Learning To Be White At Saskatchewan's Residential Schools

It's easy to forget about the legacy of Saskatchewan's residential schools, especially if you live, as I do, on the east side of the city.  Last weekend, however, I found a primer-type picture book at a garage sale, stamped inside with the name "St. Phillip's Residential School".  The book's insensitivity to culture needn't be pointed out, and was indeed the point.  These schools sought to eliminate the "indians", or at least make them White. 

A few pages from the reader...

St. Phillips Residential School was opened in 1899 and closed in 1965.  It was located in Kamsack, Saskatchewan.  

For more on the residential schools, I highly recommend the following websites:

• Where are the Children? Healing the Legacy of the Residential Schools 
• Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
• Saskatoon Public Library's Indian Residential Schools: Histories, Biographies, and our Future

Miracles Do Happen

I finished Augusten Burroughs' This is How in a matter of hours.  I know I will read it again and again.  It's a book worth owning, just to know it's there on your shelf, just in case.  

Augusten Burroughs, on miracles (from, of course, This is How):

“Miracles do happen. You must believe this. No matter what else you believe about life, you must believe in miracles. Because we are all, every one of us, living on a round rock that spins around and around at almost a quarter of a million miles per hour in an unthinkably vast blackness called space. There is nothing else like us for as far as our telescopic eyes can see. In a universe filled with spinning, barren rocks, frozen gas, ice, dust, and radiation, we live on a planet filled with soft, green leaves and salty oceans and honey made from bees, which themselves live within geometrically complex and perfect structures of their own architecture and creation. In our trees are birds whose songs are as complex and nuanced as Beethoven’s greatest sonatas. And despite the wild, endless spinning of our planet and its never-ending orbit around the sun–itself a star on fire–when we pour water into a glass, the water stays in the glass. All of these are miracles.”

I am in love with an old wooden trunk

Why is it that I always plan out a garage sale route, even when I know the best ones are the ones you just come across?  I'm utterly delighted with this old wooden trunk I found in Saskatoon this past weekend.

It could have been the best garage sale ever.  The proprietor, a woman in her eighties, told me that she and he husband weren't necessarily downsizing but "you can't keep everything".  She had been a teacher; he a scientist.  I was at the sale for over 2 hours, as she showed me the best reading games and the books her children loved as kids. 

Then, when I had packed two boxes plus the trunk to take home (on my bike) she insisted on delivering my purchases to me later that evening.  I told her I could take the bus, or make several trips since that's what I'm used to doing anyway.  But she would have none of my nonsense and delivered my trunk and boxes at 8 pm that evening. 

Ain't it grand?

Lost and Found Photos of Centre Hospitalier Angrignon

Finding old photographs at thrift shops is both sweet and bitter.  Sweet because when you hold a 50 year old photograph in your hands you hold a piece of history.  Bitter because this history belongs to someone else.  When estates are sold, often the objects that have little monetary value are either thrown away or are sent to thrift shops.  But I wonder if there is someone to whom these items are priceless.  

I found the photos below in a disintegrating photo album amongst the vinyl records at a Renaissance Thrift Shop in Montreal.    The album was not priced.  At checkout, the cashier shrugged and charged me 99 cents.    

After a little investigative work, I learned that these photos were taken at the Centre Hospitalier Angrignon, Verdun Pavilion, which at one time operated as a teaching hospital for nurses.  

A part of me wishes I could keep these photos.  Sending them to the Verdun Historical Society or other such place feels so much heavier than giving up piece of history that wasn't mine but became mine - for 99 cents.   

 

Bookyard: An Outdoor Library/ Art Installation by Massimo Bartolini

I love the idea of a community library where people can leave a book, take a book, or just peruse the shelves.  I love public libraries, don't get me wrong, but there is something about book ownership that makes life oh so sweet. 

On that note, I just came across this outdoor library on the design blog Colossal.  It's an art installation called Bookyard designed and built by Italian artist Massimo Bartolini for the Belgian art festival TRACK: A Contemporary City Conversation.   It resides on the grounds of St Peter's Abbey Vineyard, surrounded by grape vines and old trees.  At the Bookyard, you put a donation in a drop box and become the owner of whatever book suits your fancy. 

Bookyard is a temporary installation, ending on September 16, 2012.   It serves as a fundraiser for the public libraries of Ghent and Antwerp.  It is art meeting design meeting function meeting community.  It's beautiful.  I wish I have some vacation time coming up!

Self-Help (Or Something Like That) From Augusten Burroughs

Augusten Burroughs released a new book in May 2012 and I just found out.  It's being touted as "brutally direct self-help book" on Burroughs' website and I couldn't be more excited.  There is nothing more satisfying than the openness and humanity we've come to expect from Burroughs.  Stay up all night and read it with me?

How can you resist a title like this?

 

This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

 

Click the book to go to Amazon.com.

 

You know you're curious about those leotards!

Watching the women's gymnastics competition, it's hard not to wonder about those leotards.  Marvels of engineering, they are.  Read more about them here.

Gabby Douglas rocks Swarovski crystals. Image by EMMANUEL DUNAND / Getty Images

The Always Picturesque St. Joseph's Oratory

Lady Liberty in Mille End

Something new everyday...

If you keep your eyes open in Montreal, and get out of the house, you can learn something new everyday.  And I never leave home without my camera because without it I might forget the little things that catch my eye during my outings. 

Case in point:  Art in the Metro stations.  I've noticed this before, but it was not until I stopped at the De Castelnau station that I fell in love.  Check out these bas reliefs by Jean-Charles Charuest.

Read more about these pieces (and see many more of the reliefs in the series) at this fascinating site about the Montreal Metro.  I am hooked on it, and thank my lucky stars that someone (specifically Matt McLauchlin, who also seems like a pretty cool guy)  has put so much effort into such a worthy project.  

Montreal Street Art: A Walk Down Joliette

Two Chantileers - Illustrated by Volodimir Golozubov