These two fellows have on the outskirts of the city in what was once cow fields and now a suburban area, developed a beautiful vegetable and salad garden, with 8 varieties of tomatoes and fresh garlic just picked. He also has zucchini flowers which are very edible and delicious. This time of the year markets are full and until end October of an increased variety of fresh vegetables, so fun. Fresh Island Corn which is very sweet not at all starchy.
The corn we buy usually arrives direct from farms just outside the city, brought in by the farmers to the small markets. Speaking with our Burley Farmers they also have a program of a box of fresh produce starting in March, so we will register with them. Some of the produce little little carrots and square tomatoes which is a specialty if you like to stuff them.
We are one day away from departure, just like little kids we are excited. I was saying to a fellow blogger that the sky in New London or anywhere outside the city is simply white with stars, it is almost scary to think there is so many planets and stars up there and all around our little planet. Once you drive out of town at night you have to drive with your high beams on all the time, the roads are so dark, visibility is poor, but the sky is very bright.
Hoping for great weather, it looks like sunshine and then Bar-b-q time. We are taking some of this garlic with us to cook.
We are now less than a week away from going to the cottage at Yankee Hill at French River. The Light House in the area is known as the New London Rear Light house, it indicates where the channel is and the sand bars all around and the entrance to the French River and the South West river. It is a very quiet rural area of beaches and sand dunes. It was one of the earliest settled areas by a group of Puritans who unfortunately died during the first winter, the handful of survivors moved to Park Corner just a few kilometres away.
We hope for good weather and we will bring books etc. a sweater for cool nights. We are looking forward to it, just for the quiet.
Today 15 August is the start of the big holiday in Europe, like France but for us it was the week of our arrival in Rome in 2007. The City was super quiet, everyone is gone, businesses, the government are shut, grocery stores are open only for a couple of hours, banks are closed, only ATM work. It is very strange but so nice at the same time, life comes to a standstill. We had never seen that anywhere, but in Italy it is part of the culture of the country. So we too would go to the seaside to Pesaro in the Marche region on the Adriatic.
The dog days of summer are those days when Sirius, the Dog Star (so called for the way it follows Orion into the night sky), rises above the eastern horizon before sunrise and becomes the morning star. The English term comes from the Latin dies caniculares, itself a calque of the Greek.
Beautiful grilled mediterranean sardines, so delicious with a drizzle of olive oil, french fries and a salad of tomatoes and a nice glass of Grillo wine from Sicily.
I came across a YouTube video about Huiss Doorn or House Doorn the residence in exile in the Netherland of Kaiser Wilhelm II who died 81 years ago in 1941 at Doorn.
What I did not know was that the mother of Audrey Hepburn was a Dutch noble, Baroness Ella Van Heemstra, Huiss Doorn was her childhood home until 1920 when the exile Kaiser bought the house and would live there until his own death in 1941.
When Baroness Van Heemstra died in Switzerland in 1984, her daughter Audrey Hepburn took her remains to be buried on the grounds of the property Huiss Doorn.
When the Kaiser was informed on 10 November 1918 that he had been pushed out by his own government and Chancellor and told he could not remain in Germany, he decided to go first to Spa in Belgium and was told the army did not want him and his life was in danger, he then gave the order to the engineer of his own private train to go the border with the Netherlands. At the border, the Dutch border guards were surprised to see him and refused to allow him into the country. He was made to wait several hours by Queen Wilhelmina and her government before getting permission to enter. The Dutch had suffered during the First World War and the Kaiser was an enemy but also a cousin of the Queen. The Dutch government convince Count Bentinck to allow the Kaiser to stay for a few days in his castle, this lasted 11 months. The Kaiser was not an easy guest and still behave as if he was the Sovereign.
