blogcutter

R.I.P. David Wiffen

2026-04-07T20:49:05Z

I wake up every weekday morning to CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning. Quite often they are playing a "golden oldie" and although I like the music, my heart sinks because there's a strong possibility that someone has died. Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, Ian Tyson and today: David Wiffen, singing "More Often Than Not". Admittedly there have been a few false alarms, like Joni Mitchell, who was in the news for her achievements, not her death. Maybe this summer we'll hear Randy Bachman (of Guess Who and BTO and Vinyl Tap), as he apparently will be at Bluesfest, and he's still very much alive AFAIK.

Anyway, back to David Wiffen. He was a featured performer back in the 1970s, during orientation week at Carleton University, where I did my undergrad degree and later, a masters' degree in public administration.
He also appeared at least once (probably more) at Le Hibou, which I wrote about in my last entry. But I digress. Here's Youtube video about him and his passing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfkv-vPCmCc

The old folkies are dying and that saddens me.

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Poissons et hiboux d'avril

2026-04-02T00:55:02Z

Jokes, pranks, rumours, fake news ... they all crop up on April 1. When you hear or read something on April Fool's Day, it's sometimes hard to know whether to believe it or not. If it's something distressing, you might hope it's not true, but maybe it is. If it's good news, you'd like to believe it but maybe it isn't. There's that old adage: "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is" [too good ... and therefore it's false. Although I don't claim to be an expert in logic!]

My mother died exactly 20 years ago today. That's not a joke, its's true. So sad news, certainly, but I definitely believed it, as I was there. Bad news? Not entirely, as she was in familiar surroundings, listening to (or at least to some extent hearing) a favourite Mahler symphony, with two of her daughters sitting close by. It wasn't a MAID situation but her death was not unexpected.

Today, however, I experienced an example of the second type of April Foolery:

https://hansonthebike.com/2026/04/01/le-hibou-open-again-ottawa/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=jetpack_social

Indulging in a bit of magical thinking, I was initially taken in as I'd love to see a revival of the coffee house scene in Ottawa, and a rise from the ashes of Le Hibou in particular. But the byline quickly brought me down to earth again: Fahrrad Schlittschuh? Bicycle-Skate? I envisioned a bike mounted on runners or snowshoes or bob-skates (or should that be Hans-Skates?) and it was all sounding rather fishy. Poisson d'avril! Or do I mean Hibou d'avril?

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Is romance in store for you?

2026-03-20T19:27:52Z

If you love reading about love, there's a new bookshop in Ottawa that will be celebrating its grand opening tomorrow:

https://evermorebooks.ca

I'm thrilled to see the resurgence of specialty bookshops in the area. We lost House of SF and Prime Crime long ago, but romantasy is so hot these days that with any luck, Amanda Holmes and her crew will be able to make a go of things. And back in the era when House of SF and Prime Crime were around, websites and online sales were not really a thing the way they are now. Evermore Books will promote and sell books both in-person and online and presumably events may be conducted both ways too.

In a recent post, I mentioned the Spaniel's Tale, which will soon be moving to more spacious digs, probably some time in May. Sadly, though, not all the independents are doing so well. Further along that Wellington-to-Richmond stretch of road, Westboro Books closed permanently earlier this month:

https://www.facebook.com/100094299872995/posts/dear-readers-we-have-some-sad-news-to-share-with-you-after-a-lot-of-consideratio/775280878958568/

The independents can't flourish if we buy all our books at Indigo and Amazon. So check out Evermore Books and the Spaniel's Tale for your beach reads, your travel reads, and all those quirky chance discoveries you didn't even know were out there!

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Ms. Blogcutter Goes to London ... or not

2026-03-06T20:54:45Z

I recently renewed my Canadian passport, which will not expire for another ten years, unless of course I do.

While I don't have any international travel planned for the next little while, my old passport would only have been good until June; if I'd suddenly wanted or needed to travel, it might not have been allowed as border agents generally insist that documentation be valid for at least 6 months beyond your departure date.

On the other hand, I've been tentatively planning to visit the U.K. some time in 2027. I'd heard a while back that U.K. border agents would soon be requiring Canadian citizens to obtain an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) in order to enter (or even pass through) the U.K. A bit of a pain, I thought, but still manageable.

What I only recently learned is that dual citizens of Canada and the U.K. are ineligible for the ETA but must instead travel with a British passport or a Certificate of Entitlement. And even if I HAD known that, it never dawned on me that I might have unwittingly possessed British citizenship in addition to my Canadian citizenship for over seven decades! After all, I was born here and have lived here my entire life.

My dad was a British national. So, for that matter, was my mother, but apparently she didn't count. The rest of my family, i.e. my parents and three older siblings, came to Canada in 1950. They became naturalized Canadians and to the best of my knowledge, always traveled on Canadian passports after that. It does make sense to me that my two surviving siblings would have dual citizenship as a birthright, but I always assumed that I had Canadian citizenship and nothing else. It also seems to me that the U.K. government wants to make it HARDER for their own kith and kin to visit than they do for citizens of other random countries. Is that reverse xenophobia or what? It seems to me to defy common sense!

Anyway, I'm betting that a lot of people will be caught off guard by the new rules.

Rebecca Zandbergen, host of CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning, managed to arrange an interview with the British High Commissioner's office in an effort to clarify matters and let's just say he was the soul of discretion and diplomacy in deflecting her questions! You can listen to that interview here:

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-100-ottawa-morning/clip/16201575-why-many-british-canadians-scrambling-u.k.-passports

So, it's the airline's responsibility to ensure every passenger has the requisite documentation before they board the plane. If they're not satisfied, they can turn them away. If they inadvertently let someone on without proper documentation, that someone may be turned away by U.K. Borderforce after the plane lands.

What specifically could be the consequences for the hapless passenger or would-be passenger, or for the airport officials at either end of the journey? Mr. High-Commissioner-Chap couldn't or wouldn't say.

Ottawa Morning apparently then tried to get a statement from Global Affairs Canada which, in time-honoured bureaucratic tradition, passed the buck or the loony or the pound squarely back to the U.K. Government.

Does anyone in this forum have any experience with the new travel rules? Any horror stories? Or success stories? Or practical advice or tips?

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Happy World Book Day!

2026-03-05T20:11:32Z

So, bringing you more news from the world of books and reading, today is World Book Day. Here's a description of what it's all about:

https://literacytrust.org.uk/about-us/world-book-day-national-literacy-trust/

And here's another U.K. site, Goldsboro Books, in which their staff weigh in on the books that have had the greatest impact on their lives:

https://goldsborobooks.com/blogs/news/world-book-day-the-books-that-made-us-readers?mc_cid=702d996c97&mc_eid=47fc6ebfe4

Closer to home, we're also blessed with a strong network of libraries and bookshops. While most residents are likely aware of the location of their nearest or most convenient public library branch, there are also numerous libraries supporting educational institutions, government offices, law firms, and more. Their resources are often available to anyone who needs them, whether for consultation on site or borrowing directly through an alumni connection or otherwise via interlibrary loan.

There are also libraries geared to specific groups within our community, for example the Ottawa Trans Library:

https://ottawatranslibrary.ca

That said, there's something about book ownership too, especially with classics and other books that you anticipate re-reading or referring to on a regular basis.

Getting kids reading and enjoying books early in life is important too, and that's the philosophy behind Twice Upon A Time, which provides free books (of their own choosing) to children up to age 12:

https://twiceuponatime.ca

For leisure reading, I'm a big fan of in-person browsing, the serendipity of discovering something you weren't specifically looking for, but looks like it might be right up your alley. I love second-hand bookshops and fund-raising book sales but when I buy new, I try where possible to shop the independents.

One of my favourites is The Spaniel's Tale, located in Ottawa's Hintonburg neighbourhood. Their current space is really too small, although they've been making good use of the space they do have, highlighting local authors at the front of the store and devoting plenty of space to mystery and crime fiction, other genre fiction, gender studies, indigenous studies ... all the stuff I typically gravitate towards, anyway.

And the good news is ... they'll soon be moving a few doors along Wellington Street to more spacious digs!

https://thespanielstale.ca/our-new-location

If you shop there or think you would like to, you can even help with their expansion by becoming a Bookstore Builder at whatever level you're comfortable with (details at the above-listed website). They even maintain a gift registry for the aforementioned Ottawa Trans Library:

https://thespanielstale.ca/gift-registry/yHVwG-HlRiI

Not all independents do well here. Collected Works, which was located near Wellington and Holland, was in a cosy little space, accessible via a number of bus routes, and offered coffee too. They expanded their space, but sadly were unable to make a go of it after that.

