A ‘best of’ list of 2024 Canadian poetry books

Once more, I offer my annual list of the seemingly-arbitrary “worth repeating” (given ‘best’ is such an inconclusive, imprecise designation), constructed from the list of Canadian poetry titles I’ve managed to review throughout the past year. See my fourteenth annual list over at the dusie blog here, along with links to all of my prior lists. Can you believe it has been fourteen years since dusie-maven Susana Gardner originally suggested various dusie-esque poets write up their own versions of same? Once again, I thank her both for the ongoing opportunity, and her original prompt.

This year’s list features a small handful of non-fiction/prose titles, and more than fifty full-length poetry titles by Fawn Parker, M.W. Jaeggle, Robert Coleman, Chimwemwe Undi, Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, Rob Manery, Allie Duff, Nicholas Bradley, Chuqiao Yang, Johanna Skibsrud, Matt Rader, Sarah Burgoyne & Vi Khi Nao, Kim Trainor, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Faith Arkorful, Bren Simmers, Hamish Ballantyne, Michael Turner, Sylvia Legris, Shō Yamagushiku, Concetta Principe, Margaret Christakos, Dawn Macdonald, Simina Banu, Domenica Martinello, Tia McLennan, Jennifer May Newhook, Michael Goodfellow, Britta Badour, R Kolewe, Tonya Lailey, jaz papadopoulos, Ben Robinson (twice!), Clare Goulet, Chris Turnbull, Stuart Ross, Melanie Siebert, Keagan Hawthorne, AJ Dolman, Dale Martin Smith, Ashley-Elizabeth Best, Zoe Whittall, Kevin Stebner and Jaclyn Piudik. Go take a look at my amazing list! With direct links to each of the publisher's page to order direct, as well as to my original review as well.

happy holiday things!

from all of us to all of you, there. (and there,

oh, and might we see you on Friday night at our PFYC annual holiday event?

Lemonade (August 21, 2011 – December 5, 2024)

Our beloved cat, Lemonade, who turned thirteen this past August, collapsed the other night in clear distress. I rushed him to the Emergency Vet Clinic not ten minutes away, but he passed within five or six minutes of landing. What the hell happened? I was still filling out paperwork. At home and throughout the car ride he was howling, howled, in a way that seemed frightening; collapsed on our bedroom floor and drooling, unable to move.

Not even enough time for the Veterinary assistant to bring me into the room. It was the suddenness, more than anything else. An emotional whiplash. He’s actively dying, they said. His heart or a clot, although they were able to medicate him for a bit of relief. Do you want to go in with him, even as a further interrupted, saying it was already too late. I signed my name to a form. Christine, still at home, attempted to comfort our distraught children, upending their bedtime. Aoife, who chose to remain home from school the next day, as she couldn’t stop crying. Rose, who chose to go, so she could talk it out with her friends.

It was somewhere in the fall of 2011 that Christine told me that she wanted either a baby or a dog or a cat or a flower. It was a list I found startling, as we were neither married nor engaged at that point (nor had any of that been discussed), a year into living together in a third-storey walk-up in Centretown. God sakes: a baby? In that moment, I had no idea if she was serious. A cat, I thought, seemed easy enough. A flower might be the wrong answer, although she did list it. Heading over to the Humane Society off Hunt Club Road, we chanced upon a kitten on a high perch, amusing himself by startling his peers by dropping down on them. This is the one. We selected this rakish black-and-white bundle known to the staff as “Pepe,” so named as he reminded the staff of the cartoon skunk from Warner Bros. cartoons. Beyond the cultural implications, we didn’t think he looked like a Pepé.

Lemonade. He looked, I thought, like a Lemonade. Four months old, we officially fostered for a bit until he had run through some medication for a stomach issue, before we could fully adopt him. His stomach issue persisted, providing a variety of medicated food attempts before one would settle, and then, re-settle. Lemonade: the kitten who pounced on us in the middle of the night, later scratch at the closed bedroom door at all hours, pulling up carpet. We eventually placed a plastic car liner underneath the door, to protect the floor of our McLeod Street apartment. He was an indoor cat, unable to be out without leash (which he barely tolerated). We watched him fall off the couch, we certainly weren’t about to let him roam around outside by himself. We allowed him to wander (accompanied) a bit at Sainte-Adèle, preferring the comfort of bushes than the open space of the yard.

