Two months in Canada

Friday 9 June

I put crazy paving steps in the garden, which was tiring but very satisfying.

Saturday 11 June

We had a barbecue in the garden to celebrate our birthdays and the new house, and I did a land acknowledgement saying that the land was the territory of the Attawandaron, Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples.

Monday 11 June

Today was induction day at head office for the new job; it went well.

Tuesday 12 June

Today is the first day in my actual office with my actual colleagues. Lovely people. On the way home from work, the rear brakes seized on my car. The first we knew about it was when someone shouted "fire" at us. So thankful that Bob was in the car with me, that someone pointed out the problem to us, and that the car was still under warranty and we got a courtesy car to tide us over.

15 June

We are gradually getting things sorted out here. Got car, TV, shelving, cat tent (for letting the cats in the garden gradually), getting a new freezer today, possibly a second car.

New job is going well, they’ve got a very well organized development environment which is brilliant (harder to break stuff). Car all sorted now.

18 June

We went to WicCanFest (basically an open Pagan event, not specifically Wiccan) on Saturday. Introduced the topic of inclusive Wicca to people; it’ll be interesting to see how things develop. 

On Sunday we went to Elora Gorge and then to a pub for lunch with two of Bob’s Morris friends (lovely people who are interested in the environment and gardening).

Gradually acclimatising the cats to the garden using a cat tent.

Not homesick yet but I can see it from here.

22 June

Job is going well; I successfully built something yesterday.

Yesterday evening, Bob and I went for a walk. There were red-winged blackbirds, cranes, loads of flowers (a pink & white vetch that smells nice; a white mallow; a white campion; water lilies on the millpond; a big pink convolvulus). We saw ducklings with a mother duck. So cute! And away from the river, we saw a cardinal (bird). And a beautiful sunset.There’s also a funny little bird that flies low over the water. It’s passerine in shape, brownish-black body, bluish-black head, and ears things in the water. I’ve named it the Ontario Dipper Bird.

In the garden we’ve had robins, squirrels, a rabbit, chipmunks, and mice. The roses and hostas are coming out.

27 June

Just finished reading The Dust that Falls from Dreams by Louis de Bernières. Lovely book. Shades of Galsworthy and Vera Brittain.

29 June

I was driving to work and listening to Classical FM (Canadian version of Classic FM), when Bach's Jesu joy of man's desiring came on. It's a very beautiful piece of music. What moved me was that we used to hum or whistle it in the car when I was a kid. My dad would start and we would join in. I was moved to tears - mixture of my family being far away and the poignancy of a childhood memory, I think.

2 July

Yesterday we went to Bob’s family cottage by Lake Erie and spent the afternoon and early evening swimming in the lake (freshwater swimming is wonderful), hanging out with the family, and having a barbecue. It was so great seeing the kids, and the rest of the family too. The kids showed me the amazing stuff they can do in the water: handstands and rolls and flips.

Exhausted as we’ve been painting a layer of primer in the living room. Looks a lot better!

Saw a blue jay and a female cardinal in the garden this morning. We’ve also planted the herb bed with rosemary, thyme, parsley, catnip, mint, coriander, and basil. Bob's friend brought some sweet woodruff, echinacea, and wild strawberries to plant.

4 July

On Monday (it was Canada Day, so day off) we put more primer on the walls and yesterday Bob put the yellow paint on. Horrid grey blue colour all gone (there’s still some in the kitchen but one doesn’t spend so long looking at that).

6 July

We went to Puslinch Lake, which was stunningly beautiful.

11 July

On Sunday, Bob and I drove to Lake Huron, which was spectacularly beautiful. I just wish I could look at the landscape here without thinking “this land was stolen from Indigenous peoples” every five minutes. Anyway we had a really nice time at the lake. Found a nice pub at Goderich, which used to be the station, too. 

13 July

Felt my first pang of homesickness today. Knew it would happen sooner or later, but it’s hard.

I’m pleased that the turnout in London to protest against Trump was good.

16 JulyHad an amazing weekend as we went to a cultural festival in Waterloo, where there was a Mapuche singer and storyteller from Patagonia, a Venezuelan band, a Mohawk storyteller, a Brazilian band, and nice food too. It was very hot in the sunshine but after a bit it clouded over and there was a breeze. We are going to Bob’s family cottage next week. Looking forward to that.

23 July
On holiday for the week, staying in the cottage by Lake Erie. We drove to Long Point and saw a snowy owl in broad daylight; also some turkey vultures. And we found a nice restaurant for lunch and had nachos.

