Twenty years is a long time. Alas, not long enough for the government in China to have progressed to the point where it would allow its citizens to at least acknowledge and honour the friends and family members that were killed on that fateful day in Beijing. According to the Toronto Star, uniformed and plainclothes police officers outnumber tourists in Tiananmen Square today. Known dissidents have been prevented by police from leaving  their homes, and anyone wearing all white (the Chinese colour of death) is being taken into police custody for questioning. Foreign journalists are being harassed in the square, and popular monuments and tourists attractions have been shut down “due to maintenance” for the days surrounding the anniversary.

How can one not feel blessed and lucky to be living in Canada when hearing of these atrocities? Imagine a mother literally not being allowed to grieve for her deceased child.

Recently, Toronto has been the setting for many dramatic protests by those urging the Canadian government to help the persecution of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. In order to bring attention to their cause, these protesters have resorted to dramatic measures- most notably, their forced closure of the Gardiner Expressway, on Mother’s Day.  There has been considerable backlash from Toronto’s population regarding these protests, as they have at worst endangered people, and at least irritated and inconvenienced them. My own mother, who nervously drove downtown to have lunch with my sister, was forced to sleepover in the city because of the Gardiner closing. She didn’t do much sleeping, mind you, as sounds from the street filtered through the windows of my sister’s King and Spadina condo: “Stephen Harper, help us!!! OBAMA, PLEEEEAAAAASEE!”.

I will admit that in spite of having a great deal of respect and admiration for the Tamil protestors’ tenacity, I, too, have been annoyed by the protests. My apartment is around the corner from the Sri Lankan consulate, and thus I have bore witness to many of the Tamils’ efforts. However, even when at the end of my rope with the noise and inconvenience that come of these protests, I always reflect on what an awesome thing it is to live in a country where it is your RIGHT to stand up for your beliefs and concerns. Here in Toronto, if one wanted to parade around in front of Queen’s Park wearing a sandwich board declaring that one is a Communist  Wiccan robot who disagrees with school segregation, that would be okay! An extreme example, of course, but you get my drift. How grateful I am to be born when I was, where I was.  Everyone reading this, please take a moment to reflect on how fortunate we really are to be living in Canada, a country defined by freedom.

Every summer, myself and a group of university pals  go up to my old roommate Natalie ”Ruby” Rubino’s cottage for a weekend of fun: food, drinking, swimming, more food and drinking, and games (this particular group of friends, which includes myself, my sister Kris, Ruby, her boyfriend Dan, and his old roommates, is generally referred to as The Gang). While at Ruby’s cottage, The Gang often combines these elements of fun (eg swimming and “Who Would You Rather…?”; drinking and TABOO; eating and EVERYTHING), and a good time is had by all. My favorite game that The Gang plays at Ruby’s cottage is, hands down, TRIVIAL PURSUIT.

I have been playing this game since I was a very young Jenna. We would play the ORIGINAL Trivial Pursuit at my Nana’s house, and before I was old enough to know any of the answers, it would be my job to secure the teeny tiny little slices of “pie” as they were won. Later, when the 90s version of the game came out,  I was old enough to really play, and I LOVED IT. The purple-haired, black-nail polished, and orthodontia-sporting me had a blast competing against the grownups. On the occasions when I knew something that my Nana didn’t (eg What grunge rocker infamously committed suicide in 1994), she would get very irritated and announce her disgust with the new version of her beloved Trivial Pursuit. Her reaction to the new version of the game wasn’t so different from her reactions to other new things. I recall one memorable evening when she tried to watch the futuristic thriller ‘Minority Report’ with Kris and I: (”What is this crap? What happened to ‘The Wizard of Oz’? ‘Gone With the Wind’? THOSE were movies!”). However, despite Nana’s annoyance with me and the evolution of her favorite game, she quickly learned that it was a good idea to get herself on MY team.

At Nat’s cottage, The Gang feels the same way. They all clamour to be on my team, but we usually play boys against girls. Then the girls always win every pie except for the sports one, and we wait and wait until the boys catch up with us and answer the crucial question about some quarterback or pitcher or whatever and then win.

As you have probably gathered by now, I like trivia and am very good at it. So when I picked up THE BIG BOOK OF CANADIAN TRIVIA, I thought I would for sure know most of the content already. I mean, a) I’m Canadian b) I’m really good at trivia and c) I have a degree in history.

Did I know most of the information in the book? Not so much! It turns out that I am far more ignorant about all things Canadiana than I ever would have expected. Sure, I know the names of the Group of Seven,  I remember that Roberta Bondar was the first Canadian woman in space. But the origin of the name ‘Canada’? Why Canadians say ‘zed’ instead of ‘zee’? The fact that LM Montgomery’s ‘Anne of Green Gables’ (first published in 1908) is still the best-selling Canadian book of ALL TIME? That the Jolly Jumper and the Bloody Caesar are both Canadian inventions?  I had no clue! And that’s only the tip of my ignorance iceberg. You better believe I’m memorizing the whole thing before I introduce The Big Book of Canadian Trivia to The Gang this summer!

To everyone who is reading this that plans to visit a cottage this summer, I suggest you pick up this book to bring along as a host or hostess gift. I plan to! After all,  flowers die and food and booze tend to disappear at a cottage, but your host/hostess AND their future guests can enjoy THE BIG BOOK OF CANADIAN TRIVIA forever!