Perfect Books, on the other hand, quite recently doubled their existing space and appear to be thriving. I'm sure it helps that they are in a central downtown location but they are also great community builders and have partnered with, for example, the Writers Festival to be their official book vendor. During pandemic lockdowns, staff would often hand-deliver orders free of charge and not only to downtown locations.

This one goes back a ways, but I also want to highlight the creative solution that Books on Beechwood came up with, when facing almost certain closure back in 2013:

https://www.newedinburgh.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/2013_FebNEN_web.pdf

Way to go!

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Ban the Bomb, Not The Books

2026-03-02T16:39:46Z

I'm late this year in commenting on Freedom to Read Week, which concluded at the weekend. Though of course, I personally believe that EVERY week should be Freedom to Read Week.

In fact, I did a couple of things to commemorate the week.

First, I watched a documentary called The Librarians on the PBS show Independent Lens:

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/the-librarians/

It mainly focused on school libraries in the U.S. and predictably, a large proportion of the contentious books concerned LGBTQ+ young people. Right-wing fundamentalist parents' groups (including, or perhaps especially parents of kids who were gay, questioning, gender-fluid etc.) compiled a long list of books that they demanded be immediately withdrawn from libraries and school curricula in their communities (mostly school libraries, although I seem to recall some public libraries were also targeted). Librarians, teachers and other concerned citizens who dared to challenge the challengers faced serious consequences.

Nothing new there, I guess. And certainly Canadian libraries are by no means immune to this sort of nonsense.

Anyway, one of the challenged books they described piqued my interest: Lawn Boy, by Jonathan Evison. I put a hold on it at my friendly local public library and just a day or two later, got the notification that I could come and pick it up.

Even though the book had sounded intriguing, my expectations for it weren't really super-high. I was envisioning something like a YA novel, kid comes out as gay, gets disowned by parents, finds himself and comes into his own with his new circle of friends and associates, you know the sort of thing. But what I got was much more than that.

Mike Muñoz is a vaguely white-looking kid with a Hispanic surname who recently finished high school and does various short-term menial jobs when he can get work at all. He lives with his mother and stepdad no. 3 and his obese and intellectually challenged older brother. Though he seemingly has no marketable skills, his passion is landscaping and especially topiary. Basically a starving artist.

But what really makes this book stand out for me is Evison's gift for characterization and getting into other people's skin, even those who are nothing like oneself. It's all about the assumptions we make about other people and the assumptions they make about us, most of which may be quite erroneous. And I'm not just (nor even primarily) talking about assumptions about sexuality and gender identity: I'm talking cultural background, social class & living conditions, race, age, occupation, political orientation ... in short, just about every demographic detail you can think of.

There's some great dialogue in the book and a lot of humour too. The main characters are basically good people. Flawed, unquestionably, but they look out for each other. There's basically a happy ending, though not saccharin happily-ever-after. Mike Muñoz has found his tribe.

I also found the author's essay at the end, which he entitles The Great American Landscaping Novel, quite fascinating. While Evison is quite prolific, this novel seems to have been his passion project.

I'm now reading Evison's most recent (c2025) novel, The Heart of Winter. It's much more ambitious than Lawn Boy, moving back and forth through various time periods. Lawn Boy did that to a degree, but since the main character is only 22 years old, there's far less time to revisit! The Heart of Winter concerns an elderly couple - Abe is 90 and Ruth 87 - and the book covers a span of 70+ years from when they first met in 1953 at the University of Washington, he a business admin major who's politically conservative and she a staunch feminist and artsy type who loves poetry, through to 2024 when they're parents, grandparents and great-grandparents and she becomes seriously ill. Lots of ups and downs and adjustments and re-re-re-adjustments they have to make in their relationship and in their respective roles are of course necessitated.

I'm finding Heart of Winter very interesting too and it's still very much informed by Evison's gift for getting inside his characters' skins. But it's not such a light or entertaining read as Lawn Boy. There's far less humour and far more pathos. As for historical accuracy, I'm not nearly as up on U.S. history and politics as most of his readers probably would be; still, in terms of the international scene I did do a double-take when Ruth and Abe were discussing the Berlin Wall. In 1953?!

OK, so let's put Evison and his books aside for a moment. As I observed above, Canadian libraries of all kinds have been subject to book banning too. And librarian banning.

This latest move relates to librarians in federal prisons. And to CEGEP programs in Quebec-based federal prisons. Both of which are being eliminated. A few years ago at an Ex Libris Association annual conference, I listened to a very moving presentation by a wrongly-convicted long-time prisoner, who said that the prison library was pretty much the only thing that made his incarceration endurable. Prison conditions in general are of course a whole other kettle of stinky fish but even leaving aside the wrongfully convicted, I would note that a whole lot of prisoners are just awaiting trial for months or years on end and have not been found guilty of any crime.

For those who are interested, here's a link to a petition you can sign:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScqtBD2prjrQ4ud8bi9LYRhO7XYV9H7WrCYTgIjtN4C-Ev4mw/viewform

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Some juicy gossip ...

2026-02-15T01:27:51Z

... about juice. Except that this looks to be a bit more than just gossip, hearsay or misinformation. Minute Maid has announced that it's getting out of the frozen concentrated juice business:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/minute-maid-discontinuing-frozen-juice-9.7065520

Some people may be saying, "So what? Isn't the ready-to-drink stuff more convenient?"

Not to me it isn't. In fact, it promises to seriously disrupt our whole grocery shopping schedule!

At the moment, my partner and I do our main grocery shop every two weeks. Typically we buy about 8 cans of orange juice on each trip. One can provides the two of us with our morning orange juice for two days: four fairly generous glasses of juice. So if you're good with figures, you can figure out that seven cans will last us the full fortnight, leaving one extra can in case we can't get out on our usual shopping day, or we want to use some juice in baked goods, or we need extra O.J. to make screwdrivers or tequila sunrises as the sun sets on a particularly stressful day.

The eight containers of juice fit easily into a normal-sized shopping bag, with room left over for the frozen veggies, frozen pierogis, ice cream or whatever. Now, imagine how much bag space we'd need to hold 32 already-made-up glasses of juice. Not to mention how heavy those bags would be, the number of un-reusable bottles we'd toss in the recycle bin, and the amount of fridge space we'd need to store it!

We're fortunate to still have a family car, although only my partner drives. But what about people who, whether by choice or necessity, rely on other modes of transport like walking, cycling, taking notoriously unreliable public transit, and so on?

With frozen concentrate, you just make up the juice as needed, in a container you can re-use over and over again. You can make the juice stronger or weaker, according to taste.

Admittedly, ready-made juices do have their place. Maybe there's a water shortage or your water supply is unsafe for some reason or you're going on a hike or a picnic where you may not have ready access to a decent water source. Cold or frozen juice-boxes may be great at keeping your kid's lunch cold for the morning, while being thawed to a palatable temperature by lunch time. But for everyday use, frozen concentrate is much more practical and economical for us and, I would think, for many other couples, individuals and families.

Of course, those disgusting orange crystals are pretty compact too, and require no refrigeration. Could we be segueing into a New Tang Dynasty?

Another thought: we used to have a milkman and a breadman. Maybe we could also have a juice man? Or woman? Or maybe even a drone?

Let's hope that either Minute Maid eventually sees the error of its ways, or that other companies step in to fill the gap.

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Does Management understand what it's letting itself in for?

2026-02-12T21:52:57Z

Whether you define Management as Treasury Board, the Privy Council Office, the Prime Minister's Office, the Prime Minister himself or someone or something else, I'm genuine baffled at the reasoning behind the back-to-the-office orders for federal public servants. Not that it really affects me personally as a retiree, although I think my 3+ decades as a federal worker should qualify me to weigh in on the issue!

My Public Service career began in the 1970s with a succession of summer and part-time jobs, before evolving after a couple of Masters' degrees into a series of progressively more responsible positions in Departmental and Agency libraries. Over the years, there were some brutally hot summer days when we had to be sent home because the buildings weren't air-conditioned; there were some epic snowstorms and ice storms and other extreme weather events; unsafe indoor air (think, for example, asbestos, mould, UFFI, spilt chemicals ...); computer downtime because in their wisdom, the powers that be assumed automation was the be-all and end-all and so manual procedures were totally abandoned; and so on and so forth. Anyway, my point is that there were multiple occasions, long before the pandemic lockdowns, when federal public servants were sent home because they were simply unable, because of some force majeure, to be productive.

How, precisely, was this beneficial from an Employer standpoint?!

Now, of course, the situation is ten times (or more) worse: federal buildings in critical condition and plagued by vermin, the dire situation with public transit, at least in Ottawa, the housing crisis - most public servants still in the workforce simply don't have a viable office to go back to!

