Today is what people who are consumed by weather conditions call a 'filthy' day. From dawn, it has been steadily raining. Correction: it rained heavily all night; in bed we could hear the rain running in the eavestroughs and pattering on our bedroom windows. The sound of rain falling during the night has a calming effect, though, seeming to comfort the listener, as though proclaiming that all is right with the world; after all, water and rainwater are necessary for human survival. We'd like it well enough if rain was exclusively a night-time phenomenon, doubtless.

Today's rain seems, like the all-day rain we experienced on Monday, a never-ending affair. We don't get the kind of monsoons seen in tropical parts of the world where the rain falls and never seems to stop. But sometimes, at this time of year, the atmosphere does resemble an aquarium. As it does today; the ambient air suffused with moisture, everything grey with heavily overcast skies, dripping, storming, plastering us with rain.

The birds don't seem to mind, they take it all in stride; they have few other options, after all. Today the redpolls have gathered in their flighty numbers around the feeders. Among them, on the ground, there was a goldfinch just beginning to change its drab winter coat to full-on spring/summer attire of, of course, gold.

Jackie and Jillie are less than thrilled with the rain, reluctant to stick their dry little noses outside, and unhappy that their usual romp in the ravine isn't likely to happen.  So they watch us for signals and sit about a trifle disconsolately.

This kind of rain reminds me of when our children, now all in their 50s, were teens, and we spent all of our leisure time across the Ottawa River in the nature preserve of Gatineau Park. Ever optimistic, we would embark on a day's adventure to explore the long trails that soon enough became familiar to us, with all the challenges inherent in clambering up stone- and root-heavy trails to get as high as we could in the mountainous terrain, an ancient chain no longer mountain-height, but respectable nonetheless in its geology. We would begin the adventure with a picnic, and then head off for one or another of the miles-long trails we got to know so well. At that time the area was under-used, and we would be the only people around, anywhere we chose to make it a day's adventure.

Occasionally, we'd have set out on such an adventure, despite weather reports contrarily warning of just such a 'dirty' day in the hopes that there would be a clearing and we could enjoy the kind of outing we'd become accustomed to. We would arrive at a destination, set up our picnic, then jerk our heads overhead at the first sound of thunder. We always came prepared, since bungees and tarps at least guaranteed some shelter, and surrounding trees provided the perfect anchors for a nice large tarp to be hauled over a picnic table. Sometimes the rain would pass on after awhile while we patiently waited, enabling us to enjoy a rather wet but pleasant picnic, then we'd head off for a long and damp hike in the woods.

But sometimes the rain was unrelenting, and we weren't able to carry on. That was the worst-case scenario, when we'd have a damp picnic under a tarp, enjoy our wet surroundings in the forested semi-wilderness that we so loved, and look anxiously at the sky for glimpses of let-up, but to no avail. That's when our day's excursion was cut short and we returned home, resolved to make the best of whatever was left of the day, disappointment notwithstanding.

When, years ago, my husband and I shared our home with our little Pomeranian-Poodle mix, a miniature-sized little female, she became socialized on our many walks in our neighbourhood forested ravine coming across other dogs. She also played often with our daughter's Malamute-Shepherd mix, a few years older than she was. And Button had her playtoys, none that she loved more than a pale green tennis ball. That ball, actually, turned out to be more than one ball over the years. Though she loved the ball and we daily played with her where she would race after it, retrieve and return it to us for another toss, she would also settle down to chew on it. Eventually the original ball's integrity was compromised; it sprung itself into pieces and Button was disconsolate. My husband, ever enterprising when Button spurned one replacement after another, took to placing the old split carapace of the original ball over substitutes and after a few days, the new one took on the odour of the old one, and Button accepted it and adopted it as the original beloved ball reborn.

