The Vintage Icebox

Audrey has been helping her parents move into a house in High River from their acreage just south of town. The new place is a little smaller, so a few things are without a place in the new home. One of them is this amazing old icebox refrigerator that Audrey was allowed to bring to our house.

Her folks found it at an antique store about ten years back or so. It is a beefy piece, as you can see here, and has displaced the red storage bench we had close to the front door.

The thickness of the doors demonstrates how tremendously well-insulated this icebox is. It used a big block of ice (or perhaps a container of smaller chunks) to keep food from spoiling for up to a week, as far we can guess.

And unless I miss my guess, the Arctic Ice Company shown on this plate dates back to 1882 and got their start carving blocks of ice out of Lake Winnipeg. They delivered ice to homes right up until 1954 when electric refrigeration became the norm. Instead of disappearing though, they seem to have evolved into Arctic Glacier, whose ice you can still buy at the supermarket today.

The instruction panel is still largely intact; it refers to this device as a refrigerator but I still prefer icebox for the clarity and old-timeyness of it. The label makes it sound like you would only need to clean this item out every week or so.

The ice would go in the compartment on the left, a drip pan behind the bottom door on the left, and the shelves on the right are where you could rack your perishables.

Mostly though, I just love the richness of the wood grain, the precision of the carving work and the immaculate condition of the piece. I guessed the icebox to be from the 1920s or thereabouts, but Audrey's mum thinks it might actually date back to the late 1800s, which fits with what I think I know about the company.

Audrey wanted to put a runner across the top for protection, but I begged her not to - there is so much character in those grooves!

It is much cooler than the wooden storage bench we had in that spot previously. The fact that it will also hold even more stuff out of the way is a bonus! We are very grateful to Audrey's parents for the opportunity to host such a nice-looking appliance from around a century ago.

Thunder Lake and the Re-Discovery of Couples Camping

With the exception of Audrey's recent trips down to High River to assist her parents with moving into town from their acreage, we really haven't had cause to leave home since...gosh, since we visited Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park last August. And with me working from home since last March, it became prudent for us to get away for a week.

Thus we camped by ourselves for the first time since 1997 or thereabouts.

Audrey wanted to go someplace we hadn't been and I found what looked to be a nice site at Thunder Lake Provincial Park, about an hour and a half northwest of Edmonton. We drove up there shortly after watching England's hopes get dashed in the Euros final (sigh), and found that the site was,` indeed, pretty nice.

Not to say that there weren't issues though - aren't there always?

First of all, even though we were right next to the path leading from our campsite loop to the lakeside, neither of us wanted to go swimming due to the number of leeches in the water. How many? Enough to warrant placing zipper baggies full of salt in a bowl at the camp office and store.

I mean, not that I don't appreciate the gesture, but not enough to immerse myself in that lake, despite the heat getting up to 33 one day while we were there.

Two of the three campsite loops are also currently without potable water, and even having brought 11L: with us, we still needed to refill at the Co-op in Mayerthorpe (about 25 min away).

Lastly was Canéla - this was her first time camping, and she still has a lot of insecurities. As a result, every time someone went up or down the stairs, she felt obligated to bark and snarl like the most vicious of beasts, even though all she is saying is "HEY! HI! COME HERE! I WANNA SAY HI! HEY!"

We explained this to her a number of times, but she still seems to be missing the core concept, so the struggle of socializing continues. In the meantime though, it was lovely to watch her exploring the sights and smells of the lakeshore, occasionally pouncing into the underbrush after detecting movement. This was usually due to the dozens of tiny frogs, smaller than your thumbnail, that could almost pass unnoticed in the taller grass

This left her tired enough at night that the only problem was keeping her off of our beds.

Still, we had a tremendous amount of shade, with our picnic table only being in direct sunlight for a little more than an hour each day, and never the whole thing at one time. This gave us a nice spot to play games on, including cribbage, Hive, Skip-Bo, and even a couple of games of Connect Four on the little travel set that we keep in the trailer. I did pretty well at Hive but got skunked in two consecutive games of cribbage.

Mayerthorpe has a fascinatingly cluttered old hardware store on its main street, a Burger Baron close to the highway, and the first Fields store we had seen in ages and which Audrey took full advantage of. We also made sure to pay our respects at the Fallen Four Memorial, commemorating the four Mounties killed there in an ambush in 2005.

I found it strange that the memorial made no mention of the 2005 tragedy, but not as strange as the realization that a decade and a half have already passed since then.

We also visited Barrhead, which is only 15 minutes away and has a Tim Hortons, whose wifi I gladly used to download the season finale of Loki while Audrey took Canéla to the local off-leash park. There is also a delightful local drive-in, Sal's that we split a donair and fries from, then got immense breakfast bowls from on Friday on our way back home.

