The first springtime hike was uphill - finally!

We went on the best hike today. We go most Sundays, but this one I researched properly and it was a winner - it actually had an UP bit.

That's one of the things I miss most about Ireland - walking in the Wicklow mountains, or in the Kerry mountains, or the Mayo mountains. There are no mountains in Nova Scotia. Nothing you have to climb for forty heart bursting minutes until you get up onto a bit of a ridge and see a view and have a breather before the next leg-destroying six miles. In the rain.

Here, it's all flat marked trail.

B-o-r-i-n-g...

But I searched and searched and searched and found the Salmon River trail.

One of the things I love about Nova Scotia is that this trail is four miles outside Preston, the African Nova Scotian community on the edge of Dartmouth. So it is less than forty minutes from the house and still it is pure back country.

The first part of the hike is a scramble over dead trees littering the lakeside and a haul across an old bridge that's been pretty much destroyed by the winter. The lake is still frozen but all around the sound of the ice cracking and splitting and LEAVING could be heard. Then it was straight up for twenty minutes, up an old Mi'k Maw trail onto the top of a barren.

A barren is a burren with moss, by the way.

This was like a mini-Ayers Rock. When we got to the top, we had a spectacular view of the valley. Bald eagles are really common here apparently, but it was still a little early for them to be fishing. Next time, hopefully.


The sun was really warm at this stage, so we sat for a while and enjoyed the view and had some water - first time I needed water on a hike since I got here - and then we made our way down to the river.

It is unbelieveably peaceful to be making your way along a river bank trail that exists because people have been making their way along it for various reasons, mostly involving food, for ten thousand years at least, safe in the knowledge that this bit of the earth hasn't changed all that much in the meantime.

As we were walking along the riverbank, Himself started to notice a plethora of gnawed sticks.

Beavers, he said.

I love beavers. They're really industrious for absolutely no reason in the world. They spend all their time cutting down trees to dam rivers that don't need to be dammed because trees are going to fall into them eventually anyway.

No wonder they're the Canadian national emblem...

Then we rounded the corner and there it was, a bit scruffy after the winter, but a big dam all the same (picture down a bit further on the blog). Looks like the guys have a lot of gnawing to do this summer.

Then we saw a pair of wild ducks poncing around in the river, so Himself went to scare them into flight, so I could catch them on the exciting new action zoom lens. Despite his best efforts, they ignored him and sailed past in a stately manner.

Not being used to humans and all that.

It wasn't until we were halfway up the river bank that we met three other people. One of whom was our neighbour Lyse. We always bump into Lyse on these hikes. She of course had hiked about fifteen miles already, but we like to stop and take photos and potter and collect gnawed stuff etc., so we are a bit slower. She was with Gear Guys, who had their GPS locaters attached to matching shoulder straps on their hi-tech Mountain Equipment Co-op rucksacks. They were spotting fly-fishing spots for next week, when the season opens.

Then we stopped for lunch, which was great today because Leonard had organised it.

Walking is a fun time for Leonard and as he is from India originally (although he has been Canadian since he was a teenager) fun involves interesting food and drinks. Hooray! We had to stop him bringing nice bottles of white wine on the walks as I was getting too sloshed to walk properly and starting to fall over a lot. Which I don't like as it is supposed to be the time of the week when I am healthy.

Today he brought samosas and other interesting Indian foods and oranges and (heavy) bottles of Orangina for our lunch .

Because his daughter makes Christmas candles from the bottles.

I work for Leonard as a researcher and he is my favourite politician on the planet ever and I love Leonard (but don't tell him) even when he's annoying me to death, by making me do work I don't want to do because I am lazy...

But I particularly love him when he's walking.

Pinstriped trousers tucked into Dr. Martin boots. A completely inappropriate (for walking) sports bag full of food slung across his back. And a half-gnawed beaver branch for a walking stick this time.

I wonder what Gear Guys made of him?

By the time we finished eating and chatting and drinking Orangina and coffee and having some almond and cranberry granola bars and chilling out the sun was starting to go down behind the old growth pines on the riverbank so we set out for home. I stopped to take a photograph of some nice lichen on the limestone with some icicles hanging off it and Himself sat on a rock with his beaver branch that he'd found too and said, I don't want to go home.

I know how he felt.

So it's Sunday night now and Himself is in bed because he has to get up at 5.30 and Kitty is puddling round in the bathroom and I should sign off and go get ready for another week of mayhem.

