A Spoonful of Sugar

..per bite? Oops.. My bad...I hosted book club this morning and was responsible for inviting all that sugar to the meeting....

It was quite the meeting...For whatever reason, Zoom let us down once again...and we had to resort to the phone to include our friend Pat in Nova Scotia. That got us off to a slow start, but our discussion of the book (The Knowing about Canada's shameful history with the Indigenous community) was one of our best.  

It was the book I had not finished, but I'd read enough to be able to contribute; Whew. I had also done some research on residential schools years ago while working at TVO, and since then there has been so much in the news that we all had at least some understanding of that history and had strong feelings and emotions on the topic. How could one not? 

What was special though, was that Pat, a decade older than we are, had actually taught some of the young Indigenous students who were transported from their families up in James Bay to public schools in northern Ontario where they were boarded for the school year. It was evident in Pat's description of that experience that it was one full of challenges, but one that really moved her emotionally; after all these years, she could still remember individual students and recount events in vivid detail. Her story added so much to our discussion...and even brought out a few tears... 

I was so relieved that the meeting had gone well after the technical fiasco, that I put aside the errands of the day in order to just relax out in the yard, sitting in the sun at first and then actually doing some yard work!  I managed to fill half of a yard-waste bag with leaves, twigs and blow down limbs and then raked the grass path - at least the part where the snow had melted! Yes..there is still snow where the sun doesn't shine. And yes, this was jumping the gun somewhat....but hey, the sun was out! 

Being outdoors led to encounters with two neighbours...one who offered to come and install new smoke detectors for me...Yay!  (I am not allowed on ladders)  and another who needed my help for something! That worked well. It seems that good things happen when you get out of the house?