He was a polydactyl, attending extra toes on every foot, the way his paws attempting flies looked like two catcher’s mitts on either side of any errant black speck. He caught the rare fly that snuck into the house, which we appreciated, but he ate them, which we thought was quite gross. You’re gross, Lemonade. Soon after he arrived, I composed a short sequence of poems that appeared in my Centretown collection, A halt, which is empty (2019): “Lemonade, polydactyl (or, / the cat with twenty-two toes,),” a title that played off Michael Ondaatje’s classic The Man with Seven Toes (1971). They told us that to declaw a cat would be inhumane, and it eventually meant we had to take him to the vet for trimming, otherwise his nails would catch on our carpet, and we were too likely to be scratched. As my piece begins:

this new kitten;                        bone-cleave,
            hindrance; to de-claw

 

is to pick out bone; inhumane,

they tell us,

                        [see the full poem here]

Can one of you feed your brother, I would ask our young ladies. With three daughters, he was my only boy. Aoife used to argue, pointing out that he wasn’t really their brother, and he was adopted. I would point out that I, too, was adopted. Does that make me any less family to my parents, my sister? The idea eventually took root, Aoife announcing to teachers and classmates that she had three siblings, including a brother, who was actually a cat. It counts, certainly. Aoife, who would lay her head on Lemonade’s back as he rested on our bed. Rose would regularly come through and pet him, attempting to get him to pay her attention as well.

During pandemic, as he required tooth extraction, I sat in a parking lot in Ottawa’s east end awaiting the results of his follow-up appointment. He and I were the same age, then. His extraction cost enough that we began to refer to him as our second car, and the poem I sketched out in that parking lot became “Summer, pandemic,” a piece forthcoming in the book of sentences (2025): “This body as a means // to dialogue, and his teeth held / in synaptic space. From this lone parking lot // in Ottawa’s east end, veterinarian staff report his outbursts, frustrated // at their prodding. He is such / a mood.” [see the full poem here]

He was temperamental, skittish. Always acting as though, if we were both walking within the same room, I was clearly there to murder him, somehow. He’d scatter. He wished to remain in our orbit, but often too far for us to reach or to pet. Kitten Lemonade, who would jump up and set his head and front paws on my shoulder whenever I sat down, something he outgrew by the time we were on Alta Vista, but he was never a lap-cat. He would sit near, often on his own blanket-space on the couch, or, eventually, in the bedroom with Christine, held there through two different maternity leaves, or through her recovery stretch since her 2019 stroke. He kept good company. Lemonade attended her days, often complaining when she wasn’t home, attempting to herd anyone else into that empty space. “I know a little language of my cat,” Robert Duncan wrote, to open “A little language,” a poem that rests in Ground Work: Before the War (1984), “though Dante says / that animals have no need of speech and Nature / abhors the superfluous.” He communicated what he needed, the past few years more vocal in his requirements for attention, food. Cats, they say, who predominantly speak aloud to communicate with humans, and less so with each other.

He was our constant, between Christine and I; one of our first marks or measures of permanence, more important to our household than I could have first imagined. Our young ladies had known him their whole lives, this meandering cat who sniffed around during their baby and toddler stretches, remaining just out of reach. Marge Piercy, as part of her poem “The cat’s song” from Mars & Her Children (1992), wrote: “My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.” Lemonade, on his part, required us, but he required his distance, offering our young ladies a patience far more than with us, although there was the rare time he would snap if they crossed him. Never a scratch but a warning. He understood, it would seem, their difference.

Responding to my social media notification on his passing, someone offered the poem “from Jubilate Agno” by English poet Christopher Smart (1722-1771), a link from the Poetry Foundation website. The excerpt, at least, composed for his “Cat Jeoffry,” filled with reverence and Christian ardor, and this small couplet that makes the point perfectly:

For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.

 

happy eleventh birthday, Rose!

Happy eleventh birthday to my brilliant, hilarious and ridiculous dervish middle daughter, Rose!