But hopefully amidst all the beaver activity that is the Estimates debate next week, I will hold today in my heart.

For a few days at least.

Lichen and ice on the side of the Barren

Beaver Dam on Salmon River

Book reviews from winter reading

I am reading a lot at the moment, having rediscovered the joys of the library in an attempt to encourage Kitty to read. However, she seems to be getting books from school, so mine are going by the wayside.

Having said that, she doesn’t think much of the books from school. One would think being in a position to allows you to force a teenager to read, i.e. a teacher, you would give them something GOOD to read.

The library on the other hand, is full of great books and even better librarians who treat every teenager in there as if they are made of solid gold. Consequently, the young adult section is full of them reading and watching movies and working on the computer.

However this is Boooorrrrinnnggg…. Apparently.

How do you get a child to read? There’s the question for today…

Anyways, this girl, who didn’t want to do anything else but read when she was young, presents this lot for your review. Here’s the scoring system.

A+ = glad I read this book. You should read it. The world is a better place for the presence of this book.
A = interesting in terms of subject matter or style. Glad I read it for that reason, but not really adding to my understanding of my reason for existence.
Ho hum = self-explanatory
UNCSYWYLRTB = under no circumstances should you waste your life reading this book.

I’m going to put the score in before I review the book and then see if I remember it right by reviewing the book. If I’m wrong I’ll rescore it.

Animal Dreams
Barbara Kingsolver
A

Codi Noline returns to her Arizona home town to keep an eye on her father, who has early stage Alzheimer’s. She works as a biology teacher even though she is a doctor like him. Her altogether more together sister Hallie is in Nicaragua working with peasant farmers to increase their yield organically, despite the Contras attempts to stop her. As Codi falls in love with Navajo local, Loyd Peregrina and begins to enjoy teaching, can her rubbish self-esteem or other circumstances in her life and past hijack her new-found happiness?

As with all Kingsolver novels, the themes are environmental issues and filial responsibility. She writes novels about having to start being a grown up in your early thirties, about how crap it feels to have to fulfil family and societal duties, and each one of her novels put forward the premise that, at the end of the day, building a strong family and caring for the environment are the only worthy concerns.

Reading a Kingsolver novel when you are feeling crap about being a selfish thirty-something in the dark corners of your soul is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you don’t feel so goddamn alone and that takes the edge off the selfishness. Which is not such a good thing when you’re supposed to be trying to eliminate it. On the other hand, you get to the end of the novel and think, mweh… the alternative sounded pretty cool.

So why do I keep reading them? Well, firstly, they’re pretty goddamned popular. Lots of copies in the library, and I like to keep up with the Oprah book club types. Secondly, I like writers who write from their place in the world as much as I like those who concentrate on the art of writing or imagining. And unlike many female literary types (as opposed to chick lit), Kingsolver is a good writer who always throws in a couple of interesting side issues and teaches you a lot. This novel focuses on the Pueblo people of Arizona and New Mexico, their art and the amazing pueblo cities they built and still live in. Sounds like Arizona would be a good holiday trip someday.

Be Cool
Elmore Leonard
UNCSYWYLRTB

I do not get the point of Elmore Leonard. Also, I can’t read his novels now without thinking of John Travolta. And since Chili Palmer has a lot of sex in this novel, I found it quite off-putting.

In this novel, Chili Palmer (hero of movie Get Shorty) is thinking about doing the third instalment in his three movie deal, and like the previous two (Get Leo and Get Lost), writes the script by living it. Enter a former shylock colleague who gets topped while having lunch with Chili, some Russian mobsters, a potential Americana star from Odessa Texas, a totally corrupt music executive called Raji and his sidekick, the gay Samoan bodyguard, Eliot Wilhelm.

Much mayhem ensues, Chili dabbles in the music industry, despite nearly being thrown out a window by the Samoan he wins out in the end and the new movie goes into pre-production.

Boring drivel.

The Dead of Winter
Lisa Appignanesi
Can’t remember a thing about this book, but it is on my bookshelf so I must have read it.

The Globe and Mail said this was a cleverly conceived plot about the strange and terrifying power of love. Now that I read the back cover I remember: this is a crime novel set in Montreal and rural Quebec. Rural Quebec is this year’s planned road trip, so I think that’s probably why I bought it.

