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 Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 11:14 am Post subject: |
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The Vancouver Sun
Daily Newspaper
Can-Tastic Creations
The fourth annual Canstruction event, on at
Canada Place until Sunday, raises
food donations for hunger relief
agencies.
March 6/06
Our favorite winning entry:
| Quote: | | Hunger Folds, designed on the theme of poker, won the Best Use of Labels award, 2006, made by Kodak with 7,600 cans. (Westcoast News, p. B2) |
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| Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 3:14 pm Post subject: |
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Globe and Mail
Daily Trombone
Chevron's East Coast gamble
$140-million well Canada's most expensive
By Dave Ebner
July 31/06
| Quote: | Chevron Corp., the oil explorer that discovered the Hibernia field off the shore of Newfoundland and Labrador a quarter century ago, is leading one of the boldest bets in the history of the Canadian energy business, a $140-million well in the deep waters of the province's Orphan Basin.
Scheduled to begin drilling in mid-August, the well dubbed Great Barasway will work in 2,400 metres of water, the deepest for East Coast exploration, and the drill bit is set to plunge 7,400 metres below the seabed in search of crude, equivalent to about 13 CN Towers. It is the most expensive well in Canadian history and will work in essentially uncharted territory about 400 kilometres northeast of St. John's, an area beset by icebergs in winter. On a scale of frontier ambition, the four-month drilling project rivals Arctic exploration in the 1960s and 1970s. (Opening paragraphs, p. B1) |
Ah, well, it beats squid jigging for a living.
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| Posted: Wed Nov 01, 2006 1:00 pm Post subject: |
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The View from Castle Rock
Stories
By Alice Munro
| Quote: | The first story told of Will is about his prowess as a runner. His earliest job in the Ettrick Valley was as shepherd to a Mr. Anderson, and this Mr. Anderson had noted how Will ran straight down on a sheep and not roundabout when he wanted to catch it. So he knew that Will was a fast runner, and when a champion English runner came into the valley Mr. Anderson wagered Will against him for a large sum of money. The English fellow scoffed, his backers scoffed, and Will won. Mr. Anderson collected a fine heap of coins and Will for his part got a gray cloth coat and a pair of hose.
Fair enough, he said, for the coat and hose meant as much to him as all that money to a man like Mr. Anderson.
Here is a classic story. I heard versions of it - with different names, different feats - when I was a child growing up in Huron County, in Ontario. A stranger arrives full of fame, bragging of his abilities, and is beaten by the local champion, a simple-hearted fellow who is not even interested in a reward. (-- pg. 9) |
A geneology excercise taken to dull extreme. Not Munro's best. Scottish Tourism would do well to excise any links, in our view.
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| Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 11:33 am Post subject: |
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Piccadilly Jim
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | Ann followed her father's gaze.
"Do you mean the man talking to Aunt Nesta? There, they've gone over to speak to Willie Patridge. Do you mean that one?"
"Yes. Who is he?"
"Well, I like that!" said Ann, "considering that you introduced him to us! That's Lord Wisbeach, who came to Uncle Peter, with a letter of introduction from you. You met him in Canada."
"I remember now. I ran across him in British Columbia. We camped together one night. I'd never seen him before and I didn't see him again. He said he wanted a letter to old Pete for some reason, so I scribbled him one in pencil on the back of an envelope. I've never met anyone who played a better game of draw poker. He cleaned me out. There's a lot in that fellow, in spite of his looking like a musical comedy dude. He's clever." (-- pg. 102) |
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| Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2006 12:32 pm Post subject: |
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Sports lotto millionaires beat the taxman
By CBC Sports
cbc.ca/news,
News link of Canadian jewel massive federal cutbacks
since the '80s have failed to shut down
Dec. 21/06
| Quote: | Two brothers who made millions playing sports lotteries won't have to give Revenue Canada a piece of their winnings.
In a decision issued Thursday in Ottawa, Tax Court Chief Justice Don Bowman ruled the multi-million-dollar fortune Brian and Terry Leblanc accrued by playing sports lotteries may defy explanation, but it was exempt from taxation.
Revenue Canada had claimed the brothers, former window-washers, had somehow found a way to beat the system, and demanded they be taxed as a business. "Good for them, but it's time that they coughed up a part of that so that the rest of the people of Canada don't have to carry the burden that they're presenting," Revenue Canada lawyer Roger Leclerc argued.
