Richard Hatfield: A colourful NB flashback

(Back in the winter, I shared a piece I had written about Alden Nowlan: The poet from Desolation Creek, Nova Scotia. Alden and the Premier of New Brunswick at the time, Richard Hatfield, were good friends. Richard was a regular at Alden's, hob-nobbing with poets and novelists and artists. I met him there often and always enjoyed his company. I took a special interest in this book and this is a review I wrote when it was published in 1992.)

Richard Hatfield: Power and Disobedience

Michel Cormier & Achille Michaud (publisher: Goose Lane Editions)

This is a terrific book. Authors Michel Cormier and Achille Michaud have captured an era in New Brunswick political history that is as lively as good daily journalism and as relevant as good history.

In spite of the title, the book isn’t a biography of Richard Hatfield in any strict sense; it’s a picture of a province through a changing time, with Hatfield at the centre and the usual cast of characters peopling the inner circle, the outer circle, the margins and the fringes. How can anyone say New Brunswick is dull?

Both authors were journalists in New Brunswick during part of Hatfield’s tenure but they didn’t decide to write the book until 1985, the year the premier went on trial for possession of marijuana. They used a combination of interviews, archives and personal observations to put together this work, originally published in French by Editions Libre Expression. The translation is by Daphne Ponder. (Cormier is now Ottawa correspondent for CBC Radio’s Sunday Morning and Michaud is the Toronto correspondent for Radio-Canada’s Le Point.)

Hatfield was certainly one of the more interesting premiers in our country in the recent past and all the predictable stories are here: Bricklin, kickbacks and Francis Atkinson, the doll collection, the membership in the Parti Quebecois and the bizarre toast to the Princess of Wales and, of course, the marijuana affair. Some of the stories are more familiar (and more frivolous) than others but all, especially the chapter about the Atkinson affair, are meticulously researched and clearly presented.

Hatfield with Bricklin

Other stories (and I was a journalist in New Brunswick and knew Richard Hatfield socially) are less familiar; the authors had good sources and have an engaging way with anecdotes.

Maybe the most interesting thing these authors bring to the book is their own Acadian background. Not a lot has been written for English-speaking readers about the political dynamics of the Acadian communities and the relationship Hatfield was able to build with them – which most certainly was one factor in his longevity as premier.

Not so his administrative skills. The book is riddled with examples of his carelessness in running his government, his lack of interest in how things get done. One typical story involved the hiring of Marcel Mass‚ as deputy minister of finance in 1973. Mass, an economic advisor in Pierre Trudeau’s office, was interviewed for the position and went back to Ottawa:

“Four months later...Hatfield called Mass‚ and said, ‘You start as deputy minister of finance in two weeks.’ Taken aback, Mass‚ explained that he needed more time to resign from the Prime Minister’s Office, sell his house and discuss the move with his wife. ‘That’s your problem,’ Hatfield replied, apparently amused. Before hanging up, Hatfield asked Mass‚ to draw up his own employment contract because he was not sure of the responsibilities of a deputy minister of finance.”

The authors observe that he preferred to forget about day-to-day problems or let them be dealt with by others – or not. “Not only was he more interested in principles than in their application, but he also believed that it was up to individuals to demand their rights...”

Certainly Hatfield was a charming and engaging man and his life makes for an interesting story but a reader coming to New Brunswick politics for the first time must wonder how anything got done in the province, how any progress could be made. And in truth, many things didn’t get done; progress was limited to one or two areas of Hatfield’s special interest.

There was an ambivalence about Hatfield in the province which I think these authors understand very well. Some people voted for his governments because to vote for another party was not an option to be considered.

They were your lifelong Tories. The Liberal party went through several destructive changes during the ‘70s making them a less desirable alternative than they would become later. But Hatfield was able to stitch together odds and ends of support to bolster the core Tories and some of the Acadian communities to win four consecutive terms – unprecedented in New Brunswick. (His final election, when he lost every seat to the Liberals, has also gone into the record books.)

