Memories

Tags

2020, 2021, life, optimistic

First thing this morning I was reminded by FB that 8 years ago today I retired from work. It seems like decades ago, another time and another life. I do remember it was not a particularly cold day that Friday in 2012 and there was no snow in Ottawa at that point. I went in to sign off papers and close down accounts at work. The director of Personnel was a dreadful person who was usually quite unpleasant unless she wanted something from people. I had to wait for her despite having an appointment with her. An hour later she showed up, I signed my resignation letter, she signed it too and that was it. No words, nothing not even a goodbye.

I left the Service a year after our return from Rome. This was a period when our department was going through a period of getting rid of anyone over the age of 55 and finding creative ways to be unpleasant so people would leave. Age discrimination a prohibit ground under the Canadian Charter, yes but this is the Government, they do as they please. What I discovered a few weeks later was that a bonus was given to managers who were instrumental in getting rid of people. So much for the ethical behaviour of the Government. A few years later we would all discover that senior managers often got bonuses even when things went badly and even promotions, the Phoenix Pay system is one very good example, hundreds of millions lost and promotions handed out to the main culprits.

It was time for me to go in many ways, I had a long career, many foreign postings, more than average really, I was very tired and suffered from anxiety, etc. The work atmosphere had become poisonous and I was amongst the last of my recruitment year to leave. The next generation were at least 20 years younger and the service had changed to a point it was unrecognizable.

I remember leaving the building and finding myself on the street and feeling like a free man out of jail after a very long sentence, I felt a sort of euphoria. Now looking back all this seems like such a long time ago. But that was not the end, we left Ottawa for PEI, 3 years later for a new chapter in life, a completely different adventure which opened new doors, new friendships and new horizons.

So here we are now in 2020 or the last days of it. It was a year full of anxiety and I may put a brave face on it, I was often not looking forward to going out to shop and seeing how people did not observe the most elementary sanitary rules. We got the hang of it here in PEI but cannot say the same in other provinces in Canada. We were cut off from the mainland for our own safety and no one could come here either. Flights out were cut and so was the ferry service. It really felt at times as if we were on another planet far away. So going to the beach to look at the waves and the sea was a distraction and the fresh saline air is always good.

My blogging continued but I felt it was mundane at times and maybe repetitive, as I was following architectural stories or food shows or other topics like reading. I am a slow reader and I have several books on the go and I have not started reading the Obama biography, A Promised Land, though I am looking forward to it.

So the year is coming to an end and all we can hope for and I have reasons to be optimistic is better days ahead. On the Eve of 2020 I wondered what will it bring, on the Eve of 2021 I can only believe that no matter what happens, it has to be better.

Great Weather

Tags

2020, Christmas, Holidays, life, World

If 2020 for a lot of people all around our planet was a disaster year full of frustrations and disease, countless death, terrible natural disaster. This pandemic was a reminder that we are not immortal and that technology cannot solve all our consumer society problems. Many political leaders around the world have failed miserably preferring to delay and dither on what to do and focus their energy on businesses instead of public health. Now as the year ends vaccination campaigns have started and I like many others wait for my turn to get the shot.

Let us hope that 2021 will be a better year for all of us.

On CBC radio on Sunday Paolo Pietro Paolo is the host of a show devoted to classical music with a segment about forgotten composers who left beautiful compositions. Because it is the end of the year he also had his list of famous musicians and singers who died this year. He always includes artists from all around the world, from Iran, India, Poland, Italy, France, England, etc.. in the end he focuses on Canadian artists. Making us reflect on the contribution all these people made to our lives.

Today is another beautiful day, sunny and somewhat cold, no snow. Christmas day was so warm that people I know went swimming in the Ocean, it was that warm and little wind. Now that is something to talk about in future years. But with climate change I think we are in for more warmish winters. Our past Summer was hot and humid, another first for the Island and in continued into the Fall. It has been so warm, that some days we simply cut off the heat in the house and I have not brought out the big Winter wool covers. I am not complaining I much prefer a Northern European Style Winter to a Frosty Snowy Canadian one.

In our trip to Fredericton N.B. last Fall we noticed how many well stocked fine grocery stores there are. Recently I discovered that you can even get Caviar. A company called Acadian Caviar farms Sturgeons and sell the eggs and the meat, this is wonderful. WWW. ACADIAN-STURGEON.COM , this fish is quite large and given that the supply in Russia has petered out due to overfishing, other countries have developed their own. I know Iran produces very good caviar. In the Maritime Provinces several fishers have developed a market for specialty fish.

Quiet days indeed as the year ends and I really don’t mind it.