Queen Wilhelmina refuse to turn over the Kaiser to a Court of Justice to be judged for war crimes, France was pushing for this, England was sort of on the fence, given that the Kaiser was the grandchild of Queen Victoria, The USA government was against the idea of a trial. The new government in Germany negotiated a favourable parting of the ways with the Imperial Family and the Kaiser, he was allowed to take with him all manners of furniture, paintings, silverware, household goods, and his military uniforms 300 in all. The train had 26 cars loaded with goods from the Neues Palais in Potsdam and the Palace in Berlin. Other stuff made their way to the family’s Castle in southern Germany, where his descendants still live. However Huiss Doorn was a mansion not a great palace and the place was full to the rafters with knick knacks, you could say it was over stuffed. Doorn is currently the property of the Dutch government and is a museum, it can be visited on a guided tour and you can see what it looked like when the Kaiser lived there.
The Kaiser remarried his wife Empress Augusta having died in 1920 of heart failure. When the Kaiser died at age 82 in 1941, he stipulated in his will that he did not want to be buried until the Hohenzollern family was restored to the German throne. So his coffin was placed in a mausoleum at the end of the gardens in Doorn, covered with his own personal Imperial Flag. The mausoleum is closed and cannot be visited by the public, only his relatives like Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia, who is the current head of the family have access to the mausoleum when they visit. So it has been 81 years and it does not look like the old Kaiser in his coffin will not be buried or going home anytime soon. Following a family tradition his 5 dachshunds are also buried by the mausoleum.
Yesterday I gave a tour to 50 American tourists who were travelling on a cruise ship. The tour was an all inclusive Anne of Green Gables with the author the late Lucy Maud Montgomery. This involves speaking about the author who was in her lifetime prolific, 21 books, 500 short stories and another 500 poems and 30 essays, countless lectures etc.
Maud lived from 1874 to 1942 dying of an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol, a fact hidden from the public for 50 years. This tour also requires that participants have at least read one book, maybe the most famous Anne of Green Gables. If not it is difficult to impart why you should be interested in this author. After all she died some 81 years ago, the world has changed quite a bit since. Her first book was published in Boston in 1908, after being rejected countless time by publishing houses. It was and is a fictional romantic fantasy of a mythical place on Prince Edward Island, Avonlea AKA Cavendish which is a tourist trap today.
Our tour started after travelling to Silverbush at Park Corner a small settlement about 55 minutes from Charlottetown on the West side of the Island. The Campbell family relatives of the Montgomery own to this day the house and farmland where Lucy Maud would grow up. You are welcomed by the Campbells who show you around the house, many of the rooms are exactly as they were in 1911 for her wedding day, furniture and all. Some of the furniture made famous by the books written by Lucy Maud, including the small organ in the salon used for her own disastrous wedding to the Rev Ewan MacDonald.
It is a very beautiful area just minutes away from French River where we spend time every summer. The tour in the countryside which would have been basically where the author Lucy Maud M. grew up. We also drove by her parents house where she was born, a very little house, which is interesting to visit to give you an idea of life then back in the late 1800’s, so very different from today. The houses were practical and nothing else, often small and you really had to share the space with your parents and siblings. There were lots of chores daily many very repetitive and time consuming. A life dictated by the sun and what daily light there was. Up at dawn to bed at dusk. Oil lamps, making your own food and keeping the fire going for cooking, outdoor plumbing and bath once a week in a great big tub in the kitchen. Difficult to imagine living like that today.
Finally we arrive at the fictional Avonlea, AKA Cavendish with all the tourist awful paraphernalia, fast food and cheap entertainment. The house green gables from the book is another house which belonged to her relatives and where she came to visit many times as a child. The house today is part of the National Park and has been considerably modified to fit the description in the book Anne of Green Gables, total fantasy but made to delight those who after reading the book want to see what it looks like in reality. The site is pristine, nothing out of place. Just outside the park and around the corner is a small cemetery where Lucy Maud Montgomery and her husband Ewan MacDonald are buried, a simple grave decorated with lots of red geraniums and 2 small hew trees.
