This month's "parties"

Written on Christmas Day

The only Christmas gatherings we went to this month were the unreal ones. 

From their individual living rooms, on December 7th, more than 100 CFUW-Ottawa women came to an online Holiday Party: "the most unique venue ever!" Lasting a couple of hours, the event was quite skillfully executed and very well received. Catherine acting as the MC did a particularly fine job. Alice auctioned a basket of wines and cookies for the Scholarship Fund for which the bidding went above $300. Heather entertained us with a funny story about a goldfish and Gouhar told an anecdote about black rat snakes invading her family cottage in the country. Ilse and Käti read out poems they'd written and Elizabeth, the director of the Club's choir, presented its theme song, We are the MadriGals, the singers having prerecorded this in parts to new, Covid-relevant words. In normal years, the "MadriGals" would be giving concerts at local retirement homes; just now that is out of the question. Elizabeth had some of us standing up and waving our arms about for "warm-up" exercises in the privacy of our own homes. In addition there were musical interludes from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and children's choir (an arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon) and from a Carleton University graduate whom our Club had sponsored, Anita Pari, played Chopin's Arpeggio Étude:

I liked the moment when Hope, a Jewish member of the Club, gave us some insights into Hanukkah traditions, such as spinning a Dreydl, and then when we watched the (USA) National Children's Chorus charmingly singing about this game!

Natalie talked about her memories of Christmas in Hong Kong. Diane, who has published a 100-year history of the CFUW, read us an extract describing Club parties in the 1950s, elaborate and stylish affairs. Toward the end of the current one, Barbara told us a story of her father's recollection of wartime Christmases and and advised us to persuade the older generations of our families to tell their stories too, before those precious narratives are lost. Pat brought the party to a close with a final poem, leaving us with the message that we should approach 2021 "with a glad and hopeful heart." 

We were allotted to "breakout rooms" at one point where we were encouraged to talk to one another in groups of eight, for ten minutes. Otherwise the majority of the party-goers, me included, were passive listeners. I posted some screenshots on the Club's private Facebook page and, soon, I have to complete a report of this surprisingly happy event, for the Club's next newsletter, that I'll probably base on the first half of this blogpost.

Later that week, I hosted a special meeting of my conversation group at which each participant told the others in German of her particular memories of Christmases experienced in diverse parts of the world (Brazil, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, Cuba, the Netherlands, Bangkok, Helsinki, Canada).

Family parties went online as well. Yesterday we had a Zoom call with Debbie, David and Robert who were staying at a house in Eastbourne, Sussex, and then we celebrated Christmas in advance with George and company in Australia, who had already opened all their presents. Today, Christmas Day, was another marathon of phoning and video-chatting with friends and family, asking what they were all up to. My sister called from Wales before we were dressed, here; we returned her call and the video link kept breaking up, but it was so good to see one another with our respective Christmas decorations in the background. Chris spent half an hour talking to his sister too, in Grantham, Mrs Thatcher's home town. Then we had a prearranged Zoom meeting with Emma and Peter and their sons in London (whom we'd also seen on Christmas Eve) and Peter's parents and brothers in Essex. After a local phone call with Elva, who with Laurie would usually share a Christmas Dinner with us, Rob called Chris from York, while I dozed off. 

We are flagging. Chris says he doesn't have the energy to go to bed so will sleep on the settee*. He ran on his treadmill again this afternoon, and we've been for two 3km walks, under dark grey skies, along the wet pavements. There seem to be many more Christmas lights in porches and round windows, in the branches of what our city's "distinctive trees" and round the tree trunks, this year. Our neighbours on the front of Cathcart Street had a sort of in-person street party in progress with Sandra handing out cups of mulled wine from her porch. 

We enjoyed our meals today.  I enjoyed the preparing of them too. Roast turkey breast with ham and stuffing, sprouts and carrots with mushrooms and almonds, roast potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy. We had some merlot with that. I'd baked a couple of mini Christmas cakes previously. Supper was a multi-ingredient potato salad, inspired by a German recipe for a Czech salad, and a sausage filled omelette.

