How Do You Like Them Apples?

 

Kay and I just returned from the Berkeley Springs region of West Virginia, where we spent a week with her siblings. Since we were the advance party, we got to sample some local culture, including the kickoff parade of the local Apple Butter Festival.   Who knew there were so many apples?  Extra marks for identifying the types of apples represented here.

I have some more photos to post when I get back from a conference happening this weekend.

MP

A Good Day At Church

Kay and I took church with us to Rockwood Conservation Area this weekend.

The traffic on the way to church was light and there was lots of parking.

 We decided we would sit right in front of the altar rather than as far back in the church as humanly possible.  

Safely home thanks to Appa the Volksbison.

 

An Anglican Haven In Florence

This piece appeared this week in the quarterly newsletter of the Anglican Military Ordinariate (aka Canadian Forces Anglican Chaplains).  Since I edit the AMO newsletter, this publication is no great distinction.  

Worship is a big part of tourism for me.  I like the experience of the different, but also enjoy the sense that the Anglican Communion gives me a spiritual home wherever I go.  In this case, it was a gracious and historic Anglican expat church in Firenze (Florence), Italy, a city which may be my new favourite place in the world. MP+

The last edition of this Newsletter featured an account of Ann Bourke’s visit to Camposanto Teutonic, the chapel of the Swiss Guards at the Vatican.   I would like to suggest another destination for any readers fortunate enough to visit Italy, St. Mark’s (The English Church), Florence.   

 

The English were once the most prominent foreign community in Florence, and St. Mark’s is the city’s second oldest Anglican church, founded as part of the Anglo-Catholic movement of the 19th century.    Today it continues to serve the expatriate community and all English-speaking visitors to Florence.   St. Mark’s is part of a chaplaincy of the Church of England in Tuscany that includes two other churches in Siena and Bologna, and is also home to an Old Catholic congregation.  

 

The current chaplain is LCol. (retd.) William Lister, a former British Army padre.  I asked Father Lister how his ministry in Tuscany compared to his experience as a military chaplain.  He told me that “Florence has been an enormous blessing. It is not dissimilar to military chaplaincy in many ways - it is a discrete, ex-pat community - largely from Commonwealth countries and many with a military background. It is very much a 'chaplaincy'. We are a 'gathered community' joined by any and all English-speakers who find themselves in  Tuscany/Emilia Romana (including both tourists and students).”

 

 

The church is located within a palazzo dating from the 16th century.  From the street, St. Mark’s is not especially noteworthy, but the interior is calm and serene.  The artwork is quite lovely, and much of it, as Fr. Lister told me, was contributed by the first members of the congregation, many of them leading figures in the 19th century’s Pre-Raphaelite movement.  Today St. Mark’s maintains a strong liturgical tradition and is a centre of the local arts scene, particularly music, opera, and painting.  

 

 

St. Mark’s has a strong connection with the military, in that the interior contains two stone memorials commemorating members of the British Army who fell during operations to break the German Gothic Line during the Italian Campaign.   Many of these men are buried just outside Florence in the Commonwealth Cemetery at Girone, including over 30 Canadians.  Our own Padre Don Aitchison, chaplain to Toronto’s 48th Highlanders, tells me that he will likely be travelling to St. Mark’s later this year along with the 48th’s Honourary Colonel and other members to dedicate a memorial to the regiment’s fallen.   That dedication is planned for All Soul’s Day, and Padre Aitchison has promised an account of that trip for a subsequent AMO newsletter.

 

St. Mark’s maintains a number of apartments for short and long-term visitors, which would make an ideal base camp for a visit to Florence.  Details may be found on the church website.  St. Mark’s also features in Love and War, a new novel by the British author, Alex Preston, published by Faber.  Fr. Lister tells me that the novel’s hero is an Anglican priest and secret agent, which makes this sound like an irresistible read for the remainder of the summer, even if the Telegraph didn’t particularly like it..

