Happy Canada Day!!! and Canadian Challenge 2 Wrap-Up

Happy Canada Day!!! July 1 is our national day, a holiday from coast to coast. Here in Ottawa we have a huge party on Parliament Hill, which I wrote about last year, here. This year, my husband isn't feeling very well, so we are staying close to home. We were going to go back to the Dinosaur Museum (which everyone who lives here calls the National Museum of Natural History), but this time we are going to a park nearby, Andrew Haydon Park, where there are rides and games and fun for everyone. As I'm doing this post before we head out because storms are expected later (and you know me and lightning.....) I'll add pictures later. We are all, by the way, wearing red again! Wherever you are, enjoy July 1!!


In keeping with today's theme, I thought I would wrap up the 2nd Canadian Book Challenge, Eh? and review a Canadian book, my last for the challenge. I'm so patriotic, aren't I?





Well, bad me. The Canadian Challenge 2 Eh? is over, and I read 3 out of 13 books for the challenge. So not so patriotic after all!! John at The Book Mine Set hosted this one for the second straight here, and his wrap-up is here. I was supposed to read 13 books by Charles de Lint. I read The Blue Girl, Wolf Moon, and The Dreaming Place. I haven't reviewed The Dreaming Place yet, so here is a quick review, as it was the best one out of the three, and a very good story.


The Dreaming Place was read for both Carl's Once Upon a Time 3 Challenge, as well as the Canadian Challenge 2 Eh? I was really hoping it would be better than The Blue Girl, which I reviewed here, and I am happy to say it is. The Dreaming Place is a young-adult novel about two cousins, Nina and Ash. Ash has come to live with her cousin after her mother has died. Ash is angry, and being stalked by a mysterious man. Nina has hippie parents, including a half-Native father, and this is important later in the book. Nina is unknowingly learning how to shape shift into the bodies of different animals. However, this is done through dreams, and she cannot control it. When she goes into a coma because she is trapped by a spirit - a manitou in the dream world, only Ash is able to go save her. Ash's negative emotions drew the spirit's attention, but Nina also has a link through her father to the manitou, that must be broken to save Nina. I really liked too, how Ash learns about her anger, and that she has choices.

This is a beautiful story. Nina and Ash, Cassie, the manitou, Nina's parents, all the secondary characters, are all well-drawn, believable. The dialogue is very good (if a bit dated by references to Debbie Gibson, and the Beauty and the Beast tv show!), realistic and concise - these people are talking to each other. I loved it. This is Charles at his best. The travelling in time and space, the use of Aboriginal mythology, the shape-shifting, the magic fo the shaman - these are all accurate. I say this because I have some knowledge of Aboriginal spirituality.

This is a story about the Manitou, the Native American spirits who live in the spirit world but can tap into ours, and how dangerous it is to play at religion. There are spirits all around, and the characters - all of them - come to understand that any promise to the spirits, in whatever form it takes - prayer, ritual, playing with one's heritage - does have a price. Knowing and honouring the path one follows is one thing, but making promises without knowing the cost, is another.

The Dreaming Place is one of Charles' older books, and in it I can see the beginning of his combining of Native American and Celtic mythology into one spirit world. The danger is the same - time moves differently, manitous and faeries can't be trusted, and the spirits of the dead wander here.

This book is 4.8 out of 5. I would make it five if it were longer! A very good book.

So another challenge not completed. And I plan on entering the third round of this challenge! I refuse to give up, I will get to 13 Canadian books read in a year! I have some books already lined up: Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson (thank you Chris at Book-a-rama for your review!), Tanya Huff - (at least three to catch up on some of her series), Kelly Armstrong (same), and more Charles de Lint, since the one book I really wanted to read, Forests of the Heart, I didn't get to. Plus, since I have Canadian history books to read for the Classics by 19th Century Women Challenge - A Gentlewoman in Upper Canada by Anne Langton, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles by Anna Brownell Jameson, - and I want to read Three Day Road and possibly Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden, I think I have a better chance this coming year of succeeding. Anyway, I plan to!!!

Have a very Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canadian book bloggers, and enjoy this day wherever you are in the world. Happy Reading!

Happy Canada Day!

