Butter tarts, a treat I think of as quintessentially Canadian, even though my recipe doesn't contain that most quintessentially Canadian ingredient, maple syrup.
Yet finding one last bucket of strawberries in the fridge from last Sunday's pick meant I was baking wintry treats in summer -- at the same time I was needing to slice berries for the freezer -- for wintry treats.
This somehow felt like a happy juxtaposition, a sunny kind of parallel, even complementary -- a yin and yang of seasons, of oven and freezer.
Tonight was another tradition -- the fireworks show on the beach in White Rock. As always, crowds of people streamed down the hills towards the sea, looking for the best vantage point for viewing. We managed a spot along the boardwalk, just below the train tracks that run the length of the beach. When we heard a train go by shortly before the show started, we thought that would be good to have it out of the way before everyone got down there.
But then in the midst of the celebratory display, not just one, but two more trains came through. Tanker cars, black. To me, ominous-looking as they rumbled along so close to those thousands of people -- young and old, so many families and groups of friends -- who'd been talking and laughing and pointing at the colours in the sky.
Black metal train cars carrying something toxic. Even their sound overshadowed the fireworks. American train on Canada Day. Talk about stealing someone's thunder.
3 comments:
The train was an ominous reminder that the oil industry has become an evil thing on the planet.
I'm not sure whether what they contained was oil. Nonetheless, oil is indeed a commodity we will need to learn to live without, and likely the sooner the better.
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