When we introduced our toy Poodle Riley into the household, we anticipated that Button would enjoy his company and become a mentor to him, that they would play together, sleep together, become friends. That expectation was dashed from day one. Button kept her distance and ensured that Riley would keep his exuberant young distance from her. She remained aloof from him for the next dozen years of their lives together, until she died at 19 years and four months and he was twelve. Button remained, throughout that period, fixated on her ball (succession of balls) and Riley, emulating her chose not a ball but a tiny green plastic frog to be his companion-toy, racing after it when it was thrown for him, and then retrieving it. His relationship with the frog did not have the deep dimensions of Button's for her ball, though.

Now that Riley too left us at a despairingly early age of 15, we have two siblings who resemble Button physically but with characteristics all their own, and neither Jackie or Jillie is interested very much in toys; they still prefer hunting down socks, slippers, mittens to covet with our odour on them though they do occasionally have fun with plush squeaky toys. When we toss a tennis ball, Jillie barely responds, while Jackie does with great enthusiasm, but an enthusiasm that swiftly dissipates. They don't need balls to become fixated on for entertainment and 'company'; they have one another to tag with, to tussle, wrestle, box and snuggle with.

On occasion, in the ravine, we may come across some lost ball, or part of a ball and it's obvious that some dog will have been distraught at the experience. We often wondered why it is that their owners allow them to take their beloved balls on walks and risk their being lost, since we're aware of how vital balls can be to the dogs that depend on them for comfort and some kind of assurance. Yesterday, we came across a woman whom we've lately seen on occasion in the ravine with her large black, shaggy dog. She was down at the creek's edge, seemingly searching for something, her dog beside her, head tilted expectantly toward her. She explained that her dog had lost its ball. They had both seen it slide down the ice-glazed snow bank above the creek and watched it tumble into the muddy roiling spring runoff, an orange blob bouncing around among the other seasonal detritus that ends up in the creek.

So they had headed off in the same direction the creek was tumbling into in the hopes that at the bend of its trajectory the ball would become mired among the pile-up of detritus and it could be saved from loss. They looked for the bright orange sphere and waited for it to appear, but it failed to. Obviously it had been caught up in the tangle of detritus on its way to the bend. The woman and her dog were both standing deep in the snowpack, alert and patient, but to no avail. Finally, they decided to make their way back toward the halfway mark between the bend and where the ball had fallen down the bank of the creek. The dog, large as she was, struggled to gain footing and make her way up the fairly gentle slope of the bank at that point of the creek. The woman, middle-aged, laughed when we offered her a hand up and had no difficulty making it on her own. Concerned that her trusting dog would end up sadly disappointed with her efforts she resolved to continue the search.

An hour later we came across them again, proceeding toward us, the dog jaunty, that orange ball firmly in its mouth, its shaggy black pelt still dripping with water from the creek when it had sighted its moored ball and retrieved it.

It is such an abiding mystery to us non-biologists how the small wild creatures that populate our out-of-doors manage to sustain life throughout the long winter months of miserable cold and food privation they are subjected to. Birds can migrate, but the other small denizens of our open spaces cannot obviously do other than hunker down and depend on luck and inherited instinct and habit to carry them through the long period of weather inclemency.

Yesterday dawned with heavy rolling thunder, quite thrilling for us, but alarming to our puppies Jackie and Jillie who doubtless wondered what giant agency was disrupting their early morning sleep. Once the thunder had had its say copious, heavy rain was ushered into the morning and that remained the theme of the day, unrelenting downpour. On the positive side, it helps to wash away winter's detritus, along with the layers of ice and snow stubbornly covering the landscape, helped along by night-time temperature dips.

This morning, however, all is light and blazing sunshine. A contrast that enlivens our day, and certainly goes a long way to not only brightening the interior of this window-rich house, but warming it as well.

We experience the warmth of pleasure looking out the front door to see what guests the new day has brought. For the past week we've seen flocks of migrating redpolls, tiny birds with red caps and striped grey-black wings nestling in the trees opposite the porch and taking their turns at the seed from the feeders. Goldfinches too have appeared in abundance, as well as chickadees and nuthatches and juncos. They have been challenging the squirrels at the large feeder, more capacious and able to accommodate dozens at a time, while single ones and pairs perch further aloft at the two bird feeders.

