Hogan Doll

When my sons were young, they were very much into WWF wrestling. One of their favorite characters on TV was Hulk Hogan.

Recently going through old toys - with the aim of getting rid of some -  I came across this Hulk Hogan "talking" toy that my youngest son loved.

L

I can still remember him gleefully punching it, just to hear Hogan (the doll) reply - "Hey! Get off my gut! ..."

Playing with it - by that I mean, punching it - my son "became" a wrestler, too!

(Both he and his brother still refer to their biceps as "pythons"!)

Does his current love of boxing and wrestling owe its origins to this showman/wrestler/entertainer?!

Then, a few days ago, I  heard that Hulk Hogan had died of a heart attack.

How can I get rid of this toy?! (Even if no one plays with it now - because it frightens my grandchildren?!)

Maybe I'll just replace the battery and see it I can get him to "talk" again!

For Old Time's Sake

On a recent trip to Toronto, Terry and I went back to the neighborhood where one of our sons used to live...

To a favorite restaurant...

And the house we used to visit so fondly...

Just to remember... For old time's sake!

I'm so glad they live closer to us now!

Childhood Homes

On our recent trip to Kelowna, I revisited the homes where my family used to live...

My parents bought this house when we first moved to Kelowna in 1958. It was newly built at the time... but a long walk to the downtown school I attended. I can't remember if my brother walked to school as well. He would have been in grade 5 and his walk would have been just as far as mine.

When we lived there, the attached garage was an open carport. My family planted numerous trees - was this red maple planted by my dad?! I don't remember!

The second house we lived in was older - but only a block from our schools.Two of my cousins wanted to see it again, too. All three of us had our own fond memories of this home - which was painted white when my parents lived there.

We then went to see another former family home. My mother's older sister and her family were the first to move from Edmonton to Kelowna in the late 1940's. Others in the family followed in the 1950's. In her later years, my aunt lived in this house near the downtown city park. The house was sold over 20 years ago, when she died. The next owners renovated it...

When we arrived, we discovered that a Hallmark Christmas movie was being filmed on her street. In fact, her house was being used for filming the day we arrived!! 

We wandered around taking pictures...

What fun!

Remembering...

I recently had lunch - by myself - at a vegetarian restaurant my daughter also enjoys. We used to come here once or twice a month when she lived nearby.

I've decided to continue coming on my own - because I enjoy the food. (Also because the DASH diet for hypertension recommends eating vegetarian.)

Sitting here, looking out the window - it suddenly occurred to me that this is a very significant place in our family's history.

The university across the street is the reason Terry and I moved to Ottawa in the first place. Had Terry not come here to study, we would no doubt have raised our family in another part of Canada, lived in a different neighborhood, and had different friends. So much would be different! But the university brought us here - and here we stayed!

Cellar!

I remember basements like this!! A door in the floor.

Back then, we called them "cellars,"

This one is in a shop in Almonte. They kindly opened it up to show my granddaughter, after I noticed it.

The ones I remember held root vegetables. This one serves as storage for out-of-season shop decorations.

An history lesson for our 7-year-old - and a memory for me!

Interesting Souvenir

I've been going through some of my mother's sentimental favourites - souvenirs that she brought with her when she moved to Ottawa, from western Canada, at the age of 83.

One of the most interesting - or strange, depending on your point of view(!) - was this permission slip to participate in the River Glen School track meet in June 1957.

It wasn't filled in. Had she kept it as a souvenir of the school she would eventually leave when we moved to Kelowna, BC? She was the home economics teacher at this school. 

Or was this permission slip the only piece of scrap paper handy when she was making a list of games younger children could play outdoors? Had she been assigned the task of organizing games for them?

Here's the list: The farmer sows his seed / London Bridge / Farmer in the Dell / Drop Hankie / In and Out the Window / Crows and cranes / Volley Ball / Good Morning afternoon / Hide button / I say Stoop / Snatch the handkerchief / Looby Loo / Did you Ever See a Lassie 

(I only remember a few of these...)

The memories we hold onto in our souvenirs! 

I wonder - did my mother keep this little piece of paper as a souvenir of her teaching days in Red Deer - or to list games children liked to play?

Eventually this innocuous scrap of paper became a book mark ... one she kept for almost 60 years!