Madeleine Blais and Pierre Rousseau are childhood sweethearts from rural Quebec. Madeleine becomes a famous movie star and dumps lawyer Rousseau heartlessly. A couple of Christmases later, she turns up hanging in her grandmother’s barn. The police decide it’s suicide and close the case, but Pierre knows it’s murder because she had called him just beforehand. That must be how you know, then.

Pierre’s investigations in Montreal get the killer on his tail and the usual mayhem ensues before the plot is satisfactorily resolved.

Ho hum, although there are two satisfying twists to the tale that I only saw coming about half a mile off.

The Island Walkers
John Bemrose
A+ (but I’m not sure why).

This is a debut novel that got nominated for the Giller, Canada’s big literary prize, a year or two ago. Set in south-western Ontario, it charts the decline of an industrial town called Attawan through the eyes of a young man Joe Walker, whose father Alf gets involved with labour agitators who are trying to organise the town’s textile plant workers.

The labour agitator is an Irish guy called Doyle, which is a nod to the fact that many Canadian union activists and organisers of the fifties and sixties were in fact Irish immigrants. Pity they never get any credit for what they did at home in Ireland. Better keep that for the Democrats in the States, I suppose!

The town is bisected physically and class wise by a river, and it is on its edge that most of the action takes place, from the teenage couplings and rivalries described in the early part of the novel, to clandestine union activity. The mill is taken over by a Montreal company who bring in the usual productivity changes (ie redundancies), and try to root out any attempts to organise the workers by buying off their natural leader, Alf Walker, with a supervisory position.
Alf married above him (an Englishwoman he met during the war) and finds himself caught between his principles and her desire to move up a class in the town.

The portrait of Alf is very compelling, of Joe less so. I found myself seeing my father in Alf’s struggle, which is strange, as they are not alike really.

Alf’s desire to provide for his family leads him to an act which may or may not betray his comrades and lead to the death of a friend. The author switches viewpoint from Joe to Alf for this part of the novel, and Alf’s struggle with his guilt is the best third of the novel.

The first two thirds, which focus mostly on Joe’s perception of the town and his family and developing the movement of the story, are a little laboured. I never got into Joe’s skin, or developed much empathy for him. The whole plot could have done with a bit of a cull.

However, Alf and his co-workers and union buddies are very well drawn. They were all from the same ‘character group’ though, if you know what I mean. Bemrose needs to work on his range. If he can pull a group of diverse well-drawn characters together for his next novel, and go easier on the water imagery, then he’ll have a cracker on his hands.

I’m downgrading this to an A for Alf. Good starter novel though!!

The Secret River
Kate Grenville
A

Speaking of dads, mine gave me this over Christmas. Dads are generally very predictable, aren’t they? The Queen Dad usually gives me novels about a) Australia or Southern Africa, which are b) rural in setting, c) mostly historical or set in the recent past, rarely contemporary, and d) thematically, generally involve some discussion of how the principal European colonial powers messed up the rest of the planet for everyone who happened to be there first.

Sure enough, The Secret River is mostly set in colonial Australia, circa the turn of the nineteenth century, and involves transportation and other colonial outrages. This one has lots of boats, though, which gave it an additional kick of interest.

William Thornhill is a happily married waterman on the River Thames, who gets into a spot of bother due to the big freeze of 1806, steals some lumber, gets caught doing it and is sent to Australia.

Thornhill uses his waterlore to throw off the yoke of servitude, buying a sloop to bring supplies upriver to the early settlers. Eventually he makes enough money to buy his own land, which he settles with his family (who chose to be transported with him).

Trouble is, his land is sacred to the local Aboriginals.

Thornhill’s intuitive response is to try to manage the conflict and build a dialogue with the locals. Unfortunately, not all the settlers agree, and their views push him into an unfortunate choice when the conflict reaches a head.

The initial part, set in London, is an excellent description of the watermen of the Thames, not a subject of which I knew anything. And the descriptions of the Australian outback are so vivid that I felt I was there without ever having visited Australia.

Brilliant characterisation and unfolding of the eventual conflict between Aboriginals and settlers. With lots of sloops. Excellent read. Particularly if you like boats.