She's requested I refrain from posting recent photos of her on the interwebs, so here is one when she was smaller, visiting me in my home office (which I am currently dismantling, so they can each have their own bedrooms).

some Thanksgiving, Sainte-Adèle, etc.

Another weekend, another Thanksgiving [see also; two years ago], at mother-in-law's cottage, Sainte-Adèle, up in them Laurentides (roughly an hour's drive north of Montreal, if that situates you a bit better). Christine, myself, our two young ladies and irritable cat, Lemonade, hosted by my most favourite mother-in-law. I think this is only our third weekend up here this whole year [see also: labour day weekend], unable most weekends due to the array of child appointments: ukulele lessons, choir practices, ringette, German language school, etcetera. What have we done to ourselves?

We saw no deer on this trip, but there was wind. And squirrels, running up and down the side and the back of the building. As ever, I attempt these get-aways as marathon reading sessions, most of the weekend focusing instead on poking through the larger manuscript of my ongoing "the green notebook," recently subtitled "a writing vigil" [see a variety of excerpts of the project at my substack], as well as putting the final touches upon my essay on Christine's new book, Toxemia (Book*hug Press, 2024), thanks in no small part to an assist by Kim Fahner [see the final essay here] (I think at least half the time up there was dedicated to that particular essay). I might have poked at the beginnings of a short story, also. I'm not sure yet. Otherwise, Rose and I did get part of an evening of chess (her eldest sister and I played a great deal when she was roundabout Rose's age, also): we're already rather evenly-matched, so we keep landing into positions where we've almost no pieces left, simply chasing each other around the board into uselessness, but we enjoy it enormously.

Still, there's a whole mound of material I'm attempting to get through. Did you see the new Stephen Cain poetry title? The new Leonard Cohen biography? The new Ashley-Elizabeth Best poetry title? The stacks of brilliant items produced through Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative? I mean, holy crap: previously uncollected or unpublished works by Bobbie Louise Hawkins (what I was most excited about, honestly), Adrienne Rich, Diane Di Prima, Muriel Rukeyser (some very cool things in there), Edward Dorn, etcetera. Have you seen the collection Other Influences: An Untold History of Feminist Avant-Garde Poetry that Marcella Durand and Jennifer Firestone edited? I've been recommending it to everyone. I spent the weekend working up many notes on many things. A flurry of notes, and then the final morning as I woke completely wiped out, unable to do much of anything (Christine did the driving en route home, due to my brain-fog), confirming Covid-positive once we landed back in Ottawa (today is day five: second day the kids out from school), which is very irritating. So the past few days have been fallow: those notes, as of yet, are still only notes.

And the young ladies have been requesting I minimize photos of them in this space, but here's the youngest during a walk we took down the road, on our final evening there. The tower in the background. The slight pink-purple of sunset and encroaching dusk.

end-of-summer something-something, : sainte-adèle

It took us five months [see when we were here last], but we managed another away-weekend at mother-in-law's cottage. Christine, our young ladies and our persnickety cat, Lemonade, three days of Sainte-Adèle, Quebec, just up along the Laurentides. As ever, the leaves were already beginning to turn (before they do back in Ottawa). Naturally, I now approach such awayness-ess as marathon reading sessions, where I attempt to make first-notes on as many books as possible towards potential reviews (I did get through about half of this stack, if you can imagine, although I was also focused on edits on the manuscript-so-far of "the green notebook," my day-book in-progress).

The Maggie Nelson title, LIKE LOVE (2024), was a particular highlight, although there were certainly others (watch my reviews across the next few weeks). I've noticed over the past few years that I tend to pick up a longer book of prose or two for such trips such as these for my reading attention, whether Anne Boyer, Elisa Gabbert, Sarah Manguso or, now, Maggie Nelson, for poolside in Picton, or either in sunroom or on the porch of Sainte-Adèle. I haven't the opportunity for longer prose these days, otherwise (unless stepping onto a flight or a train, which I also get rather excited about, due to the potential for reading). Christine read her mysteries and worked on some things; I moved through a mound of new titles (mostly poetry titles) and worked on some things. The young ladies played downstairs for a bit, ran around for a bit; Rose is reading a series of young adult journals (not sure if fiction or non-fiction, I haven't looked at too closely), including one referencing the War of 1812, so she's learning all sorts of interesting things (that she is telling us, naturally). I am intrigued by what she is picking up.

