ROOTS

You have been so patient as I sorted through, and put captions on all my pictures from Scotland.  As usual, I took several hundred photos, so it's taken me awhile  ...

10 glorious days in Scotland ... I was surprised at the impact it had on me.

I had decided to go because I work in a Scottish church and so wanted to understand a bit more about the roots of the large number of Scots in our congregation.

Roots!  What was unanticipated was the stirring up of my own roots, of my own childhood, and of the significance of the large Scottish settlements in Eastern Canada.

I reintroduced myself to what is Scottish in me: my mother had roots in the Sinclair clan; the Craigs came from Aberdeen and were a prominent sept in a clan.

                                                 Sinclair Red Modern

Signs I looked at, tombstones I read, street names, storefronts, towns or cities I passed through or stayed in, all bore the names of children I had gone to school with in Lennoxville, or names of patients of my father or of neighbours, or of cities and towns familiar to me in Eastern Canada.  At first it was uncanny and then the feeling of being "at home" flooded me.  The roots of so much of my childhood were here in the ground of the Highlands.   Inverness, Murchison, Matheson, Murray, Grant, Brown, Allcorn, Burns, McGilvery, Campbell, Glengarry, Calgary, Banff, Gordon, Stewart ....

I was curious, then moved and troubled when I finally understood what the Highland Clearances were all about.  To see remains of crofters' stone houses, crumbling stone walls where once there had been a farm, sheep grazing by the hundreds, reminded me of the horror the ancestors of my friends and many Canadians lived through, as they were forced off their farms and made to leave, and the land was cleared for the raising of sheep.  So many emigrated to Eastern Canada and settled there.  Their culture, language and food colours much of Ontario on the Quebec border, and of the Eastern Townships, where I come from.

Another surprise was how I reacted to the hills, the open spaces and panoramas with few if any people in them.  It was like a breath of fresh air and I drank it in deeply.  I hadn't realized how much I missed this aspect of Canada, living as I do here in a city, and in a little country with one of the most dense populations in Europe.  The Scottish Highlands fed my thirsty soul.  Again, I felt "at home".

I got a fresh insight into the Scottish Reformation: heard lots about John Knox, saw monuments to Reformation martyrs, learned more of the Scottish story but also saw remains of cathedrals and churches that the newly Reformed people tore down.  So fascinating for me from Quebec to see that the majority of the churches in Scotland are Reformed/Presbyterian, coming as I do from a Roman Catholic province.

I had beautiful weather and I saw Scotland at its best  Stunning scenery, quiet forests, sparkling lochs, green fields where sheep grazed, heather-covered hillsides and solid Scottish architecture.

 

 

And my new friends - my hosts - became fast friends.  Isabella Burn took the time from her busy schedule to walk me around St. Andrew's; Brian and Karsee Parr in Dundee let me enter right into their family fun and daily schedule; Laura and Murray McCheyne in Inverness drove me to the North Sea and to Loch Ness, hiked me up a mountain and let me right into their family life too; James and Jyl Murray helped me better understand the story of the Clearances, drove me to Ullapool and shared their beautiful home hidden away amongst the hills and the sheep.

 

                                "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof."

                                                           "Haste ye back"

                                                    ... and I WILL go back!

MORE ON THE SPECIAL SPRING BABIES

For those of you who have been interested in the baby falcons nested in the tower of Brussels' Cathedral, here are two photos of them I took today - 10 days after the first ones I posted on May 7th.  The photography is not good because they were moving all the time, but it will give you an idea of how much they have grown.

I am leaving for Scotland on Monday, the 20th so I'm afraid they will have flown the nest by the time I see them again on the 31st.

A WELL-KEPT SECRET

From late April to early May, a few acres of woodlands in Halle (south of Brussels) are covered with a breathtaking carpet of wild bluebell hyacinths.  It's one of Belgium's most amazing natural spectacles and one of its best-kept secrets.

The beech is the dominant species of trees in these woods and Halle's woods are part of Europe's largest beech forest, stretching across the south of Brussels.

I have never seen anything like this: this soft blue colour spread out in front of me as far as I could see.

It was an outing that really moved me; another opportunity to praise the Creator and thank Him for the beauty of this world He made for us.

And since today is Mother's Day, I wanted to send it to all you beautiful mothers out there who have a special place in my heart.

Happy Mother's Day!

SPECIAL SPRING BABIES

When was the last time you had a front-row seat at the birth of baby pelegrine falcons?!

In the left tower of the Saints-Michel-et-Gudule Cathedral, on the lefthand side, up at the very top, a mother pelegrine falcon has made her nest ...

and given birth to 5 babies!  And how do I know and how can I observe them?  Aha!