The LeBlancs' lawyer responded that betting on sports lotteries is too risky to be considered a business, and winnings are tax exempt, no matter how many times you hit the jackpot.
"There's no tax on luck," Bill Vanveen told CBC Radio's Teddy Katz. (emphasis added)
The brothers said they used a computer to help see what kind of combinations would earn them a big pay day. But in the end, they said, their bets came down to pure guesses.
The Leblancs also told the court they lived frugally — even after they started winning — and spent $200,000 to $300,000 per week on sports lotteries across Canada. At one point they had 15 people buying tickets for them. It paid off for the brothers, whom Justice Bowman called compulsive gamblers, with lottery wins all over the country. |
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:33 am Post subject: |
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Across the Bridge
New Stories
Hardcover
By Mavis Gallant
| Quote: | In May true spring came, moist and hot. Berthe brought home new dress patterns and yards of flowered rayon and pique. Louis called three evenings a week, at seven o'clock, after the supper dishes were cleared away. They played hearts in the dining room, drank Salada, brewed black, with plenty of sugar and cream, ate eclairs and mille-feuilles from Celentano, the bakery on Avenue Mont Royal. (Celentano had been called something else for years now, but Mme. Carette did not take notice of change of that kind, and did not care to have it pointed out.) Louis, eating coffee eclairs one after another, told stories set in Moncton that showed off his family. Marie wore a blue dress with a red collar, once Berthe's, and a red barette in her hair. Berthe, a master player, held back to let Louis win. Mme. Carette listened to Louis, kept some of his stories, discarded others, garnering information useful to Marie. Marie picked up cards at random, disrupting the game. Louis's French was not a woolly as before, but he had somewhere acquired a common Montreal accent. Mme. Carette wondered who his friends were and how Marie's children would sound.
They began to invite him to meals. He arrived at half past five, straight from work, and was served at once. Mme. Carette told Berthe that she hoped he washed his hands at the office, because he never did here. They used the blue-willow pattern china that would go to Marie. One evening, when the tablecloth had been folded and put away, and the teacups and cards distributed, he mentioned marriage - not his own, or to anyone in particular, but as a way of life. Mme. Carette broke in to say that she had been widowed at Louis's age. She recalled what it had been like to have a husband she could consult and and admire. "Marriage means children," she said, looking fondly at her own. She would not be alone during her long, final illness. The girls would take her in. She would not be a burden; a couch would do for a bed.
Louis said he was tired of the game. He dropped his hand and spread the cards in an arc.
"So many hearts," said Mme. Carette, admiringly.
"Let me see." Marie had to stand: there was a large teapot in the way. "Ace, queen, ten, eight, five...a wedding." Before Berthe's foot reached her ankle, she managed to ask, sincerely, if anyone close to him was getting married this year. (The Chosen Husband, at pgs. 22-23) |
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:55 am Post subject: |
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Roses Are Difficult Here
Hardcover
By W.O. Mitchell
| Quote: | He was willing to bet that the woman was good at her work - interviewing, observing people, whatever anthropologists or sociologists did. It wasn't that she stared at a person, so much as that her face held a steady and quite impersonal candour that could not be soon or easily accepted. It was something you had to adjust to, as when brilliant light has been thrown upon the pupils after a long time in darkness. One thing it did: it told a man instantly that he was a man and that she was a woman, and since that impertinent difference had been disposed of, they could get on with more important matters.
He left the office with her, crossed to the Post Office side of the street, then past the Palm Cafe, Willie MacCrimmon's Shoe and Harness, to the Cayley or, as it was better known, the Aunt Fan building. It was two storeys of tan sandstone, tilting visibly on foundations that had been sapped by year after year of floods. Tall, narrow, and squeezed between Finlay's Vulcanizing and the Beauty Parlour, it looked somehow a little like an elderly maiden lady who had come upon distressing times and companions. Aunt Fan Cayley had arrived from England thirty years before with a young brother, Hubert. He had drunk up his own and most of his sister's money, leaving her only the Cayley building, which he had won from Ollie Pringle in a game of Saskatchewan Show at the Ranchmen's Club over the Palm Cafe two years after his arrival in the district and one year before he had been barred from the club for the use of a deck of cards whose backs he had meticulously pricked with a needle. (Chapter III, pgs. 36-37) |
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 10:00 am Post subject: |
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Conrad and Lady Black:
Dancing on the Edge
Hardcover
By *Tom Bower
| Quote: | ...The new challenge - 'Murdoch vs Black," the clash of the Titans - enhanced the minnow's status.