Lots of Dutch connections in this area - about 20 minutes north of Barrhead is Neerlandia, a hamlet where the two tallest buildings are the Christian Reform Church and the Canadian Reform Church, and whose gargantuan Co-op store boasts an enormous selection of Dutch candies, licorice, stumpot seasoning and other trinkets.

Back in Barrhead, the De Herdt Gardens are an immense plant store and greenhouse (with an astonishing selection of succulents) but also host a coffee nook and Elieneke's Bake Shop, which is developing quite the reputation for its scratch-made pastries, Belgian chocolates and artisanal breads. The rustic sourdough we brought home with us is delicious, and makes me wish we had bought more. 

All in all, we had a lovely week at Thunder Lake. Hot during the day, but bearable in the shade (or in an air-conditioned Flex on the road to somewhere or other) and then cooling to 15 degrees of less at night. It rained a couple of times overnight later in the week, but the ground was practically dry by morning, and we never got tired of sausages and eggs cooked outdoors on the old Coleman stove.

We enjoyed lakeside walks with the dog, listening to loons and seeing at least one spectacular sunset.

But at least once a day, whether setting up a two-player game or preparing a dinner for two, or even just bedding down for the night, one or the other of us would wistfully express how simply strange it seemed for both girls to be absent from our campsite for the first time in over twenty years.

This is the way of things, I suppose, and I am glad both girls get the experience of working in Churchill for the summer, but I still hope one or both of them are able to join us camping before too long!

In the meantime, I am grateful to be married to someone who enjoys the time we spend together, even (or especially) when we do nothing at all.

Spiders and Lies - Black Widow, Reviewed

This weekend we finally got to end the drought of Marvel movies that has hung over us like a pall for nearly two years. In July of 2019 the MCU capped off their Phase 3 with Spider-Man: Far From Home. Television shows like WandaVision and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier have helped keep things from stagnating, so having the long delayed Black Widow finally arrive to properly kick off Phase 4 was a real treat.

I might have gone to see this in the theatre, except the girls are both up in Churchill for the summer, working, so I bought the Premier Access so they could watch it on opening weekend, as we have so many of the Marvel movies.

And because it was paid for and we can now have guests in in our home, I called the lads over so we could enjoy our first viewing party in almost a year.

And it was a treat. Black Widow is mostly a straightforward spy-fi action adventure, delving into Natasha Romanoff's (Scarlett Johanson) past as an agent of Russia's "Red Room" training program.

But like most MCU movies, there are additional layers dealing with loyalty and betrayal, revenge and regret, families real and pretend, and how the latter might become the former under certain operatic conditions. 

We are introduced early on to the ersatz family Natasha grew up with in Ohio - father figure Alexei (David Harbour), maternal unit Melina (Rachel Weisz), and younger sister Yelena (Florence Pugh) - but they are separated after the supposedly successful closure of their mission as sleeper agents.

Years later, Natasha is looking for a place to lay low following the events of Captain America: Civil War, but is dragged back into her old life when Yelena breaks her conditioning and now wants to help other Widows do the same.

Along the way they will fight the ruthless Taskmaster, an assassin who can copy the moves of anyone they've seen and who has been equipped with replicas of Captain America's shield, Hawkeye's bow and Black Panther's claws.

The villainy aren't half as relentless as the pace of this movie though, which often feels like it is just reaching interesting emotional ground when something else explodes or a new chase begins.

But it would be churlish to complain, because the fights are great, the chases are wonderful, and action and pathos alike are intercut with that trademark Marvel humour that leavens the proceedings up nicely.

And the emotional beats are still there - David Harbour is a standout, staggering from regret his alter-ego the Red Guardian never got to tangle with Captain America ("Not so much a nemesis, more like a contemporary, co-equal…") to misguided pride in the lethality of his proxies daughters, and eventually regret that they couldn't stay together.

Florence Pugh is wonderful too, mocking her older sister for her often-imitated landing pose in one moment, but clearly looking for her approval in the next. She can play strong and vulnerable concurrently and also looks very capable in her action sequences. Apparently Kevin Feige and company thinks so too, so rest assured we have not seen the last of Yelena (stay through the credits).

Of great appreciation was the scale of the story - no longer trying to save the world or even the universe, the stakes feel more accessible, more personal, in the style of the earlier Bond films.

Wonderful art design as well, particularly the Russian weapons and hideouts that reminded me less of Bond and Bourne and more of the Metal Gear video games.

Director Cate Shortland has done a deft job marrying the emotional and kinetic requirements of both a summer tentpole and a movie that has to advance the story and mythology of an established film series. Black Widow sticks the (hero) landing and gives Phase 4 a great base to build upon.

Hopefully we can see Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in theatres in just a couple of months…

Oh...Canada

This past Canada Day may have been one of the strangest and least comfortable in my memory.

It wasn't due to the fact that we shared a meal with friends for the first time in well over a year (thank you Pete!).

It wasn't due to the fact that our city (and much of western Canada) was undergoing an absolutely unprecedented heatwave, nor the haunting notion that it was just a peek into a hotter drier future for all of us.

