DEFENDER OF THE FAITH

Hanns F Skoutajan

Pictures of the christening of the young Prince George have raised in me memories of the times when I, like the Archbishop of Canterbury last Wednesday, took babes in my arms, touched them with water and baptised them “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

The Globe and Mail (October 24)  commented that, “falling birth rates  and rising secularism have meant that fewer people are going to church and fewer children are being baptised across nearly all Christian denominations.”

The baptism  of baby George at the 16th century chapel of St. James Palace had particular significance . Some within the church hoped  that this act  by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and all the royal family would once again set a trend, which they have often done in many other respects,  and encourage a return to the church and its beautiful rituals. It might but I doubt it in the long term. 

I always enjoyed my role in this ancient ceremony of the church. It has also been observed  that I had a quietening affect on the young subjects. I scarcely ever remember a “burn out” at the font. 

Indeed, on one occasion I discussed with the parents  how we might handle the logistics  of the sacrament with their child who “made strange” with anybody except the mother and had no compunction about expressing his feelings vociferously. He had good lungs. Our decision was to allow the baby to rest in his mother’s arms during the ceremony.

All went very well so that when the time came his mother surrendered her charge to my arms , and nothing happened. He looked at me with some puzzlement but I wondered what would happen when I sprinkled water on his head. But once again “ all was quiet on the western front.”

It was my custom after baptism to carry the child down the aisle and back. Once again there was no objection on his part. When I returned the child to the parents they stood there in total disbelief at what had transpired so peacefully.

It seemed that a corner had been turned and I take no responsibility or credit for this change. Nor did the child henceforth “make strange” with others. I am happy to say that he has now graduated from university without making much of a fuss.

Within the churches the sacrament of baptism has been much discussed. The most noted Protestant theologian of the past century, Professor Karl Barth of Basel, Switzerland, did not believe in infant baptism but advocated that only when candidates are old enough to understand and decide for themselves should baptism take place . He was not a Baptist but a Reformed theologian.

I myself was not baptised until I was 24 years of age and well on my way to ordination as a minister of the United Church of Canada. How could this happen? Both my parents had left their respective churches before I was born, my mother the Roman Catholic Church because it seemed too archaic for her time, and father the Lutheran Church because it was too German nationalistic when that really mattered. Thus I was never baptised. Only after coming to Canada and attending Sunday School with my friends was I drafted into the communicants or church membership class. It was simply assumed that we had all been “watered down” and thus were duly confirmed. 

Later as a theological student I began to think about this omission. I discussed the matter with a fellow student, a professor/mentor  and the minister of a local congregation whom I highly respected. We decided that although my eternal salvation was not in jeopardy I should nevertheless undergo the rite. Thus on a Saturday morning in an empty sanctuary but in the presence of a few friends the deed was accomplished and I was regularized, so to speak. 

To my mind and in the thinking of my rather theologically progressive denomination, baptism doesn’t do anything to the eternal destiny of the soul.  Having just read Son of A Certain Woman by the quintessential Newfoundland writer Wayne Johnston, I was made aware of the pressure some have undergone to submit to baptism for the rescue of their souls from eternal damnation and thus to gain entry to the realm of the blessed departed and the divinity itself albeit after a time of purgation.  It also gained Browny Points for the persuaders.

I believe that this rite is rather an acknowledgement that the individual at any age  is a member of the family and household of God. 

The baptism, or christening as Anglicans prefer to call it, has a particular significance. Prince George, as future king, if indeed the monarchy still persists, will become Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, a mighty responsibility for any shoulders.

In a day and age when many, if not most, by word and deed affirm that “God is dead” does it much matter who defends the faith? We have become more like the ancient Romans and Greeks who worshipped many gods.  The Apostle Paul on visiting Athens said the following , “ As I passed by, and beheld  your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription ‘To The Unknown God’..., him I declare unto you.” (Acts 17 : 23) Like those people of long ago we worship many gods, among them  Mercury , a god who specialized in communication, and dare I suggest for our time god of the Internet, in whom we invest much time, money and trust.