Seen On The Morning Run - Kingston, Ontario

These pictures were taken last Saturday while I was in Kingston, Ontario, for a wedding. Kingston is a little gem of a city, and has tons of historic interest. The old downtown has wonderful old world limestone buildings, lots of decent restaurants and pubs, and cultural life. Nearby Queens University keeps the place young and vibrant.

Saturday morning a storm was blowing off Lake Ontario but since our hotel was on the waterfront I decided to risk going for a run along the harbour trail. That trail brought me to Murney Tower, one one of the Martello Tower fortifications built in the 1840s. Kingston was a strategic communications point and garrison, both during the War of 1812 and later as it anchored the Rideau Canal being built northwards to Ottawa, so the Crown was anxious to fort up the place in the event of another spat with the United States.

In the picture below, you can see how strong the wind was by looking at the trees to the right of the tower. When I was running into the wind, I was really just walking.

This photo shows a view of the Kingston Harbour and the choppy water. If you squint you can see two more red roofed Martello towers, one on the right at Royal Military College (Canada's version of Sandhurst or West Point), and one on the left by the inner harbour.

One of the pleasures of running, especially in a new place, is that it allows me to see things I would miss while travelling in a car. As I meandered around, I noticed how the local architecture mimics and echoes the Martello tower shape and theme. The picture below shows a residence building at Queens University. In the bottom right, just above the SUV, you can see an example of what I mean.

Another example of a Martello tower echo in a high-end townhouse complex I ran by along the waterfront.

So this post is a little longer than most of my Seen On The Run posts, but I encourage you to get out, be healthy, and notice things.

Farewell to Nova Scotia 1 - Nova Scotia is a Fowl Place

Before our flight out to Medicine Hat on August 4th, Kay and I had a chance to spend several days in Halifax, doing and seeing things we never had the opportunity to do during our posting in Greenwood.

Kay made a friend in Halifax's lovely Public Gardens Park.



And another, larger goose, outside the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia :





Interpreter in full historical costume at the Fortress of Louisbourg:

The Haunted Hat

Who ya' goin' to call?



Devoutly hoping we don't need to call these guys once we move into our new old house in Medicine Hat next month.

With Queen Victoria in Ottawa

The 24th of May is the Queen's birthday, so they sang in my mother's day. Ottawa's excellent repertory cinema, the ByTowne (another reason why I'd like to get posted to Ottawa), was cleverly running the 2009 film The Young Victoria, so as a good subject in the town she chose as Canada's capital, I went to see it.



Beautiful looking film, and Emily Blunt brought a lot of intelligence to the role. Not sure I learned that much about history, but it was better than the Marie Antoinette film that came out a few years back. I tend to agree with Anthony Lane that Blunt was the best thing hiding in an otherwise staid but visually gorgeous film.

And, since Kate Beaton is still making me laugh, here's her take on Victoria Day.

Weekend in Ottawa

With the Ethics Course I'm taking having left me in Ottawa this last weekend, I thought I'd escape from papers and assignments from time to time to see some sights. Caught a few images using the camera that is part of my iphone, including several at night, which turned out quite decently.

This last weekend happened to be the gala reopening of the Canadian Museum of Nature after a multi-year renovation. One of the features left as it was were the moose heads over the door.



This faithful old beast looked down on the casket of Sir Wilfrid Laurier leaving the building after his lying in state.



The moose (and his ((consort? partner? mate? friend?)), there are two) also looked down on Canada's parliamentarians after they set up shop in the museum after the Houses of Parliament burned down in 1916.

Inside the museum, with a view of the staircase build inside the glass tower that replaced the original stone tower. I like the chance fact that I caught a woman having her photo taken. Through the windows you can see Ottawa facing towards Parliament Hill as the sun begins to set.



At the foot of tower on the inside, with the last of the sunset.



A view of the tower from the outside. You can see the long lineups waiting for the ghost tours. Didn't get a chance to take one given the crowds, but I did get to meet Sir Wilfrid in a stairwell.



On the way home to St. Paul's University along the Rideau Canal, a shot of the Pretoria Bridge reflected in the canal.