"Ogopogo"

Kelowna, the city my family moved to when I was 12, is situated on Okanogan Lake in British Columbia.

The lake is the home of a fabled water monster called the Ogopogo. 

This statue of the Ogopogo resides next to the lake in downtown Kelowna. It looks a little different than the one I remember from my childhood.

I have never seen the Ogopogo - and I don't know anybody who has - but there are just enough claimed sightings to keep the myth alive.

But the Ogopogo's fame must have spread. In the mall where I walk several times a week here in Ottawa, there are mechanical ride-on toys that one can rent. The green one is named Ogopogo!

I should add that I don't usually see older people riding them, though the ad suggests they might. It could be fun!

VHS Discovery

Going through boxes in a former bedroom - now my sewing room - I discovered…

This box of VHS tapes that my children loved to watch… Not sure how the got into a cupboard of sewing supplies…

But what now?!

We still have a VHS player… somewhere in the basement. There’s also an old TV it connects with…

A weekend of movie nostalgia, perhaps?! (I await to hear from my kids!)

Some Random Thoughts on Memory

I find it interesting that my mind seem to “cycle” - and out of the blue, so to speak, I remember people and events I haven’t thought of for years.

As a result of one such “remembering,” I recently reconnected with a friend from my university days. In our emails, we discovered that though we both remembered certain events, the details each of us remembered were different…

***

Terry, in his working days, had a colleague who had “total recall.” She remembered so many details - dates and people who were present! But the last time Terry and I bumped into her at a supermarket, she was carrying a shopping list! So total recall may not include everything… though she may still remember what date that was. She definitely remembers all our children’s names, even though the last time she saw them they were babies.

***

My father, in his later years, loved to solve his Rubiks Cube. He called it his daily exercise - and claimed that - since he started doing the puzzle multiple times daily - his memory had improved.

I’ve tried, but I simply can’t get into it!

***

What has me thinking about memory is my frustration that - if one of my kids asks what I did on the weekend, or even the previous day, I can’t remember!

Maybe - like my mother - I’ll have to start keeping a diary, writing it down!

Birch Bark Buckets

I used to enjoy going on field trips with my children when they were in elementary school.

Spring “sugar bush” outings were always popular. Not only did we see how maple syrup was made from early times - tasting maple toffee was also a highlight.

On one field trip with my youngest son's first grade class, the guide showed us different kinds of buckets used to collect sap over the years: Birch bark containers were used by natives......

Later, European settlers used wooden buckets.

Then metal buckets...

But nothing stays the same. The last time I went to a sugar bush, there were no buckets hanging on trees. Instead, plastic tubing captured the sap which flowed to a large central container. 

I was reminded of the birch bark buckets recently when I saw a statues of one in a Gatineau park.

I wonder if they were always decorated with pictures of animals - and if they were made in different sizes.

I did find a you tube video that shows how to make birch bark buckets. Glad to see that this traditional craft won’t be forgotten.

Interesting Magazines

For quite a few years, my mother had a subscription to Reminisce - a nostalgia magazine with pictures and stories about the "good old days".....

I recently found a stack of them in the basement. I had fun showing my daughter these coats from 1943... Not that different from styles these days...

Why haven't I gotten rid of these magazines before now? I wondered...as I picked another one up to peruse it ...

The pictures and articles bring back such good memories of my childhood! I guess that's why..

Like this photo of sisters with their toy (or are they real?) irons. Seeing the small cordless  irons reminds me of the days before electricity when laundry irons were placed on the wood stove to to heat them up. The handle was removable in some cases so that, when the base cooled off, it could be exchanged for a hot one fresh off the stove. 

So many memories!

The only way I'll ever get rid of these magazines is by tossing them into the recycle box without opening them up!

A Year Ago!

Today is my daughter-in-law’s birthday! 

I wish her an amazing year... a totally different kind of year! 

Last year at this time, we had no idea what lay ahead. The COVID-19 pandemic had not yet arrived in Canada. In fact, I don't know if I even expected it to come... 

I was living day to day... staying with her and the children while my son was away on business.

(He reminded me recently that he returned on his wife's birthday...)

Being with them was one of the highlights of my year... 

