The secret “other anthem” I knew first

Thank you for visiting again for another post in the “O Canada” category.

I was born in the proverbial small town in the prairies, a railway town with a small population. But like many, maybe most, small prairie towns it had a hockey rink and a curling rink.

In Canada hockey and curling aren’t just winter sports that a small minority are interested in. In Canada talking about hockey and curling, especially curling in my family was “what we talked about”.

On my family curling team “growing up” my Dad was the skip, my Mom played third, and I played second and my brother was lead. We played in leagues every winter and it felt natural that we did; it was never even discussed as optional. I remember when I had my learners driving licence driving the family to the weekly games every Sunday night.

My father curled for over 50 years, and if my parents went away then my Grandparents “subbed” in for them.

I think for families all across Canada watching and playing curling some time in their lives is just normal and it’s definitely multigenerational.

It’s not uncommon for curlers to begin in their teens and curl until they are seniors!

Of the 1.5 million people in the world who have curled; 1.3 million of them live here in Canada.

(Canada used to dominate curling I think it would be fair to say but now there are many other countries on the podium. This year Canada won the Gold world curling championship trophy for women (Rachel Homan’s team out of Ottawa) and the men won Silver (Brad Gushue’s team from St. John’s).

Curling is definitely a world sport now and so winning both this year was really sweet!

But winter offers more than curling to Canadians – it also offers hockey.

When I was only 6 years old I had skates and I played on a team although my skating skills were something my Mom joked about for years. I guess it was more like snowshoeing the way I moved and all of us just bunched up around the puck.

My Dad even made an ice rink one year in the front yard which earned him the “super dad” title that winter.

As I grew up it was normal for winter to include these important items; toboggans, curling shoes and brooms, hockey skates and hockey sticks.

I love those roots and that I, like many other Canadians, look forward to winter because that’s curling and winter seasons!

I would remiss if I didn’t answer the question to the title of this post –

What was the “secret” other anthem I grew up with?

I think every boy I grew up with could hum the music to “Hockey Night in Canada” before they memorized the O Canada theme but it helped it was sung at every game♥

The opening bars of the Saturday night musical theme for “Hockey Night in Canada” are deeply imbedded in my memory and I am fairly confident that before I memorized “O Canada” – Hockey Night in Canada was my anthem, at least on Saturday night♥

Thanks for reading and visiting- ♥ David

Please enjoy the 30 seconds of opening music to Hockey Night in Canada!

O Canada, Our home and native land

Thank you for returning for another post in my “O Canada” category.

Canada’s national anthem is “O Canada” and I love that it’s easy to sing and when it is sung at events.

I think what I enjoy the most is when the crowd sings along with the anthem. I don’t want to be the only one singing and neither do you. LOL

While researching this post I listened to O Canada many times, and different anthem singers including Sarah McLachlan (famous Canadian singer songwriter – more than 40 million records sold)

I think the version that is my favourite remains the Nylons. (The Nylons were an a cappella group founded in 1978 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

I remember them singing “O Canada” during half time of a Grey Cup game, which is the Canadian Football league championship.

I also heard them sing it live at a concert once and I was in row 11 in the hall that evening – what a fun night that was, and of course that was how the night began – no instruments except them – the beginning and the percussion they make with their voices always makes me smile ♣

Here is a link to the Nylons singing O Canada in Ottawa on July 1st which is Canada Day, the celebration of confederation July 1, 1867.

Canada Day – The Nylons singing “O Canada” a cappella

But I digress, here are the lyrics to O Canada

O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all of us command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

And for fun, the Molson Fridge Commercial in which the key to a cold drink is properly singing O Canada

For Thee !

Thanks for joining today, I sincerely hope you enjoyed the topic today, and the Nyons singing O Canada ! – ♥ David

Because I Can Project

This post is one that is very close to my heart because I am a kidney transplant recipient from a living donor – last week I had my 5th birthday. My Third Transplant

My third transplant was a chain just like the one Shelley was involved in.

Today for this reason an extra big big BIG thank you for reading my blog today, consider it my birthday gift ♥♥♥

Shelley is a regular Mom who dotes on her boys

I remember the first time I sat down and visited with Shelley Hunt, it was a decade ago.

It was summer time and a hot Okanagan day, her two adorable little boys were splashing and enjoying the waterpark down at Skaha lake. I chatted with her as we sat on a bench and watched them splash and laugh.

At that time she was waiting to donate one of her kidneys to a young boy thousands of miles away and she told me how she was making sure that she was super healthy to give him the best kidney ever!

Shelley loves to hike and be outdoors and she was doing it all while getting ready to give a gift that he could never hope to repay.

It was a conversation that I would never forget.

