Tag: Jottings

In 1965 we were living at 10 Maple Lane in the Edinburgh section of Ottawa. Less than 2 blocks away was the wrought iron fence surrounding the huge estate known as Rideau Hall, the official residence of the Governor General of Canada.

A friend of mine (I believe from the boy scouts, but I don’t recall his name) suggested one night that we sneak through the fence and go exploring. This, of course, would be tresspassing and could get us into trouble, so I wasn’t keen to participate. However, he explained that his father was the Aide de camp (personal assistant) to the Governor General (at the time Jules Leger), and so he had been on the grounds before.

In any case, being adventurous 12-year olds, we did sneak in. Looking at pictures of that fence today I can’t imagine how we got through. I just remember that somehow where the wrought iron posts met with the cement columns the space was enough for us to barely squeeze through.

We spent probably about 40 minutes walking around and exploring in the dark. For some reason I don’t recall anymore, my friend was carrying a coffee can filled with Red devil firecrackers!

My friend instructed me that if anyone saw us or asked us what we were doing I should not say anything but let him do the talking. He explained that there were other houses on the property that various servants lived in with their families, so it was not unusual to see children on the grounds.

As it turns out, we took a much greater risk than we anticipated… because that night there was a foreign diplomat visiting Rideau Hall, and RCMP officers were everywhere

At one point as we were walking down a small dark street, a security guard pointed a flashlight at us. My friend simply waved at him and said hi with a big smile and walked on! He explained to me that since he didn’t run away but acted as though he belonged there, the guard simply assumed he was one of the children who lived on the property.

After that we decided we’d better leave since we noticed the large presence of police. So that was our adventure, one that luckily ended without incident. Who knows what would have happened had they stopped us and noticed the can of firecrackers!

Sometime in the late 60’s I went exploring with some friends up at our cottage at Battle Lake, near Perkins-Sur-Le-Lac, Quebec. We took our boats through the narrow channel connecting our lake to the much larger Lac Rheaume and then went to a small bay where we had previously noticed something that looked like an old path through the wilderness. We hiked along that old path, using branches to chase away the vicious horseflies that kept trying to bite us.

After a while we came upon a very tiny but beautiful lake with the bluest water I’d ever seen. Completely untouched, it was quite a sight. Unfortunately I don’t seem to have taken a photo of the lake — probably because I was only shooting black and white film.

Exploring further, we found what we quickly realized was a long-abandoned mica mine! The site consisted of a collapsed wooden shack containing some old rusty equipment. One piece looked a bit like a tractor but seemed like it maybe was an air compressor of some sort, presumably to power drills or other mining equipment. There was lots of mica all around the ground. (Mica is a unique mineral that separates into thin, almost transparent amber-colored sheets. It was used as insulation for many years, especially around WWII when it was in great demand.)

I found a few photos that I took of the shed and equipment. Wish i had taken more!

POSTSCRIPT: I just looked up Gardner-Denver (the name on the abandoned equipment.) They still exist, and are in fact specialists in air compression equipment, so my guess at the time was correct!

Doing a bit more research, I found an amazing paper written in 1997 that describes the entire Perkins-Sur-Le-Lac area from a mining perspective. For those of us who remember Lac Batteille (Battle Lake) and Rheaume, this makes for fascinating reading!

A brief article I found online…

Here is a satellite photo of the area, including the two lakes mentioned…

The following are the photos I took of the abandoned mine shack and equipment…

In April 1968 the Canadian Liberal Party held a convention to elect a new party leader. The convention was held in Ottawa’s stadium at that time, the Civic Ottawa Center.

Although he was not seen as a favorite to win, the charismatic Pierre Elliot Trudeau had garnered a lot of support as the convention arrived. However there was a large field of candidates, and a definite anti-Trudeau movement. This made for a very exciting atmosphere.

In those years I had become somewhat politically active — or at least interested — and, together with three friends from school, decided to try to attend the convention. As I recall, none of us had any particular political leaning… we were just interested in the process

The only way we could attend was by coming as volunteers to work for various candidates holding signs in the stands and cheering them on. Although the four of us were in favor of Trudeau, when we got to his offices we were told that he already had a full compliment of volunteers and was not allowed to take more. This was quite a disappointment, but it didn’t take us long to decide what to do… We went to the office of a competing candidate, Paul Hellyer, and volunteered to carry his signs. This worked, and we were not the only ones to do it: as soon as we got our passes and got into the actual convention we dumped his signs and took Trudeau signs. Clearly, the Trudeau camp expected this, and they had people waiting inside with tons of extra signs.

