The Canada Post

I was stuck in Canada (a.k.a. Canuckland) for a month, from mid-March to mid-April, on the whims of the Embassy of the United States (a.k.a Yankland), who needed that much time to unearth my life story and slog through the related paperwork. This month has hit me with very varied experiences and I think I was very glad to have had the opportunity for a one-month forced exile from the Greatest Country on Earth. I have no overarching narrative to present here. Instead, I shall lazily present a series of extremely short stories, as has been the norm for my recent travelogues, and invite the reader to make whatever conclusion they want. Here we go.

1. How to be stranded in Canada for a month

I applied for a J1 visa to the United States. I brought all the things that they said I must bring to the interview. Ms. Consular Officer Lady, who I am sure is a great person to her family and friends, asked me for my CV, which I did not have on my person. So she drew up a writ of refusal, asked me to send in my CV and research history, and told me to wait for "two to four weeks" and "you can go anywhere, just not the United States". And then the interview ended.

The plan had been to stay less than a week at the time. No one likes to see the word "refusal" in such a situation either. I remembered the weather became extra slushy those few days.

Thomas the Burundian was my host. He was a good guy and tried to reassure me that things were not so bad, after all. "We had a guy from India in here; he was in the same situation as you are now. They asked him to stay put for a few months, and in the end he went home to India to wait it out. (You know what, never mind.)"

2. Thomas of Burundi

Wurtemburg House

Thomas the Burundian works at Amnesty International. Thomas the Burundian is an exquisite gentleman. Thomas the exquisite gentleman lives in an apartment in a grand old house at Rue Wurtemburg, and gets guests to stay in the extra rooms through Airbnb. Thomas greets his guests with a welcoming wave, wafting gratuitous amounts of civility. On the first night of my stay we shared the dinner table and talked about geopolitics. I found that we disagreed on some things. I decided not to bring up the hilarious story of Pierre Nkurunziza, who wanted to be President-for-life like Paul Kagame from the country next doors, but could not, and instead had people rising up against him in huge riots. So the story goes.

Less than a week into my stay, Jessie Liu of Nepean returned to Canada from a trip to sunny California and arrived at Wurtemburg by car. She yanked me right out from there and let me stay at her son's room for the remainder of the exile. For this, I owe her my eternal gratitude.

3. Auntie Liu of Nepean

Chinatown of Ottawa

Auntie Liu is the daughter of a friend of my father from his days of mucking around in the United States in his youth. Auntie Liu works for the Canadian government, like most people in Nepean. She has formed many ideas about the governance of Canada and suchlike and have been more than enthusiastic to make sure I (and anyone else within earshot) knew about them. I found that we disagreed on some things, but never mind. It is a good thing to be listening to people who disagreed with you.

Auntie Liu introduced me to Costco and the Asian Supermarket T&T 大统华, also punnily known as 炸药店 (Explosives Store). She taught me how to cook steak, how to distrust Chinese restaurants with their scammy card reader machines, how to pick out fresh produce at Explosives Store, how to deal with the public transportation, how to pick a good high school for your kids in Ottawa, how to go to Chinatown, and many other potentially useful life skills.

I tried as much as I can to be good, clean up after myself, and do some cooking. The neighborhood of Centrepointe, where we were at, had a nice church in a half-hour's walking distance, making it handy for daily mass.

4. Parkhill University Residences

At the oratory

Matthew of Surabaya attends the University of Ottawa (uOttawa), and had to find a place to stay. It was late, and school housing had run out. Searching for alternatives on the internet, he found Parkhill.

Parkhill University Residences sits at a quiet spot in back-alley downtown next to the Embassy of Mali. An oratory in the building and resident Frs. Paul Cormier and Joseph Escribano make daily mass extra handy here. Not all are practicing Catholics: Matthew, for his part, stayed for the cozy environment conducive for study rather than for the religious formation, and Minh is an outright communist who had found his way into Parkhill by sheer dumb luck.

Like the city itself, Parkhill has English and French speakers in equal measures, making conversations interesting.

