Lisa Anne's Thoughts on Canada and Being Canadian

 

 

Today’s commentary has been written from its title. Not often do I title a piece until I have written it and edited for the most part. But that is not so for today. After a dumping of November snow I found myself thinking what it meant to me to be Canadian. What were the things about my country I am proud of and maybe not so proud of…eh??? Or maybe just my thought...

The table on our deck. Photo by Lisa Anne

 

Canadians are a hardy bunch. We endure long cold winters that seem to never end. We do it with style through ice sports like hockey, figure skating, skiing and tobogganing. I have never been much of a hockey fan until the last two winter Olympic games. In Vancouver, Canada showed the world that we are made of the right stuff. Not only did we win both men’s and women’s hockey golds but we also won and broke the record for the most medals won by a host country. I think that is pretty spectacular. And just to be Canadian one step further we go to Sochi and come home with bilateral gold medals again for hockey. I remember watching the women’s game and feeling down right lost as the clock ticked down and the score was for the other team. We tied it up in the last few seconds and then in overtime slammed it home for the win!!! Way to do it ladies!!!

 

But all-in-all we have cornered the market on snow blowers and shovels, snowmobiles, skies, and quite possibly winter outerwear. Most true Canadians have owned or know someone who has or does own a Hudson’s Bay coat. That would include yours truly as an owner, thank you. These garments are the epitome of Canadian outerwear. The coloured stripes on the beige background is very distinctive and the warmth of such a coat is undeniable. Also so is the weight. You need to be in good shape to wear one!!! I remember the deep red, navy, grass green and the bright yellow always holding some position in our family cottage on a cold night. Then as I grew up I found the value of a Bay blanket on my bed at home. To this day in winter I slip under the weight of a six point gift of warmth that I will never surrender.

 

My final thoughts are about winter storms. I remember plenty of them as a child and ones that came with walloping winds, tons of snow and lots of ice. This always made the roads slippery for those who would shag. If you do not know what that is, I will not hold responsibility for telling you and it is not dirty, just dangerous. Almost every car I rode in went sideways along the roads and there was always the slipping backwards down the hills as cars were unable to climb and top small mounts that were heavily topped with snow. The snowmen in the yards were made by every household on the block and the forts to have snowball fights were built to last the season. We still have storms like that. We have just had one that was caused by lake effect snow and possibly another one coming. That will never change in Canada, we are the country that counts on these storms for our survival. These storms replenish our land and cover it with a blanket to allow it to rest for the following spring when it will come alive again. A country of four distinct seasons that do not blend and are their very own in every way. So after all of this my best thought about Canadian snow storms…the invention of the snow day from school!!!

Mystic Beauty of a Storm. Photos by Lisa Anne

Buried. Photo by Lisa Anne

 

I have always been proud to be Canadian. From the poppy I wear lest I forget, to ones I grow in honour of a grandfather. To the places I have seen and the simple saying of “Sorry” I am proud. We are a nation true and strong and we stand together and will not fall. I have pride in the beauty of this country, from the mountains of the west coast to the flats of the prairies, through the mosquitoes of Manitoba and the great lakes of Ontario, the history of Quebec and the rich culture of the east coast (which I am yet to visit) I have pride. We are the true north, strong an free and in that I stand a Canadian.    

My Garden Sink & Potting Bench. Photos by Lisa Anne

The Shed. Photo by Lisa Anne

 

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An Officer and a Gentleman

 

I repost this again as we approach Remembrance Day 2015. Please know that our soldiers and military service personnel are people with families who love them. These thoughts and memories I share with you are because of that sacrifice these individuals made to keep our country free. On November 11th stand in silence and please remember and be grateful.

I wrote this piece back in June of 2014 to honour my father at Father’s Day. It seems appropriate today as well that I post it to let you see a little into the life of an Officer and a Gentleman. I love you Daddy. Please remember and may we not forget the sacrifices made for our freedom.

As Father’s day approaches I have been thinking about my Dad. It has been just over thirteen years since he died. And the morning of May 20^th 2001 has been etched in my mind and my heart forever.

My father was a tall and dark haired man with a strength and presence about him. His blue eyes often glistened with pride even though he would show very little emotion. Being born in the thirties and raised throughout the war toughens a person especially as a young child. A stiff upper lip was always present. But as a child I could just tell how much he loved his children and family.

I think back on times of fishing and my mother and I out in the boat, the bugs becoming too much and the need for the toilet overwhelming. Dad finally gave in and only to reel in the tiniest perch fish I have ever seen. My mother holding the rod had not even noticed the little fish nibble the hook. I remember Dad’s laughter as she was surprised to see the little thing there. It was almost as if he knew better than we. 

