Honours

I am currently reading 4 books all on various unconnected topics. The first one is entitled Les Mémoires de Saint-Simon, it is a 12 volume diary transferred in book format of the memoirs of Louis de Rouvroy Duc de Saint-Simon and Pair de France (1675-1755). He is famous in French literature and many enjoy reading him, despite the fact that is grammar is terrible and his French can be described as archaic, meaning that his written French is more in keeping with the style of writing prior to 1700. Many of his sentences run on and sometimes have no verb.  But why is Saint-Simon so appreciated and why do so many people enjoy reading him?

                  Saint-Simon

Well his memoirs are devoted to life at Court in Versailles at the time of Louis XIV and Louis XV. His father was a confidant of King Louis XIII. He came from a privileged family and his world view is that of the high circles around the King. He describes life and the people at Court in terms that paint a accurate picture of what it was like. He will often give physical description of a person, their character and personal habits. He tells you about the behaviour at Court and what is required to be noticed by the King. You see intrigue, gossiping, evil doings and great kindness anything is good as long as it gets you noticed. No one is spared not even the King or his brother called Monsieur in his descriptions. Saint-Simon does not like Monsieur who is gay and attaches himself to the Duc de Bourgnone in the hope of gaining political power at Court.

Conducting the business of war in Europe and there were many wars almost one every 3 years which often went on for several decades and all to do with Royal Successions, territory, political ascendency or honour. The King conducts the war and the Court must follow him, literally hundreds of people and servants with all the necessary baggage. Nobles with ambition are required to buy a regiment, dress and feed it and put it at the disposal of the King. It is an honour to pay to raise an army in the service of the Monarch. Battle is done through complicated protocol and following prescribed ideas on rank. Battle cannot be engage until all parties are agreed. It looks more like a parade of troops and flags, Officers dressed in elegant and lavish outfits, with great plumed hats and many ribbons and medals flashing.

He describes going to war against the Prince of Orange (Netherlands) and how the King decides one morning that he is bored and is returning to Versailles taking with him all the ladies of the Court. The Prince of Orange is overjoyed by this stroke of luck and the French Nobles including Saint-Simon are devastated by this news, what should they do now, go home, stay? Battle is engage and Saint-Simon describes who is killed, he only mentions his fellow nobles and who looses his hat or his perruque, the cannonball took the hat and perruque but not the fellows head, we had a good laugh. Then after an 8 hour battle where he tells us that amid the battlefield he had his man servant and his two laquais follow him as is the tradition in case he needed to change horse in mid-stream, brave lads he says. At the end of the day he is famished and has luck would have it for dinner with his fellow princes and dukes there is a great rack of lamb and a good bottle of red wine. By the way there were twenty thousand dead but the lamb at dinner was superb and we won the battle.

Saint-Simon is a man of his time, the people is the Court, his fellow noble. France is the King it is not a territory as such, the centre of the world is Versailles. The Tier Etat when he refers to it is the great ignorant and superstitious un-wash masses which really do not count at all in the scheme of things.

Honours and who got them from the King is also extremely important. Constant battle at Court to get this or that honour or to even get a simple Bonjour or a gesture from the King on any given day is a great honour and can mean all manner of things. If the King stops to speak to you and smiles, well all the Court watching will know that you are suddenly in favour. Difficult to understand in our world of today, we are so very far from that world.

From an historical perspective I find it interesting, it helps understand how the world was then in France and in Europe and the events of that period. Though Saint-Simon's ways of thinking may appear pretentious to us, it was then common. Even Voltaire who was not a nobleman did not write or speak for the great masses, he directed his books and his writing to the rulers of Europe and to the Aristocracy. He had no interest in the common people.

Canada being a Kingdom one can pursue honours from the Sovereign. The Office of the Chief Herald of Canada in the Household of the Governor General can receive petition for a personal Coat of Arms and a flag which if accepted after review will be granted by the Sovereign in letters patent. However we have no one like Saint-Simon to relate the gossip and no Court around the Governor-General.

See: www.gg.ca

Les Patineurs, Die Shlittschuhlaufer, Gli Pattinatori

Inspired by Le Cercle des Patineurs du Bois de Boulogne in Paris, this beautiful waltz composed in 1882 by Emile Waldteufel is perfect for a bright sunny cold Winter day watching the skaters on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. The other piece of music is an arrangement of Meyerbeer's music by Constant Lambert for the choreographer  Frederick Ashton, Les Patineurs, this version from a Japanese NHK TV production. This second piece I did not know of and it was brought to my attention by our friend D.N. in London.

This is what I saw today in front of our house. Lots of people skating along the 7.8 Km. The Canal is to Ottawa what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris. Something everyone in the Capital enjoys summer or winter.

I did not go to the other end of the skateway which ends at Dow's Lake, on a sunny winter day
its very nice.





Wandteufel, Les Patineurs

30+ years

Today at coffee time I was honoured by my employer for 30 years of service, it is in fact 32 years now but that is beside the point. Our Director General and my Director said some very nice things on my achievements and contributions and how much it is appreciated. They presented me with a Long Service Certificate on behalf of the Prime Minister and our Deputy Minister, there was also a small gift. What surprised me though, was another Certificate in this presentation which read as follows: ''In recognition of your years of service to the Nation a tree has been planted in honour of your dedication to the government of Canada. Now your contribution will be forever part of the landscape of Canada''. I was very surprised by this gesture and was speechless, it means a lot to me personally to be recognized in such a way. I was told that the foundation Tree Canada which is involved in environmental projects has planted 75 million trees since 1992. The tree or my tree, in this case, is in Sudbury, Ontario and is part of a vast plan to reforest and restore the environment of the town devastated by mining for the last 80 years. So far 3200 hectares have been restored.

