A Canadian Cottage Garden, late July 2023

 

Hollyhocks at Loyola College

Photograph taken from the parking lot of what used to be Loyola College but is now part of Concordia University. For some reason, in recent years, these hollyhocks are cut down sometimes even before they bloom. This year they are a beautiful sight; sometimes I take seeds from these hollyhocks to grow them in my garden, but rarely with much success. Considering they are a fairly common flower, growing like weeds in this neighbourhood, I have little luck growing them. 

After the flood

 

After the flood

What some people dispute about climate change is whether it is caused by people or that it is a natural phenomenon. Whatever the cause we've had a climate roller coaster this summer. Forest fires, heat waves, and recently a downpour of rain here in Montreal so great that our infrastructure was not able to deal with it; in this part of our neighbourhood, many houses and apartment buildings had flooded basements. Right now the City is removing piles of wet garbage, broken gyprock, flooring, soaked furniture, papers, books, computers, microwaves, and just about anything else you can think of, all of it destroyed in flooded basements. I arrived home on the day of the rain ready to use a bucket and remove water from our basement, but it was a lost cause, the water poured in from a basement shower drain and toilet. I was not alone, for the following week, when driving on adjacent streets, there were huge piles of flood damaged stuff at the end of many driveways. As the week progressed the piles of wet garbage grew larger.

So, as I was throwing my papers from the last ten or so years into contractor bags, my soaking wet archives including letters, notebooks, manuscripts, and photographs, I wondered at how neat I had been, labeling every file folder, placing them in now soaking Bankers Boxes, and I thought what nonsense had propelled me into saving all of this stuff? But the fact is, the more I bagged the more relieved I felt, getting rid of this stuff, these many boxes of papers, now I wanted to get rid of them as quickly as possible not just because they were damaged and I wanted to get our home back to normal, but because I wanted to discard the mania of saving all of this stuff. And then the thought that I've been a fool, thinking this stuff had any value and that I could somehow defeat time by writing everything down, in diaries and poems and letters, and saving all of this junk. These papers would have been in my literary archives, the latest and possibly last accrual, but even these papers would have eventually ended up in the dust bin which is how the cosmos works, everything returns to nothing, and it does not favour permanency. I think of the Doukhobors who, finding one of there own has gone over to the side of materialism, no longer a "spirit wrestler", will burn down that person's big house and, they thought, restore the person to a spiritual sense of life. But, at the end, does any of it matters? We are all headed to nothing from the nothing we came from, leaving behind a few words, chalk on sidewalks, or a fragment of a poem, and even that is being optimistic, the rest is like Shelley's "Ozymandias". I am too old for this folly, or any folly for that matter. 

"Leisure" by William Henry Davies

Families at leisure on Fletcher's Field, now known as Parc
Jeanne-Mance, in the early 1900s

 

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night. No time to turn at Beauty's glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth can Enrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.

"Being For The Benefit Of Mr.Kite" by Lennon and McCartney

 

For the benefit of Mr. Kite
There will be a show tonight on trampoline
The Hendersons will all be there
Late of Pablo Fanques Fair - what a scene
Over men and horses hoops and garters
Lastly through a hogshead of real fire!
In this way Mr. K. will challenge the world!

The celebrated Mr. K.
Performs his feat on Saturday at Bishops Gate
The Hendersons will dance and sing
As Mr. Kite flies through the ring don't be late
Messrs. K. and H. assure the public
Their production will be second to none
And of course Henry The Horse dances the waltz!

The band begins at ten to six
When Mr. K. performs his tricks without a sound
And Mr. H. will demonstrate
Ten summersets he'll undertake on solid ground
Having been some days in preparation
A splendid time is guaranteed for all
And tonight Mr. Kite is topping the bill

Note: From Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) by the Beatles. I loved this album, from it I got the idea of a thematically themed book of poems; the album is all of a piece, not just whatever The Beatles had written and assembled in one album, but a whole album conceived as a single thematically piece of art/music. It is still considered the greatest popular album of all time. When I was in high school I'd go home at lunch time and listen to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It's still great music and "Being for the Benefit" works as both song lyrics and poetry.

