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| Last updated at 8:36 AM on 06/07/08 |
Made in Canada 
PAM FRAMPTON 
The Telegram
"We peer so suspiciously at each other that we cannot see that we Canadians are standing on the mountaintop of human wealth, freedom and privilege."
- Pierre Elliott Trudeau
I owe Stuart McLean an apology. A couple of years ago, I became disenchanted with his popular CBC Radio show, "The Vinyl Cafe."
Actually, it went beyond disenchantment. I scoffed at his cosy little world, his interminable stories of Dave and Morley and all things quaintly Canadian.
G. and I often find ourselves near a radio Sunday afternoons, when the show airs, and I began to dread the sound of McLean's voice. It ignited a deep cynicism that - being an optimist - made me feel uncomfortable.
I felt that McLean's world, full of moose jokes and country quilts, coffee shops and silos, ice hockey and maple syrup, was false and facile; that it represented a Canada that existed only within the confines of his show. It was all too precious, too sweet - a romantic, idealized, unrealistic version of the country that did not jibe with where I lived.
What did McLean know about life on the margins, in a rough and rugged province where some people still pit themselves against nature to eke out a living? There were no Daves and Morleys here.
Even when "The Vinyl Cafe" took its show on the road and broadcast live from St. John's, it was all about the big landmarks - Signal Hill and The Narrows, Jellybean Row and Cape Spear. It didn't seem to reflect real life or ordinary citizens.
All this skepticism, you have to understand, arose right about the time that Stephen Harper became prime minister, back in 2006.
It makes sense, in a way. Here was Harper with his not-so-hidden agenda, a man who is chillingly conservative when you look beyond the aw-shucks face and the neatly combed hair.
"Canada's New Government" seemed to want to take the country backwards, to erode women's rights and stifle the left wing. Harper was muzzling cabinet ministers and shutting out the media and peddling propaganda.
Suddenly, this was a Canada I didn't recognize, and McLean's on-air love-in with all things Canuck seemed even more out of step.
And so it became easy to cling to the notion of Newfoundland as the perennial outsider; the fiercely independent country cousin always ready to take on urbane Upper Canada.
Last week, that changed for me.
Life in the country
Our family vacation took us to visit relatives in farm country in southeastern Ontario - a wonderful acreage with chickens and horses and turkeys and a cow. It's an idyllic place of fertile green valleys and rolling hills, where majestic trees reach up to brush the sky and gurgling creeks widen out into still, deep pools. We woke each morning to the boastful call of a rooster and enjoyed watching the horses brush flies off each other with their swishing tails.
One night, the house phone rang and G. picked it up.
"Are you missing a heifer?" the voice asked.
Well, G. looked out the window, and sure enough, we were. Selma, a young cow, had somehow escaped from the pasture and had enjoyed some time at large before being corralled into a neighbour's chicken pen.
Eventually, a horse trailer was hitched to the back of a pickup and a group of us went to collect the cow.
But getting a skittish heifer to walk up a makeshift plywood ramp and into a trailer is not as easy as you might think.
Selma made a run for it.
For the next two hours or so, we tried to persuade her to go home. G. and some others waded into fields full of biting flies to try to get her out of there. But cows, we learned, have minds of their own.
Just as we'd get close to Selma, she'd bolt. We stretched our arms out wide, like human fences, and yelled to get her to run in the right direction. But when it comes right down to it, when 600 pounds of beef is barrelling down on you and crashing through fences, you get out of the way.
And so, we found ourselves at twilight on the side of a dusty country road, some of us carrying hockey sticks - what else would a Canadian use as a cattle prod? - swatting at flies and waiting for a cow lying down in tall grass to make her next move.
A pickup approached, and then slowed. The driver stopped and rolled down the window.
"Ketch her yet?" he asked.
"Nope," I said.
"They're tricky," he acknowledged, grinning widely before driving off - as laconic a reply as you'd get from any Newfoundlander.
And I thought then of the many kindnesses we'd been shown - the hospitality of our hosts, the generosity of the woman at the golf club who had given us fresh-picked strawberries, the artist couple who kept Selma in their chicken pen until we could figure out what to do, the friendly waitress who told us of her remarkable life journey from Brighton, England to Brighton, Ont. - and I felt as at home as I ever had, and everything was warm and familiar.
Right here, in Canada.
Pam Frampton is The Telegram's story editor. She can be reached by e-mail at pframpton@thetelegram.com. Read her columns online at www.thetelegram.com.
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06/07/08
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Edward from Leduc County, Alberta writes: I had to phone our farmer landlord at 2 o'clock one morning. I'd heard this queer sound (like some serious munching) outside our bedroom window, grabbed a flashlight and took a look. There was the HUGE east end of a very pregnant cow facing west. I called to tell him one of his cows had busted out. Ten minutes later he was out in the yard rustling up the mudder-to-be with his pickup truck, headlights bouncing around on full bright. (The farmer) is growing canola. It's the same yellow as buttercups when it blooms so the canola fields (there's a lot them in Alberta) all turn brilliant in early July, my but it can some stinky though.
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| Posted 06/07/2008 at 6:50 PM | Alert an Editor | Link to comment |
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JM from NL writes: Reading this, I heard Stuart McLean's voice coming through loud and clear.
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| Posted 07/07/2008 at 8:40 AM | Alert an Editor | Link to comment |
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