Weekly meetings and prayers make for excellent bro-company with many illustrious gentlemen around town. Also on one occasion I was invited to become a museum exhibit for a full room of high school-age fellas who asked me questions like "Is Singapore part of China" just to see how I would react. But the happenings at Parkhill are too many to pen here.

5. The Church in Ottawa

St. Clement's - FSSP Latin Mass Parish

St. John the Apostle - Parish near Auntie Liu's house

St. John the Apostle serves the elderly of Centrepointe, offering mass on Tuesdays to Fridays at 9 o'clock in the morning. Father Lindsay takes a vacation on Mondays, so on Mondays I join for noonday mass at the Notre Dame Basilica at Downtown, near to the National Gallery. On Saturdays I join Latin mass at St. Clements, which sometimes is filled to the brim with French-speaking children. Later, I would discover that the same parish runs a nearby school.

Notre Dame - Cathedral

Our Lady of the Annunciation - Anglican Ordinariate Parish

The Ordinariate parish is run by Fr Doug. Fr Doug helped me through the liturgy because I was the only guy who showed up and had to do the responses without any prior experience. I learned that the Ordinariate Mass is almost identical to the Tridentine mass of the Latin tradition. I have a newfound respect for Ordinariate Catholics and their compatriots, the High Church Anglicans.

The Eastern Catholics are represented by the Syro-Malabars and Ukrainians, but the locations of their parishes are weird, and I never had an excuse to visit them. The Chinese parish is in Orléans, a Francophone neighborhood, which is also very odd.

6. The Church in Gatineau

Notre-Dame-de-l'Île - Parish of Hull District, Gatineau

My experience of the Church in Gatineau has been disappointing. To be fair, I had been warned about the state of the church in Quebec, which seems to be in terminal decline since the 1960s. The website of the Cathedral did not show the correct mass timings. Notre-Dame-de-l'Île's actual mass timings also differed from what was shown on the sign up front. By and by I found a group of aunties in a meeting at the church's basement. "Pas de messes ici! Shoo! Shoo!" they said to me. "No mass here! Go away!"

- Vous devez changer votre site-web!
- C'est pas notre problème!

Five minutes before mass was due to start, the priest arrived in his car and assured me that the mass and Eucharistic Adoration was, contrary to the women of the basement, set to take place that evening. I was overjoyed. I called him Monsieur because he did not have his collar on. He would disappear again shortly after the start of Adoration, leaving a layman to say the priest's lines and elevate the Host.

6a. Exchange with Suzanne from Quebec City on the Quiet Revolution

This came from the Catholic History Geeks Facebook group. I found it interesting and relevant, so I repost it here.

Me: [...]It surprised me to see that the church in Ottawa is thriving but the parishes in Gatineau (which is supposedly Francophone and Catholic) feel gutted. I read that the parish of Notre-Dame-de-l'île in Hull was formed out of four former parishes when the churchgoing population fell from a quarter of a million to ten thousand. It is way harder to find daily masses there than right across the river. Friends from Québec, or who are familiar with Québec history, is this the result of the so-called "Quiet Revolution"? Have you lived through this period of Canadian history? What was it like?

Suzanne: Hi there. I grew up in Quebec. People describe the "Quiet Revolution" as this hardcore anti-Catholic period. I don't remember it that way. It was more of a progressive indifference of the Church that today has developed into full-blown anti-religion. Quebeckers never had to fight for their faith. They were never constantly attacked by Evangelicals or other Protestants; so they were never forced to learn the why and wherefore of their faith in order to defend it. So Quebec's faith was a mile wide and an inch deep, depending a *lot* on sociological transmission to keep the faith going. This is why when there was an onslaught of secular thinking after the advent of T.V., Quebeckers' faith couldn't take it. The Church, faithful Catholics, have very little confidence in themselves or their faith. They basically retreat in the face of the onslaught. And that's why you have churches closing down and Quebec losing its Christian landscape.