A visit to the Spanish and Portuguese cemetery

The Corporation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews is the oldest Jewish institution in Montreal, in Quebec and in Canada. It traces its history back to the first Jewish settlers who began to arrive in 1760. The few families met for prayer in private homes until the Congregation was formally established in 1768. In 1993 there were an ongoing series of celebrations to mark the 225th anniversary. The Congregation is as old as Quebec itself.

From  The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue website

Living on Belmore

We put up with--endure--a lot of cold weather for a few mild months, for a few perfect summer days, for the way we'd like to live year round.

A visit to the Urgel Bourgie cemetery in Ville St-Laurent

This cemetery is located in Ville St-Laurent, adjacent to Montreal, with the elevated Metropolitain Expressway just outside the front gates. A few years ago I tried to find this cemetery, no GPS back then, but I did find the Robert Mitchell Company which is where my great grandfather (Thomas Morrissey) worked for many years; after he retired in the early years of the 20th century, my Auntie Mable, who was still a child, would pick up his pension from them on Saturday mornings and deliver it to his home only a few blocks from where she and her family lived in St-Henri. As the English-speaking population has declined so have the number of English-speakers interred in this cemetery; it used to be an affordable place of burial; the English-speakers buried here are largely working class folk; of course, through legislation our numbers have declined everywhere in this province and the Federal government has completely sold out the remaining million English-speakers still here. The French language is thriving here but the excuse for some very fascistic and racist legislation is the on-going decline of French; it's an artificial crisis but politicians love a crisis, it's a great way to motivate people to do your biding and vote for their party. BTW, Urgel Bourgie is a chain of funeral parlours and they've extended their services to include this cemetery, it used to called Memorial Park Cemetery. 

Bessie Richards Parker is my great grandmother, born in Blackburn, Lancs

Grave of my mother's parents, John R. Parker (a fireman), and his 
wife, Bertha Chew Parker, both born in Blackburn, Lancs

Hold the Line by Tamara Lich, a review

                                                         

Hold the Line, My story from the heart of the Freedom Convoy

Tamara Lich

Rebel News Network, Ltd., 2023

ISBN: 9781990583025

 

If you don't write down your story, no one will write it down for you, or if they do they might leave you out or change what really happened. Tamara Lich's Hold the Line is both her story and the story of the Freedom Covoy, it's about her participation in organizing the Freedom Convoy, travelling across Canada in winter, the arrival in Ottawa and several weeks of demonstrations against Covid-19 mandates, then being arrested and incarcerated. This is Tamara Lich's version of what happened; it isn't the mainstream media's version of this historical event, or the government's version, or Justin Trudeau's versio, they all vilified the Freedom Convoy from the beginning.   

    What was the Freedom Convoy protesting? It began by opposing vaccine mandates and vaccine passports but, I suspect, it soon grew to opposing Justin Trudeau and how he was transforming the country into something unrecognizable to average Canadians. Among other things, Covid-19 mandates restricted our freedom of movement, promoted mandatory vaccinations, required a vaccination passport if you wanted to travel by air or rail, and required a period of quarantine when returning to Canada from outside of the country. In Quebec Covid-19 mandates included a nightly curfew, the streets were deserted between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. the following day; what did Quebec's curfew achieve? Nothing at all. 

    The day after the Freedom Convoy arrived in Ottawa the mainstream media began demonizing the Convoy. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation began its daily misinformation about the Convoy; this included the alleged "desecration" of the Terry Fox statue that Tamara Lich mentions in her book. On the second day of the protest the CBC interviewed various people on what they thought the Convoy was all about. One elderly man was on the verge of supporting the Convoy until the announcer said that members of the Convoy had "desecrated" the Terry Fox statue and that they had Nazi flags, none of it true; of course, he then opposed the Freedom Convoy. This is only one example of how the mainstream media let us all down with their biased reporting. Tamara Lich writes:

