When last we saw our ravine friend he had with him his now two-year-old bull mastiff and his elderly Bernese Mountain dog. Today we discovered when we ran across him in the ravine that the Bernese Mountain dog was put to sleep several weeks ago. A tumour he'd had on his leg that was being treated suddenly spread to his heart, becoming hugely enlarged in the process; he was eight years old. Since then a second bull mastiff was acquired; he had contacted the breeder from whom he had got the first, and was informed that a family with five young children was struggling to cope with the cost of looking after its litter mate and gave him the contact number.

He discovered that the family owning the second bull mastiff really was unable to cope, and they negotiated a deal. He took the dog off their hands, and reintroduced his own to the newcomer. Both males, his original dog is the alpha, the second one having a more laid-back temperament. The second one was undernourished, hadn't been fed adequately because the family couldn't afford it, and was seldom exercised.

So little accustomed to being active that it actually had to be encouraged to climb steps, and when we saw them it was its first incursion into the ravine. We walked along together for a half-hour or so, discussing mutual acquaintances in the form of area vets; we'd only discovered yesterday that the original veterinarian whom we'd contracted with over 25 years ago had died; it was his brother who had been looking after Button and Riley on the retirement of the older one due to illness.

The two huge and powerful dogs took little mind of Jackie and Jillie who were happy to cavort around them. We eventually came across two others whom we know more remotely, with a bull mastiff/boxer cross and a husky. The cross, we learned later from its owner, was pathologically averse to the presence of other large male dogs, and swiftly showed us just how averse it was, so we parted expeditiously.

We also parted with our friend with the bull mastiffs when the two dogs began wrestling with one another, emitting appropriate growls and snarls as they played. Their playfighting both aroused and frightened our two mites, so we parted ways for fear that their shrill barking at the two large dogs would infuriate them.

The two men with the cross-bred boxer/bull mastiff and Siberian husky eventually caught up with us, cautious to enquire from us whether the two bull mastiffs were still around, Reassured, they walked along with us for another half-hour of our ravine ramble. It was a mild day, overcast with little wind, and we'd gone out earlier than we normally do, to get out ahead of the forecasted rain when the temperature was set to rise to about 6 degrees, quite a change from yesterday's minus-7, and miserable wind.

Soon other dogs joined the four walking along with us, another much smaller boxer and a mixed brindle hound. Jackie and Jillie are thrilled with the presence of other dogs, wanting to get to know them, and to romp alongside them. They only draw back when another dog expresses too much of an interest in them, making them uncomfortable when things get a little intimidating. Otherwise they want to be 'one of the boys'.

Neither of us is given to snacking. We just don't feel the need to nibble anything between our meals. We're too busy doing things, and we don't feel hungry or the urge to eat other than at our regular mealtimes. And we eat only two meals a day. We have a full breakfast and a hearty dinner, and that does us just fine, and has for decades. To some it may seem strange, but this is the way we have ordered our daily life. For me, it happened when I had three infants one and a half years apart, and had no time to indulge in lunch for myself. While the children were eating their lunch I was reading to them.

For my husband, it happened later and much more gradually. By the time he was ready to retire from work he no longer felt the appetite to indulge in eating anything at midday, and that grew into a match for my own abstention; not deliberate but a perceived lack of need, both of us finding we didn't at all miss having lunch halfway through breakfast and dinner.

When we have company, people staying with us, then we prepare lunch but don't feel inclined to take part in it, since we're absent the appetite for it, other than to share tea. When it's our own children staying over with us on a visit they just busy themselves making their own lunch.

We do have fruit, but as an accompaniment to our meals; various types of melons and banana for each of us at breakfast time, and an assortment of fruits to conclude dinner. That would include, grapes, cherries, blueberries, persimmons, strawberries, raspberries, peaches, plums, pears, clementines, mangoes, pineapple, for example, but never that mainstay of fruits, apples. Unless they're baked, which my husband enjoys; baked apple or apple pie or apple crisp.

And those concoctions are done only once a week when we indulge in having one baked product for dessert, whether cupcakes of various types, or fruit pies, or cakes, or raised-dough products like Chelsea buns. My husband's 79th birthday is on the near horizon and for that occasion I'll bake a chocolate cake, his favourite, and fill it with whipped cream.

Yesterday I thought I'd use some apples to produce a dessert because they'd been around awhile. I sliced four large applies unpeeled into a glass baking dish, sprinkled cinnamon, cloves and brown sugar around the slices and put them in the microwave for a few minutes to partially cook. Then I prepared a batter of 1/4 cup Becel margarine, 1/3 cup granulated sugar, one large egg, 1/3 cup of sour cream, vanilla, rum flavouring, 1 cup sifted cake and pastry flour with 1 tsp baking powder added and a dash of salt. I added Thomson raisins to sprinkle over the apples, then poured the cake batter over the apples and baked it until puffed and browned on top in our little countertop convection oven.

It made a nice light-enough and quite delicious finish to dinner last night.

Two weeks have now passed since that minor elective surgery took place where I had a cyst on my stomach wall removed and it will no longer be a nuisance in episodic events of infection, causing me to have to be put on antibiotic medication until it once again subsided. Over a period of some fifteen years there were about six infection events, and each one was different, annoying, inconvenient, painful.

I'm still experiencing annoyance, inconvenience and pain. But at least it will be limited in time. I dare hope.