Chris is moving around very slowly, saying Ow! because his legs hurt. He gave me the present of a machine that makes tap water fizzy. I shall have some now and retire to bed again.

* He did make it upstairs in the end.

Christmas continued

Christmas Eve now, and we're enjoying a log fire tonight. It's raining instead of snowing, as would be more usual, but nothing's normal this year, and 8°C outside, as predicted. Another abnormality was my forgetting to listen in the service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College Cambridge, but in any case that wouldn't have been the same because no congregation was admitted, due to the British lock downs.

In London and Sydney our grandsons are showing signs of excitement. The Australians are already in the afternoon, so we had Eddie showing us the presents he'd opened, the chocolates he was eating and the paper hats he was colouring-in. He was glad to tell us that Santa had not only taken the snacks left out for him and his "reindeers," but had even left a thank-you note. On the other side of the world, in London, we watched Alex, the 14-year-old, stretching up to show us how he could touch the ceiling these days, and Thomas putting the unopened Christmas presents into individual piles, so that the family would know whose were whose. We'll see them again tomorrow.

Emma bought me a baobab sapling, hoping that it will grow to maturity once out of its nursery near the village of Matsangoni, in Kenya, and sequester a good deal of carbon. I was delighted with this gift, which my daughter has called "Canadian Hope". I can find the place where it grows on Google Earth and perhaps watch its progress. Emma bought another such tree for herself. We're encouraged to buy a forest!

For Chris, we have acquired a treadmill today.  He bribed the delivery men quite generously to ensure that this heavy, bulky object reached our basement safely. It said in the installation manual that it would take 40 minutes to erect. More like two hours actually. I refrained from taking a blood pressure reading either during or after the construction process. It was a success at last, however, and he ran on it, so that's good.

Not too bad a Christmastime

It's peaceful to stay at home without visitors. The small tree is decorated and lit; there's a small pile of gifts under it. The fire's going to blaze in the hearth. We have been listening to Beethoven and Schubert recordings and I'm accompanying Schumann's Dichterliebe songs at the piano. More music: Frank Gruska made a video of us singing in parts as a substitute for the usual carol-singing party we attend at Jennie's and Bill's place on Kensington Avenue. It's called Christmas at Kensington, and shows us performing E. Poston's Jesus Christ, The Apple Tree in which the women's voices divide into four parts. I took the top line, prerecording it at home for Frank to add to the mix. Chris sang the bass part, likewise.

Snow fell today, briefly, not much of it, and the temperature's currently at -6 and rising. Tomorrow and on Christmas Day a deluge of rain is expected, in warmer air, +8. A green Christmas, then. 

Multiple emails have to be written, this week, but these are end-of-the-year greetings to friends rather than work. I'm attaching copies of our Christmas letter, which didn't have as much travel news in it as previously. Our only travelling is on foot round the neighbourhood, each day: through Bordeleau Park and past the Chinese Embassy, across the St. Patrick's Street bridge to the other side of the Rideau River then through New Edinburgh to the Minto Bridges, and so back across the river and home again. Three kilometres. We've seen sun, sunsets, moon and stars on this walk, and last week the near conjunction of the planets. We missed the once-in-800-years moment due to a cloudy, foggy night; it can't be helped.

This evening I gave Chris a warm foot bath, so that he's sure to sleep well. We have plenty of food in the fridge and cupboards. We are the lucky ones of this world.

Reflected in steel balls

Our group has made a couple of attempts to meet out of doors during the pandemic, because we're missing one another. The snag is that several of our group are in the vulnerable category and don't feel like taking the risk, even in a relatively safe environment. This week, instead of meeting on a Zoom call, a few of us met in the parking lot of Strathcona Park for a face-to-face encounter instead, wearing masks of course, and warm clothes, because it was a chilly day. We did a lap of the park, setting off beside the Rideau River; its water level was very low and the ducks appeared to be wading rather than swimming in it. 

