Canadian Culture

I am Canadian. Posts here are about Canadian culture, history, and resources I have found along the way.

There are 159 posts filed in Canadian Culture (this is page 7 of 16).

Anne of Green Gables at Christmas

L. M. Montgomery can’t be here to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Seasons Greetings or Happy Holidays. But, Anne of Green Gables continues to bring us kindred and Christmas spirits in this book of Christmas stories. Anne is not in every story, the book is a collection of short stories in the Christmas theme, all written by L. M. Montgomery, two of them are taken from the Anne of Green Gables series.

I have loved Anne of Green Gables since I read the first book as a little girl. Every book in the series continues the story of Anne. Starting as an orphan sent to the wrong home. Then going to school and meeting her best friend, Diana and her nemesis (at the time) Gilbert Blythe. Later Anne and Gilbert marry and have children and a home again at Green Gables. But, it is a long journey from her early days as an orphan beloved by the old brother and sister, Matthew and Marilla.

L.M. Montgomery wrote more than the Anne of Green Gables books. This Christmas collection gives a glimpse of her other characters and stories. Each of the stories can be read by children or adults but Lucy Maud did write some stories for adults, people already grown up and facing the world and life as an adult. I hope more of her grown up stories get into reprints.

One thing I always like about reading classic stories is the history taken from life at the time. Not imagined or recreated but actually lived. Life before computers and technology. When cars were new and phones were not something you carried around in your pocket. More than just technology has changed our modern life, however. Before people had so much less and had to make more of what they needed versus getting it replaced at the store. I like reading about such a different life, written by the woman who lived in those days and that age. Classic books not only give us a story but a record of history and life in the past.

Start the New Year with the whole Anne of Green Gables series.

RIP Stompin’ Tom Connors

If you aren’t Canadian, or if you are pretty young, you may not know whoStompin’ Tom Connors is, or was. He was a proud Canadian, a musician, a wanderer, a poet, sometimes known as the Canadian Troubadour. Stompin’ Tom Connors was a Canadian legend.

My Mother and my Grandmother introduced me to the music and the character of Stompin’ Tom. So, thinking of him now I am thinking of so many other things connected to the memories I have of the man, his lyrics, his music, his travels, his love of Canada and his goofiness.

R.I.P. Stompin’ Tom Connors.

Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Charles Thomas Connors was raised by foster parents in Skinner Pond, Prince Edward Island.

Connors was fiercely proud to be Canadian. In 1979, he protested what he saw as the Americanization of the Canadian music industry by returning six of his Juno awards.

 

With only 35 cents in his pocket, Tom Connors didn’t have enough money to buy a beer in a hotel barroom in Timmins, Ont. But he had a guitar, so a friendly barkeep offered to buy him a drink if he’d play a few tunes. By 1970, six years later, fans are packing Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern to hear Connors and the legendary plywood stomping board he uses to keep time. In this CBC-TV interview, Connors describes his life on the road and a near-beating at a gig in Kapuskasing, Ont.

• Born to an unwed teenage mother in New Brunswick in 1936, Stompin’ Tom Connors spent most of his childhood with a foster family in Prince Edward Island. Unwilling to pick potatoes for a living, as he says in this 1970 clip, he left at age 15 to make his own way.

• For 13 years Connors was an itinerant worker, hitching his way across the country with his guitar and writing songs about the people and places he encountered. His nickname, Stompin’ Tom, was bestowed on him by a waiter introducing him onstage in Peterborough, Ont. in 1967.

 

• Connors and his bride, Lena Welsh, were married in November 1973 in a live broadcast of CBC-TV’s Luncheon Date. After the ceremony, Connors explained that he chose the live setting as a way for the fans who gave him so much to participate in a special moment in his life.

 

• The song that almost got Connors thrashed in Kapuskasing was The Reesor Crossing Tragedy, his account of a 1963 labour dispute that led to the deaths of three people.

 

• Connors became an officer of the Order of Canada in 1996 and has received several honorary university degrees. In 2009 he was one of four subjects in a Canada Post stamp series paying tribute to Canadian musicians.

 

• Stompin’ Tom Connors died on March 6, 2013, at the age of 77.

Australian definition of a Canadian…

I think I’ve read this before. It was forwarded in email by my Mom today.

Australian definition of a Canadian…

Once in a while someone does a nice job of describing a Canadian, this time it was an Australian dentist.

You probably missed it in the local news, but there was a report that someone in Pakistan had advertised in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed a Canadian – any Canadian. …

An Australian dentist wrote the following editorial to help define what a Canadian is, so they would know one when they found one.

So the following is an Australian Definition of a Canadian. In case anyone asks you who a Canadian is ??

A Canadian can be English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek.

A Canadian can be Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, Arab, Pakistani or Afghan.

A Canadian may also be a Cree, Metis, Mohawk, Blackfoot, Sioux, or one of the many other tribes known as native Canadians.

A Canadian’s religious beliefs range from Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu or none. In fact, there are more Muslims in Canada than in Afghanistan.

The key difference is that in Canada they are free to worship as each of them chooses. Whether they have a religion or no religion, each Canadian ultimately answers only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

A Canadian lives in one of the most prosperous lands in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which recognize the right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.

A Canadian is generous and Canadians have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return.

Canadians welcome the best of everything, the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services and the best minds.

But they also welcome the least – the oppressed, the outcast and the rejected. These are the people who built Canada.

You can try to kill a Canadian if you must as other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world have tried but in doing so you could just be killing a relative or a neighbour. This is because Canadians are not a particular people from a particular place.

They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, can be a Canadian.

Please keep this going !!
Pass this around the World. Then pass it around again !!
It says it all, for all of us.

‘Keep your stick on the ice Canada’ !!!

Pauline Gedge: Canadian Writer of Ancient History

Pauline GedgePauline Gedge is a Canadian fiction writer of ancient history. Most of her books are about ancient Egypt.

But, the book I most remember is the very first of her books I ever read: The Eagle and the Raven. It was a book about the British Queen Boudicca. At that time I just had to know more about this ancient Queen who commanded an army and sacked a city. Her husband was killed, her daughters molested and yet Boudicca fought on. Rome had to step up it’s game to defeat the Celtic Queen.

The book is about other important people in history at that time and place. Caradoc, the leader of another British tribe and the soldiers and leaders sent from Rome too. I do remember the character of Caradoc (I even got a little fictional crush on him while reading the book). None of the others can hold a candle to Boudicca. She stayed with me and has never stopped being an interest of mine every since I first read her story in Pauline Gedge’s book.

But, that is all ancient history. Boudicca, Caradoc and the others are all long dead. I wish the book had become a series of books as Pauline has done with her books about people and times in ancient Egypt, but it didn’t turn out that way (so far).

If you like reading historical fiction I highly suggest you pick up The Eagle and the Raven. It was an epic story. I read it when I was still a school girl and then read it again 30 years later and just found more to love about it.

Read more from Pauline Gedge.

Get into space, vampires or her favourite theme – Ancient Egypt.