12/18/2023 0 Comments Abcd efg hijk elemeno p qrs tuvWhen the kids were small, Sylvia and Jerry took them on marathon cross-country trips marked by carsickness and a blurred vision of mountains, long flat boring bits and more trees than you could ever imagine. Snuggle in the warmth and safety of the British institutions and customs and attitudes that have always underpinned Canadian life, lending it dignity and order, helping shield it from the obnoxious blowhards forever yelping and banging and partying next door, way past bedtime." The teachers never said this out loud, but Joe just knew it. The attitude to the States and its violent history that Joe would have inferred would be this, according to Canadian-American humorist Bruce McCall: "The patriotic Canadian should keep his distance. To what? The mighty jackpine? Cod? Brian Mulroney? Jeez. There was nothing like a Pledge of Allegiance. In high school, Canadian history was a blizzard of names, starting with Cartier and ending with Lester Pearson's peacekeeping missions and Trudeau. "When the other kids made mistakes, he'd help them out. "He was a nice little boy," recalls Miss Dockstader, now retired. "Joey, it's pronounced 'about,' " she told him. One day Miss Dockstader warned him, "Joey, put your toque on, your ears will freeze." But he lost his toque and they froze all right. These were indeed the formative years, and much else stuck with Joe. In grade school, he sang the alphabet song:Ībcdefg/hijk elemeno p/qrs and tuv/double-u and xy zed/Now I know my abc/Tell me what you think of me." Easy. She was not then seen as the twisted, evil old mother-in-law she always looked as she did in 1963, sitting pretty in her youthful rectitude. O Canada and the Lord's Prayer every morning in the classroom (no one went to church by then anyway and no one thought to be offended by anything in those days) and a painting of the blue-sashed Queen Elizabeth II in the hallway outside the principal's office. ![]() Joe got a good, sturdy education, which in the seventies still meant There's a pattern to how Canadians learn to be Canadian, that is, polite, hard-working, fond of snow, British in their skepticism and their dislike of extravagant gestures, American in their appreciation of hot showers. Joe's childhood has a lot to do with his feelings about Canada. Besides, Jerry said, the trip would be so expensive and they were putting all their money into the big new split-level house by the river with harvest-gold carpeting, avocado appliances and a new chesterfield from Eaton's. Funny, Scottish food never came up somehow. Basically, culture is food and they had all the perogies they needed. Alberta's winters might be rough, but it's a sight better than Aberdeen, Jerry's parents always said.ĭespite all this talk of multiculturalism, Sylvia and Jerry have never taken the kids to the old country. Sylvia is from solid Ukrainian stock - her family's been in and around Alberta since 1906 - and Jerry's family came from Scotland after the Second World War. Sylvia is a nursing supervisor and Jerry's an engineer working for the city. His parents, Sylvia Havlachuk and Jerry McConachie, met in high school there and, four years after they got married, they moved to Edmonton to raise Joe and the younger kids, Darren and Leigh-Anne. It's a small town in the northern north of British Columbia, where wolves still stalk the highways and the regional airline route stops.
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