Black concealed his true dilemma. As a capitalist, he should have instantly cut the Telegraph's price and spent money on improving the newspaper's editorial content and promotional campaigns to blast The Times's challenge into oblivion. The cost excluded that option. Unlike Murdoch's media empire, which generated $7.5 billion a year, Black's kingdom was dependent on the Telegraph for more than half its annual profits, and despite the income, Hollinger had accululated debts rather than cash. Without any capital, Black relied on the previous day's cash flow to survive. Matching Murdoch's price cut, he knew, would not only jeopardize his finances, but would break a lifetime's habit. Black was fighting a war on uncertain terrain.
As a student at Oxford, Murdoch was renowned as a poker player. Ever since, his commercial career had been marked by risking huge sums to win, and occasionally bearing a loss. Black did not understand a game of chance among equals. He could only win if his opponent was in trouble and the odds were stacked in his favor. If he had gathered around himself serious advisers and directors rather than relying on Dan Colson, David Radler and Jack Boultbee, he would have understood this new battle. But openness was anathema to the cabal, a weakness spotted by Murdoch, who smelt blood. (From Chapter 9, ,The Torpedo, at pgs. 199-200) |
*cbc.ca
Conrad Black Timeline
Last updated March, 2007
| Quote: | Feb. 19, 2007:
Conrad Black files an $11-million libel suit against British author Tom Bower, whose unflattering book, Conrad & Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge, outraged the couple. |
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| Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2007 9:28 am Post subject: |
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Gambling B.C. 'BILLY-style:
Cha-ching! Increase your B.C. lottery odds as a ticket-seller
| Quote: | Canada.com
Corporate Media Scion
B.C. probes odds-defying luck of lottery retailers
By Chad Skelton
May 30/07
| Quote: | The B.C. government has launched an audit of the lottery system in response to Tuesday's report from the province's ombudsman which found the system open to abuse by unscrupulous retailers.
"The ombudsman's report is a start, but by no means an end," said Solicitor-General John Les. "The bigger question of how and why B.C.'s retail lottery system was left vulnerable to potential fraud remains and that question is what the audit is intended to answer."
B.C. Ombudsman Kim Carter launched her investigation in December after the Vancouver Sun reported lottery retailers were winning major prizes at several times the rate of the general public. According to internal lottery documents obtained by the Sun, over the past six years, those who sell lottery tickets have won 4.4 per cent of all lottery prizes over $10,000 - a rate anywhere from three to six times their share of the population. The figures, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, raised fears that retailers may be stealing customers' winning tickets.
Immediately following the revelations, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation said that it had confidence in its lotteries and believed the high rate of retailer wins was simply due to retailers playing more often. However, Carter's report found several gaps in BCLC's security system. |
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... although Ontario seems to have the same problem, according to cbc.ca ... Go Canada....
... Just another lucky bluenoser?
| Quote: | cbc.ca
3rd time lucky in lotto, store clerk investigated
Oct. 12/07
| Quote: | A Fredericton convenience store employee has won big in the lottery, and it's not the first time his numbers have earned him a cheque. Carl Hallet, 49, won $100,000 in Atlantic TAG on Oct. 3. In 2005 he won $50,000 and in 2006 he won $5,000.