7. The geography of La Capitale

Link

The Capital of Canada sits on the south bank of the Ottawa river, which drains east into Saint Lawrence. The river forms part of the border between the provinces of Ontario (south) and Quebec (north). The big village of Gatineau sits on the north bank, within walking distance, and enjoys the perks of being close to the national capital without technically being part of it.

The neighbourhoods of Ottawa work roughly like this, from west to east: Kanata has the high-tech startups. Bayshore has gunfights with guns smuggled in from Yankland. Nepean has retirees and government workers. South Keys has the airport. Downtown, Vanier and surrounding areas have drug addicts and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is also a drug addict. In the furthest east, Orléans is the French-speaking district, as mentioned.

Downtown Ottawa is split in two by the Rideau Canal, which functions as a skating rink in the winter (i.e. most of the year). Parliament Hill and Ottawa's most iconic buildings sit at the left bank of the canal, within eyeshot of the Embassy of the United States on the right bank. Unlike many other cities, Downtown is densely built, human-sized, walkable, and well-connected by public transport. For this reason it swiftly became my favourite place on the continent.

This building is important for some reason

8. Canadian Soft Power

Auntie Liu's sister has a husband, a genial fellow named Try. Try is Cambodian-Canadian, a Francophone, and lives in Gatineau. He visited us at Nepean one fine evening, bringing gifts from the wife's place in Nanjing. A thing of Try which made an impression on me was that he spoke in a mesmerizing drawl which I have come to associate with the country of Canada. It was late into my stay in the country, and it had grown on me as well.

The country has had me in its thrall for a long time, its influence on me disproportionate to its influence as a world power. I would happily watch a mediocre Canadian movie over a similar American film of higher acclaim. I had learned my first French words from Quebecker songs. I had eschewed authentic American country music, preferring its imitators on the Manitoban prairies. It was no different for this trip. I had my fill of Canadian movies and Canadian literature. The film adaptation of Joseph Boyden's Through Black Spruce aired at Bytowne Cinema during the time of my stay. I bought and am reading Boyden's earlier novel, Three Day Road, which had catapulted him into fame. The Haida-language film Edge of the Knife aired in Toronto in the last week of my stay, and I took this excuse to go on a road trip down south.

It helped very much that Ottawa bookkeepers sell very good books at very affordable rates at many places about town, spoiling me rotten.

From Patrick McGahern's bookstore, which is probably more expensive than most others

9. The almost-road trip to the North

I was briefly tempted to make a trip to Iqaluit during this time. The airfare (~2500 CAD) felt prohibitive, and the temperatures in the Canadian Arctic in the month of March (minus a gasdfjillion degrees in any scale) seemed to be beyond the reach of my human experience. Strangely, the former did more to discourage me than the latter.

The temptations would continue, and, as someone who becomes irrationally excited at the sight of Inuktitut syllabics, I accepted them as a test and opportunity for mortification in this blessed season of Lent. Confiteor tibi, Domine. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Don't look at it, Andy

*throws away magazine*

10. A quiet way of living

Despite all appearances and temptations, I was not keen for adventure. People who know me all know that I am a homebody who likes to play Civilization VI too much for my own good. I was anxious to get into the rhythm of work in Cleveland more than anything, to the beat of a quiet, uneventful mode of living. This was no time for adventure!

I complained to Mom, and she gave me a dress-down, saying something along the lines of: Suck it up. There's nothing you can do about this mess. You are now on holiday, whether you wanted to or not. Go out and learn to have some fun.

That's fair. I went to the museums and grudgingly assumed the role of a tourist. They turned out to be great. The National Gallery is now a favourite place.

Yay, art!

History!

Tame cockroaches!

But when I was not in the mood to spend on earthly pleasures, I found home in the public libraries, one branch in Downtown on the Rideau, and the other at the former Nepean City Hall. Here admission and wifi are free, and there was shelter and quiet. I could print my readings, write my papers, and get the research work going at snail's pace (I was told not to bring my laptop).