Buggy rides on Water street

Thinking…

Tags

2020, climate change, covid19, disasters, New Year, thinking, virus

Late last night I was thinking,  as Will would say to me; what have I told you about thinking. This is our little inside joke we share. I was thinking that this Covid19 Pandemic has change fundamentally the way we live and it is unlikely we will return to the way things were before March 2020.

It has been 10 long weeks of staying at home and only going out for essentials. The word essential has become the key word in our life. Someone is essential or not, shopping is essential or not, businesses are essential or not. All Government directives are based on what is essential or not in terms of services etc.

These 10 weeks which upset our lives are lost forever, we followed the rules because this is what was required in order to stay healthy and not infect anyone if we happened to be Asymtomatic. I believe in Civic Duty and responsibility in such cases so we did it.

However this pandemic also revealed the ugly side of many people, the selfish, self-centred attitude, ME first is their mantra. That is very disturbing to see and hear. People who place the economy first and foremost and do not care how many will get sick and die. The economy is more important, really? Obviously such people do not know that you can’t take the money with you when you die. We have them here on PEI, and such people are a sad spectacle.

But my thinking was more about how our lives had changed, we went in just 24 hours on 11 March from having lots of social activities with friends to nothing, zero, zilch to do. Could not meet anyone, ok will do zoom instead, well it’s not the same. Also having nothing to do plays on your mind. We did try to keep busy and that lasted all of one week. I started to forget what day of the week it was and had to look at the calendar and my iPhone for confirmation. It all looked the same, nothing had any order, time became irrelevant. Streets around us were deserted, no one anywhere, we took the dogs out for walks but it was eerie, no one anywhere, the silence. We have two large parks by the house and the Hillsborough river in front but seeing the snow melt and then the grass grow, the City employees were not coming, garbage collection was cut back, all businesses closed including the bank branch. All of it was very strange and unsettling. The only distraction was going to the gas station to fill up and going to the grocery stores but we were told only once every 2 weeks. Lucky us, we never really had any shortages, though on 13 March we had the great toilet paper caper, that was silly and we all laughed at it, within two weeks that was resolved.

Now since 1 June we are in phase 3 and businesses have re-open and so has restaurants, but we are not going. We will do take out but that is it. Our Club is also re-opening but no we are not going there either. Because of the frustration of being limited in what we could do, far to many people are now behaving thoughtlessly, not observing social distancing, no masks or gloves.

I miss seeing our friends, good conversation, cocktails, birthdays or having dinner parties. I joked in March that this would last 8 months, looks like I was right about that one, it may be longer. What we have now is fear, the fear of getting sick. The fear that something may go terribly wrong. Fear for the future, fear for the economy, though so far nothing major has happened. Yes there is a lot of unemployed, in PEI it’s 20% but it is not apparent so far. Our tourism Season will not happen and fishers are complaining of no markets. People are fearful but what can we do. Everyone is hoping that life will return to some kind of normality, even if this means a new normal. I can see it with the Dentists and Doctors, procedures for patients is very different now. Wearing a mask is not mandatory but strongly recommended. Everything is done through a plexiglass window and there is lots of cleaning going on. It really feels like a twilight zone, a bad dream.

Climate change has not gone away and we see signs of it with strange weather no one remembers ever happening before. We have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we may have this pandemic for a long time, it may not go away and coupled with worsening effect of Climate change, quite the combination.

So on New Year’s Eve I thought to myself what will 2020 bring, I thought well for sure there will be some disaster or incident, something to make us pay attention. Well we had our load of disasters for the year in the first 3 months, from the downing of a commercial airliner over Tehran by the Iranian guards with all those Canadians on board, the month long railway blockades by native groups across Canada over a pipeline in British Columbia, the price of Oil in Alberta dropping to almost zero, the crisis with China over Meng of Huawei and her possible extradition to the USA and then Covid 19.  Now our border was closed with the USA in March and will remain so for the time being and all our seaports are also closed until 31 October. Maybe it is a good thing we cannot see what the future holds. I do hope to see our friends this Summer, I miss them and I hope that we will remain safe and healthy.

 

V.E. Day 2020

Tags

2020, EIIR, message, Queen Elizabeth II, Remembrance, war

A message from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Canada had 1 million Canadian serve in the Second World War during 6 long years.

New Year’s Day

Tags

2020, art., life, Music, Musikverein, Vienna

Today is Levée Day in PEI and in the Capital Charlottetown 44 Levée took place. This year I worked at my Club to greet our visitors who came to pay their respects. We had 750 visitors, I shook hands with all of them and wished them all a Happy New Year. In the Ballroom, Moose Milk was served with a very generous dose of Jamaican Rum. Lots of fruit cake and cookies also and the Club Bar was open. The great Parlour had a roaring fire going and our house musician played on the piano waltzes and other dance music of the 1880 to 1900 period. We also had for good measure lots of sunshine streaming into the large Italianate windows. It is amazing to see so many people all in the space of 3 hours.