And apparently one of her school-mates taught Rose chess at one point (which she was then teaching her wee sister), which she only pointed out at seeing Oma's chessboard (you know we have one at home, right? apparently she did not). We played a few games, and she's not bad. I remember teaching my eldest when she was just a bit younger than Rose is now, and we had that as part of our weekly routine for Saturdays, the travel-board we'd pull out in the food court of the Rideau Centre. I suppose I'll have to pull that out now for Rose.

what we did on our summer staycation, (part two,

[see the first part of our travels here] Two days (again) at Great Wolf Lodge, Niagara Falls, where I hobbled around in my boot, protecting my still-healing broken foot. Where I was unable to go into the water, which allowed a bit more time with notebook, pen; with reading.

Mother-in-law met us there, with six year old nephew in tow, which allowed for some good cousin visits (Christine's brother moving from England to Halifax this summer, which should allow some more-often cousin visits, perhaps). Our young ladies don't get to see any of them that often [although we were in London not long ago, where our young ladies enjoyed a good handful of cousin days].

Day two included a visit to Christine's great-uncle Charlie in Thorold, to see how he's been keeping. On the way back, catching a freighter through the Welland Canal: That boat is so long! Aoife declared. It must be a million Aoifes! (Christine looked it up: apparently "one million Aoifes" is equivalent to 232 metres).

The children, Christine and Oma even played laser tag (Rose came in fourth place, naturally). We all played a round of mini-putt golf. I sat on the step with notebook and reading material during both evenings, and caught a visit (again) from the local skunk, who toddled by both nights (and even the next morning). He was uninterested in whatever it was I was doing. Before we left, both young ladies and nephew their faces painted.

Back in Picton another few days, we landed just in time to catch the latest PEP Rally at the bookstore, curated by Leigh Nash and Andrew Faulkner of Assembly Press (Christine reads at same in September, by the way), with readings by Sneha Madhavan-Reese, Spencer Gordon and Matthew Tierney! What are the odds? I don't even recall the last time I heard either Spencer or Matthew read.

Curious to start going through Spencer's latest, and I haven't even seen Matthew's yet. And did you know that novelist Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer lives rather close? Was good to see her again (we thought the last time we'd seen each other was at the final Scream in High Park in Toronto, which would have been more than a decade ago).

And, once back at father-in-law's place (where we'd deposited the young ladies, just prior to heading to the reading), another three days of attending them, poolside. Another three days of reading, although we did manage a dinner, just the two of us. Up on a hill, way way up above the water. Did you know a small lake in those hills? And a brewery? A view along the water's edge to nearly-Kingston, nearly-Napanee. Point north, where Roblin Mills, or where my birth mother lives. Point east, where the wind farm sits on the horizon. Point east, where a tower sits, near the town of Bath.

In Picton, where the young ladies saw a handful of turtles along the water's edge, and Rose named one "Reginald," taking a forty-minute video (with my phone) of her new best friend and his adventures. Where they sat at the water's edge.

And then, Sunday afternoon, back to Ottawa. Aoife remains, spending some solo time with gran'pa and his wife for a few days, whereas Rose a day-camp began Monday morning.

what we did on our summer staycation, (part one,

Okay, not entirely. We had been aiming for a genealogical drive across New England for a few days, attending sites for either Christine or myself (as much as the young ladies might have tolerated), but my broken foot (my driving foot) threw a wrench into that, which was frustrating (although I'll admit I don't mind that we aren't in the United States right now, given all the stress). We’d actually been originally planning for summer 2020 to do this same drive, but then the onset of the Covid-era delayed that plan. We will get there, I’m sure.

Instead of a New England drive, we spent three days in Picton with father-in-law and his wife, as our young ladies spent their days in the pool. Our original plan had us another two nights at Great Wolf Lodge [just like last year], so that didn’t change. What were we to do? A couple of days not moving in Picton wasn't necessarily the worst of ideas, honestly. Christine sat and read her book, I sat with notebook and pen and a mound of my usual reading. The kids in the pool. I am sketching out notes towards further sections of "the green notebook," as well as editing the larger manuscript. I'm also travelling with my novel-in-progress manuscript and recent short story manuscript, to get some editing/scribbling done on that, but I haven't quite made it there yet. I've made notes on about a dozen books (poetry and memoir and essays and short stories) and gone through "the green notebook" twice.