As I recall, the convention went on for about 3 days, and since high school was still in session, we were all skipping school for a couple of days. The experience however was an educational one!

We listened to all the candidates speak, and watched as the party delegates voted. It actually took five ballots to decide the leader, since a majority of 50% was required to win. After the results of each ballot was announced, we could observe lots of delegates visiting the various candidate camps, trying to convince the ones who were not doing well to drop out. It was actually very interesting.

In any case, I do have a few pictures that I took at the time both from inside the convention, and of my three friends as we proceeded to the convention in downtown Ottawa. (Unfortunately, there was no such thing as a selfie camera so I am not in those shots!)

On Sunday, June 30, 1968 (I believe that was the date) there was a very violent storm centered around Denbury and Princeton, and down Denbury to Richmond Road. Was very likely a tornado but never officially called. Luckily it was a Sunday and summer break had just begun, because otherwise there would be lots of kids walking to and from school along this route.

I was babysitting my younger siblings and herded them into the basement as the sky got very dark and the winds picked up. I had always been interested in storms, so I stayed upstairs to watch. I remember the sky turned a strange dark yellow/brown color and fierce winds came up out of nowhere. I watched as lightning struck a transformer on a pole, and everything went flying into the street with huge blue-green sparks. I saw many large tree branches crashing down but luckily the huge tree right across the street didn’t fall. Just down the block, a few other trees didn’t survive the winds — and these were really huge, old trees. Some were split open and some were uprooted!

Right after the storm I went out with my camera (of course).

On June 27, 2010 I was sitting in my upstairs home office at my computer. There was a thunderstorm outside which was pretty common for summertime in Chicago (Skokie).

Suddenly there was the loudest CRACK of lightning like an explosion. Looking out my window I could see that the largest tree in the backyard had been hit by lightning. A large part of the upper portion of the tree had been split off and was lying in the yard and out to the street.

Running downstairs to investigate I found some major damages besides the tree itself: our in-ground sprinkler system and our outdoor lighting system were both destroyed.

I was amazed that even though these were both low-voltage systems with very low capacity wiring, the wires were somehow able to carry the enormous voltage surge of the lighting conducted through the ground. Moreover, that surge of electrical energy got translated to physical energy when it reached any control points. As the photos (taken and annotated for insurance) show, the control boxes for both systems were physically blown off the building! And in the case of the sprinkler control, the box was blown open, wires ripped, and components flung as far as 20 feet!

The photos show the damages, and effectively illustrate the amazing power of electrical energy. I remain surprised that the fine wires didn’t just melt and act like a fuse, but rather delivered this huge surge of energy.

Afterwards, I found that in my office an external disc drive had its electronics destroyed and also a small battery-operated clock had its time reset! The clock was intriguing because it was not connected to anything, so it was simply the electro-magnetic pulse from the bolt of lightning that affected it!

The photos that follow are annotated for insurance claim purposes.

Although we moved from Toronto to Chicago in 1992, I had never bothered to become a US citizen. As a “green card” holder, I had all the same rights as a citizen except for voting, so it never seemed important to me.

That changed in 2019. Like him or not as a person, I believe that President Donald Trump was great for America. I watched from the sidelines as he won the presidency in 2016, and was so impressed with his policies and real, definitive actions that I wanted the privilege of voting for him in 2020.

So I finally applied for citizenship, after living in the US for 26 years.

Of course I still hold Canadian citizenship, as one is able to have dual citizenship. I got my first US passport in July 2019.

Over many years I shot many scenic images for my own interest. I thought it made sense to post a selection of my favorites with a bit of commentary….

While our house was being built in Skokie, I spent some time designing and building a stand-alone wooden sukkah. Although I had built a simple one years earlier in Toronto, I wanted this one to be better and hopefully last for many years. Another goal was that I should be able to put it together by myself every year, since the kids were still too young to help.

Although I had a good idea what I wanted to do, I did get some good construction ideas from watching the carpenters working on the house — such as using liquid nails in addition to screws to attach the walls to the studs.

My design used cross-beams that fit together with cut slots, so I could assemble and disassemble it easily. Those cross beams were also slotted to fit over the walls, so they would hold the walls in place while I bolted the panels to each other.

I included a single Plexiglas window, and a hinged door with a latch. Chicago can be cold that time of year, so being able to close it in somewhat was important. For schach I used individual bamboo poles, which looked nice but were a pain to lay out and bundle for storage. In later years they had bamboo “mats” available, which I switched to in the last couple of years before we moved to Florida.