The redpolls are busy in their reverse migration. Having spent the winter months just south of us, they're now returning north of us to nest and spend the spring and summer in their traditional grounds around Hudson Bay.

The sight of the elusive little chipmunk, or chipmunks as the case may be, since we can never be certain, seeing it/they at the front and at the back of the house, charms us. Its tiny size and busy occupation stuffing its cheeks with seeds is quite the sight. We don't see chipmunks all that frequently although we're aware they're around constantly. So it's entertaining to see their presence in those rare instances when squirrels aren't crowding the feeding stations.

Our puppies were somewhat less than thrilled when they were jolted awake this morning by rolling thunder and then violent thunder claps so close that we felt our rain-darkened bedroom shake with the vibrations. Subsequently when they had to go out to the backyard when we first got up they balked at going out into the rain, and who can blame them?

The week-end had spoiled us all, with its mild and sunny appearance, and yesterday was beyond merely beautiful. Our ravine walk with our two little rascals turned out to be an opportunity for them to become re-acquainted with many of their old friends who had been absent in the days previous when, the weather inclement, we saw no one else out.

Sometimes, not coming across anyone else hiking in our urban forest is explained by time-of-usage of the trails; people get out, but just not at the same time as others. In this instance, however, it was largely because the trails were so icy they had become dangerous to negotiate without the precautionary measure of wearing cleats strapped over boots, and not everyone has availed themselves of a good sturdy pair of cleats as we have.

In any event, there they were, one after another, familiar faces and furry ones accompanying them. At one juncture when we were standing about chatting to a ravine friend with her two miniature Australian shepherds eager to continue their run, along came another friend, this time with a new addition to the regulars we see. This young man had a few years ago introduced us to his bull mastiff whom he had partnered with an older Newfoundland. It seems he lost the older dog just recently to old age, and had filled in the gap in his household bestiary with the addition of another bull mastiff, a breed he particularly admires.

So here was the older male, calmly strolling ahead, and after it a much smaller puppy walking a trifle uncertainly, and clearly taken with all it surveyed in equal parts puzzlement and fascination, in the little female's introduction to an exciting world she could never have imagined with its intriguing personages, fragrances and opportunities. All the dogs sniffed about one another, and the bull mastiff puppy evinced more of an interest in our little poodles than the other, larger dogs. Perhaps feeling more assured in the close proximity of dogs whose size didn't overwhelm her own puppy stage.

The adorability quotient of any puppy, irrespective of breed and size, is always assured.

"He's just a little boy. He can't even take care of himself yet, and that's the scary thing because he's so dependent on me."
Destiny Turner, Austin, Manitoba

"Our son Chase has been missing since March 22. It's unlike our son to wander off of our property, and if he did he would always have our dog with him. Chase has vanished without a trace."
Thomas Martens, Austin, Manitoba

"Our radius is expanding, and now involving more and more water. Most of the ground has been searched."
"You have to keep in mind the time frame we are dealing with at this point. Obviously we remain hopeful. It's in our nature ... We are aware of what we're dealing with right now."
RCMP spokesman Sgt. Bert Paquet

Chase Martens was last seen playing outside his home on Tuesday, March 22 around 6 p.m. (Photo courtesy of Facebook/Lexi Thomas)

Day one when two-year-old Chase couldn't be found, there was hope. That night concern accelerated as the temperatures plunged well below freezing. He had last been seen wearing his jacket, his boots, geared up to play in the backyard of the family farm. Speculation was that he had done what any curious little boy might do, simply wandered off in a quest for interesting things to sight. Alternately, thoughts revolved around the possibility of an abduction, but that didn't seem likely and no amber alert went out.

