Sunday game

A beautiful Sunday afternoon for a field hockey game - UBC versus Jokers.  Rowan and team-mates - Rachel, field-player-Gabby (as opposed to goalie-Gabby) and Sophie (or her twin, Amy?) in goal for a short-corner.  UBC eked a 1-0 win from a penalty shot.  Doco and I and a few other proud parents were "the crowd".

Protest

"Save the Sacred Headwaters.  We all live downstream!"

Thursday found Doco and me at our first-ever protest - on Hornby Street, outside the head office of Imperial Metals, owners of the proposed Red Chris open-pit copper mine in the large alpine basin that is the headwaters of three major rivers in Northern BC - the Stikine, the Skeena, and the Nass.  Imperial Metals is the same company whose tailings-dam at the Mount Polley copper/gold mine burst last August, dumping tailings into Quesnel Lake, feeding into the Fraser River.  The Sacred Headwaters region is unceded Native land - Tahltan.  A coalbed-methane-gas fracking project proposed for the Sacred Headwaters was cancelled in 2012 after two years of blockades.  Last summer, Fortune Minerals started work on a huge coal mine in the same area, and blockading Tahltan elders were arrested.  Thursday's demonstration was to protest the granting, to Imperial Metals by the BC Government, of permission to start mining, dumping tailings into a tailings pond like that at Mount Polley.  No one from Imperial Metals appeared.  Hmm …  I wonder what they thought.

Two-thirds Unitarians, one-third Aborigines, 80 or so in all

"Fish" and her mother hold up (for 2  hours)
"IMPERIAL METALS,  NO MORE"
Lots of honks and waves.

But the best part - "the Raging Grannies"
with their glorious hats and their version of "this land is your land … '"
Shall I join them?

P.S. Wade Davis published "The Sacred Headwaters" in 2012.  I think I'll look for it.
P.P.S.  Forgot to say that I got there because of playing my harp in Susie's recorder group!  We had to stop early because my friend Joane was going and I joined her.  These recorder players!

DIana's birthday shenanigans

A perfect day for a January birthday.  A Saturday.  Only a little rain.  And the first day of Celtic Traditions January Sale!   Damage done.  For Diana a gorgeous Yorkshire "Buttercup" cardigan (modelled below).   For me a repeat purple-Harley-pullover.  (You never know when you may need a new copy of your favourite sweater, and chances are, when I've gone through the elbows, had them patched, and then gone through the patches, Michael won't be able to get my favourite sweater anymore.)

where I'm spending much of Thursdays this winter -
harp lesson in the afternoon, Celtic session in the evening

Next, to Spanish Banks for a walk along the beach with the Saturday strollers and joggers, and the winter ducks - mostly out of my camera range, but an obliging flock of widgeons bobbed up and down on the waves just off-shore.

And to top off the day, Rowan was free (after her indoor hockey game) for a birthday sushi
supper with Diana, Doco and me in front of the fire.

"My corner" of UBC

On Wednesday afternoon, back on campus for the first time in a month, I found my corner of UBC (as seen from my home in the Wesbrook Building, at the corner of University Boulevard and East mall) to be in more of a mess than ever.  This corner has been a construction zone my whole life at UBC.  I thought that, when the Bookstore rebuilding was finished in the summer, at least this part of the corner would be calm.  But no.  Today, outside my window, they have the entire street dug up - between the Bookstore and the Wesbrook Building.  They are putting new hot-water-heating pipes throughout the campus (replacing the ancient steam-heating system) and I guess it's our turn this month.  A big job!  Students-and-all stream in and out of the Bookstore in a narrow path between wire fences.  And the opposite corner, across University Boulevard, is still a major construction site - the nearly-complete Alumni Centre and Student Union Building.  They have also begun dismantling Empire Pool and have construction underway all around it.  Funny thing is it all feels quite normal.  I figure that by the time I finally "retire" everything will be done and all beautiful.   Will I recognize it?

Wesbrook Building, itself quite tranquil -
 until they start the renovations before Biology joins us

Views from Wesbrook, left to right ...

Michael Smith Building, with pipes

Bookstore and Chemistry from the Wesbrook steps

Alumni Centre behind the fence

In the gap, a flagperson tries to keep walkers and construction apart 

Corners of the almost-done Alumni Centre and Student Union Building
with a start on Empire Pool demolition in the distance

Then, as Diana and I were walking in a mob of students past all this mess, whom should we meet but Rowan (no photo).  What are the chances of that?  Diana figures that next year, on one "bad day", Rowan could run into her grandfather, grandmother, godmother, uncle, and aunt!