This book is beautifully written – and beautifully translated. In a passage about former Liberal leader, Joe Daigle: “He was respected for his integrity and discipline, and for the long hours he worked on the public’s behalf, but only in the way a boring priest is called a saintly man. His appointment to the bench at the age of thirty-five seemed less an impressive career advancement than a sign that he had grown old too early.”

In this day and age, it’s a wonderful thing to read a book that has all the words spelled right and is almost completely devoid of editing inaccuracies. (Okay, IODE stands for Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire, not International etc. etc. In the authors’ defence, this is an organization not commonly found in Acadian communities.) In general, Goose Lane has made an attractive, readable book – with photographs interspersed rather than bunched in the middle.

Oh yes. Some of you want to know how the question of Hatfield’s sexuality was handled. And these authors have added little to the discussion on the eternal question: was Hatfield gay? They asked him, choosing their words carefully and assuring him (and us) that their only reason for asking was because it had become an issue in the last campaign. His response was vintage Hatfield:

“If it was a factor in 1987, it was also in 1982 and 1978. In 1978, Joe Daigle made an accusation he retracted because of the adverse reaction to it. So regardless of what they may have said or what they may have whispered, you know, sometimes people would tell me things and sometimes they wouldn’t. But it never bothered me. I had a very generous respect for the people.”

People in New Brunswick knew that, I think. That would be another reason for his political success over such a long period.

---

The book is still available and anyone interested in looking back at fairly recent history would definitely enjoy it.

The intriguing story of how I spend my days

I'm borrowing a format I've seen other blogs use, to tell you a bit about my typical day.

What am I reading?

I'm reading The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt.

I bought this book when we visited Hyde Park, the Roosevelt home and site of FDR's Library and Museum. I have a stack of books always waiting to be read — as many people do — and this one has risen to the top.

Eleanor is so modest, so humble. There are times, based on her memories of things that happened to her as a child and as a young person, that I want to wrap my arms around her and hold her. She so often mentions that she was homely, tall for her age, awkward — and it's because people told her that. It seems that people felt free to tell her anything that popped into their minds. She was an exceptional person and surmounted the slurs of her youth and became one of the most admired people of her time. Her writing is plain and accessible and appealing.

I'm also reading Heave by Christy Ann Conlin.

I should have read it years ago when it first came out but for some reason, I didn't. Christy is a good writer and the book strikes many familiar notes about growing up in a small town in the Maritimes. The book is set in the Annapolis Valley and involves alcohol, drugs, families, gossip, pain, love and hate. What else is there?

What am I watching?

Right now, I'm watching The Fall, an acclaimed BBC Two crime/thriller drama.

It's set and filmed in Belfast and stars Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan.

It's well-written, well-directed, well-acted and it's very suspenseful. It keeps me on edge.

Just before The Fall, I watched the latest season of Luther, another BBC production, this one set in London. Luther stars the magnetic Idris Elba in a truly distinctive role.

And just before that, I watched — and recommend — a series from Australia called Rake. I enjoy watching shows from Australia because I realize that I know only superficial things about Australia and I enjoy learning more about the culture and daily life of a country that we're supposed to have a lot in common with. There are a lot of differences between our two countries though.

Rake stars Richard Roxburgh and its tagline is "A brilliant barrister battles his self-destructive tendencies." That's about it. The barrister, Cleaver Greene, is a deeply flawed character and I found it interesting that they don't try to romanticize or glamourize his faults. He just is.

What am I listening to?

I don't listen to the radio any more. It used to be the first thing I did before I was barely awake was turn on the radio beside my bed — CBC Radio, of course. I came awake listening to it and then, as I moved along for shower etc, I turned on the bathroom radio. Downstairs, the large radio in the kitchen could be heard as we moved around getting the day underway.

