Tag Archives: university

Oh Canada! Happy Birthday to you

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Today is Canada Day, the yearly holiday to mark the anniversary of Canada becoming a country. This year, Canada celebrates 150 years. However, 150 years is only Canada’s official age, and does not take into account the centuries of trade and exploration before that, including the founding of the world’s oldest department store, the Hudson’s Bay Company(where both my mother and I worked, though at different stores). It also does not include the rich history of the indigenous peoples, whose culture was almost destroyed by white settlement, millennia of art and language and living with the land dismissed by our more ignorant forebears.

I lived in Canada for fourteen years. It’s where I attended high school and university, where I learned to drive, where many of life’s milestones happened to me. It’s a country I love dearly, where I still have friends, and where I met my husband. I also hold citizenship, so am proud to call myself Canadian on this day.

It is a place of wonders, of glimmering mountain peaks, vast prairies and tumbling waterfalls. Of wildlife fierce, tooth and claw, of people kind and welcoming. Its cities are bright and clean and vibrantly multicultural, and regularly place high on the list of best places to live. Canada has spawned authors and dancers and musicians, actors and directors and doctors and scientists.

It’s not a perfect country – nowhere is. But it’s pretty damn close.

And so today, on its 150th birthday, I would like to say Oh Canada! Happy Birthday to you 🙂

You can find me on Twitter @AuthorHelenJ,  Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Plus my latest book release, A Thousand Rooms, is now available on Amazon. Visit my Amazon Author Page to see more.

Wednesday Wander – Stratford-Upon-Avon

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DSC_0494This week’s wander is to the West Midlands town of Stratford-Upon-Avon, famous as the birthplace of William Shakespeare. However, he was not the only luminary to come from this small town – do you notice the American flag decorating the front of this fine half-timbered house?

DSC_0496This is Harvard House and, as the sign states, it was once the home of Katherine Rogers, mother to John Harvard, who founded Harvard University.

DSC_0497I grew up not far from Stratford-Upon-Avon and have been there many times, yet it was only on a visit a few years ago that I noticed Harvard House. It just goes to show how much history is packed into the winding streets and ancient buildings. As you can see, Harvard House was built in 1596 and has some wonderful carved decoration on the front – the initials A.R. stand for Alice Rogers, Katherine’s mother. The house was privately owned until 1909, when it was purchased by the American millionaire, Edward Morris. He restored the house and presented it to Harvard University as a gift – it is now managed on their behalf by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and is open to the public. We didn’t end up going inside that day – something for a future visit.

Thanks for coming on another Wednesday Wander with me – see you next time 🙂

Memory Box

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The other day I opened a box full of memories.

I’ve been having a big clearout recently, inspired by Marie Kondo’s ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying‘. Even though I’ve moved a lot in my life (twenty-four times at last count), clutter still tends to accumulate, especially when you have children.

So into cupboards I went, discarding clothing and dishes with abandon. Then I found this box. I should mention that I love trinket boxes and have quite a collection of them – this was one of the more unusual additions. I was about to put it back in the cupboard, when I decided to open it and look inside.

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And I found treasure.

A photo of me with a friend from Grade Nine. My University Library Card. A note from my brother, over twenty years old. A birthday badge saying ‘I am 24.’ A flower which I think is from my parent’s wedding cake. A necklace I remember playing with as a child, several stones missing. A small velvet bag, full of buttons. A book of matches from the CN Tower, ‘Top of Toronto.’

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All things that, at one time, were part of me.

As mentioned, I’ve moved a lot, with several of those moves being across oceans. And each time I moved, I had to discard bits of myself. Make adjustments. For many years I tried to ‘fit in,’ wanting a sense of belonging that always, despite dear friends and family, seemed just beyond reach. For a while I almost lost myself completely, but I found the road back to discover, like my old friend Dorothy, that home was inside me all along, and all the things I’d experienced were what made me who I am.

So finding this box at the turning of the year felt particularly poignant. It’s a time when I look both to the past and the future, gathering all that I am and all that I have been to carry into the new year. And this box, with its small collection of trinkets, reminded me that, even though I’ve moved through time and space, I don’t always have to look far to find myself.

Sometimes, all I need to do is open a box.

 

 

 

Thursday Doors and Funny Faces

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Back when I was at university, I had to take a short photography course as part of my degree. I wasn’t very good at it, to be honest. I had my grandfather’s old Pentax complete with an awesome selection of lenses (which I still have), but it was quite a large and unwieldy camera to carry around. It did take nice shots, but in the days before digital it took a few rolls of film to get anything decent, and, as a student poor in both time and money, I often had to ‘make do’ with whatever turned up when I was developing the shots. Then the camera broke down halfway through the course and I lost a few weeks while it was being repaired, so overall I was lucky to pass.

One of the assignments we had was to take pictures of anthropomorphic inanimate objects – I particularly remember it as it was about the time my camera broke, so I’d only managed a few shots before I had to take it in for repair. Still, it was an assignment I enjoyed, simply because it was something different. I still like to take those kind of photos now, finding faces where there are none, and this week’s Thursday door fits in with this nicely. As a bonus, here are another couple of shots along a similar theme:

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This leaf was smiling up at me as I walked home from school drop-off the other day – I couldn’t resist picking him up to take home.

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And this is a rock on an Irish beach – I’ve used this photo several times on other posts.

Finally, here’s my door, for Norm 2.0’s Thursday Doors Challenge. I couldn’t resist taking a photo of it – not only because of the colour, but also the fact that the owner obviously has a sense of humour (and in a posh part of London, too!).

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PS I’m back in Ambeth again! I started reading Oak and Mist and that was all it took – I was back in the park and through the Gate before I knew where I was 🙂