October 28th, 2018

2:40AM

An autumn snowfall, the first of the year. We were with you when the breath left your body, holding your hand. I know you knew we were there. The nurse said it wouldn’t happen tonight, but we hoped it would; it was torture to see you in pain. She said sometimes people might hang on, not wanting to leave if they know their loved ones are there. We stroked your hair and let you know it was okay for you to go.  We toasted you and thanked you. We were filled with a sense of privilege and duty to accompany you on your final journey. When your eyes fluttered open and you jolted, we were told you couldn’t see us, but we reassured you anyhow and we noticed your last tears. No one will know what you saw as your lungs slowed; but then we felt your peace. We didn’t let go until we were sure you were really gone. In the hours between the worlds you left this one a red fox appeared at the window, and we knew you were okay

Editor: This affectionate memorial was composed by my niece and goddaughter Jennifer for my late mother Yvonne.

As we crawled amidst the burdensome traffic into the city early afternoon today en route to a family foregathering at the home of my sister and her husband along the Rideau Canal nearby Dow’s Lake, memories bubbled to the surface. My first recollection arose after crossing Pretoria Bridge onto Hawthorne Avenue. It is a now abandoned roadside building which once housed a highly reputed antique sterling silver jewellery and accessories retailer.  The owner was notoriously well-informed (to the point of didactic), thorough and reliable. For his part my partner recognized the grocery store where he formerly shopped when living on nearby Metcalfe Street in Centretown. The immediate object of our journey was the Green Door at 198 Main Street. It is a vegetarian restaurant and bakery.  We had ordered a specialty cake as our contribution to today’s luncheon. Over thirty-five years ago I had been associated with the owner when the store first opened. Though we haven’t been able to return as often as we would have liked, each time we have done so has been an unqualified hit.  Today’s dessert was no exception at table.

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If comfort is happiness and happiness is inexpressible then comfort is inexpressible. Sounds about right to me.  Incontrovertible (though admittedly not hugely informative). But it’s a start. Having absorbed myself assiduously this morning on the balcony ruminating about the logic of life’s elemental premises and conclusions while idly looking upriver at the glistening water and hearing the cacophony of Canada geese assembled overhead in various incalculable patterns, I have derived from this elemental yet elegant logic the straightforward conclusion that comfort is inexpressible. The deduction is immediately reminiscent of the similarly ambivalent talisman, “If she knows why she loves him she doesn’t!” Each inference is the product of a direct and simplified method of reasoning. Yet to say that lovers do not know one another, or that contentment is ineffable, is clearly not without its complications.

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In the movie Gosford Park there is an opening scene which has clung to me. Kristin Scott Thomas as Lady Sylvia McCordle, Sir William’s wife, daughter of the Earl of Carton, an old but impoverished family, rides up in a flourish upon a horse to the front of the country house where a stableman takes the reins to permit Lady Sylvia to approach and welcome the arriving weekend guests. It is the start to an exciting Agatha Christie style dinner party!

Gosford Park is a 2001 satirical black comedy mystery film directed by Robert Altman and written by Julian Fellowes. The film, which is influenced by Jean Renoir’s French classic The Rules of the Game, follows a party of wealthy Britons plus an American producer, and their servants, who gather for a shooting weekend at Gosford Park, an English country house. A murder occurs after a dinner party, and the film goes on to present the subsequent investigation from the servants’ and guests’ perspectives. Gosford Park premiered on 7 November 2001 at the London Film Festival.

The TV series Downton Abbey—written and created by Fellowes—was originally planned as a spin-off of Gosford Park, but instead was developed as a standalone property inspired by the film, and set earlier in the 20th century (from 1912 to the mid-1920s).

This afternoon (after having  positioned myself on the balcony for an hour directly in line with the autumn sunshine) I went for a ride on my horse. There is no question that the metaphor of one’s automobile ride and a horse is not for nothing. With a degree of pressure I can recall from my childhood having ridden bareback upon an 18hands gelding on a ranch in Alberta. Curiously it was bareback riding used to introduce us novices to the subsequent English saddle.  Upon reflection it was all about the use of one’s knees to preserve stability atop the beast.