Tuesday we made for Great Wolf, Christine having to do the driving, which knocked her out a bit. Her energy isn't what it once was, after all. Mother-in-law met us there with a nephew, so the young ladies had a cousin to play with, which everyone appreciated. They adore each other but also wear on each other, as you might imagine. I with broken foot spent much time in the lobby with notebook and reading etcetera as the wee children ran around on quests, so that worked out quite well. Thursday we head back to Picton, and hopefully get there in time to catch the evening reading at the local bookstore (Sneha Madhavan-Reese and Spencer Gordon and Matthew Tierney).

Oh, and at the Newcastle 401 en route rest stop, heading out this way, I ended up seeing my former mid-1990s roommate Rob Haller? I honestly hadn't seen him in fifteen years or so, so that was absolutely great. I've always been fond of that guy, and we just lost track of each other once he married and moved outside the city limits. The kids were indifferent, their father "talking to some random guy," as they told their mother. Well, then.

Before I knew him, Rob was apparently the tour manager for the band Fluid Waffle, his main job keeping four of the members of the band from killing the other guy in the band they thought was irritating. Once that other guy left the band, the remaining four changed their name to Furnaceface, and became 1980s/90s Ottawa indie darlings. Back when Rob and I were hanging out, his girlfriend at the time (who was my roommate) was irritated (and did not think it was appropriate) that we turned the 1995 Quebec Referendum into a drinking game. I mean, what else were we to do?

happy canada day!

Not sure what today is doing yet, although we might be slow moving. Christine has been laid flat with a cold all week, & I've my broken foot, falling up stairs on Father's Day. Here is, at least, a short story I wrote a while ago set on Canada Day, at the Dominion Tavern in Ottawa's Byward Market (posted as one of those occasional short stories upon my substack, in-between other projects I'm attempting to further), which falls into my short story collection, On Beauty (University of Alberta Press, 2024). You've already pre-ordered a copy, yes? And how many short stories, do you think, are set at the Dominion Tavern? Oh, those were the days.

Both of our young ladies, obviously, have finished their school years. This past Thursday, Aoife completed grade two; the Thursday prior, Rose completed grade five. Let the summer of day-camps, potential travel and other randomness begin. Oh, and I'm reading in Toronto again at the end of the month?

How many kilometres to London Towne?

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” Samuel Johnson

[see my report on the first part of our journeys here and the second part here]

Thursday, May 16, 2024: Back in London, where the young ladies played a bit with their cousins before cousins headed out to school, and the four of us headed to the Victoria and Albert Museum, a space the children were enjoying well enough up to a point, but also barely tolerating. We took the tube, as Aoife offered coins to buskers in the station. Once at the museum, the children were already hungry, so we made for the cafeteria, adorned with an array of stained glass windows. The young ladies were not fully convinced. Rose wanted to go shopping. At least there was a space to press images into paper, as a kind of royal mark, which they young ladies enjoyed.

We moved through some of the metal-work and portraiture, but it was through the jewellery exhibit that their interest was, at least, sparked. I had hoped to get into the photography exhibit from Sir Elton and David's collection, but the young ladies were having none of that. I'm both hoping and presuming it lands at Ottawa at some point (although that could be a few years away, I know).

Rose, attempting to replicate a pose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think the longest we spent in the building at all was the gift shop, where I complimented one of the staff on the intricacies of her tattoo, and discovered that she was from Colorado.

After the museum, Christine had booked us a nearby 'dinosaur tea,' which doubled as lunch; wishing to introduce the young ladies to that most British of rituals (but dinosaur-themed). There were small cakes and treats shaped like dinosaurs and dinosaur eggs, and dry ice providing a bit of smoke from the plates. They were pleased.

The cafe sits in a basement corner of The Ampersand Hotel (it was very fancy). On the way to the washrooms was this artwork that I quite liked, "Assemblage" (2012) by Alex Petrescu, although I couldn't find any references for the artist online.