Jackie on my left, Jillie below on my right

The dressing was to be removed, according to the surgeon, four days post-surgery, and this was done. Since the surgery the wound has never stopped bleeding, albeit not heavily. From time to time I've tried to put a bandage over the wound, but then had to suffer excruciating discomfort removing it after showers, even though I've used non-stick bandages of a size adequate to the task.

More often I've gone without anything over it, and I've had to wash my underclothing free of blood, not discard bandages. It's annoying when I try to bend, because that presses on the wound. At first the stitches were a problem since their ends would 'catch' and cause extreme discomfort. Now it's just the wound itself. The area around the wound is heavily bruised, discoloured purple, grey and black; extremely sensitive to touch.

I'm still not recovered in a sense that either the anaesthetic or the trauma of the surgery has caused a bowel blockage that doesn't seem agreeable to surrendering to a need to evacuate normally.

I haven't had to suspend any of my activities and I'm grateful for that. Our daily ravine hikes in the woods across from our house continue and have become less problematical as the wound heals. But it certainly is taking its time.

We are so exceedingly fortunate for many reasons in our lives, untroubled as we are by being helplessly embroiled in events that we cannot prevent or avoid, as occurs to so many people living elsewhere on the Globe. There are always events occurring in anyone's daily life, about which they are similarly unable to do much to protect themselves from injury, and so to be enabled to enjoy the comfort and pure beauty of the natural world that surrounds us, so close to where we call home is nothing but a blessing from nature herself.

It is winter in Canada, the least favoured season for elderly people. The elderly and the frail tend to sequester themselves during the icy, windy, snowy months that make for a Canadian winter, to prevent catastrophic falls injurious to their longevity, not to mention the discomfort that accompanies extreme cold and even brief exposure to it. Those who can afford it and have a wish to escape the excesses of winter ship themselves off to more benevolent climes. Those who appreciate all seasons regardless of their age, stay put and make the most of seasonal presentations.

On a sunny winter day when the landscape is blanketed with snow and trees are in their slumber mode, with small furry creatures running about, a vigorous walk in the woods is quite literally just what the doctor orders for those who can mount hills and descend into valleys where running streams are frozen and everything has a mysterious aura of ghostly humps of white.

All it takes is the will and the inclination, and if nothing else prods one to embark on outdoor recreational opportunities, the companionship of dogs will do the trick. The knowledge and the responsibility inherent in dog companionship is certain to instill in people the need for both their canine friends and themselves to take advantage of all opportunities to air-and-exercise themselves for health and pleasure.

In the process, for us, we've acquired a wide network of similarly-inclined ravine-walking acquaintances, and so have Jackie and Jillie. They constantly come across other dogs, old and young, small and large of all breeds with whom they have established a rapport, exciting them and offering them the experience in social life as seen through the lens of a dog they'd not otherwise be afforded.

 Observing the antics of all the various four-legged companions of others and their interactions with our own is another endless source of entertainment incidentally leading to the maturation of one's understanding of the animal world and the emotions, intelligence and instinctual reactions of animals other than ourselves.

Within Evil's Dark Malice

• In Poland, 2,900,000 Jews were exterminated; 88 percent of Polish Jews met their death during the Holocaust.
• In Belorussia, 245,000 of its Jews were annihilated, representing 65 percent of its Jewish population.
• In Bohemia/Moravia those numbers were 80,000 death, 89 percent of its Jewish demographic.
• Germany itself collected a mere 55 percent of its Jewish citizens to murder 130,000 during the Final Solution. 
• For Greece 65,000 of its Greek Jews were rounded up and slaughtered, representing 80 percent of its Jewish citizenry.
• Although 90,000 French Jewish lives were extinguished, this number represented only 26 percent of its Jewish citizens.
• Hungary sacrificed 70 percent of its Jews for a total of 450,000 murdered.
• Italy under fascist Mussolini surrendered 20 percent of its Jews, where 7500 met their deaths.
• Latvia managed to dispose of 77 percent of Latvian Jews when 70,000 were sent to death camps for disposal.
• Lithuania exceeded Latvia's cleansing accomplishing a 94 percent death rate in the murder of 220,000 Lithuanian Jews.
• The Netherlands handed over 106,000 Dutch Jews for a 76 percent clearance.
• Slovakia rendered to the Final Solution an 80 percent majority of its Jews when 71,000 were exterminated.
• Ukraine surrendered 60 percent of its Jewish population in the deaths of 900,000.
• Yugoslavia, with a death rate of 80 percent of its Jews, waved off 60,000 into the death chambers.
• Austria: 50,000/36%; Belgium: 25,000/60%; Bulgaria: 11,400/14%; Denmark: 50/1.3%; Finland: 7/2.8%; Great Britain: 130; Luxembourg: 1950/50%; Norway: 870/55%; Russia: 107,000/ll%; Romania: 270,000/33%.

Numbing numbers in their totality, difficult to comprehend let alone interpret as the reality of destroyed lives of men, women and children; the hale the halt and the infants among them. Solely because they were Jews. Deliberately to destroy the presence of Jews in Europe. Had the Axis powers triumphed the extermination program would have continued.

From 1941 to 1945 Britain interned on Mauritius 1500 Jews anxious to travel to Palestine. The British Navy sank a ship in 1939 with Jews attempting to enter Palestine. A number of Jews were deported by Britain to camps on the Channel Islands during its German occupation. Thousands of Jews were deported by Britain to Athlit and Cyprus; thousands more shipped to British internment camps, while some were deported to Germany.

