Quiet

Tags

Charlottetown, cooking, Covid 19, cuisine, flowers, Nourooz, PEI, Persia

Charlottetown PEI, city centre Kent Street at Queen Street, the building with the tower is City Hall. This is the look of what should be a busy intersection on any day. Parking is usually a big problem, how things have changed since 11 March. There is no end in sight, though it has to be noted that Prince Edward Island only has 2 cases of Covid 19 and both persons are at home in quarantine. So far 165 people tested all negative. Our isolation as an Island in the Gulf of St-Lawrence and our very small population at 150K helps.

So what do we do all day? Well cleaning house, washing clothes, taking care of our two little monsters Nicky and Nora and cooking a lot and discovering new website with good recipes. So Lori Brown in Imoden, Arkansas, Whipperwill Hollow and Sheryl who lives South of Glasgow, Scotland, What’s for tea and the Lazy Cook, Pete Thomas.  There is also a lady from Newfoundland who does typical Newfie cuisine which is very typical of The Rock, Bonita’s Kitchen, she had a recipe today for Corned Beef patties, she also had another one for White Bread Cod Pudding with a butter sauce. I know it is good because years ago Mrs Crosbie who was the wife of John Crosbie then Minister of Finance in 1980 in the Rt Hon. Joe Clark’s government made a Cod au Gratin dish that was superb for a dinner I was attending. Cod was and still is important in the folk cuisine of Newfoundland.

I did make a Potato, Leek and sharp cheddar cheese pie with puff pastry that the Lazy Cook Peter Thomas showed us, that was very good and very British, something to have at Tea time which I have now come to understand is a full meal like supper for us. This dish can be eaten cold or hot, versatile.

Before going into the oven at 400 F or 200 C. for 35 minutes. The puff pastry with the  Star pattern makes it festive. Very good pie! I think the sharp Aged Cheddar makes a big difference in the taste.

This is a little dessert I invented with the left over puff pastry, simply butter, raisins and cassonade (golden brown sugar) in the oven at 350 F for 18 minutes. Delicious!

Will also made banana muffins and today he made a beef Goulash 

Also because we are not under total lockdown like in some other countries, it is possible to walk around town for the moment but that could change at any moment. Charlottetown’s core is still very much a residential district with one main business street, Queen. Other streets are either commercial for one or two blocks like Kent Street or Euston, or Grafton. So it is pleasant to walk around. On these walks I do notice how much gentrification is going on and how the prices of properties have shot up in the last 24 months. Now with this on-going Health crisis with no end in sight, prices will probably tumble.

This weekend is also the beginning of the Persian New Year with the Festival of Nourooz so I took a picture of my miniature Orchid by friend Minoo of BelFiore on Elgin Street had in her shop 6 years ago. It flowers 4 times a year and it is my sunshine in the kitchen. Very vibrant colours.

Despite the quiet, we phone our friends and talk to people on Facetime, keeping in touch and busy is very important and only listen to the news twice a day no more, simply so we don’t go bonkers. Take care and stay safe.

 

Winter in PEI

Tags

CCAG, Charlottetown, Garlic flats, PEI, Regina, Romania, VIctor Cicansky

Though I chose this song with Jo Stafford we are far from September. It is a song I heard many decades ago and always liked. On 7 March the Winter show at the Art Gallery opens it will showcase Victor Cicansky (Czekanski) a Canadian artist of Romanian descent, born and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan. He is a known gardener and ceramist, he is 85 years old. Art and gardens have been Victor Cicansky’s life since boyhood in Garlic Flats, a neighbourhood of East Regina known for its vegetable gardens and large Eastern European Immigrant population. I went to the Art Gallery to see the pre-opening exhibit. it is beautiful, fun, colourful. Here are some pictures I took.

Curious Hybrid. Bronze, patina, acrylic paint. In 1975 Cicansky broke is big toe while renovating his house. This sculpture answers the question: What do you do with a crutch.

Beef, this is a giant installation on the wall of the gallery.

up close detail of this sculpture.

Love this table, the foot representing the limbs of an apple tree.