As I grew older and was able to venture out I was taught to ride a bike. With Dad running behind me holding the seat I felt safe and secure. But then he let go and all of a sudden…freedom hit and I knew how to ride and I was gone. I took off around the block and down to a friend’s house, with Dad calling after me to come back. He had neglected to show me how to stop let alone turn around!!!

Now Dad was not all glory and good guy we were disciplined and kept in line by a firm military hand. This did not keep us out of trouble but Dad was the top of the food chain when it came to who ruled and if you were in trouble with Dad you knew it was bad. He had a subtle way of teaching you through well-chosen words that came at you as he sat looking at his paper work, the occasional glimpse over the rim of his glasses gave you the finality of it all. There was nothing left to say.

Rides to lessons, that I took far too many of, and suffering of cold at the skating rink he would endure with pride. Hockey games for my brothers, baseball games at the local parks that gave me time to run and play on the swings as he watched the boys play their games. Dog bites cleaned and dressed with a stern warning to leave the animal alone come back to me with the sound of his voice in my head. The wounded, stray, lost, dying, or just forgotten animals were all welcome around Dad often crowded our house. Cats were often just called “Cat” and dogs, well they were called whatever came to mind sometimes. He tolerated the plague of hamsters, mice, guinea pigs and rabbits that lived with us for most of my pre-teen years. I am not nor have I ever been sure he was comfortable with the rodent population that lived under our roof. It often outnumbered the humans. 

His silly personality shone through with the renditions of old songs he would come up with out of his head. Sometimes with new words created just for the occasion. His knowledge of old movies was like a library of Hollywood and he would often share this by just saying the name of the actor or actress and then silence but you got the point. His favorite movie of all time was Top Gun. As a RCAF pilot retired Dad enjoyed this movie more than any other. When it finally came out on video I am sure we had two or even three copies of it, with reserves just in case one broke or became damaged.

But it is not the memories that has brought me to my computer to write about him and it is not the nearness of Father’s Day. That time can be filled with my husband and our family as we grow together. It is as if it was yesterday that we lost you Daddy and nothing has changed in my heart. I know you would have stayed if you have made the choice yourself, but that was not yours to make. I know you are never far and I often feel your presence, your strength reassuring me. I just want to tell you how much I love you and that I miss you with all of my heart.

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Our Personal and Environmental Foot Prints

 

 

As I sit here at my desk and wonder what to write about I find my thoughts are scattered today. For most blogging is a passion and not a career. I am one of the passionate ones. I make absolutely no money informing people about how crappy the human race truly can be. Maybe you have noticed that I write commentary that gently slaps humanity in the face.

It is not that I want human beings to be crappy, I want them to be better. Better to the world, better to each other and mostly better to themselves. Life is not easy when you have children, a mortgage and other responsibilities, but why have we let that become the societal norm to the western world? Because we all want what each other has…it is that simple. We are never satisfied and strive for more, but that strive has achieved us what…more of what? Well look around your home, it is decorated well with well-made furnishing, are your cooking pots from Canada or the US made. You get the idea and where I am going with this. I look around and find that more has brought in the cheap junk toys, the expensive spatula that broke on its third use, the vacuum that will not pick up the dust and the parts break if you bump the base boards too hard. Wanting more has brought us to a level of consumerism that sucks. Junk is cheap, easy to make and disposable, so what is wrong with that?

 

What is wrong with it is that more cheap breakable crap we buy and give to our children or use ourselves, the more packaging we use (to keep breakage and theft at bay), the more disposable our world becomes the more we pollute our planet. Yes there I said it we are destroying our planet. And really if you have some fantasy about going to Mars, get over it because that is not going to happen in this or any other lifetime. Not only are we destroying the health of our planet we are destroying our own health as we nosh down on fast food, Halloween candy (how many parents out there are at the junk that was brought home after secretly wanting it to begin with?) and the ready made foods from the grocery store.

 

I get it the days of the stay at home “Leave It To Beaver” household are gone. Truly I would not want those days back, the hair do alone would kill me, let alone the dresses, and we have come along way with technology since then and it has improved our lives. But in the same breath it has taken away many things we crave as people.

 

People can get lonely when they are not social. Yes, humans are social creatures. We need to interact with each other on a personal level so that we can grow and form our personalities. Wait for it…now add in computer games. These games are usually solitary and are performed for the most part in the seated position. Great that is just wonderful, now our human being is not only alone but sedentary and eating crappy foods. What is wrong with this picture? It makes me sad to think of someone like this, in this state of disrepair as a person and our planet in this state of disrepair and a living being. Yes our planet is just like a living, breathing human being and we are killing it slowly.