If the above-mentioned problems could be resolved, I suspect many public servants would be quite glad to return to the workplace. There's a huge variety of jobs in a large organization like the Public Service. Some jobs lend themselves well to telecommuting, others not so much. Ditto with people.

At the moment, Bruce Fanjoy seems to be the only MP willing to stick his neck out and say that the back-to-office mandate might not be the brightest idea that Management has come up with. Other MPs are much more reticent, generally toeing the party line and hiding behind the weasel words "No Comment!"

I find it all rather ironic. For my entire career, I (along with other public servants) was cautioned against becoming too politically involved. On the other hand, politicians are SUPPOSED to be politically involved. I'm too loyal to my former employer to name names, but let's just say that one current Ottawa-area MP and one current Gatineau-area MP were public servants and regular clients of mine in the libraries where I worked, before they left to run for office. Now they're refusing to comment publicly?

What's the world and the country coming to?

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2026 and all that

2026-01-04T21:04:32Z

My greatest wish for 2026 would be that we all put our efforts into re-humanizing our world. Making it more humane, of course, but also working towards a more human-CENTRED world.

Now, I'm not necessarily against technological innovation. I'd just like to see a more symbiotic relationship between humans on the one hand, and cyber-creations (computers, bots, etc.) on the other. A world where we have humans doing what humans do best, while computers and machines of various kinds do the kinds of things that humans simply weren't designed or evolved to do: computations at warp-speed, feats of strength and amazing physical prowess, and so on.

In order to develop artificial intelligence, we have to first understand what human intelligence is all about. We also need to understand other human qualities and strengths and talents that we don't necessarily associate with what we typically think of as intelligence.

"Emotional intelligence" was a buzz-phrase a decade or two ago. Is there such a thing as artificial emotional intelligence? What about the evidence of our senses, all five or six (or perhaps more) of them? Human senses are clearly not quite the same as sensors, the kind you have in your smoke detectors, CO detectors, radon detectors, motion detectors ...

Many folk in the world of politics, economics, finance, etc., insist that we are in the midst of a "productivity crisis". Maybe that's true. But how do we figure that out if the definitions, standards and benchmarks for "productivity" are left unexamined and unchallenged because they're considered the purview of specific categories of experts, people much smarter than you and me?

How do you measure the productivity of a daydream, a night-dream, a nightmare, a vision? Or even an assumption or preconception, one that's possibly a little or a lot at odds with the mainstream? Perhaps any productivity problems we have can be partially attributed to our reluctance to fund and promote the things that matter most? Basic research as well as applied research. The arts. Leisure. Remember when the futurists were all predicting that by this century, we would all be working far fewer hours? Machines would do all the drudge work, leaving us free to pursue our passions in life?

Instead, we are increasingly being channelled into doing things the machine's way. The computer's way. The Chat-bot's way.

I did accomplish some things in 2025. The year was not terrible for me; it had a fairly typical blend of ups and downs. But over the past few years, I've been finding more and more that in the day-to-day business of life, in conducting basic essential transactions, I can't interact with my world in the ways I prefer, and that's hugely alienating.

So much has to be done online now: paying bills, uploading documents, sending in applications. Even picking up the phone and trying to talk to a real human being is often an exercise in frustration or at worst futility. I'm definitely not an extroverted life-of-the-party type of person but even typical introvert activities like planning, analysis, deep thought or concentration, imagining, the creative process, and so on, are seriously hampered when we're forced to do things as if we were impersonal machines.

Let's hope that in 2026 and beyond, we remember our humanity and make good use of our human qualities, for the benefit of ourselves and others!

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Books Read 2025

2026-01-02T01:52:30Z

For whatever reason, I read less this past year than in previous years. So here are the books I read, in the order I read them. I've marked them as F (fiction) or NF (nonfiction).

1. Unrest - Gwen Tuinman (F)
2. Machines Like Me - Ian McEwan (F)
3. The Trapp Family Singers - Maria von Trapp (NF)
4. A LivelyMidwinter Murder - Katy Watson (F)
5. Shipwrecked Souls - Barbara Fradkin
6. The Butterfly Kid - Chester Anderson (F) - Greenwich Village Trilogy #1
7. The Unicorn Girl - Michael Kurland (F) - GV Trilogy #2
8. The Probability Pad - T.A. Waters (F) - GV Trilogy #3
9. On Community - Casey Plett (NF)
10. Library Girl - Polly Horvath (F)
11. And Then She Fell - Alicia Elliott (F)
12. The Berlin Apartment - Bryn Turnbull (F)
13. The Compassionate Imagination: How the arts are central to a functioning democracy (NF) Max Wyman
14. The Librarian Spy - Madeline Martin (F)
15. The Adversary - Michael Crummey (F)
16. The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on the Meaning of Hope and Freedom - Nasser Abu Srour (NF)
17. Bonheur d'Occasion - Gabrielle Roy (F)
18. Agatha Christie's Marple - Mark Aldridge (NF)
19. How to Age Disgracefully - Clare Pooley (F)
20. Olivetti - Allie Millington (F)
21. Enchantress of Numbers: A novel of Ada Lovelace - Jennifer Chiaverini (F/NF)
22. Don't Fall Off The Rocking Horse - Lawrence Freiman (NF)
23. Found in a Bookshop - Stephanie Butland (F)
24. Letter to my Transgender Daughter - Carolyn Hays (NF)
25. And a Dog Called Fig: Solitude, Connection, The Writing Life - Helen Humphreys (NF)
26. The Sound of Music: The Making of America's Favorite Movie - Julie Antopol Hirsch (NF)
27. The Underground Library - Jennifer Ryan (F)
28. Fashion Conscious: Change the World with a Change of Clothes - Sarah Klymkiw & Kim Hankinson (NF)
29. Bibliophobia: a memoir - Sarah Chihaya (NF)
30. Whose truth is it anyway? [TNQ #174 special issue on climate change - various authors (both F & NF)]
31. The Cat Who Saved The Library - Sosuke Natsukawa (F)
32. Jennie's Boy - Wayne Johnston (NF)
33. To Place A Rabbit - Madhur Anand (F)
34. The Schubert Treatment: A story of music and healing - Claire Oppert (NF)
35. Trans Galactic Bike Ride: Feminist Bicycle SF stories of transgender & non binary adventurers (F)
36. The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards: Memoir - Jessica Waite (NF)
37. Suppose We Kissed While Sinking a Billionaire's Yacht: v.1 of Antifa Journal (various authors) (F)
38. Yoko - David Sheff (NF)
39. Nine Lives: The autobiography of Erica Rutherford (NF)
40. She's A Lamb! - Meredith Hambrock (F)
41. On Book Banning: How the new censorship consensus trivializes art ... - Ira Wells (NF)
42. The Café With No Name - Robert Seethaler, translated by Katy Derbyshire (F)
43. The Cat Who Saved Books - Sosuke Natsukama (F)
44. A Natural History of Transition: Stories - Callum Angus (F)
45. The Titanic Survivors Book Club - Timothy Schaffert (F)
46. Wittgenstein's Nephew - Thomas Bernhard (F/NF)
47. The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction - Ursula Leguin, intro. by Donna Haraway (NF)
48. Who Lies in Wait - Brenda Chapman (F)
49. The Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil (F)
50. Death on the Island - Eliza Reid (F)
51. Journey into the Past - Stefan Zweig (F)
52. A Moment of True Feeling -Peter Handke (F)
53. The Left-Handed Woman - Peter Handke (F)
54. English for Fun - Ruth Kletzander & Andrew Williams(NF)
55. Your Sound of Music Keepsake - Stefan Herzl & Bernhard Helminger (8th ed., 2020) (NF)
56. Memories Before and After The Sound of Music - Agathe von Trapp (NF)
57. My Parents- Hervé Guibert (F)
58. Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre - Niigaan Sinclair (NF)
59. Bruce Fanjoy's Apple Crumble: How one man defeated a would-be Prime Minister - Brigitte Pellerin (NF)
60. Die Singende Familie aus Salzburg - Margret Springl; Illust. Regine Orel; intro: Johannes von Trapp (F/NF)
61. The Baker Street Letters - Michael Robertson (F)
62. The Vinyl Diaries: Sex, deep cuts & my soundtrack to queer joy - Pete Crighton (NF)
63. The Book Club for Troublesome Women - Marie Bostwick (F)
64. Memoirs of a Bookshop Girl - Heather E. Thomson (NF)
65. True North Rising - Whit Fraser (NF)
66. A Fatal Truth - Faith Martin (F)
67. Bookish - Matthew Sweet (adapted from TV series created by Mark Gatiss) (F)
68. The Big Brown Suitcase: A Woman's Journey to Freedom - Marvin Kolahdooz (NF)
69. My Bert has Alzheimer's: Caregiving is living for two - Paula de Ronde (NF)
70. Murder at the Christmas Emporium - Andreina Cordani (F)
71. The Black Wolf - Louise Penny (F)
72. A Maigret Christmas and other stories - Georges Simenon (F)
73. A Capital Mystery [short stories] - Crime Writers of Canada (eds. Bernadette Cox & Mike Martin) (F)
74. No New Land - M.G. Vassanji (F)
75. Displaced in Gaza: stories from the Gaza genocide (various) (NF)
76. The Christmas Stocking Murders - Denzil Meyrick (F)
77. A Season for Spies: A Lane Winslow prequel - Iona Whishaw (F)
78. Lost Time - Winona Kent (F)
79. A New Blueprint for Government: Reshaping power, the PMO & the Public Service - Kevin G.Lynch & James R.Mitchell (NF)
80. Kafka Americana - Jonathan Lethem & Carter Scholz (F)
81. Mr. & Mrs. Willmott Investigate - Margaret Holbrook (F)

