The Antique Road Show in Eastern Ontario

The last time I was in Canada, one of my sisters and I deposited our husbands and children somewhere and went on a shopping tour of Eastern Ontario. We love nothing better than taking off for an afternoon without a map or a planned route, to let our whim take us where it will. On this day, we stopped by the Tay River in the town of Perth for lunch and a coffee, and continued along, stopping at a number of antique shops on the country roads. The most memorable of these was Rideau Valley Antiques. Luckily I had a camera with me to capture the chaotic collections in their yard. The shop is housed in a turn of the century country farmstead. We found the rooms crammed with junk that had been sorted: dinnerware, teapots, soup tureens, and other porcelain in the former living room, sports equipment in the hall, tins in the kitchen, bottle openers hanging from the ceiling.

I went back a second time to take photos and to buy baseball gloves for my boys. The photos are some of my favorites:

In need of a slightly worn garden hose?

...or a rocking horse?

...or perhaps a rusty wagon from the considerable collection at Rideau Ferry Antiques?

They don’t have a website, but I found the shop listed at Antiques in Canada. If you are travelling in the area, be sure to shop by – at least for a chat with the owners, a couple of brothers if I remember correctly.

A Toast to Alice Munro

Martin Levin in the Toronto Globe and Mail writes that “if drinking were not verboten in the office”  he would drink to Alice Munro, the mother superior of the short story and one of Canada’s literary treasures. First of all, no writer in the world deserves more than Alice Munro the recognition that the Man Booker International prize has now awarded her for her body of work. She is the Canadian Chekhov, a master of the short story, and if you have never read any of her stories, go now and do so. She writes of humble, small town people and has the most uncanny insight into human behavior. She is a delight to read. I have loved her books since I read Who Do You Think You Are 30 years ago. After stumbling upon Shakespeare and Co. , the legendary Paris bookstore, last week where I learned that Ms. Munro had been awarded this distinction, I bought a copy of her lastest book for the friends who were with me. Anglophiles though they are, they had never heard of her. I hoped with my purchase not only to correct that oversight but to convert them to lifetime fans of Alice Munro.

But what I thought was most startling about Mr. Levin’s comment was that drinking is not allowed on the job. This is probably true of most offices in North America. Maybe I’ve been away from home for too long, but I work in a place where the office refrigerator is stocked with bubbly and where popping a bottle is de rigeur to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, or team achievements. The management team even awards a Champagne of the Month to an employee for outstanding efforts. Our cupboards are stocked with notebooks, pens, post-its — and booze. Until cost-cutting measures were introduced last year, beer and soft pretzels were served after every all-hands meeting. 

I’m not at the office today, but I will drink to Alice Munro.