the application. IRCC provides a handy online calculator (the Online Physical Presence Calculator – CIT 0407) for this part of the operation, the results of which feed forward into the application itself.

The application is effected by completing form CIT 0002 (10-2020) – the latter part of the form number being the current version number which will change from time to time. Form CIT 0007 (06-2021) is the accompanying document checklist. In my case this indicated that I should submit the following:

  • The application form itself (CIT 0002)
  • The output from the Online Presence Calculator (CIT 0407)
  • A colour photocopy of every page of my UK passport
  • Photocopies of two personal identification documents – which must include name, photo and date of birth
  • Two identical citizenship photographs
  • The fee receipt – the application fee having been paid online in advance
  • The document checklist itself (CIT 0007)

If one completes the application form online – as did I – one also generates a couple of pages of barcodes, the which should be printed and submitted as part of the application.

IRCC do not respond in any way until they actually start processing the application. In my case I posted everything off back in July and – as you see above – have only just received the acknowledgement that the application has been received.

The IRCC Application Tracker – to which I can now log on – tells me that my application is ‘In Progress’ – which is good news. Even better news is that – because I am (well) over 54 years old I do not need to take (or pass) the citizenship test, or to provide proof that I can in fact speak English.

Now – following that brief flurry of excitement – it is back to the waiting game!

 

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CC0 Public Domain image from https://www.maxpixel.net/sportsIn the afterglow of Emma Raducanu’s thrillingly successful and unprecedented title campaign at the US Tennis Open last week I promised that I would take a quick canter through the various sporting events that took place throughout the summer, as it now winds down into the Fall.

In the normal run of things I would certainly have posted little vignettes on the events that interested us as they came and went – as a normal part of the rich tapestry of life – by way of illustrating that which keeps us oldies chugging along as opposed to just slumping into an armchair and gazing, dead-eyed, out of the window.

I am, therefore, slightly worried that we have gone through this brief season – watching coverage here and there, rejoicing when sports that we love have shown signs of recovering from the pandemic – only for very little of it to have moved us as it would normally have done.

Is this somehow down to the events themselves – or is it just us?

This was, of course, a belated Olympic and Paralympic year (confusingly maintaining the conceit that it was still 2020 in Tokyo rather than 2021). We enjoyed a fair amount of the coverage and the Brits and Canadians performed pretty much in line with expectation, but though the empty expanses of the spectator-free stadia did not prove quite the dampener that they might have there was still something about the event that prevented it from quite hitting the high notes. As a Brit I was also somewhat worried that in events in which we were but recently world-beaters (rowing and cycling come to mind) we seem to have fallen off the radar. True we won medals in some of the new events (skateboarding, BMX!) but I am not sure what to make of those.

For those of us who are Rugby enthusiasts and who hail from the UK, the quadrennial tours by the British and Irish Lions to the southern hemisphere are virtually on a level with the World Cup when it comes to representing the pinnacle of the sport. We were all thus agog with excitement this summer at the promise of the Lions twelve-yearly trip to South Africa.

You may have gathered from the overall tone of this post that the outcome was a disappointment – and not just because of the results. The tour – beset as it was by the now familiar COVID troubles – had a sadly sour note to it. This was very much not helped by the frankly bizarre behaviour of some of the South African backroom staff – including some who should very much have known better – but it also did not help that the rugby itself was fairly grim. World champions they may be but I for one do not care for the Springbok style of play and the fact that the Lions chose to try to fight fire with fire proved sadly to be the wrong approach on the part of the Lions manager – the otherwise estimable Warren Gatland.

There was one a brief passage in the third and deciding test when the contest suddenly sparked into life; when Scottish fly half Finn Russell finally made it onto the pitch. Sadly it was too little too late – though maybe lessons will be learned (again) for the future.

Having been given a drubbing in India during the winter the English mens’ cricket team faced a busy summer hosting the return series against the Indians as well as the Kiwis – who now hold the Test Championship title. In spite of Joe Root’s repeated heroics the inconsistent form of many of the squad and the lack of match readiness resulting from the introduction during the height of the summer season of an idiotic new short format of the game, resulted in a completely unpredictable sequence of results.

Some of those were down to the Indians, who suffered their own strange lapses without which the England results would have been even poorer. As it was the final test of the summer would have given the English an opportunity to come from behind to tie the series – had it not been postponed indefinitely at the last minute as a result of positive COVID tests in the Indian backroom team. This sad ending seemed about par for 2021.

There was also – I believe – some sort of footie tournament during the summer, but regular readers would not expect me to know anything about that – and nor I do!

 

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The Girl and I watched the other day the extraordinary denouement of the US Open women’s tennis championship from Flushing Meadows, New York.

