Monday, 25 April 2011

Monday 25th April 2011 - Not a Bank Holiday

Hello everyone, I hope you all had a lovely Easter. Last Tuesday I went to the Chrism mass at St. Michael's Cathedral in town. The Archbishop is an excellent preacher. Many of the Toronto worshippers show great devotion, particularly the Filipino and Asian Catholics. Some were kissing priests hands and there was a long round of applause for the priests at the end of mass. I don't know if that happens in Westminster! Also there were some interesting differences in the liturgy at our new church. At the Maundy mass I couldn't see any signs of people about to have their feet washed then the priest started talking about the washing of hands. A slip of the tongue I thought, but he kept saying it. But that's what happened: the whole congregation filed towards one of 4 priests who poured water over our hands, saying: 'As I serve you so may you serve others'. We then had our hands dried by the person in front then we had to turn and dry the hands of the person behind. Lovely symbolism but I missed the Washing of the Feet. The solemn process of the priest tying the apron around himself and kneeling to wash the feet of others, I find very moving and it always reminds me of the times one of us had it done. This just seemed to be a quirk of this parish and I could see it fitting well on another occasion such as the first day of the new year in September or on the feast of St. Joseph the worker maybe. On Good Friday the Veneration of the Cross took place at the end of mass. People lined up to approach the large crucifix so some people waited in line for a long time. We sat and waited until the crowd had gone down; unfortunately the priest didn't ask people to leave in silence so a lot of people were waiting in the lobby chatting and switching their phones back on as they left. It just shows that we have to adapt and accept other ways of doing things even if we don't particularly like them. However, the music was very good, they have talented parishioners, and the priests preach very well. By the way, we found Hot Cross Buns on Saturday - that seems to show that they are available but only on Easter weekend, just like the old days back home. Eamonn went to the vigil on his own as I've come down with a stinking cold - my first for years! New germs to get used to I suppose, plus I keep misjudging the weather; it's always cooler than it looks and I try to avoid wearing my coat too often. In fact last week I went into town assuming it would be too warm for a coat and I was the only person I saw on my entire journey not wearing a jacket or coat of some sort. Silly me because, unlike London, it's actually cooler in town because winds from the lake whistle along between the skyscrapers. The rule of thumb is to remember to look out of the window before going anywhere and check what the locals are wearing!
Now I'd like to show you some photos of the quilt exhibition I went to last week. These were done by ladies who belong to a local quilter's guild. I'm hoping to get into quilting next winter. I've only made one quilt for the cot over 30 years ago! As you can see these are quite traditional themes though in quite a modern style.
Summer rainbow

Summer Rainbow - close up
There were more traditional designs too but these bolder ones were among my favourites. Unfortunately, some would not show up well enough on this scale. I really enjoyed this day, one of favourites so far. It was also a day that made me really laugh as I'll explain, but for those of you more easily shocked you might not want to read on - but here goes. One small quilt was hung towards the bottom of the display so I didn't get a good look at it immediately. Mel told me it was a bedside quilt - it had little pockets around the edge; at first she thought they contained little prayers (- she's very religious). I glanced and said, 'Ooh, what a good idea! Tea bags!' (- I am obsessed with tea). Then we looked more closely and saw that the little pockets contained condoms! It was in fact: 'The Safe Bedside Quilt' ! I was already crouching down to get a closer look then ended up sitting on the floor laughing my head off. I thought it was a very clever way of combining traditional techniques with an aspect of modern life.
The Safe Bedside Quilt




 

Close-ups:



Our recent tally of films on tv and in the cinema includes:Cider House Rules, Secrets and Lies, Last Orders, The Lincoln Lawyer and Jane Eyre. I saw this last one on my first venture with the Toronto Newcomers Club, an organisation, mainly for women, which plans lots of activities. I have signed on for several things including art tours and walking. The women I met at the cinema were American and Japanese and Korean, generally wives of businessmen. It finishes for the summer soon so at least I'll have had a flavour of it and can see if I want to continue in September.They seemed to be nice people but they won't replace you lot back home.
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We saw this Canadian advert over the weekend and thought it was very funny:  

Today's Canadianism, this time a joke:
Q: How do you stop bacon strips from curling in the pan?
A: You take away their little brooms.                       Boom, boom!

Just to balance things out, 23rd May (Gemma's birthday) is a Bank Holiday here: Victoria Day so we're not so badly off.

Meanwhile I hope you've all enjoyed your day off if you had one and look forward to our next chat. Moving day is looming! Will email our new address as soon as we're in.
From a very wet Toronto,
Lots of love,
Mary xx



Wednesday, 20 April 2011

Wednesday 20th April Easter Greetings!