We exposed the Liberal friendly mainstream media for its agenda and its lies. People across Canada, and around the world, could see how the CBC, the Toronto Star, CTV, The Globe and Mail and many others were working to vilify peaceful protesters in servicc to a corrupt prime minister who writes their bailout cheques. For every honest journalist -- and there were some -- there were a dozen or more who were out to call us Nazis or violent criminals, or claiming we were foreign agents or trying to overthrow the government. (218)                           

    Every evening during the Freedom Convoy I watched live streaming of the demonstration on YouTube; I wanted to know as much about it as possible. Every evening I watched as someone walked the downtown streets of Ottawa interviewing people, and what I saw didn't correspond with what the legacy media was reporting; but it did give an idea of what the truckers and the Convoy were all about. The first night there were perhaps a few hundred viewers of these live streams, by the end there was a nightly audience of fifty thousand, that shows the scale and importance of the Freedom Convoy; it was an event of worldwide interest. I was very impressed by what I saw; I didn't see any violence, I didn't hear much or any horn honking by truckers, I saw what I came to think of as a Freedom Festival. And where was Justin? He was hiding in his country home north of Ottawa.

    I wonder what would have happened had Justin walked among the protesters? This is not a rhetorical question or an attempt at humour. I doubt Justin would have been physically accosted, he would have been yelled at, but after the Emergency Act was enforced protesters were physically accosted and knocked to the ground by police officers on horseback. The police were following orders. Maybe, in the early days of the Convoy, Justin could have shown some courage and people would have been truly impressed -- go out and meet citizens with a grievance against the government -- but he doesn't have it in his makeup, and no one is impressed by Justin's relentless publicity seeking, his dancing onstage in India, his black face, his costumes, his bungee jumping, his relentless selfies, his singing a Queen song the evening before the Queen's funeral, his apologies, his taking the knee, his inviting illegal immigrants to enter Canada at Roxham Road, and lots more. It's disingenuous, it's all fake with this man, and it's obvious to the average person how false it is. 

   I always thought one of the hidden reasons for enacting the Emergency Act were the Fuck Trudeau flags; I even saw them in Montreal. Justin is narcissistic and the Emergency Act was his revenge for these many flags. It's not as though there was rioting in the streets as we saw recently in Paris after a young man was killed by the police; the demonstration in Ottawa was inconvenient for many local residents of Ottawa, but there was no violence. And then things got worse, despite their peaceful assembly, the police attacked the demonstrators; they broke car windshields with impunity, they arrested people, including Tamara Lich and others. The government froze people's bank accounts, and this is one of the most egregious acts committed by this bogus use of the Emergency Act; how are mortgages and rents to be paid, groceries purchased, life to be lived with no money? We also saw the banks colluding with and supporting the government. The Emergency Act was as bogus and unnecessary as the Covid mandates were, all a scam testing the public's tolerance for government intervention and control of average people's lives. All of it a scam.

    Hold the Line is an important book and I recommend it, buy a copy and read it! Tamara Lich is not self-promoting, she is giving us, the reader, her true story, and I believe her. On one of the night's of the live stream the man behind the camera entered a tent where a meeting of Freedom Convoy members was just ending. And at the end of the meeting the people assembled stood and said a prayer. I can tell you it was unexpected and deeply moving; these demonstrators that the media and politicians demonized are our fellow Canadians. I doubt there were any meetings of Justin, Freeland, Lametti, Joly, and Mendocino, all government ministers, who have lied to us, betrayed us (especially the English-speaking population of Quebec) that ended with a communal prayer and a statement affirming what they were doing and looking for guidance other than the shallow leadership of Justin Trudeau. 

 

Notes and After Thoughts: 

1. The other event that is similar to the Freedom Convoy is the 1935 protest against Depression conditions and the Trek across the country from Vancouver where unemployed men boarded freight trains; they were stopped in Regina and negotiations with Ottawa began but when the RCMP tried to arrest the leaders they were met with protesters and the Regina Riot began. The site of the Regina Riot is now a historic site. One day the Freedom Convoy will be similarly looked upon and Tamara Lich and the other Freedom Convoy organizers and participants will be recognized as national historical figures; there will be a plaque or statue located on the site of the demonstrations.