People responded from nearby farms and towns and from further stretches of the geography, from neighbours to searchers coming in from Winnipeg, to aid the RCMP in their search and all were welcomed. As no sight was found of the child the search area expanded to take into account the wandering proclivity of a tiny boy. The RCMP brought in an underwater recovery team of divers as the area included more ponds, creeks and other bodies of water in their spring thaw cycle.

Military personnel from Canadian Forces Base Shilo joined volunteers from over a dozen fire departments. Little Chase had accompanied his father on a short routine drive, an errand swiftly concluded and when they returned home and his father entered the house, Chase wanted to play outside. His older sisters, 6 and 7, were inside the house with their mother. When Destiny Turner last looked out at the yard her tiny son was there, playing.

And then, when she looked again, around 6:15, he was nowhere to be seen. And that's when the alarm and consternation began to build, turning into the agony of uncertainty followed by stark fear. Yesterday, Chase was found in a creek not far from his family home, an area that had been searched diligently on a number of occasions. He will soon be put to final rest, a little boy whose curiosity and whose parental trust that he would remain safe led to his death.

I doubt there will be many parents of young children prepared to cast stones of blame. We have all been faced with similar situations, when our guard has been momentarily at a low ebb. We've been involved with all the little distractions of a busy life, not the least of which is looking after three small children. And most of us were fortunate that no calamity struck. The family of Chase Martens knows what calamity feels like.

The venerable British Broadcasting Corporation, the mother national broadcaster after which Canada's own Canadian Broadcasting Corporation patterned itself to reflect the Canadian experience with Canadian-based content for the purpose of connecting Canadians coast-to-coast with social, political, artistic, cultural content reflective of Canada, also incidentally gave the CBC a besmirched legacy to copy. In the sense that it was so married to the celebrities it had fostered on air that it chose to overlook their sinister, soul-destroying misconduct. The Corporation's dependence on the public acclaim for some of their key on-air personalities kept it from investigating rumours that some of its public lights were notorious for molesting children.

The sexual predation, in fact, was so widespread, and was so secretly in the realm of the kind of scandal that must be hushed -- taking an obvious page out of the Catholic Church's handbook of avoidance of criminalization of pederast-predators -- at risk of bringing infamy to the public entity -- that it chose to ignore what it knew, throwing the lives of children's stability away as simply tolerable sacrifices to the greater good of the public weal in protecting the reputations of their predators. While those predators continued to exercise their entitlements as celebrated public figures to prey on vulnerable children, the BBC management continued to avert their notice in the greater interest of the BBC.

And although its Canadian counterpart has not and likely would not have succumbed to a similar exercise of immoral and deliberate avoidance of responsibility, it too chose to overlook sexual misconduct on the part of one of its media darlings whose popularity was so widespread that it served to protect him from the merest hint of sexual impropriety. Even while those within the CBC were aware of his entitled predation, and chose to tolerate it. Muted complaints and concerns that were expressed by those exposed to Jian Ghomeshi, host of the iconic CBC program "Q", were casually shunted aside; in any event those underlings were anxious to graduate from their inferior status to more meaningful positions within the broadcaster. So while those in control of the program became aware of the man's unsavoury reputation, they looked away.

Rene Johnston / Toronto Star 

Jian Ghomeshi and lawyer Marie Henein leave court Thursday after Ghomeshi was cleared of all charges.

Until the time, finally, when rumours of rancid violence directed by a CBC-protected star toward women unfortunate enough to come into his orbit could no longer be ignored, once they spectacularly hit the outside news media with some journalistic probing. The charges that ensued as women, most choosing to remain anonymous with one exception, that of a well-known actress, resulted in a paroxysm of public aversion, and in one fell swoop Ghomeshi's public acclaim for his popular on-air cool, suavity dissipated.