25%

Tags

Charlottetown, Christmas, PEI, poverty

Here in PEI with the approaching Holiday Season the many, many campaigns to help the poor are underway. Every year it’s the same story, tons and tons of food and clothing are collected for poor children and poor families. PEI is the smallest Province of Canada and our total population is 150,000, that is the equivalent of one neighbourhood in Montreal or Toronto.  The Provincial Capital Charlottetown has a population of 36,000. a small town really.  If you visit PEI from May to September like most tourists do, you will see zero poverty, we are very good at hiding it. You will see beautiful properties, manicured gardens, beautiful clean beaches and tons of greenery. We are known as the garden province. Restaurants serve lobster and seafood to tourists but that is not the diet of poor people who are reduced to eating food from the large food banks, mostly canned goods, powdered milk and other non-perishable. If you look on the internet you will find no photos of impoverished areas anywhere on the Island, it is all about affluence and pretty snapshots to maintain the myth and to make tourists happy.

Speaking with doctor friends about their daily encounter with poor people they mention a lot of mental health problems caused by poverty. We also have a zero housing vacancy which creates another layer of difficulties. At the moment and for the last 3 years the old original Downtown of Charlottetown is going through extensive gentrification. Properties which were former mansions or large houses turned into rooming houses are now being sold and thoroughly renovated and re-sold as luxury condos or high rent apartments pushing out a precarious population. For a small town we also have 800 Air B&B or STR as they are called now. The owners at the moment pay no taxes on such units and it is enormously lucrative. Most are not registered as STR’s and many do not meet the fire code regulations but no check is being made by the City.  New regulations are coming in 2020 but again we are dealing with powerful and wealthy people who are very well connected, this is a small place after all.

PEI also has the lowest minimum wages in all of Canada, so the waiter or the store clerk you meet is making a pittance a day in salary. In many ways the history of this Canadian Province is far from progressive and in its history from Colony to Province (1755 to today) the wealthy landowners and business people have ruled with arrogance and impunity.

So Officially according to the Department of Statistics of Canada the level of poverty in PEI is 15% and the number of children living in poverty in Charlottetown alone is 25% according to 2017 figures, that would be 9,000 children, an incredible number.

So in December the CBC will have a charity drive usually hosted by the local Weather guy collecting turkeys for families who cannot afford a meal at Christmas. The Churches will do free concerts for all. The Food Bank will collect food and many gifts come from large companies who have surpluses like ADL the big dairy producer. Many farmers will give excess potatoes from the last harvest. The media in general will interview donors and thank them for their generosity. But the poor themselves are mostly invisible, no interviews for them, no photo-ops. Last year the Feed a Family Campaign collected over 2000 turkeys. Other social clubs will give away free meat pies, upwards of 100 per day until Christmas Eve. Clothing for children, toys and cash donations are also taken.

Of course such charity drives exist in all cities and communities during the Holiday Season, however it is more shocking here on this small Island given the small population. I am aware of the need in the City but someone pointed out to me the need also exist and is more acute in rural areas where people are very isolated and often must make a choice between buying fuel to heat the house or food.

I wish our politicians would try to seriously address the housing shortage and minimum wage crisis more effectively and our Media stop presenting these Charity Campaign as a great gesture from the well to do for the deserving poor.  The current system is entrenched and keeps the poor in this vicious circle. Lack of education, lack of opportunities, lack of meaningful jobs and clean housing is part of a societal change required for PEI. This situation is nothing to be proud of PEI.

 

 

Wonderful Happy Hour

Tags

Birthdays, Charlottetown, clam chowder, Friends, lobster, Oysters, PEI, Seafood

Today was a bright but cold sunny day,  tomorrow a storm is coming and it will not be fun. Around 3pm we got a call from across the street from friends asking us to come and have a drink at the Water Prince Corner Shop our local and famous seafood restaurant.

Shane and his son Coady Campbell are the owners and it is all about quality seafood, oysters and lobsters in a simple decor. We went and met our friends over oysters on the half shell, Shrimps in cocktail sauce, Clam chowder and lobster with white wine, what a wonderful happy hour it was. Never going back to peanuts and chips or whatever.