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Some light seasonal reading

2025-12-23T21:55:08Z

I don't enter many contests but when I heard about the "When Hallmark Met Librarianship" contest, I was definitely intrigued and decided to cobble together a submission.

It was open to anyone in the library-ish communities (i.e. libraries, archives, etc.) and you had to come up with a romantic storyline featuring some sort of information professional, that could be the plot of a seasonal Hallmark movie. The title and outline had to be no more than 250 words.

I must admit that although I'm generally a woman of few words, I struggled with that constraint. I didn't feel able to properly develop my characters or outline a major source of conflict. Gone are the Dickensian days of writers being paid by the word - in these days of sound bites and tweets, 250 words no doubt feels like unimaginable luxury to many an aspiring author! Anyway, I had a lot of fun dreaming up my story and even more fun reading what the other entrants came up with. It would be pretty cool if Hallmark actually did make a movie out of any of those story ideas. And hey, Ottawa and points just west of us are prime locations for such movies. You see, we're the snowiest national capital so there's no need for the fake snow, unless perhaps they decide to film the thing in July.

Anyway, you can read all the entries here:

https://librarianship.ca/blog/hallmark-met-librarianship-2025/

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Who's afraid of the big Black Wolf?

2025-11-30T22:42:15Z

The latest Penny has dropped, and I've just finished reading it. It, in this case, being Louise Penny's The Black Wolf. Wow. It's an intricately constructed book and it's gripping and suspenseful in the extreme. I'd call it a page-turner, except half the time I was flipping the pages backwards instead forward after saying to myself: Wait a minute, did I just read what I thought I read?! Didn't she say something totally different about him just a couple of pages ago???

The first time I saw Louise Penny in person was around the time her second novel, Dead Cold, came out. She spoke in our public library auditorium to a sparse audience of perhaps a dozen people. At that time, she mentioned that she planned to write a Three Pines book set in each of the seasons, and I thought: Oh, good - that means there'll have to be another two books to go. When her fifth book was released, it felt like we'd hit the jackpot. But the best was yet to come, and The Black Wolf is the twentieth in the series, as well as being a companion piece to no.19, The Grey Wolf.

Another interesting comment she made back in the early days of the series was to the effect that she didn't want to write the kind of books that would make her feel scared to go to bed at night. It's particularly interesting in retrospect because her books have definitely become quite dark, even apocalyptic, over the course of the series. From a thematic point of view, her later books are definitely not cosies, although she doesn't really go in for graphic descriptions of blood and guts. Her characters are fully fleshed out individuals: they feel like people who could be our neighbours, our friends, or our family. There's a lot of humour in her books too.

The later books send some of our favourite fictional characters away from the safety and security of their fictional village to interact with real people in real places. The Black Wolf includes several scenes in the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, which straddles the border between Quebec and Vermont and has been in the news a lot over the past year:

https://www.haskelloperahouse.org

Blending fiction with reality, particularly in a book set in the present day, presents certain challenges, both for the writer and the reader.

For instance: journalist Paul Workman is a real live person, who plays himself under his real name in the book

https://oneworldinformation.com/paul-workman/

But the other journalist, Shona Dorion, who sees him as a mentor and also has a major role in the story is, I would assume, fictional or perhaps a composite of a few people.

Obviously there is a real live Prime Minister of Canada and a real live Deputy Prime Minister too. There's a Minister of Defence and a Chief of Staff. There's a U.S. President. And so on. And if any of these people are going to be serious bad guys in the book, or perhaps even if they're not, they obviously have to have different names and identifying features to avoid libel.

I think this is the first book of hers I've read in which a large part of the action occurs in Ottawa. And I have to say there were some descriptions in the book that gave me pause. For example, Gamache looks at a painting of skaters on the Rideau Canal, done well over a century ago, which he muses could, if it weren't for their old-fashioned clothing, have been painted last winter. Hmmm, really? I mean, the canal was finished in 1832, but the official skateway didn't open until 1971. Yes, I'm sure parts of it were occasionally used on an impromptu basis for skating or hockey, but when he reflects that "skaters still glided for miles along the frozen waterway", that sounded a bit off to me.

He goes on to remember his parents taking him skating there for the first time, when he was just a small boy. Which could be possible, I guess, except that it would make Gamache a fair bit younger than I thought he was supposed to be. Mind you, the speed with which an author ages their main characters is a whole topic in itself. I think we have to allow a fair amount of literary licence here, as characters and series sometimes have an unexpected longevity that defies human limitations! Gamache does seem to have a bit of a gift for reverse-aging, though: In the first book, Still Life, we learn on page 2 that he's in his mid-fifties, "at the height of a long and now apparently stalled career"; in the very next book, Dead Cold, we are told that "though he was only in his early fifties, there was an old world charm about Gamache, a courtesy and manner that spoke of a time past."

The pacing in The Black Wolf is another little niggle I have with it. As mentioned above, it is for the most part action-packed, a whirlwind of new twists and turns minute to minute. That I find appropriate for this type of book. But then in the last couple of chapters, several months elapse with the total time-frame for the book comprising a year. That's fine if it's really a kind of dénouement, with loose ends being tied up. Except that in this case, a couple of chapters totally change the course of the story arc. I found it jarring. There was too much telling rather than showing, and moments where Gamache did things that weren't in my opinion What Gamache Would Do.

All that said, I'll still keep reading the Three Pines books for as long as Louise Penny keeps writing them, or as long as I'm still around to read them. I'd also love to read a sequel to State of Terror, which she co-wrote with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

More on Louise Penny and her books here:

https://www.louisepenny.com/books.htm

And here's a link to Brome Lake Books in her home town:

https://bookmanager.com/1178946/?q=h

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If it's out there, don't come in here!

2025-11-19T22:07:38Z

For some time now, Ottawa Public Library has been using the tag line "If it's out there, it's in here." Presumably they're trying to encourage us to avail ourselves of their whole range of services, which we are after all paying for with our tax dollars. Here's something that was on a poster recently:

"Ottawa Public Library (OPL) is the largest bilingual (English/French) public library system in North America, with 34 branches, physical and virtual at BiblioOttawaLibrary.ca, bookmobiles, and kiosk services. OPL’s mission is to inspire learning, spark curiosity, and connect people. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Contact us at InfoService@BiblioOttawaLibrary.ca. If it’s out there, it’s in here."

In addition to the services directly provided by library staff, public libraries also provide space for other groups to provide services that are of broad general interest and benefit. Like vaccination.

Via our local city councillor's newsletter, I learned that during November, vaccinations would be on offer on Monday and Tuesday afternoons at the Emerald Plaza library. That suited me, as I was due for a COVID booster as well as my annual flu shot. I'd gotten a COVID vaccination there before, just over a year ago, and it was fast and efficient - I'd been in and out within about 20 minutes.

So yesterday afternoon, off I went to my friendly local library.

Turned out I couldn't get my shots. This time around, they were only doing folks who couldn't get the service anywhere else. People who had no valid health card, for whatever reason - newcomers to the country or province, transients, infants under two ... I guess there must be several possibilities here.

They did seem to have a couple of patients waiting, but it certainly didn't look all that busy. I'm sympathetic to their policy of giving priority to those with special needs. By all means, triage us - I could happily have accepted an appointment an hour or two hence as I can find plenty to amuse myself with in the library. Just don't turn us away entirely, when you're a public organization supported by public funds!

Fortunately there was a Rexall pharmacy a short distance away. I walked over there and learned that yes, they did offer both the Moderna vaccine and this year's flu vaccine, including the one intended for folks like me who are over 65. And yes, they accepted walk-ins. They estimated that I'd have about a 30-to-40 minute wait, which proved to be fairly accurate.