Switzerland curtailed the flow of Jewish refugees into its embrace through a policy of refoulement enforced from 1938 until 1944. Still, some 30,000 found refuge in or passed through Switzerland, while 10,000 were turned away. Trains en route to concentration and death camps in the
East were routed through Switzerland, but its prewar Jewish population of 12,000 was withheld from the Nazis.

The black hell of the Holocaust was illuminated with occasional examples of the "Righteous Among the Nations", a Talmudic distinction describing any who risked themselves to help save others' lives, even utter strangers. Some distinguished themselves by responding to that inner call for compassion, like Oskar Schindler, while others hid Jews in their homes and others yet assisted Jews to cross borders toward safety, while diplomatic status was used on occasion to issue transit visas or grant citizenship to fleeing Jews.

These righteous hearts are honoured at Yad Vashem in Israel, and a tree is planted -- to honour each who valorously gave of themselves -- to express a living testimony to their heroism.

We keep zig-zagging from extremely cold and windy atmospheres prevailing for the better part of a week, with or without sun, then suddenly limping into milder weather bringing with it freezing rain.
Snow events and even freezing rain present no challenge to embarking on hikes in the forest, but rain certainly does, requiring winter-grade raingear for us and for Jack and Jill.

Snow being whipped into our faces is not bad, but when it's rain it's not quite so attractive. When we spoke with our son in Vancouver last night he said he'd had his kayak out at wreck beach, but because of high wind and choppy water he'd had to confine himself to kayaking over to the UBC side. Rain, he said, had replaced the previous and unusual spate of very cold weather.

As far apart geographically as we are, we're undergoing similar atmospheric alterations. Just a little bit of nature's full panoply of weather events; here in the Ottawa area we're accustomed to sudden polarized changes in the environment. That old saying, if you don't like the weather right now, just wait a bit ... holds true, though, whether you're in Alberta or Newfoundland.

It was milder than the day previous when we were out in the ravine yesterday. We came across a young woman whom we've become familiar with over the past four years or so, walking her German shepherd cross, a mild-tempered dog that usually has more patience with Jack and Jill's frantic antics when they see a dog they know, than they deserve.

Occasionally she is accompanied by her partner, a younger man who sometimes takes their dog out on his own. At one time they had a golden retriever as well, but it was elderly and is now gone. She told us yesterday that this area is where her partner grew up, that as a teen he used to roam through the ravine with his friends, and they'd be involved in all kinds of juvenile-reckless behaviour.

It's more than likely that ten or even twenty years ago her partner would be one among the adventurous young boys who set fires, destroyed trees and quaint rustic signage (never replaced) and basic exercise equipment placed in several locations, along with benches for people to relax and passively enjoy the area. The only things that were ever replaced were the few benches, and they have long since also been mutilated by a later crop of area juveniles.

But boys, doing things that boys tend to do when they're among a restless daredevil-feeling bunch, do grow up. Sometimes, no doubt, they look back at how they comported themselves in public areas in such destructive ways with regret,   more often likely, with a mental shrug. He's a nice young man, good-natured like their dog, and pleasant in conversation.

She, older than he is, no doubt provides a levelling contrast to his former carefree attitude, helping him to reach a social and emotional maturity and perhaps even personal sense of responsibility and respect for nature that he can pass on when they have offspring.

Exquisitely incrementally, little by very little winter daylight is increasing, hard though it may be to credit. And a few days ago, Irving was surprised to hear a cardinal sing its springtime trill. When he told me so I could hardly believe it. We are, after all, only half-way through January -- oh, a slight bit more than halfway; still...

The birds know what we do not, they are closer to nature and they respond to signals that we cannot identify. Their instinctual heritage, a survival imperative. We are delighted to hear their message. And yes, it's true, although twilight still creeps up on us before we feel it should briefly before the dark of night falls, it is slightly later in arrival.

We had a pair of bluejays at the feeder, happy to see these infrequent visitors. Were it not for the feeder we'd not have the pleasure of seeing them at all. They used to be so common particularly around the Toronto area, but here in the last few decades or so we've seen them only rarely, and usually in the spring in the ravine.

There was a pileated woodpecker, that giant of its type that flew close to us a few days ago in the ravine, undisturbed by our close proximity, fixated on a nearby tree trunk. When I first heard its call far off, and saw it in the sky I thought it was a hawk.

A flock of doves continues to visit at the feeder, and take their rest on the porch. We love seeing their peaceful presence so close by. Unfortunately that presence comes complete with the need afterward to scour the porch of their fecal matter. We've got a new newspaper carrier who hasn't yet noticed the hooks meant to receive our daily newspapers, hanging beside the front door. This carrier simply tosses the papers on the floor of the porch. Where, you guessed it, dove-poo with all the bacterium it contains, festoons it.

Finally, the last of the stained glass series that Irving designed for the dining room shutters has been completed and installed. There just doesn't seem time enough for him to do everything that he sets out to accomplish, sometimes. This is one thing that is now off his 'to complete' list, in any event. That was on Friday, and we set off soon afterward for a ravine walk.

We'd no sooner returned home, got out of our outdoor gear, settled Jackie and Jillie down, when the doorbell rang. There, to our surprise, was a young couple we know from the ravine, who live several blocks over from where our street is located; you've got to access a main road at the bottom of our street before you eventually come across the street their house is located on, another four streets or so over.