One day, about three years ago, I turned all the radios off and I haven't turned them on since. If I want to hear some music, I listen to Sirius radio, often the Sinatra channel (which is not all Frank but also includes lots of music from singers of his era and earlier: Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett, Billie Holliday, Perry Como — and more.)

I also listen to a classical music channel but the truth is, I also spend a lot of time listening to nothing. I enjoy the quiet. The windows are open now and there are children in the street, shrieking and laughing and playing. And there are birds and often just some nice breezes blowing through the trees. That's pleasurable and relaxing too.

This has turned into a bigger project than I anticipated so I'll come back to write part two soon.

Mary Pratt: brutal and bloody, domestic and warm

We are a family that gives each other books for Christmas. And for birthdays, Valentine's Day and anniversaries. Or for no reason or no special day.

We have way too many books already and it's awfully hard to think about parting with them, something everyone finds themselves doing at some point. Our problem is, we have no trashy books. We have the classics and books by or about people we know. We have art and history and architecture and fiction and biography. We have poetry and photographs and, of course, cookbooks.

One day I wasn't feeling well and I set out to count all the books in the house to take my mind off my illness. I was approaching 2,000 when I got distracted. I think I had to go lie down.

Even with all these books, Dan goes to the library at least once a week and comes home with a stack of books. They all get read.

One of our books from this past Christmas is the Goose Lane edition of Mary Pratt's paintings, published in conjunction with her recent touring exhibition. It's called Mary Pratt.

We went to see her exhibition when it was here in Halifax and although there are many more pictures in this book than we took with our own camera, for some reason we feel a stronger connection when we took the pictures ourselves.

I shared some of the pictures on Facebook last year. Here they are, with my comments. (I haven't reminded you for awhile to click on the photos. For these ones especially, it's nice to see them big.)

Her paintings are beyond real. They're often brutal, often bloody. If it's not blood, it's something that makes you think of blood.

She often paints food, during preparation, before or after meal-time, sometimes raw and just killed. Or maybe in a beautiful bowl or sitting on lace. Often, the food is on foil-wrap or plastic wrap or waxed paper. (The model you can see through the doorway is serious and hauntingly human.)

This is a picture of a wedding dress which was made by a friend of the bride and which hangs on the bride's bedroom door. The marriage is very happy. It reminded me of my wedding dress, also made by a friend — my friend, Joanne Lamey — also hanging on my bedroom door! (My dress is a little nicer but has a little in common with this dress.)

A large cod, in all its gutted glory, delivered to the pristine garden of her home. She liked the contrast. On the right, a butchered moose.

Pictures from the genteel home where she was raised in Fredericton.

It may be that her exhibition is still showing somewhere in the country. You could look it up. One way or another, I do recommend this beautiful book — even though I've been told that my jelly looks prettier than hers. What do you think?

I think she'd be amused at the thought.

Mary Pratt, sitting with her paintings.

Beyond the basics: the cookbooks that took me there

A few days ago, I wrote about vinegar — not vinegar as a cleaner or purifier as you so often see, but vinegar as an incomparable flavour agent. I mentioned one of my favourite cookbooks — Oil and Vinegar — and offered some of the ways I use vinegar.

I have lots of cookbooks, as you probably do too. I have other favourites — some that I use regularly, others that I just like to see sitting there on the shelf, looking beautiful.

I wasn't always a good cook. As a young woman, I guess I knew the basics — how to cook some veg and fry a pork chop, or bake a potato and stuff a chicken. Most people did "plain cooking" in those days — the word "foodie" hadn't been coined as far as I know and the herbs and spices and condiments that are commonplace today were probably still mostly used in the land of their origin.

I can remember almost exactly when my cooking skills changed for the better. I had been browsing in a bookstore — this was in Montreal in the late 1960s — and I was just leaving when I stopped to look through a bin of books that were marked at 99 cents. I poked around and near the bottom of the bin, I found this:

A set of four paperback cookbooks — the size of book that used to be called a "pocketbook" — in their own little cardboard case. I don't think I even pulled them out of the box. There were four books there for 99 cents and they were called The Wonderful World of Cooking. Each volume covered a different part of the world: Volume I is the Far East and Near East; Volume II is Italy, France and Spain; Volume III is Northern Europe and the British Isles; Volume IV is the Caribbean and Latin America.