24 July

Having a lovely relaxing time at the cottage. It rained buckets yesterday so we went to Niagara on the Lake (very pretty place) and it had cleared up by the time we got there. Also spoke with my friend Jane via Skype, which was nice. Then we went to the Brock monument to the war of 1812 and discovered that there’s a substantial additional monument to the Indigenous people who also fought against the Americans on the Canadian side. This was pleasing. (Photos on Instagram.)

25 July

We went kayaking on the O:se Kenhionhata:tie (Mohawk / Kanienke:ha, Willow River), Grand River (English). We saw cormorants, kingfishers, terns, and dragonflies. A dragonfly landed on my kayak. In the evening we went for a walk by Lake Erie (Erielhonan).

27 July

We visited the home of Mohawk / Kanienke:ha poet, Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwa:ke). Her father was a Mohawk chief, her mother was a Quaker whose family had come to help with the Underground Railroad. Her father built the house the same on both sides to offer a welcome to Indigenous people arriving by canoe from the river, and to European visitors arriving by road. The house is allegedly haunted, especially the room where Pauline wrote her poetry. In one photo you can see a replica of the Two Row Wampum, a peace treaty between the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and Europeans — repeatedly broken by European settlers. The drawing room furniture in the house was designed by Pauline’s father. We also visited the Mohawk chapel, where her father is buried.

We visited the infamous Mohawk Residential School. Pauline Johnson’s brother ran away from the school; professional runner Tom Longboat said he wouldn’t send his dog here. Known locally as “The Mush Hole” for the awful food — corn mush. Children at residential schools were forbidden to speak their Indigenous languages or express their cultures. Christianity was forced on them.

Lastly, we visited a reconstructed Haudenosaunee longhouse and village, within the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve. The Mohawk storyteller we met at the Waterloo culturual festival told us that they had to apply for planning permission for this and submit an architectural drawing! For a structure they’ve been building for millennia on their own lands. Anyway I’m glad they built it.

29 July

We went to the Six Nations Pow-wow. My first ever. It was amazing. The dancing, the regalia, the food, the craft stalls. 

After my happiness at seeing the depth of culture still available to the Haudenosaunee — knowledge of healing, wampum, traditional laws, language, etc, my heart breaks for everything that was destroyed by the period of cultural genocide. And I’m angry that it happened.

The government needs to implement UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples). Not more of the failed policies that are still oppressing Indigenous people/s.

But what I saw today gave me hope. The depth of knowledge and culture available is considerable — and people seem a lot more confident and proud of their heritage than was apparently the case in the fairly recent past.

A lamente for the schnoz

Whan thatte the Sonne hadde hys course yronne
Acrosse þe Fens to Trumpingtoun
He passed þe windowe of þe Bo
And mayde hys schnoz to glowe.
Full sore the schnoz did pele and pine
For cooler daies of yore, whan eke the windes did whine
And chauntë solemne canticles about þe college
Impartyng esoterick knowledge
Unto yonge studients, that sluggardlie to classen goe
Under þe tutelage of Bo.

memories of Cambridge

As Bo is moving to Cambridge, it brought back memories...

Cambridge is in many ways a strangely schizoid place. It is divided between town and gown - there's even a pub name commemorating this deep divide. The university was founded in the 14th century after some academics fled from Oxford after the people of Oxford rioted in protest against the oppressive behaviour of that university. Accordingly, the Cambridge colleges appear to have been built to withstand a siege; they have ditches and banks and cast-iron fences. They also own most of the river bank between Midsummer Common and Silver Street, and only members of the college can sit upon the hallowed lawns. That said, most of the colleges do let local residents into the tourist bits for free, which is nice. But the university once had enormous power. In the nineteenth century, an unaccompanied woman walking around at night could be arrested by the university proctors for soliciting.

I love the hidden corners of Cambridge, the architectural surprises. If you look up and in side streets, there are often quirky features of buildings - the gateway of Gonville and Caius college for example. There's also the splendid lamp-post in the middle of Parker's Piece, which traditionally has "REALITY CHECKPOINT" graffitied onto it. Last time I went, it was still there. Another architectural oddity is the Round Church, originally a Templar church; it has Romanesque architecture, but it's round. The Templars also had a cave in Royston - a bell-pit carved into the chalk which was rediscovered in the eighteenth century.