The Pick Up
Nadine Gordimer
A+

Because of the Queen Dad (see previous review), I have a deep interest in South African and Australian writing. Nadine Gordimer is my second favourite SA writer, after JM Coetzee who is the MASTER of contemporary, post-conflict literature (better even than our own Ronan Bennett) and who consequently should be read in detail by everyone on the planet.
Coetzee has a dark emptiness inside his stories that is so terrifying and bleak, I can’t figure how he controls it enough to write sentences, never mind complex, demanding novels. Sort of like Murakami, or Pamuk, but with a Western European sensibility.

Anyway, enough about Coetzee.

I got The Pickup in the library and have sent it back, so consequently I won’t be able to remember any of the characters names. I never can. But the book is about a rich South African white woman who falls in love with an illegal Muslim immigrant from an unnamed African country (Saharan though), and who accompanies him back to his village as his wife when he gets deported.

I thought about this book for a long time after I finished it. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you why I did without spoiling the ending.

Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers

When they get back to the unnamed country, the SA woman has to live in the family home with him, in a village on the edge of the desert. She falls in love with the desert and the lifestyle, and begins to think how they could develop wealth in the town with her trust fund. Hubbie meanwhile puts the kaibosh on that, as he spends all his time trying to get a visa to somewhere else.

Finally, he gets a green card and celebrates a chance to make it in the States. Only thing, she’ll have to live with her ditsy mother in California while he drudges in Chicago, as he’s not going to expose her to the seaminess of being an immigrant to the States. She hates her mother, so on the day before they leave, she announces that she’s staying with his family. He is astounded and furious, but leaves without her.

The end.

The dichotomy between her need to escape the capitalist wealthy countries of which she’s a privileged member, and his fierce desire to get into any of them is one I had never thought of before. Gordimer highlights this beautifully in the context of an unlikely love story.

The Wildfire Season
Andrew Pyper
A

“Ross River is a town clinging to the outside world at the end of the Yukon’s loneliest road. It is also the hiding place of Miles McEwan, the town’s hard-drinking, fist-fighting fire chief. But the slow burn of Miles’ self-imposed exile is about to explode.”

That’s the blurb on the back. This book is great for three reasons:

1 – it deals with bush fires, and the people who start them. A large part of the novel deals with the crew that fight this fire and the investigation into how it started.

2 – one of the principal characters is a total mother-fucker of a she Grizzlie. I dreamt about her for nights afterwards.

3 – one of the other characters is a watcher – sits in a big tower for months on end, spotting fires. Currently that is my ambition in life.

A rip-roaring read, excuse the pun. People who know tell me it’s exactly what the Yukon is like. Next year’s road trip maybe. Pyper has two other novels, Lost Girls, and The Trade Mission, which got excellent reviews too.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Marissa Pessl
UNCSYWYLRTB!!

“Beneath the foam of this exuberant debut is a dark, strong drink” – Jonathan Franzen. Yeah, well you’d know all about foam, Jonathan!

Some nice person bought me this for Christmas, and I can’t remember who because I opened my presents when I was a bit drunk on Christmas Eve and forgot to write the name of the gifter on the novel, which is how I normally remember. So apologies if the gifter reads this. The book itself is a beautifully presented hard-backed edition so I will treasure it for that reason, but ...

... what a (huge) pile of annoying shite.

Dazzling debut my arse! This girl has been writing this novel since forever. Every book she ever read is in here somewhere, the whole enterprise feels like a series of book reports, book-ended by her diary entries about the teacher she had a crush on.

Plot in brief: Precocious grade 12er with handsome witty academic dad moves to new private school and meets astoundingly charismatic teacher who has select group of cool students round for supper every Sunday. Precocious girl tries to get in with the ‘in’ crowd. Weird, murder-related stuff happens, with completely OTT ending involving the Minute Men. Sound vaguely familiar in parts to anyone who has ever read the Secret History?

Ms Pessl says in the afterword (when did they become de riguer) that she thanks ‘my amazing husband Nic, my Clyde, who graciously watches his wife disappear alone into a dark room with her computer for ten or twelve hours at a time and asks no questions’.

I don’t think Nic is the one needs to be asking the questions love, if you don’t mind me saying. What is Nic doing while you’re in the dark room, eh?

And by the way, if you arrange your chapters as Core Curriculum (Required Reading), with such chapter titles as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Madame Bovary, would it be too much to ask that there be a CONNECTION between the chapter title and the content?