 

So what do you say that we take some time and do a few things for the human race and our planet. How about lowering your own household environmental foot print? Buy reusable sandwich bags (can be found on Pintrest), use cloth shopping bags instead of taking the plastic ones from the store, recycle everything that is recyclable and make this a habit. Hold governments accountable for the recycling initiatives and make sure they follow through. Turn your heat down and wear a sweater, get off the couch and move you will warm up, don’t just turn your heat up get up. Take a closer look at packaging of toys, foods, and other consumer goods and refuse to buy anything that has way too much packaging. Stop eating everything in the grocery store, learn how to cook (look that up on the web) healthy meals that will give you leftovers for lunches. Buy fresh fruit a couple of times a week and eat it. If you take it with you, you will eat it just because it is there. Most of all have will power to make positive changes in your life and your environment. It takes twenty-one days to make or break a habit. Let’s try to make some new good ones that will benefit all.

Now get out there and live and make the healthy choice for yourself and our planet. We can do for ourselves with ease, but our planet will take team work!!!

 

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Can You Afford toEat???

 

 

Well it has been since Thanksgiving that I have written a commentary for your reading pleasure. I was raised under the adage that if you have nothing nice to say do not say anything. Well that is not what my commentary is about. I have tried to keep quiet but that is…well…impossible.

So after finishing my workout this morning I headed to the grocery store to pick up a cabbage, milk, and some ground beef. Seems simple enough right? No not at all. The price tag on these three simple items was over twelve dollars!!! I was stunned at the cash but not before I was hammered with the prices of the produce and the meat. I never shop the inside isles of the store as that is the junk food and the processed foods. As a Mom at home I have the opportunity to prepare wholesome meals and shop in the outside isles, so I do. I was making my rounds of the fresh produce only to notice that English cucumbers were $1.99 and were about eight inches in length and as skinny as a twig!!! Not only that, but, the price of a ham was $12.00. Less than a year ago the ham was $7.00 and the sale price was $3.99. Ground beef was another one. 500 g was $5.00 a week ago now it is $6.00 for the same amount, but still who can afford to eat right now?

 

 

We live in one of the largest food producing nations in the world. Our waste food is one third of what is grown in this country Canada and the farmers, producers and manufacturers of our food has the nerve to up the prices like that. My family spends about $800.00 per month on general food products from the grocery store. That does not include the extras such as the odd pizza or other celebratory meal out type of deal. For the most part we cannot afford to be eating out or ordering in food (neither can our health for that matter) so we stick to what we can buy from the grocery store or local farmers. So imagine my shock and horror as I walk the isles with my measly bi-weekly allowance and try to reconfigure our grocery list. I have cut out of our diet as much as I humanly can to manage our monthly budget. It is not as if my husband’s salary is going up to compensate for this financial grab by the food industry or as if I make any money from this blog. We are stuck now having to find what it is to give up next to make sure we have the right foods on the table for pure children to grow and be healthy.

 

Most of the food in this photo would have been wasted due to rotting.

Source: my local grocery store. I have observed and questioned.

 

Well as it stands right now, I make bread at home for a cost of $0.50 per loaf instead of paying over $2.00 for commercial bread. I make crackers, jellies, pickles, and just about every other condiment that you could want in your home including ketchup. I make my own soup stocks in order to lower our grocery bills we use every scrap of food that is bought and waste next to nothing to continue to lower this mandatory survival bill. We purchase nothing that is prepackaged or processed to yet again lower the bill. I price match and use coupons when I can (mainly for toiletries and items like that) yet again to lower the overall bill. So where does all of this give the audacity to the manufacturers and producers and sellers of our food to increase the cost to the point that we as an average family in Canada cannot afford to eat??? What gives you the right to be so financially greedy that you would and will stave people this year??? I know and am sympathetic to the circumstances of the lousy Ontario crops this past summer but really as I looked upon the elderly man in the store with me looking to his budget and trying to adjust his list so he could buy the meat he needed to survive my heart broke and my rage grew. There is no reason in this great country of Canada for anyone to be starving or having to make the choice between meat and heat. Ridiculous I say!!!

 

This is not the man I met at the store but a good representation of our aging population that will not be able to feed themselves.

 

You would think that after we as a country came together for our fallen soldiers over the past few weeks that we would be able to come together for our own countrymen. But I seem to think that this is an impossible task and that we are doomed by common human greed for money and that even as a country we will not all take a small part of the bite financially so that we can all ride this storm together and reach the light as a community we will do as any other place in the world would do, pass it all on to the consumer and let our tiny salaries, already squeezed dry, find a place to fit expenses that we are stuck paying just so we can live. Food is a basic need.

 

Food is a right not a privilege!!!

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