I took those books home and began to read. I was enthralled. I had never considered cinnamon and cloves — Christmas baking ingredients — as spices to be used in savoury meat and poultry dishes. My days of going to Spain were still ahead of me but I came across a recipe for paella a la Valenciana long before I ate my first paella on a Spanish beach. I discovered the magic of saffron and beauty of that golden rice. I found out that in Venezuela, cabbage rolls included capers, olives, raisins.

That was only the beginning.

The apartment we lived in at that time was in an old mansion in downtown Montreal that had been divided into fairly bizarre apartments. The kitchen was, quite literally, in the bedroom. It had been, I imagine, a small closet. It really only consisted of a stove and a sink and about six inches of counter space. The fridge was right there but not in the closet. It was just outside, in the actual bedroom.

The stove had two burners and a small oven. Only two out of the three elements would work at any one time so if you were using one burner and the oven, you couldn't use the other burner until you turned the oven off.

One evening, the even-then-well-known journalist, Peter Desbarats and his then-spouse were coming over for dinner. I had already told him, in an earlier casual conversation, about the stove and when he accepted the invitation to dinner, he feigned hesitation and said he didn't know whether he should accept, knowing what he knew about my cooking circumstances. But he was good-natured about it and we set up the date.

I made a Pakistani chicken dish — all in one skillet (therefore, one burner) — full of chopped veg, bay leaves, exotic spices, served with a fragrant rice and a cucumber and yoghurt salad. The dinner was a big hit and my little set of cookbooks was the unheralded star.

Forty years on, many of the recipes are dated now but there are still some that I use regularly: one of the books taught me a no-fail pie crust recipe that I used for years. Now that I have more experience, I can add variations to that recipe but it's still my go-to. The German cookie called fruchtplätzchen that I make every Christmas comes from these books.

The books are falling apart now and have been taped up quite a few times (the photo of the books above is borrowed from Amazon) but I consider them an essential in my cookbook library. They're not as pretty as some of the others — no colour photos here — but they've played such an important part in my culinary journey that I think they've earned a safe space on my shelf.

Vinegar to make your tastebuds sing

This is one of the loveliest photos in all my albums. This is chive flower vinegar.

If your garden — or weed patch, as the case may be — is anything like ours, you can't keep up with the chives. They're the first welcome little green things as the snow disappears (around the same time as the crocuses) and before you know it, they're a runaway crop and try as you might, you can't think of another way to use them.

Then the beautiful flowers appear.

It's time for you to act.

Pack some of the beautiful flowers into Mason jars.

Pour white vinegar into the jars to fill them up.

When it's a gorgeous pinky-red colour, strain it through cheese-cloth into pretty bottles.

It has a chive-y, onion-y flavour and so goes nicely in any vinaigrette or simply drizzled over your fresh salad. It can be used in all sorts of creative ways as, of course, all vinegars can. And certainly, if you make a lot, be sure and offer a bottle to your friends.

I love vinegar. I have a pretty little shelf over my stove and although I've tried to keep just the coarse salt cellar and the mortar & pestle up there, this is what it looks like now. It happens, gradually:

The vinegars that didn't make it for the photo shoot but are in regular rotation are the apple cider, rice, plain white, malt and sage — which we've made the same way we made the chive flower: stuff sage leaves into Mason jars instead of chive flowers.

I'm pretty sure I use vinegar every day, in one way or another. Some of the obvious uses — pickles, for instance. . .

. . .are just once or twice a year.

