God of War, Goddess of Love

Kate in Quebec. Apparently, a British expat has just talked to her about starting a family. My gosh, where are his manners? At least you can’t blame the Quebec school system.

Well yesterday, Kate Middleton __ (what is her full name?) or the Duchess of Cambridge and her husband, William, spent an edgy day in Montreal, what with the well-wishers a bit thin and the separatists singing songs of protests.

I’m sure there would have been many more well-wishers, except Montrealers are well-trained. We know,even, that displaying a Canadian flag on Canada day is kind of iffy business.

Anyway, a stop on their tour was at the school for cooks, at the Institut de tourisme et d’hotellerie du Quebec, which has no English name. The day before CTV news, local edition, the one we used to call Pulse, had a feature on the preparations for the big visit at said culinary school and they showed all the super fancy desserts being prepared for the couple.

Of course, it is a little ironic. Kate likely doesn’t eat dessert. She likely has to pull a Jackie Kennedy in that regard. I once read that Jackie was always presented with a complimentary dessert when she ate out and all she did was dip her fork in it, touch the fork to her lips and say something like, “Lovely.”

Sort of like what I do, before I eat 3 helpings.

Anyway, as a deconstructor of all things media, I recogized that this stop, this PR event, has a purpose, as do all the events on the tour.

And that purpose isn’t just to promote the Institut, which is located right downtown on St. Denis, and not somewhere I would have brought the Royals, since that area is,well, ugly and being dug up big time.

No, I’m sure the visit, at least on the part of Will and Kate, was to promote cooking in England. In England they are really worried about the deskilling of their population. I read they even re-introduced cooking classes in schools, or, were at least, thinking about it. You can thank Jamie Oliver for a lot of this awareness.

Of course every stop, every event on the trip has a purpose. I see Will as The God of War, and Kate as representing the Goddess of Love/Beauty which is why they visited Veterans and thanked the Van Doos and why they planted a tree of LOVE.

The entire trip appears about cementing MARTIAL bonds. Of course, this is what is meant when the Brits talk about their special relation with the US. I guess they want a special relationship with Canada too.

Just like when Williams Great Great Grandfather, the Prince of Wales and future George V, (otherwise known as Colin Firth’s dad) visited Quebec in 1908, for the tercentenary celebrations, arriving aboard a glittering battleship without his wife, Alexandra, this Royal visit seems to me about promoting cooperation should Britain need to start (another) war.

Oh, and about selling magazines.

(Margaret Nicholson attended the celebration which featured a pagent in era dress featuring Henry IV’s court, Jacques Cartier and naked natives (parts played by citizens) as well as a spectacular military review on the Plains of Abraham and (which was in prep for the coming World War to end all wars, I guess) and I’ve written a lot about these celebrations, on this blog. These particular celebrations have been written out of history and I can only guess why. (Were it not for the Internet, I probably never would have figured out why Margaret went to Quebec to ‘see the Prince.’)

That’s how I read it.

And that’s why Prince Charles and Camilla aren’t useful anymore as icons. He’s not Aries; he’s more the God of puttering in the garden and sustainable agricultural (which is probably more important to the future of the human race than fighting over oil and resources, but hey.) And I don’t think I need to mention that Camilla is not Aphrodite, either. She certainly doesn’t sell magazines, or media time, as does the photogenic and preternaturally lithe Kate.

This visit to the Montreal cooking school unintentionally provoked the least complimentary media line of the Royal visit I’ve heard so far. And it had nothing to do with separatists. The cook who supervised the PR event, where William and Kate were taught how to cook a souffle, was asked a number of questions, in an interview on CTV. “Was the lesson a success?” “Yes,” said the sober serious and likely camera-nervous head cook “The souffle rose one and half inches.” Well, that is better than if didn’t rise at all, which is rumoured to have been the case with General Douglas MacArthur’s souffles.

Flora Sophia, Anne Shirley, Kate Middleton

A few posts ago I commented on a website that deemed my www.tighsolas.ca website to be worth a booming 11 dollars. This site said so few visitors came to my site that it was not worth noting.

But I riposted that the visitors to my website, (three times what they cited) were mostly high school students, mostly from Canada, most from BC and Ontario, but also College Students, British Students, American students, and some from every province in Canada.

And I also mentioned that they ALMOST ALWAYS find what they are looking for. The list above is random, and except for search term “the meaning of apocalypse” www.tighsolas.ca has the answers to these queries.

The writer, continuity, is ME. I did that once and it is posted on my C.V.

So there you go.

I also notice that more hits from BC for my story Looking for Mrs. Peel on PDF at www.tighsolas.ca/page3.pdf.pdf

That pleases me. My story is about my grandmother’s experiences at Changi, in Singapore, where she was tortured in an infamous incident.

