Maintaining as I do an overall idle distraction throughout the day – a civility and mental avidity which I reluctantly confess is wont more often than I care to admit to commence as late as 11:00 am after the appearance of a good night’s rest – it is no enormous deprivation on occasion to encounter a prolonged rainy day. This at least would be the standard accommodation. When however the day about which one opines is more than a mere midsummer’s day but instead Canada’s National Holiday, the hardship is somewhat less dissoluble. Watching the combined effort and effect of the wind and the rain amounts to a dramatic and strategic attack upon the evident nature of the coast-to-coast celebration of higher estimation.
Such despondency would seem to capture today’s unscheduled evolutions on the wistful chart of events. Yet as quickly and as unanticipatedly as I was drenched earlier this afternoon by the sudden (and may I say surprisingly aggressive) downpour upon exiting Tim Horton’s coffee shop (and doughnut shoppe and pâtisserie), I soon thereafter saw from my 2nd floor desk overlooking the adjacent meadow by the river a tiny but brilliantly red cardinal swooping gleefully among the flora, fauna and funga.
A pâtisserie (French pronunciation: [pɑtisʁi]) is a type of Italian, French or Belgian bakery that specializes in pastries and sweets, as well as a term for such food items. In some countries, it is a legally controlled title that may only be used by bakeries that employ a licensed maître pâtissier in French, meester banketbakker in Dutch, Konditormeister in German (master pastry chef). In Dutch often the word banketbakkerij is used for the shop itself and banketgebak for the confections sold in such an establishment.
In Italy, France, and Belgium, the pâtissier is a pastry chef who has completed a lengthy training process, typically an apprenticeship, and passed a written examination. Often found in partnership with a boulangerie in French, bakkerij in Dutch, Bäckerei in German (bakery), pâtisseries are a common sight in towns in Italy, France, and Belgium. Cakes and other sweet foods can be bought at a pâtisserie.
“Wither come thee, saucy Wooster, resplendent with thy burnished veils?” By what a miracle it is that, staring into the clearing skies and watching the river settle beneath the diminished gusts of wind, I am restored from an erstwhile state of confusion and alteration to a status more mindful of clarity than obfuscation. It is almost unpleasant to use the word “nationalist” in view of its apparent nexus with those of more striking objection. But for right or for wrong, I am a supporter of Canada. Certainly I wouldn’t engage in any numerical assessment of countries. I acknowledge there is an instinct to promote one’s own country. From here however it is a radical leap one direction or another.