Other obvious uses are in salad dressings and marinades. But just as I agree with that TV chef (I can't remember which one it was) who said there's almost nothing that won't be improved by a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, I also think that a splash of lovely vinegar brightens up any dish and makes the flavours pop. I use it to de-glaze a pan. I add it to onions, celery, carrots and garlic as they're softening to begin a sauce. I use it when the drippings are simmering down during the gravy-making. I use it making the base for soups and stews. The dinner I made today (a biscuit-topped pasta casserole) used tomato sauce I had made earlier in the week — a tomato sauce that had vinegar as one of its secret ingredients.

Often when you use vinegar like this, it will need a little counter-acting. You can throw in a bit of brown sugar or maple syrup. And if you look back at the bottles above my stove, you'll see a bottle labelled "Clic." It's pomegranate molasses — it was bought by mistake, I think — and a dash of it in with a tasty vinegar is a lovely combination.

Some of the ways I've described using vinegar are also the ways you probably use wine in cooking. I use wine also; it adds a deep rich flavour but there are times I prefer the effect vinegar has. It just really wakes up your tastebuds.

This is a favourite cookbook. It has good reading in it as well as recipes. I hadn't looked at it for awhile and I'm happy to say I've just seen a new recipe for peaches — which, by late August, I'll be looking for again if our peach tree has its usual good yield. I'll go right now and mark it on the calendar.

Wonder of Wonders (Part Two)

Wonder of Wonders Part One is right here.

After I wrote Part One, I was feeling dissatisfied and I think it's because I started out and ended up without really knowing what I wanted to say. It was as if I had an assignment but no one had told me precisely what was expected of me.

I didn't manage to make the connections between the musical and my patients I had hinted at when I wrote Miracle of Miracles a couple of days ago although I guess it's obvious. The story of Jews being forced from their shtetl in Russia into the diaspora is a pretty specific connection.

But the universal message of the musical is not only literal, it's also symbolic. It's a story of oppression and deliverance and that's why it had — and continues to have — cultural repercussions around the world.

That message is seen so clearly in the story of the junior-high school production in Brownsville, Brooklyn in 1969. It was a time of school strikes, of bitter battles between the school boards and the teachers' unions, and of black-Jewish tension throughout the neighbourhoods and the schools. I remember the unrest of those times. The story of the school's production of Fiddler on the Roof was new to me, however.

The drama teacher in charge of the production was Richard Piro. He believed that working on this show would give his black and Puerto Rican students a more sympathetic understanding of Jews. It was a controversial choice. The principal of the school wanted to do Guys and Dolls.

As told in The Jewish Week:

While many in the school and the community tried to stop the production, Piro and the students persevered, rehearsing in his Manhattan apartment during the teachers’ strike. Sheila, the young woman who played Chava, Tevye’s daughter who falls in love with a Ukrainian, felt her character deeply, as her own parents wouldn’t let her date, and her brothers kept an eye on her.

Many of the students had witnessed evictions, and understood the sadness as families left Anatevka. Like many high school plays, the production became their own Anatevka, a small shelter of warmth and family, before they too must move on.

There were still people in the community who wanted to stop the show and their final move was to alert the Broadway producers because the student production hadn't got the authorization they needed to perform. It brings tears to my eyes to think about it but the show went on for the brave students and their wonderful teacher, Mr. Piro, when the Broadway producers granted them special permission and when producer Hal Prince, Jerry Bock (composer), Sheldon Harnick (lyricist) and Joseph Stein (librettist) travelled to Brownsville for opening night! It's an unforgettable story!

The true story of Richard Piro himself, a music-drama teacher, who worked in a junior high school where black and Puerto Rican students put on a Jewish musical, Fiddler on the Roof. It is about the tragic realities he had to combat: black anti-Semitism, the fear of Jewish teachers who believed the children would ridicule them, the anger of black militants who did not want excellence to be shown in a ghetto school.

It is the story, too, of how the Jewish principal and black parents and leaders joined with Piro, a gutsy and deeply devoted teacher, in the battle so that the show would go on. The youngsters' production was so successful that it was nationally televised. And finally, and most important, it is about children, their humor, their passion, their despair, and their triumph.

