On November 9, 1969, I arrived in Canada as a landed immigrant; so today is my 42nd anniversary as a Canadian. Three weeks later I went back to Edinburgh to help Wendy with the final clearing up of our wonderful home at 5 Greenbank Crescent on the south side of Edinburgh, and escorted Wendy and the kids from there to Ottawa, via London and Montreal. We arrived in Montreal just as a snow storm began and were on the last late afternoon flight before both airports (Montreal and Ottawa) were shut down by what turned out to be a brief but disruptive storm, the first of that winter. Our little family had our first night in Canada in the comfort of the Lord Elgin Hotel. Somewhere on that journey, probably on the frantic dash along an endless corridor from the immigration desk to our departure gate, Rebecca got separated from her precious Teddy Bear, a disastrous start to her life in Canada but she got over it as quickly as she replaced her lovely Edinburgh accent with harsh Ottawa Valley speech.
This anniversary has brought another warm sunny day to celebrate the event. Another celebration is the annual Massey Lectures which are on CBC radio this week. This year the subject is "Winter" and the speaker is Adam Gopnik, a public intellectual, a Montreal man now living in New York and writing for the New Yorker. In my opinion Gopnik is a rather light weight Massey lecturer; it's a pity that CBC couldn't get someone of more substance for this 50th anniversary of the Massey lectures.
I know what a Zamboni is; I can pronounce Etobicoke and Temagami; in January I wear a toque, not a sun-hat. But I have to confess that in January I would prefer to live where I'd wear a wide-brimmed hat while watching the batsman lift a slow ball over silly mid-on and the umpire signals six. All the same, having lived in Canada for almost half my life, and for several years longer than I lived in Australia, I am Canadian, or at any rate more Canadian than anything else.
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