The long-awaited trial in the wake of much public discourse and prurient interest in published details led to the man's metaphorical hanging, his career in tatters, his position with the CBC obliterated in infamy and apologies to the public. But the trial itself was an abysmal failure. Of the three women who agreed to testify, giving anecdotal evidence of their experience with Ghomeshi, none came out of their testimony having advanced the case. All, without exception, had resorted to shielding the evidentiary trail with details they preferred not to divulge. And when inconsistencies, outright prevarication and obvious collusion emerged, Jian Ghomeshi's trial lawyer, a skilled courtroom tactician, had a field day, revealing the obvious and many weaknesses in the Crown's case.

It was, then, of little surprise when the presiding justice felt he had no option but to dismiss the charges based on the testimony of women whose honest portrayal of the circumstances they found themselves in at the mercy of a sexual predator, was tainted and unreliable. Not that what they contended did not happen, but that their descriptions of the aftermath, as an example, were lacking. There were hints at a collusion between them in a vendetta against the man. And it was obvious that police did not probe adequately what they were being told, nor did the Crown ask those meaningful questions and give the kind of legal cautionary advice advice they should have, to the women who were their prized witnesses in a case that should have resulted in public opprobrium of sexual misconduct finding the man guilty on the basis of reliable evidence.

The old syndrome of female reaction to male violence was most certainly at play here, where abused women tend to cater to the very men who had abused them. Complicated by the social interactions where men of power and influence, and social 'cool', attract women with their insecurities, anxious to please and to restore relations despite abuse, in the hope of the situation miraculously ending to their advantage.

Not a very nice weather-day for Good Friday. It's cold and blustery, though the freezing rain has stopped. But those conditions made for an unhappy conclusion for tens of thousands of people in Ontario who have had no electricity, and I am exceedingly grateful that we haven't been affected. Glad too that one of the daily newspapers we have delivered published today. Our oatmeal cereal breakfast went well with the papers though the news abroad does leave something to be desired in the good-cheer category.

When Irving did the food shopping yesterday he brought home a turkey breast and a tin of pumpkin puree. His favourite holiday combination. So turkey breast it is today, for a change, and the pie has been baked; decided to put pecan halves on top for a bit of crunch. My dear husband spoke wistfully of the miniature challahs I used to make when the children would come over for dinner.

I prepared a plain bread dough earlier for pizza tomorrow night, then set about making a bread dough suitable for what my husband yearned for. It, though, had a milk base, with butter and eggs and a little bit of honey. I used half of it to put together four little braided breads, since there's only two of us this time around, and sprinkled them lightly with poppyseed. I'll use the remainder of that dough some time during the week to bake sweet rolls with, that will please my beloved.

He's been downstairs for hours labouring contentedly in his workshop, producing mouldings that he planned to install, and soon will. He's never happier than when he's working with wood, making something.

Meanwhile, while the dough was raising and a pot of chicken soup was steaming away, I decided to give little Jack and Jill haircuts. They're thrilled to have my attention; not so much for that purpose, but they behaved well enough, enabling me to snip away and groom them. I'm hoping that by the next time haircuts come around, Jackie will have gained a little more weight. He's able to eat far more than previously, with the use of the newly-introduced kibble specifically meant for gastric upsets. And there have been no more meal refusals and a hangdog-looking little dog.

We'll wait awhile yet before embarking on our ravine walk. The  temperature has risen somewhat, but it's damp and the wind is expected to pick up by late afternoon, and we're being warned that more snow, albeit not much, is on the way.

Just when Jack and Jill were rediscovering patches of forest floor without snow and ice, March did its usual; brought back snow. In the gardens in our backyard, the shrinking snowpack has revealed bare soil in places and there our lilies, tulips and irises, along with some early-appearing hostas began to lift fresh green shoots out of the still-frozen soil. We've now experienced several days of alternating freezing rain and light snow to once again cover the landscape.

It never fails to treat the eye, since it is beautiful. And along with the snow there has been hours of sunshine and milder temperatures, both of which have served to quickly melt the new snow. Today, as predicted, it's colder, with a high expected of no more than minus-four degrees, and there's a stiff wind to accompany it. Gusts of which lift snow from roofs to create long diaphanous veils of white stretching across our vision.