It was such a joy...

Making forts with a then-three-year-old... Watching a two month old discover the world around him...

All too soon it changed to social distancing... 

My hope for us all is that we will soon be able to return to life as it was before... when we can hug those we love, and we don't have to worry about "the virus," as my granddaughter refers to it. So glad for the memories! Children grow up very, very quickly!

A Sudden Memory...

I was a teacher for many years... Part of that time, I taught English to immigrants and refugees... It was an interesting - and often humbling - experience: I taught them English while they taught me about life in the rest of the world.

My own parents' immigration stories showed me that life can be unspeakably hard. Governments can be cruel... Had Stalin not taken my grandparents' farmland in Europe and killed so many of their neighbors, they probably wouldn’t have immigrated to Canada - and I wouldn’t have been born here...

But ... aren't things better in the world these days? 

Not necessarily.

 I remember one of my students - a girl my daughter's age - telling me how she happened to come to Canada :

***

I escaped being killed in my country by hiding in a bathroom, a young woman from Rwanda told me one day. 

Can you imagine living in a bathroom?!

My sisters and I were at boarding school when civil war started. Everyone was able to get away except us. So a man who worked in the school hid my sisters and me in a small bathroom in the school... Can you imagine what that is like?! For days, we never left the bathroom... We had to be quiet all the time. If soldiers would have found us, they would have killed us - maybe raped us first.... And they would have killed the man who was hiding us and giving us food.

One day some soldiers came and checked the building. What's in this room? they asked, trying to get into the door.

It's an old storage closet full of junk, the man told them. It hasn't been opened in years - and I've lost the key.

Fortunately the soldiers believed him and left.

Eventually relatives came and rescued us. We were able to escape and leave the country...

***

Where was I when all that was happening? I wondered... When I got home, I googled Rwandan genocide: It was the spring of 1994, from April to July. 

That was the spring my parents traveled to Europe - where my father contracted bacterial meningitis and died... My poor mother returned home in mid-June without him. Our family of five drove across Canada for his memorial service at the end of June. July was spent helping my mother organize her affairs, and get legal paperwork done. Eventually we drove back home - a six-day trip across the continent... 

I'm sure I heard about the Rwandan genocide in the news... But I didn't pay much attention...

Isn't that the way it is so often in life...? We're so caught up with our own problems of the moment that we don't see unspeakable tragedies happening around us in the world...

Blanket Gift: A Travel Souvenir

It's fun to get Christmas gifts that bring back travel memories.

One such gift that I received this past Christmas was a soft blanket.

The design on the blanket is a map of  Grand Canyon National Park, which I visited in September.

Looking for the names of the places we visited on the map, I realize that we only saw a small part of this large national park.

Just the part on the bottom right of the map..

It would be wonderful to go back and drive through as much of the rest of the park as possible... It would take a week at least - and some parts are inaccessible by car.

It's Hard to Get Rid of Old Cards...

One of my goals this summer is to go through filing cabinet drawers and shred or toss papers we no longer need... (This is no easy task: We have five filing cabinets!)

Among the papers are bundles of cards and letters my mother treasured and brought with her when she moved to Ontario at the age of 83: Lots of birthday cards, a few souvenirs from her own wedding, and a large bundle of sympathy cards she received when my father died.

Marie Kondo (the Japanese organizing guru) suggests that when getting rid of sentimental "clutter," one should take time to appreciate the friends and occasions that the cards (or gifts) represent. Then say good-bye.

As I read the cards, I am reminded that my parents enjoyed a large network of friends and family. What a treasure!

But there is also nostalgia here... In the bundles I've encountered cards from people I knew well, too. Many of them, my parents' generation, are no longer alive - like my godmother, Ruth and other close family friends.

Seeing their handwriting and comments brings back such strong emotion that I have to resist the urge to dig through the recycle bin and retrieve the cards.

Saying good-bye is never easy.

Memories of a New Brunswick Vacation

I rarely eat potato chips...

But I recently saw these chips in a local grocery store and couldn't resist buying them...

(There are enough chip lovers in my family to eat them, even if I don't!)

Why did I just have to pick them up and put them in my grocery basket?

They reminded me of a trip Terry and I made two years ago - when we visited "The World's Longest Covered Bridge" in Hartland, New Brunswick.