It is my hope that the future King George will defend faith in a God not only of the Church of England or any other denomination or religion but the God of Love and Peace and Justice in the very difficult times that lie ahead for all humankind. 

God bless young George and all his family.

SQ 24/10/2013

Other writings may be found at MYQUEST     

THEN AND NOW

Hanns F Skoutajan

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”  Having done lots of parting and perhaps not enough partying I can well attest to the truth of this adage.  I have experienced both the sweetness and the sorrow that is so much a part of living.

But I have also met some who have never experienced ‘the move.’ In my former congregations there were always some who had been born and lived and died in the same community. I particularly recall two spinster sisters who had never left the ancestral home or each other. I marvelled, envied and pitied them.

True enough, they had seen change  in all around them, saw their community metamorphose from a small incestuous hamlet to a commuter community. It was gradually populated by newcomers who wanted changes  - utilities that were totally lacking in the earlier lifetime of these women. 

Their outhouse still stood, somewhat rakishly, in the backyard of their property. On the kitchen counter rested a small pump that had supplied wonderful water from a well  down below. It was no longer in use but remained as a kind of memorial to an older way of life. Parting with pump and outhouse, was it a sweet sorrow?

One of their weekly outings was to the funeral home up-street “to visit the dead,” as they referred to this ritual. They had after all been their contemporaries with whom they had grown up, gone to school, all eight grades, met daily at the general store and the postoffice to get a few pieces of mail but also to exchange neighbourhood gossip. They never missed going to church, though I often wondered what they made of my progressive theology . 

The newcomers had little knowledge of those “good old days.” It was a sad occasion when the village cop, who had also grown up in this community, was traded for the services of the OPP, which doubtless was more efficient but who were strangers who didn’t know the territory or its history. 

The two siblings lived to a ripe old age and their departure came only months apart. Their house was sold, then demolished, to be replaced by one of those modern bungalows with plastic sidings. Children played in the driveway, also new. A basketball hoop hung over the garage door but a clothesline was missing out back. TV dishes came and went. 

I have always enjoyed the study of history. Invariably it is the account of partings and arrivals, a tale of sweetness and sorrow and of course the excitement of discovery as well as the terror of war. In my lifetime I have experienced the sorrow of walking from my childhood home with a backpack and a small suitcase clinging to the hand of my mother. There was nothing sweet about our departure for an unknown future. As the train pulled out of the station I took careful note of the cracks in the concrete of the platform and wondered if and when I would walk on them again.

Those two venerable elderly citizens of small town Ontario had no comprehension of my story. Leaving home and kindred was totally out of the realm of their experience or imagination. Our lives were worlds apart.

I do not denigrate their lives. They had known departures, not theirs, but their neighbours, the boys, and some girls, who left to fight for “king and  country” in not one but two world wars, some of them never to return, a war that was fought thankfully far from their doors. They also knew the hardship of the depression when life was difficult and their income as seamstresses covered only the barest of necessities. 

They didn’t change, everyone in the community would vouch for that.  But life all around changed. Stubbornly resisting the new they were nevertheless swept along as with the periodic flooding of the nearby river. 

Today change is everywhere and constant.  My own neighbourhood is undergoing change  as modern dwellings, as much glass as brick, are replacing venerable gracious  old homes with “centre hall staircase and gumwood trim” as the realtor reminded prospective customers. A recent devastating fire on main street left room for a multi-story, mixed commercial and residential development that will change the street, hopefully for the positive. “The  village will never be the same,” is an oft repeated commentary of the locals. 

A week ago I wrote about the rediscovery of my treasure trove of old Geographical Journals (1938 - 48). One of the things that fascinates me is not only the black and white photos and accompanying articles but the ads that betray the way of life back 70 years ago. They also advocated change but from previous ways to a new and different future, one much to be desired, better cars and milder cigarettes. The whiskey is still the same. 

It seems that we are in race with time. What concerns me most is that my granddaughter, who will be subject to many and constant changes, may not have time to experience and savour the sweetness and sorrow that is so much a part of history.