But it’s also about 1967 Canada, and about grandmothers/granddaughters and inter-generational tension.

This is a story that should appeal to all Canadians, but especially for Canadians of Asian origin, Chinese, Japanese, and South Asians too.

Maybe it will become a Canadian bestseller or the best selling e-book on the Net.

It’s a radio play really, (because I love BBC Radio Four radio plays and I was hoping to get it produced, as I once was a radio writer) but a Canadian publisher has asked to see a narrative prose version.

(But first I have to Finish Flo in the City).

Malaya was one of the world’s first multicultural societies – and my story touches upon that too.

Ps. I see that His and Her Royal Highnesses William and Kate are going to visit P.E.I on their Canadian visit because Kate Middleton is a fan of Anne of Green Gables. She’ll like it there. She’s a natural unaffected beauty and PEI has a lot of natural unaffected beauty.

Anne of Green Gables was published in 1908, by a Boston Publisher, and a while I back I thought about figuring a way to put that in my story of Flo in the City, because Flora visited Boston in 1908 and Anne of Avonlea was serialized in the Montreal Gazette in 1910 or 1911. I saw it there in the archives.

Circle Game: 100 Years Ago

Kate Middleton. I got this picture from a fashion website. It is clear what her role is: fashion role model.

Just to prove my point: that “The Tighsolas Era” is an important one, the media is featuring quite a few important articles about 100 years ago, in 1911.

Sunday Morning promoted an HBO documentary (playing today in Canada) about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (Actually Triangle Waist Factory) and the New York Times had an editorial this morning about a topic I have covered extensively on this blog: the fear of immigrants.

The editorialist did what I did, he looked up old newspaper articles online to find that the US was so freaked out about this wave of immigrants, tidal wave, that it sent out researchers to analyze them, or deconstruct their personalities.

If you read articles from Macleans magazine from the era, they do the same thing, although usually in praise of whatever ethnicity they were writing about.

Anyway, to do my part here, I thought I’d report on an article in the 1911 Food and Cookery Magazine. The July 1911 edition.

The Coronation of George V was big news here, but Food and Cookery Magazine decided he was getting enough press and wrote about Queen Mary. The article was titled “The Woman in the Coronation.”

We have read with great interest legends revived, have tried to picture to ourselves the banquet which required eight tons of gold plate in the serving, but to the woman, one of the two central figures in the scene, has hardly been accorded the recognition which is hers. …Queen Alexandra departed from the tradition which robed a queen in purple and ermine, her robe was of red rose which matched exactly the robe of the King. To Westminster Queen Mary returned to the earlier custom.

The deep ivory satin for her robe was made at Baintree and the embroidery of both dress and robe was done by the Ladies’ Work Society or Princess Louisa Needlework School. Deftly wrought into the pattern was the English rose, the Scottish Thistle, the star and lotus lily of India.

A border of English oak leaves and acorns worked into the finest gold thread framed this patriotic design.

True to her purposed, that everything pertaining to the coronation be made by her British subjects, she ordered the velvet made in Suffolk where the hand loom is still found.

For years Alexandra was enthroned in the hearts of the British People. Even as the wife of the Prince of Wales, by the rare charm of her lovely personality, by the fascination of her wonderful beauty, by the calm dignity, she won the heart of the nation.

It is not easy for Queen Mary to take her place. She has been essentially a home loving mother. It has been a pleasure to see her personally attend to some of the details of the education of her children; she has enjoyed teaching her children to sew and embroider, arts in which she is proficient. She has been as happy as the most democratic American mother in trundling her baby about the garden.

Coming to the postion on England’s throne, she brings to her performance of her public duties the same high ideas that characterize her home life.

She may not dominate even indirectly by her inherent executive ability; she may not charm by the gift of great beauty, but she should make an appeal to every womanly woman of every nation, for she shares with these woman a common crown, the crown of wife hood and mother hood and glories in the wearing of that crown….

Hmmm. I can’t help but think of that scene in the King’s Speech where Queen Mary coldly recoils from her son when he cries at the thought of being king and tries to get a hug. She sure brought up messed up sons.

This article is a load of B.S. of course, but it was ‘instruction’ in the age of the New Woman and Suffragette.

Something to remember when they media coverage of William and Kate’s Royal Wedding gets rolling. It’s all BS designed to sell stuff. Of course, Kate will be the big draw, visually, not William. In the past 100 years, women have been driving the Consumer Society, so the spotlight is always on pretty young women, the woman who spend the most on their looks, and are nice to look at in pretty clothes. I wonder if Kate is having poor kids help from the projects or estates as they are called, add details to her wedding dress.