Hello everyone. We wish you all a very happy Easter, with all your sunshine, blossom and Bank Holidays. Hrrumph. Still can't say we've got Spring. There are buds and some grass but we had snow last Sunday and a fair bit of rain since which should at least warm the soil. Daily temperatures are still in single figures so no sightings of blossom here. Also, Monday won't be a Bank Holiday here, although schools are closed for the day, those jammy teachers again. There is nothing like the quantity of Easter eggs on sale here that we have at home. They go in more for small eggs to hide for the children and chocolate rabbits and sweets, no serried ranks of Smarties/Mars/Crunchie type eggs that we have a la Tesco etc. So today I bought a little Lindt bunny for us each and a selection box of small Lindt eggs for us to share - aah. Also they don't do hot cross buns here which seems surprising but only because we've probably been selling them since Boxing Day! I will miss them on Good Friday. We went to mass on Palm Sunday and I made these little crosses with our palms so this is my Easter card to you all. Something else you don't see here is wine at mass and there's no hand shaking, just eye contact, nodding and smiles which I find more stressful. I think they're afraid of germs here. I remember seeing a film about how Toronto was the centre of the SARS outbreak in 2002 so it may be a remnant of that time.
Reflection on Yonge St
The big news is that we now have an apartment. We get the keys on May 1st (have had to learn to write the date that way - not 1st May!) so we have a good overlap before we leave this one on May 7th so we can get furniture delivered etc. It's an 8th floor condo: 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a corner suite with windows facing south and west, a balcony and it's fully carpeted in pale grey. There's a pool and exercise room downstairs and it's a very good building in the road behind us so it's still really close to the subway and mall etc. It was a very strange process though. We made our offer on Saturday 9th as soon as we saw it. Yes it seems odd making an offer on a rental but there you are and we also had to provide our own credit report to show we were good for the rent. We had to wait until 5pm on Sunday to hear that our offer had been accepted so then the paperwork had to be emailed to us for signing. That arrived at 9pm. Having signed several bits of paper we then had to scan and return them so that took another while. It seems so bizarre to be doing such transactions late on a Sunday night; it was just as well we'd bought our own printer/scanner otherwise we'd have been stuck. We collected the car too on Thurs 14th so we're making progress. Last weekend we went looking at furniture in IKEA (yes) and The Brick. This is an amazing store which sells everything for furnishing and appliances. We're going to get our beds and sofas from IKEA and tv etc from The Brick. However, these stores won't give any of us credit, even though as I've said we can prove our credit worthiness but it means nothing here. This means having to transfer more money from the UK to pay for this stuff while we wait for the Company to give us our relocation costs. There is no such thing as international finance apparently. At least we haven't had much sent from home. One man, still working for Carillion at 78(!), who came here 40 years ago from UK told Eamonn there's no point bringing furniture because the wood in it would shrink due to the dryness of the air in winter! 
We registered at St. Gabriel's church as new parishioners so we'll be looking out for ways to get involved. I told you about the televised mission and it was broadcast here this week. There are 2 programmes, both available on YouTube to watch in half hour chunks. We were at the first one and if you're quick you might spot Eamonn a few rows back in a blue jumper, quite near the beginning. I was hiding in the dark of course.
Program 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgUGKghxtg8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewg9LJTPIZQ
Program 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8JANatuo-M&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOpjh-zLEYA&feature=related
My main recommendation though for watching it is to listen to Sr. Melannie in both programmes and I love the song at the beginning of Part 1, Follow Me.
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The election moves nearer. It's an indication of how important ice hockey is here when I tell you that the televised Leaders' Debate (French speaking version - yes they do it twice) had to be moved because it clashed with a high profile match between Montreal and Boston.  

Today's Canadianism:
When it snows while the sun's shining: The devil's wife is fluffing her pillows.
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More good news, Gemma and Andy are coming over in May!
I have a lot more to tell you so I'll save it and do another blog over the weekend. I have great photos from a quilting exhibition, including a cheeky one! 
Bye for now,
Happy Easter again,
with love,
Mary and Eamonn