At the same time I felt a little old, when I joined the Service there were typewriters like the IBM Selectric and telex machines, the war in Vietnam had ended just 5 years previously, no computers or any of the gadgets we have today. Our way of working was so different, our Director General spoke on that and I did too, my colleagues are about 20 to 25 years younger than me, it felt a bit like a Jurasic Park moment. I also felt nostalgic, thinking of all the things I had accomplished and all the places I had been around the world, so many memories, I thought of Mountolive, Balthazar and Justine, the characters in the book of Lawrence Durrell, of receiving as a gift in 1983 the Satow which was written by Sir Ernest Satow and edited in its fifth edition by Lord Gore-Booth, a book I have often consulted during my career.
Someone asked, will you retire now, to which I answered, no I want to make it to 50 years of service because I hear they give you a brand new Subaru, everyone laughed, I have no such intention.

                                                    Non Sibi Sed Patriae!

Accession Day 6 February 1952

On this day King George VI died in his sleep at the age of 56 and his daughter Princess Elizabeth was proclaimed Queen of Canada.  She would later take her Oath of Sovereignty upon her return to London from Kenya where she was with Prince Philip. Today is the 60th anniversary of her Accession to the Throne, the beginning of the Diamond Jubilee year. She is the only Sovereign I have known in my life and I met her twice.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in Ottawa on the steps of the Peace tower of Parliament taking the Royal Salute one month before the beginning of World War II in 1939 on a tour of Canada.

Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, Official portrait of the Diamond Jubilee (1952-2012)

We as Canadians can be very proud of our Sovereign and all her achievements, devotion and sense of duty.
God Save the Queen!

Books I am reading now

A few weeks ago I was reading the Globe & Mail, dubbed Canada's National Newspaper and Jeffrey Simpson whose column I have been reading for years, I wonder how old he is, I do like his column a lot. He recently recommended a new book which has been published on the War of 1812, titled the Civil War of 1812. This war will be commemorated in 2012 by the Canadian Government as will be the Diamond Jubilee of our Sovereign.
A monument to the war's bicentennial is under construction in Ottawa, but no one seems to know where exactly. I think I may have glimpsed at it today by accident at the corner of the Western Parkway and Wellington street just below Parliament. I saw what looks like the new footing of a great monument, but I digress.  What I wonder is, will the government also build a monument to the Queen on the anniversary of her 60th year as monarch. She already has an equestrian monument on Parliament hill on her favourite horse Burmese (1962-1990), a gift of the RCMP.

H.M. the Queen riding Burmese

All this to say that Jeffrey Simpson in his column suggested that we should not commemorate the war of 1812 between Canada and the USA. It was according the author of the book Charles Taylor, more of a civil war between the same people, than a war between two nations. The book is full of very interesting facts, unknown to me. One in particular made me laugh, the White House sent an express messenger to Canada to warn us that war had been declared, so General Sir Isaac Brock had several hours head start on the US Authorities at the border who had no idea that they were at war with Canada. Brock took advantage of it. The book also shows that US politics was not much different then as it is today. The Republicans were against taxes of any kind. The Federalist were very friendly to Canada and willing to see  things our way. Many of the great American heroes were nothing more than greedy businessmen and rapacious landowners, the 1% of their time. The USA was not well established as a Republic and it would take at least until 1867 or after the Civil War to firm up in the population the idea of republicanism and nationhood.

The other two books are on our first Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald (1815-1891) born in Glasgow, Scotland, he move with his parents to Kingston, Ontario at the age of 5. Richard Gwyn has done a marvellous job of bringing the man to life in a very personal way, showing him as a human being with his frailties and not just as a politician. Macdonald was certainly a man of vision, who united the Nation, built the transcontinental railway, created the first national political party. He became Prime Minister at a time when Britain was no longer much interested in Canada, preferring India and openly suggesting that we might want to join the USA, it was an uncertain time, even our border with the USA was not clearly established, we had far more land to the south of the 49th parallel. It was a time when Macdonald had the vision of us as a distinct people, as Canadians different from the Americans. He was a Scot by birth but an immigrant by choice who believed in the possibility of his new country Canada. His vision, to secure land, the North West ( a.k.a. Western Canada), owned by the Hudson Bay Company and to build a railway to cement the national bond. He also had clear plans on governing, he created the RCMP, ensuring that our history would be different from the Americans. His vision was that of a country based on law, order and good government, settlement of the western provinces to the Pacific ocean would be done by the government in Ottawa and not as in the US model by whoever happened to be going westward. He also decreed by Order In Council that the Government of Canada would use British English spelling in all its documents and this is what we do to this day.

Sir John A. Macdonald as First Officer of the Privy Council of Her Majesty in Canada. This picture is a favourite of mine and hangs in the Foyer of the House of Commons in Ottawa.

 Certainly Sir John ranks amongst the great Nation builder of the 19th Century, men like Disraeli, Garibaldi,  Bolivar and Bismarck. It is most amazing that a man who suffered so many personal tragedies, his first wife died young, his first son died in infancy, his second son Hugh John was distant from him, and though his second marriage was a happy one, his daughter Mary was born an invalid, he love that child and 30,000 letters survive full of gentle and funny words for his dear daughter. His strenght of character allowed him to rise above it all, in other words he took the high road and who we are today as a country is thanks to him. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about Canada.

Sir John A. Macdonald as a young man 1842.

Earnscliffe, the home of Sir John on Sussex Drive in Ottawa, it is the Residence of the British High Commissioner since 1930. He died there in his study in 1891.