Well tomorrow is the day we head out of Quesnel on our way back to Dalian for another year. Leaving is always sad and unfortunately it seems to get harder every year.
The visit has been very low key but quite relaxing.
We managed to snap a few shots of the family … and had a total laugh doing it. Surprised that any of them turned out well.
Nathan always looks for someone to relax with. His Ampa was more than willing to oblige.
Ian Millar has finally won an Olympic Medal in his 8th Olympic games. Ian Millar age 61 is the most successful competitor in the history of Canadian show jumping representing Canada since 1971. He is probably best remembered for his success riding Big Ben (April 20, 1976 – December 11, 1999). I can remember hearing as if it was yesterday Don Chevrier announce “Ian Millar rides Big Ben in Equestrian this Saturday on CBC Sports.” Incidentally Big Ben is one of only 2 horses inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame (Northern Dancer is the other).
Sadly both Don Chevrier and Big Ben have passed away but Ian Millar rides on.
Congrats Mr. Millar
For a short video of Ian and Big Ben click this link.
Phelps hits the lucky number 8 (in China 8 is lucky) to become the greatest Olympian ever … but hey lets not forget that Mark Spitz previous record of 7 golds has stood for 36 years and he only entered 7 events. And one thing Phelps does not have that Spitz did was a really cool mustache.
Ursain Bolt (nice last name for a sprinter) shatters the world record in the 100 m.
Now where have we heard this story before? A Jamaican sprinter shatters the previously held world record crossing the finish line lightyears ahead of the next runner. Please pee in this cup Mr. Bolt we have seen this before.
Nope .. not talking about Team Canada’s recent 3 medal earnings but rather Michael Phelps’ 7 and counting gold medal haul. The 7th was simply amazing that he even got it. The whole family was watching and we all thought immediately that he didn’t get it and were shocked to see he won by the width of the clipping of a fingernail. No one has brought up the fact that the timing company Omega is Phelps’ sponsor ….
Nice kid, humble and a real winner. Wish he was Canadian.
Much ado has been made about breaking my leg (mostly by me of course). The real story in all of this mess is how my lovely wife, Alice, has coped with tending me back to health while all the while taking care of the two boys. She is definitely overworked and underpaid but I want her to know that she is not underappreciated.
Babe I owe you big time once I can move around freely … and I will repay your kindness somehow.
Tom Jones summed it up so well with this 1970’s hit .. She’s a Lady.
The 4th and last in the Summer Books Series is none other than Dave Bidini’s “Tropic of Hockey”
Dave Bidini is a musician with the band the Rheostatics and he also plays hockey in an Ontario league with other musicians like Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo fame. In 1999 Bidini travelled the globe to search for hockey in unlikely places.
The book has a special place in my heart because part of his adventures took him to China where he played in some of the same rinks we have played in. He also knows a few of the hockey guys from Beijing that we have met in our travels.
I have read the book before (about 5 years ago) but have forgotten most of it so it is like reading it for the first time.
Not sure if I will get this one done before we leave next Wednesday (especially if Alice has her say) but I will give it a go. Might be some nice reading for the plane … of course with a 2 and 4 year old and a broken leg I think reading on the plane is a pipe dream.
Gymkhana is a term used in the United Kingdom, east coast of the United States, and other English-speaking nations to describe an equestrian event consisting of timed games for riders on horses. These events often emphasize children’s participation and may be organized by a recognized Pony Club or a 4-H club.
Tonight we travelled out to Bouchie Lake to watch my 8 year old niece, Natasha, ride in a Gymkhana (which thanks to the Wikipedia definition above you now know what it is). She had a bit of trouble with the horse she was riding but overall did great.
My brother Doug’s girlfriend Kelly gave Marshall, Alice and Nathan a ride on her horse. True to form Carter declined the offer … maybe in a next life.
The 3rd in the series. I guess I am a sucker for non-fiction and in particular biographies. The Tiger Willams experiment was a resounding failure but I decided to press on with another story of a hardluck guy from the Prairies - Stu Hart (May 3, 1915 – October 16, 2003).
Stu Hart was the promoter for Stampede Wrestling out of Calgary and was basically the biggest name in pro wrestling prior to the arrival of the WWF and Vince McMahon Jr. His name was brought tragically to the mainstream media in 1999 when his youngest son Owen Hart died trying to complete a stunt in a WWF run promotion.