It is Canada's 141st birthday today. It is a national holiday, and all over the country there are parades, picnics, and in the evening, fireworks. The biggest party is here in the nation's capital, Ottawa. Every year Ottawans, Canadians from all over the country, and our many wonderful thousands of tourists, go onto the Hill, Parliament Hill, and from noon on, when the Prime Minister and the Governor General (who is the Queen's Representative, as the Queen of England is our titular Head of State) give their speeches, it is one long day of eating, drinking, walking around,listening to music, and finally, at 10 pm, fireworks over Parliament. In the meantime, better than any words, are some pictures I took while on the hill. Since the colours of our flag are white and red, many people wear one or the other on Canada Day, especially if they are going to the Hill. The best place to watch the fireworks is either from directly in front of parliament or from the river.

Parliament Hill - it sits slightly higher than anything around it, and gives a commanding view across the river to Gatineau and the province of Quebec. It is a gorgeous setting for our Parliament, the clock tower is yes, built in homage to Big Ben in London, and during the year, the grounds are accessible to the public daily. You can see how much rain we've been having because the trees are so green!


This is my husband Toby, and our two youngest children, Holly-Anne and Graham. You can just see the clock tower in the back ground. All the shots are from the east side of Parliament. We had gone to the Museum of Nature (called "The Dinosaur museum by Ottawa people in the know......)


Can you guess why? This is the new revamped display, and of course our kids's favourite part of the museum. We did go to every other floor, and then back outside back up to the Hill. By the time we came back from the museum, it was almost impossible to get close to the centre of the Hill. I will be taking pictures of Parliament from the other side of the river one day soon, as part of my 'what I see as I walk home' post I plan to do, since I have a spectacular view of the downtown and Parliament buildings when I take this particular route. Today, though, by 2 pm, it was almost impassable! And yes, if you look closely, we are wearing red or white! I admit it! we were part of the crowd today!!

We are not going back for the fireworks; the weather is so good today - a mild 25c, sunny, no clouds, no rain, no threat of storms as in past years - that by 2:00 it was mad with people on the hill,and there will be well over 100,000 people gathered to watch them because it is going to be such a beautiful evening. My husband and I estimate there will be between 200,00 and 300,00 people going downtown over the day, today. If not more. That's too many people for me! Though a great party! We're off to Britannia Beach shortly, which is 10 minutes walk from our house, and where yours truly might get to open a book.

Looking down towards the Rideau Centre, a shopping centre which is also the heart of downtown. The crossroads lead to the National Art Gallery (again photos will come on my later what I see from work walk) and the heart of the Market, a local summer fresh food market, and filled with the most amazing shops and stores. Very trendy, very crowded today, so we didn't bother. Most weekends it is the most popular part of Ottawa to go to. It is also where the oldest buildings we have are located, and in old days was called Lower Town, or Bytown. I love walking around looking at the old stonework, and the art gallery, St Patrick's Cathedral, and just people watching while I shop. The Rideau Centre is named for the Rideau river (which feeds the Ottawa River behind Parliament), and the Rideau Canal, which bridge we are standing on. The canal is now a World Heritage site, and still functions; it was designed to make it passable for boats from the Ottawa river to the St Lawrence, and is a series of waterways and canals built in the very early 1800's, as Ottawa itself was just growing as a town. The locks still work, and during the summer boats travel up and down the Ridea Canal in the middle of the city. Today though, it is a sea of white and red and people! Including our two:


catching some shade.... If you look closely, you can see they each have a Maple Leaf on their cheek, and Holly-Anne has the word on her arm.


I love the man's shirt! I had no idea, of course, he was even there, but it's a fitting way to end this little picture-logue of Ottawa celebrating Canada's birthday. The Maple Leaf is what we are most famous for. I told you we wear our colours proudly today!!!

And - I finished Piece of My Heart last night, so I read 10 books for the Canadian Book Challenge. Hurray! I will review later. Time for the barbecue (another Canadian tradition on July 1) and then the beach!!

By the way - the streets around Parliament Hill are closed off for the day to traffic. It's not a pedestrian mall! Normally filled with traffic, it is the one day we can walk through the downtown core freely. So that's why the shot of the Rideau centre is so remarkable - not just for the sea of people, but that this happens only once a year too!

Happy Canada Day, everyone! Happy birthday, Canada!