"I've always said if you buy the right ticket at the right time, you'll win, and I put my faith in God," Hallet told CBC News. But new security rules introduced in Atlantic Canada mean his win must be investigated for at least 30 days, and so far Hallet has not received his prize. The rules were adopted in March after studies showed retailers in Atlantic Canada were winning 10 times more often than statistically probable over the last six years. (emphasis added)
Hallet's previous win history will be examined, said Mike Randall, vice-president of social responsibility and communications with the Atlantic Lottery Corp. |
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Link to this entry
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| Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 1:17 pm Post subject: |
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Naked with summer in your mouth
Paperback
By the people's poet of Canada, Al Purdy
| Quote: | GROSSE ISLE
Look, stranger, at this island now
The leaping light for your delight discovers -
- W.H. Auden
Look stranger
a diseased whale in the St. Lawrence
this other island than Auden's
dull grey when the weather is dull grey
and east wind brings rain
this Appalachian outcrop
a stone ship foundered in the river estuary
now in the care and keeping of Parks Canada
- a silence here like no mainland silence
at Cholera Bay where the dead bodies
awaited high tide and the rough kindess
of waves sweeping them into the dark -
Look stranger
at this other island
weedgrown graves in the three cemeteries
be careful your clothes don't get hooked
by wild raspberry canes and avoid the poison ivy
- here children went mad with cholera fever
and raging with thirst they ran into the river
their parents following a little way
before they died themselves
- and don't stumble over the rusted tricycle
somehow overlooked at the last big cleanup
or perhaps left where it is for the tourists?
Look stranger
where the sea wind sweeps westward
down the estuary
this way the other strangers came
potato-famine Irish and Scotch crofters
refugees from the Highland clearances
and sailing ships waited here
to remove their corpses
and four million immigrants passed through
- now there's talk of a Health Spa and Casino
we could situate our billboard
right under the granite cross by the river:
UNLIMITED INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Look stranger
see your own face reflected in the river
stumble up from the stinking hold
blinded by sunlight and into the leaky dinghy
only half-hearing the sailors taunting you
"Shanty Irish! Shanty Irish!"
gulp the freshening wind and pinch yourself
trying to understand if the world is a real place
stumble again and fall when you reach the shore
and bless this poisoned earth
but stranger no longer
for this is home
(-- pgs. 9-10) |
Take a virtual tour of Grosse Île.
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| Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2007 10:52 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | eNews Vancouver Opera
Vancouver Opera In Schools presents
The Barber of Barkerville
E-mail Alert
Aug. 1/07
| Quote: | VO’s 2007-2008 touring production for young audiences will make a stop September 29, 2007 in historic Barkerville, B.C. And for good reason: the show is The Barber of Barkerville, an adaptation by Ann Hodges of Rossini’s famous opera.
Set in Barkerville during the Cariboo Gold Rush, the story features Al, a young miner who has struck it rich; Rosie, a young woman of estimable beauty and wit, and the apple of Al’s eye; and Bart de Ville, Rosie’s over-protective boss and proprietor of the Hotel Barkerville.
And of course *Figaro, the town’s professional fixer.
The Barber of Barkerville, featuring a cast of four energetic and talented young singers and a nimble-fingered pianist, will enthrall nearly 50,000 school children in schools and community venues across B.C. The show is proving to be extremely popular: it’s almost entirely booked, through to the spring of 2008, and the Barkerville show is nearly sold out.
For information on the Vancouver Opera In Schools program and VO’s other education programs, click here.
To find out more about Barkerville Historic Town, click here.
| Quote: | Consisting of four rising young Canadian opera singers, a pianist and a stage manager, Vancouver Opera In Schools' touring ensemble travels throughout British Columbia, performing on stages and in schools. These talented artists appear at venues as diverse as school gyms, local firehalls and community theatres.
Now in its 35th season, Vancouver Opera in the Schools has brought more than 1.6 million people to the magical world of opera. Each year, nearly 50,000 school children and families see a performance by the ensemble.
Specially adapted for younger audiences and performed in English, these fully-staged and costumed operas last approximately 45 minutes, and are followed by a short question and answer period with the cast. A gym floor and an excited audience are all that’s required. Teachers are provided with a comprehensive study guide and excerpt CD to help prepare their students for the presentation.
2007/2008 Production
The Barber of Barkerville
Adaptation written for Vancouver Opera by Ann Hodges.
Touring BC schools and communities
September 2007 - April 2008
Music Director, Kinza Tyrell
Stage Director, Ann Hodges
Adapted from one of the world's most popular operas, Rossini's comic masterpiece The Barber of Seville has been relocated to BC's historic Barkerville during the exciting Gold Rush.
To book a performance in your school or community venue, please contact:
Patrick LeBlanc, Education Manager. 604-682-2871 ext. 4835
pleblanc@vancouveropera.ca |
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Yes, that would be ...