I can't really say that the drugstore did much to inspire my learning or spark my curiosity the way OPL strives to do. But at least it connected me with the people I needed, something that the library failed to do yesterday!

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Choosing what to read

2025-11-14T22:12:15Z

In his latest blog post, David Headley of Goldsboro Books in the U.K. asks: Do you trust an algorithm to tell you what to read? :

https://goldsborobooks.com/blogs/news/do-you-trust-an-algorithm-to-tell-you-what-to-read?mc_cid=79cf372777&mc_eid=47fc6ebfe4

He makes some valid, if rather obvious points about trapping you into reading what you've always read and closing off the delightfully elusive and ineffable processes involved in serendipity.

Here's how I would respond.

No, I wouldn't necessarily trust an algorithm. But depending on how sophisticated the algorithm is, it can be an interesting parlour game to find out what the recommendation system thinks I might like. If some of its suggestions sound appealing, I would certainly see if my library or independent bookshop has them available, and find out more about them.

If I'm able to devise my own algorithm or search strategy, or if I have some flexibility to refine theirs, that's great too. That's precisely what I used to do in my working life as a librarian, whether conducting a reference interview, looking in available reference sources, consulting with colleagues or following up on my hunches. It's what I still do now if I'm looking for reading matter.

Can hunches be automated? I think the jury is still out.

Of course, people tend to be consistently inconsistent too. What I'm in the mood for right now may not be what I feel like reading next week or next year. Moreover, telling people they should not or must not read something because it's erroneous, disgusting, hateful or obscene will often make them all the more determined to get their hands on it. Banning a book can be a sure-fire recipe for its success.

I do think sometimes very basic recommendations like "If you like Author A, you may enjoy Authors X, Y and Z" are somewhat useful. There are familiar comfort-reads and then there are challenging or interesting reads that you'd like to discuss with others and that make great book club selections.

Human reader advisory services are still a thing, both in bricks-and-mortar libraries and online. There are plenty of good independent sites out there too. Here's an extensive one I found recently and really like:

catherinerosegunther.com

How do you decide what's going to be your next read? Do you generally read one book at a time or do you generally have two or three on the go at once? And where do magazines, newspapers, newsletters etc. fit into the overall picture?

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Budgeting for Dummies

2025-11-09T02:02:30Z

This past week, the Carney government unveiled its first Budget. It makes for some interesting and rather disheartening reading, especially for anyone engaged in artistic, educational or cultural pursuits:

https://budget.canada.ca/2025/report-rapport

Consider, for example, the cuts projected for Canadian Heritage, which is responsible amongst other things for national parks, museums, libraries, archives ... you know, all those third spaces that make our lives interesting and worthwhile. They're outlined as follows in Annex 3:

"To meet up to 15 per cent in savings targets over three years, the Parks Canada Agency (PC) will maximize efficiencies while continuing to deliver services to Canadians by refocusing its organisational structure and business unit functions to avoid duplication of work, as well as ceasing or reducing lower priority activities, such as library services."

As a federal retiree who devoted over 33 years of my career to working in government libraries, this hits a bit too close to home. It feels like a slap in the face, or perhaps more like the Government of Canada slamming the door shut behind me ... although at least I have a pension to show for it!

Joanne Laucius wrote an article for the Ottawa Citizen that goes into the cuts in a bit more detail:

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/federal-budget-cuts-ottawa

Okay, so what exactly is the Government's rationale for these cuts?

First of all, it wants to free up money, and lots of it, for Defence.

Secondly, it figures that the work done by librarians or educators or artists or archivists is either just an expensive and unnecessary frill or it's something that can be done equally efficiently (or maybe even better) by AI! I thought the article below was a pretty good summary of what we're up against:

https://www.404media.co/ai-is-supercharging-the-war-on-libraries-education-and-human-knowledge/?utm_id=01K9F9XTAM3WMACR5B2EMY54HM&_kx=oHkjrHJvte_xQmd6BtVhi3XyF695SCuGAH0CoHIefGffz-_bBde44HsGkMwH8i6L.U5D8ER

The Government made a big deal this time of separating out its Operational budget from its Investment budget. Personally, I'd have thought that educational and cultural enrichment were pretty good investments in people, in preserving our heritage and in ensuring a better (or at least not worse) future for our descendants and the generations to come. But what do I know?

They did at least announce that the Canada Strong pass would be back next summer. That's something I applaud, though it's a relatively small win. But meanwhile, nothing substantive about the environment, or promoting research, or knowledge transfer, or ... _______ (fill in the blank).

Yet despite everything I've written above, I reluctantly concede that I don't want to see this government fall on a non-confidence motion just yet, because the alternative looks so much worse!

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Smoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer?

2025-11-03T15:02:50Z

A few nights ago, I had a rather bizarre dream.

The scene was some sort of high school bush party. My daughter was there, along with a bunch of her friends. In the dream, she and her friends were maybe around 14 or 15 years old. I was there too, and quite illogically I was pretty young too, maybe in my early twenties. I think I was supposed to be some sort of responsible adult chaperone.

A couple of guys came by and crashed the party. One of them seemed to take a shine to said teenaged daughter and I was trying to figure out if the attraction was mutual. I was a bit concerned, thinking she was at kind of a vulnerable age, but I didn't say anything.

Anyway, the two gatecrashers were bearing gifts, in the form of marijuana. Free for the taking, and toking. Which was what everyone proceeded to do, myself included. I had no idea where the dope had come from, although I certainly knew what it was. But with impeccable dream-logic, I figured that if we happened to get caught, I could plead ignorance of what it was we were smoking, and we would all be off the hook!

Naturally we did get caught.

A police-narc stepped into the bushes and flashed his badge at me. Unlike the poor sod in the Phil Ochs song, I didn't get arrested and sentenced to thirty years. Instead, the cop phoned up MY parents to come and get me. Which they did.

Their car pulled up, and my dad got out to talk things over with the officer. I think maybe he had to sign something. I got into the back seat of my parents' car, as instructed. On the way home, I mentioned that I didn't know where the guys had obtained the marijuana.

"Hmmp," said Dad in his inimitable way. "It sounds as if you might not be as guilty as we first thought."

Mum was not impressed and sat stewing and seething in the front passenger seat.

Meanwhile, the cop had driven off in the opposite direction, presumably back to headquarters. The kids were left at the bush-site, free to resume their revelry.

I don't know if everyone lived happily ever after. Phil Ochs certainly didn't.

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Halloween and seasonal traditions

2025-11-01T01:39:29Z

I'm never quite sure how we should prepare for Halloween. When I was growing up as a Baby Boomer, we often had around a hundred or so trick-or-treaters coming to our door. Sometimes our family ran short of goodies, so when I got back home with my haul, my parents would give me some of the bigger treats they still had, in exchange for a bunch of the little candies from my bag that I didn't really like anyway.

When my partner and I bought our own house in the suburbs, there weren't a lot of small children in the neighbourhood. We'd buy a few goodies, but usually we didn't hand them all out, although sometimes I'd take the remains into work so others could enjoy them. Then we had a kid of our own and she was always well supplied with stuff when she went out in our neighbourhood.

It's always a dilemma: Do you buy the kind of goodies that you yourself like, so that you have a ready supply if you don't give them out at the door? Or do you avoid temptation, buy the sort of stuff you can take or leave, and give away any extras when Halloween is over?

We went through many years of having sometimes no trick-or-treaters, sometimes only three or four, but rarely more than half a dozen. So clearly we didn't want to have 50 or 60 little chocolate bars just lying around staring at us as if to say, "C'mon, eat me - you know you want to!"

The solution we settled on was to buy a whole bunch of those little boxes of raisins. Because even if we didn't get anyone coming to our door, we could always use those raisins for baking, or on cereal, or whatever.
And of course during the days of COVID lockdowns, everyone was staying home anyway.

But then last year, we suddenly got a whole bunch of trick-or-treaters. We really struggled to do our duty to the hopeful little ghosts, goblins and wizards who appeared on our doorstep. So this year, we bought a box of 40 little packages of potato chips, in addition to the little boxes of raisins.

Halloween has been rainy this year, which no doubt has discouraged some of the young trick-or-treaters. But we still gave out 27 bags of chips. I'm confident we'll be able to use up the rest of them, as well as the raisins.

So what of other seasonal traditions?

Well, last Saturday we attended a live performance of the Rocky Horror Show at the Gladstone Theatre. That's definitely become a Halloween classic. And this year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the movie, too.

