Natasha Regehr

Category: Reflections (Page 1 of 3)

When in Rome…

My first impressions of Rome were not so favourable.  It seemed to be a city made of garbage and graffiti.  I saw it on the bus from the airport to the train station, and then again on the walk from the train station to the apartment.  Garbage and graffiti everywhere.

“You’re going to love Europe,” I told my niece.  “Everything here is so pretty.  The ornate buildings.  The immaculate gardens.  The cobblestone streets.  Everything.

No, not everything.  Definitely not the trajectory from the Termini train station to our humble abode.  Rome, I thought, is a dirty, unpalatable city.  I’m not so sure I like it here.

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Lest We Forget: Pass it On

I did not wear a poppy last year on Remembrance Day.  It wasn’t a statement: I simply forgot.

But as I learned today on the shores of Dieppe, forgetting is a statement.

Yesterday I visited the famed Flanders Fields of John McCrae’s poem.  Rows of crosses, row on row.  Thousands and thousands of them.  Each representing a boy-child, son, husband, father, lost on the Ypres Salient in World War I, gaining a mere eight kilometres for the Allies through the many months of brutal attacks.  Stones marked “A soldier of the Great War, known unto God” because their bodies could not be identified in the carnage.  Men lost to the first crippling gas attacks, in the days before gas masks.  Men whose body parts could not be sorted from the others and reassembled for a proper burial.  Men who died, and died, and died again, not knowing the outcome of the war that was supposed to end all wars.

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Plunge

A few months ago I had the super-bright idea that it would be cool to snorkel between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, having two continents within arms’ reach.  Cool, I thought.  I’m going to do that.  Because I do all the things.

So off I went to Iceland, where I did all sorts of other things.  I went zip-lining upside down.  I went hiking in the mountains.  I bathed in the Blue Lagoon.  I paid 35,000 Icelandic króna for a pair of rain pants that I didn’t end up using (that’s okay — it’s just money.  Sometimes it goes away like that).  I photographed geysers and waterfalls, soaked in hot springs, and ate rye bread that had been baked for 24 hours underground, where the water is at a constant volcanic boil.  I wandered the streets of Reykjavik, went to the flea market, and ate an incomparable fish dinner.  I bumped my head on the top of a cave and marvelled at the almost-midnight sun.  All the things.

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Coronaware: A Story of Malaise

In the beginning we had Fear.  Fear and Novelty.  And that amounted to a bracing dose of quasi-Solidarity.

The fear was first conceived as mild disinterest in a foreign malady that would never find its way Here.  It gestated in the womb of skepticism (“This will not affect us.  We are different.”) and false reassurance (“We learned from SARS.  We are prepared.”).  And then, suddenly, driving home from a normal day of work, we heard government announcements of a province-wide shut-down.  States of emergency.  Clean out your desk.  Tomorrow will be your last day.

“We heard government announcements of a province-wide shut-down.”

That was when the Fear was birthed, attended by financial panic and the stomach-gutting realization that People Would Die.  Real people.  Our people.  Right here.  Everywhere.  Store shelves emptied as the masses stockpiled toiletries in preparation for Armageddon.  Doors closed.  Everything stopped.  It was Unreality, unfolding in unreal time.  Things changed hour by hour.  We hovered, breathless, over our devices, awaiting the latest statistics.  Following the spread from one network to another, and eventually to Here.  These are “unprecedented times,” said our bewildered advisers.  We slept last night, and woke this morning in a blind Unknown.

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Seasoned Greetings: The Power of One

“Happy New Year.”

We say it every year, to pretty much everyone we see, because that’s the thing to say in January.  Do we mean it?

Well, of course, to some extent.  Who doesn’t have a generic sense of goodwill towards the world at large after several weeks of holiday indulgences? Who doesn’t support the idea of a year of happiness to replace the year of whatever-it-was that just concluded?

But really, much like with “How are you?” and other empty social conventions, we aren’t particularly interested in the type of year most people have just had, nor in the particularities of the year ahead of them.  We just want a seasonal alternative to “Hi!”

We may gaze fondly at our dearly beloveds at 11:59 on December 31 and offer them our affectionate good wishes.  We may encourage those closest to us to pursue their dreams with optimism.  But in general, we settle for a blanket “Happy New Year,” spread with equal (dis)interest over great populations of distant acquaintances, and consider our festive duty done.