… and back with the Vancouver Unitarians

Back in Vancouver and right away back into the Unitarian community.  No market until June, but Cole is in charge of the opening words for today's service and here are his words:

"Good morning and welcome to the Unitarian Church of Vancouver.   My name is Cole Harris, and I am a member of the Worship Committee.   My wife Muriel and I have been away for the last six weeks, visiting family in Oxford, Ottawa and Montreal, and although we have had a wonderful time with children and grandchildren, I want to say how pleased we are to be back in this city, back among this congregation.  In Montreal three days ago, the early morning temperature was – 27 degrees Celsius.  Here jasmine and witch-hazel are in bloom.   In Oxford we were enmeshed in the rich, many-centuries-long texture of that wonderful place.   The night before we left, we attended evensong in Christ Church College cathedral: glorious early gothic architecture, glorious English male choral music, a service theologically unchanged, as far as I could judge, since the Council of Nicaea early in the fourth century AD.  Sitting there amid all that inherited beauty and theological rigidity, I though that one can be too pressed in upon by the past.  I thought of this church, of its open, experimental architecture, of its open, experimental congregation, and was sure that, in many ways, the advantage lies with us.   It is good to be back." 

UCV, half an hour beforehand - musicians getting sorted in one corner
Doco and today's speaker in the other 

Lily and Alice selling mushrooms at the market table last July
(photo from Rachel)

from Montreal to Vancouver

off to school in Montreal, Jan 7 ...
(beauty in the snow, at 15 below)

… back home in Vancouver, Jan10
(the first witch hazel coming into bloom)

Luckily for us, our plane was only an hour-and-a-half late leaving Montreal, and got us (Diana, Doco and Meo) to Vancouver at midnight on Jan 8th.  AND Rowan was there to meet us!!!

Twelfth day of Christmas

Rue Fabre, Montreal.  7:45 am on January 6th, the first day back to school.  Minus 15 degrees.  Might be better off on skates!

After school, an iPod lesson for Doco

ICE

January 4th, 2015.
Snow, a thaw, freezing rain and then … cold!  All the trees were ice, the sidewalks glass.  But Doco, Diana, and I made it back by bus and taxi uneventfully from Aylmer Avenue to rue Fabre.   (More easily than did Rowan - on a flight, 6 hours late, arriving in Vancouver at 3am!)

rue Fabre backyard "Christmas tree" (Lobo apple) ...

… and living-room Christmas tree (Fraser spruce)

New Year's in Ottawa

For New Year's, a full house at 58 Aylmer:

• Meo and Doco
• Diana Juriloff
• Jane Anna Chapman and family (JT, Ben and Zachary)
• the usual Chow Harris inhabitants, including Rowan home from UBC
• … and Zeus

(and Janet had been worried that they would be on their own!)

The Chapman/Buchheit family had driven from Boston for 2-3 days of cross country skiing, like last year.  But this year, no snow.  So, two days of museums and games for the boys (Griffin, Ben and Zach), a ship version of Settlers of Catan for the assorted adults and almost-adults, and jigsaw puzzles!  It's a lovely gaming time of year.

For me, a New-Year's-time highlight was the Jack Bush exhibit at the National Gallery (with Doco, Colin, Griffin and Ben on Dec 29, and with Doco, Diana and Rowan on Dec 31).  Such colours!  How do they work?  Many "favourites", but this was the only one in a poster (no cards).

For New Year's Eve, we had undefined plans for some sort of shenanigans.  Teagan and Rowan were off with their pals, the rest of us seemed totally happy puzzling (adults) and gaming (boys).  We only quit as midnight arrived and we all convened for a living-room circle and "Auld Lang Syne".  Then the next day:

Rowan and JT preparing the oysters for the New Year's Day feast,
Colin and JC on the rest ...

… major cleaning and repairs to Rowan's goalie bag
 and all her goalie-padding parts disassembled and washed!

a quiet pre-supper moment at the kitchen table

Jigsaw Puzzles
Three 1000-piece puzzles got put together in about 4 days.   Donuts (done by the gang here last year), "The Accolade" (the knight-and-lady puzzle that Colin, Griffin, friend-Ben and I had chosen at the National Gallery), and "Village in the Laurentian Mountains, 1925" by Clarence Gagnon (winter - a lot of white).  We discovered that the pieces in at least 2 puzzle brands (Eurographics and Cobble Hill) are in a great variety of shapes and fun to find, even when the colours are tough.
But not as fine as Colin's marvellous "MEO" jigsaw puzzle for my birthday.  How do you do it?

…………………………………….
Jan 5-8
Puzzle-making continued in Montreal, with a second round of "The Accolade".  Doco, Diana, and I had to leave for Vancouver before it was done.  Maybe it still isn't done!

"The Accolade" by Edmund Leighton, 1901

Here, Doco and Diana are hooked, but it could have been almost any of us.

……………………..
P.S. Jan 24 from Rachel
Turns out it IS!  See erictaillefer@blogspot.com