At the Downtown branch of Ottawa Public Libraries, I discovered that the homeless population shared my passion for books, internet access, and free shelter from the elements. This made for quite interesting company whenever I wound up studying here. The librarians of Downtown graciously adapt to serve their customer demographic, and treat everyone cordially and with respect. There is just one awkward detail: when you needed to use the bathroom, you have to ask the front desk for the keys.

11. Good people

There is a hidden Chinese restaurant on the south side of Rue Rideau, between Dalhousie and Walter. They occupy the husk of a former restaurant, giving themselves no distinguishing brand or name, and never bothering to lift a finger to change out the signage or the furnishings. However, I must point out that their noodles are very satisfying to horf. The restaurant has become very popular among the uOttawa students who manage to find them. I must also note that they are unique in the neighbourhood for rounding down (not up!) the price for cash payments to the nearest dollar, and for not accepting tips!

Byward Market has a Moroccan restaurant named Le Casablanca. I went there whenever I felt posh or wanted to have coffee that was not watered down. I built some rapport with the family running the place over time. Near the end of my stay, the building had a fire which gutted one of the other restaurants. No one was hurt, but it was probably really bad for business. I hope they are all doing better now.

I should remember that people are good and can be good all on their own, whether they are good to me or not.

The last random story I would like to write about is about an old man and his two young granddaughters, whom he brings to Centrepointe Avenue to be picked up by the school bus every weekday morning. I spotted them often on my way to church and drew a sketch of them, from memory, because I found the scene to be exceptionally adorable. I'll let the picture do the talking.

Are they twins? The girls were of similar heights. Their jackets and pants were colour-coded, but the hats are switched. Grandpa holds both their backpacks. I have no surefire way to know who owns which bag now. Where will they be when I come to Ottawa again? Maybe, the sisters will be all grown up when the time comes. Will they still think of themselves as the pink and green halves of a pair then? Maybe something else?

I've written enough; it's time to sleep.

Arkadius

Photo: A. Novichkova

I am on my way once more; I, Thexeira Haji, consigned to wander the earth in unending pilgrimage. My sins were numerous, my promises I did not make true; No sacred silence did I keep in the floridness of my youth. Instead, I have Silence foisted upon me. Deep, dark, endless Silence, as expansive as the Taiga who stretches from Noril to Khatanga, from the slopes of Putoran to the shores of Qarataimir. How the timber of the woods muffles my cries; how their leaves blot out the light of the sky!

A close friend passed today, a volunteer at the place of my refuge, now obliterated by cannon fire. Arkadius, Arkadius, how did I not know you before! You have no good looks, nor stature, nor power, but the light of your deeds have been blinding. Yesterday you were one with us, the unwashed and needy; today we remembered you as the one who saved us from certain demise. As our sanctuary came down, crumbling into dust, it was you who had readied the canoes and pushed us out into the middle of the lake, away from the reaches of the General's men. The Good One answered to your wishes, sent us to safety, but you yourself wound up entombed in the rubble, alongside the bride of Toyogarov.

Hear, Arkadius, the cries of Olivia, who grieves you so stridently. She has consigned herself to the lake shore, she has turned down all nourishment offered her, waiting in vain to see you arrive on your own boat. Tell me, Arkadius, was this really needed? Should you not have spared a thought to those who valued you over their own lives? Silly, impudent man! You hurled yourself bodily into the maws of the Satraps, the hypocrites, and those of their thugs. Now defeat hangs heavy over all of us, and the justice of God rings hollow.

I, more than anyone, deserve death, and not to have good people giving themselves up for my sake. I only offer to people my company and my stories of faraway places, and in return they keep me alive. The propensity of good people to buy into this sucker's trade befuddles and humbles me. Give back, I tell myself, give back! But I could never give enough, however much I strain with the effort. This is not the time for me to be alive. I, more than anyone else, deserve death! How gladly I would have exchanged my place in Hades for that of Arkadius!

