Sugaring Off! Celebrated at a Montreal street festival
Cameron and I had a great time sampling traditional Quebecquois foods that are part of the annual "Sugaring Off", a time when people celebrate the maple sugar industry and have wholesome fun and great food. Since Canada makes 3/4 of all the maple syrup in the world, the maple syrup industry is everywhere: from the flag and sugar pie, to maple sugar ice cream and maple butter.... it is all celebrated and the maple things are delicious. Here are some videos from the fun day we had at the street festival.
It turns out that Cameron and I both like Poutine, a traditional Quebecquois food that is even served in McDonalds. It's got cheese, sausage, sauce and potatoes.
Our first time trying homemade maple sugar marshmellows!
Oral history of Egyptian human rights organization & an army of human rights interns
I recently wrote a blog piece for Fulbright Canada about the internship program I've been offering this year for students from McGill and Concordia Universities as part of my Egypt Oral History project. If you would like to read more about my interns and my oral history project, here is a link to the Fulbright page: http://www.fulbright.ca/ You can click to the right of the first photo of me with my interns at this link.
For all of you interested in learning more about Canada in an interesting and fun way, you can check out my husband, Jeff's, "Canada Quiz". He has a weekly question about Canadian culture, history, politics, the arts, nature, and obscure facts. Here's the link to the website where all past questions are posted: http://thecanadaquiz.com/
For example, below is this week's question. (He put the sign on a lego background to prevent people from doing a quick search on Google images.)
Jeff's weekly email:
Hi everyone. I suspect that Canada Quiz #28 may be a tough one. The sign mystified me for quite some time when I first came across it.
CANADA QUIZ #28
What does the sign in the foreground below signify?
Answers are due by end-of-day Monday, March 31. Earn 2 points for a correct answer, and 1 point for an incorrect one.
Jeff, Cameron and I had a wonderful time seeing the Chihully Stained Glass Exhibit during its last week in Montreal in October. We went on the last Wednesday of the exhibit, half price night so only $10 or so each instead of $25. We discovered half of Montreal had the same idea about going on the half price night so the line outside went for almost a block! But it was well worth the hour or so wait.
The line to get into the exhibit. Jeff and Cameron at the end.
The exhibit starts with this amazing gateway kind of stairway flanked by deep saucers of color which Chihuly calls "Persians".
When you get to the stop of the stair case and look back, this is what you see:
Here are close-ups of the "Persians".
I was interested to see that Chihuly got his start with the help of a Fulbright Fellowship in 1968.
This piece was like a forest of blue glass with a base that reminded me of redwood.
I did the audio tour of the exhibit and was interested to hear that Chihuly doesn't make his own glass. Rather, he designs all the art and has many glass blowers working with him to create the glass that he has designed. I remember the description of the blue glass forest also talked about how there was only one particular factory (maybe in Eastern Europe?) where glass-blown tubes as long as these could be made.
Next came the Perian Ceiling which was just amazing. Here's some background:
Here's a video clip that gives the whole effect which was mesmerizing in the depth of color. Even the shadows cast colors on the wall. It feels like the room is bathed in color by the light shining through the glass in the ceiling.
Next came the room that looked like Christmas trees (some upright, some hanging from the ceiling), all made of glass.)
The next room was like entering the solar system with certain corners lit up with balls of brilliant color, and with a garden of glass in the middle. It looked like another planet with the darkness surrounding the glowing glass just enhancing that effect.
The audio tour discussed how Chihuly became fascinated with how his glass balls of color looked in boats. I think there was a story about how they were literally put in a boat once and were so beautiful that he decided to have this be one of his regular themes.
I loved how he used a black reflective floor creating an amazing mirror effect with every glass object on the floor.
This room of neon rods was a little unnerving, but interesting for a short visit.
The final room was filed with this undulating bowl shapes of incredible color, sometimes with the inside and outside being rich contrasting colors.
The exhibit looped back to the blue glass forest and the amazing staircase.
The exhibit was breath-taking, but we were glad to leave the crowds.
This last photo is of a piece called The Sun which stood outside the Museum of Fine Arts enticing people to come to the exhibit. The sun is composed of 120,000 pieces of glass and spans 5 meters. The Museum is now trying to do a fundraising campaign to try to purchase The Sun for its permanent exhibit. (See article linked to at the start of this blog entry.) They need to raise at least $500,000.
