Designation of Former Family Residences on Lisgar Street in Ottawa as Heritage Buildings

In Ottawa last week, I decided to walk back to my hotel from a meeting downtown via Lisgar Street.  I was a bit thrown to see a "Sold" sign on 66 Lisgar where I had lived with my parents, great-grandfather and grandmother as an infant.  I assumed that this meant that the old house would be torn down and the land used to build a high rise condo to join the others surrounding it.

Then to my happy surprise I found that 66 Lisgar and my namesake great-great-grandfather, Charles Magee's house next door both have been designated as heritage buildings by the City of Ottawa earlier this month.  So those family residences should be preserved for a good long time, I hope.

Here is some relevant documentation:

Report on designation of 66 and 78 Lisgar Street as Ottawa heritage properties
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2D2uy6GvLKWajdXalBpLWRnMUE/view?usp=sharing

My letter of thanks to Nancy Schepers, Deputy City Manager (Planning and Infrastructure) and Michael Mizzi, Chief (Development and Review Services Planning and Growth Management), City of Ottawa
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2D2uy6GvLKWOWtyNmQ1NHZ6aWM/view?usp=sharing

Photos of 66 Lisgar Street as it is presently in 2014
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2D2uy6GvLKWZVR0ckFPdG9XWU0/view?usp=sharing

Reflections on Harry Belafonte Song Lyrics

I was disappointed to learn recently from my Uncle (erstwhile Parish doctor of St Philip, Barbados) that the claim in the Belafonte song "Coconut Woman" that "Coco got a lot of iron, make you strong like a lion" is actually not true at all. There is only a trace amount of iron in coconut. Coconut is evidently a very good source of potassium though. 

On the other hand  when I select fruit at the St. Catharines Sobeys, I do continue to abide by his important warning in "The Banana Boat Song" that "A beautiful bunch a' ripe banana hide the deadly black tarantula."

Belafonte's confusion over the nutritional benefits of coconut water may have its origins in that fact that Belafonte was a native of Harlem in New York City, although his Mum was an immigrant from Jamaica and his father from Martinique.

Chinese Cultural Association of Regional Niagara Spring Festival Gala 02FEB14

Ephesians 6. 10-18

Finally, my brothers, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.

Reflections After Entering Marks for POLI2P47

I have just finished manually transcribing some 180 POLI2P47 "Rights Across Borders" marks from the Google spreadsheets I prepare for myself and my TAs to the clunky database that the Brock University Registrar's Office uses.  When I first came to Brock I could ask the Department secretary to do my photocopying, type my letters, and take my telephone messages.  But now we have two administrative assistants and an administrative staff as  undergraduate officer  instead and we do those things ourselves.  I don't mind.  Time change.  We don't have chalk to write with anymore either (asthma hazard, evidently).  And we don't fill out marks sheets in pen and send to the Registrar to be input into a mainframe by their staff any longer.  I do find the data entry part of my duties rather tedious, but I do it slowly and carefully, double checking and cross checking, to avoid giving a student the wrong grade.  So it takes me a while to complete but this mindless task, but it does give me a chance to think.

Looking over the spreadsheets one can see that some students only rarely attend seminars and still manage to pass the Course. Similarly, when I deliver the POLI2P47 lectures,  I can also see from the banks of empty seats in the lecture hall, that should be filled to capacity if they were all there, that some students rarely, if ever, attend the 2 hour starting at 8 a.m. lectures.  The timing is not by my choice, we have a "Scheduling Office" for that, but as students have choice over what classes they enroll in, it does call the question why chose an 8 a.m. lecture if you are not a "morning person"?  Many of those non-lecture attending students passed too.  I suppose they have a Facebook group or Google the topics of my lectures given on the Course outline (available on-line, of course) to get by (??)  Despite the use of plagiarism testing software, I can't help but suspect that some of the term papers submitted to me (electronically now, of course) were not written by the student who submitted them.  As the term paper assignment accounts for 35% of the final grade, a strong paper would go a long way to a pass.

I suppose that it is the province of grizzled older professors to complain that "things aren't what they used to be."  But 20 odd years ago when I started teaching at Brock, I would have a single class of about 15 with all of them in the same seminar discussion group led by me.  They spent long hours researching in the University Library.  They wrote their term papers themselves by hand.   They would send me a note of explanation if they had to miss a class.  They came to my office hours regularly for a cup of tea and a chat, often about personal matters or other topics unconnected to the course.  After the exam I would buy them pitchers of beer in the student pub to celebrate.  When it came time to write letters of reference for grad study or to help them land a job, I had lots of things to say about them.  None of this is the case today.

I can't help but lament that the quality of education I can offer students now is much debased compared to what it was when I was a young professor just starting out.