I present my case on this novel with a random excerpt:

“When I’d raised my hand in AP English to answer Ms Simpson’s question regarding Primary Themes in Invisible Man (Elison 1952) (which turned up on Summer reading lists with the regularity of corruption in Cameroon), incredibly, I wasn’t Quite fast enough; another kid, Radley Clifton, pudgy, with an eroded chin (BTW - That novel that E. Annie Proulx wrote about a guy, pudgy, with an eroded chin, i.e. The Shipping News, was very popular and often re-read by people, by the way, so you should probably think twice about ripping off lines from it again, Missy!), already had his fat hand in the air. While his answer wasn’t brilliant or inspired, it also wasn’t crude or Calibanesque, and it dawned on me, as Ms. Simpson handed out a nineteen page syllabus only covering Fall Term, perhaps St. Gallwey wouldn’t be such Child’s Play, such Easy Victory.

Sigh. Five hundred and four pages of this shite. With drawings.

You’ll be glad to hear that Radley beat her to valedictorian. Naturally, there were extenuating circumstances, of the kind you’d find in that US magazine that keeps track of UFO sightings and Elvis and such like.

UTTER SHITE.

Three Days to Spring - here's the first Fly of the year

This morning is typical Paddy's weekend weather.

Wet. Grey. Dull.

Enough said about the weather. Spring is coming in three days. The entire population of Canada is as stir crazy and sick of winter as I am, so the spring equinox is A BIG DEAL here.

Just to put the tin hat on the crappy sports day that was yesterday, Montreal beat Toronto to get into the playoffs and Toronto are out.

This is a big deal apparently. Himself is very upset. As is the boy wonder nephew Branden.

I'm talking about ice hockey by the way.

I watched a bit of the game (game, not match, doncha know) and as far as I could see Toronto were the best at beating the other team up, but apparently that doesn't count. Also, while Toronto were beating up the Canadiens, the umpires just stand around and watch. I asked Himself why they didn't stop the fighting and he said they wait until the players fall over before they intervene.

For guys on skates they can fight on their feet for a remarkably long time.

And apparently it's okay to ram another player at speed into the goal uprights.

I have no time for any game that involves body armour.

The Queen Parents called at some unearthly hour of the morning (for them, not me) to comfort me in my hour of woe and the Queen Dad informed me that Ireland had knocked Pakistan out of the Cricket World Cup and were into the last eight. So not to worry about the rugby outcome.

And then I saw Luke had put the same comment on my blog this morning.

This is what I love about Irish people.... they find comfort where they can get it.

Here's a thought... if by some miracle Ireland gets into the World Cup cricket semi-final will you all get time off work to go to the pub and watch the match?

I mean it would only be fair to support the cricket lads the same way as the football lads, wouldn't it?

And then Roddy Doyle could write a book about Fitzer and Paddy Mac and whoever paddling to the Carribean in a souped up Ford Transit van and how they got in with the reggae heads and had a few smokes and realised that not all foreigners were terrible.

Anyways, enough about the weather and the game, I got the first Fly of the year the other day.

I mean The Stinging Fly. It's a creative writing compendium from Ireland. Accent Monkey bought a subscription for me for Christmas. Nice pressie. You get told about it. You forget about it. Then one day you come home from work and there it is in the mail box.

The name comes from a Plato quote (about Socrates): God has especially appointed me to this city, so as though it were a large thoroughbred horse which because of its great size is inclined to be lazy and needs the stimulation of some stinging fly...

Edited by Declan Meade, it contains essays, creative writing, poetry, reviews, photos and new lyrics. This issue has an excerpt from Eugene McCabe's new novel in progress, which is about nuns and which is a perfect short story in itself.

Good stuff generally. Particularly the poetry. However, I am at a loss to understand the three short stories in the review. I never did get the point of short stories if they weren't written by Alice Munro. I didn't really like any of these ones. Someone should tell me sometime what the current thinking on the short story is, as I am too lazy to research it myself.

And the two essays were not essays as I understand the form, although maybe the form has moved on and I have not realised.

However, as always in Ireland, the poetry more than makes up for any weakness in the prose writing end of things.

I'm trying to pick a favourite, but I can't, so here's one of the ones I liked, and I'm a big fan of Caroline Dowling's writing anyways, with apologies for printing it here if it's not a good vibe, etc.

The Cardigan

Her face flushed

When he gave it to her

unexpectedly on

Christmas night.

He'd picked darker colours,

brown and black

trimmed with a

cream crochet thread.