On my mother’s side of my family, the Wickware/Watling side, we have two adoption stories. One began in 1950, and the other in 1994. The former was a secret until 1997, and the latter was recently documented in Deborah A. Brennan’s book Labours of Love: Canadians Talk About Adoption.

My maternal grandparents, Bernice (Bernie) Wickware and Eric Watling, grew up in Pembroke, Ontario. While very much in love, the two were forbidden by their parents to marry, because Bernie was Catholic and Eric was Protestant.  When Bernie became pregnant in 1950,  she told her family (except for two of her sisters, who knew the truth) that she was moving to Kingston for a job, and instead went to stay at a home for unwed mothers.  After her baby boy was born, Bernie went home to Pembroke and the child, named on the birth certificate as Lawrence, was put up for adoption.

Against their parents’ wishes, Bernie and Eric eloped in 1953, and for 5 years struggled to conceive, with no luck. In 1959, though, my mother, Cyndy, came along, followed by Lorie, Leslie, Bill and Lisa. Bernie and Eric had 5 children in six years. The Watling family grew up mostly in the Toronto area, with the children never having any idea that they had a long-lost brother.  In 1983, when my mother was a few weeks pregnant with me, Bernie and Eric were killed in a car crash as they were returning from a visit to Pembroke.  Devastated, over the next few years my mother and her siblings all settled down in the GTA, sticking close together in the wake of my grandparents’ untimely deaths.

When I was around seven my mother told my sisters and I that one of our great-aunts had told my Auntie Leslie that Grandmother and Grandaddy had given up a baby for adoption in 1950. Mum and her siblings debated whether or not to look for the man who was Baby Lawrence, but ultimately decided to let him find them, should he ever need or want to.

One day when I was in grade seven, I came home from school dying to use the phone, but was unable to because my mother was on it for what seemed like hours. When she finally resurfaced, it was to break the happy news that her long lost brother had found them! Renamed Hugh as a baby, he grew up an only child in Stoufville, about 45 minutes from where all of us lived. Uncle Hugh did not find out that he was adopted until he was 47 years old, and the only reason he ever did was because he overheard a phone conversation of his father’s. He tracked down my great-aunt Grace, who had the sad task of telling him about Bernie and Eric’s accident, but also got to break the happy news that the man who was an only child now had 5 full siblings. The six Watling children, with spouses and children in tow, had a very emotional first meeting in the Fall of 1997, and have been close ever since.

As Deborah A. Brennan wrote in Labours of Love:

“It is hard to imagine an adoption story that has no loss or pain, or any unanswered questions connected to it.”

My Uncle Hugh’s adoption story has all of the above, but my cousin Caroline’s story is the exact opposite. To read about the incredible story of how she came to be a part of my family, check out the chapter of Brennan’s book called “Destiny’s Child: The Watling Family, Markham, ON”.

You can’t ask what you’re asking me to do

And I hope you understand when I refuse

I’m going North with my point of view

And I’m never gonna think the same as you

The above lyric is from one of my all time favorite songs, “An American Draft Dodger In Thunder Bay” by Sam Roberts, from his 2006 album Chemical City. This is one of those songs that I can’t listen to just once on my Ipod; I have to listen to it three or four times before I’m satisfied. Not only is it a phenomenal song musically, but like many great songs, it tells a story.

The “draft dodger” mentioned in the song’s title is an unnamed young man living in the American south, who is at risk of being drafted by the U.S. army to fight in the Vietnam War. The young man, who has “nothing against them Viet Cong”, refuses to travel across the world to kill his fellow human beings simply because the powers that be disagree with their beliefs. Against the wishes of his war-hawk father, the young man escapes to Thunder Bay, Ontario, where he gets a job teaching at a high school. Although he misses Mississippi, he embraces the community and is embraced by it, and begins to “put down roots in [the] frozen fields.”

When I had my second job interview at Dundurn Press, I told my interviewers that I had browsed through their Spring 2009 catalogue and was very interested in many of the titles. When asked for an example, I told them I was dying to read Erratic North: A Vietnam Draft Resister’s Life in the Canadian Bush by Mark Frutkin, because the title instantly reminded me of the Sam Roberts song I love so much. I got my wish, as they sent me home with a copy of the book, which I read in one sitting.

Frutkin’s memoir is a fascinating one. In 1971, the then twenty-three year old was issued an induction notice to report for active duty in Vietnam, to fight in a war he believed was ill considered and hypocritical. Against his parents wishes, and like an estimated 50 000-100 000 other would-be American soldiers, Frutkin voted with his feet and hightailed it to Canada, where he had spent childhood summers with his Toronto-born mother.

A hippie version of Henry David Thoreau, Frutkin escaped to the isolated wilds of the Quebec bush, where he faced the bitter cold and snow of cruel Canadian winters, torture by blackflies like “tiny flying draculas”, and intense loneliness. Frutkin spent his time in the bush learning how to farm, communing with nature, and searching his soul. It was there, in a remote cabin lacking electricity and running water, that Frutkin “learned to write by writing.”

With the story of his grandfather’s escape from Czar Alexander III’s pogroms in Russia to the promised land in America woven throughout the story of his own journey to freedom, Frutkin gives readers a beautifully written personal memoir about his rejection of mainstream American society and his desire to go “back to the land” to find where he belonged. As Frutkin writes in Erratic North, “When I eventually came to Canada, I truly felt I was coming home.”

Oh, Canada! Glorious and free.