Shelley said she’d been accepted into an organ donation chain that had her attached to a five-year-old boy in Langley.

Shelley was not a medical match to the boy in Ontario, but when one of her kidneys goes to her recipient, it will trigger someone else’s donation to the boy in Ontario that she wanted to donate to.

“The chains can actually be quite long and complex, but it usually consists of six pairings,” she explained,

Shelley said it all began with a pamphlet in the mail

Shelley said it started in March 2012 when she spotted a pamphlet about organ donation in her junk mail and she decided to research the subject.

“I never look through my junk mail and so it was exactly the right time in my life,”

When she learned of the huge need that exists for organ donors, she knew she’d just heard her calling and what she wanted to do.

She began by organizing some community events, such as the Wishmakers Walk and annual Easter egg hunt at LocoLanding to sign up organ donors but wanted to take on something bigger.

“I was really looking for something that was a lot more direct. I didn’t want to just hand over a cheque to somebody; I wanted to be involved in something,”

The Project Vision was born after she met Jess,

The Because I Can project began when she posted on Facebook a video she made with her son about the need for organ donors.

Co-founder Jess Royan, a casual acquaintance at the time, got in touch with her and “literally within 24 hours we decided we were going to start a national campaign,”

Because I Can – The Project

Please watch the trailer

The “BECAUSE I CAN” project tells Shelley’s story but its overall goal is to raise awareness for all the other people waiting for a transplant.

In British Columbia 95% of the population supports organ donation while only 21% have registered their decision to be an organ donor. And get this fact I didn’t realize – Only 3 in 1000 registered donors will die in a way that allows for deceased organ donation.

But change and awareness is growing and that’s part of the Project.

Nova Scotians already have the opportunity to be organ donors unless they opt out.

Nova Scotia has the highest rate of organ and tissue donor registration in the country, but donation rates could still be higher.

In Nova Scotia everyone is a potential donor, and will be automatically referred to donation programs to determine if they are good candidates. 

Not Based on a True Story – It is a true story !

The documentary is amazing to watch, and I truly hope you will ♥

Here is the link – watch ten minutes or as much as you want. If you can. BECAUSE I CAN – TELUS ORIGINAL LINK

♥Hugs, David

BE AN ORGAN DONOR – Because you Can! link here to learn more

Organ donation includes kidneys, pancreas, heart, liver, lungs and small bowel. Tissue donation includes cornea (tissue that covers the front of the eye), sclera (white part of the eye), skin, bones, tendons and heart valves. 

A single organ donor can save up to 8 lives, and a single tissue donor can help up to 75 people.

You’re 6 times more likely to need a transplant than become an organ donor.

I am Canadian or Fun with a red Fridge

This post is about multiculturalism in Canada and I hope you enjoy this latest post in the “O Canada” category. (smile)

What does that word “multiculturalism” mean in reality especially because I live in a small city in western Canada.

I admit I live in a small city and the big cities like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver are tremendously more diverse but multiculturalism is celebrated and encouraged here in sunny Penticton also.

In this little city we have immigrants from Sri Lanka, Jordan, Turkey, Iran, Vietnam, Korea, Nepal and more even, Ontario (gosh ! ha ha chuckle) .

It is not uncommon for there to be special events throughout the year being held by various cultural groups in one of the parks and this includes parades, and of course, there’s the food! Yay!

According to the internet, annual immigration in Canada amounts to almost 500,000 new immigrants – one of the highest rates per population of any country in the world.

As of 2023, there were more than eight million immigrants with permanent residence living in Canada – roughly 20 percent of the total Canadian population.

The Canadian government recognizes multiculturalism in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and created the Multiculturalism Act in the late 1980’s.

I think nearly all Canadians agree that immigrants make our country BOTH a better place to live and are important for the economy.

The Aga Khan described Canada as the most pluralist society on the face of the globe.

Now some fun stuff ♥

Molson Beer in Canada has done a few advertising campaigns featuring a red fridge that only opens when certain “Canadian” related criteria are met. (More on this later)

In 2015 a new Molson Fridge made it’s public debut. It would only open  if the words “I am Canadian” are uttered in six different languages.

That new fridge uses Google’s Speech Recognition API and other technologies to recognize 40 languages, from French to Hindi.

Once the fridge recognizes the key phrase “I am Canadian,” the doors finally open to reveal an abundance of ice cold vintage Molson Canadian cans.

See it in action!

I am Canadian – teamwork for cold beer and laughs

If the youtube is not visible click link to see a fun group opening a beer fridge by voice saying I AM CANADIAN in multiple languages – LINK

Thank you for reading, and hugs to everyone who likes and comments – David ♥

In Canada, our diversity is our strength. Our social, political, economic and cultural progress is not made in spite of our differences, but thanks to our differences.