He said it suited her.

She said it felt tight.

Hemmed in her shoulders

strait-jacketed her arms

chest bursting when

fastened. Weeks of

wearing helped her grow

into it. Moulded to her

shape she felt every

knitted row - cable after

cable of blanket stitch,

garter stitch, back stitch,

stocking stitch, coiling into

patterns of Mondays and

Tuesdays, wash days and

Mass days. On Saturday

nights out she'd leave it

open, her underneath top

cheering on her red lipstick.

Sometimes after chips on

the way home he'd tell her

to button it. She could

do it with her eyes closed

It costs fifty euro to be a patron of The Stinging Fly. They don't have enough patrons. There's your birthday and Christmas presents sorted for a year or two.

Off you all go then.

Happy Paddy's Day my arse

This afternoon, after a poxy cold wet icy morning, I eventually venture out into the aftermath of last night's ICE STORM to go shopping. I have to endure OIRISH music in the supermarket and stupid drunk people with shamrocks painted on their cheeks saying 'top of the morning' to each other. I have to endure the racist taunts of the wanker wearing the union jack jacket in the Liquor Store. I have to endure Blockbusters on a Saturday afternoon which has NO MOVIES I WANT TO SEE.

And then I finally get home and check the news and find out that we've lost the Six Nations Championship by a whisker, a mere three points.

Again.

WHAT DO WE HAVE TO EFFING DO TO WIN THE EFFING SIX NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP?

WHAT?

We're the second best team on the planet and we still can't effing win the poxy six nations championship. In a single season, we cannot beat England, Scotland, Wales, France and Italy.

WHY?

Those perfidious French BASTARDS stole our six nations championship away from us again!!!

By scraping a victory against us a few weeks ago, they edged to the top of the table today. And beat us by three points!

BUT THAT'S NOT WHY!

France had to beat Scotland by twenty four points or more to win the Championship.

So Scotland let them win by twenty seven points.

Just to be on the safe side.

THAT'S REALLY WHY!!

Our so-called Celtic cousins, forever more to be known in my house as wee skanky traitors , helped them.

IT WAS ST. PATRICK'S DAY, you miserable sheep farming bastards...! Could you not kick the effing ball straight for once in your wee lives?

Accent Monkey's over there for the weekend, I hope she's giving people a piece of her mind!

Things I love-hate about Canada - part the third

Quality of life.

That's why we're all here. Apparently. Those of us that are left in Nova Scotia are here for the quality of life.

The Nova Scotia government PAYS for, using MY tax dollars, advertisments saying 'Come to Life'. Meaning, come to Nova Scotia for the quality of life.

We're so broke we can only afford three words. The other six are too expensive.

They show this ad, USING MY TAX DOLLARS, to ME, on my tv channel.

After I stopped shouting 'stop showing the fucking advert to me, I'm already here', I thought about it and now I have one question.

Define it.

They never do.

If they did, those of us that are left would leave on the next train.

If we could afford the prices.

Having said that, I am here, I am still here, and now that it's March and the winter is over, I do like the quality of life here.

There's no traffic.

There's hardly any yuppies and they all live in Bedford so I only have to see them when there's a Tory meeting I have to go to for work.

The pubs are nice.

The restaurants are great.

The scenery is awesome in a quiet way - I've burbled on about it enough not to have to describe it again.

The people are lovely, even if they are too polite and self-contained for my liking.

The food (in the summer) is fresh and organic and reasonable.

The book shops are pretty cool.

The conversation is pretty intellectual.

BUT.....

and this is a big but....

most people who live here can't afford any of those things.

So,

COME TO LIFE.

If you are a reasonably well off and healthy just pre-retiree.

Nova Scotia is the Florida of the North.

Get used to it boys and girls.

Either market yourself as such, or stop putting that stupid ad out.

Things I love-hate about Canada - part the second

Politeness.

As most of you will know, Canadians have the reputation for being the politest people on earth.

Canadians talk about this a lot, they are quite proud of this tag. Nova Scotians add to it their tag of 'friendliest people in the world'.

Coming from the land of a hundred thousand welcomes I know what a ball of smoke the concept of friendliness can be, so I'm not even going there today.

The question about Canadian, or Nova Scotian in particular, politeness is not whether this is true or not, but why it exists in the first place.