At the base of the cathedral steps, a camera truck has been parked.  There are web cameras placed high up on the cathedral and on a neighbouring building. We can go into the truck and watch the babies on computers!

They are two weeks old.  I'll go back in 10 days- just before they learn to fly - and take another picture so you can see them again.  Amazing, isn't it?!!

NEED A CHOCOLATE FIX ??

Trust the Belgians to think up something new.  They are artistically avant-garde  in designer fashions, cartoons and painting, so why not stamps?

Last month, just before Easter, five new chocolate-flavoured stamps arrived on the market.  They have pictures of chocolate on the front, the essence of cacao oil in the glue at the back for taste and in the ink for smell.  A complete fix !!

It was not easy to get the scent and flavour of the dark chocolate right. In the end, people from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland all worked on it.
It is not the first scented stamp … but this is the first time it has been combined with a flavour.

THE ROOSTER

That's the name of the little town I went to on the Belgium coast.  It sounds much more romantic in Flemish - De Haan - don't you think?

I took the train over the flat countryside, through the well-known cities of Ghent and Bruges to the coastal city of Oostende, a trip of about 1 1/2 hours.  Oostende is a bustling port and tourist vacation spot so there's lots of activity and highrise apartment buildings.

From one end of the Belgian coastline to the other (a distance of about 68 km from the French border to the Dutch border), you can ride the "Coast Tram" or the "Kusttram" for 5 euros a day.  It's the longest tram line in the world and it stops at all the little villages along the way, like ..... De Haan.

De Haan is the most beautiful village on the coast, utterly charming.  Of course it has a seaside promenade but behind it you discover a delightful maze of green, meandering avenues and a Belle Epoque area, well over a century old, an Anglo-Norman residential area.

 The weather was grey and chilly, more like winter than spring, so I thought it would be fun for you to see what I looked like as I walked the beach, enjoying the sound of the waves and the gulls.  (I told the Flemish lady who took my picture that my friends in Canada would never believe that I was walking on the beach in a winter coat!!)

And the sea...the endless sea with its never-ending waves. And then the beach in all its simplicty, with no frills and no people.

                 Beaches like this are where the Allies landed on D-Day in 1944.

The round park in the centre of the beautiful downtown residential area was coming to life!

                      And there was even a coastal forest I could meander through.

My hotel was quaint, my bed comfortable, the seafood delicious and the peace ...exquisite.  I came home relaxed and ready to pick up my responsibilities again.

                                               Thank-you, little rooster!

SPRING HAS SPRUNG!

Ohhh, but it's been a long, cold winter here in Brussels.  We haven't had the mountains of snow that Quebec has had, but we've had more snow than usual and temperatures have forced people to continue wearing longjohns, thick scarves and fleece coats right to the end of March.  There was a snowstorm on Palm Sunday!  Having an apartment that has relatively little insulation doesn't help.

No sitting basking in the sun on terraces, no snowdrops or crocuses pushing their way up through the soil, no reappearance of short shorts on the long-legged Brussels beauties. (Well, that's not completely true because they have reappeared...but with warm tights!!)

Ahhh, but here comes April and spring and blue sky (well, at least some days) and the promise of warmer days!  And flowers ...

Yesterday, it was beautiful so I took the rattlely old tram to Tervuren, a suburb of Brussels, to visit the Africa Museum.  The tracks followed large boulevards where the grass was turning green on the lawns surrounding mansions housing embassies, ran alongside an expansive park where swans were floating on a little lake, and wound through a woods (Forêt de Soignes) where the soil was pushing up purple and yellow and white crocuses and snowdrops.  Everything is waking up again!

The Africa Museum was built by Leopold II to house his enormous collection of artefacts from Africa, particularly from what was the Belgian Congo, now DRC.  There were many objects that were familiar to me from having lived in Nigeria, but the exhibit that allows the visitor to follow the meandering Congo River from its source in the south to its mouth in Kinshasa was fascinating. 

There were photos and newpaper articles about Stanley meeting Lingstone, and monkeys, elephants, deer, zebras, fish, hippos, lions and birds in their habitat, that the taxidermist had prepared for us to admire.

 I was glad to see that the museum also chose to show the visitor that there was a very dark side to all this: the exploitation of the Congolese people in the ivory and rubber trades.  Much of the beauty of Brussels - its parks, large boulevards and grandiose buildings - was built on their backs, with the money from these trades.  It's a sobering thought for me, as I walk around this city of Brussels and enjoy its beauty....

                                         hands cut off because the quota of rubber
                                      exacted from those men had not been reached

Next week, I'm going to escape for 3 days to the Belgian coast, to a little town called De Haan.  I have never been to the coast so I'm looking forward to the sand, the wind, the coastal vegetation and some "down time".  I'll take you with me ..... :)