2. Tamara Lich is an intelligent and articulate woman; listen to Jordan Peterson's podcast interview with her; she is brilliant! She could run for a seat in the House of Commons for the Conservative Party of Canada, but it may be a big mistake.

3.    Who opposed the Convoy? It included the Liberal and NDP supporters, it was the mainstream media, and it was the managerial class of Canadians who are quick to protect their elite position in society. As an example of this, Tamara Lich's Hold the Line is not for sale at Indigo Books, whether online or in their stores: this is more evidence for why we need to write down or record our own story and publish it online or in print, if you can't read about the Freedom Convoy then it's as though it never happened. Indigo, their book stores and online, a failing business, were quick to cancel Hold the Line by not selling it; but it is not up to a company selling books to decide what we can or cannot read, and the Canadian book industry should be ashamed by their silence on this issue of censoring a Canadian book. However, Tamara Lich's book is for sale on Amazon, a highly successful American company these same liberals love to condemn, in fact it is a bestselling, number one, book; to be a best seller on Amazon requires selling 3.5 thousand to five thousand copies of a book in a twenty-four hour period, and Holding the Line did this despite fake negative reviews on the Amazon website, they were fake because these negative reviews were written before the book was even published. Hold the Line has mostly five star reviews, this is based on over one thousand reviews and book sales. It is still the number one best seller in Canadian biographies on Amazon. I would estimate, conservatively, that Amazon has sold over 25,000 copies of the book.  It is a best seller in Canadian publishing despite the haters, those in the liberal media who pretend the book doesn't exist.

4. In a blog post (31 January 2023) on defunding the CBC, I wrote: 

CBC's biased reporting can slip over into being reporting of even greater dubious value; that is, news has become interpretation, bias, and even falsehood. An example: the second day of the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, in January 2022, CBC announcers would mention that two monuments in Ottawa had been "desecrated" by the demonstrators and they've kept repeating this story; among other things, it effectively cowed people they were interviewing into opposing the Freedom Convoy. It was ammo they could use against the Freedom Convoy. But the CBC has a double standard, it has never referred to beheading, toppling, or throwing paint on statues of our first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, or Queen Victoria, or Egerton Ryerson as "desecrating" these statues because the CBC sympathizes and agrees with the demonstrators who defaced, destroyed, and desecrated statues of these historical figures. The use of the word "desecrate" is also interesting, it is loaded with innuendo and exaggerates the demonstrators' action which was to drape a Canadian flag on the shoulders of the statue of Terry Fox. The CBC assumes an agreement in values between itself and its audience but I suggest that most Canadians are good and fair-minded people who don't identify as much with the values CBC promotes as the CBC thinks. The CBC wasn't always this way; the CBC used to help unify the country and be known for excellence in broadcasting. Now it's come to the point that the sooner they are defunded the better for the country.

5.  Back in 1968, some people at the St. Jean Baptiste Parade in Montreal threw bottles at Justin's father, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau; what did Pierre do? The other politicians ran but Pierre stayed on the podium; he had some courage while his son, years later, had no courage; during the Convoy Justin was like Waldo, he couldn't be found, he was in-hiding in his country home.

6.    Those who supported the Freedom Convoy have been demonized by Justin Trudeau and the mainstream media as ignorant, extremist, racist and biased, but to read Tamara Lich's book is to find a voice speaking the truth about the Freedom Convoy. We now live in a country where to say you are favour of freedom is to be labelled an extremist; in fact, Justin Trudeau is the extremist.

7. Cancelling someone used to be called character assassination; you can see the CBC and other media doing this regarding Premier Higgs of New Brunswick. 

8. My family was always Liberal; in the 1920s two relatives were Members of Parliament from New Brunswick; as a family we always voted Liberal, never Conservative. It was only when Justin Trudeau became prime minister that I began thinking outside of the Liberal box. The years of his administration have been a disaster for Canada and I am not sure we will recover as a nation from what he has done.

                                                     10 July 2023