While I hadn’t the threat or discomfort of riding a horse today, all the other traits of advantage were there. Not unusually I immediately opened the windows and the landau roof.  In anticipation of this manifest breeziness I dress accordingly.  Though I did not wear a jacket, I sported a Patagonia pullover which was sufficiently warm on this first of our cool autumn days.  Once having initiated the jaunt I recalled having a pair of driving gloves stored in my glovebox.  I withdrew them and put them on. The leather is good quality with a noticeable pleasantness.

The sheep that provides the leather grows hair, not wool, hence its name. The fine hair leaves no markings resulting in smooth leather. Favoured for its natural strength and elasticity, hairsheep leather is generally acknowledged as the best leather for gloves. Durable and supple, this is an excellent choice for lasting comfort.

Men's Classic Leather Driving Gloves

Customarily I do not have the radio turned on when driving with the windows open.  However today I could not resist a bit of amplification.  Seemingly yesterday I had already invited Siri to “play me some music”.  The choice alternated between opera and baroque music.  When however I had had enough of Giacomo Puccini and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, I invited Siri to shift to more modern compositions which ended including Pharrell Williams, Eminem, Queen, The Verve and Lana Del Rey.

Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer known primarily for his operas. Regarded as the greatest and most successful proponent of Italian opera after Verdi, he was descended from a long line of composers, stemming from the late-Baroque era. Though his early work was firmly rooted in traditional late-19th-century Romantic Italian opera, he later developed his work in the realistic verismo style, of which he became one of the leading exponents.

Music is unquestionably an ingredient of the successful ride. After filling the gas tank with Ultra 94 and employing the equally successful Petro-Canada App to wash the car, I was off! Because I had the decency this morning to get out of bed before nine o’clock, and having further expiated any lingering guilt by going for a short tricycle ride in the neighbourhood before indulging in the breakfast of steel cut oats and a small slice of carrot cake from Ashton Truck Stop (he added parenthetically), there was enough time remaining in the day to divert along the northern passageways and the Ottawa River to the hinterland of Renfrew County. There in the rugged countryside trucks like stallions are rampant. I have long ago abandoned the amusement of speed or excess; instead now I prefer to grimace at the cowboys as they fulfill their modern gallop.

On the return home I was greeted by further informatin from the Queensway Carleton Hospital where my upcoming surgery is now scheduled. I abated any possible sting of this latest intelligence by drinking a chicken soup sufficient I am certain to appease the magnanimity of Bobbie Gordon who recently wrote me about the remedial broth!

What I have always found agreeable about gold is that it is small, manageable and exquisite. Lately – that is, upon having moved into this small, manageable and exquisite apartment – I have been rethinking all that there is about gold and where to find it and how to extract it.  Extraordinarily I find myself concluding – with the most frugal of affirmative expostulation and persuasiveness – that we are sitting on a gold mine. Before I venture further explanatory detail, allow me first to give a brief but critical background to the exploration.

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Listening to the soundtrack of the motion picture Out of Africa has inspired several seemingly unrelated thoughts. Not the least of those thoughts are naturally those surrounding John Barry’s music. Like most composers (or for that matter, artists of whatever description) Barry’s vast work is nonetheless recognizable for its distinctive similarities. Though many of his compositions involve a British theme there is as well an inescapable American hallmark. I recall having seen the first James Bond movie in Toronto in 1963 when I was fourteen years old while in Fourth Form at St. Andrew’s College.  My roommate Keith Forsythe and I visited his parents for Thanksgiving and took the opportunity to attend a movie theatre in a local mall. Seeing Dr. No was at the time the height of novelty. Several years later in Paris, France on the Champs Élysées with another of my boarding school colleagues Ricardo Schmeichler, he and I attended the opening of Born Free for which Barry also wrote the headline music. And who can forget Goldfinger!

Out of Africa is a 1985 American epic romantic drama film directed and produced by Sydney Pollack, and starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. The film is based loosely on the 1937 autobiographical book Out of Africa written by Isak Dinesen (the pseudonym of Danish author Karen Blixen), with additional material from Dinesen’s 1960 book Shadows on the Grass and other sources.

John Barry Prendergast OBE (North Yorkshire, England) composed the scores for eleven of the James Bond films between 1963 and 1987, as well as arranging and performing the “James Bond Theme” for the first film in the series, 1962’s Dr. No. He wrote the Grammy- and Academy Award-winning scores to the films Dances with Wolves (1990) and Out of Africa (1985), as well as the scores of The Scarlet Letter (1995), Chaplin (1992), The Cotton Club (1984), Game of Death (1972), The Tamarind Seed (1974), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) and the theme for the television series The Persuaders!, in a career spanning over 50 years. In 1999, he was appointed with an OBE for services to music. Barry was married four times and had four children. He moved to the United States in 1975 and lived there until his death in 2011.