I fear that we have become so preoccupied by change that we forget the past and miss its lessons. High expectations as well as a plethora of newfangled gadgets with short life expectancies, that each of us can’t afford not to have, have carried the day.  Old values and ways of life are forgotten or frowned upon. In no way do I advocate a return to the good old ways, which is of course an impossibility, but rather to learn from the past, blemishes and all.

The speed of life accelerates. The moon and  stars are no longer familiar sights in the night sky to be known by their constellations but are looked upon as destinations to be mined or even  visited. Some are buying one-way tickets to Mars with no prospect of a return. Sweet sorrow!

What I am pleading for is the fostering of a sense of time, its passage from the then to the now, and the patience to learn from what has gone before, its sweetness and its sorrows.

SQ 10/10/2013

Look to MYQUEST for previous stories.                  

OUR GEOGRAPHY - OUR HERITAGE

HANNS F SKOUTAJAN

A bundle of Geographicals, some three years accumulation of my favourite mag, provided me with a seat in the back of the truck. We were moving our few possessions to our new home about 100 miles east of Toronto in the summer of 1942. I was then 13 years of age and curious about my new homeland. Shortly after leaving the suburbs a light  drizzle descended on us and the driver arranged a rickety tarp over me and our meagre  possession.  It managed to keep us dry,  particularly my precious magazines.  

The Canadian Geographical Journal, as it was then called, was my favourite magazine from which I would not be parted by rain or snow. Over the years  since our arrival in Canada in April 1939 at Halifax’s famous Pier 21 after our flight from the Nazi scourge, the monthly editions have brought us a plethora of information and pictures about every part of our country but also of places beyond our shores.

We came by the Canadian Geographical Journal  in a novel way. Our group of families were settled on very marginal land on abandoned homesteads in northern Saskatchewan after freeing the German takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1939. People at the University of Toronto became interested in our plight. We were probably the first immigrants to receive second hand clothing from sympathetic people half a continent away.  The clothing was usually dumped in an empty granary to be picked over by our people. My mother acquired a very nice fur coat, muskrat I believe, in that way. 

One day, however, the shipment consisted of reading material. Our benefactors had properly surmised that ours were not only material but intellectual needs. We poured over the mound of books and mags like hungry ants. I salvaged a copy of Two Little Savages by Ernest Thompson Seton, a classic which dealt with a boy about my age who had contracted TB and for his recuperation was sent out to a farm to benefit from the fresh air. He befriended another boy and together they undertook many adventures. It also contained a good deal of nature and “Indian” lore . I learned how to make a bow and arrow and to identify a variety of wildlife. That copy still rests on a place of honour on my bookshelf. 

My father garnered several copies of the Canadian Geographical Journal . He had the audacity  to write to the editor to explain our impoverished circumstances but  also our interest in this new homeland. Soon afterward we received a bundle of back copies and a five year subscription gratis. When it ran out we subscribed and have continued to do so until this day, 75 years later.  

The  September 1939 edition carried an article and photos of the city of Warsaw, Poland . A few weeks later the German armies laid waste to this world-class city and its wonderful architecture. Luckily carefully secreted plans surfaced in the postwar years and the city was able to be restored to its prewar splendour.

During the war years the magazine brought information about Canada’s war effort. Among them was an article about the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (July 1940). In those years  our country not only produced guns and tanks and aircraft but the soldiers to maintain and man them on the battlefields, on land, at sea and in the sky. Canadian industry built the famous Lancaster bomber among other war planes. I used that article for an essay which I had to write for Grade 6 at Regal Road Public School in Toronto  and then presented it as an “oral composition” to the class. So rich in information was my essay that my teacher took me aside and questioned me whether my father, still a foreign national, was a spy.

Following the war I was particularly interested in a story about Imperial Airways  that flew flying boats, the Caribou, Cabot and Golden Hind, as the first trans-atlantic mail and passenger service. Those huge four engined aircraft with ship shaped hulls to land and take-off  from  water, flew from the St. Lawrence River at Boucherville, east of Montreal to Southampton, Britain.

