Charitable causes and luncheons

This week has been busy with dining out for charitable causes. First there was the luncheon in Aylmer for the Heritage Association, not a charity per see, more of a conservation of our early heritage in the Gatineau Hills-Ottawa valley area. It is important to remember that without such groups there would be precious little heritage to talk about or look at.

Italian Peonies imported and given to me by Will

Then on Wednesday night we participated in ''A taste for Life'' which was supported by the Toronto Dominion Bank and by hundreds of people attending the event throughout Ottawa with 45 restaurants in the Capital giving 25% of the nights proceeds to Bruce House and Snowy Owl Foundation. We went to Absinthe on Wellington Street West which as the name implies has a lot of drinks on its menu made from Absinthe. It is also a very good restaurant, they have knowledgeable staff and Chef Patrick presents an imaginative cuisine in a modern zen décor. The turnout was very good our friends A and R were the hosts at Absinthe. The goal of Bruce House which opened in 1988 is to provide supportive housing and care to people living with HIV-AIDS. This service is unavailable through any other agency in Eastern Ontario.  Their belief is that everyone is entitled to live and die with dignity.

Snowy Owl Foundation's goal is to establish and maintain a financial resource available to organizations dedicated to HIV-AIDS education and prevention.

It was a very enjoyable evening and all for a good cause.

Today I participated in the Writers Festival (www.writersfestival.org) luncheon given at TABLE 40 at Fraser Café on Springfield Road, in the New Edinburgh area of Ottawa. Vincent Lam, winner of the Giller Prize for his first book Bloodletting and Miraculous cures was presenting his new book The Headmaster's Wager published by Doubleday Canada. I know Vincent through his parents, A & R who were on posting with me in Beijing a few years ago. Vincent is an Emergency Room Physician in one of Toronto's largest Hospital and a writer, he also plays the violin. He was raised in Nepean a suburb of Ottawa and his parents were Boat People from Viet Nam who came to Canada at the end of that war.

His book is based on his grandfather and grandmother, who were Chinese national living in Saigon in South Vietnam about 80 years ago. As he explained some parts of the character are real to life and other parts is fiction.  The critics are raving about this book and it seems like he may very well get another award. I was very happy to meet Vincent, who is charismatic, with an easy manner and very approachable.

Vincent Lam, author, medical doctor, musician

The Writers Festival is in support of Children's Literacy and events like this one provide funds for various programs on literacy. It also brings writers like Vincent to schools to engage children and give a positive image of reading and books. A chilling statistics was given, the rate of literacy in children in Ottawa, the Capital of Canada is lower than that of children in Cuba.

I knew that Cuba had better health care for its population compared to the USA but this one on literacy I was unaware of, though I notice all the time how children have no vocabulary, cannot spell, cannot put a sentence together or read without stumbling on every word and have problems with critical judgement in general.

The restaurant Table 40 ( table40@frasercafe.ca) is a unique place, the tables are made of Western Maple fished out of rivers in British Columbia, the trees where cut diagonally and the wood was finished to give this high polish rough look showing all the variation and gradation of colour in the wood. The light fixtures are antique with naked filament bulb, lots of natural light and the kitchen is a modern lab setting at the back where the brothers Ross and Simon Fraser, both Chefs cook.

author

Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters.
-- José de Sousa Saramago

José de Saramago died of Leukemia on June 18 at the age of 87 at his home in Lanzarote, one of Spain's Canary Islands. The Spanish newspaper EL PAIS devoted 8 pages to him as a tribute. He moved to Spain from Portugal after a dispute with the Portuguese Government in 1991, which he accused of censorship after one of his books was banned.Saramago's controversial novel, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, was excluded from the European Union literary contest Ariosto by Sousa Lara, Under-Secretary of State of Portugal, but after international protest it was returned to the list of candidates. Saramago interprets the key episodes from the Gospels from an ironic point of view, inventing new miracles and prophesies.

The human heart is never content, and that doing one's duty does not bring peace of mind, though those who are easily satisfied would have us believe otherwise."

José Saramago was born in Azinhaga, in the province of Ribatejo in Portugal. He was forced to abandon school in order to earn his living. Saramago was educated as a technician, and before becoming a journalist, translator, and writer, he did a number of manual jobs. He joined in 1969 the Communist Party of Portugal, which was forbidden during the military dictatorship of Salazar, but he also criticized the party. In the 1970s Saramago supported himself mostly by translation works. Since 1979 he devoted himself entirely to writing.
International critical acclaim came late in his life, starting with his 1982 historical fantasy "Memorial do Convento," published in English in 1988 as "Baltasar and Blimunda."
The story is set during the Inquisition and explores the battle between individuals and organized religion, reinforcing Saramago's recurring theme of the loner struggling against authority. he was the first and only so far Portuguese author to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

Saramago published plays, short stories, novels, poems, libretti, diaries, and travelogues. His first novel appeared in 1977. Its basic theme is the genesis of the artist, of a painter as well as a writer. In Journey to Portugal (1981), Saramago searched for the idea of Portugal, a few years after the dictatorship had ended. To see his country with with fresh eyes and fresh wonder. His style was described as experimental.

An intellectual who defended what he thought to be just, until the last moment.

‘We won’t change the world,
said José Saramago, if we don’t change our own lives first’.