Memories of Ottawa Family Christmases Long Past

I am in Caya Coco, Cuba as I write this on December 24, 2011 while self-exiled in my air conditioned hotel room by the heat and humidity of the Cuban mid-afternoon.  But the strangeness of being in such a sunny and warm place on this Christmas Eve makes me recall the Christmases past of my childhood.

When I was a child in Ottawa in the 60s we had a large family based on the descendants of my great-grandfather, the Ven. Archdeacon, J.M. Snowdon: my grandmother, Mary Greaves (1899-1962), my great-aunt Kay to whom I was very close (Kathleen Baker; 1892-1981) and her very amiable husband, Massy Baker, and  my great-uncle Allen (1894-1956) and his wife Edwina Higginson (1894-1984 ) to whom I also felt very close.  

The party was hosted by my grandmother's cousin, John Magee (1920-2011), grandson of my great-great grandfather, Charles Magee (1840-1917) and his wife, Aunt Margie (Margaret Medland) at their house in Rockcliffe at the bottom of Maple Lane.  

Uncle John lived in Ottawa as he was the head of the Canadian Transport Commission.   He had a remarkable model railway in the basement and a lot of interest in trucks too.  

Among the children, aside from my brother and myself, present at this annual event were Uncle John's two daughters: Cynnie and Diana, grandchildren of Uncle Allen: Harry, Rozzie and Jenny Jones and their parents, my mother's cousin Aunt Andrea and her husband Ralph Jones (who suffered from cerebral palsy so in latter years attended in a wheel chair). And there were the children of Uncle Massy's nephew, Dennis Evans and his wife Joan: Massy, Pamela and Michael Evans. 

Uncle Dennis's soft-spoken and kindly mother, Aunt Irene also came. She had moved to Canada after the war, having been widowed when her husband Horace was killed horseback riding in the family estate in Ireland.  Other regulars were Lucy Grout, my brother’s Godmother, a niece of Plunket Bourchier Taylor (1863-1944) who was husband of my great-great Aunt Flo (1873-1956), my great-grandmother's sister. Marion Holden (b. 1897), my grandmother's companion in Barbados and who lived with her in Ottawa at 66 Lisgar Street and later at 8 Elmvale in Lindenlea always came too.  She was my godmother and my father's secretary.  Her family were all in Spain.  She died a miserable death of lung cancer in the fall of 1966 another great loss to me, second only to my grandmother's premature death in late-1962.

One year Uncle Fred Taylor (1906-1987), an artist, another grandson of Charles Magee and son of Auntie Flo, came to the party while visiting Canada from his home in San Miguel Allende, Mexico. He met his ex-wife and cousin, Uncle John's sister, Miriam, at the party for the first time in many years.   One can read all about Uncle Fred and his brother, the notably successful industrialist, Uncle Eddy, in the book Fred Taylor: brother in the shadows by John Virtue (McGill-Queen's Press, 2008).  
In 1973, Florence Magee (b. 1886; this is not my great-grandmother's sister of the same name) was introduced to me at the party as "Cousin Florence."  She was a niece of my great-great grandfather, Charles Magee. She and her sister had evidently continued to occupy the original Magee farm house on the Richmond Road for many years after the land was divided up in a suburban subdivision.  Aunt Kay used to mock the “Ottawa Valley twang” of our poorer rural cousins in South March (where Aunt Margie tells me there are family graves) but I had never met Cousin Florence even though by that time she lived on Metcalfe Street just a  few blocks down from my father's office in the Medical Arts Building at 180 Metcalfe Street.  Evidently there was some family rift evidently based on resentment of Charles Magee's success after leaving Nepean and going into successful businesses in real estate (developing the Sparks estate in Sandy Hill) and beer (Brading Breweries) and banking (he was President of the Bank of Ottawa on Sparks Street).  About a week after the party there was an item in the Ottawa Journal to the effect that Florence Magee had been found dead in her apartment by police after the neighbours reported a bad smell coming from under her door.  I did feel very badly having just met this "cousin."

The children played in the basement while the adults smoked cigarettes and drank mixed drinks upstairs (I don't think anyone had beer or wine, rye and water or rye and ginger were favourites).  Then what was to me the highlight of the event,  Uncle John Magee playing the piano with enormous talent and flair while we all sang Christmas Carols.   This went on a good long time.  The feast was always turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce, and roast ham. The men took turns to carve it.   Afterward there Christmas pudding with hard sauce, Aunt Edwina's lemon snow, Christmas fruitcake, mince tarts, etc., traditional family fare.

One of the vivid memories of my childhood was coming out the Magee's house  following prolonged goodbyes and heading to my father's large Chevrolet car (he had Impalas and then Caprices).  It was a bitterly cold night and there was a lot of well packed snow banked up high. The night was very clear with a high round moon and the stars bright in the sky.  

I felt ineffably happy.  

2010 CCARN Chinese New Year Party

2012 CCARN Chinese New Year Celebration