When I started reading Alisa's book, I was just interested in the simple story of how the musical came to be. By the time I read the story of the junior high production, the open-air production in Poland and the making of the Norman Jewison-directed film, it turned out to be so much more than that. Fiddler on the Roof is a phenomenal work on so many levels — literature, music, community, politics, oppression, fear and courage and hope.

Because it's all of that, it's life itself.

To Life!

Miracle of miracles

(Jack Inhaber: Unbroken by the Holocaust*)

In the late '60s as a young nurse, I worked for a few years at what was then called Maimonides Hospital and Home for the Aged. It was in Côte Saint-Luc — still on the Island of Montreal but a good long bus ride from where I lived in downtown Montreal.

I don't really remember how I came to be working there. Did I answer a newspaper ad? Did someone tell me about the job? I can't answer that but there I was — head nurse on the fourth floor. This is how Maimonides looked then. (It has since been topped up with two more storeys.)

Geriatric nursing is not for everyone but I was good at it. As always, I was much better taking care of my patients (and my staff) than taking care of my paperwork. Priorities, let's say.

My patients were mostly all in their mid- to late-80s. Some were in their 90s. They had all, without exception, come to Montreal from Eastern Europe (mostly Russia, Poland and Romania) around the turn of the last century, many fleeing pogroms and other persecution in their home countries. They covered the whole range in religious practice from orthodox, conservative and reform. At least a couple were secular Jews although they didn't broadcast that.

They all spoke Yiddish and although their English was good, it was peppered with colourful Yiddish expressions and their inflection was text-book. Kosher dietary laws were all practiced in our dining rooms and regular worship was offered in the beautiful Synagogue.

On my floor, there were two men who spent much of their day in the Synagogue, praying and studying the Talmud and the Torah. They would leave the floor right after breakfast, wearing the prayer shawl and the tefillin.

Tefillin are a set of small black leather boxes containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah, which are worn by observant Jews during weekday morning prayers. . . The arm-tefillin, or shel yad, is placed on the upper arm, and the strap wrapped around the arm/hand, hand and fingers; while the head-tefillin, or shel rosh, is placed above the forehead. The Torah commands that they should be worn to serve as a "sign" and "remembrance" that God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt.

The orthodox men were uneasy with us but they were not unkind to the nurses. It was clear though that this would not have been their ideal living situation and I encouraged my staff to respect their religious privacy.

Our oldest patient was Mrs. Kimmerfield (the rest of her family went by the name Field) — she was 98. She was a tiny little woman and never said much. She gave the impression that she had already said everything she had to say. One day, I went into her room and she was sitting going through her photo album. I sat down with her and looked at some of her photos and heard some stories. As so many of us lament about our own parents and grandparents, I wish I had paid more attention to the stories I heard at Maimonides. I passed up a lot of social history.

When she had closed her photo album, she sighed a little sadly and said, "You know, there's no one left who calls me by my first name." I asked her if I could and she happily said, "Yes." Her name was Leah and from that day on, we were Leah and Sharon. We had made a real connection — and I have never forgotten how important it was to her to hear the sound of her first name.

One hot summer's day, I had a phone call from Leah's daughter with a message. I went down to her room and said, "Ruth called to say she's not coming this afternoon because she's playing golf. She'll probably be here later." Leah asked me what the temperature was and I said it was hot — it was in the high 80s. "Playing golf," she scoffed. "The old fool." What a good laugh we had together.

We had two husband-and-wife couples on our floor and thankfully, they each had their own double room. The Steins were a fractious couple although that's probably an unfair description. Mr. Stein was grouchy and Mrs. Stein had to spend a lot of time pacifying him. He took a lot of his grouchiness out on her and although we tried to act as a buffer, she was stoic and for sure, truly believed that he was her duty. He had certain lovable qualities but he wasn't an easy husband.

