A Take on the 1868 Australian Aboriginal Cricket Team

In Australia we became aware of the game of cricket.  Go figure... cricket was part of the school sports days, the local teachers who were former exchangees made sure we learned some of the basics, and we all tried a few runs and hits of the ball.  Complicated enough to keep me asking questions.   Friends from the state of Queensland, Penny and Ted (often referred to as Ped and Tenny by me), are quite cricket mad (in a good way...!).  Penny took her time to acquaint me with some of the esoteric (or so it seemed to me) aspects of the game, and answered my naive questions.  Their son participated in Cricket Australia's Indigenous XI tour last year.  He and several friends went on a journey of discovery as they tried to piece together what it must have been like for those first sporting tourists one hundred and forty years earlier, and have produced several films and slide shows that they have posted on YouTube.

I'm having moments of discovery this summer, even though I'm supposedly trapped in my home city and not far from work any given week.   Much of my discovery circles around the experiences of Canada's indigenous population in the last 100 years, residential schools, reconciliation, oral stories.  To see the young men of this century tracing the journey of a group of indigenous players is another moment of transcendence -- current technology provides the eyes through which to journey into the past.

The game is still complicated to me.  It's not complicated to someone who has been part of the sport since they could walk, who continue to strive for excellence no matter the century.

Jim Wagner

Many many moons ago, Tom and I drove to New Mexico for a summer holiday.  Little red truck.  Through South Dakota, west to Wyoming.  Stayed in a motel worthy of the Bates motel in Psycho.  Scared ourselves by walking around a tall, abandoned old school building, marveling at how blank its windows appeared in the dusk of the old coal mining town in Wyoming.  And then how frightening it appeared.  Hustled back to the comforts of the motel, and an old bed that sagged down in the middle.  Onwards to Colorado and down to New Mexico where we discovered the beauty of Taos and Santa Fe.  One of the better moments in Taos came with a visit to the Parks Gallery, where we discovered the wonderful and quirky work of Jim Wagner.

At the time, I treated myself to a Jim Wagner silver pin -- a pregnant angel.  Tom, for his 50th, received a print of Jim's depiction of an old adobe church.  Jim Wagner continues to impress me with his works... a new show is being exhibited at the Parks Gallery. 

Crop Duster

Cliffside Kiva

Our journey continued back through Colorado -- over Independence Pass, on to Snow Mass and the gorgeously expensive town of Aspen, back up to South and North Dakota, and then our amazement at how green Manitoba looked after the dry western states.  We'd like to repeat the journey some day ... for now we have to content ourselves by lusting after Jim's gorgeous works!

Strawberry fields forever

A hot summer day in Manitoba.  Blue sky, reaching from horizon to horizon.  The flattest part of the prairies.  The Assiniboine River bends slowly, enfolding farms and homes.  Get off the Trans Canada Highway and head south to the strawberry farms.  We decided to head out to a strawberry farm to pick a few berries.  Remembering the days of my youth, I filled the ears of the 3 younger of our crew with stories of picking on Steve Schmidt's homemade picker, shaped like an old-fashioned airplane, chugging along in the straw filled ruts of the strawberry patch along Four Mile Creek.  We friends and cousins slogged away in the humid heat of Southern Ontario's late June days -- we got a bonus if we worked on what was then known as Dominion Day.  I cannot for the life of me remember the amount we were paid -- it was definitely per flat of berries, but no clue on the total amount per flat.

We hoped to visit Our Farm, a family-run farm, where the strawberry fields are run by the kids in the family. Unfortunately they had some winter kill and what the winter didn't kill, the torrential rains of spring eliminated.  So no strawberries there.  Then we headed to a bigger unit, the Connery strawberry fields, aptly called Riverbend Farm.  Apparently the main crops are carrots, green onions, and asparagus.

It was summertime and the picking was easy.  We ended up with 14 4-litre baskets... way too many to handle easily on the weekend.  A day of cooking jam later... some mashed strawberries mixed with mango and lime juices will form the base of a party slushy drink... frozen whole and sliced berries... two fruit pies, including a Saskatoon berry pie, which is one of Tom's faves.  No wonder I was tired this morning.  The pies were good.  The jam is great.  We'll be more than happy to taste some red gold sunshine in the middle of winter.