No, it was due to calls not to celebrate Canada Day whatsoever, in the light of the discoveries of unmarked graves of children at several Indian Residential School sites across the nation, with hundreds, if not thousands more to follow. Many municipalities did, in fact, cancel their planned observances in favour of reflection, while #CancelCanadaDay and arguments to do away with regular July 1 traditions like fireworks blossomed all across social media.

So when we left our friend's house a little before 8:00 on July 1 and saw that the tiny Canadian flags he had put in the ground by his driveway and sidewalk had been trampled flat, it wasn't altogether surprising.

I like to think I understand. I mean, I recognize that whatever else they might have purported to teach, these schools were intended to eliminate Indigenous culture in our country. Not only by taking children away from their homes and families but by punishing them for speaking their own language or following their own customs. 

It took me a long while and some patient education by excellent people before I came to accept the idea that the I.R.S. program was, in fact, cultural genocide. That there was really no difference between this program and the "ethnic cleansing" we've heard about in other parts of the world.

So, yeah - my country has a lot to answer for in the way it has treated Indigenous peoples. And to be clear, this is not ancient history. The last residential school did not close until 1996. The so-called "Sixties Scoop," where Indigenous children were put into foster care with white families, persisted through the 1980s.

Pretty much every single Indigenous person you encounter is either a residential school survivor, or a child or grandchild of one. Generations of people who have not only been brutalized, but who also have absolutely no picture of what "normal" family life might look like, from either a settler or Aboriginal perspective.

At Audrey's elementary school, which has Cree language and culture programs, they have elders come in who share cultural lessons with the students. In talking with one of them, the full horror of the challenges facing First Nations children - mental and physical health, unemployment, access to education, addiction, and incarceration - really came into focus for her (and later me). And all of it stemming from a paternalistic attempt of European colonizers to make the people here less like themselves and more like 'us'.

Audrey asked the elder how long it would take for real healing to take place, and she answered "seven generations." 

I have no idea if that healing has even started yet.

But even in the midst of the horror stories of these unmarked graves (graves that school survivors had talked about, and that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 asked the federal government of the day to pay for their location and repatriation, but were denied), I am hopeful.

Almost every developed nation has a rocky history with the people who were there first, but not all of them have had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

And even before the TRC, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized in 2008 for not only the excesses and abuses committed at the schools, but for the creation of the residential school system itself, and its part in a government policy of assimilation. Four years earlier than that, the RCMP formally apologized for their participation in the I.R.S.

My own church, which was one of the religious entities that operated the schools at the behest of the Canadian government, apologized in 1986, saying: 

We imposed our civilization as a condition of accepting the gospel. We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were. As a result, you, and we, are poorer and the image of the Creator in us is twisted, blurred, and we are not what we are meant by God to be. We ask you to forgive us and to walk together with us in the Spirit of Christ so that our peoples may be blessed and God's creation healed.

It is important to note, however, that this apology was not accepted by the Indigenous elders it was presented to, who felt it was incomplete, and much work was still needed.

That work still needs to be done, and for every person who comes around to perceiving the bitter harvest of racist seeds sown by previous generations, there is another who feels Indigenous people have it pretty easy and should "get over it already."

And meanwhile, here in the middle, is a middle-aged white guy who is ashamed of how his country has behaved, but proud of the small steps it has taken to get better. Present Canadian governments have now apologized and are trying to undo some of the damage caused by former ones. A country that, at the same time it did unconscionable things at home, did laudable things abroad, including defending freedom, keeping the peace and feeding the hungry.

Can Canada be ashamed of its racist past but appreciative of its other accomplishments, including the solemn recognition of that past? I think maybe, yes. I am not ready to give up on either Canada or Canada Day just yet.

It is right that Canada Day 2021 should be different though. This is the year when attention really started to be paid to the fallout of the residential school system, because this is the year when the unmarked graves of unnamed children were found, beginning with the 215 in Kamloops. 

I think more subdued observances and calls for reflection on our national relationship with all Indigenous peoples were a good idea. I don't know that cancelling the day outright or pretending there is no Canada is a solid way forward, although I certainly appreciate the communities that did so out of respect, like St. Albert, whose firework display normally takes place on Mission Hill, the former site of Youville Residential School.

The horrific tally of unmarked graves will continue to rise between now and next Canada Day. Will there be calls to cancel festivities again next year? Possibly. Probably, actually.

But I hope that somehow we, Indigenous and non-Indigenous inhabitants of Turtle Island alike, can find a way forward together that will use the shame and sadness of these discoveries to make real changes. Changes we sorely need so that Canada can realize its promise and potential for everyone who lives here, whether their ancestors started out here or arrived later.

In the meantime, a few paper flags crushed by someone expressing their anger and disappointment in the Canada that was, and far too often continues to be, seems a small price to pay.