Jubilee barge and cultural gulf

Royal Barge moored on the Thames at Richmond, May 2012

As a Canadian, I've known the Queen since she ascended the throne when I was two. I still have the souvenir biscuit tin my mother bought to celebrate her Coronation.

Seeing the Royal Barge on the Thames a few weeks before the recent Jubilee celebrations made me think about the differing cultural attitudes between Canada and the UK.

Though in practice the application of our democracy has been and remains deeply flawed, Canadians still place great value on the social ideal of egalitarianism.

The whole idea of monarchy, with its ancient practice of male primogeniture and the Royal motto of Dieu et mon droit flies in the face of the notion of equal rights for all.

Technically, Canada is a monarchy, but it doesn't feel like one. A great deal of our loyalty to Elizabeth II stems from historic familiarity. After her era, will Canadians be willing to extend such loyalty to her son Charles? I find it hard to imagine.

Yet even though today the idea of inheriting a throne seems weirdly outdated, the presence of a monarch (even though she does not govern) does lend government a feeling of stability. While elected Members come and go, the Queen remains.

The brolley brigade

 Photo by where.ca

We're having a lot of rain for the time of year. I carry an umbrella in the car and keep one in my office, though I can't recall when I last used either. Even so, besides my husband's golf umbrella, for use in the soccer field, we have several. Not entirely sure where they came from. I didn't buy any of them.

My non-use of umbrellas goes way back. It was a conscious decision I made when first I moved to this rainy city. A hooded jacket worked well if the rainfall was heavy; otherwise, I told myself, a little water never hurt anyone. Walking in the rain was poetic and romantic, and made my hair curlier.

In April, when I was packing for London, another city famous for rain and umbrellas, I debated about whether to pack a small folding one my daughter had left behind. In the end I didn't, figuring if I could negotiate Vancouver brolleyless, London shouldn't be a problem. Luckily, I did take along a transparent plastic poncho with a hood -- left over from my days as a Girl Guider.

During the three weeks I spent in London, it rained nearly every day. Still, I stubbornly resisted buying an umbrella I would have to either abandon in London or carry home to add to my collection. In the end, I did buy a water-resistant rain jacket with a hood, but that's another story.

My decision not to join the brolley brigade is nothing against umbrellas. I love the Impressionist paintings of wet Paris streets teeming with umbrellas as much as the next person. I love the image of a the London brolley brigade too, though now it seems more of a memory than a reality. In today's London, City men in suits often get their gelled hair and the shoulders of their jackets damp as they dash for the Tube or the bus.

Still, I have a certain fondness for The Umbrella Shop on West Broadway. When I arrived in Vancouver in 1967, it was still downtown on Pender Street - a whole store dedicated to umbrellas.

At the time, I had no idea that Vancouver Umbrellas, as it was called then, was established in 1935 by the patriarch of a family of European emigrants who started in Toronto, then moved to Vancouver upon hearing this city had more rain. Written here by Cory Flader, the history of Vancouver's first and only business devoted strictly to brolleys reads like a social history of the city and the century.

Today, The Umbrella Shop has an online catalogue and four branches. In 2010, it was invited by the City of Vancouver to participate in a green initiative. The factory, likely the last of its kind in North America, is located above the store. It still manufactures 15% of the umbrellas sold, and also does reasonably priced repairs -- by post for those who do not live in Vancouver.

Personally, I hope this shop, a piece of Vancouver history, carries on for a long time to come, sheltered from economic and social storms, even while its local products shelter the buyers from the climatic storms that are bound to come soon. After all, as the saying goes, this is the Wet Coast.

Strange sidewalk markings

Photo: Great Northern Way, looking East toward Clark Drive

First there were paths and tracks through the forest, then came dirt roads. Later, people improved their roads with cobblestones or gravel, and still later, with asphalt, or pavement.

Today's paved roads are covered with an astonishing array of patterns, words and symbols. Airport runways have lines and numbers that make sense to pilots, though to descending passengers they appear arcane.

Highways have white and yellow lines -- single, double, broken, solid -- to make drivers aware of the safety and legality of passing. Speedometer test sections are painted onto some roads so that drivers can check the accuracy of their speedometer gauges.

Until recently, helicopters were used to patrol for speed using road markings. Words are painted on roadways too. STOP is one example; others are SLOW and SCHOOL ZONE.

Possibly because the United Kingdom is one of the few nations where left-hand driving is the norm, London pavements are painted with the legend, LOOK LEFT, sometimes with the added illustration of a large pair of stylized eyes. JK Roadmarkings have posted a variety of complex patterns of lines and other symbols used there.

The painted road above is a recent change. This intersection lies between my workplace and King Edward SkyTrain station, and before I went on holiday, the crosswalks were definitely not green. This the first time I've seen bright swathes of green paint used on a city street. Now I'm watching the roads for new developments:  clearly this is a happening art.

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection, by Alexander McCall Smith

In this latest of the Number One Ladies' Detective Agency Series, Alexander McCall Smith has once again conveyed the themes his loyal readers have come to expect. With flashes of humour, he holds up the mirror of human imperfection, yet does so as gently as the boiling of the stews we frequently see on the stove of Mma Ramotswe.

This time, the gently boiling stew of the newly married Grace Makutsi is featured, as she and her husband Phuti Radhiphuti entertain an illustrious guest. Her persoanl flaws of vanity, ambition, and outspokenness come sharply into focus; yet we love and forgive her. After all, without that ambition, Grace might have remained a poor girl down in Bobonong. She might never have gone to secretarial college at all, never have achieved the pinnacle of 97% in the exams, never have met Mma Ramotswe, or joined the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

Through the crisis of the orphan farm matron, Mma Potokwane, we are shown the difficulties that arise when "the lips say one thing and the heart says another." We are reminded to find time to pursue old dreams, and that "'the human heart...is pretty much the same wherever one goes.'"