They bought their house about five years ago. We'd always noticed it because it's on a prime lot with one entrance to the ravine right behind the very large backyard. The house itself has had quite a succession of owners, and some interesting work had been done with it; one of the owners had extended a glass window like a terrarium in the kitchen, overlooking the green space surrounding it.

We'd got to know the young couple, coming across them from time to time in the ravine during our rambles, and often stood about talking. They have two rescue dogs that are regularly taken for walks there. And there they were, on the porch, to say they had been walking by, noticed we were in and thought they'd say hello. Months ago Mike had told us that they often walked by the house (though we've never seen them on the street) and wondered who lived in it.

Our house is distinguished from its neighbours because for one thing it's different. It was built as a new type of model and never repeated. Not the kind of house to raise young children in for one thing. Too many elevated open spaces that could spell disaster for a young, adventurous child.

Over the 25 years we've lived in our home Irving has changed it quite remarkably. Unusually, most of the windows have been covered with stained glass inserts. If our house actually faced or backed onto the woodland ravine that mightn't have happened. In any event, people tend to know this house as the 'stained glass' place. And so it was with our ravine friends. We invited them in because they were obviously curious, and spent time ushering them about so they could view what they were curious about, as a courtesy.

The young woman had minored in art history, I think she said, so she had a particular interest. And Irving never minds explaining to people who express an interest in learning more, how he goes about designing his windows, producing the pattern, repeating it to cut out the pieces, numbering them and then beginning the job of putting all the pieces together to produce the final product.

It's odd -- or perhaps not -- that sometimes when we read of others' lives and events, it stirs memories of our own lives and events. In this instance it was for me reading about a "man with no identity", an elderly man picked up close to Hereford in Britain. Evidently someone in near proximity to this man who appeared to be aimless and in need of attention called an ambulance to say he had found an elderly man wandering around. He vanished, while the elderly man was taken into custody, found to be in good shape, but incapable of adequately communicating his identity.

"He is saying very little but he speaks with either an American or Canadian accent" a public appeal by police stated. The elderly man who was neatly dressed, clean shaven and agreeably tolerant to questioning said little other than appearing, while at Hereford Hospital to say his name was "Roger Curry". Enquiries by police forces throughout the United Kingdom came to naught; no match was discovered to a missing persons case.

Police appealed for assistance to dialectologists and those experts in identifying regional dialects have come up with a choice: Canadian or American in origin -- or possibly said a professor of linguistics at University of Toronto cluing in to the man's random pronunciation of the word "house", clearly Canadian. Evidently, despite outreach to various sources for possible information to solve the mystery of the man's identity, authorities feel no closer to discovering where he comes from, who he is, who might possibly be missing a family member, than at the start.

It's rather sad; a man in his declining years albeit healthy, insufficiently sound of mind to recall his own identity, and therefor a puzzling charge on the social/health system and conscience of a nation.

It brought to mind for me a trifling event, but one which as a teenager I found irritating beyond belief. I had accompanied my mother along with my younger brother, then an infant of three, on a long train trip to Atlanta, Georgia, from Toronto, Ontario. I was about sixteen, and it was my first trip out of Canada, an exciting prospect, even if it meant leaving my then-boyfriend of two years for a three-week period, the extent of our stay. My mother missed her older sister who had moved with her family a year or two earlier from Hamilton, Ontario to Atlanta where more distant relatives had long lived. It was those distant relatives, wealthy in comparison to our modest resources, who had in fact, loaned my mother and her sisters passage funding to leave the Pale of Settlement in Russia for Canada. (Their father was a school teacher and he and her brothers were politically involved "reds" who came under attack by the "whites" who threw a bomb into the family home killing their father and two brothers, wounding the girls; my mother caught shrapnel in one eye, her sister in a leg.)

I can dimly recall that it took my mother many years to pay that loan back to her wealthy uncle; not until I was in my eleventh year or so did she manage to shed that Albatross and I often wondered and still do, why wealthy people might expect to be paid back sums expended in such circumstances.

My uncle, who had been a furrier in Hamilton, on arrival in Atlanta bought a small convenience store on the very street where Martin Luther King and his father before him led sermons from the pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Many years later when Irving and I lived for a brief three years in Atlanta, with a Canadian diplomatic mission, I visited that church and the memorial building where I watched a video of his most famous speech, "I have a dream", feeling I was in the ghostly company of a rare human being.

On that long-ago visit we stayed with my aunt and uncle in their home and I was able to renew my relationship with my three cousins, one of whom was a boy one  year younger than me. Also a guest in their house and temporarily living there was an older boy, a young man really, who was recently brought to the U.S. as a war-refugee. He was an Austrian Jew who had escaped death but not a stay at a death camp. He had studied architecture before the war, and meant to resume his studies in his new home. A romantic flirtation arose between us and he later visited with me in Toronto to my boyfriend's anguish. I felt unable, finally, despite my attraction to this young man, to abandon my two-year emotional investment in my boyfriend, much to my parents' disappointment. A decision I have never regretted, nor had reason to.

The point of this long-winded reminiscence is that during that time there was one evening when we were all invited to the house of the wealthy uncle. There I met his children or grandchildren, I can't quite recall. My own cousin knew them well and got on well with them. While the adults had congregated in one part of the house, the young people took possession of another, and sat around talking; I mostly listened, pretty intimidated by everything and everyone around me.

