Au Canada

Meanwhile, back in my Canadian Province of choice, Canadian things have been pre-occupying me.

The first concerns the Western Hemlock. The picture is of that same tree, but you can't see it very well because I wanted to catch the hummingbird right at the top of the tree.

Yesterday our friends Steve and Christine came over and before dinner we went for a walk in the Nature Park. I was proudly able to show them stuff that I've learnt and it was a glorious afternoon.

The western hemlock interests me mainly for two reasons. The first is the name. We are used to thinking of hemlock as a poisonous little plant that Socrates was made to drink as a form of execution - quite a civilised one in my opinion - but this tree is no relation to that plant, and in fact the needles when crushed, smell like grapefruit and can be boiled up and drunk without death resulting.
The other reason I love this tree is that it looks as though it is a cartoon tree resting and waiting to smile at you and then walk off. It has overlapping branches shaded light and dark, and it has a drapiness to its boughs that make it look as though it has been drawn by a skilful artist. I guess I'll have to photograph one as I'm failing miserably to share what I mean. Canada's Ents :)

The second bit of Canadiana that has pleased me is an album by K.D.Laing. Last week at writers' group, Anne was talking about this album, 'Songs from the 49th Parallel' because it is covers of songs by Canadian songwriters. Everyone else present then said they already had this and it was a terrific album. Well, they probably didn't say terrific. So I bought it and we played it on a loop all yesterday evening. It is wonderful, let me put it like this. There are people who think Neil Young's voice is ok, but I'm not one of them. He has written some amazing songs though, so if you get the person with the best voice in the world to sing them, you're golden. Best voice in the world was Anne's opinion and now it's mine, that's all I'm going to say on the subject.

In the way that I am about to claim Heath Ledger as an almost British actor, Snow Patrol are a Scottish band and therefore almost Canadian. We bought their new album and I loved it even more than 'Final Straw'.

We watched 'Casanova' last night, not a Canadian film, but the only non-British actor in it is Canadian Oliver Platt (OK, yes I know that Heath Ledger isn't technically British, but I always count Aussies as such) ((Unless I don't like them)) and he was superb, as were the whole cast. We both enjoyed it tremendously, it was extraordinarily well everythinged, directed, written, played, filmed. Much of it must have been actually filmed in Venice and that in itself was wonderful. There was no dull moment in this film, don't listen to any critics, just take my word for it ;) Oh and it had the added attraction of the wonderful Tim McInnerny, Lord Percy from Black Adder. And is it my imagination or is Jeremy Irons coming back from a bad patch and getting even better ?

As we watched our perfectly legal in Canada back-up copy of the film, Kevin noticed that the punishment for illegally copying a film is five years in prison, (in the States) we couldn't help comparing that with the crime I mentioned where a young man was brutally killed by a youth stealing petrol and in a stolen vehicle, and the guilty party only got nine years. Interesting reversal of values in my opinion.