Best of Bugs Bunny
DVD
Featuring the Looney Tune classic,
Rabbit of Seville
Watch the cartoon
More Gambling for Gold.
Beaumarchais in Seville
An Intermezzo
Hardcover
By Hugh Thomas, who seems to know his Spanish onions.
| Quote: | Reading between the lines of Barmarchais's letters in these months, it would seem that Madame de Croix was usually with him at that time as his companion. She was certainly with Beaumarchais when he won a fortune at brelan against the ambassador of Russia, Peter, Count of Buturlin.
* Brelan was an old simple game in which each player is dealt three cards, on which he bets. Three aces, the best hand, was known as a brelan.
In the past, gambling in Spain had been condemned, and playing for money considered heresy. But many Neapolitans came to Spain with King Charles III determined to gamble, and though the law still included such punishments for gambling as banishment to the country for five years, a fine of two hundred ducats, even a hundred strokes with the whip, secret gambling prevailed. Smart tertulias were especially arranged for the hostess to profit by gambling, pocketing her gains, for example, and avoiding paying if she lost. There was thus apparently gambling every night at the house of the Condesa-Duquesa de Benavente, one of Caron's debtors, where a secretary of the Inquisition and a ruined merchant were that winter the most frequent players.
... Early in February 1765, Beaumarchais played against the Buturlins jointly and won two thousand livres from them. They did not pay. Probably that was because they believed that it was not necessary to settle debts incurred in one's own house. Similar games continued over several weeks. Then Buturlin won one hundred louis, but he still did not pay anything back nor indeed did he speak of doing so. Beaumarchais said: "If the count lends me some money, I shall embark on a folly and take the bank." He did take the bank and lost money to Lord Rochford, the British ambassador, to the Duque de San Blas - and to Buturlin. To the latter, Beaumarchais said, "Ah, my dear count, we are quits." The count said that what he owed could not be balanced against what the bank should pay him. "That," he said, "does not really cost you anything." "That's what you could say to me," returned Beaumarchais, "if I had been a bad debtor." At that, Madame de Croix got up and told Beaumarchais to give her his arm. They left.
The next stages in the dispute were somewhat disagreeable. Beaumarchais and Madame de Croix went back to the Russian embassy, as was normal for them, in order to avoid giving the impression that they were angry. Beaumarchais lost every night about 10 or 12 louis, against a bank of 200, but before he left he developed the custom of putting all he gained on two cards, which always won. He broke the bank when it was in the hands of the Marques de Carassola. The Chevalier de Guzman put 500 louis on the table and said, "Gentlemen, don't go, I wish to bet that Monsieur de Beaumarchais will break the new bank." Beaumarchais felt obliged to accept the bet, having already made 200 louis. Everyone watched, because no one else played for such high stakes as he did. He put ten louis on each of his three cards. He was dealt three aces, a *brelan, so he doubled his winnings. He continued to win and, in two hours, he broke the bank again. He went to bed having made 500 louis, of which the next day he lost 150. Thinking then that he had played enough, he was about to go home when Buturlin came up and said to him, "Is it possible that you are not going to play against me?" "I have lost a great deal this evening," said Beaumarchais. "But yesterday you won more," said the diplomat. In the end they played, and Beaumarchais won another 200 louis. He again sought to leave. Again the Russian insisted that the game continue, though it was four in the morning. Beaumarchais insisted on giving up, and the Countess Buturlin, angry at the losses of her husband, said to him, "You are more fortunate than polite, monsieur." "Madame," he said, "you forget that eight days ago, when dining with Lord Rochford, you said quite the contrary." For at the British Embassy, the Countess Buturlin had begged him to lend her 30 louis to pay what she owed at the tables. (From Chapter Nine, At the Tables and to the Theatre, pgs. 127-131) |
About Beaumarchais's contribution to art:
| Quote: | Beaumarchais's *Figaro plays comprise Le Barbier de Séville, Le Mariage de Figaro, and La Mère coupable. They were some of the most important French plays, for the trilogy spans the most turbulent period of French history. Figaro and Count Almaviva, the two characters Beaumarchais most likely conceived in his travels in Spain, were (with Rosine, later the Countess Almaviva) the only ones present in all three plays. They are indicative of the change in social attitudes before, during, and after the French Revolution. The two began in a formal master-and-servant (albeit light hearted) relationship, in Le Barbier; the two became rivals over Suzanne in Le Mariage, a personification of class struggle in pre-revolutionary France; and they finally join hands again to thwart the evil schemes of Bégearss, an attempt to call for reconciliation in La Mère. Further, Beaumarchais also dubbed La Mère "The Other Tartuffe", to pay homage to the great French playwright Molière, who wrote the original Tartuffe.
