My Countries

I have cause to celebrate twice this week.

Happy Canada Day to my Canadian family and friends!

 

I was belting out some off key renditions of O Canada at work yesterday.  I even met a fellow Ottawan at Earth Fare.  Hard to mistake her for anything but a proud Canuck with Canada on her T-shirt, even her baby's pacifier had a maple leaf on it. 

Reconnecting with my roots has been a theme these days.  Through the magic of Facebook, I recently found my childhood best friend, Anne-Marie.

Her passion in high school was ballet.  My bet was that she would end up dancing with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. We lost track of each other right after high school.  She thought I was heading to Carleton U for Architecture.  Instead, I headed to the States to study agriculture and she went about her business getting an MBA.  After being a stockbroker, Anne-Marie decided to begin the second act of her career and became a chef and a college culinary instructor.

Always driven and disciplined, I bet she has a third act up her sleeve.
This Fall will be my first time back to Canada in four years, only fitting that best buddies (even after a 27 year hiatus) will be together again.  Serendipity!

It's been said that the person you should become is the one you were at 15 when your passions were clear.  For me, it's always been about animals and books.  Seeing this photo that Anne-Marie had of us at 15 made me laugh. Everyone else on the bus is chatting and we're engrossed in our books.

 

In honour (notice Canadian spelling) of Canada Day, I want to recommend a fine Canadian author.  Louise Penny has written a series of detective mystery books set in Canada. 

 

 

Bury Your Dead is a contemporary novel set in Old Quebec City.  A fabulous read.  I could spend the rest of the Summer cradling her other ten books...

 

In honor of my adopted country, I present two books from an Auburn University entomologist, Dr. Mullen, both books concern Phillip Henry Gosse's year in Alabama in 1838.  Gosse was an Englishman who had worked in Canada before moving to Alabama to become a school master. One book is of his watercolors Entomologia Alabamensis.

 

 

The other is a collection of letters he wrote detailing the flora and fauna he discovered over the course of 8 months in Dallas county, only two counties from my Lee county.  Written 176 years ago, I could be standing there beside him when he describes his euphoria at the discovery of Actias luna (Luna moth), he even compares back to his explorations in Canada.  All these strange southern bugs and plants that I've delighted in studying, he had the same adventure two centuries ago.

 

 

It would seem he did more exploring than school teaching, using his pupils to gather specimens for his entomological collection.  He had minions!  Gosse's descriptions of agricultural practices make me shudder.  Rather than clear cutting forests for the preparation of fields, the cotton farmers girdled trees, killing them within a year, but also wasting the wood.  The following season, the slaves planted cotton in the devastated wasteland.  Gosse describes the danger involved for the slaves working among thousands of dead standing trees. 

One experience that I can only live through his eyes is of hunting on horseback in a virgin forest.  Gosse was able to pursue deer at a gallop through the forest. He goes on to explain that second cut forests are choked by brush and terrible vines.  You don't say, that I have plenty of experience with! 

 

Happy July 4th to all my American friends and adopted family members!