What would I give for the Lord of the Universe to hear me? What would he say to the ravings of this mad creature? If only one day he could open his mouth and rebuke me for my delirious exclamations, or take the burdens of such heartbreak, enough to last me generations.


Notes
This passage is dedicated to the memory of Anthonius Gunawan Agung of Palu, Central Sulawesi Province, departed September 2018.

From the Desk at the Public Library in the Former Nepean City Hall, Ottawa

I spend these days skulking around the libraries a lot; first, the one down in Rue Rideau, which plays hosts to a dazzling array of vagabonds and other desperadoes including myself; then, the one in what used to be the City Hall of Nepean, a jurisdiction recently absorbed by the capital in what many see as a shameless money-grab. I almost forget to mention a third: a study room tucked securely in a residence for university students run by Opus Dei, and a fourth: a picturesque little lounge in the National Gallery from where I took this pretty picture of Gatineau. These venues give me ample supply of books, space to study, and distraction from the protracted visa paperwork with the embassy. The affair was anticipated to take only a few days, but evidently, it will drag for weeks to even a month.

I have decided to become Canadian in the meantime. To (interiorly) thumb my nose at the Yanks I have bought new clothes, bought a public transport card, registered myself at the library, mingled with the parishioners, and sharpened my French. Family friends have graciously taken me into their home, so that I have a taste of the most mundane Ontarian suburbia, and do not have to change hotels every few days while I wait for an indeterminable time for news from the embassy. New friends and acquaintances feed me so many opinions on how the country is (or should be) run that I almost begin to share in their anguish in the woes of Canadian society and politics, even though I do not have business in this country other than that wretched paperwork. Maybe, when things are going better, I will look back on these times and laugh.

Miracle Child

Picture source

Mikolaiki arrived at the abbey in the dead of winter in the war years. A ten year old boy, with dark hair, attentive eyes, and rosy cheeks. He surprised everyone: no one believed a child could be caught wandering the country like this. Violence was everywhere in Taimiria, with the battles between the Sultan's men and those of his revolting Satraps. It took some time for the folk to find that the child could speak, and did so in the dialect of the Midlands ("war orphan" was the term people used for these individuals). He also surprised everyone for not having a name — he did not even seem to have a notion that people should have names. So they named him Mikolaiki, after Saint Nicholas of Myra, whose feast was celebrated on the day he showed up.

A wild child, they said at first — maybe even raised by a wolf-mother! Mikolaiki were not bound by any of the customs and traditions found among the families who have found shelter in Amatodate Abbey. Presenting himself to each of them, in turn, wandering just as he was used to, Mikolaiki learned the Pripyatine dialect from the friars, classical Turkish from Osman-bachi and his family, and Lowland Taimir in the company of Irannika Yasin and her servant-girl, Olivia Hutanonoyong. These he mastered, curiously enough, in the same amount of time they got him to eat using utensils instead of his own bare hands. This boy is precocious! they all said. They trusted him enough to delegate to him the cleaning chores, then to the kitchen, then to the gardens, a position that little Mikolaiki took to with relish.

The garden was where Mikolaiki revealed himself to be something like a miracle child. Green fingers — that was they said of people who took care of plants very well — the fingers of Mikolaiki are amazingly green. The vegetable patches flourished in the days after he took up duties. In the spring, when some of the manpower were succumbing to illness, a roster had to be drawn up to divvy the work between the helpers. The groundskeeper swore that the garden looked to be in much better shape on the days the boy was in charge. Around this time, the pear tree at the northern corner, which everyone assumed was dead, bloomed and sprouted leaves for the first time in years! Of course they said that young Mikolaiki did it. And they all began to fear him.

