Vancouver Island

Back at the Dogpatch on the Hat, in Malahat, that is. It is so lovely here and the kids like it too. Poor Alfred has been kvetching a lot about being overscheduled this summer. He had over 2 weeks after school ended to goof around and a few days between Los Angeles and Canada. Maybe he’s stressed about starting high school. In any case he and Andrew both adore Canada and seem to be relaxing quite effectively now.

Gretchen has one of her old students and his wife visiting and they are also good company. The husband loves to cook so we are being regaled with all sorts of homemade goodies. He told me about a "no knead dough" for bread which I will try when I get home in an attempt to resurrect my moribund dream of baking bread. He is a behavioral therapist for severely disturbed children.

Yesterday we made our annual pilgrimage to the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria. It's August so everything is much more crowded than usual. The main exhibit is on the Titanic. What hubris to proclaim that it was "unsinkable". Many people died because they refused to go into lifeboats - they believed that it was indeed insinkable. Most moving were the testimony of people about the musicians who did indeed play until the sink went down, never running off for their own safety. It was amazing how many fragile things could survive for 73 years in a frozen ocean at the depth of 60,000 feet.

We also enjoyed the exhibit on northwest Pacific "First Nations" (what we call Native Americans in the US, or did.) They were mostly settled rather than nomadic. Some of their masks reminded me of Japanese Noh masks.

Later we strolled on crowded Government Street visiting Rebecca's Hats and Munroe's Books. I picked up 2 of my favorite Robertson Davies books which youc an't get as individual volumes in the states: "The Rebel Angels" and "The Lyre of Orpheus".