We were 15 minutes late due to traffic coming back to the boat, people were anxious, but as I told them, cannot imagine the captain leaving minus 50 passengers, how would he explain that one. I did alert the Port that we were running late. Interesting just 25 minutes after our arrival at Port, passengers on board, the ship departed with 2 big blast of its horn.
I was exhausted talking and entertaining the group, I hope they liked the tour, despite their little knowledge about the author and her work.
I counted this morning 12 days before we go to the Cottage at Yankee Hill. So looking forward to our escape just 50 min down the road. The photo was taken today by our neighbour of the beach with the clouds on the horizon. A very quiet spot, few people. We are 3 min on foot from the beach and see it from our cottage window. I am seriously thinking that next year I would want to be there for maybe a month.
Today is a public holiday, Natal Day, which celebrates the creation of the Provinces of Nova Scotia and PEI as separate entities. It was one province before 1800, should have stayed that way.
I picked up at the Hospital a little pamphlet which explains the cost for tourists who would be in need of medial attention. As Canadians we are not aware of the cost because we never see an invoice, it’s all covered by our socialize medicine plan. Here is an example of what it would cost if you had to go to Emergency $886. Cdn. MRI scan $1326. Day surgery $26,000. a general room usually 4 beds one bath $2,500. if you are in ICU then it’s $5300.
Not cheap but probably less than hospitalization in the USA.
Well the tourism season is not going great guns, merchants are complaining that they have less sales due to the low volume of tourists. Apparently tourism is down -25% this year, it was suppose to be a great rebound year. No one seems to know why exactly, some factor could be the price of gas at $1.86 a litre or $7.45 a gallon. or hotel rooms and Air B&B on average at $400. per night. or more in some cases up to $700. ,such prices I find difficult to comprehend. I just feel that the prices have jumped but the overall value for your dollar has not, most places are very basic. A few new restaurants in town but the really good ones are few and far in between. The good ones are out of town, the wine list is still pretty basic, I would say pretty ordinary but the price $14 to $19 per glass, come on. The best meals are catered at home with your friends.
Tomorrow I am doing a all day tour with passengers from the Caribbean Princess, 3000 passengers. All about Anne tour, so we will visit several places in and around PEI where the author Lucy Maud Montgomery lived as a child, we will be going to French River among the places to visit. I will be sure to have a meal before I go, I find that when you are doing such tours you barely have time for a drink of water.
September, October I will be very busy with guide tours, almost everyday. Fall is the high season for cruise ships. Hopefully the weather will be nice and sunny.
The Sandman was a popular figure on french television in Canada. The puppet figure of the Sandman or Sandmanchen in German started in 1957 as a show for children. It was bought by Radio-Canada and broadcasted every day. The stories are very simple but also very sweet, something children would immediately love. There was a West German and an East German version and I am not sure which one I saw as a child, I think it was the East German one. The movie, Goodbye Lenin (2003) about life in Berlin at the fall of the wall has an episode where the Sandman appears.
In the 1970s, Bonne nuit les petits aired on French television. The show featured Nounours, a bear who took care of two toddlers, Nicolas and Pimprenelle. He would arrive on a cloud driven by his friend Sandman (“Le marchand de sable” in French) playing a flute as the sun set, and would only leave once he’d accompanied the children to bed. At the end of every episode, Nounours would say “Bonne nuit les petits” (which means “Good night, little ones”) before Sandman created a light shower of sand, putting the two siblings, Nicolas and Pimprenelle, to sleep. The bear and Sandman would then take their leave on the same cloud, once Nounours had climbed back up the ladder that he’d descended at the beginning of the episode. Here, Sandman has a major role to play, with his flute, driving the cloud, interacting with the other characters from time to time and, most importantly, inducing the children to fall asleep. The show was broadcast nightly at 7:50 pm, and each episode lasted 10 minutes, marking 8 pm as the bed-time when children, duly reassured, could sleep peacefully. It was later reduced to 5 minutes in the 1990s for the reboot series. In francophone Canada, it airs on Ici Radio-Canada Télé immediately before Le Téléjournal.