In my family, this annual dissimulation of goodwill has traditionally taken the form of a “Family Letter” reminding others of our largely unchanging existence; and being a literary type, I am often the one tasked with trying to make our lives sound interesting.  My earnest attempts at creativity have included detailed profiles of each family member, illustrated by elaborate collages and laced with carefully-crafted witticisms.  The resulting epistle was typically sent to Everybody, with instructions to pass it on to Everybody Else.  It was posted on social media, and maybe on my blog.  Just to make sure that Every Possible Person had access to my self-absorbed ramblings. 

But this year I did something different.

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Love in the Form of Snowsuits

Substitute teaching in a variety of locations has a way of opening one’s eyes to realities we may overlook when we spend much of our professional life in the same building. Sometimes a trip across town is a greater leap than a voyage abroad. This reflection takes a hard look at issues of equality in Canadian schools.

I recently walked into a Grade 3 French immersion classroom in a rural community.  The students greeted me with rosy cheeks and cheery smiles as they walked in the doors and peeled off their abundant snowsuits.  They immediately went about the serious business of being obedient schoolchildren.  They hung on my every word (partly because I spent a good part of the morning impersonating Red Riding Hood in French, and partly because it was their natural habit of mind). 

The most challenging students in the room were two boys who were obsessed with measuring things and doing puzzles.  I had to confiscate their tape measure at one point because they were estimating and checking when they were supposed to be writing stories.  I commented that one of the mathematicians may want to consider being an engineer one day (at this point he was using the springing function of the tape measure to carefully propel objects across his desk).  “No,” he said.  “I want to be a farmer.  My dad wants to take over my grandpa’s farm, and then I’m going to be a farmer, too.  I really want to be a farmer.”

The picture of wholesomeness.

The next day I walked into a Grade 3 classroom in an English school in an urban neighbourhood on the literal “wrong side of the tracks.”  A little girl in a pink coat was curled up in fetal position on the carpet, and remained there, unmoving, until I left.  “Give me back my g**d**m slime!” exclaimed another girl, flopped on a bean bag, grinning feverishly.  Little boys ran around in their stocking feet, sugaring themselves with Christmas treats at 9am. 

“Is there anything I should know?” I asked the teacher. 

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Royal Wedding Recant

True story: I posted my Royal Wedding Rant in the wee hours of the night, and then hastily took it down the next morning, when, in the cold light of day, I realized that I had typified myself as a bitter old woman with no hope – but not before a robust 39 people had had the opportunity to read it and form opinions about my perceived state of ongoing misery.

Therefore I feel I must further unpack my comments, and perhaps qualify them with a few points that, in my state of royal grumpiness, I had overlooked.

First: I stand by my suggestion that perhaps there was a touch too much money poured into this particular matrimonial event. No woman, princess or not, needs a $600,000 wedding dress.  I also feel duly entitled to my opinion that all of the media hoop-la was a little excessive.  But then again, I feel the same way about the idolization of rich and famous people in general.  I simply have no interest in pop culture and its dull derivatives.  I prefer dead baroque musicians.  Call me quirky.

So there we go.  The royal wedding phenomenon, as a newsworthy event, struck me as a rather silly over-investment of time and money, when there are so many more interesting things in the world with which to occupy oneself.  French grammar, for instance.  I truly do get a kick out of French grammar.

Yes, I’ll concede that I’m an anomaly when it comes to entertainment.

But that does not make me a bitter old woman with no hope.  For that, we must address my feelings about weddings, and marriage, in general.  And that is a stickier topic indeed. Continue reading

Casting Blame: It’s My View, Too

Am I complicit in this? I think I am.

It was with shock and heartsickness that I woke up on Wednesday morning to find the world on fire.  I had followed the campaign process with a kind of grim amusement for the last year or so (how could one not?), and therefore I thought I knew what was going on.

Clearly, I did not.

I had gone to bed the night before mildly curious about the outcome of the presidential election, but not at all perturbed.  “Surely the majority of thinking, voting Americans share my viewpoint,” I thought.  “They’ll never vote him in.”

So how was it that I was so completely sideswiped by the next morning’s announcement? How did I not see it coming? Continue reading

A Canadian in Paris, Part 1.5: Lessons at the Louvre

A few weeks ago I had the unprecedented pleasure of spending a spontaneous weekend in Paris.  Here is the second in a series of three (very) loosely chronological reflections.  

Why the second and not the first, you ask? Well, the first one isn’t ready yet, because I actually wrote it second.  Never mind.  Just read.

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I went to one of the most famous art galleries in the world today. I saw one of the most famous paintings in the world. It moved me not.

It was terribly exciting to get off the metro and follow the signs to the Louvre. It was exciting to walk past the gallery bookstore and approach the gallery information desk. It was exciting to buy my ticket, and stand under the famous pyramid, and plan my route to the Mona Lisa.

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