The summer of the following year, General Tansukchin had ousted his own lord in Totte Muran, rallied the other lowland satraps through tactics persuasion and intimidation, and gathered an army to march northward to meet the men of Hakim Sultan. He named the Abbey of Amatodate a prime target in this campaign, as it had admitted casualties from the Sultan's army into its tents, and also abducted the Princess from the House of Yasin. Yes, everyone can see that Amatodate had apostatized from the true faith, along with whichever Christian who chose to take shelter with them. The abbey shored up their defenses, amassing a hundred fighting men and women from the inhabitants to match the thousands who now march upon them. When the abbot had finished the count, all were murmuring in dismay, uncertain of their survival. But little Mikolaiki spoke, his eyes fixed to the chapel:

"Not a hundred, Father Abbot, but tens of thousands have joined us."

The chapel was empty at that time; everyone knew that. Few heard the random nonsense of a miracle child, even if his fingers were very, very green. The ones who did knew what it entailed to see things which are not there, and chose to pay no comment to Mikolaiki. But they still told me after everything had happened, and that is how I knew.

In the kid's eyes, the chapel must have appeared very crowded indeed.

The abbey's fighters fought valiantly in the siege, weathering the first and second waves of assault. Few would think such an outcome possible; the abbot had anticipated the abbey's total annihilation, going the same way as its previous incarnations. My personal opinion would be that we had help from elsewhere: from the guardian angels, from the faithful of faraway lands, the "tens of thousands" counted by the miracle child during the counting. Those who were near Mikolaiki at the time heard him say these words, and so we know they are true.

As everyone knows, the abbey did not survive the third assault, when the reinforcements opened with their fateful artillery barrage. Thanks to the borrowed time, most of the inhabitants fled before the fall. We remember among the slain the Father Abbot, Princess Irannika Yasin (whose remains have never been found to this day), and a small company of friars who had taken charge of the evacuation but failed to leave themselves. Tansukchin took Mikolaiki alive, knowing him to be close to the Princess. He hoped to learn of the whereabouts of the Princess from him, but found him unresponsive and tight-lipped. The next interrogator was called in: the Satrap of Toyogarov, a wretched and evil man. In a fit of sadistic rage (for the Princess had been his betrothed), he had the boy's tongue ripped out, his eyes gouged, and left him to die in agony in his cell.

Note that I do not know if the things that happened to Mikolaiki after the fall of the abbey were true or not. Of course, I was not there to see them happen. But more than a few people who I met later knew the story and told them this way, and a few of them I know to be close to the Satraps, and so I think them reliable. The version of the story that I shall tell now comes ultimately from the words of Toyogarov himself, who has become insane. I came to know of it thanks to people who took the trouble to sift through his increasingly incomprehensible ravings for snippets of sensible speech. This is what they heard him say:

Three weeks after they had buried the child, the Satrap woke up in midnight, in cold sweat, only to find the boy standing at the foot of his bed, alive. The resurrected Mikolaiki lacked the distant air and unearthy mien which typified such apparitions. He appeared as if no death or trauma whatsoever had happened to him — he had all his features seemingly restored, his disposition human. Except, to the Satrap's horror, he was holding: in his left hand, a pair of eyeballs; in his right, a severed tongue. "You have nothing to be afraid of." said the boy to him.

"You have nothing to be afraid of!" raved the Satrap to his advisors ever since that night. And because nothing new has happened after that time, I will end my story here.

Notes
1. The name "Mikolaiki" comes from the Polish name of St. Nicholas's Day.
2. The apparition to Toyogarov is loosely based on the story of Saint Lucia of Syracuse.
3. The stories of Irannika Yasin and many other characters mentioned here will be written in future posts.

The Adventures of Nasreddin and the Hat he Bought for Six Tangas

Nasreddin bought a tubeteika at the bazaar for six tangas. Everyone he met asked him: “How much money did the tubeteika cost you?” Nasreddin answered to the first of them, he answered to the second of them, he answered to the third of them, than he said: “If I answer to everyone, I will go crazy.” He took the tubeteika off his head, ran to the bazaar, and cried: “Hey, people! Go quickly to the square, gather somewhere there! The Big-ones have something to tell you.” All the people gathered at the square, and no one else remained in the city. Nasreddin came upon a high place, and cried: “Hey people, just to let you know, I bought this tubeteika for six tangas”

A tubeteika

[source]