2023 Books

 The list of books read during 2023.... as usual Canadian authors shown in RED, British authors in BLUE, American authors in GREEN.

JANUARY

The Gift of Rain - Tan Twan Eng

Mothers and Sons - Colm Toibin

Finding Edward - Sheila Murray

Sea of Tranquillity - Emily St.John Mandel

FEBRUARY

Utopia - Heidi Sopinka (DNF - got as far as page 3)

Make Ink, a Forager's Guide to Natural Inkmaking - Jason Logan

Ducks, Two Years in the Oil Sands - Kate Beaton (graphic novel, well worth reading!)

The Glass Hotel - Emily St.John Mandel

MARCH

The Hungry Ghosts - Shyam Selvadurai

Uncertain Kin - Janice Lynn Mather

When We Lost Our Heads - Heather O'Neill (DNF)

Mouth to Mouth - Antoine Wilson

Beyond Black - Hilary Mantel

APRIL

The Mystery of Right and Wrong - Wayne Johnstone

The Maid - Nita Prose

MAY

Fayne - Mary Anne MacDonald

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth - Chris Hadfield

Station Eleven - Emily St.John Mandel

JUNE

Spare - Prince Harry

The Finder - Will Ferguson

Miss Benson's Beetle - Rachel Joyce

First Snow, Last Light - Wayne Johnstone

Making Handmade Books - Alisa Godden

JULY

The Lindbergh Nanny - Mariah Fredericks

Custodian of Paradise - Wayne Johnstone

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep - Joanna Cannon

Queen's Gambit - Elizabeth Freemantle

AUGUST

The Art Thief - Noah Charney

A Tidy Ending - Joanna Cannon

Three Things about Elsie - Joanna Cannon

Don't Tell Me You're Afraid - Giuseppe Catozzella

SEPTEMBER

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 

Shrines of Gaiety - Kate Atkinson

The Juggler's Children - Carolyn Abraham

Big Sky - Kate Atkinson

The Lake House - Kate Morton (DNF - just didn't grab my imagination)

OCTOBER

Cooking for Picasso - Camille Aubray

The Second History - Rebecca Silver Slayter (DNF - not my sort of book)

11/22/63 - Stephen King

Human Croquet - Kate Atkinson

NOVEMBER

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood

Diamond Eye - Kate Quinn

DECEMBER

The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter - Hazel Gaynor

The Rose Code - Kate Quinn

After the Bloom - Leslie Shimotakahara

Currently reading: Moral Disorder - Margaret Atwood

Breugel-Boche Bus 2

 Some details of the Breugel-Boche bus....

There's a video about this marvellous bus, please have a look ----

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQdOu0kqswE

Breugel-Boche Bus

The Bruegel-Boche Bus.... an amazing mindboggling piece of art displayed in it's own room at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario.  The artist started with an old 1960 VW bus, just like the one I had many years ago, and started elaborating on it.  He started in 1996 and the construction is still continuing. 

It's a marveroolus (love that new word, I just made it up by accident) piece of imagination. The bus appears to pull a post-industrial universe displaying a cornucopia of fantastic and seductive worlds, and I wonder if it will ever be finished!

More photos to come......

The Big Bad City

I hardly ever get to go to big bad Downtown Toronto any more, and I certainly NEVER drive there. I can take a bus or train very cheaply and with far less mental stress.  But it's good to have a wander around the city once in a while.... so that's what I did when I went to see SIX - The Musical.  Too bad it was such a grey day.

SIX

 SIX... The Musical.  You would think that it would be difficult task to compose a musical entertainment about King Henry VIII's six wives. After all, it was a sad story for most of them. Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. It was a short musical as musicals go.... only 80 minutes with no intermission... but the six wives sang and danced and were absolutely marvellous and full of delicious energy for the whole show.  I loved it!

The Royal Alexandra Theatre, commonly known as the Royal Alex, is an historic performing arts theatre located at 260 King Street West, in the downtown Toronto Entertainment District. There are 1,244 seats across three levels. Built in 1907, it's the oldest continuously operating legitimate theatre in North America.

Halifax Harbour

It was a grey day but no rain when I wandered along the Halifax waterfront.  The last time I was here was in 2000, the year that the Tall Ships Festival came to Halifax, and the waterfront was very different then, with tall ships from all over the world tied up at it's wharves.

Halifax Harbour is a large natural harbour on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, located in the Halifax Regional Municipality. Halifax largely owes its existence to the harbour, being one of the largest and deepest ice-free natural harbours in the world.

HMCS Sackville - Canada's Oldest Warship

HMCS Sackville is a Flower-class corvette that served in the Royal Canadian Navy and later served as a civilian research vessel. She is now a museum ship located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the last surviving Flower-class corvette.

The ship was transferred to the Canadian Naval Corvette Trust in 1983 and restored to her 1944 appearance. She currently serves the summer months as a museum ship moored beside the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax.  

In September 2003, Sackville broke loose during Hurricane Juan and struck the schooner Larinda moored beside her.  

Sackville is towed by a naval tugboat from HMC Dockyard to a location off Point Pleasant Park on the first Sunday in May to participate in the Commemoration of the Battle of the Atlantic ceremonies held at a memorial in the park overlooking the entrance to Halifax Harbour. 

Sackville typically hosts several dozen Royal Canadian Navy veterans on this day and has also participated in several burials at sea for dispersing the ashes of Royal Canadian Navy veterans of the Battle of the Atlantic at this location. In 2018, the ship underwent CAN$3.5 million in repairs at CFB Halifax.