Tomorrow evening, we'll be trotting over to our neighbourhood park for their pumpkin display, where folks in the neighbourhood bring their creatively carved jack-o-lanterns to be admired by all, before they are consigned to other uses: composting, animal feed, and so forth. It's a relatively new tradition, initiated a couple of years ago by our community association, and I'm looking forward to it.

I just finished reading a murder mystery by Faith Martin, published in 2020 but set in 1961, about someone dying during bonfire night in the UK, and the ensuing investigation where the death is found to be a murder.

One tradition I'd never heard about until a decade or two ago when someone in my Toastmasters group gave a speech about it, is Mat Night, held on October 30 in some parts of Canada and the U.S., and on other dates in other parts of the world:

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/watchwords-the-night-before-halloween-used-to-be-a-mischievous-affair

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischief_Night

So I guess the next few days mark various occasions ... All Saints' Day? All Souls' Day? Fall-back Day?

What occasions do you celebrate (or dread)?

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Book Clubs in Fiction, Nonfiction and Real Life

2025-10-23T01:55:06Z

Yesterday I went to a book club meeting. The book we were discussing was Wînipêk by Niigaan Sinclair:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/673193/winipek-by-niigaan-sinclair/9780771099175

The six people at yesterday's meeting had varying views on the book and we had quite a lively discussion. One of the members suggested it should be required reading in high school history classes.

For me it was a fascinating book: well researched and documented but also very personal, relating events from throughout his life and the lives of people he knows, how he thought about the events when they happened and how he thinks about them now in retrospect. It's told in short pieces or vignettes, usually only a few pages each. I found it highly readable, somewhat to my surprise.

It was even more of a surprise when I woke up as usual this morning to Ottawa Morning on the radio and learned that Niigaan Sinclair was going to be interviewed on the show, just before the 7:30 local news. It was in connection with some [ceremonial or sacred or at any rate highly meaningful to indigenous people] items that have been held at the Vatican and which the Vatican had long ago promised to return, and now it seems soon will be ... sort of. Apparently they will go back, initially at least, to the Canadian Council of Bishops, meaning there will undoubtedly be further delays before they are restored to their rightful owners or guardians or whomever, and allowed to resume their intended purposes in indigenous life. But anyway, he set things out far more eloquently than I possibly could so if you're interested, you can listen to him here:

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-100-ottawa-morning/clip/16176874-indigenous-artifacts-held-vatican-museums-heading-back-canada

Anyway, it's said that truth is stranger than fiction. And I guess reconciliation is stranger to us, and much much harder for us, than ... well, most things anyway. Maybe you can fill in the blank?

Along with the Sinclair book we were going to discuss, I had with me at yesterday's meeting another book that I had nearly finished and that I was finding absolutely riveting. A novel this time, by Marie Bostwick, about a book club. The Book Club for Troublesome Women.

It's set in the year 1963 in a new subdivision in Concordia, Virginia, and concerns four married women of various ages and at various stages of their lives. Three of the four have children; all are housewives dealing (with varying degrees of success) with social constraints and expectations, mostly associated with gender. And all have ideas about how they want to live their lives. Margaret Ryan wants to be a writer; Bitsy Cobb (the youngest of the group) wants to be a vet, loves working with horses and collecting vegetarian recipes; Viv Buschetti worked as nurse during the war and looks forward to resuming her nursing career once her six children are all in school; Charlotte Gustafson is the bohemian one, an unsuccessful, manic moody artist who has spent time in a psychiatric facility, comes from a family of means but is definitely the wild child black sheep of the family.

So anyway, Margaret, who is tired of some of the mindless neighbourhood kaffee klatsches, decides to set up
a book club. And the book decided on for their first selection is Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. Some of the other selections include Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Mary McCarthy's The Group

Anyway, what I loved about the book was how well-drawn and true-to-life all these women were, how they rallied to support each other in their crises, how we learned about their families and their backstories over the course of the book. It didn't hurt that I had read number of these books myself and they had impacted my life too, although really these women were more of my mother's generation than mine. But I'm old enough to remember 1963 reasonably clearly: the early days of the space race, the Kennedy assassination and funeral, and so on.

Of course, 1963 was a pivotal year in the U.S. and in much of the rest of the world too. Real-life people like Katherine Graham of the Washington Post and Jacquie Kennedy and a few other people had small roles in the book. The author relates in her Afterword which of the events described in the book were strictly factual and which were just her imagining of how it might have been.

Marie Bostwick is a NY Times bestselling author, so it's pretty easy to find reviews of the book, questions for discussion, etc. Also this party kit, which could be fun if you're into this sort of thing:

https://mariebostwick.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/TBCFTW-Party-Kit.pdf

I also want to mention this book that I read a few years ago, and that struck a lot of responsive chords (some of them literal ones) with me:

1963, The Year of the Revolution: How Youth Changed the World with Music, Art and Fashion. By Robin Morgan and Ariel Leve (HarperCollins, 2013)

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Postsecondary education: A Donor's Dilemma

2025-10-18T01:10:03Z

So, it's that time of year when I make decisions about where to donate money that will qualify for a tax break when I file my 2025 income tax return. And one of the categories where I always donate something is postsecondary educational institutions. Since this is totally at my discretion, I naturally want to give to organizations that are in some way meaningful to me and to those people I care about.

No doubt many of you out there have been faced with similar decisions and I welcome any advice or personal stories you may have about your ultimate choices.

So here are some options that I'm looking at.

1. Carleton University:

This is the university I've had the most dealings with. I got my 4-year undergrad degree here in 1975 (50 years ago!) a dual major in French and German (a program I don't think exists any more). Then in the late 1980s and early 90s, I went back part-time together a Masters' degree in Public Administration. After my retirement in 2009, I took several non-credit courses on a variety of topics, all of them very enjoyable, through a program that was at first called Learning in Retirement, then CUALL (pronounced "See you all" and which stood for Carleton University Adult Lifelong Learning) and finally just Life Long Learning, before disbanding entirely a few months ago (although some of the former teachers / facilitators have now set up shop independently)

2. Western University (formerly the University of Western Ontario):

In 1976, I went to Western and got my M.L.S. (Master of Library Science) at their School of Library and Information Science, which amalgamated with the journalism program and I think parts of their technology, computer science, film studies etc. and is now part of a larger entity called the Faculty of Information and Media Studies (FIMS). There's some exciting stuff going on there, including something called the Starling Centre. But as for what it means to me? Basically my entire career as a librarian in the federal government wouldn't have been possible without that degree (or an MLS/MLIS from another accredited university).

3. Algonquin College:

I sporadically taught evening courses here part-time during the late 1990s / early 2000s. It was rewarding in many ways, including time spent with the students and it gave me the impetus I needed to stay up to date in my field. It was also frustrating in some ways because the College's support for part-time teachers was not always the greatest, we were paid only for in-class hours and had to do our preparation and marking on our own time, and we were not part of the union.

4. McGill University:

My daughter went here, as did one of my sisters. I'm impressed with their Faculty of Music. I was less than impressed when the Quebec government in its infinite wisdom decided a year or two ago that out-of-province students would henceforth be treated like international students as far as tuition fees go. Since then, I have been contributing to McGill's Canada Award that was created as a result of that decision, and I'll likely do so again. Because had the policy been in place when my daughter applied there, the tuition costs would probably have been out of reach for our family.

Our grandchildren, on the other hand, have always been Quebec residents and wouldn't face that obstacle. But if they wanted to attend an Ontario University, it might be another story because the Ontario government has made more than its fair share of bad decisions too! Just recently, for example, I learned that medical students in Ontario would essentially be second-class citizens when it came to internship choices unless they had spent at least 2 years ... in an ONTARIO HIGH SCHOOL, no less - which is not exactly something you can go back and change after being admitted to medical school!! Now, I don't know if any of the grandchildren aspire to a career in medicine, although I will note in passing that both the grandparents on the other side of the family were medical professionals.

So those are the educational institutions I'm considering at the moment. Within them, though, I don't yet know what particular fund or program to direct any donation to, nor the amount of the donation. Generally speaking I would avoid anything like a school of business or anything that already attracts all kinds of corporate donors with far deeper pockets than mine!

Does anyone have any thoughts about this?

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Exploring Salzburg independently

2025-10-07T20:56:31Z

So as promised (or perhaps threatened), in this post I'm going to write about how I spent my free time in Salzburg. There wasn't really enough of it, I found, although that's always a hazard when you book any kind of group travel experience. And if you want to explore areas outside the major cities - which I definitely did - I think a package tour like this one is the way to go. I don't drive and even if I did, I'm not sure that I'd be very well-placed to learn about and choose the highlights I'd be most interested in seeing in the time I had available.