We had an early afternoon appointment at the veterinarian hospital we now take our two little bandits to, so we engaged earlier than usual with the ravine yesterday. Snow was still fresh on the trees, and in many places covering what days earlier had begun to emerge as the forest floor prepared itself for the onset of spring. It will take many more such milder, sunny days, however, to melt the prevailing snowpack and underlayers of ice, since both remain thick in most areas of the ravine. One positive thing about the new snow was its wet texture, clinging to the sheer ice on the trails, making walking along them far less precarious.

New fragrances are being released day by day, irresistible to dogs small and large, and they sniff about appreciatively. We're somewhat less appreciative of some of the vestiges of doggy deposits that have collected over the winter months when dogs more or less forget their socially-mandated pretensions to modesty and thoughtfulness, preferring not to venture into the deep snow on either side of the trails, and simply squat there on the trails. Some people pick up after their dogs, or at the very least remove the offal off trail, and some prefer to simply ignore it.

Someone, and certainly not the municipality, has gone to the personal trouble of securely hanging collecting pails on large tree trunks at all the entrances/exits to the ravine trails, with little notes encouraging pick-up. When the plastic liner of the pails becomes full of deposits, those thoughtful, community-spirited people whoever they happen to be, collect what has been deposited and put out fresh collection bags. That is the spirit of altruism.

I remember when we lived in Tokyo, there was a man of East Indian extraction who had a daily spot on one of the television stations we tuned into for the morning news. He would try to corner busy people using public transit hurrying on their way to work in the morning hours. Sometimes people would stop briefly to hear him out and respond, but more generally people simply hurried on their way, evading him. One of the questions he asked in the spring was "Do you like spring cleaning?"

The question had a certain cadence to it, particularly the way he emoted it, and we would often kid ourselves, asking the question of one another in his sing-song as a bit of rhetorical irony. I can't recall what response he got of the people he asked this question. He spoke in English, as a way to intrigue people and aid in the eternal quest of the Japanese public at large to pick up English words and phrases.

So, do I like spring cleaning? Not really. Who does? But it does represent an occasion to deep-clean certain places in a home that are  usually given short shrift. It's a drag, of course, because homes always cry out to be cleaned on a daily basis, of the detritus and dust we acquire living in them, soiling them. It seems we never catch up, are perpetually engaged in cleaning up after ourselves. So spring cleaning is an added burden. On the other hand, there's something about spring that gives us an anticipatory, itchy feeling crying out for us to do something in preparation to adequately welcome it. Why not a tidier, cleaner house? There's a certain satisfaction to be had in applying oneself, however grudgingly, to the task.

And since I began almost a month ago I've managed to clean out and tidy the three bathroom vanities in this house, the large glazed double-tiered breakfast room cabinet, and all of the kitchen drawers and cupboards and some of their contents washed and sparkling, but for one upper bank still awaiting attention. So, that has been accomplished, along with some incidental things like cleaning French doors, the backs of Chinese lacquered screens, that type of thing.

Yet to be done? The window sheers, and the windows themselves as well as their screens. All in due time. There's still ample snow on the ground here, it's still plunging to minus ten Celsius at night, and we're due for another snowstorm tomorrow.

Everything we tried with Jackie to ensure that his metabolism was well supported by the quality of food we were offering him seemed to be failing. His twin, Jillie, eating the very same high-quality food is thriving. She has gained the appropriate weight for her breed, size and age, while her brother's weight remains precarious. She is stout and free from any health symptoms, and he, by contrast, is delicate, with no spare fat on his frame, his spine and ribs prominent, and he has been susceptible to all manner of episodic health incidents throughout his young life.

He's the happiest of little dogs, his personality rambunctious and joyful and loving. Her character is a pale reflection of his, though she certainly has her moments. Both of these puppies love galloping about with one another, indulging in rough play and enjoy constant surges of frenetic activity. And both of them are addicted to eating, while only one doesn't seem to thrive on what he's eating.