In those days the chief announcer of Radio-Canada was Henri Bergeron, who had the perfect radio voice and will also work in television. He truly became the symbol of Radio-Canada. Unfortunately we no longer have such great people and he was not the only one of that era. Many great men and women worked at Radio-Canada and at the CBC. What is interesting about the 1950’s-60’s era was that the transmission of shows from coast to coast in both official languages. This is not done anymore and it is most unfortunate.
One facet of life abroad is often loneliness at home. Due to my job there were times when I could not go somewhere for various reasons or had to be careful of keeping my distances towards certain invitations to avoid conflict of interest. Meaning staying at home was the only option. I did not want to particularly socialize with work colleagues with whom I had little in common and with local staff one also had to be very careful not to be seen as favouring certain people over others.
Egypt in 1989 was a stable and nice place to be, outside of the various Country Clubs and luxury hotels, once you had done the tour of the monuments, there really was not much else to do. So one day I asked our head of Office about getting a dog and all she said to me was what kind of dog would you like. This is where my first Dachshund came in, a little bundle of energy, short hair female. I called her BUNDNIE at the suggestion of the staff. The word means brown like coffee. She was quite young, a little puppy and lived with an Egyptian family in old Cairo in one of those old apartment buildings built by the French about 100 years prior in a parisian style. They really did not know what to do with this little dog and I wondered why they got her in the first place.
Bundnie had a storied life and travelled around the world with us, a long life and was spoiled. She lived to the age of 17 and died at home. She loved people and always wanted to be part of the party. She did have one habit which was disconcerting, whenever she got too excited she would pee on people’s shoes. She was a lovely dog and brought us much joy. Like all Dachshunds she was also an actress and knew how to draw sympathy, cookies and cuddles. This personality trait started with her at puppyhood, being very intelligent she would play games just to see our reaction, one had to do with food of course. Dachshunds are always hungry no matter how much they ate that day. Because there was no dog food in Egypt at the time I had to cook for her and it was beef, vegetables. It took a long time to prepare a week’s supply. When I travelled to the Sudan, I had to find a reliable person to take care of her who liked dogs and would not mistreat her. She accompanied us back to Canada and then on to Poland, to Chicago, to Montreal and finally to Ottawa. KLM gave great service then for transporting animals.
Bundnie on the chair on the balcony at home in Cairo at the age of 1. She loved sitting on the chair.
Bundnie in bed in 1990 Christmas period, we had returned to Ottawa for Christmas and since the first Gulf War was about to start, I brought her back for safety reasons. She had been to the Vet to get her neutered, and this was her way to tell us she was not happy, notice the pillows and blanket. She was telling us she had a rough life.
Our other dachshund was Reesie, who came along in 1994 in Chicago, we had been to the dog show at McCormick Place. We had seen other dachshunds, the long hair ones were quite beautiful. We met a breeder and visited their kennel outside of Chicago. This we would find out later was not a reputable breeder and Reesie had health issues that needed monitoring. He was also deaf. Nonetheless he was a lovely dog, at first Miss Bundnie thought he was just visiting so she ignored him but then it dawned on her that he was living permanently with us. There was some rivalry but nothing nasty.
He too had a storied life and travelled with Bundnie and us all over the world. Reesie was a very calm dog, a good ole boy. He accompanied us to Rome in his old age at 16 but we think that the stress of the trip was too much for him and he developed some health issues and died on Boxing day. It was hard to take, Bundnie had died in Ottawa and now we were without our little companions. Being Boxing Day in Rome, we decided that we would go to the Borgo which is the neighbourhood next to St-Peter’s square to a restaurant owned by the same family for decades who serves meals to the ecclesiastic staff working at the Vatican up a few steps away. It was a cold damp day in Rome.
Our next two Dachshunds would come into our life in 2009 in Rome.