We will repeat this experience next Monday for another Birthday. It was great fun and gave us that wonderful feeling of ” Oh life is so good here”.

Events and Photos

Tags

Brian Burke, Canada., CCAG, Charlottetown, figurative painting, Jazz, Music, Painters

As I said before in Charlottetown we are busier than we ever have been socially. There is always something going on.

In the last 10 days we have been to the opening of the Winter Show of the Art Gallery of the Confederation Centre. A retrospective of the work and life of Brian Burke, displaying 110 paintings,  a small fraction of this life’s work from 1980 top 2016. Burke died at his home in PEI. He had lived in Lucerne, Switzerland until last year. Many of the paintings are from private collections, unseen by the public, some came from Europe. He has a style all his own and you know when you see one that this is Brian Burke.

From The Guardian (Charlottetown) eulogy:

Born in Charlottetown in 1952. “One of PEI  most significant painters, Burke pursued his long interest in expressive figurative painting with passion and commitment. Brian was an artist who inspired a generation with his body of work, and for making his way in the world as a painter and musician.

Over the years, his paintings were exhibited in private and public galleries in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts. His work is in public, corporate and private collections, including the permanent collection of Confederation Centre Art Gallery, TD Trust, the Bank of Nova Scotia and the Canada Council Art Bank.

The Summer Cruises are coming to an end, we saw about 100 ships the biggest carrying 4500 passengers. In one day several ships arrived at once and upwards of 15,000 passengers got off for a 5 hour stop, roaming a 4 block radius of the downtown area of this small town of 36,000 people. Is Charlottetown becoming like Venice ( same square mileage area) Should be like the Mayor of Victoria BC on the Pacific coast call for a reduction in cruise ships and the enormous pollution they bring with them in terms of garbage and air pollution. Difficult to say, the Charlottetown Port Authority is a private concern and they make tons O’Money with the cruise ships and passengers.

According to the Tourism figures of the PEI Government, cruise ship traffic is up 60%, no wonder, we only had about 30 ships a year four years ago now it is close if not at 100 per year or in the Season (May to October). Tourism in other areas like visit to the National Parks is down, tourism by car or coach is also down, only special festivals still bring significant numbers to the Island but this is a one off and no repeat. So our elected officials cling to the cruise ships. However don’t try to get numbers on what this traffic really bring, it’s a big secret and must not be discussed. There is also the problem that after 1 September most businesses dedicated to the tourism traffic close only to re-open on 1 June. So yes we need to think seriously about where we are going with this tourism thingy.

With the artist Tyler Los-Jones and Gallery director Kevin Rice on opening night.

Then here are some city views around the neighbourhood.

Thursday Night Island Jazz at Baba’s Lounge and the 200th show. Every Thursday night of the year, jazz with a variety of musicians from local to international and only $5 bucks. Always fun night to meet friends.

 

 

As we come to the end of August

Tags

Beach, Charlottetown, Europe, Food, Parade, PEI, Restaurants

In PEI after Old Home Week 15 August, the last week of August feels like the end of the tourist Season, families disappear over night replaced by older couples with no kids. Motel and camp grounds empty and you know that as of 1 September tourist spots and restaurants catering to them will start to close. We will still have Cruise ship traffic until November but there will be less to do for the tourists.

The PEI Tourism Board has tried to lenghten the Season into a shoulder Season at least until mid-December but that is very difficult, the merchants are not interested for the most part. They made their money and now they move to Florida for the next six months. In the Spring we would benefit from early opening of tourist restaurants and bars around 15 April because the first Cruise ships do arrive on 1 May. But no, that again is difficult to do, many businesses open around 1 June, this makes for a very short Season.

Despite promising myself I would go to the beach this Summer we never went, until 15 July the weather was cold and miserable and then it became hot and unpleasant. We are both busy with volunteer work and one thing after another and we stayed in town.