A very funny incident, it really made me smile, one of our visitor was upstairs in what use to be the bedrooms and office of the Lowden Family. On the wall an old telephone, the model is the type we all had in our kitchens in the 1960-70, it is black and rotary dial. It still works perfectly but for a person under 35 it gets strange looks. This person was I would say about 25 years old and she said to her friend; my grandmother had such a phone in her kitchen but I don’t think I know how to use it. I told her it still worked fine, she was amazed, how could that be. So I told her to go and try it,  she picked up the receiver and heard the dial tone. Her friend then told her what number to dial and bingo they got to speak to another family member in town. Much amazement and giggling over this experience. I could not help laughing at this, so very strange to me, I went in my lifetime from the rotary, to touch tone to pocket phones to iPhones with face time. Makes you feel old but at the same time think that you have lived through a lot of change.

When I came home I went to look for the Vienna New Year’s day Concert from the Musikverein, which celebrates 150 years in 2020. The Conductor this year was the Latvian Andris Nelsons.  Also this year the Salzburg Music Festical is 100 years old, when the Salzburg Festival in Austria was first held, in the summer of 1920, it consisted of just half a dozen performances of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s morality play “Jedermann” (“Everyman”). Since then, the festival has grown into one of the grandest events on the world’s cultural calendar. It will celebrate its centennial in the summer with more than 200 performances in 44 days of operas, symphonies, concerts and plays. Music with a local angle by Mozart (Salzburg’s favorite son) and Richard Strauss (one of the festival’s founders) will be featured. We went to Salzburg for the Festival several years in a row and taking in up to 3 concerts a day, all in formal dress.

In 2020 it is also Ludwig Van Beethoven’s 250th Birthday born in Bonn, North Rhine Westphalia in today’s Germany and spent most of his life in Austria.

Here is an excerpt of today’s concert. If you wonder about all the masses of flowers in the Golden Saal they are provided by the Public Works dept of the City of Vienna each year.

Then for dinner, Will cooked a very tender pork loin and ratatouille with roasted potatoes and we had a bottle of champagne, it is New Year’s Day after all!

Hope you had a good New Year and that it will continue all during the year.

Seid umschlungen Millionen • Johann Strauss II composed and dedicated to his friend Johannes Brahms in 1892.

 

As the year ends

Tags

2020, age, levee, New Year, PEI, seniors, tradition, Travel

Well now we look at the New Year 2020, what will it bring, who knows.  My only wish is really for good health, because if you are in good health then you can do pretty much anything. For me this new decade means I will truly be in my so called golden years.

I still do want to travel to cities like Berlin in 2021 and maybe to other European countries, but has one ages the window of opportunity for travel closes and it becomes more difficult to travel given the stresses involved nowadays. I also have to look at priorities, living on this small island, spend more time going to the beach, visiting the Maritimes, going to Nova Scotia and Cape Breton all of which is very close to us. As for my volunteer activities, I may become more picky about it, I really don’t want to spend an entire Summer doing guided tours at the Art Gallery, there are other things to do.

This week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day is always a bit of a loss, people are away on vacation or visiting family. Then the question is what to do with New Year’s Eve, well frankly speaking we do not have any plans and not sure we want any. We are in no mood to go to a pub to listen to some music with a rowdy crowd. Maybe these parties are for the under 40 crowd or go to a restaurant for more rich food, we have a fridge full of food. The big day is Wednesday 1 January for the Levée activities, this is a very big thing in PEI and everyone participates, it is rare to find someone who does not partake in visiting all the different Levée held not only around Charlottetown but in other towns and communities on the Island.  The tradition of the Levée, a French word meaning to rise, dates back to Louis XIV, the Sun King, who made his courtiers attend his rising every morning, if you missed that event you were banished. With time the tradition transformed itself into this event on New Year’s Day where the population comes to pay their respect to the personal representative of the Sovereign in PEI, the Lieutenant Governor and to other elected Officials Civic and Military.  Anyone can hold a Levée, if you are willing to put up with the crowds. Government House will see about 700 people, our Club will have about 500 people show up.

This 1 January I will be at the Haviland Club in the greeting party to welcome all the visitors to our Club. Our time slot is 11am to 1pm. Many will go to pay their respect to the Lieutenant Governor at Government House at Fanningbank first and then wander down to the other venues like the PEI Regiment barracks to see the Military Commander, to City Hall to see the Mayor, to the Fire Hall, to the Premier’s Office, etc… Everyone offers a drink, a piece of cake and coffee.

Government House, Charlottetown, PEI.

The Haviland Club, Charlottetown, PEI.

WISHING EVERYONE A HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR 2020. BONNE ANNÉE!