In the unlikely eventuality that any gentle reader might somehow have remained unaware of the details of this unprecedented match – here they are:

  • The final was between two teenagers – nineteen year old Canadian Leylah Fernandez and eighteen year old Brit Emma Raducanu.
  • Neither girl had been seeded and both had had remarkable and unexpected runs to the final.
  • The winner – Emma Raducanu – is the youngest Briton to win a Grand Slam title.
  • She is also the first British winner of the women’s US Open since Virginia Wade (who was in the crowd) won at Flushing Meadows back in 1968.
  • Ms Raducanu is the first woman or man ever to win a Grand Slam title having started as a qualifier.
  • She is the youngest Slam winner since Maria Sharapova in 2004 and the first woman to win without dropping a set since Serena Williams in 2014.
  • Both young ladies appeared to be supremely self-assured and nerveless throughout. Oh to be so at any age – let alone when still in one’s teens.

The Girl had, naturally, been rooting for Leylah Fernandez and the knowledge that Emma Raducanu was actually born in Toronto and moved with her parents to the UK when she was two years old didn’t really help much. For both Brits and Canadians, however, the current plethora of sporting talent on show from both nations is extremely pleasing and its like has not been seen since eons passed.

Hearty congratulations to both youngsters – but in particular to Ms Raducanu who, in addition to becoming US Open champion, earned herself two good passes in her A Levels a couple of months back (goodness knows how she found the time!). It think it is fair to say that neither of the girl’s lives will be the same again.

Writing about this event reminds me that I have not posted anything at all to this journal on the subject of sport for some considerable time – the which is all the more peculiar given that there has been a fair bit of it on offer this summer.

I feel that a brief catch-up and explanation is due and promise same for the very next posting (or one shortly thereafter should other ‘stuff’ intervene).

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A new entry in an occasional series that should be entitled “Only in Canada“.

This one made it to The Guardian…

The headline reads:

“Pilot charged after landing helicopter in Canada town centre to buy ice-cream cake”

Enjoy!

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Two days ago I started a relatively light-hearted post on the subject of having to move into our basement to avoid the worst of the recent heatwave. By the time that I had finished and posted it yesterday the mood and tone of the piece had changed. News of the tragic sudden deaths of an unexpectedly high number of  the elderly and infirm of British Columbia certainly put into perspective the trivial inconvenience of having to transfer our sleeping arrangements into our basement.

My post had also made reference to a visit that I paid back in the 1980s to the hill station of Ootacamund in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. I included a quotation by the first Lord Lytton concerning the ‘English’ nature of the rain and the mud at Ooty. This Lord Lytton was the very same (though I had not noticed the fact at the time of writing) for whom the small settlement (less than 250 inhabitants) in the Fraser valley in BC was named – the which was coincidentally also mentioned in my post yesterday as being the town that had – over the past three days – set three successive all-time heat records for Canada.

It is doubtful that many outside the country had even heard of Lytton – though some may have seen items in the international press on this new and unwanted record.

Today Lytton is gone!

On Wednesday afternoon a wildfire swept through the town so quickly that there was no time to issue evacuation orders. Residents grabbed what they could, took to their cars and fled. Within two hours ninety percent of the town had burned to the ground. Though loss of life is thought currently to be mercifully light, the loss of homes and property is not.

Our heartfelt thoughts are with all those who have suffered and those who will continue to suffer as a result of this climate-related episode and should any others wish to suggest that now is not the time to be raising such matters I can only say:

“Now is exactly the time!”…

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I have only visited India once – and that was a long time ago, back in the 1980s. We went – very sensibly – during what is, I believe, called the ‘post-monsoon’ season. This period – from October through November – is usually fairly dry but also considerably cooler than are the summer and monsoon seasons.

Such things are understandably of concern to the Brits, who, for some hundred of years, insisted on venturing to parts of the globe for which they were (and are) not really equipped.

We went home, of course, before the weather became too extreme for us. The Brits who were stationed in India during the British Raj were obliged (by their masters) to stay. To avoid the more unpleasant (to them at least) aspects of the climate they established settlements between two and three thousand metres up in the foothills of the Himalayas and in other elevated parts of the sub-continent, to which they might retreat when the heat on the plains became intolerable.

These Hill Stations – as they became known – were frequently modeled on aspects of the Old Country, such that the ex-pats might pretend that they were back in good old Blighty! Lord Lytton said of Ootacamund (Ooty) in the 1870s – “Such beautiful English rain – such delicious English mud!”. This does, of course, beg the question…

As it happens, I did visit Ooty. I had long nurtured a fascination for the place having seen images in one of my father’s old railway magazine of the steam rack railway (the Nilgiri Mountain Railway) that still connects (and is still operated by steam) Ooty to Mettupalayam on the plains below. The excursion from Bangalore to Ooty and back was quite an adventure and not one I could contemplate undertaking now – but I am very glad that we did so then.

“But why?” – the gentle reader might reasonably ask – “Are you reminiscing just now about your travels in the sub-continent some decades back?”

Good question!