We did go to Rustico to the Watermark theatre and discovered a new restaurant with very good food owned by a Portuguese couple. We also attended our friend S.D. Summer party in New Glasgow which is always fun. We went to Victoria by the Sea to see our friend J.D. at his antique shop. The Landmark Café has a new owner and it is great food and service as always. There were some other social engagements but other than that not much really.

On Monday we travel to catch a flight to Amsterdam which will make for a complete change of venue. Our friend B.P. is coming from Ottawa to babysit the puppies.

In the meantime here are some photos of our Old Home Week parade which is such a tradition here in Charlottetown in August.

The Royal Canadian Navy from HMCS Charlottetown

Lots of ACADIAN flags since the World Congress was taking place in August.  Looks like the flag of France but it has a Yellow Star on it.

The Lieutenant Governor of PEI with her Aide de Camp in the carriage.

The Belfast PEI, Bag pipes, they practice in the park across the street from our home. Nice group.

The Canadian Army PEI Regiment with their regimental flag (Black and yellow)

The float of the Mayor and City Councillors in a canoe no less.

The Royal Canadian Air Force Band

The Mi’kmaq of Abegweit (AKA PEI)

And the best band of the parade bar none, a group of music teachers and professional musicians including the Green Party Leader, who is also leader of the Official Opposition in the PEI Legislature plays the trumpet, talk of versatile politician. This group is known for its zany costumes, always a big hit with the crowd.

 

PRIDE PEI

Tags

Canada., Charlottetown, LGBTQ, PEI

Well today was the 25th edition of the Pride Parade and it was big. Everyone is in it, families, grand-parents and grand-kids, politicians of all stripes, the Armed Forces, the RCMP, the local police and just plain people, all celebrating and having fun. The parade is one of the events of the week of celebration all around the Island and here in Charlottetown.

The parade snakes around the downtown core through residential areas and people are 5 row deep. Remember this is a town of 36K, so not a big place but PRIDE makes it big.

We had a great deal of fun at the Parade today and saw so many people. At the end of the Parada there was a party in one of the city square and the Premier of the Province said a few words. Live music with local artists and just a nice time in the shade.

This Island has come a long way in 25 years and it is amazing.

PRIDE Flag at the PEI Regiment base

The Haviland Club

The Canadian Navy with their float

The orange theme float of the NDP (political party) the leader is holding a Pride flag with the smily on it.

Some young conservative who had T-shirts with the letters PC (progressive conservative) in rainbow colours.

Lots of Unicorns at this parade.

Green Party Youth group

This is S. my videographer during my campaign with his girlfriend dressed as Ms Kitty, she has a big following on YouTube, such nice people.

Grafton Street, it was 27 C in the Sun today but a nice breeze was blowing.

Everyone wearing are with the Green Party, the Official Opposition in the Provincial Legislature. The Greens have had a pretty good start since the election passing some important bills on reduction of Carbon emissions to 1.2 megatons by 2030 instead of the Paris agreement of 1.4 megatons. This is why a minority government is a good thing, gets things done.

The parade certainly had all the colours of the rainbow and then some. There are no big floats like in other cities, it is just local people celebrating, all ages and backgrounds. Which makes it fun.

Tonight there is a huge party at the DELTA Hotel in the ballroom. Seems like everyone is going.

 

 

PRIDE

Tags

Charlottetown, Gay, Japan, LGBT, Parade, PEI, Tokyo

June was Pride month and in PEI PRIDE week is 20-27 July with the usual big parade, everyone joins in, it’s the thing to do.

I was in the Parade here in Charlottetown last year and we had a lot of fun. Come and celebrate PRIDE in PEI,  www.pridepei.ca

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the first pride parade on P.E.I. Pride P.E.I. is planning 12 days of events and learning opportunities for Islanders, beginning on Saturday, July 20.

The theme of this year’s parade is ‘shapes + forms’. The organization says love comes in many different shapes and forms. Inspiration for the theme comes from the vibrant spectrum of gender and sexual diversity visible in the province.

For something completely different here is PRIDE TOKYO. Japan has a lot of Festivals and Pride is another one. I love Tokyo, visited the city on 2 occasions for several days each time and travelled in Japan also. Very impressive place, just love it.