Thursday, 7 April 2011

7th April Still settling

Hello everyone. We've been here just over 4 weeks - which isn't long, and each week seems to have raced by. I think we're in a different time zone in more ways than one! We made an offer on a 2nd condo which has just failed so we're hoping it'll be 3rd time lucky. The other Carillion couples are all sorted including one pair who've bought a house! Anyway, the last condo didn't feel right so I wasn't surprised it didn't go through. The good news is that Eamonn's bought a car, a Hyundai Santa Fe, not the prettiest but it's higher on the road for visibility and I find it much easier to get in and out of - very important! He collects it next week. 
These lovely birthday flowers came from Michael this week and give some welcoming colour to our apartment. AND my stash of Corrie programmes that Gemma's recorded has just arrived! It was like being wrapped in my favourite blanket eating warm custard!! I'm resisting the urge to watch them all in one go.
This is a very Catholic country and daily mass is broadcast on tv every afternoon, live from St. Basil's parish church in the heart of the University district, downtown. I went there for mass (not the broadcast one) with Mel one day and we had a very pleasant walk after, spotting some more street art. We stumbled across 'Crepesagogo' (you can check their website), an authentic French creperie where they serve sweet and savoury crepes in a paper bag - it is really hard to find places which use actual crockery and cutlery; a few coffee shops will supply you with a real mug if you ask. I get fed up drinking out of waxed cardboard! But the crepes were yummy.  On the subject of mass we tried another local church on Sunday, St. Gabriel's, run by the Passionist Fathers. It was a modern, friendly, family church with good music. There was to be a mission too which we decided to go back for in the evening. I don't usually pay much attention to these at home but our interest was caught. Also, this mission was being recorded for broadcast on national tv here in Holy Week so we sat at the back! There were 2 very good speakers: Fr. Senior spoke on St.Paul's hope for the future. He described the Church, with all its failings, as a wounded body, like that of the crucified Christ. His overriding theme was that, as Paul said, '..without love I am nothing.' There was music sung by a small male choir which we could join in with and the second speaker was a Notre Dame sister, Sr. Melanie Svoboda who spoke on Pain and Suffering. She was a very cheerful, warm speaker: she explained that pain, of whatever type, is universal and shows that we can never be in complete control of our lives and it is through suffering that we learn to serve others.She reminded us to look for the essential goodness in daily life, the little things that please us in nature, people, music, etc. Her three tips for sustaining hope were: to stay close to hopeful people, to receive the eucharist which provides bread for our journey and to pray, in order to stay close to God. She herself has been diagnosed with a very serious auto immune disorder which means she may not live more than 5 years but you really couldn't tell she was ill. Because this was being recorded there were lengthy pauses while sound was being checked etc so we all sat patiently enjoying the atmosphere and watched the snow come down outside! Luckily it didn't settle. We weren't able to go back for part 2 of the mission on Monday night so I'll make sure to watch it on the 18th. I think it'll be available on YouTube too so I'll send the link when I find it. Here endeth the lesson. Well, not quite. I managed to get to see 'Of Gods and Men', a wonderfully made film based on a true story. I do recommend it if you haven't seen it yet, it says many important things, including how we should take care of each other in these difficult times. 

I haven't mentioned the 'Man in the Ceiling', have I? An important feature of condo life is obviously safety and my first experience of MiC was when they were testing the fire alarms. A young male voice boomed at me via the speaker above informing me that this was just a test and apologised for the inconvenience. Fine. Then at 12.15 am last Saturday morning there was a screeching alarm shattering our sleep while MiC advised us that the lifts were not running due to a fire alarm in the mall below. It was being dealt with so we calmed down and tried to go back to sleep but of course we couldn't because we knew that MiC would be back to tell us that all was ok so he'd wake us again! Which of course he did an hour later. No doubt we'll hear more of him from time to time.

 Having had a tedious few days of apartment, car, insurance and printer hunting we made sure to have a little outing after mass on Sunday. We went to an area called Scarborough Bluffs, a lakeside district where there are sandy cliffs. So much land is pretty flat here so this was a bit different. They look as  thought they could collapse at any time they're so sandy but there are houses right on the edge. We saw plenty of little tell tale holes so we look forward to going back to see the sand martins when they arrive. There is a restaurant and pub there which had just opened for the season so we had a very tasty, filling brunch in the Dogfish Pub. No need for Sunday lunch after that. Mmm. Spring is still taking its time arriving but we saw a little clump of tight daffodils. (Also the square opposite our apartment has been planted up so perhaps the cascade and fountain will be running soon too). Along the shore here are 'Floating Houses' which are exactly that, not quite house boats, more house that boat I'd say.
    I wasn't keen on exploring the wilder parts having read this notice:
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They are very keen on our Royal Family here and have a little item in the news about Kate and Wills everyday. CTV will be broadcasting coverage of the wedding from 3am. I shall probably get in position on the sofa from about 5.
The news is also full of election campaign coverage. I can't imagine how they'll fill the schedules after the election! This is the 4th election since 2004, that's the beauty of coalitions for you. The PM, Stephen Harper, made a fool of himself trying to limit the press to only 4 questions a day and made them stand behind a little barrier. It sounds like someone on his team doesn't understand how to keep the media onside - literally. That rule didn't last 5 minutes as they kept asking what was his reason for the limit and he realised they wouldn't be reporting anything important to him if this continued. The party leaders are zipping across this enormous country dealing with gaffes and skeletons in cupboards just the same as at home. It's curious hearing about the Bloc Quebecois who are the separatist movement. Many ordinary Canadians are concerned that their vote might result in a coalition government which would include a party that wants to break up the country so how could it sit in a Federal Government? Hmmm.
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While browsing a second hand bookshop I found a book of Canadian words and sayings so I thought I'd drop some in now again. This week's choice is:
Eagles may soar but beavers don't get sucked into jet engines.

You decide what it means!


Eamonn's doing fine at work, revelling in his 15 minute drive in and 30 minute drive home and I manage to fill my time pretty well but will really enjoy putting a little home together. Say a little prayer that we get fixed up soon! Many thanks and love to all.  
 PS.
I do love it when I see a comment  and hope I see a new little face or two soon. I know you're there but I like to see you!