Three Things from Edmonton podcast - Episode 94: Franciscans, Basilians, Ursa-lines


Happy end of the week, y’all, from snowy Edmonton. In addition to the 22 trick or treaters who came up our front steps on Halloween, here are three other things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude.

                                       

1. Franciscans 

The dark season is upon us in Edmonton, and the red eyes out there are watching the days get shorter. The red eyes I mean are the stop lights at intersections in the evening, the taillights of the cars lined up on Fox Drive, the aviation lights on top of university buildings on Saskatchewan Drive. 


These red lights remind me of Jawas, the miniature, humanoid scrap dealers from the sands of Tatooine. All we know of the faces of the Jawas are the glowing eyes set in the recesses of the cowls of their rough habits. They look like little Franciscans. I pedal by a house on 102 Avenue with five, metre-high cypress bushes in the front yard. This is the starry time of the year the owner covers the cypresses in burlap against the overnight temperatures. I imagine Jawa eyes on them. 


One year, long ago, Shelagh sewed together little brown habits for the boys to go as Jawas for Halloween.  Poking through a chest of old costumes last week, I found their Jawa eyes. They were made for the boys by Vic Gobeil in his engineering workshop in my days at ITV News. Vic fixed the news cameras and the live trucks. He was a wizard. Switching fairy tales from Star Wars to Camelot, Vic was Merlin. That Halloween, I had asked him how to make the eyes? Bring me a couple of black hair bands, he said. Onto the top of each hair band he attached two red LED diodes wired to a 9-volt battery strapped to the side. He added a tiny switch. The boys wore the apparatus over their eyes, like glasses, lights pointing out. Switch it on, instant Jawa eyes. 


This time of year, when little characters troop up our front sidewalk on the prowl for candy, I see in the dark behind them on the sidewalk by the hedge two little adorable Jawas, brothers, eyes smoldering, costumes by Shelagh, special effects by Vic. The kids on the doorstep say thank you for the treats. I do, too. 




2. Basilians 

The Canadian folksinger James Keelaghan performed at the New Moon Folk Club at St. Basil’s Cultural Centre while a full room enjoyed Ukrainian platters of perogies, cabbage rolls, sausage and beer, which is an Edmonton life sentence right there. Keelaghan sang new songs, including one about a trickster who lures people down the road to ruin that I have to listen more closely to, and some old yarns that I have listened to for years. He sang Kiri’s Piano and Hope Princeton Road and the Hillcrest Mine from down Frank way in the Crowsnest Pass. 


At a back table, Shelagh and I sat with Mike and Aleasha to lower the average age of the audience. Off to our right the hall’s kitchen door opened periodically and out into the dark, backlit by an escaped shaft of fluorescent light, walked an old parishioner, one of the crew of volunteers helping to raise money for the church. My grandparents worked under those lights in that kitchen. The day after Saturday night banquets, they would drop off leftovers at our house in the northeast end. I still see Gramps wearing a fedora walking around the car and up our walk, one hand holding a box of food not to be wasted.


Before his encore, Keelaghan paid some debts. He thanked the crowd for supporting live music. He thanked the technician on the mixing board. (The red lights on the console looked like rubies, I thought as I clapped.) And he thanked the servers behind the door who supplied the food. I hope that beyond the kitchen door they heard the applause.



3. Ursa-lines 


Sunset in Edmonton now occurs before the six o’clock news starts. 

I don’t mind the dark in the city. High above Parkview, some of the stars are now visible. Their presence transformed a walk back up the driveway with the garbage carts from a walk back up the driveway with the garbage carts to a walk in the galaxy. As I strode back to the house, there was the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, those giant saucepans of the night sky. And Jupiter, which is a great word, three syllables, stress on the first, JU-piter, which makes it a dactyl. I said it out loud: “Jupiter.” Jupiter twinkled in the east.



We were driving through Cochrane that year in high school, Daniel, Bernie and I, to show Daniel, from Quebec, what the Rocky Mountains looked like, what we meant when we said mountains. We stopped at the Franciscan retreat house. We knew some of the friars there. Fr. Lucian was an amateur astronomer. He had a Celestron 280mm Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope up his sleeve. Through it that night, he took us to the moon and off to the stars of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the big and little bears above the Rockies, and then across the vast plain of void to Jupiter. With my own eyes, I saw the stormy Great Red Spot on the planet. Galileo’s eyes, actually. I was stunned. I still am. 



Back inside the house last week after hauling the garbage carts across the universe and up from the alley, I caught the comforting aroma of dinner from the kitchen. Shelagh and I had roasted a chicken. It was delicious. Which makes you wonder: in a universe of hydrogen, helium, dust and cosmic rays, can one of the most rare and remarkable things out there really be a roast chicken in the air-fryer basket along with a halved lemon, four sprigs of thyme and salt and pepper? It’s beginning to unfold that way.


Thank you for being out there, friends. 


 

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