Then we crossed the bridge that connects Somerset Street to the eastern bank of the river, named the Adàwe Crossing, admiring the sculpture half-way across, two large steel balls reflecting us, the river and the sky, with the title, A View From Two Sides. This was created by the artist Kenneth Emig who knows our friend Jill (now living in Victoria, BC). Jill informs me that he made the sculpture at the new, Ottawa University Campus, light rail station, as well. That one is similar, featuring another steel sphere; he calls it Sphere Field.

The conversation in German didn't last all that long, due to the shortness of our walk, but we enjoyed one another's company and hope to meet in this way again. Ute extended her walk by arriving and returning home on foot; the rest of us used our cars.

Only short flights

"We can't fly anywhere!" Chris complains, meaning that this year we've been thwarted from undertaking a trip by air to stay overnight in a place that's new to us, or to land somewhere like Ithaca, say, in New York State, to revisit its attractions on the ground. Instead, we've only been for short flights, "round the block", usually up above the Gatineau River to the Wakefield area and back, which we can do in under an hour. Once, at the end of October, we extended that loop and overflew the dam at Low. We have memories of the "log-driver" canoeing trips that used to be offered by Aventures Radisson in the 1990s, on that stretch of the river, through spectacular scenery. 

Scenery near Low, QC

Nostalgia trips. On another afternoon, at the end of May, flying through bands of rain visibly falling from grey clouds as we approached them, where squalls of wind blew into us, we had a there-and-back outing by air to Whitewater Village on the banks of the Ottawa River, via the Luskville and Shawville areas, so that I could take aerial shots of Barbara's cottage where we'd stayed last November (in 2019). Barbara was there at the time of our flight, and came out on her deck to wave to us, even. Chris repeated that ride with Chuck, later, who takes better photos than I.

Whitewater Village

A similar ride was the one when, during the pumpkin harvest season in mid-October, we took the plane (without stopping) down to Cornwall airport (CYCC) and back, one Saturday afternoon, doing a "touch-and-go" landing on the runway and getting fine views of the St. Lawrence from the circuit there, with the international border very close. On the way there and back we overflew the farm where I'd been for a wagon ride through the pumpkin fields the previous day, with people in the Diplomatic Hospitality Group.

Pumpkin farm from the air

St. Lawrence River, near CYCC

Twice this year, we did land somewhere else and got out for a walk, again just repeating short trips we'd had many times in the past. It's almost exactly an hour between Rockcliffe airport and Kingston (CYGK), so that's a popular excursion for members of the Rockcliffe aviation fraternity; it's traditionally one's first solo cross-country flight when working towards one's Private Pilot Licence. Chris and I walked through the conservation area to the edge of Lake Ontario, that day. Another walk in the woods that we relished was on the day we flew north in September, also for about an hour, to Mont-Laurier airport (CSD4), our walk after lunch at the nearby roadside café following the ATV trails part way around the airport fence, on the outside, that is, through some wild-looking shrubland.

All worth doing, and we appreciate how extraordinarily lucky we are to have those experiences, and to be able to afford what it costs to use our little private plane, but none of the above is the same as a real flying adventure, such as we've boasted of in most previous years.

The Riverkeeper Meeting

I hosted the second of my guest-speaker meetings (Webinars, in effect) for my Environment Action group on November 9th. After the previous speaker (my daughter!) had described how scientists can assess the damage to our planet from outer space, by means of satellite technology, I said, making a bad pun, we were now "Zooming-in" to something closer to home, the state of our local rivers. Our speaker this time was Elizabeth Logue, "Riverkeeper". On Twitter, she calls herself @nibilogue. She is the policy developer and spokesperson for the Ottawa Riverkeeper organisation.