From there, we headed over to the Natural History Museum (although we had hoped to spend far more time in the Victoria and Albert), a space that held an array of constellations upon the wall. I'm always amused to utilize Christine's phone for constellations, the Star Chart app that allows one to see constellations in whichever direction you point the phone, including all the ones that we can't see from North America, on the other side of the earth, such as "Billy the Cowboy," or "Three Bears in a Trenchcoat."

It is interesting to compare some of these other natural history museums in other places, other countries, and be reminded how lucky one has it by being near Canada's Museum of Nature; the one in Chichester was okay, but small; this one is very impressive, offering an array of alternate information, given the different geographical focus [Rose and I visited similar in Washington D.C. in 2015, but she moved too quickly for me to get any useful photos of such]. And it would be impossible to not be blown away by the architecture and scale of the building.

And then back to Hammersmith, where the young ladies spent some good time with their after-school cousins, and I crashed a bit, preparing for the evening. I had been working a couple of weeks attempting a poet-gathering at the pub right by brother-in-law's place, The Queen's Head, but schedules didn't necessarily align with interest. I had booked a table (which was good, as the pub was rather busy), and waited for those who might show (while going further through Luke Kennard's sonnets, and a collection of interviews with American poet Peter Gizzi I'd brought along as well).

There were a half-dozen local poets unable to make it, with two poets (I only discovered after the fact) that got caught up in other things, but it was great to reconnect with London-based Canadian poet and filmmaker John Stiles (right) after some twenty years, and what was Vancouver poet Sean Cranbury (left) doing in Hammersmith? The last (and only) time I'd seen John Stiles was in 2006, when Stephen Brockwell and I were in London touring around, and I attempted another gathering of poets: a evening quartet at a pub that included myself and Brockwell with London-based Stiles and Kim Morrissey, a writer/poet originally from Saskatchewan [see my notes on such here]; As for Sean, apparently he was at a hotel only a couple of blocks away, his wife, the writer Carleigh Baker informing him, I think rob is close to where you are and inviting poets for drinks? So random. It was a very nice evening: both Sean and John discussed their admiration for Alberta band The Smalls, and Sean was deeply impressed to discover that John had done a documentary on the band. John stayed for an hour or two, but Sean and I closed the place (which at this location is still the 11pm bell, in case you were wondering).

Friday, May 17, 2024: We woke for further adventuring, aiming ourselves for one of those double-decker bus tour things of get-on, get-off, taking the tube near Buckingham Palace. It took a while for an accumulated grouping of us to actually land a bus, as the stop by where we landed was out of service, and nothing was properly marked (and the guy selling tickets didn't seem terribly interested in helping properly).

But we rolled around for a bit, listening to bits of historical patter and buildings and sites and such (Hyde Park, for example), until Christine had us jump off at Hamley's, a seven-floor toyshop that she herself had visited as a child on family trips. Oh, there was much excitement. A whole floor of just Lego! A wing dedicated to Peppa Pig. British-specific Playmobile figures available only at this particular store, this particular location.

One of the twentysomething staff complimented my sunglasses, and I told him that I had picked them up from Corner Brook, Newfoundland; he said he was uncultured, and didn't know where that was (my fault, honestly). It reminded of Sean Cranbury responding to a British cab driver who asked where he was from, and the driver asking if Vancouver was in Norway? I am Greb, the young employee said, I am from Lithuania. We ended up in a conversation about sunglasses, one longer than you might imagine, really. Rose said he was only trying to sell me something (which he was not; we were literally discussing sunglasses).