The Herers were entirely different. Mr. Herer was grumpy (it's different from grouchy) but no one could ask for a more devoted and tender husband. He got Mrs. Herer out of bed in the morning, helped her get dressed and settled in her chair, brought her breakfast and sat with her while she ate and then left her with her radio and reading material while he went off to his daily routine. He spent much of his time in the art/craft room and I was honoured — really I was — when he presented me with one of his mosaics. That was almost 50 years ago and his creation is still with me and is in regular use on special occasions.

This is it. (Don't forget to click on the picture.) I'm still so impressed by the meticulous artistry:

I started writing this because I was going to tell you about a book I've just read called Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof. The book "traces how and why the story of Tevye the milkman, the creation of the great Yiddish writer Sholem-Aleichem, was reborn as blockbuster entertainment and a cultural touchstone, not only for Jews and not only in America." (Amazon says.) It made me think about my years at Maimonides and my beloved patients there — so many things in the book reminded me of them — and it made sense for me to reminisce a bit before I told you about the book.

Obviously, I'll have to come back tomorrow to tell you about Wonder of Wonders.

(*The painting at the top is by a current patient at Maimonides, Jack Inhaber. This was painted in 2009.)

(The two parts of Wonder of Wonders are here and here.)

Tell me a story. . .

When we lived in Ottawa, I took William — then a toddler — to the theatre to see Robert Munsch. The theatre was full of parents and kids, kids ranging from babes-in-arms to 12-year-olds. It was mostly pandemonium with a high-decibel count but it was great fun. My own toddler contributed his share — and more — to the racket and my only regret about the afternoon is that he was too young to remember it.

He loved Robert Munsch though and Robert was very adept at getting the attention of his audience and we all enjoyed the participatory elements.

William's favourite Munsch story was Mortimer. . .

. . .as so often with Munsch, a subversive story in which the kid outwits the grown-ups and kids, of course, find this most satisfying. At the concert, Robert asked all of us in the audeience to sing "Clang clang rattle-bing-bang" in the tune we used at home. We all sang as loud as we could — kids too — and of course, everyone's tune was different and it couldn't have been funnier.

Clang clang rattle-bing-bang

Gonna make my noise all day!

I enjoyed seeing what Robert said about Mortimer:

Once I was telling stories at a school in Toronto. It was not a fun school. The principal ran around looking very mean; the teachers ran around looking very mean; and the kids ran around looking very unhappy. I don’t think anybody got along very well in that school. At the end of the day I told stories to all of the kids and when I was done the principal got up and started yelling at the kids, telling them how they were going to be quiet and go back to their rooms and not cause any trouble. When he was done talking all the kids were silent for a second and then they all started to sing, “Clang, clang, rattle-bing bang.” Well the principal was really freaked out. I decided it was time to go.

Robert asked the audience to sing together again, this time, the mother's song from Love You Forever.

I’ll love you forever,

I’ll like you for always,

as long as I’m living

my baby you’ll be.

Once again, everyone sang with a different tune but the atmosphere was much different. Many of us acknowledged that we simply couldn't read Love You Forever without dissolving into tears before we finished the book. The kids weren't impressed and didn't understand but maybe they will someday.

Living in Ottawa, we had access to TVO and it was there we became acquainted with another fellow who became a favourite: Fireman Sam. Sam seemed to be — and was — a very simple and innocent guy. The stories were straightforward and suited a small person and who wouldn't enjoy becoming familiar with a village called Pontypandy?

At that time, Fireman Sam books were not available in Canada and we had to order them from the UK. We still get an occasional email letting us know when a new title comes out. That makes us all feel a little sentimental.

In Halifax, we lived on a busy downtown street where traffic passed our front windows day and night. One of our favourite books from that time was Night Cars.

It is late at night in the city. From his father's shoulder, a sleepless baby watches the snow drift down from the sky onto the busy street below. What are all those noises? What are all those lights? His tired but patient father explains everything, from the bustle of taxis swishing through the slush to the grinding and slamming of the early-morning garbage trucks.