Diverse Photos of Canada – See for yourself!

Canada the Beautiful

Woke up this morning to blue skies, birds chasing one another outside my window and Jane’s pictorial tour of Canada.

There are many photos here that I like and that I want to investigate and one of the Okanagan that is the valley just a few minutes south of my humble hut.

Canada is beautiful – enjoy the views! – David

CLICK HERE to see the photos

There are All sorts of Unexpected Things in Life

It’s me again ♥ Thanks for visiting and taking time to comment – it makes my day reading the comments and replying.

Today my post belongs to a couple of different categories such as Okanagan Related, and Thinking Out Loud. All the categories are along the right hand side of the page.

My life and yours includes all sorts of unexpected things, hopefully mostly happy, and I am sure you have some stories to tell on that subject.

My bike rides are all about the unexpected for me. I am talking about spotting eagles, osprey, coots, bufflehead ducks and even snakes.

Snakes? Yes; I was riding along the river channel a few day ago and I unexpectedly nearly ran over this tiny snake below. I circled back as I wasn’t even sure it was a snake, as I hardly got a look at it. It was a little one and he had a tiny black head and small tongue flicking out – he was pretty timid though. I thought that would be it for snake sighting that day, but I was wrong.

Only about 50 feet further along that I found another larger snake, and it was less inclined to move away when I got closer.

Since I know that small and larger teeth hurt, (guess how I learned that!) I left these snakes alone. I used pick up wild mice and things but after a few little bites I stopped doing that. (I guess I am learning, albeit slowly)

I am told that years ago, the Okanagan used to have a lot of snakes and in the hills when people went for a walk they swept the sidewalk in front of them to move the snakes out of the way. It is startling for me to imagine that now, it would make a person think twice before putting out the garbage at night!

Unexpected surprises come in all types including apparently lost wallets.

I lost my wallet in Stanley Park back in the 1970’s so there is still hope apparently because of this recent “found” wallet story that happened here in Penticton just recently.

Long Lost Wallet (story by Taya Fast – Global News)

Two construction workers separated by more than 60 years along Skaha Lake Road in Penticton, B.C., are now connected through a long-lost personal item because Scott Walls, was working in the area back in early March when something caught his eye buried in the roadway.

“We were putting in a sewer main and as we were excavating the hole we always watch for other utilities or conflicting things in the ground,” said Walls.

“When the operator was pulling the dirt back, I saw a red credit card — I didn’t know at the time that’s what it was — and it happened to be a leather wallet.”

The wallet was almost perfectly preserved and stamped on it was the name Roger Desfosses. Inside the wallet was an Arthur A. Voice Construction credit card.

Walls took to social media with the information and eventually connected with Defosses’s son, Danny, and widow Gisele Desfosses, who both live in the Edmonton area.

“It was neat,” said Walls. “We find a lot of things in the ground, but usually they’re glass bottles and plastic, but to find something leather and then have a name attached to it and then a credit card with the company he worked for, and the expiry date was 1964… that was super cool.”

Only a couple of days later, the Desfosses family drove out to Penticton from Alberta to meet Walls and get the wallet.

Giselle along with her son, grandson and his wife, and three great-grandchildren all piled into a vehicle to make the trip.

“I had to go. I owed it to Scott, and I owed it to Roger, because he can’t speak for himself and that’s something that he would have done,” said Desfosses.

“When I heard about it, I said we’re going, that’s it, we’re going. Scott wanted to mail it but I didn’t want to take a chance because we lost it for 60 years already, I didn’t want to lose it in the mail for another 60, I won’t be around.”

The pair had come to Penticton in the 1960s for civil construction work along the same stretch of road where Walls had recently been working.

Giselle and Roger Defosses were only in the South Okanagan for a few months, which is likely when the wallet was lost.

Giselle went on to say that the wallet brings back a lot of memories.

“It was a good time in our lives,” Giselle said.“We were just starting our family. Danny, he was four years old, and Suzanne was two and our youngest son was born seven years later, and he is now gone.”

The wallet had been sitting about three-and-a-half feet under Skaha Lake Road ever since.

Roger Desfosses died in 2020 at age 85. He and Giselle had known each other since Grade 1 and were married for 63 years.

Link to video here – click to watch

They say “expect the unexpected” which just doesn’t make sense to me but I will say “celebrate the unexpected” delightful events you can – they don’t get front page, and they don’t go viral but still taste sweet.

Savour them like lifesaver candies, as long as you are able.

I appreciate you reader! ♥ – Sincerely, David

The Okanagan lake was so smooth today, this was during a morning walk.