The magazine also carried stories about the development of Canada’s northland . I was enthralled by the pen and ink drawings of transportation on the Mackenzie and Coppermine Rivers  where barges were pulled manually by rope harnessed crews on shore.

This truly Canadian publication not only enriched our understanding of our new environment but also of the world. Its stunning photography, first in black and white and after the war in full colour, was truly a window on the world. I well remember my first viewing of the art of the Group of Seven in stunning colour on its pages.  

Recently we have had to do some downsizing of our possessions - too many books for sure - in the course of which I came upon a bundle of Geographicals which we had first acquired on our pioneer farm.  When I showed them to a friend he suggested that I list them on E Bay, where they would fetch a good price from a collector. I refused, they are priceless to me. I hope that my granddaughter will value this archival treasure as I do and recognize it as part of her personal heritage.

I sincerely hope that the Canadian Geographic will not fall to the economic hammer as have so many publications but continue to publish informative and colourful articles and pictures about this land and our global environment and history. 

Thanks Canadian Geographical Journal  and your more recent incarnation the Canadian Geographic. As they are wont to say in Ole Limey, “Carry on Canada!.”

SQ 0410/2013

                 

IF MUSIC BE THE FOOD OF LOVE...

Hanns F Skoutajan

“And he plays the piano good,

like a real piano player should:

Horowitz, hear, hear!”

It wasn’t Vladimir Horowitz, (1903 - 1989) who “ tinkled the ivories”  at Southminster United Church last Wednesday noon, but Mauro Bertoli, a young Italian born  pianist. He played on the beautiful Heintzman, a 9 foot concert grand, built in 1905 that for many years was the stage grand at the venerable Massey Hall in downtown Toronto. Indeed, years ago Horowitz himself had played this very instrument.

Roland Graham, the organist and choirmaster of Southminster United Church in Old Ottawa South (Bank Street and the Rideau Canal), and if I dare say, “impresario,” has initiated and directed Doors Open for Music at Southminster, a Wednesday noon-hour series begun earlier this year. This fall it will comprise 11 concerts that are affordable to all, a freewill offering at the door will be appreciated.

Bartoli who has a long list of accomplishments is presently Artist-in-Residence at Carleton University. He, at an early age, has acquired an international reputation that spans his homeland, Latin America, the United Sates and Canada.

His presentation on Wednesday in my estimation rivals any piano concert that I have attended. It was a wide-ranging repertoire  from Johannes Brahms  (1833 - 1897), the Intermezzo and concluded with George Gershwin’s (1898 - 19370) inimitable Rhapsody in Blue.  Schumann and Liszt were also part of his outstanding performance. 

But what brought me to my feet with loud “Wows:” and “Bravos” was his rendition of Allegro da Concerto  by Enrique Granados (1867 - 1916). I hurried to acquire his disc containing that performance after the show.

Speaking to Graham after the concert which by the way brought 150 people to Southminster’s hard pews, I marvelled at the rich resources of musical talent that is found in Ottawa and indeed across Canada. We are much more than “hewers of wood and haulers of water” or the modern equivalent thereof. Roland’s concerts showcase much talent giving young artist an opportunity to be appreciated.

Granted, these are short  concerts, more than hors d’oeuvres but a little less filling than a main course, enough to introduce you to performers  and music, some familiar and others a pleasant and surprising introduction to “now for something entirely  new.”  If Mauro Bartoli’s concert presages what is to come then my outburst of “wows”  at last week’s concert should be prolonged throughout the season.  All of this proves that Ottawa isn’t an entirely boring government town but indeed is rich in culture.

Across the country and abroad as well, churches have taken on the role of concert hall There is nothing new in that.  Even in the Middle Ages cathedrals hosted musical events, granted most of them were of a “sacred” nature, but then that‘s what most music was about  What better place for that Food of Love than a house of worship.  Rejoice in this rich heritage. Enjoy and support it! 