The book had a very moody quality and was lovely to read. It was written by Teddy Jam, the pen name of author Matt Cohen.

And there were Goodnight Moon and The Velveteen Rabbit and Katy and the Big Snow and any number of books about trucks, diggers, bulldozers and all manner of heavy equipment. Not to mention sports, fairy tales, fables, legends and the classics.

Nothing though took over every room in the house like the little blue engine called Thomas.

We first saw him on TVO as well. His ascent had begun but at that time, he was still a fairly unknown little engine. The first books we got were still the small oblong hard-cover books by The Rev. Wilbert Awdry and many of the engines had not yet made an appearance.

Thomas did get very big indeed but at our house, after the books, the trains and the tracks were all that were needed.

(We had lots more tracks than are shown in this Internet picture.)

Every day when William came home from school, a new configuration of tracks would begin to take shape. The tracks ran under the chairs and around the legs of the coffee table. They often straddled two rooms and we all learned how to get around the house without disrupting the goings-on on the Island of Sodor. In short, Thomas, Percy, Edward, Gordon, Henry, James, Emily, Rosie and Sir Topham Hatt all became valued members of the family and they all had their place.

Most of the childhood books have been given away to other children or sold at book sales for good causes. Not the Thomas books though. William decided at a certain point that he would keep them and they would accompany him on his life's journey, wherever that may take him. The books are carefully packed into a box with the trains and tracks, a few videotapes and maybe a CD, and the beautiful Thomas the Tank Engine bedspread that he slept under for much of his little boyhood.

On our recent trip to England, we were passing through the village of Stroud in Gloucester on one of our day trips with The English Bus. As we passed a row of modest houses, our guide pointed out one of the houses and said, "That's where The Rev. Wilbert Awdry lived. Some of you may have heard of him."

Oh yes. If only he knew.

The library: a labour of love in Denia

Years ago, we used to go to Spain quite regularly and often stayed for a few months near the town of Denia. It's a lovely Mediterranean town, just down the coast from Valencia and up the coast from Alicante. We used to stay in a villa a couple of miles from the centre of town, near the beach.

Two or three times a week, I would catch a rickety bus and go into town with my straw basket to get provisions and to browse the market and shops. Before I caught the bus back, I would often sit down for a drink or a coffee and watch the action on the busy main street.

Denia's main street

My favourite stop on most of my trips was at The English Library. It was up a side street just off the main street and up one flight of stairs. It was a medium-size room with floor-to-ceiling shelves all around. The shelves were filled with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of paper-backs.

The library was a labour of love for a couple of English expatriate women. They had lived there for some time and somehow, had begun collecting the books that travellers left behind. When they found themselves overwhelmed with books, they decided to open the library. Most of their clients were expatriates too but there were some people, like us, who were shorter-term and there were some who were just passing through – travellers dropping off books and picking up others as they travelled on.

We paid a certain amount to join – about 100 pesetas – and then paid a small amount to borrow a book. It was worth every peseta and we completely understood that they needed, at least, to cover their expenses. In retrospect, I hope they did better than that.

I used to borrow several books every visit and when I look back, I realize that I owe so much of my status as a well-read person to that unconventional little library on a side street in Denia.

I was not above some great recreational reading – Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler. I loved – and still love – Eric Ambler. I read John le Carré (I discovered at the library that he had a house outside Denia also, perhaps a little more elaborate than ours).

I did love George Smiley.

But I also read literature: W. Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh (my first experience with Brideshead Revisited), E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, Harold Nicholson, D.H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell.

The library had mostly British writers but I read some Americans: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller.

This is only a partial list. I hasten to add that I didn't like some of these books. I don't regret having read them; obviously, they're part of who I am as much as the books that came later that changed the way I look at the world.

We went back to Denia several times and always went back to the library. They were still there and they remembered us. I often think of them and feel so grateful that they were there.

I had intended to share some of the books I'm reading right now but my time is up. That list will be for another day.