Well, we couldn't stay in the toystore forever (and yes, some items were purchased), so we made for the bus again, attempting to loop around to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London [remember that other time we went through there?], before an attempt for a boat back to Westminster. Sean Cranbury sent a text offering that there was some kind of small publisher's fair happening at the Tate (and I had been hoping to get back to the Tate, especially after missing the David Hockney stuff the last time around), but there simply wasn't the time in the day (had I only known prior!). Sean only found out because he was literally at the Tate watching them set up, but didn't wish to hang around for the extra two hours or so before the event would have been open for the public. It would have been much fun to run through a London book fair, mainly to be able to meet so many folk in person for the first time. And apparently our tour-bus went by the building (and rooftop) where the Beatles played their final live show? (I wasn't able to determine which rooftop)

The Tower of London: it was interesting to move through this space a second time, catching elements I hadn't seen prior, especially when one is following the moods and interests of young children. During our prior visit, I think we were focusing more on the overview, including around the Tower itself, and Anne Boleyn. I followed Rose through a thread of corridors and towers, watching her catch (three times, on a loop) a short video history around Edward I, "the hammer of the Scots," and attempting to explain to her exactly what that entailed. Some of us might not have been in North America but for some of those histories; decisions that I attempted to let her know directly impacted certain threads of her genealogy. She does seem to have an interest in British history, which is interesting to watch (we spent a year or two watching Time Team, as you know; and I think she's done at least one school project on British Royals, including Elizabeth I). The young ladies attended to the ravens (at a distance), and admired the grounds. We went to see the Crown Jewels, Christine grimacing at the imperfect placement of the letters in the signage for same (some shoddy workmanship, there, Tower of London sign-folk).

My question: why were the puppets in the gift shop SCREAMING?

From there, we caught one of the tour-boats on the Thames, wandering slowly across the water to the perpetual banter of the First Mate, who claimed not to be a tour guide, but there for our safety. He was pretty entertaining, but there was a part of me that wondered if they put him on the microphone to keep him out of trouble. He informed that many asked how to keep straight Tower Bridge from London Bridge, as people were always confusing the two. He suggested that Tower Bridge is the bridge with TWO TOWERS ON IT, and London Bridge was the bridge that said, in big letters upon the side, LONDON BRIDGE. I think that clears all that up, certainly. He also pointed out a spa at our eye level underneath one of those bridges where patrons might occasionally forget that tour boats go by, and we might see some nakedness. He had us all wave in that direction. At least one person sitting in the spa waved back.

I also pointed out, to Rose, the London Eye, something we'd seen more than a couple of times across Doctor Who episodes. And did you know there's an Egyptian Obelisk along the Thames? Cleopatra's Needle, although the way the First Mate spoke, it was three thousand years old, as though it had been there since then, but apparently it was moved by the Victorians, in that way Victorians had of picking up items from other places and attempting to absorb as their own (apparently there's also one in New York). Hm.

Given Sean Cranbury was still in town, we met up at the pub again, he and I. Once the children (who were playing with their cousins) were settled, Christine came along for a drink as well, which was nice (her energies, especially by mid/late afternoons, doesn't always allow for such). As well, before either of them landed, I ended up in a conversation with one of the staff, who looked barely twenty, discovering that this very British-sounding young lady had parents who are both Canadian? Apparently they'd moved here before she was born, one from Montreal and the other from Toronto. She says she has cousins in Dorval (hey, that's where our car is!), Pointe-Claire and Banff. You should go to Banff, I said. It's lovely.

Saturday, May 18, 2024: We had to be up enough to be at the airport for 6am, which was miserable (we spent much of the afternoon prior, post-touristing and pre-drinks, packing ourselves and the young ladies), with brother-in-law Mike good enough to drive us to the airport. Half-way there, a text message saying our flight delayed five hours, so we turned right around and I went back to sleep. On our second attempt, we made it, and, thanks to father-in-law, a bit of time in the Air Canada Lounge (the young ladies going through the ridiculous magazines Christine had let them purchase at the shop in the train station). Just like the flight to London, both children refused sleep, watching as many movies as they could (with at least one if not both doing a re-watch of Mean Girls), before Rose actually crashed for a third of the flight. Six hour flight, five hours delayed. And once landed, back to our car in the parking lot (safe, but the windows coated in dust) and the two-hour drive back to Ottawa, as both children crashed rather immediately. They only woke once I had opened the doors in our driveway, and informed them that I'd picked up take-out (a happy meal for Rose, a&w for Aoife), completely unaware that I'd dropped their mother in the Beechwood area for a work-friend potluck she'd been hoping to get to.

I think it took at least three or four days for our sleep to settle. But at least school-mornings were easier on everyone.