Do you know how difficult it is to buy goose liver these days, at least outside Quebec or Europe. I did find a farm near Montreal who sells goose liver and if I was able to travel to the farm would be able to purchase a whole liver which can be prepared simply by pan fry it with a liquor. There are also shops in Paris who have it for sale. Goose also roasted is excellent but you rarely see it these days on menus, I wonder why.
With the death of our dear close friend JCH about a month ago, I was going through an incredible amount of photos from my time in Egypt where he and husband RM came to visit us back in 1989. At the same time I found lots of other photos of my life and of the people in it. Looking at a record going back 67 years, I found photos my parents took of me as a baby, the sort of photos all parents love to take of their little bundle of joy, you know the photos they love to show many decades later in life just to embarrass you. For some reason parents always delight in such photos. I also found photos of colleagues and events from all around the world, it all seems like a life time ago, another world. In so many of those photos, people are no longer with us. It is strange to look at a photo and realize that everyone is dead except you. Looking at them, I thought but it was just 25 years ago or 30 years ago.
Lots of memories of travelling in a time when life and the world was less under threat. I like to think that I lived at a time and served abroad when it was still the good years. I will be posting some photos with the story that goes with them.
Now on YouTube
I follow quite a few Chateau renovations in France, it appears that lots of Chateaux or Mansions are for sale, most cases no modern electricity, no modern heating system and no water, old roofs or no roofs. Meaning lots of work at restoring buildings that are not really suitable for modern living though still beautiful. What to do with gardens of 20 to 80 acres, manage forested areas etc. especially when it has been abandoned and unkept for decades. With Brexit upon the ex-pat Brits who bought the chateaux in France now comes a big problem, after years of living within the European Union, they must now leave. No visa, no permit to reside or stay 90 days only. So many are now selling the Chateaux/Mansions. Many of these places you will find were abandoned my the families after 1946, unable to rehabilitate or modernize, owners die and kids are not interested in that type of lifestyle, house is closed and left to rot. France like England went through such social changes. Poland has loads of old castles and palaces in its countryside, impossible to maintain given the size of the estate.
I always thought watching those renovations of such places far away from any major towns in small villages where the owners all Brits, do not speak French, it is not really plausible for a long term residence. I think all this is more about flipping a property and making money on it.
In Spain thousands of ex-pat Brits had to move back to Britain after Brexit to their surprise, strange did they not understand what leaving the European Union meant? Also many of them voted to leave the EU. Strange how people do not think of consequences of their actions.
Recently I have been looking through hundreds of photos from the past, it is interesting to see such old memories. This photo is from 1921 and was taken on the steps of the house of my great grand parents on Boulevard Pie IX in the Eastern part of Montreal. The Olympic stadium is just 800 feet away across the street. Their house still exist today, it is a 3 story brick building. I remember it from my little childhood around 3 or 4 years of age. The family owned the house into the mid-1960’s. In this picture you see my great grandmother Elmire Pitre-Beaulieu, the tall fellow in the middle is my grandfather Laurent Beaulieu, I have his name. Next to him my great grandfather Alfred Beaulieu and in front my two great uncles Guy and Roger. The house outside has changed a little, the windows and the doors are modern now and so is the balcony. They were well to do prosperous and I do remember that my great grandmother Elmire whom everyone called Palmire was quite wealthy, she dealt with cash and always had big rolls of dollar bills in drawers in her bedroom. She owned properties and had a convenience store, was a shark at cards and would occasionally smoke a cigar. She died in 1962. Her son Laurent died in 1955. Her family name was Pitre which is Acadian and her family fleeing British troops in 1755 fled to Chateauguay south of Montreal.
Jerry and I get around. In 2011, we moved from the USA to Spain. We now live near Málaga. Jerry y yo nos movemos. En 2011, nos mudamos de EEUU a España. Ahora vivimos cerca de Málaga.
Telling the stories of the history of the port of Charlottetown and the marine heritage of Northumberland Strait on Canada's East Coast. Winner of the Heritage Award from the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation and a Heritage Preservation Award from the City of Charlottetown