I must say, I was proud of the result, and as a testament to the quality we used it every year for 12 years — and when we moved a “gemach” was happy to take it.

Note the slotted cross-beam assembly… Not only easy to assemble, but the cross pieces would server to hold newly-installed panels in place until I could bolt them together.

The door was fully functional and latching…

When putting the sukkah up by myself, I would start with the door panel because it could stand up by itself when the door was in the open position. I was then able to bring the next panel in line and connect them using two lag bolts with wing nuts (as all the panels were connected to each other)

Many people would make such a sukkah with the smooth side of the panel on the inside and the side with the framing on the outside… I chose the opposite for two reasons: 1) I liked the look of the finished side on the outside, and 2) It made assembly and disassembly much easier since I could insert the bolts from the inside, and also use 1×2’s to prop to the panels before I was ready to bolt them together.

The framed plexiglass window…

In later years I added what I jokingly called “space beams” — those 1×2 inch pieces that appear curved in the corners of the sukkah. They were just loose, but propped under the top panel support and then wedged tightly against the cement. This added support against the winds which were sometimes significant.

In the early years when the kids were young I had to do everything myself, but later my kids were of great assistance. Here Moshe is seen putting up the bamboo poles…

After the bamboo was up, 6-8 bundles of cedar branches were spread thickly over the top…

In the last couple of years I replaced the individual bamboo poles with newly-available bamboo mats, making the process much easier… Note also the lighting: I chose to use three floodlights pointing downwards and reflecting off the white tables. This orientation also made the lights safe in the rain since the sockets pointed downwards.

We used two six-foot tables, covered with a tablecloth and a thick clear vinyl. Then, to make clean-ups easier, we’d put a thin disposable plastic over the top and replace it after meals. During the day, the window not only provided light, but allowed us to keep an eye on the kids playing on the swing set.

Since the patio had a slope to it (away from the house), I always propped an old metal pipe against the back side to keep it more level.

In 1977 Russian artist Vladimir Dashevsky along with his son Gregory (also an artist) presented the Lubavitcher Rebbe with a large portrait of him for his birthday. Although I no longer recall the exact relationship, Vladimir was a cousin of mine (through my grandfather Shaya Lipson.)

Jewish Educational Media (JEM) preserved a video of this presentation in 770, below. As Gregory lifted the portrait high and showed it to the crowds, the Rebbe showed his wonderful sense of humor, signaling for them to put it down and saying “They see the original!”

The Rebbe then encouraged the Dashevskys to grow in their Yiddishkeit, explaining that they originally didn’t know how to paint, so growing in Jewish knowledge and observance is the same…

A couple of years after this presentation, we visited Vladimir in his home in Brighton Beach. His English wasn’t great, and our Russian was non-existent, but we had a nice visit. In honor of our relationship he gave us an original drawing of the Rebbe, which we of course still have:

Over the next few years, the Rebbe encouraged them to specialize in painting Jewish themes, which they did. One well-known example::

In the late 1960’s my mother went to see a Chanukah menorah that her friend’s Polish neighbor wanted to sell. It was obviously very old, but was also very dirty and most of the silver plating was worn off. But seeing that it was made is Warsaw, and being that her parents were from Poland, she thought it would be nice to have, so she bought it.

Being the mechanical type, I immediately decided to try to clean it up, and disassembled all the component parts. Even after the best cleaning job I could do, it still looked pretty poor after it was re-assembled. But because of the sentimental attachment, we kept it on display in our home for many years.

Curious as to how it came to be in the hands of a Polish lady who knew nothing about it other than guessing that is was some sort of Jewish object, my mother asked her. She related that she had recently gone back to Poland to visit her parents. Her mother had decided to put in a garden in the back yard — and when digging it she found this buried in the ground!

Of course my mother knew that many Jews buried valuables when they were being rounded up and sent to the camps, believing that they would return and not wanting these items to be stolen.

Recently (2024) I asked my mother if I could have this piece, and she readily agreed. This time, I decided to have the silver plated parts re-plated, to try to restore its original appearance.

A local Jewish silversmith did the work, and after it was re-assembled, it looked wonderful!

A bit of internet searching uncovered some interesting facts….

As can be seen here, some versions of this same menorah were completely silver-plated. I found other versions that were part brass and part silver-plate like ours is. Also, ours is missing the original crown on top, as well as the side cups. Note that the two elevated side cups were intended for use as Shabbos lights for the Shabbos during Chanukah.