SQ 27/09/2013

Addendum:

For those in the Ottawa area who are able to take advantage of these concert the following is the line up of performances until Christmas:

Next week, October 2,Peter Woods, saxophone  and Brian Browne, piano, will make the case  for Jazz in Sacred Spaces, that is music in the modern vein to enhance Christian worship. 

In the following weeks there will be Lunchtime Lieder with Laurent Deleuil, baritone accompanied by Justine Pelletier on the piano. On subsequent  midweek concerts our wanderlust will be spirited by Vaughan William’s Songs of Travel with Jeff Boyd accompanied by Graham  himself. Other exciting  presentations will be Come Dance With Me  played on the piano by Katarzyna Musial, (Oct. 23). 

Graham has chosen from his own choir a chamber group  to sing Palestrina’s Missa Papea Marcelli ( Oct. 30).

From Vienna, one of my favourite cities and my father’s birthplace, to Paris, my wife’s favourite city, will feature  a piano duet  of Ioulia Blinova and Ruby Jin, (Nov. 13).

On November 8 Carolina Leonardelli will perform Paysages on harp which is sure to be enjoyed.

For a total change of pace look forward to Nov 20 to thrill to Mike Essoudry, Francois Gravel and Linsey Wellman, percussion, piano and woodwind.

The second last in this years series , Nov. 27, will be a Benjamin Britten Birthday Bash with Dillon Parmer, tenor, Gary Dahl, baritone and Matthew Larkin, piano.

December 4 appropriately will usher in the pre Christmas season with Advent Mysteries sung by the Southminster United Church Choir directed by Roland Graham.

   

          

BLESSING THE MOURNERS

Hanns F Skoutajan 

The horrific bus- train crash near Fallowfield Station on the outskirts of Ottawa ( Sept. 18) has affected many of the people of Ottawa. Everyday thousands entrust their lives to drivers and their vehicles and occasionally these fail.  At Fallowfield it resulted in 6 deaths and numerous injuries. The incident has been described graphically by many of the survivors. 

We all have our stories to tell of accidents or close calls. I remember in my latter teens one night returning from the movies in Belleville with a carload of my friends. To the west of the city the county road follows the CNR double track main line  and then crosses over it. As I approached the unprotected cross-over a freight train came from the west. I stopped to let it pass and then proceeded over the eastbound tracks when a westbound freight came roaring by. Its approach had been obscured by the the previous train and I was unable to hear its whistle. Remember, this was in the era of those mighty steam engines. 

I slammed on my brakes and came to a stop on the eastbound tracks no more than a car’s length from the oncoming train. I was shaken although my passengers were too involved in smooching and thus oblivious to the precariousness of their lives.  We continued home safely.

Last Wednesday evening as my spouse and I returned from sitting our granddaughter we recalled the people who at that moment were in deep grief, including the wife of the bus driver. Undoubtedly there were many devastated as well as relieved people in  Ottawa that night.

It reminded me of the saying that in the midst of life we are in death. Incidents such as this make us aware of the shortness and uncertainty of  human life.

One of the positive things that happen on the occasion of  a catastrophe is that people are drawn together. Already bunches of flowers have been placed along the tracks and transitway, many of them by total strangers. Let no one disparage these acts of compassion. They give witness to a human bond that extends beyond kith and kin.

They also say something about the human community in which we are bound to one another . Sometimes it takes tragic events to remind us of our belonging. 

As I proceeded over the tracks that night long ago I was deeply shaken . My girlfriend sitting close by my side was conscious of my upset. Did she move a little closer? I could not help but think of the consequences that might have been - the grief, the carnage, the lost lives. I thought of my own parents having to inform my relatives  overseas of the tragic event of the loss of their  only child who was about to enter university, as was the case of several of the victims of the crash at Fallowfield. 

I have often travelled from Ottawa to Toronto by VIA rail and enjoyed the comfort of modern train travel. I recall the train slowing as it approached the suburban station. I noticed the traffic halted along Woodroffe Avenue to let the train pass. Never did I give a thought of what would someday occur at this very place.