As mentioned in my last entry, my free time in Salzburg more or less began following the afternoon we spent in Berchtesgaden. Wandering along Rainerstrasse, I came across a great 2-storey bookstore. Newer stuff on the ground floor and sale books (often considerably reduced) upstairs. There was also an extensive array of those inexpensive paperbound classics published by Reclams Universal-Bibliothek. It reminded me of my university days!

https://firmania.at/salzburg/buchhandlung-motzko-platz-der-bücher-inh-mag-gerlinde-steiner-426368

A couple of doors away, there was also an interesting-looking children's bookstore. I looked in the windows but didn't stop to browse. Then I found a Billa grocery store in the basement of a modern-looking but basically utilitarian shopping mall:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/BILLA/@47.8104204,13.0424485,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x47769079f49784f3:0xf8d6bc8dc87a1d63!8m2!3d47.8104204!4d13.0424485!16s%2Fg%2F1wnbwvd1?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDkzMC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

It was the perfect place to pick up a few supplies for impromptu meals and snacks in my room. I wish I had discovered it earlier. But the next day I had a full day to explore. Thursday is market day in that neighbourhood so I set out bright and early to check it out:

https://www.salzburg.info/en/events/events-calendar/schrannenmarkt_event_12184438

I bought a few things there. A container of raspberries, which were just HUGE: as big as most of the strawberries you get here. Some fresh bread and some cheese. And even when there was nothing I was interested in buying, it was great to window-shop (stall-shop?) and see what the individual independent vendors had available.

By this time, the shops were opening up for the day and I strolled along Linzergasse:

https://www.salzburg.info/en/sights/squares-streets/linzergasse

I took numerous photos of things along the way, with my pocket-sized Pentax point-and-shoot (it actually has other features too, like video), focusing on quirky details that you wouldn't likely see on postcards or in guidebooks). I did do some shopping here too. At the Tracht store Almwelt:

https://www.salzburg.info/en/travel-info/infos/almwelt_az_301628

... I bought myself a short-sleeved white eyelet blouse.

At this music store:

http://musikladen-salzburg.at/lp-cd/

I bought 4 CDs, focusing on their Austrian section and items I'd be less likely to find back home.

Then I continued my journey to the Museum der Moderne:

https://www.museumdermoderne.at/en/exhibitions#c283

I made my way through most of the exhibits and even input my own very basic little drawing into the Art-o-Mat:

https://dynamic-media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-o/2f/b0/89/47/caption.jpg?w=1400&h=800&s=1

... and twiddled a few knobs and dials to get the AI bot to manipulate it ... with interesting results. I got to take home both my original and the one that AI had embellished.

Then I went out to the restaurant on the terrace for a lunch break ... and a spectacular view of the city!

After lunch, I wended my way back to my hotel.

I opted out of the farewell dinner, as I was booked on a 6AM flight out of the Salzburg airport, which was going to make for a punishingly early morning even by Salzburg time, and a punishingly long next day as it's 6 hours later in Ottawa. Also, I still needed to take a short nap, pack up my stuff and finish up food that I still had in my hotel room.

But overall, it was a great trip!

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Salzburg & environs with the group

2025-10-05T21:34:53Z

Salzburg is famous for a number of things, many of them involving music. Mozart. The von Trapps. The Sound of Music. And since 2025 marks the 60th anniversary of the release of the movie, Sound of Music tours have been particularly popular this year.

Our local guide for much of our time in Salzburg, not just Sound of Music-related sites but other places as well, was a distant relative of Agathe von Trapp, mother of the first seven von Trapp children. After she died, the Captain married Maria and they went on to have more, the youngest of whom is in his mid-80s and owns a lodge in Vermont.

As is typically the case, the Sound of Music mixes fact with fantasy in the interests of telling an engaging story, although I found both the facts and the fiction to be quite interesting and was at times even surprised at some of the overlaps.

The Sound of Music is of course not just a movie but also a stage play. And the play is not always presented with human actors, but sometimes with marionettes instead:

https://marionetten.at/en/shows/the-sound-of-music

The movie scenes that were filmed right in the city of Salzburg included the Do-re-mi song in the beautiful gardens of the Mirabell Palace, which includes some rather interesting dwarf statues:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/zwerglgarten-dwarf-garden

I knew I had a birthstone, a birth-flower and a zodiac sign, but I never knew I had a birth-dwarf! Anyway, another member of the group obligingly took a photo of me with my August-dwarf.

We saw the gazebo where Charmian Carr as Liesl bravely sang "I am 16, going on 17", pressing on despite having injured her foot (ankle?) on the glass of the gazebo. And nearby, there's a building that will open in 2026 as a Sound of Music museum.

During our walking tour in Salzburg, I of course saw posters advertising upcoming shows. One of them, a Mozart piano concert, had a picture that stopped me in my tracks. My goodness, I realized, that's Angela Hewitt! Another Ottawan, a little younger than me, who went on to a successful career as a concert pianist. I had actually thought she had mostly given up on touring; during the pandemic and the great occupation of 2022, she had to reschedule a local concert and around that time, I remember her auctioning off a bunch of her fancy dresses & other performance-wear (possibly to raise money for Orkidstra or Music & Beyond or something?) Anyway, small world!

We drove out into the countryside to see (from the outside) Nonnberg Abbey, apparently the oldest continuously existing nunnery in the German-speaking world. We saw (both inside and out) the basilica in Mondsee where Maria and the Captain were married, and stopped for lunch nearby. Mondsee is really beautiful:

https://parenthoodandpassports.com/mondsee-austria-lakeside-charm/

After lunch, we did a bit more exploration in the countryside before returning to the hotel.

Then in the evening, we went out to a Mozart dinner, which was lots of fun. Actors in period costume performed scenes from Mozart operas between courses, and musicians played some famous Mozart compositions like Eine Kleine Nachtmusik on historic instruments:

https://www.mozart-dinner-concert-salzburg.com/music.html

The following morning, still with the same guide (the von Trapp relative), we got to cross the border into what today is part of Germany, to see Mount Kehlstein and the Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle's Nest), which was built in 1938 as a 50th birthday present for Hitler and business and social hangout for the Nazis. What an incredible place:

https://www.berchtesgaden.de/en/nature/eagles-nest

After lunch, we had a choice of activities. Six people in our group of eleven opted to go down into the salt mine, while I and the other four preferred to explore the town of Berchtesgaden above ground on foot.

Here are some highlights. The places I looked at are mostly covered in the self-guided tour:

https://undiscoveredberchtesgaden.com/berchtesgaden-town/

We got back to our hotel in Salzburg a bit earlier than we had after the trip to Hallstatt I mentioned in my previous blog post. That allowed me a bit of time to explore the Neustadt part of Salzburg on my own, and there was still another day for independent exploration too. But I'll cover that in my next instalment.

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En route to Salzburg

2025-10-02T20:34:56Z

I'm coming now to the part of my trip that I liked the least (unless you include negotiating airports and coping with sleeplessness and jet lag, which I knew at the outset would be inevitable!) I'm referring to the day we spent travelling between Graz and Salzburg, and more specifically the places we stopped at along the way.

It wasn't a complete loss. I loved the Bad Aussee place where we stopped for our morning coffee break. They're world-famous for their home-made Lebkuchen:

https://www.lebkuchen.at

After that, it was on to Hallstatt, where we got a short guided tour before being turned loose to explore, wander the marketplace and maybe grab a bite to eat. We were to reassemble around 2PM to board a boat for a cruise on Lake Hallstatt.

https://www.hallstattaustria.eu/hallstatt-market-square-marktplatz

Now, it's probably heresy to say I didn't really enjoy this. I mean, it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site!! And yes, the natural scenery is beautiful, it's important historically, geographically, archeologically, and it does have its charms. BUT. To me it was too ... commercial? Touristy? (Yeah, OK, I guess I'm part of the problem here).

Part of the problem may have been that we were there on Monday, and for a number of the shops and cafés, it was their Ruhetag. One shop that specialized in traditional dress and accessories (dirndls, lederhosen etc.) had a sign indicating it was now closed "for the season". I guess they must have meant the summer holidays, although I'd have thought many places like that would if anything be gearing up for Oktoberfest.

To add to the ambiance: 1) There were signs posted warning to beware of pickpockets (fair enough, I guess). 2) The marketplace only had pay-toilets (fee 1 Euro), something I could understand if they were at least clean, well-maintained and provided a reasonable degree of comfort. In this case, they were ... adequate but no more. You had to go through a turnstile and there was a fairly long queue.

The boat for the Lake Hallstatt cruise, on the other hand, had no toilets whatsoever, although we did have prior warning about this. It did, however, have a snack bar, above which was posted a notice stating in both German and English that it was verboten to consume your own food on board. Which to me is just plain tacky, especially when the food they do have on offer is nothing to write home about.