Several kilometers away we came across the chip factory where these were made.

The chips bring me back to the memory of that day!

Paper Dolls

I'm currently doing daily writing exercises aimed at stimulating creativity by writing about the past.

The writing suggestions come from the book, It's Never Too Late to Begin Again: Discovering Creativity and Meaning at Midlife and Beyond...

One question posed recently was: How you enjoy spending time as a child?

After thinking a bit, I remembered that my passion, as a young girl, was playing with paper dolls. I had dozens of them - some from books, others cut from Eaton's and Sear's clothing catalogs!

I'd lay my paper dolls out on my bed - and imagine stories. They were a whole neighborhood of people... I had Blondie and Dagwood paper dolls, among others. What adventures they had! (Such fun!)

Do children play with paper dolls anymore? I wondered...

I still have paper dolls in the house - not ones I played with, but some I've picked up here and there. There is a book of paper dolls dressed in the American Civil War period that I purchased in a museum bookstore. I was surprised to see that paper dolls could still be found.

Each doll is wearing typical undergarments of the time...

I remember reading that big wide skirts like these were a fire hazard - in an age when there were lit candles in every room at night.

I also tore out these pages of paper dolls from a craft magazine... just for old time's sake.

I wonder if my granddaughter will ever be interested in playing with them. My own daughter preferred Barbie dolls.

Paper dolls... Barbie dolls... Cash registers... Tiny cars and trucks... (The toys my sons enjoyed before they discovered Nintendo).

It probably doesn't matter what children enjoy playing with, as long as they're using their imaginations.

How Quickly We Forget

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada - a day when we remember soldiers who fought and died in recent wars, starting with World War I.

The date of Remembrance Day is based on the day World War I ended - November 11, 1918.  That really wasn't that long ago.... before my lifetime, for sure, but a mere eight months before my mother was born. My father, a few years older, lived in Europe and remembered visiting his father, a cook on the front lines.

Every year, Remembrance Day would bring to mind those terrible times, World Wars I and II...

I've never been a serious student of history, so a lot of what happened must have gone over my head... because I was shocked to read - in the autobiography of Glenn Clark, a man born in the 1880's - that although World War I took 10 million lives, the year the war ended (1918), more than twice as many as that were killed by influenza!

Really?!!

A Google search confirmed that the pandemic Clark refers to in his autobiography was the Spanish Flu, which in two years killed an estimated 20-50 million!

The war and then the flu... Such great tragedies! I can't imagine living through all that!

How those events must have altered the world! And how quickly we forget!

A La Julius

Do you recognize this man? Terry asked, referring to this obit in our local paper.

Yes! It's Julius!

We met Julius late in his life. He was one of the founding members of the Miller's Oven Tea House in Manotick, a small restaurant manned by volunteer seniors to raise funds for their activities.

He occasionally worked at the cash back in the early years when we went there.

The obit was enlightening: We didn't know that he had been a veterinarian, or that he was born in Montreal. We did hear that he had moved to Brockville...

But we will always remember Julius because he was a charming man - and because one of the menu items was named after him.

French Toast a la Julius - French toast dipped in a mixture of egg and milk, then in uncooked oats before frying it - has become a favorite with one of my sons!

Every time we make it, we think of him!

Moon River Memory

When I was sixteen, my goal in life was to travel, to see the world... A hit song of the day, "Moon River," became my personal travel theme song...

A few years later, I did start to travel - most significantly spending 10 years in Israel, studying at the Hebrew University, then teaching at the Anglican International School. When I returned to Canada on vacation - three times in those 10 years - I spent a few days in Europe. Traveling became an important part of my life.

A few months before finally leaving Israel to return to Canada, I attended a Henry Mancini concert in Jerusalem. Mancini had written the music to my theme song... Listening to him play "Moon River" took me back to the young girl I had been... and to my travel dreams...

Something equally surreal happened as Terry and I were returning from PEI...

We spent our final vacation day in Quebec City.

Sitting in a French bakery, we were entertained by an accordion player.

I didn't pay much attention - until he started playing "Moon River"...

I sat there dumbfounded - again remembering the 16-year-old with traveling dreams - that I had been.