So I went rooting around Wikipedia for some answers. And lo and behold, there's a theory about politeness. Why am I not surprised? There's a theory about everything, isn't there?

Politeness Theory

Politeness consists of attempting to save face for another. Simply put, model persons want to maintain others’ face, but nevertheless are often forced to commit face threatening acts. Thus, politeness strategies are developed in order to formulate message in order to save the hearer’s face when face threatening acts are inevitable or desired. This means that the speaker avoids embarrassing or making the listener feel uncomfortable.

So, politeness is a construct designed to get other people to acquiesce to your needs without feeling that they have lost face.

And here was me thinking that politeness was 'a good thing to do'.

Apparently, the majority of Canadians believe the same, telling pollsters recently that they were polite because that was how they were reared. That would explain a lot. In Nova Scotia politeness is often given as a necessity rather than a gift. I am of the opinion that if you don't feel like being polite then you should be grumpy. Therefore, I HATE IT when people are polite to me because they have to be and then glower at me because of it. Here in Nova Scotia, mostly in work, I often come across politeness which barely conceals disdain, contempt, aggression, rage, passive acceptance of being trampled underfoot, or just plain dislike.

I'm still not done with feeling crap when it happens.

I often think it is me. My politeness techniques are different to theirs and the difference grates on them, or so I rationalise it to myself. I get archly teasing about my 'Irish temper' and my 'Irish directness' (in the Nova Scotian 'I am polite but you are pissing me off so much I am grinding my teeth, so I am going to put you down so I can feel better about the whole thing' manner which they have nailed perfectly in this province).

But if politeness is a construct designed to get other people to acquiesce to your demands, then that's a whole different kettle of fish, isn't it?

Back to Wiki:

There are four main types of politeness strategies: bald on record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and off-the-record or indirect strategy.

First, bald on record strategies do not attempt to minimize the threat to the hearer’s face. This strategy is most often utilized by speakers who closely know their audience. With the bald on record strategies there is a direct possibility that the audience will be shocked or embarrassed by the strategy. For example, a bald on record strategy might be to tell your sister to “do the dishes. It’s your turn.”

This would be my normal way of operating in the world. I assume everyone I meet is a friend I don't know yet, so I assume that if I don't closely know them that I soon will, so I go for them baldheaded.

This tends to terrify the shit out of your average Nova Scotian. Those people who are not terrified become my friends. Easy peasy.

The second strategy is positive politeness and this strategy attempts to minimize the threat to the hearers face. This strategy is most commonly used in situations where the audience knows each other fairly well. Quite often hedging and attempts to avoid conflict are used. For example, a positive politeness strategy might be the request “I know that you’ve been really busy lately, but could you do the dishes?”

Normally, if someone has been really busy lately, I will do the dishes for them. So I don't tend to use this one too much. Consequently, I am really bad at it, and even if I do use it, I come across as being sarcastic and so it generally backfires.

The third strategy is negative politeness which presumes that the speaker will be imposing on the listener. The potential for awkwardness or embarrassment is greater than in bald on record strategies and positive politeness strategies. Negative face is the desire to remain autonomous. Thus, a request without consideration of the listener’s negative face might be uncomfortable: “I need $5” is awkward if five dollars is outside the recipient to the question’s financial capabilities. But if the speaker, knowing that the listener wants to maintain their autonomy, adds an out for the listener like “I know you’ve been kinda strapped for cash, but could I borrow $5?”, the listener is more likely to give them that money because the request showed a respect for their ability to maintain autonomy.

I tend not to borrow money from friends unless I absolutely have to, it being the root of some evil. Having said that, when I am asking for something that will involve a Canadian losing face, I tend to forget (for that read 'don't bother') to add the required add on.

This is where I hit the wall in Canada. In Ireland if you do this, the person will either say no, or show through a facial expression that they really don't want to do it. At which point you back off and say 'don't worry about it'. At which point the Irish person would either not worry about it, or spend twenty minutes telling you it was NO PROBLEM while you said, NO NO, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, and face is saved by having a row over who was prepared to be put out the most.

In Canada they don't do this. They just stare at you with an expression of panic. The more insecure ones flap their hands around a lot. I am always at a loss for words at this stage and this kind of encounter drives me crazy.

It doesn't help that I still don't really know what is an acceptable favour to ask a Nova Scotian. Not very much of a favour or a HUMUNGOUS one I think. In between ones leave them flailing.