Things in life

Tags

AGCC, art., artists, Charlottetown, life, PEI, Summer

The old song says “The best things in life are free”, I wonder if many today still think this way in our hyper consumer society. This song was very popular back in the XXth century written by the songwriting team of Buddy DeSylva and Lew Brown (lyrics) and Ray Henderson (music) and published in 1927 but it continued to be popular up to the 1960’s and you can still hear it today on some radio stations, a classic you could say.

This week was the opening of the Summer show at the Art Gallery of the Confederation Centre and since I am a guide there, as always I make a point of attending all the lectures with the curators and artists.

This year the theme is about life and its transitions from birth to death. The artists are all emerging young artists funded by the Royal Bank Of Canada (RBC) for the last 10 years. This program in cooperation with the Curator of the Art Gallery gives an opportunity to young artists to work with a gallery and curators in a professional setting, organize an exhibit and get exposure. In PEI  the Art Gallery is the only venue offering such an opportunity. All the art is Canadian as per the mandate of the Gallery.

The funny thing is that people are not always comfortable with the idea that we all die one day, it is the human condition can’t escape it. We have two solo shows one by Philippa Jones (Perpetual) of St-John’s, NFLD. Perpetual brings together a selection of recent work by Philippa Jones that explores ways of dealing with loss and mortality through the neutralizing effects of preservation, aesthetic arrangement, immersive ritual, and ultimately recognition of a natural continuum, the temporal cycle that encompasses all being. Catalyzed by the untimely death of close friend and collaborator, Newfoundland curator Mary MacDonald, the artist’s explorations of the processes of extraction from the everyday world, common to art and science, take on a heightened resonance.

The other solo show by Inuit artist Shuvinai Ashoona (Mapping Worlds) from Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Nunavut which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year as an Inuit territory in Canada. This gigantic area of Arctic Canada is 1500 miles North of PEI with a population of 33,000 mostly young people.

The other shows are group exhibits and explore the transitory aspect of life, Split Images: Truth and Fiction,  something that also disturbs a lot of people.  

In the concourse of the Centre is the exhibit of Ian Funke-Mackay: Serpentine Signs, an artist from Halifax, produces images and signs for a new visual field in which past energies resonate within the present. His colourful and faceted arrays and forms echo the worlds of computer-generated imaging and video-game animations, aspiring to fuse the future-oriented legacies of abstract painting.

 

I do like Philippa Jones work because it is challenging and offers a chance to listen to what our visitors have to say and see their reaction. So this is the show for this wet and cold Summer so far in Charlottetown. Let’s hope it warms up!

In closing I have added this video of a favourite singer of mine Peggy Lee with Benny Goodman sextet and the famous song On the Sunny Side of the Street. Right now we have no Sun in PEI.

 

 

Cold weather and travels

Tags

Charlottetown, Festivals, Franconia, Germany, lobster, Moncton, Moose, NB, PEI, Petitcodiac, Reykjavik, Travel, wines

I am constantly amazed at the amount of people who simply do not believe anything is wrong with the climate. Winter started in PEI in early November, it was not a snowy Winter, it was mostly ice rain and high winds. April was rain and more rain, May not much better so far with one warm day. The Weather is so out of wack that farmers cannot plant anything the fields are mud, big sticky red mud. Tourists are staying away given the cold around the freezing point and rain weather. Of course the joke is that PEI only has 2 Seasons, Winter and Summer, in Quebec its Winter and Construction.

So last week I decided to travel off Island to Moncton, New Brunswick which is all of 2 hours away by car and across the Sea bridge of 12 Km. Going was not bad in terms of driving but coming back 2 days later the wind was high so crossing the Sea bridge, you are 350 feet above the Sea, I had both hands gripping the steering wheel and all the big transport trucks 18 wheelers were in convoys. It is a 2 lane bridge and you cannot go any faster than 80km  per hour, but with high winds around 60 miles per hour you do not want to go fast.