The distant 'cousins' seemed to regard me as some rare not-too-bright creature to be studied. They prodded me continually to say certain words among which "house" loomed large. Whenever I repeated "house" at their urgings, they burst into raucous laughter, including my cousin, whose own Canadian roots would have had him familiar with that pronunciation, but who now carefully avoided speaking the idiom we had both grown up with. It was humiliating to be placed in that situation among strangers purporting to be family who found humour in demeaning another stranger who wondered what kind of family this was.

It is odd how such things remain in one's memory, even 63 years later. What remains in the mysterious elderly man's memory now is anyone's guess, but he is being aided, not humiliated.

One of Irving's uncles was a farmer. He owned and operated a fairly large farm near Kleinburg, Ontario. Eventually part of his farm was taken over to become part of a vast system around the Toronto area, given over to conservation areas, meant as recreational facilities for the growing population. Until it was, however, and his uncle became too old to farm, it was a going concern.

It was also fairly anomalous that a Jew would be a farmer, since that generation had emigrated to Canada from Europe, and there were laws restricting Jews from owning and operating farmland in Poland where they came from. His uncle's sons, all three of them, worked on the farm when they weren't attending school, as they grew up. Eventually none of them became farmers; one in particular became a professor of dentistry, the others businessmen.

When Irving was growing up he spent some of his favourite summers at the farm, and there he learned what farmwork was like; tough. He has fond memories of working and living on the farm. How the infuriated hens would peck him when he was sent down to the henhouse to gather eggs. How prickly the stalks were on bare skin in the summer and fall bringing in t he sheaves, as it were. The contraption his uncle had put together on a pulley system to move grain into storage; another one to help clean out the barn. His uncle's furious response when the bull had pulled himself loose and was banging about the barn, hauling around half of the stall.

Even I have memories of that farm, since when we were around fourteen, fifteen he would sometimes take me out there with him to visit with his aunt and uncle. It was all new to me. A railroad track ran through the farm and he showed me how to put pennies on the rail, so they would be flattened after the train ran over them. A branch of the Little Humber River ran through the farm, and he would sometimes fish there, using cornmeal as bait. At one point Irving had got himself an old Lee Enfield 22 rifle and we did target practise there. I remember he hit a bird once, and was so distraught he never picked that rifle up again.

When I was quite a bit younger I had spent two summer seasons at a fresh-air camp for underprivileged children that was located nearby. I can recall being by myself quite a bit there, making no friends, and simply roaming about, loving the summer-green acreage, the trees, the brook that ran through the area. I remember once, close to the gate of the camp I had seen a young boy pause at the gate, look through into the interior of the vast green space, from the exterior of an equally vast green space. I felt convinced years afterward that it had been Irving, wandering about, curious about what lay beyond close to where he was living with his uncle and aunt and cousins.

He doesn't think so, he cannot recall any such incident, but I cling to it, regardless.

Could the contrast in personality be greater between a father and a son than the one I observed with the boy I loved when we were both fourteen years of age and his father whose character I immediately identified as coarse and egotistical presented that question to me? I used to hate it when I saw that boy do everything he could think of to ingratiate himself with his father, only to be rebuffed with total indifference. Every boy wants to have his father's approval; in this case it was entirely lacking through lack of interest.

There are times when even at a young age you immediately sense something essential missing in another human being. In the case of this boy's father it was a social, humane conscience, augmented by a sense of arrogant entitlement. Sixty-five years later that boy's father is long dead. And the boy and I occasionally muse about the characters of our parents, the redeeming qualities they had, and the dysfunctional familial relationships that resulted from their behaviours with their offspring.

Try as I might, I can think of no redeeming traits that this man was in possession of. He condemned what he did not like and controlled whom he could. I believe he disliked me as instantly as I did him, because it soon became quite clear to him that I would not be among those who deferred to him. I had the unmitigated temerity to voice my personal disagreement with many of his statements. Our lack of comity became evident on our first meeting when he casually asked if my mother was the 'cross-eyed one' he vaguely knew of.

He was the kind of man who would steer his truck deliberately on the highway to gain a score, killing any wildlife unfortunate enough to cross his path.

Not surprising that as a devoted recreational fisherman he treated the fish communities he targeted as prey whose number and size corresponded with 'scoring a hit' as evidence of his canny conceit in his ability to trump their attempts at survival as opposed to his dedication to destroy their lives. When on the rare occasion he allowed his son to accompany him and his son caught a fish, it would be his father who would pose for it, the very picture of the conquering hero.

He was the kind of man who had no sense of decency, someone who when his brother-in-law whose wealth as a result of hard work he envied, died and this kind man who had been a source of comfort to his own son, my beloved, this brute of a man described as a "son-of-a-bitch". That was because he had been unable to coerce money from him. Unlike his constant demands from his own elderly parents whom the boy overheard being manipulated by his father in harshly demanding threats.

This was a man whose voice, dripping with sarcasm, would intimidate our children when they were young and vulnerable to the point where they hated being in his presence. He was a man who enforced the discipline of his word by violence against his own children had they dared on occasion to challenge his dictates. His circle of friends reflected his own values; alcohol-swilling, card-playing men most of whom were, however, capable of genuine jocularity unlike his own grim display of misanthropic schadenfreude.

I may be giving the impression in this little display of ancient pique that I heartily disliked this man. It is an entirely correct impression.