The final politeness strategy outlined by Brown and Levinson is the indirect strategy. This strategy uses indirect language and removes the speaker from the potential to being imposing. For example, a speaker using the indirect strategy might merely say “wow, it’s getting cold in here” insinuating that it would be nice if the listener would get up and turn up the thermostat without directly asking the listener to do so.

This of course is what girlfriends do to their boyfriends. To no effect. I did it this morning actually. Woke Himself up and said 'I'd love some coffee'. To which he said 'mrufufrahaslummmnn' and went back to sleep.

Bastard. Had to get up and make my own coffee.

Anyways, politeness, the ultimate fitting in to a new place test.

I'm probably scoring a C minus at the moment.

Things I love-hate about Canada - part the first

Northern Light

I just finished Jane Urqhuart's The Underpainter last night. A great novel, beautifully understated in Urqhuart's manner. Apparently she came up with it during a stint at Memorial University in Newfoundland.

It's the story of Austin Fraser, an American minimalist painter who is telling his life story from his vantage point at the end of his career. His life and work spans the early part of the twentieth century.

From his teenage years he spent his summers painting landscapes on the Canadian shores of Lake Superior and Lake Ontario.

The story is about what an utter bollox he was to everyone he ever met, including his muse, lover and long time friend Sara, whom he painted for fifteen summers and then abandoned when a painter friend remarked on how cold his paintings were, how loveless.

Reminded me a lot of an ex of mine actually.

But that's not what I'm writing about tonight.

The novel talks about light a lot, in particular the Canadian winter light. In one particular scene, he has a little panic about his life, after inadvertently causing disaster to visit some friends, he travels to see Sara who must ski across the lake for a day to meet up with him. He sits in his hotel waiting for her to appear on the horizon.

The shopkeeper told me the temperature was thirty below zero. But the sun, the white blaze was everywhere and so the chill seemed irrelevant.

Or

I sat in a room blade bright with sun. Prisms angled towards me from the bevelled edges of mirrors, and anything made of metal - the lamp base, a castor on the foot of my bed, my zippo lighter - glared.

This is my world in the winter. And it's breathtakingly, achingly, deceivingly beautiful. I wake up every morning facing the most glorious colours of dawn streaming in the eastern window of our room.

Then I go into the eastern facing bathroom and look in the mirror and see EVERY LINE AND WRINKLE AND GREY HAIR AND FRECKLE AND BLOCKED PORE.

There's a lot to be said for the soft fuzz of an Irish dawn drizzle.

Billion dollar bust in winter's last gasp

I'm being hopeful about the last gasp of winter.

The billion dollar bust is today's shock announcement that Halifax is withdrawing from the Commonwealth Games bidding process, due to the proposed bid at $1.6 billion being about a billion dollars over budget.

As a colleague said today, the Tories, they'd fuck up the Lord's Prayer.

So you've got a cabal of Tories that run this province. And some of them are in the government. And the rest of them are in key positions of influence and authority around the province. And the ones that are in the government hired some of the other ones to run the bid process and gave them $14.3 million of my tax dollars to come up with a winning bid.

That we could afford.

So the lads went off and toured the Commonwealth in first class luxury and came back with a great bid.

For about a billion more than we can afford.

And then there must have been some kind of row and the political Tories shafted the merely influential Tories, and now there's some kind of Tory bloodbath going on.

I'm a simple person, who doesn't really get the nuances of politics in this province too well, as I am constantly being told by the clever people I work with.

But here's my question:

Did the political Tories not think of calling the influential Tories to tell them that the funding cap was going to be about a billion dollars, and to bring in a bid round about that amount?

Obviously not.

If not, why not?

In the spirit of the cbc.ca Test the Nation quiz happening next week, is the answer:

a) they're complete effing morons who shouldn't be in charge of a £12 billion budget anymore;
b) they shafted the influential Tories because they didn't want the Games to happen;
c) they thought they could get some more money out of the federal Tories, and gambled for the big win and lost, or
d) some other obscure Nova Scotian reason that I'm too simple (and by that I mean European) to understand?

Anyways, I'm waiting for Redser Byrne to send me his grateful thanks from Glesgey, who are sure to win the bid now.

Even I was embarrassed today and I'm a come from away.

From Myles, via Accent Monkey

Lunar eclipse from our bedroom window, Saturday night

Sandy Cove near Halifax, Saturday