Mind, they're so absorbed in consuming things that they're continually browsing when we're out of doors. Which means that every little twig, dessicated leaf, or other type of detritus we pass attracts them. This is most acute during the winter months when such detritus stands out visually on the covering of snow. And occasionally that results in a bit of a catastrophe when they munch on something that has fungal growth attached to it. We've thought about equipping them with muzzle halters to stop this continual browsing, but just cannot bring ourselves to enforcing our 'No!' policy to that extent.

As much as Jackie loves food and consuming it ravenously, there were occasional mornings when he spurned all food, just walked away from it, disinterested and obviously feeling unwell. Usually by mid-afternoon he would have surmounted his disinclination to eat, returning to normal, and by the time his evening mealtime rolled around, he'd be famished and more than ready to eat again.

The veterinarian found nothing organically wrong with him, just that he was definitely underweight, but intrinsically healthy. He advised that we consider giving him a specialized kibble produced by Royal Canin, meant for dogs who appear to have a gut problem in absorbing nutrients. He sent us home with a small gratis bag of it, to try it out, but we have a dislike and distrust of the brand, and continued to feed them both the locally-sourced-ingredients produced by a Calgary dog food processor of high quality.

Jackie

And for whatever reason, Jackie's episodes of refusing food accelerated from once-weekly to daily. In desperation, we finally decided to try the gastro high-energy food and it does appear to have made a big difference. He tolerates it well and aside from two random episodes of brief food refusal in the morning, he hasn't returned to exhibiting symptoms of gastric distress. We hope this will be the answer to his feeding problem, though it's not apparent to us yet that he has gained any weight under this new regimen.

We had problems almost similar with our little toy poodle Riley when he was a puppy, and we're hoping that Jackie will somehow manage to outgrow this problem.

Nazi Death Camps Liberation

The policy of the Western Allies vis-a-vis displaced persons, an omnibus term used by SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force] which included the so-called 'slave laborers' as well as the inmates of concentration camps, was perfectly straightforward. The Allies intended to handle the massive problem in two not very distinct stages. First, immediately after liberation all possible aid would be given to the victims with the object of saving as many lives as possible and restoring the sick to health. This preliminary stage, it was hoped, would last no more than a few days or at most a few weeks and would blend naturally into the second stage: repatriation. As soon as the DPs were physically able to return to their homes they were encouraged to do so. All repatriation, however, was to be voluntary -- no one was to be forced to return. The only exception to this rule was in the case of Soviet citizens who, in accordance with Stalin's demands, were to be returned to the Soviet Union whether they desired to be or not.
The first stage was reasonably successful, and within a few weeks infectious diseases had been brought under control and the sick were being nursed back to health. As expected, most DPs were anxious to return to their homes as soon as possible, and even before VE-Day the concentration camp inmates [were] making their way back to their homelands. In all something over 11 million people were classed as DPs requiring repatriation. By the end of August 1945, 500,000 French citizens had returned home; 298,000 Belgians, 325,000 Dutch 800,000 Italians, 2 million Soviet nationals; 1,593,000 Poles, 367,000 Czechs; 200,000 Yugoslavs -- in all 9.8 million. 
Who was left? First, the overwhelming majority of those still in the camps in the autumn of 1945 (about 1.5 million) were Poles, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Rumanians, Balts, and Soviet nationals who had refused repatriation. There were also a small number whose health did not permit travel. Most of the central and east European Jews also remained in the camps. Their position was anomalous. Since they were not considered a separate national group, they were scheduled to return to their countries of origin. However, in many cases that country no longer existed (the Baltic states, those portions of Poland which had been incorporated into the Soviet Union, for example.) Furthermore some who had returned to their homelands -- Poles for example -- were met by violence and sometimes death. Given this situation, the American authorities were not inclined to encourage repatriation, but neither could they offer any alternative. As a result the former inmates were left in temporary camps awaiting a decision on their fate.
In this discouraging situation, two leaders emerged who organized the Jewish DPs in southern Germany and gave the community -- such as it was -- a sense of direction. The first to emerge was an American rabbi, Dr. Abraham Y. Klausener, who had arrived in Dachau in the third week of May. First, he acquired an automobile to travel from camp to camp in Bavaria in order to compile lists of survivors. He simultaneously wrote letters to various organizations in the United States describing the conditions in the camps and soliciting help. And lastly, he induced the American occupation authorities to remove the Jewish survivors from Dachau to more acceptable quarters.
But Klausener recognized that in the long run the only way to provide for the needs of the Jewish DPs was to organize them and then convince the American authorities that the Jews had a right to be recognized as a separate national group. In July UNRAA gave Klausener office space in the Deutsches Museum in Munich and there he established a kind of informal office to offer advice and counsel to individuals and groups while at the same time negotiating with the American occupation authorities. 
The idea of organizing the surviving Jews into a national community received powerful stimulation when on June 20, 1945, units of the Palestinian Jewish Brigade arrived in Bavaria. They brought relief supplies which were sorely needed and hope which was in greater demand. 'As crowds surged around the soldiers and clung to them, a current of mutual discovery and sympathy was generated. For these emissaries, unlike the Allied liberators, had come to seek out their families and their people, to instill courage and hope, to organize and lead an exodus to the land of Israel'.