Irving puts together a very useful combination of herbs and spices that we keep in the pantry and which he renews when required. We use it mostly for pizza-making, but it does have its uses in other dishes. Yesterday, for example, when I put together a casserole featuring eggplant, spinach and goats-milk cheese. Here's the ingredient list in tablespoons: 2 oregano, 1 basil, 1/2 fennel seeds crushed, 1/2 dried thyme, 1 garlic powder; 1 cayenne flakes.

I was looking for some kind of platform I could use that would be built on those ingredients [eggplant, goat's cheese/spinach]. I found plenty on line featuring either eggplant and cheese or spinach and cheese, but among the features in those recipes were eggs, and I wanted to make something with no eggs included, since Irving had eaten two eggs with his breakfast already that day.

It was he, actually, who found the basic recipe I would alter, that had eggplant and cheese in it. I just added the spinach. He went through one of the cookbooks in our kitchen library of cookbooks; this one titled Cooking in Colour, 700 recipes for every occasion. It has an excellent vegetarian selection. I wanted to focus that way on yesterday's evening meal because the evening before we had a small sirloin roast, Yorkshire pudding, steamed green beans prefaced by a small tomato/cucumber/avocado/snowpea salad, and this was to make amends.

I started off with the eggplant, slicing it into rounds, placing them in a glass dish, salted them and covered and weighed them down, while we went out for a ravine walk. On our return I tipped out the resulting moisture, washed the slices free of salt, dried them and dipped them in fine breadcrumbs. And then they were fried brown-crisp for a few minutes on either side in olive oil; finally placed on paper towelling to remove any excess oil.

I washed the spinach leaves and steamed them until they were limp. Then chopped up two garlic buds and a medium-size onion and stirred them until almost transparent in more olive oil. I chopped up six medium-to-small tomatoes and placed them into the pan with the onion-garlic, added plenty of dried sweet basil, and Irving's herb mixture as well, stirring it all until the tomato was stewed and the fragrance divine.

I cut up a small log of goat's cheese into crumbly pieces and then began assembling the casserole; spinach on the bottom, eggplant over, and Parmesan sprinkled over the eggplant. Then came the crumbled goat's cheese, and over it the onion-tomato mixture. Remaining spinach was sprinkled over the tomato, and the top sprinkled again with Parmesan. This was refrigerated for a few  hours, and at dinnertime the cooled casserole was popped into a toaster-oven for about a half-hour until it was piping-hot and bubbling. 

The verdict? Absolutely perfect. The melding of flavours and textures was indeed superb, a recipe I'll repeat time and again. It deviated from the original with the use of Irving's mixed herbs, and using fresh, not canned tomatoes, goat's milk, not mozzarella, and we were more than pleased with the results.

With fresh, excellently moist and flavourful peaches from Chile (!) sliced into dessert bowls, dinner was lovely.

They are impressively stoic and patient, those two impulsive little black imps sharing our household. Not when it's time to eat, mind, but when we're preparing ourselves to venture out for our daily ravine ramble. We ask them if they're ready to set out, and Jackie picks up his ears in anticipation, while Jillie runs for cover, hiding from easy reach. Why she does that remains a puzzle to us, since she enjoys being out and all the more so on a woodland trail.

We're stuck in a spate of cold, windy days. Days when it often snows in a desultory manner; not enough to cause havoc, but just enough to ensure that driveways and walkways must be shovelled. Windy enough that the excesses of snow are blown off rooftops and tree boughs. And certainly sufficiently windy to make the already-frigid air exceedingly uncomfortable. It takes no time at all for unprotected flesh to begin the process of being frost-bitten in moderately prolonged exposure.

I regretted not wearing a scarf when we ventured out this early afternoon, and a light second sweater under my down-filled jacket. Irving is far more sensible in extreme cold, layering himself adequately to prevent the discomfort of cold and wind creeping beneath inadequate layers of clothing. When he recommends that I follow suit, he usually comes up against my insisting that I'm adequately prepared. Today I certainly was not. We've certainly been out in much colder weather, but the wind chill quotient is what made the minus-12-degree Celsius feel utterly miserable.

Today we needed to put boots on Jack and Jill. Otherwise they wouldn't have lasted five minutes out in that icy atmosphere. Even in the backyard if they're out too long, the exposure swiftly chills them and we can see them lifting their delicate legs, puzzled at the discomfort, and speedily racing up the deck stairs for the haven of the house interior. When Irving carefully fits each boot onto each little leg, ensuring the paws are snugly ensconced before tightening the boot strap, they patiently lend themselves to the ordeal.

And then, when we're out on the trails they can be as happily engaged in racing about as they wish, protected against the elements, coated and booted. They're in fact, even more inclined to buffoonish antics with boots on than without them, propelling themselves at breakneck speed, their long, wiry legs comically splayed in an exercise of speed and carefree propulsion, giving us the opportunity to both laugh and admire their puppyish pleasure in life.

It's now the dead of winter. We expect it to be cold. We know it will be, but we complain bitterly anyway. It's too cold, it's too damp, it's too windy. Too much of everything to be comfortable. Nature is trying us. Mostly we've no option but to submit to these wintry days since that's the way things are. It is winter. Winter in Canada.

These mornings when we descend from our bedroom and look out the front door, we're greeted with the sight of area wildlife making the most of their options. These small feathered and furry creatures manage, miraculously, to survive the rigours of our winters. Which have been, we are assured by environmentalists, becoming milder. Last year's winter was anything but milder. This year, however, it's a different story. And it's all in gradations, after all. When you're in a minus-ten day that's damp and windy it seems just as cold as a minus-20 day without the wind. The effect is the same.

