As long ago as I can recall,  breakfast has been a signal start to my day. It still is. My earliest – though least expansive – recollection of breakfast is as a pre-adolescent child while living with my parents.  Curiously I cannot for the life of me remember anything my mother may have prepared for me for breakfast other than perhaps a bowl of oatmeal. My father on the other hand afforded a more memorable occasion. He was an avid fisherman.  He especially liked trout.  One morning he cooked several small trout in butter in a black iron pan (no doubt echoing his camping experience). It was a rudimentary culinary exploit. But it worked. The skin of the fish was crisp and the delicate meat was lightly cooked.

Subsequently in boarding school we routinely walked from our residential digs to the Great Hall for breakfast.  The Great Hall accommodated the entire school (which at the time totalled about 300 boys).  At the far end of the Hall, furthest from the entrance, was an elevated platform where the Masters and the duty Prefect sat. I can distinctly recall being at table (one of the long dining tables for about ten boys) hearing Col. John Eldon Dean (an American student from Kentucky – and a genuine Colonel) saying, “Please pass the preserves.” He was always exceedingly proper. When we graduated, he further distinguished himself by informing us at a football match that he drove the Cadillac sedan that day because while he was at Worship service earlier in the week, vandals had stolen the RR from the hood of his Rolls Royce. Naturally when he invited a number of us for drinks afterwards at his place in Forest Hill, we raced ahead to verify his story.  We snooped into the garage and confirmed the RR was indeed gone from the vehicle.

While attending Glendon Hall for undergraduate studies, breakfast was a repeat event in the main dining hall. The main difference was that we served ourselves. It was assured that the same people arrived for breakfast every day. Already early in life, immutable habits were being formed. We may however have had one particularly bad habit in the late 60s – and that was smoking. I believe the university tolerated smokers everywhere – especially cultivated by the likes of Prof. Michael Gregory who smoked endlessly, even while lecturing in class.

Post-graduate studies at Dalhousie Law School initiated a wildly new method of having breakfast.  I had to learn to cook.  And to shop for provisions. It must have been a miserable undertaking because honestly I cannot recall one breakfast I had the entire time. The only possible exception was my discovery – early in my culinary adventures – of a dense oatmeal bread at the local Sobey’s grocery store on Spring Garden Road.

Sobeys Inc. is a national supermarket chain in Canada with over 1,500 stores operating under a variety of banners. Headquartered in Stellarton, Nova Scotia, it operates stores in all ten provinces and accumulated sales of more than C$25.1 billion in the fiscal 2019 operating year.

The bread was my fundamental grocery ingredient. I used the bread with every imaginable additive – from peanut butter to honey to Cheese Whiz. And it qualified for use at just about any meal – or when coming back from the Piccadilly Tavern above Barrington Street.

Thankfully I was at last relieved of the nightmare of having to cook for myself.  Following a brief interruption at Devonshire House of the University of Toronto (where I was a Don while attending the Bar Admission Course at Osgoode Hall) and a short interlude of Articles on Sparks Street with Messrs. Macdonald, Affleck Barrs &c., and almost within minutes of having arrived in Almonte to begin the scrupulous practice of law, I encountered Mrs. Gladys Currie at the Superior Restaurant on Mill Street.  There, with Mrs. Currie looking after us, for the next 30 years or more, every day of the business week without fail, six of us – John H. Kerry, W. Ross Taggart OLS, Nicholas Magus, Joe Sensenstein , I  and one other variable talent – regularly congregated to put on the nose bag.  We sat in the same place every day. Ordering was completely superfluous, our menus were so repetitive. It was only when I suffered a sudden diagnosis requiring open heart surgery that I veered off my diet of bacon and eggs.

Now it’s steel cut oats and fruit.

Tomorrow we’re headed to the latest modification of the breakfast drama; namely, the Mississippi Golf Club in the Village of Appleton. When I say it is the latest, I mean since my retirement from the practice of law. Before that auspicious date – given my daytime preoccupation – I attended the golf club mostly for evening or weekend events only, often involving associates or members of my family (birthday celebrations, that sort of thing). Breakfast now has overtaken the frequency.  It has become so familiar that there is a global identification of the “Chapman Breakfast” which I shamefully report is a serious protein mix of bacon, sausage, eggs and cheese marvellously (and generously) exhibited by Chef Wendy MacDonald.  Often after consuming the plate I have remarked it is the nec plus ultra.

What however awaits the festive board tomorrow morning is yet undecided.  I am now taking Ozempic and admit to a moderate appetite deterrent as a result. Nonetheless we are anticipating the rally will be favourable on all counts.  The weather is predicted to be sunny and warm.  We’ve arranged to reserve a prime seating on the patio overlooking the ninth tee, under the shaded overhang of the club house. By coincidence this afternoon I spoke on the telephone at some length with Fiona, a longstanding friend and former colleague who revitalized my enthusiasm for life.  I suspect her gusto heralds the beneficence I anticipate with Bunny et al. tomorrow.

We knew the excitement was bound to begin
When Laura got blind on Dubonnet and gin
And scratched her veneer with a Cartier pin

Noēl Coward, I’ve been to a marvellous party…