I have jumped the gun on this review because I am only about 2/3rds the way through the book but it has been a good read so far. I was hoping for more insight into the early wrestling world but the book takes a long time to get there. It spends a great deal of time concentrating on Owen Hart’s death and Stu Hart’s childhood and teenage years. I guess the book is about the man and not all about wrestling so I can’t expect too much different.
Stu Hart was one of the most respected men in the business of pro wrestling (where respect comes less freely than a folding metal chair). In his Calgary house he build a wrestling room simply called “The Dungeon”. Many wrestlers learned their craft in that basement and for a time it was the training mecca for any up and coming young wrestler. Many of them describe how Stu Hart would put them through “stretches” which basically entailed large men screaming in agony and begging him to let them out of the hold. Apparently he routinely performed these “stretches” into his 70’s and 80’s and had these young strapping lads begging for help.
The promo below is for a DVD entitled “Surviving The Dungeon: The Legacy Of Stu Hart”.
RIP Mr. Hart
The second book that I read this summer was “Tiger - A Hockey Story” written in 1984 while Tiger was still in the league. I bought the book for the steep price of $2.00 in the most amazing used bookstore in Penticton - simply entitled The Bookshop. For two bucks how could I go wrong? Well let’s just say that two bucks was about all I would pay to hear any of Tiger’s two cents.
A book written by one of the most prolific enforcers in the NHL past or present while he was still in the league should have been far more entertaining that it was. The book has its moments and a few good anecdotes but they are all told from the standpoint of “Look how great and moral I am and how pathetic and immoral everyone else is.” All I can say is Tiger, at the time of writing the book, has an overdeveloped sense of confidence and braggadocio.
The only real highlight of the book for me was when he referred to an NHL’er from Quesnel by saying “Without a doubt Bob Gassoff was the toughest hockey player I have ever known.” Being from the Q-Town I felt a little pride.
Shots of Bob Gassoff - a post on him later.
Getting back to “Tiger - A Hockey Story”. To me the acid test of a book is how long I would wait to read it again. In this case …. I won’t.
Alice and I got up early on Friday morning to catch the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics on CBC. We also had a simulcast of CCTV1 (China Central Television 1) running on the computer so Alice could enjoy some Mandarin language coverage.
That ceremony was astounding, amazing, stupendous, phenomenal and whatever other adjective you could imagine. My favourite was the fireworks that replicated the 29 footsteps running from the outskirts of the city all the way to the Birds Nest stadium.
I particularly enjoyed that Canada got the second largest cheers from the crowd (behind China of course). One of the main reasons is because of Dashan (see this earlier post for an explanation) but also because the Chinese hold a very favourable opinion of Canada and Canadians.
In July 2001 I was standing with a friend named Stan at The Office Bar in Dalian, China. We were there because there was no real other bar for foreigners to hang out in at the time but this particular night was a special one - the night it was announced the Beijing would be awarded the 2008 Olympic games. I remember we were sarcastically mocking the foregone conclusion by cheering for Istanbul and several Chinese people suggested that it was time we went home. Mockery does not go down well in the Middle Kingdom.
A group of us made the joke that perhaps we should buy tickets and then followed it up with statements like “If I’m still here in 2008 … shoot me.” Well … shoot me .. I still live there. Unfortunately I will miss almost all of the Olympics as we are in Canada for the summer. We will arrive back in Dalian on August 23rd which is the second to last day of competition.
It has been amazing to see a generation of young people grow up in China with the Olympic dream firmly rooted in their psyche. The Chinese are extremely patriotic and they do not hide their love of country for one second. The lead up to these Olympics was in feverous pitch when we left and I am saddened I will be halfway around the world when all of the hard work comes to fruition.
Of course I don’t take it as seriously as this guy
For those not already aware the reason the games are opening at 8:08 pm on 08/08/08 is that the Chinese consider 8 to be a very lucky number. The pronounciation of 8 is ba which sounds similar to the word fa which means prosperity.
Good luck China. I hope you these games are a resounding success.