In the ravine we often see groups of robins wintering over, spending their time down by the creek looking for live prey. We're assuming they will also eat any berries they find. And perhaps they're able to fish out caddis-fly larvae, since the creek has plenty of those. Even last year when it was so cold, there they were, flitting about looking for food, and you wonder why they haven't responded to their natural inclination to fly south?

When we stop at the glass panes of the front door we stand awhile and watch the squirrels and the birds have their breakfast. In the mornings it's the purple finches and juncos and chickadees mostly. Redpolls as well. Afternoon brings the doves, sometimes a few crows, goldfinches and nuthatches, cardinals and chickadees again. And in the twilight hours cardinals tend to come around, as well as doves, lots of them. As for squirrels, they're around all day, greedily stuffing themselves, and chafing at the presence of other squirrels.

Of all the birds, the crows are the most flighty, and they're also the most civil, standing back as it were, to allow others to take their fill. The doves take no mind of the presence of squirrels and the squirrels seem to return the compliment.

It will be very cold tonight, and that concerns Irving a great deal. As it does when light snow events that come down continually cover the feeders. He's always worried that the birds in particular won't be able to access the seeds. So out he goes and cleans things up, and puts out more feed for them.

He also likes to empty the kitchen compost pail frequently into the backyard compost bins; no problem there, since we fill it up pretty fast. He wants to make sure that when the raccoons come around their efforts are worthwhile. The raccoons seem to think so, since their nightly presence is fairly well assured.

The Historical Future

"On the day after the German occupation I had the most disagreeable of business to do in Vichy, accompanied by Maurice Brener because I never go to the ministries anymore without a witness. The day before I left Marseilles, the evening of the 7th, Darquier de Pellepoix put out on TSF radio a racist bulletin that made me dubious about the future. For a moment I was hesitant about leaving ... But we have to keep fighting and not desert the fort of the agencies the moment they are in danger. I cannot become now what I have never been, someone who runs away. So Daruier, with all the eloquence of an excited street vendor, announced new measures against the Jews who have not yet been neutralized by the Statut ... So should we now come out powerfully, or be so assimilated as to escape notice? ... 

• 1. Stamping the word "Jew" on our identity cards; 
• 2. Measures to be taken against Christian accomplices; 
• 3. Dissolution of the youth organizations in the UGIF. ... 

In the future we are promised further threats: wearing a badge, as in the occupied zone, administrative and political measures, legal action against mixed marriages. ... Anxiety swells in our circles. Will this war last long enough for all of u s to be deported to Poland? I hope it won't. From now on no one can hold a grudge against the Jews of France since we must live as if we were suspects during the Terror."
Raymond-Raoul Lambert: Diary of a Witness, 1940--1943; The ordeal of the Jews of France during the Holocaust

Deportation of Jews holding foreign citizenship from the Austerlitz station in Paris, 1941: Yad Vashem

The Terror has returned. And yes, Messr. Lambert's fears were most certainly realized; Vichy France took with huge alacrity to the Nazi Final Solution, going out of their way to accommodate the most vital work of the Third Reich in annihilating six million of the Jews of Europe. Their numbers have been more than replaced all these generations after Europe chastised itself and promised it would "never forget", with greater numbers of Muslims from all around the world of Islam [the ummah] who have brought with them their own viral brand of anti-Semitism.

Now, French Jewish life has been disrupted by fear as the community has been reminded that no one can predict the future with any degree of accuracy. The head of Marseille's Israelite Consistory, Zvi Amman has with heavy heart recommended that Jews of Marseille  abandon their traditional custom of wearing kippot in public in the interests of not bringing immediate attention to the fact that they are Jews. Attacks against Jews by raving Jew-haters from the Islamist tradition of detestation and violence have once again risen.

The base of the Statue de la République is defaced with a swastika as a protest in support of Palestinians turns anti-Semitic, Paris, July 26, 2014. By Etienne Laurent/EPA/Corbis.

"As soon as we are identified as Jewish we can be assaulted and even risk death. But faced with an exceptional situation, we have to take exceptional measures. It causes me such pain to come to this conclusion but I do not want anyone to die in Marseille because they had a kippah on their head." But many other Jewish leaders among whom stands out Haim Korsia, the chief Rabbi of France have raised their objections that the removal of kippot is "tantamount to admitting that wearing a kippah is a provocation". Jews, stated Rabbi Korsia firmly, must present a "united front".

A French soldier stands guard at a synagogue in Lille, France, January 12, 2015. From PhotoPQR/Voix du Nord/Newscom.

Infamously, the Jews of Germany who had assimilated into the culture could not believe they would be singled out for criminal racist discrimination resulting in death camps, their ashes rising from the crematoria to make the fields and agricultural products of the continent fecund with their attributes as human beings.

Historically Jews, united in fear at the prospect of the bleak future before them in Europe, presented that kind of "united front", but as numerous as they were, those who were enthusiastic about ridding the world of the presence of Jews were far more numerous, equipped militarily, politically and socially to proceed with their genocidal intent, and they prevailed. Jewish emigrants from Europe to Israel have now increased in a measure reflecting the new realization that their lives are in increasing peril, that their children's futures no longer can be assured in Europe.