This novel returns again and again to the small but simple things that matter. With a frazzled Mma Ramotswe, we enjoy calming cups of bush tea, and watch with relief as it "begin to do its work" of soothing the drinker. We are reminded of the simple joy of sharing food. Out in the bush, we see three women friends at a tiny rural outpost, sitting beside a fire, enjoying a meal together within a stone's throw of the mysterious Kalahari.

In Mma Ramostswe's garden, we are treated, along with her guest, to a view of a tree with its "very fine" leaves, a salubrious reminder of the earth who feeds us.

Thanks to the carpenter, Thomas, we experience the vicarious satisfaction of seeing a cheater get his comeuppance without fanfare. And thanks to Clovis Anderson's strange confession, we see again the depth of Mma Ramotswe's understanding heart, her ability to bring comfort to the places it is needed, to remind us to be grateful for our many simple blessings.

Occasionally, unmistakeable intrusions of the author's voice are what move the reader to laughter, as when Phuti innocently suggests that the reason for Clovis Anderson's sadness is that he writes books, citing as evidence for this view the "sad-looking photographs of authors on the covers."

Above all the human activity, both bumbling and graceful, there is the unbroken blue of the Botswana sky. The themes of the story are underpinned by the logic, wisdom and values of old Botswana.

The unbearable lightness of fluff

Photo: This is not snow, but cottonwood down, caught in the crevices of a paved footpath. I took the photo in Bear Creek Park.

When the cottonwoods shed the light fluffy seed casings, the "cotton" for which they are named, it floats down more slowly than an early snowfall in a cold dry climate.

It is so light that it drifts into cracks and crevices, blown there by the slightest movements of air.

If doors are left open, it drifts into the house and rides in a leisurely fashion on small currents into remote corners. At the end of fluff season, houses need vacuuming and porches need sweeping.

Meanwhile, like the first fine snow of winter, cottonwood fluff is a soothing harbinger of a seasonal change; its lightness and the brevity of its presence make it seem magical.

Back in 2010, fluff season came earlier; this year what we've seen of summer so far has been late and cold. This makes me wonder whether the timing of fluff might reveal the weather of coming seasons. Was fluff one of the signs in the Old Farmer's Almanac our forbears set so much store by?

Maybe it should be. Fluff could be bringing us arcane messages that are going right over our heads.

Canada's northernmost settlement

 Picture of Grise Fjord Airport from wikipedia

At 76 degrees North latitude, Grise Fjord is Canada's northernmost settlement.

The community was established in 1953 to strengthen Canadian claims to the High Arctic. A brief slide show of the people and landscape of what was once North America's northernmost permanent settlement can be seen here.

Because of the permafrost, wooden homes are built on platforms. Fresh water is stored in tanks on top of each house, and delivered by truck. Sewage is handled first by individual septic tanks and then pumped out to a lagoon.

According to the community website, the people of Grise Fjord hunt for marine mammals, which play an important role in their diet. Food flown in from the south comes at double the price tag people pay in southern Canada.

The only store, the co-op, sells everything from groceries to cable television, includes a post office and rents out snowmobiles. For visitors to the town, the Grise Fjord Lodge has eight guest rooms.

A single school, called Ummimmak, or Muskox School, teaches Grades 1 to 12. Students learn English and their native Inuktitut. Community elders pass on traditional skills such as carving, sled-building and sewing.

Flying to YGZ Grise Fjord Airport involves several hops. Those who leave from Edmonton, the western gateway to the Far North, go first to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, then Resolute, where they may need to stay overnight, and finally on to Grise Fjord.

Those heading north from Ottawa or Montreal travel to Resolute and then Grise Fjord by way of Iqualuit in Nunavut.

Airports north of seventy

Photo: Floatplane at Sachs Harbour Airport, by Jim Bob Malone

"'Possible presence of large animals within airport perimeter,'" warns the Canada Flight Supplement, as quoted on the Polar Pilots website. Polar bears, perhaps, or caribou? Muskoxen, maybe.

YIO Pond Inlet Airport lies at 72 degrees North latitude, near the magnetic pole. It is located on Baffin Island in northern Nunavut. Baffin is the largest island in Canada's Arctic archapelago, and the fifth largest in the world. In area, it outranks Sumatra in Indonesia. It is more than double the size of Japan's largest island of Honshu.

Also located at 72 degrees North is YSY Sachs Harbour (David Nasogaluak Jr. Saaryuaq) Airport on Banks Island. Here, pilots are expected in some circumstances to provide their own pumps for fuel.

In 2010, Banks Island was the site of an interesting marine archeological find. A few months after the the publication of a book by Vancouver author Brian Payton about the voyage of the HMS Investigator, The Ice Passage (Doubleday 2009), Parks Canada archeologists launched a search for the wrecked ship. They found it in shallow waters close to the island.

The Royal Navy ship Investigator was one of several ships that sailed out in search of the Franklin expedition, which had vanished earlier while seeking the mythical Northwest Passage, a navigable sea trade route to the Orient through the Arctic.

YRB Resolute Airport (Qausuittuq) is located at Resolute Bay, 74 degrees North latitude, on the south side of Cornwallis Island, north of the Barrow Strait. Although Cornwallis is relatively small compared to other Arctic Islands, it still covers about a quarter of the area covered by either Cuba or Iceland, which are of similar size.

Considering the size of the northern islands as well as the vast tracts of mainland, it is clear that air travel is essential to Arctic life. Thus many Canadian airports are located in the Far North.