Seating on the outdoor deck of the boat was uncomfortable and inadequate.

I was frankly glad when that "enchanting cruise on the town's namesake lake" was over and we could return to our coach and go the rest of the way to Salzburg.

We arrived at our Salzburg hotel shortly after 5PM and still needed to pick up our room keys, unpack and settle in. To me, at least, the day had been mostly wasted; I would have much preferred if we could have made just a short stop in Hallstatt before continuing on our journey to Salzburg. That way, we would have arrived midday or early afternoon and had more time to get the lay of the land there.

Because Salzburg was great. But I'll cover that in my next instalment.

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Exploring Graz on my own

2025-09-30T20:55:37Z

I landed in Graz mid-morning and took a taxi to my hotel. Not unexpectedly, my room was not quite ready but I was able to leave my heavier bag at the front desk and go outside to explore the area on foot, armed with the map the hotel provided plus some other information I already had with me.

I crossed a bridge with lovelocks all over the railings on both sides of it and made my way to a nearby art museum, the Kunsthaus. A number of their exhibitions had recently closed and they were in the process of installing new ones, but the view of the city from the top floor was amazing. The one exhibition I did see was excellent too, bringing out the oft-harrowing personal stories of ethnic minorities that I was mostly unaware of. It was multimedia and there were lots of places to sit and watch videos and look at the art - something I definitely appreciated after a sleepless overnight flight:

https://www.museum-joanneum.at/en/kunsthaus-graz/our-programme/exhibitions/milica-tomic-booklet

Interestingly enough, the local guide for our walking tour the next morning said she wouldn't necessarily go there for the art, although their restaurant was worth visit. Well, I beg to differ! About the art, not necessarily the restaurant (which I never tried).

I also wandered a bit through the streets, stopping occasionally to take pictures, see what shops and other landmarks were close by, buy postcards or check out the menus at eating places.

I was back at the hotel by around 2PM, my bag had already been put in my room, and I had a reasonable amount of time to unpack, settle in and take a bit of a nap before the welcome reception and dinner in the evening.

On my free day in Graz, I decided that one place I definitely wanted to go to was the giant bookstore I had first read about in my Lonely Planet guide:

https://www.graztourismus.at/en/sightseeing-culture/sights/buchhandlung-moser_shg_7545

https://www.echtgraz.at/buchhandlung-morawa-moser/

It's a booklover's paradise! And there's a full-service café on the top floor - they don't make you pre-pay for the coffee or food, nor do they get upset if you bring in their books and other merchandise that you haven't yet paid for. Now that's a classy place! (P.S. I ended up buying all the books I had brought in, and they were unbeschmirched by what I had to eat and drink).

When I go to a bookstore in a foreign country, I usually pay particular attention to their "Local Interest" section. That's often where I'll find some gems that I'm not likely to find back home. I also avoid big thick heavy hardcover tomes, beautiful though they sometimes are. If I see something I just have to have, I'll usually just note the bibliographic info so I can order it later.

Interestingly enough, one of my selections this time was a book called English for Fun, geared to German-speaking learners of English who are already at a pretty advanced level (which is probably most of them!)

https://www.reclam.de/produktdetail/english-for-fun-9783150145197

Turned out it was fun for me, too - and also useful! It devoted lots of space to idioms, euphemisms, slang words for body parts and bodily functions (in both languages), regionalisms, onomatopoeia, collective nouns, orthographic peculiarities and more! It revealed to me when German had similar idioms to ours and when they were a bit different (e.g. tongue-twisters vs. tongue-breakers); when there was no real German equivalent, I learned what I should say instead when speaking German.

Anyway, I had tentatively planned after my bookstore & café visit to go back and see the street glockenspiel in action but I didn't quite make it in time. But there was still time to visit at least one more major attraction before things closed for the day. So I wandered about until I found something that appealed... and this was it:

https://www.museum-joanneum.at/en/folk-life-museum

It's a beautiful place architecturally; not tiny, but small enough that I was able to make my way through nearly all of what they had on display.

That evening I actually took a break from Austrian cuisine and had dinner at an Asian place. They had a huge vegetarian selection and I had some very nice rolls that involved mango and avocado, along with a dish of noodles.

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Beginning my Austrian Adventure: Graz and Styria with the group

2025-09-28T20:37:36Z

I'll start by saying that there were several things that surprised me about Austria. Notably how small the country is, both geographically and population-wise. It's kind of awe-inspiring to stand at the top of Schlossberg or Riegensburg and be informed that in that direction is Hungary, over there is Slovenia, down there is Germany, we're in Austria, that's Italy ... I'd definitely like to see more of Eastern Europe (maybe a Danube cruise?) and I haven't explored much of southern Europe either.

As far as urban areas go, Vienna is the only really big city, at around 2 million people; Graz is the second-largest centre, with somewhere around 300,000 people. But the Styrian countryside ... wow. So much agricultural production: apples, dairy products, wine, vinegar, brandy and schnapps, and something I'd never even heard of: pumpkin seed oil:

https://www.steiermark.com/en/Suedsteiermark/Holiday/day-trips/Labuggers-Kernolpresse_isd_69875

Apparently it's a good natural anti-inflammatory product, something of particular interest to me as one who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis. Fortunately I was able with the aid of my prescription meds to avoid any major flare-ups over the course of my trip, but I did notice by the end of some days that my knees looked a little more swollen than usual, no doubt because I was unwilling to entirely miss out on anything that involved some climbing activity!

I asked about cider and was surprised to learn that that wasn't one of their major specialties. However, I did get to enjoy some Apfelstrudel - twice, in fact, one of those times with ice cream on top.

We got to tour the Goelles facility and sample some of their excellent vinegars, schnapps and brandies:

https://www.goelles.at/en/

We enjoyed a group lunch at a country inn somewhere in the Styrian countryside, involving some excellent home cooking and a wine-tasting.

We got to visit the Zotter chocolate factory, which in addition to its huge range of quality chocolate varieties, was really kind of like an Austrian Wonderland:

https://www.zotter.at/en/

And then there was the horse farm. I mean, we in Canada have our RCMP musical ride while in Austria they have their Lipizzaner stallions, stud farm and Spanish Riding School:

https://www.srs.at/en/about-us/styria/welcome

And moving beyond the agricultural to the realm of the sacred, the ecumenical, the encouraging of the masses into the fold, I very much enjoyed our visit to the Church of Saint Barbara. The legend of Saint Barbara is an old one, but Hundertwasser, the architect of the church and surrounding gardens and grounds, was modern, creative and progressive in his outlook and work:

https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=166

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/church-of-st-barbara

So that's all for today, folks. In my next instalment, I'll talk about exploring Graz on my own, my overall impressions and the sights and sites I chose to see.

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Back from my Austrian Adventure

2025-09-26T20:11:58Z

In this entry dated August 15, I mentioned that I was planning a trip to Austria:

https://blogcutter.dreamwidth.org/178964.html

I'm back home now and there's a lot I'd like to write about it! Unfortunately I'm still battling jet lag and a miserable cold (is there such a thing as a cheerful cold?) so I'll limit myself to a few observations.

First, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Perhaps in part because it was an alumni thing, they seemed to feel a special responsibility to build in some educational components: hour-long public lectures at our hotels on Austrian history and culture, on fact and fiction in The Sound of Music, the life and death of Mozart, and so on. The travel co-ordinator and local guides and experts were, without exception ... well, exceptional. They definitely were not reading from a script or Wikipedia but offered some real insider knowledge and their own perspectives on things. The travel co-ordinator won me over right at the outset by noting (in a one-on-one conversation) that I was a vegetarian (unusually, I was the only one out of our group of 11 people) and going out of his way to understand my dietary preferences and requirements. And thereafter, whenever we had a group meal, he made sure in advance that the waitstaff were informed and I would be accommodated. Discreetly, no fuss no muss.

Our home bases were Graz and Salzburg and on arrival at each, we had a 2-to-3-hour walking tour of the city core. They're both very pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly cities. (Dog-friendly too, which I was less pleased about, being something of a life-long canine-hesitant; still, the ones I saw were all well-behaved and I just kept my distance). That allowed us to get at least a glimpse of places we might want to explore on our own later on, as we always had a full day "at leisure" to do whatever we wanted. On the other days, we were driven out into the countryside or to small towns and villages near to Graz or Salzburg to see points of interest. Although even there, we usually had a reasonable amount of time to wander around on our own after getting a guided tour.

Okay, folks,I'm fading fast here so that's all for today. Stay tuned for more on how I spent my summer-to-autumn adventure.

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