Beaumarchais's characters of Figaro and Almaviva first appeared in his Le Sacritan, which he wrote around 1765 and dubbed "an interlude, imitating the Spanish style [3]." His fame began, however, with his first dramatic play (drame bourgeois), Eugénie, which premiered at the Comédie Française in 1767. This was followed in 1770 by another drama, Les Deux amis [2].
To a lesser degree, the Figaro plays are semi-autobiographical [3]. Don Guzman Brid'oison (Le Mariage) and Bégearss (La Mère) were caricatures of two of Beaumarchais's real-life adversaries, Goezman and Bergasse. The page Chérubin (Le Mariage) resembled the youthful Beaumarchais, who did contemplate suicide when his love was to marry another. Suzanne, the heroine of Le Mariage and La Mère, was modelled after Beaumarchais's third wife, Marie-Thérèse de Willer-Mawlaz. Meanwhile, some of the Count monologues reflect on the playwright's remorse of his numerous sexual exploits.
Le Barbier premiered in 1775. Its sequel Le Mariage was initially passed by the censor in 1781, but was soon banned from performance by Louis XVI after a private reading. The King was unhappy with the play's satire on the aristocracy. Over the next three years Beaumarchais gave many private readings of the play, as well as making revisions to try to pass the censor. The King lifted the ban in 1784. The play premiered that year and was enormously popular even with aristocratic audiences. Mozart's opera premiered just two years later. Beaumarchais's final play, La mère was premiered in 1792 in Paris. All three plays enjoyed great success, and they are still frequently performed today, in theatres and opera houses. (Fully annotated at Wikipedia) |
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| Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 12:49 pm Post subject: |
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Company of Adventurers
Hardcover
Classic text on the history of Canada's
Hudson's Bay Trading Company
By Peter C. Newman
| Quote: | One whimsical example of how profoundly the two cultures differed enlivens a memoir by American painter George Catlin, who observed the behaviour of a group of Indians he guided through Paris in the early 1840s. The natives were not particularly overawed by large buildings nor wildly impressed by the carriages and litters; they managed to suppress any sign of enthusiasm for white women and retained their dignity even when pawed over by various impertinent royal personages assembled to inspect them - but they were utterly flabbergasted by the way Parisian women treated their dogs. The visitors were unable to understand the affection showered on the pooches when they had seen orphanages filled with unwanted children. They could not comprehend the horror on a saleswoman's face when they tried to buy the main course for a traditional dog feast. One of the Indian visitors carefully repoduced a table of Parisian dog-walking habits that ironically presaged later anthropological reports on North American Indians:
Women leading one little dog 432
Women leading two little dogs 71
Women leading three little dogs 5
Women with big dogs following (no string) 80
Women carrying little dogs 20
Women with little dogs in carriages 31
The French visit was followed by a tour of England by a dozen Chipewyan from the HBC territories in 1848. All but three died of pneumonia and English cooking.
... Quite apart from the sensual pleasures involved, HBC men who dallied with daughters of prominent Indian families gained a concentrated course in wilderness survival. Growing up in the relatively urban environment of the British Isles provided no training in snaring rabbits with willow twigs, readying raw furs for market or chewing tough moosehide into pliable moccasins. More important, these liaisons allowed the traders entry into Indian society; the women acted as interpreters and mentors, true partners in a relationship which, when it worked, went far beyond sexual congress. On the most elementary level, it provided HBC men with cheap scalp insurance. Through a simple ceremony à la façon du pays - an impromptu marriage without benefit of clergy - they took "country wives," acquiring personal security and the inestimably beneficial support system of the country wife's family. For their part, the women won access to the relative comforts of living year-round at or near the HBC forts; they gained social prominence and, usually, some form of special consideration for their relatives at the Company stores.