The people who gathered at the Nepean Sportsplex throughout the day and into the evening had at least this comfort that they were not alone. “A grief shared is a grief diminished” is a well known saying. When we embrace and mingle our tears  we share our common humanity. No, it doesn’t change anything , but yes it does.

One of the duties of a clergyman, a profession which I practiced for over forty years, is to be with people in all sorts of circumstances, happy and sad, in hospital rooms and at gravesides. I soon learned that it wasn’t what I said that counted most but my attendance. This is what is known as the sacrament or gift of the presence that conveys sentiments that words fail to fully express. It is a sacrament that requires no ordination to celebrate. It is the gift of love that travels over unmarked roadways connecting human lives near and far.

May those who mourn be comforted by the love of fellow humans. They are after all the hand of God.

SQ 19/09/2013  

                                       HAPPY AND EQUAL

                                                                      HANNS F SKOUTAJAN

Are you happy? A recent poll of some 130 countries has placed Canada in 6th place of happiness.  Number one is Denmark. Having visited the famous Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, which opened in 1843, with its amusement park of great rides and eating and drinking places I can vouch that Danes are a happy people, particularly their children. But that is not the only or primary reason  for the Danish being in first place in happiness or for any of the people in the top 5.

In The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett make the point that egalitarian societies are invariably happier people. And Denmark, and indeed all of the Scandinavian countries, are societies that stand out as free and equal.

Our neighbour, the people of the United States, have ebbed and are now far down the line of happiness, 16th, along with Greece, Spain, Portugal  and Italy. When compared with Canadians, who share so much with our southern cousins, the US who prides itself for its freedom and democratic ethos , is nevertheless a far less egalitarian society.

“If the United States  was to reduce its income inequality to something like the average of the four most equal rich countries ( Japan, Norway, Sweden and Finland)  the proportion of the population feeling they could trust others might rise by 75%.... rates of mental illness and obesity  might similarly be cut by almost two thirds, teenage birth rates could be more than halved, prison populations might be reduced by 75% and people would live longer  while working the equivalent of two months less a year.” So argue the authors of the Spirit Level. Equality and the resultant happiness   affect every facet of our lives.

Surely it is a worthwhile goal to aim for  rather than following slavishly  in the footsteps of our neighbour.  We are a happier people precisely because we have been less successful in building as unequal a society as has America. We are, however, well on the way of adopting and emulating their ways.

The United States prides itself as being a beacon of democracy for the whole world, in Biblical language “ a city on a hill” and indeed many throughout the world still admire the United States and would give anything to live there. Unfortunately many who have  immigrated have found it a less than happy experience.

Milton Friedman,  of the famous Chicago School of Economics, the prophet of capitalism,  admitted that he was not fond of democracy.  He states “one of the things that troubles me  very much is that I believe a relatively free economy is a necessary condition for a democratic society. But I also believe that a democratic society, once established , destroys a free economy.”

For Friedman and his disciples, many of them in Canada, a free economy trumps a free society. In that economy the gap between the rich  and the middle class, to say nothing of the poor,  has spread exponentially over the last thirty years. 

Writing in the CCPA Monitor, the monthly publication of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is an article by Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist of the World Bank, that states that “The International community must face reality. We have an unmanageable, unfair, distortionate global tax system that is pivotal  in creating the increasing inequality that marks most advanced countries today.”

In the same issue Murray Dobbin,  a B.C. -based writer on economic, social  and political issues writes, “Capital in its drive for complete freedom from community and society, has outsmarted itself.  In  Canada the largest corporations are now sitting on some $700 billion that they can’t invest in productive activity because demand  for their products by cash-strapped consumers has flattened, 7% of them are unemployed and 14% of youth are unable to find jobs.

Nevertheless advertising continues to dangle goods before the eyes of consumers who can acquire them only as they max-out their credit cards and live in deep and unrelenting debt.

The result is an unhappy society, a divided citizenry estranged from  one another by their inequality. They have become beholden to the powers of mega corporations many of whom have jettisoned their Canadian work force in favour of cheap labour in third world countries.