Then there's the stories that accumulate. Apparently Aleister Crowley was so smelly that his fellow students forced him to take a shower in the fountain of Trinity College; and Byron was so mad that he took showers there voluntarily. There's also a pool on the river Granta called Byron's Pool where he is supposed to have swum regularly. A popular Cambridge urban myth used to be the story that some students substituted a polystyrene ball for one of the stone balls on a bridge over the river Cam, and proceeded to push it off as a punt-load of other students was going underneath, causing them all to jump into the river. Another myth tells that one student dressed as a porter and another student walked across the lawn, complete with a sachet of fake blood under his shirt, and then the one dressed as a porter pulled out a fake gun and "shot" him, much to the consternation of a passing group of American tourists. Another story (untrue, alas) tells that Isaac Newton built the Mathematical Bridge without any bolts - it was just held together by geometry - and the other dons took it apart to see how he'd done it; but then they couldn't put it back together again without using nuts and bolts.

There are many literary associations in and around Cambridge. A E Housman was at Trinity. Rupert Brooke and Rose Macaulay used to hang out on Grantchester Meadows with their fellow "Neo-Pagans". Of course Brooke's poem about Grantchester is well-known (though its comic aspects are often forgotten), but he got the time wrong - the church clock was not stuck at ten to three, it was actually quarter to eight (but they moved the hands after he became famous for being a far-flung outpost of England in a foreign field). Aleister Crowley went to school in Bateman Street (but cursed anyone who looked upon the place; I'm doomed then, as I used to live two doors down from it) and later lived at 12 Portugal Place.

Grantchester Meadows are idyllic, and a great place for walks. I once went there to do a solo Midsummer ritual, and there was a party of hippies there playing the violin (rather well, I might add); quite magical.

Cambridge is also home to two fabulous museums: the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (like the Pitt-Rivers but bigger), and the Fitzwilliam Museum (which is like a mini-British Museum). I have spent many happy times there. The Fitzwilliam has a massive collection of Blake engravings which I never got to see; but I did see an exhibition of Hokusai there, and also paintings of Antarctica and volcanoes and stars by a wonderful artist whose name I forget. Another great place to visit is the Botanical Gardens; these used to be free of charge one day a week. They have enormous drifts of snowdrops and daffodils in spring, and a lovely grove of birch trees, and a brilliant winter garden with plants that have vivid colours in winter, like the beautiful Chinese rainbow birch.

Oddly two of the parks are named after Pagan festivals: Midsummer Common (where Strawberry Fair is held) and Lammas Land.

The pubs are quite characterful - I used to work in the Cambridge Blue (you had to have a degree to work there), and became good friends with the other bar staff, including Ruth Bagnall (sadly no longer with us) and Jane W, who then went on to work in the Boat Race as a music promoter. I tended to go in the pubs around Mill Road, but there are other good ones in the town centre. There's also a brilliant vegetarian place just up the road from King's College called the Rainbow Café. I sometimes went to the Tap and Spile, and once was playfully pushed into the river by a former Pink Floyd roadie while I was holding a pint of bitter. If I hadn't been holding a pint, I would only have gone in up to my ankles, but since I was trying to balance the pint I ended up sitting in the water (didn't spill a drop of the pint though). So I went for a quick swim in the river, and then climbed out and gave the said roadie a big wet hug, so he was almost as wet as me.

Bookshops are plentiful, as you might expect. The Libra-Aries bookshop on Mill Road is the Pagan and alternative bookshop. It wasn't there when I lived in Cambridge but we met the owners at a Pagan event a couple of years ago; they are lovely and very knowledgeable. In my day, the Pagan bookshop was the Ninth Wave (named after the Kate Bush song). In the centre of town, there's Heffers and the Cambridge University Press bookshop.

Some of the college chapels are wonderful - I went to a Tallis concert in Trinity chapel once, and the acoustic was amazing and made the music pour down the walls and float into your ears like a pale blue crystalline mist. Trinity chapel also has a Baroque interior and a black-and-white tiled floor. The atmosphere in the chapel of "Porterhouse" is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

I loved Cambridge, but it wasn't a good place for jobs unless you were a Cambridge graduate - that's why the landlord of the Cambridge Blue could stipulate that bar staff must have a degree. I applied for a PhD once, but the interviewer spent most of the interview staring at the ceiling, except when I told him I read French and German. I didn't get in. It could be frustrating sometimes, being on the outside of a hive of intellectual activity, unable to participate. However, I did write my first two books while living in Cambridge, got involved in Wicca there, and had a relationship with a wonderful bloke with whom I moved to Scotland in 1994. We split up eventually (in part because he didn't get Paganism) but I wish him well.