Kudos to Carole P. for this shot of her son Gabriel and our son Carter having a water fight. They had a blast. For some reason every time they doused each other they would say “What do you think?”
The Potters4 (well 5 if you count little puppy Oliver) dropped by for a visit a few days ago and true to form we ate too much, drank til we were sleepy and had great conversations. The kids got along fantasticly well which made our visit easy and fun.
One of my favourite shots of Nathan taking a break from trampoline action in the backyard
As Mr. Kevin C so eloquently pointed out .. I am laid up with the broken leg and so it has given me a chance to do a bit of reading. Those with young ‘uns know that a bit of reading is all you get to accomplish (if you don’t count the nightly reading of the timeless classic “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish”).
The first book I tackled this summer was the following
It chronicles the protaganist’s (Timothy Treadwell) fascination with the grizzly bears of Alaska.
In a nutshell Timothy Treadwell was a surfer dude hanging out in California who travelled to the Katmai National Park in Alaska every summer to live … yes live … among the grizzly bears. In the end his obsession was his undoing as he was eaten by a grizzly in his 13th summer of travel to Alaska. This alone would make it a worthwhile read but what I particularly enjoyed about the book was how it left it up to the reader to decide if the protagonist was either a) a man who really was in touch with the grizzly and died doing what he loved or b) a nutcase with no sense of the grizzly and who merely ran out of dumb luck. I must admit that I thought he was a total whackjob before reading the book but the author Nick Jans does a fantastic job of putting forward the first argument to the point where you are left wondering. Mr. Jans in no way settles on an opinion but instead advocates both positions admirably through his own analysis woven in with interviews and opinions of other “experts”.
I enjoyed this book much better than the second one I read … but you will have to wait until the next post to find out.
As we head for a week holiday to Penticton to visit friends and watch Marshall’s hockey school here are a couple of shots of Dad and Nathan just hanging out trying to be cool
Watching the Billy Barker Days Parade
Trying on Mamma’s shades
Fresh Strawberries from Grampa’s Garden
Sweet Corn on the Cob (the Chinese corn is swill) and BBQ Burgers
As the Olympic athletes march into the Birds Nest Stadium in Beijing this August the second loudest cheers will be for Team Canada (obviously the cheers will be loudest for Team China). The reason for this is one person - Dashan aka Mark Rowswell who has been named Team Canada’s attache to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Just who is Dashan?
Dashan, AKA Mark Rowswell, is a multi-faceted performer and cultural ambassador who has been called “the most famous foreigner in China”. Although relatively unknown in the West, it’s hard to find anyone in China who does not know of Dashan.
Born and raised in Canada, Rowswell began studying Chinese in the mid 1980s, first at the University of Toronto and later at Beijing University. While in Beijing, Rowswell became interested in Chinese performing arts, particularly xiangsheng, a popular form of comic dialogue. A chance opportunity to appear on television suddenly gave Rowswell national exposure under the stage name “Dashan”. Repeated appearances on programs with an audience of up to 1 billion viewers gradually turned “Dashan” into a household name across China.
In China relatively few foreigners speak Mandarin fluently and Dashan was the pioneer in this area. His Chinese has been described as “perfect”. In 2001 he visited our school and the students and Chinese staff went absolutely insane. When he was introduced the emcee who was a Chinese national introduced him in English because the emcee was embarassed at his own level of Mandarin when compared to Dashan.
Here is a brief video of Dashan doing a commercial for the BC - Canada pavilion which recently opened in Beijing
When I was travelling to meet Alice’s family for the first time they were curious to know what my level of Chinese was. They kept asking “Is he as good as Dashan?’
Clearly not!
As some very funny folks pointed the rods and pins in my leg look auspiciously like the ancient Chinese instrument - the Er Hu. (Are Hoo). Of course the play on words joke is
“Do you play?”
“Play? Er Hu kidding?”
For comparisons let’s look at the photos
The Fix
The Er Hu
Eerie isn’t it?
And here is how it sounds
As they would say in the Cariboo … we made ‘er (as in home). The 20 plus hour journey went relatively well and we are now setting up shop in Quesnel. The kids were well behaved, Alice was a trooper as she had to look after the kids without much help from (ok .. no help from me). Yeah .. the leg was in pain pretty much the whole time … oh well .. got my leg up now.