If she’s really trendy, she’ll be texting her friends as she walks down the aisle. Or Twittering. “God, my garter belt is cutting into my thigh.”

Testing my Memory – using Kate Middleton

Edith in a regal pose. I don’t think Queen Alexandra or Mary were fashion icons to the young back in the early part of the 20th century. But maybe some of the Princesses Royal were.

australian open, apple, assange, aaron carter, air canada;bloorview, bret hopkins, blujays, beirut,bernard hopkins; cutler, christopher stairs, crop circle slemans, calgary flames, canucks;demodevado, detroit police shootings; dead birds,demi levado, dave talyor;enmax, elizabeth edwards, elizabeth ennan, edmonton oilers,

egypt;federer, facebook, facebook sign up, future shop, firefox;goldprice, georges st-pierre, google, gsp,gossip girl;hells angels, howard stern, highway 402, haiti, hawaii 5 0;iran, ireland, india, israel, ipad;jay cutler, jack lalane, justin beiber, jack cutler injury;kevin smith, katrina laif, komisarek,korea, kate middleton.

You know, there is a test for Alzheimer’s, supposedly, where you are given 7 words and asked to repeat them and your ability to do this predicts whether you will or will not get Alzheimer’s. Well, I tested myself, checking out the most frequently typed in terms in Google News for this day for each letter and, hmm. I don’t want to talk about it. My father died of Alzheimer’s.

And this particular exercise is easier as the words aren’t random. But these ‘terms’ in the Canadian Google News are mostly the names of Russian Hockey players, or other Hockey Players, so that’s a thing in my favour. I only recently learned who Crosby was. Sydney! (I just forgot his name, too.)

Nabokov was the most looked up term for the letter N. “Gee,” I thought, “Maybe Canadians are getting erudite?” Or maybe the CRTC banned Lolita? (Or did Hang ‘em High Harper nail and jail someone for reading that iconic but somewhat pervy book on the Go Train?) But no, it’s a hockey player. Surprise!

Of course, it’s early morning and I haven’t had my coffee yet. So maybe that’s why I’m slow on the uptake.

I feel very fuzzy-brained. I’ll try this again in the afternoon after having exercise, and eaten a sprig of sage and some peppermint tea and taken my Omega-3.

At least I know who Kate Middleton is. I’ve been writing a lot about the Royal Family in the Flo in the City Blog.

How I’ve finally got my sovereigns for the 20th century straightened away: Edward VII, George V; (David) Edward VIII, (Albert) George VI, Elizabeth II.

All because I watched the movie the King’s Speech.

Actually, at Christmas I was discussing that movie with my son’s girlfriend and actually asked out loud, “Now, who was the King before George V?” and she replied…”Ah,Edward? It was the Edwardian Age, after all.” Well, duh.

A short age, but an important one. An era of incredible change – and that is what my website http://www.tighsolas,ca/ and this Flo in the City blog is about. (I’m writing a book about the era based on family letters.) This line of inquiry, unfortunately, will not appeal to anyone looking up hockey players, so finding the most popular news items of the day and typing them into this blog won’t attract the right readers to this blog.

But it will test my aging mental faculties. Alas.

Kate Middleton, a commoner, is going to be Queen Catherine. They’ll probably end up calling her Kate the Great. I hope the Press leaves her alone and doesn’t pick her looks apart, until she stops eating entirely. Slim hope of that, I guess. Maybe that’s the price you pay to be a princess, or to be a famous woman in any field.

No matter what a woman does or achieves, she is always judged on her looks. A friend once asked me “Why is Oprah so fat?”

Queen Elizabeth has earned an exemption, but she was very pretty young woman so the press corps could write ‘beautiful princess’ without holding their hands over their mouths and snickering.

I recently read a blog about the suffragettes in England and their close ties with the department store Selfridges, which was brand new. Apparently, the suffragettes were very fashion conscious. (Well, they sure knew how to use the ‘new media’ which was VISUAL, film and photographs. 60′s protesters copied a lot from their books.)

(I’ve written on this blog about how the local Press treated visiting British suffragettes: The fawned over them if they were ‘attractive’ women. And remember when the garment workers went on strike in 1912 and marched through the streets of Montreal, how the press report said that the girls were generally well-dressed, and “some even pretty.” So it goes.)

Anyway, the news media is already promoting The Royal Nuptials, The Big Event, which, I suspect, is mostly about bringing much needed foreign cash into Great Britain. It’s pretty dire over there compared to here, and it’s not great here. I was actually thinking of visiting in the Spring, but now I think I will pass. Can you imagine the prices?