Tom is off the hook...

When we returned from Aus., and were settling into our house and life in Winnipeg, we came out to the back yard one morning to find the license plates stolen from the van.  Welcome to the 'hood!!  That was actually the second time the plates had been stolen from the van.  Maybe the assumption is that a "mothership" is a smart vehicle to boost as no one will suspect the family van of being suspicious.  The cops told me that the plates are often used for a 'gas and dash' ... put the stolen plates on the stolen vehicle, fill up with fuel, and take off.

So we reported it, coughed up $50 for a new set of plates (thanks a lot) and off we went.  Fortunately I remembered to change the plate number with our parking services, or there might have been a ticket in the work parking lot.

In early June, Tom received a subpoena to attend court on July 13, which he resisted mightily as it's his birthday and he didn't want to stand around all day waiting for the case to move forward.  It took a few days to find out why he was being asked to attend -- the name on the subpoena wasn't anyone we knew and the charge was a weapons charge.  We had no clue.  After a few days of waiting (messages are NOT returned quickly) we discovered it has to do with the plates and his name is on the registration of the vehicle.  Phew... it wasn't someone from his past claiming who knows what... the mind can run riot!

Just today we got a call that a guilty plea has been entered and Tom is free to have a happy birthday without having to stand around the Law Courts.  You go!! 

On the eve of my birthday

Thanks Judy Horacek ... for a way to approach another momentous day.

Family Portraits

On "give away" day... in front of the house.  The beautiful old couch, found at the MCC Furniture Store, was given away to make room for a slightly newer one from a friend.  Some neighbours scooped it up.  Other neighbours were jealous.  A win/win situation!

At the cottage last weekend... everyone piled into the tiny bedroom and jumped on the bed, dog included.  Normally the dog is discouraged from being on the bed.  The geese were hanging out at the duck pond (goose pond) at St. Vital Park.

A Sequel to Victoria Beach

It's actually a prequel, but for the purposes of this online storytelling, it's a sequel...

In the 1930s, my Voth grandfather, Johannes Voth, went to Victoria Beach to work on the cottage of the DeFehr family, a connection made via the Springstein teacher, Mr. Fast, who married one of the DeFehrs.    Grandpa Voth would have travelled by train, and worked on the site with his nephew (by marriage), Cornie (Cornelius) Bergen.  Grandpa's wife, my grandmother, was Katherine Bergen, and Cornie was her nephew.  Cornie and his sister, were orphaned:  Siberia, disease, starvation claimed quite a few lives in the Ukraine of the 1920s.  They came to Canada in the mid 1920s and lived in Springstein with their Voth relatives. 

A few years ago, walking with my mom Susanna at Vic Beach, we were strolling along Sunset Blvd., by the lake shore, and mom recounted the story of her father going off to work at a place called Victoria Beach.  It was the first time I'd heard the story.  We grew up in Southern Ontario with stories about Manitoba, Springstein, Winnipeg, and life on the prairies.  Mom made sure we knew the history that came from her childhood and teenage years on the prairies, and Manitoba was always a great emotional destination for us.  My father, Peter Wiebe, died when our kids were just little, and some time after that mom moved to Winnipeg.  It was a real homecoming for her, and she certainly continued to explore the past and present with us.  I've taken the kids to the old farmstead in Springstein, and they can see where their grandmother grew up.  But Vic Beach was another piece of the puzzle, which was news to me.  Mom concluded her thoughts by telling me she never thought she would be familiar with the place her father would visit, that her daughter's place there was a completion of a circle that came from her childhood.

Last weekend I sat around the dining room table on Baltimore Road with some of my Voth cousins -- Murray, Arlene, Val, their partners, and my daughter.  Tom and boys were canoeing on Shoal Lake.  We had more Voth stories to share.  Murray is tracking an uncle of our uncle who moved to the U.S. before the 1920s, so I am eager to hear more when he has a change to write.   It would be another prequel, I guess... to the Voth migration to the wild west.