Roger Pires Oct 08, 2009
When he's not offering his take on daily life, Roger Pires spends his days as a computer systems analyst. It's not exactly a glamorous calling but hey, it pays the bills. He enjoys hockey, canoeing, snowshoeing, and spending as much time as he possibly can outdoors. He lives in Udora with his wife and two kids, who are his prime inspiration for Ravenshoe Ramblings.
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The visitors
For the last couple of weeks, my family and I have taken on the role of cultural ambassadors. This little side venture comes courtesy of my cousin and his friend who came to visit from across the pond. They’ve been impressed by what they’ve seen of the Great Gray North. The miles upon miles of farm land; the efficient commuter service; the friendliness of the locals. Even the weather. Mind you, they’ve been here before so they know that autumn in southern Ontario is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get. They weren’t wholly surprised when they left our house one morning in coats and sweaters and by lunch were sipping Creemores on a patio in downtown Toronto. Nor were they shocked that it rained for the next three days.
But I’ll bet the cost of their plane tickets that they never expected to return home as experts in what to do if your planet is invaded by hostile aliens. They received their wings from my eleven-year son: the ambassador of gaming and master of all things “xbox”. Our gracious visitors spent hours in the “bunker” honing their skills on the controller and building their thumb muscles to Olympian proportions. The indoctrination was complete when one of the guests strolled into the kitchen wearing a bike helmet with a flashlight fastened to it with layers of hockey tape. I’d never seen anyone with a five o’clock shadow wielding a bowl of popcorn in one hand and a Nerf plunger rifle in the other. The unlikely commando video-streamed one of his lessons back home to his own son. He now has a choice: move to Canada or buy a game system. Where he comes from, it’d be cheaper to put the family on the next flight out.
My son isn’t the only diplomat in the family. As envoy of youth culture, our daughter offered the visitors a graduate course in teenager etiquette. She impressed her guests (and shocked her parents) with her skill at setting the table for dinner and then led her enthralled charges on a whirlwind tour of the Udora General Store. She showed them which movies set the teenaged heart racing; or at least which ones are available in a hamlet of five hundred. She taught them which flavour of pop to serve with Doritos and why Moose Tracks ice cream beats the heck out of plain chocolate. She even allowed them to carry it all home. Her students were grateful for their new-found knowledge but admitted that not everything was different over here. In their country, as in ours, the teenage bedroom resembles a trailer park after the tornado has passed through. And like back home, they declined to help its owner clean it up.
When Saturday night arrived, it fell upon me, the minister of sport, to plug our national pastime. I gave them the Coles Notes version of the near-century-old rivalry between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens. This wasn’t just a hockey game; it was a history lesson. It was Leafs versus Habs. English versus French. The pillars of our cultural identity duking it out for supremacy on the ice. The Habs were the epitome of speed and grace, the Leafs of heart and desire. It was Richard and Beliveau against Keon and Gilmour. Then my little history lesson took an abrupt turn. Shortly after the opening faceoff, the guests noted that Markov and Gomez didn’t sound like French-Canadian names. And when Alexei Ponikarovsky, a native of Kiev in the Ukraine, scored the first Leafs goal, the jig was up. Hockey – even the storied rivalry between Toronto and Montreal – had gone international. But the old sentiments, the old passions, were still very much Canadian. And when they mused about adopting the Habs as their favourite hockey team, I threatened to relocate them to another of our venerable institutions: the old barn we have out back.
Hockey for Visiting Delegates was a bird course compared to the following day’s lesson. Trying to explain football – the CFL variety – proved to be another matter altogether. To them, “football” is a sacred pastime played on a sun-baked field with a round ball by guys in shorts. There was nothing I could say that would convince them otherwise. They could never call a game played by gladiators in full body armour tossing a jelly bean through a snowstorm, “football”. And the rules? It would be easier to explain quantum physics to a goldfish. However, thanks to the Argos, the skeptics have a pretty decent handle on the terms “fumble” and “interception”. When I reminded them that North Americans changed the name of their treasured game to “soccer” it nearly created an international incident.
Thanks to my lovely wife and chef de maison, any threat of a Cold War died at the dinner table. Most travellers, even football deniers, would agree that culture shines brightest over a meal. A sizeable olive branch was extended to our guests in the form of corn on the cob. A fall staple that we take for granted, these golden nuggets slathered in butter were a revelation. Corn in their country is enjoyed only by livestock and has all the flavour of a lead pipe. Their love affair with our cuisine continued with the pancake breakfast the next morning; and the grilled salmon for dinner created rumblings of possible defection.
Our honoured guests return home today. We asked them what they would report back to their countrymen about their visit. Their answer: the warmth of our people and the overwhelming sense of community that Uxbridge exudes. They loved it. Even more than pancakes.