What is required, Wilkinson and Pickett affirm is “ a society which knows where it wants to go.... coupled with the urgent task  of dealing with global warming. In all these settings we must speak out and explain the advantages of a more equal society.”  and thus  a happier people. It can be done, indeed it has been achieved in those countries that precede us in the happiness poll. They are a measure of the possible.

I encourage you to read the above quoted book, The Spirit Level as well as subscribe and read  the CCPA Monitor to become people  who are informed and value democracy  and equality more than did Milton Friedman. 

SQ 14/09/2013

Other writings can be found at MYQUEST and SKOUTAJAN’S PAGE    

THOSE FALLING LEAVES

Hanns F Skoutajan

It’s not real, the colours that are now emerging along the city avenues and throughout the countryside.

Many years ago when I was  a student in Germany my parents sent me a bundle of prints by the Group of Seven. I decorated my room with these paintings and invited my fellow students to my chamber turned art gallery. 

“Its not real,” they remarked,” the colours are too bright and undisciplined.” Used to the more classical traditions of art  they were skeptical of the work of Canadian painters. One would have thought that Van Gogh  and the Impressionists would have prepared them for something more lively.

My family came to Canada and settled on an abandoned farm in northwestern Saskatchewan. There was little of fall colour there. Poplars haven’t  a very imaginative nature. A few years later, after the war’s end my father sold our quarter section of dirt and bought a brand new, post-war Chevy that allowed us to peruse the eastern Ontario countryside where we had come to live. Thus in the fall of 1947 we first experienced the colours    that exploded along the banks of the Trent River and the plethora of lakes of Hastings and Frontenac counties. We had never seen anything like it, but we knew that it was very real. This, our new homeland was a land of colour.

We have a few more weeks to marvel at our environment before a blanket of snow covers and warms the ground for another season. For five falls I enjoyed the campus of Queen’s University  in Kingston where the colour of leaves in Macdonald Park mingled with the grey limestone buildings on the Old Ontario Strand. Now living in Ottawa across the river from wonderful Gatineau Park I cannot help but be reminded of our precious heritage.

In the last chapter, indeed, the final paragraphs of my book Uprooted and Transplanted, I briefly describe my arrival “back home.” I and a group of expatriates who had fled the Nazi take-over of our Sudeten homeland 50 years earlier, were coming to the end of our nostalgic visit to our land of birth.

“Our plane wings its way over Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. Time stands still as the sun hovers just above the left wing of the jet for quite some time. By mid-afternoon we had crossed the sea and were approaching land and descended to Robert Stanfield International Airport in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

“As we skim over the tree tops  short of landing I behold the glory of the autumnal colours. We are home  where new tasks await us  ‘ to stand on guard‘ as the Canadian national anthem  has it, to be a socially responsible people in a land where all too often      we forget  that, like our natural resources, humans are precious. Let’s not abandon each other.”

No other time than the autumn are we made aware of the wealth of our natural environment. The rich red of the maples  that mix and blend with the green and panorama of other vegetation, the shimmer of the waters of lakes and rivers and the autumn sky, cannot help but enthral us. We have a few more weeks to marvel at nature’s annual  miracle. 

‘To stand on guard’ sounds rather militaristic but it is much more than that. It means striving to keep our waters clean, protecting our trees from the developers shovel and our air pure from contamination by industry. 

Each evening I observe a groundhog feeding on the plants in the park behind our home. Its his too. We share our land not only among us humans but with all living creatures.

The spirituality of our First Nations people is much more closely linked to their environment than is found among western religions for whom the environment is something to be exploited,  except perhaps among the Franciscans whose patron St. Francis after whom the new pope has called himself. Hopefully he can awaken Christians to a greater appreciation of the beauty and sacredness of all creation.    

“Balance” is the name of the game. My fellow students in Germany  who admired (? ) the art of A Y Jackson, Tom Tomson  and J E H MacDonald  failed to notice   that there was a balance on the artists palette. Later on coming to Canada they sense that this riot  of colour was very real indeed. And its coming soon, Enjoy! Preserve! 

SQ O8/09/2013

Also see MYQUEST