Coincidentally last evening I had occasion to chat at some length with Fiona St. Clair whom I have known since about 1968. Yesterday was her birthday. As you might imagine, we delved into a long history of events covering the past 56 years and the people whom we have known. For whatever reason (perhaps because of some idle recollection of Fiona’s past in Africa) she shared with me her hopes of taking her grandchildren on safari in Africa. Fiona is a professional travel agent so I have no doubt that the adventure would be of the first order.  The only limitation is age.  Fiona wants the children to be old enough to recall the enterprise (an imperative likely prompted by our own recognition of its importance in our old age). Indeed I recall having said to Fiona that lately I have been preoccupied with the text of my memories, not for the purpose of trying to relive the past rather merely to elucidate the adventures (perhaps as a means of expressing hitherto unexpressed gratitude for what parents and others enabled or provided).

From this lofty height of reminiscence – the James Bond châlet atop a mountain in the Swiss Alps and the glamour of being conducted to a movie opening on the Champs Élysées by a prostitute (another story for another day) – I have by contrast also embraced this afternoon the indisputable delight of commonality and domesticity. The Midnight Cowboy theme was somehow apt. My indescribable partner Denis today organized a so-called simple luncheon.  Normally we eat only breakfast and dinner. But today we had to interrupt our routine by estranging ourselves from the apartment to avoid getting in the way of our housekeeper.

Our purposeless evacuation this morning began with an amble into the Renfrew County hinterland where we chanced to travel along a road neither of us had ever seen before. Out of Waba we extended directly along Kippen Road to Deerfield Drive (NO EXIT) which skirts a tributary from Calabogie Lake to the Stewartville Generating Station in McNab/Braeside “marking its 75^th anniversary of producing clean power on the Madawaska River”.

Upon rejoining our opening tracks (and of course getting the car washed), Denis collected fodder at the Almonte Butcher for what was an unanticipated but thoroughly pleasant mid-afternoon luncheon. I chose the occasion to regain my affection for caffeine.  And Barry’s music. And reminiscences of the past.

It is guaranteed that no matter the outcome, life will go on.  It will not be the end of the world or the start of a new one, whatever happens. Things will settle down and continue much as they have always done before. Nonetheless the prediction of the result of the upcoming US presidential election is something which grips the minds of many.  It is undoubtedly partly a roulette game, a spin of the wheel, awaiting the ball to come to rest.  Certainly it is a matter of political interest, certainly one of enormous international intrigue as well, not to mention the mere optics for America generally. Predominantly though for those of us not immediately involved it is a question of prediction. The augury is the thing.

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When I moved to Almonte in June of 1976 at the behest of Senator George J. McIlraith PC QC, Paul D. Scott was 1½ years old. When I bought a house at 4 Laura Crescent next door to the Scott family in about 1980 Paul and his little brother Steve were my neighbours.  It wasn’t long before Dave and Barb (Paul’s parents) and I were rejoicing in the latest educational success of Paul upon his admission to the renowned Bishop’s University in Québec.

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Jay and Alana have become our Christopher Columbus; and we are their crew.  In keeping with that metaphorical link the expedition which they have undertaken (with us in tow) is enormous by any standard.  For starters, they are Northern Ontario people who have picked up and moved to the South Shore of Nova Scotia. Just to be clear, to drive non-stop from Kenora, Ontario to Lunnenburg, Nova Scotia via Trans-Canada Highway E would take about 35 hours over about 3,500 Kms.  It is roughly the same distance from Ottawa, Ontario to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina there and back again!

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Early this morning I received a telephone call from the Renfrew hospital canceling my scheduled cancer surgery because the anaesthetist was concerned that I have a pacemaker and there was no cardiac facility available in the event of emergency.  The suggestion arose that I may have to relocate to the Ottawa hospital unless they can find another anaesthetist in Renfrew who is willing to undertake the task. This is not the first time my pacemaker has caused concern, most recently related to Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Meanwhile my related nuclear medicine at the Pembroke hospital was also canceled as well as the Carebridge driver to and from the Renfrew hospital.

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