The Indian leaders perceived most of these live-in arrangements as advantageous, because their society operated along strong kinship lines and such semi-permanent partnerships extended family allegiances into the white man's valuable networks. The was, of course, not universally true, but it did happen often enough. Trading Captains calling at Company posts sometimes paid local factors the honour of offering their daughters in country marriages to forge blood-brotherhoods. At another level, living within the intimacy of these wilderness pairings was an ideal way to pass the long postings. The most effective traders were often the veterans of such tacit marriages. "About the only way you could learn the grunts and twists that go with most Indian talk is from a sleeping dictionary," inelegantly concluded a free trader named Andrew Garcia, who spent his life on the frontier.* |
| Quote: | Daughters of the Country
Hardcover
By Walter O'Meara
* According to Walter O'Meara's Daughters of the Country, two of Garcia's buddies settled in very direct fashion a feud over an Indian girl they both loved. The partners, known only as Fink and Carpenter, had been in the habit of demonstrating their trust in each other by filling a cup full of whisky and taking turns shooting it off each other's heads. To settle the love match, therefore, they decided to prove their good will by repeating their familiar performance. Fink won the coin toss for the first shot. "Hold your noodle steady, Carpenter," the gunman commanded, "and don't spill the whisky." A trigger squeeze later, Carpenter was stone dead with a bullet hole in his forehead. "Aw, shucks, Carpenter," Fink reproached his late partner, "you spilled the whisky." (From the chapter, A Savage Commerce, pgs. 185, 202-203) |
| Quote: | Company of Adventurers
Audio Cassette
Abridged, unfortunately.
Narrated wonderfully , thrillingly even, by wee
Frostback thespian Gordon Pinsent in the jovial half-honk
peculiar to Canada's east coast
|
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editor
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 11:30 am Post subject: |
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The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks
Hardcover
By Frostback Robertson Davies, alter ego of
humorist Samuel Marchbanks
| Quote: | TUESDAY
A child asked me to mend her doll today; it had broken up into a trunk, a head and four limbs, like a country with too many parties. I gave her the usual speech about my inability to mend anything, and then set to work. It was a gruesome experience, reminiscent of the scene in Mrs. Shelley's romance where Frankenstein puts together his monster out of bits of slaughterhouse waste. But more by good luck than good management I outfitted the doll with new entrails made of strong string and tightened these by winding one leg around for twenty-three revolutions. Now the doll is better than new, for it kicks, twists and squirms like a real infant. (From The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, p. 8) |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 1:37 pm Post subject: |
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The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks
Hardcover
By Frostback Robertson Davies, alter ego of
humorist Samuel Marchbanks
| Quote: | SUNDAY
Had some notion of a picnic today, but it rained. A man I know who lives in the woods tells me that the mosquitoes this year will be as big as sparrows, and may be expected to last well into December. He bases this prediction on the way the beavers are building their dams. As everyone knows, beavers eat a lot of insects, and particularly mosquitoes (for the formic acid which the latter contain, and which assists the beaver in seeing under water) and a beaver's burrow contains a special chamber for the storage of the insects caught during the summer season. Apparently the beavers this year are making these chambers unusually big, and from this my friend deduces that they expect a bumper crop of mosquitoes, of particularly large size... I have always wished that I were better versed in nature lore of this kind. (From The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, p. 94) |
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editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 2:00 pm Post subject: |
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The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks
Hardcover
By Frostback Robertson Davies, alter ego of
humorist Samuel Marchbanks
| Quote: | OF THE UNSIGHTLINESS OF AUTHORS
I rarely play cards, but I was taken to the cleaners this evening by a couple of young women in a spirited game of "Authors." I reflected as I played upon the appearance of authors, as a class. They are a mangy lot. Shakespeare appears to have been a dapper fellow, but look at James Fenimore Cooper, who kept turning up again and again in the hands I was dealt. And look at Ralph Connor and Sir Gilbert Parker, the two Canadians included in the game. Scarecrows, all of them. Authors should be read, but not seen. Their work unfits them for human society. (From The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks, p. 274) |
Link to this entry
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Last edited by editor on Thu Jul 03, 2008 8:51 am; edited 1 time in total |
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