Moncton is poorly planned or not planned at all, shopping malls everywhere, a new COSTCO by the highway, a very beautiful river crosses the city with lots of marshland all around, because of the muddy banks it is called the Chocolate river or by its real name Petitcodiac river and it has a very powerful tidal wave coming all the way from Shepody Bay (Bay of Fundy) some 52 Km away. Moncton also has 2 Universities so lots of academic stuff and students. I stayed in Dieppe a suburb of Moncton but you could confuse the two since only a street separates the two cities. Also a large airport serves the area which is handy if you want to fly to other large Canadian cities and cannot do so from Charlottetown PEI.

I saw friends in Moncton and went for lunch to a very nice Café called Tony’s, tonysbistro.ca the food was excellent and they have the most wonderful French pastry shop. I really do not know anymore if COSTCO is all that worth it, I cannot say I saved much money. The real bargain is cheese, for the quantity and price it is unbeatable. Cheese in Canada in general is so expensive that I wonder why they do not have armed guards in supermarkets. After 30 minutes of shopping I had to get out, I was feeling tired by the place.

Chocolate river or Petitcodiac river.

Since I was staying with friends, I brought them Lobsters, now of course you will think don’t they have lobster in New Brunswick, of course they do BUT it is coastal lobster fished in the Strait whereas my lobster is fished in the Gulf on the open sea side of PEI. The taste fishermen tell me is different because of the salt water content. I am not a big lobster eater and will have one per year. However I bought mine at the Water Prince restaurant across the street from my home and Shane and his son Cody sell wonderful seafood. The lobsters were each 2 pounders, the meat was rich and creamy, very good and at $11. per pound well worth it. Now I bought them cooked because I do not know how to cook them in Salt Water and you have to know how to do it. Salt Water in the cooking is very important, many people make the mistake of cooking lobster in unsalted water, big mistake as it changes the taste and the quality of the meat. The best way is to take the water straight from the Sea.

This was my lobster, please note the long antennas which indicates that this lobster was well fed and very fresh. If the antennas are damaged or missing, that is a bad sign, lobster if they are hungry and have no food, will eat their antennas.

Going to Moncton was fun and seeing my friends was a nice brake from the Island. We will be travelling again in June but this time to Ottawa for a week. A first return trip since we left 3 years ago. We are driving 14 hours, but we will need the car in town anyways. I also visited Memramcook (Micmac language meaning Crooked river) which is the birthplace of the first French Language University in the Maritime Provinces, U de Moncton. The Eudistes Fathers opened the university in 1864, the village of Memramcook is ancient, the Micmac indians have lived there since the beginning of time and the French speaking Acadians arrived in 1700. They were deported by British colonial troops coming mostly from the Boston area in 1755. However those who survived the ethnic cleansing returned after 1765. It remains an important historical and cultural site for the Acadians.

Whenever you travel on the highways in N.B. you have to be mindful that the vast forests all around you are full of Moose, you do not want an encounter with one of them, they are very large animals weighing often for a full grown male around one ton or a little more. There is a special number to call if you see one near the road and it is important to remember to stop if the Moose is on the road and stay well away from it. They can charge your car and will injure or kill you in the process if it is mating season.

Monument Lefebvre, first French speaking University in the Maritimes, now known as the Université de Moncton. These buildings are part of the National historical park now, the University moved to Moncton some years ago.

Coming back to Charlottetown, we had tickets to go to the Wine Festival held at this time each year. This year was featuring German Wines, we bought a few bottles mostly of dry Rieslings and met with the owner of a winery in the Franconia region of Germany, Regina ZenZen (from the German word for Licence collector) a very nice lady and in her presentation she paired her wines, in this case a wonderful Silvaner with raw Tuna in a light acidic vinaigrette, the chef was Mitchell from Claddagh Oyster House in Charlottetown, one of my favourite restaurant. Mitchell is a great guy only 28 but talented.

We are also now booking a 7 day cruise with Holland America from Amsterdam to Norway, we will spend some time in Holland, I want to re-visit the Rijks Museum now that the renovations are completed. We will also fly first to Iceland for a few days, there are direct flights from Montreal to Reykjavik on our way to join the cruise in September. Other than that we lead a dull life.

Reykjavik, Iceland