Two men perform a quenelle in western France in 2014. Jean-Sebastien Evrard/AFP/Getty Images

In France there were a documented 7,086 anti-Semitic attacks against French Jews in 2014. That number represents 51 percent of all racist events registered, according to the French Interior Ministry of an ethnic demographic that represents a mere one percent of the population at under 500,000 population as compared to a Muslim population in France numbering about five million. French President Francois Hollande had taken umbrage at the sentiment expressed by  Zvi Ammar, stating it is "intolerable that in our country citizens should feel so upset and under assault because of their religious choice that they would conclude that they have to hide."

Indeed it is intolerable, and sometimes religion is not a choice when it is an integral portion of one's inheritance, ethnic group, culture and intellectual makeup. So, then, 75 years following the unspeakable dystopia of a fascist France eager and willing to fall into step with Nazi Germany's plan of Jewish extermination, French Jews are once more on the alert, and they are beginning to leave France as an expression of their deep existential concern. Perhaps there really is nothing new under the sun, and history does indeed repeat itself.

A demonstrator at a pro-Palestinian rally throws a rock toward riot police during a protest in Paris, June 19, 2014. By Thibault Camus/A.P. Images.

Our kitchen is always a busy place on Friday mornings. It's when I tend to do the pastry baking for the week. Nothing spectacular, just one choice of a dessert for Friday evening dinner. A big pot of chicken soup is prepared, and I make a bread dough to be used the next day when Irving and I make our usual Saturday-evening pizza for dinner.

This time he wanted to do something on his own initiative. Years ago I used to also make croissants for Friday dinner. But I figured that what with a potato pudding, the chicken soup and rice, baked cauliflower and chicken breasts in a tomato/onion sauce, that was enough for one meal. Irv's idea was that  he wanted to make bagels.

Long ago, when the children were  young I'd sometimes bake bagels. They're time-consuming since the risen dough shaped into loops must be briefly cooked in water before they're brushed with eggyolk and baked in the oven for the finished product. But it's been ages since I made them, and  he decided he would do so himself. I offered to produce the bread dough for him, but he insisted this was to be his project.

So he looked up some bagel recipes and using his bread machine, made a suitable dough for the bagels. While that was doing we went out for our ravine walk. And what a miserable day that was ... damp with an icy wind that made it seem far colder than the minus-9 Celsius the thermometer had told us it was. Jack and Jill wore their boots which meant we didn't have to worry about their tiny feet freezing. The result was mad dashes and hysterical romps along the trail, as they enjoyed the snowy atmosphere, so amusing to watch, that we almost forgot how cold it was.

When we got back home, Irving set about the final stages of his bagel-making. I'm impressed by his determination; whenever he's interested in any type of process he tends to immerse himself in an information-gathering, experiential-protocol that invariably produces good results. His bagels were, in my opinion, pretty damn good. He'd gone out to a nearby bulk-food shop to get malt syrup, not wanting to miss any bets.  And we enjoyed them at breakfast, this morning.

By the time the anaesthetic had begun to wear off, it became clear to me that despite having anticipated that I would sail through the aftermath of the procedure without any pain, I was going to be disappointed. The local discomfort soon edged into pain but that's hardly surprising. After all, what else can be expected when a surgeon takes a scalpel to scoop out skin and the flesh under it somewhere on your body?

That 'somewhere' for me was on my upper stomach wall. When I'd first become aware of the appearance of something peculiar there many years ago, I'd attributed it to a spider bite, occasioned while working in the garden. It was infected and required medical treatment. A doctor at a walk-in clinic drained it, bandaged it, gave me a prescription for anti-biotic and sent me on my way. It wasn't diagnosed as a cyst until it had, over the years, returned once, twice. Sometimes the recurring infections, years apart in occurrence were quite awful, and sometimes more tolerable, like the last time it happened.

When I decided it had occurred often enough. My general practitioner referred me to a general surgeon. It was she, many months later, who removed the cyst yesterday at the Montfort Hospital, the closest medical facility to where we live and just incidentally a hospital that once had a miserable reputation but which has re-invented itself over the past decade. Besides the surgeon, there was a nurse and another, younger nurse who took active part in the procedure, while the more mature one set up the instruments. The intern stitched me up after the surgeon had extracted the cyst.

The whole thing took well under an hour; my wait at the hospital was brief. Irving sat out in the parking lot in the truck with the puppies, waiting for me to return. I returned sans cyst with instructions to leave the top bandage, waterproof, in place until Sunday. Then to leave the remaining one to disintegrate on its own. The stitches, the surgeon said, would take quite long to disappear, up to six weeks.

That was a little surprising, the length of time before the stitches would be gone. On the other hand, the application of the anaesthetic resulted in almost immediate effect; quite amazing. Administered subcutaneously, the needle and its contents provided the pain quotient in the procedure, and it seemed to take forever before that part of the process was completed. But immediately afterward I was completely anaesthetized, allowing the surgeon to proceed. When the surgery was completed and the stitching was being done, unfortunately, before the last stitch went in, I could feel what was happening, necessitating another application of that miraculous anaesthetic.

Sleep eluded last night. I had no intention of taking any kind of painkiller. The site was painful, quite beyond uncomfortable. But I did manage to fall asleep, feeling pretty exhausted for some peculiar reason. And today the pain is absent, for which I'm grateful. There's just discomfort where the cyst had been if there's even modest pressure applied. Since our kitchen counter edge is right at that vulnerable level, if I forget and press myself against it, as for example while I was preparing pie dough and bread dough after breakfast, I'm swiftly reminded.