Canada Waits For Christmas – December 13th

Welcome to this virtual Avent calendar showcasing Canadian art and culture. Impossibly stuck behind the next tiny cardboard door is a life-size Ian Tyson singing the classic Four Strong Winds which he wrote in 1962, and performed with his former-wife Sylvia Tyson. Wow, upon listening to this again, I can see why it became a classic. Brilliant. The following recording of the song is sans Sylvia.

“Still, I wish you’d change your mind
If I asked you one more time,
But we’ve been through that a hundred times or more.”

In this video, Ian Tyson tells the story of the beautiful Greek girl from Vernon, B.C. whom he was missing when he was in New York’s Greenwich Village hanging out with Bob Dylan. According to Ian Tyson, he wrote the song in about 20 minutes.

Today is British Columbia artist and author Emily Carr‘s birthday. She would have been 151 years old.

Emily Carr, painter, writer (born 13 December 1871 in Victoria, BC; died 2 March 1945 in Victoria). Along with Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven and David Milne, Emily Carr was one of the pre-eminent Canadian painters of the first half of the 20th century, and perhaps the most original.

doris shadbolt, the canadian encyclopedia

“Down deep we all hug something. The great forest hugs its silence. The sea and the air hug the spilled cries of sea-birds. The forest hugs only silence; its birds and even its beasts are mute. It must have hurt the Indians dreadfully to have the things they had always believed trampled on and torn from their hugging.”

emily carr, from Klee Wyck

Well, upon reading about Emily Carr and her deep grief over the plight of Vancouver Island’s Indigenous (Haida) people, I have no jokes to make. Take care and hug what and who you love. – Lori