The Waterkeeper Alliance, soliciting the help of citizen scientists to keep waterways healthy,  is an international network of about 300 organisations, Ottawa Riverkeeper being one such. Its team of 12 organisers, plus their dedicated friends and assistants, are "the eyes and the ears of our watershed", monitoring the quality of the water we play in, swim in, fish in, and drink. Next year is its 20th Anniversary. 

Elizabeth loves the rivers, especially the Gatineau River on whose nearby banks she grew up. She still puts its rocks in her pockets, she said. At the start of her presentation she acknowledged her Indigenous heritage, the first guardians of this region being the Algonquin-Ashinabeg nation. She herself has Indigenous blood; her Irish grandfather married an Algonquin girl, and Elizabeth uses words from the native language. 'Thank you', in Algonquin, is Miigwetch.

The Ottawa or Kitchissippi River rises (not far from the source of the Gatineau River) in the Val d'Or region, meandering for about 1300 kilometres to Montreal where it merges with the St. Lawrence seaway. The Ottawa Riverkeeper sells maps of that watershed, an area that supplies drinking water to some two million people. The Ottawa River needs to be swimmable and fishable, in other words, safe. That means that sewage overflow must not go directly into it. The Riverkeeper team has been working with the municipalities of Ottawa and Gatineau to ensure that it doesn't, or that as little sewage seeps in as possible, so during these last few years a new sewer overflow pipe has been constructed beneath the city. (In fact it runs through our neighbourhood and we could hear the pile-drivers across the river from us making the hole for the tunnel in New Edinburgh park). When the construction was officially completed, on November 20th, Elizabeth Logue was standing alongside the Mayor and MP Catherine McKenna ("Climate Advocate" and Canada's Minister of Infrastructure and Communities). The Combined Sewage Storage Tunnel (CSST project) has been a $232.3 million investment, was constructed by the Tomlinson Group and is part of the Ottawa River Action Plan.

Other pollutants that ought to stay out of the river are the fertilizers and herbicides that kill the fish in it and are harmful to humans. Patches of algae blooms indicate where these contaminants are. Road salt is another problem, leaking into the drains through any small crack. After her presentation, in answer to a question about this, Elizabeth pointed out that it would be better to tackle the ice on city surfaces with urea rather than salt. 

At 58 sample sites where sediment had been investigated, micro-plastics have been detected. Nuclear waste is another huge hazard to health and biodiversity, from the reactors at Chalk River and Rolphton, near Renfrew (the latter was Canada's first nuclear reactor).

Other concerns of the Riverkeeper are the changing shoreline of the local rivers and the endangered species of flora and fauna. 50 (hydro) dams that have been constructed and / or decommissioned: the dams on the Lièvre are out of date; the Carillon dam is being reconstructed to include fish ladders. In collaboration with the Museum of Nature, the interaction of different species is closely observed. Zebra mussels are invasive. At risk are the American eel, the Lake Sturgeon carrying the embryos of hickory nut mussels, and the turtles. 

Groups of young people aged between 17 and 25 help with Watershed Health Assessment and Monitoring (WHAM) investigations, taking part in the Youth Water Leaders program. A recent initiative of the Federal Government is the Indigenous Guardians project. One Aboriginal community in our vicinity collaborates with scientists to help them understand the threats to fish, investigating mercury levels, for example, and there's a similar collaboration with people at the First Nations Reserve near Lake Timiskaming, upriver. 

Goal 6 of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals is the one about Clean Water and Sanitation. The UN declared this a Water Action Decade, so the Riverkeepers' work is very à propos. Canada's representative at the UN, Stéphane Dion, stated that "our future depends on a water-secure world," adding that "Canada is here to contribute, to be part of the solution."

Elizabeth left us with a hotline number to call if we have something to report concerning the rivers:

1-888-9KEEPER

For the record, a historic moment

 Screenshot taken this afternoon:

At this moment of tremendous relief, Shakespeare, as often, springs to mind, with Feste's remark in Twelfth Night, Act V, Scene I:

And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

... as does this line by Goethe:

Denn alle Schuld rächt sich auf Erde.