Here in Canada we have for the past few days been sweltering under the influence of a heat dome. You may have read about this because it has become an international news story – and not for positive reasons. Such has been the intensity of this heatwave that the record for the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada was broken not once, not twice but three times within the last few days – each time at the small settlement of Lytton in the Fraser Canyon right here in BC. Yesterday’s maximum was in excess of 49°C! Tragically this heatwave has led to a spate of sudden deaths amongst the elderly and infirm across the country. Our thoughts are with those who have lost loved ones.

Given the changes in the world’s climate it is very likely that we will have increasingly to adapt to such conditions. Having no hill station to which to retire The Girl and I did the best that we could – we retreated to the guest bedroom in our walkout basement, where the temperatures have been a good few degrees cooler.

Clearly this is not an ideal long-term solution to ever rising temperatures. My next post will explore the matter further…

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Those of you who know me well know how I can stand up for other people – wade in and have my voice heard.  Less so when it is very personal or if it is about me.  Although never said to me explicitly, I always sensed that I should stay quiet, hide, just in case.  In case what?  I didn’t know.  Being raised by a residential school survivor and a parent who spent time in a French Catholic orphanage I think it was bred in the bone.  Stay quiet – don’t cause anyone in ‘authority’ to pay attention to you because that never turns out well.  I am grateful I grew up loved and wanted and cared for and I love and admire my grandparents and parents and relations for who they are, all that they did and accomplished.   We are a family of survivors.

But when we are reminded, again, of the genocide of the first people and the children found buried at the same residential school where my grandmother and two aunties were forced to go, it is not a time to be quiet or hide.

Canada does not want to pay compensation to the remaining residential school survivors of St. Anne’s.

This school had the electric chair that they used to punish children and also to study the effects of electricity on the human body.

The information in the Canada Food Guide was informed by scientific studies on children in residential schools.  That is how we learned the minimum requirements of what a person needs to eat without dying or succumbing to disease.  It is not a surprise that my grandmother did not talk much about life at the residential school, but she did talk about always being hungry.  Always, always hungry.  Imagine in a land of plenty growing up starving, surrounded by people who treat you as if you are less than human.

There can be no question that children in residential schools were abused in so many ways.  They did not get to live with the people who loved them, who wanted them, and they watched their friends die and they were forced to dig their graves.

For all of these reasons, if you are moved to, I invite you to write an email or a letter to the Prime Minister of Canada (who, along with his cabinet, abstained from voting in a motion put forth by the NDP that Canada drop it’s ‘belligerent and litigious approach to justice) – that you don’t approve of these actions, that indigenous people are people.  That Canada drops all lawsuits against indigenous peoples.  That the millions of dollars spent fighting in courts be used to provide all reservations with clean water.  Stop arresting those who are protecting unceded territory, pay compensation to St Anne’s survivors.  It won’t undo past actions, but it is a meaningful act of reconciliation.  Every letter makes a difference.

This is not meant to make anyone feel badly – too many people do not know about this, or the extent of the horror.  We cannot change the past but if we do not face this, together, we, all of us, cannot heal.

All my relations

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Well, here we are in May – already a third of the way through the year…

We are also – as The Girl pointed out to me this morning – now a full sixty weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic…

This is probably as good a time as any to take stock and to see how the year – and the pandemic – is progressing. It would seem sensible from our point of view to take as a yardstick the post that I wrote back in January in which I looked forward (as has become my habit during each January) to the coming year – laying out our plans, hopes and dreams for the months ahead.

That post contained a list of things that we very much wanted to be able to do. I make no apology for repeating it here:

  • To get to see family and friends – face to face!
  • To be able to entertain again
  • To dine out
  • To see some live theatre
  • To enjoy some live music
  • To attend a live sporting event (preferably Rugby!)
  • To be able to travel… anywhere!

So – how are we doing on that list? The answer is – of course – badly!

We must not be too down-hearted. The positive news is that both The Girl and I have had our first vaccinations. We even hear rumours – which we fervently hope will turn out to be true – that the second jabs will be made available somewhat sooner than the sixteen weeks that are currently being touted. Canada is apparently taking delivery in May of a vaccine delivery larger than those of the last five months combined – which is cause for an optimistic two cheers.

Now, I know that in some other places in the world – and I am thinking particularly of the UK in this instance – progress in the vaccine rollout has been significantly better. Friends and family back there have either had their second jabs already or are shortly so to do. There is much talk of ‘opening-up’ back in the old country. Now – the optimism could turn out to be premature and it may all end in tears, but let us hope fervently that it does not. I hope that the UK gets a decent outdoor summer season in some form and that as things move into the autumn life really does begin to return to some sort of normal.

Here in Canada things are not looking so good. In BC – and in particular here on the Island – we are reasonably protected, but other parts of the country are still suffering high rates of infection and talking about locking down further. I fear that our summer will be much like that of last year.

Aside from the wish-list posted above my January scribblings included one or two other projects or plans slated for 2021. In my next post I will report on how those are going.

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This time from the Guardian – who also seem to have a bit of a Canada theme going. Who can blame them?

Hummingbirds halt controversial pipeline

Gotta love those cute little hummers!

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