Nothing has been more effective in establishing the authenticity of the Holocaust story in the minds of Americans than the terrible scenes that US troops discovered when they entered German concentration camps at the close of World War II.

The End of the Holocaust, The Liberation of the Camps : Jon Bridgman, Areopagitica Press

Dachau, Germany
Through quiet Dachau's cobbled streets
The bull-drawn carts plod their way,
Past shops, cafes and cool retreats,
Past churches where the townfolk pray.
On through the town they haul their freight
Of starved and naked dead --
Up to the hill where the mass graves wait --
At last the end of fear and dread.
American Army corporal, in witness

At Dachau concentration camp, two U.S. soldiers gaze at Jews who died on board a death train.
[Photo Credit: USHMM]

My Jewish Brethren of Dachau: (U.S.Army Rabbi Eichorn)
In the portion we read yesterday in our holy Torah we found these words: "Proclaim freedom throughout the world to all the inhabitants, hereof; a day of celebration shall this be for you, a day when every man shall return to his family, and to his rightful place in society".
In the United States of America, in the city of Philadelphia, upon the exact spot where 169 years ago a group of brave Americans met and decided to fight for American independence, there stands a marker upon which is written these very same words: "Proclaim freedom throughout the world to all the inhabitants thereof". From the beginning of their existence as a liberty-loving and independent people, the citizens of America understood that not until all the peoples of the world were free would they be truly free, that not until tyranny and oppression had been erased from the hearts of all men and all nations would there be lasting peace and happiness for themselves. Thus it has been that, throughout our entire history, whenever and wherever men have been enslaved, Americans have fought to set them free; whenever and wherever dictators have endeavored to destroy democracy and justice and truth, Americans have not rested content until these despots have been overthrown.
Today I come to you in a dual capacity -- as a soldier in the American Army and as a representative of the Jewish community of America. As an American soldier, I say to you that we are proud, very proud, to be here, to know that we have had a share in the destruction of the most cruel tyranny of all time. As an American soldier, I say to you that we are proud, very proud, to be your comrades-in-arms, to greet you and salute  you as the bravest of the brave. We know your tragedy. We know your sorrows. We know that upon you was centered the venomous hatred of power-crazed madmen, that  your annihilation was decreed and planned systematically and ruthlessly. We know too that you refused to be destroyed, that you fought back with every weapon at your command, that you fought with your bodies, your minds, and your spirit. Your faith and our faith in God and in humanity have been sustained. Our enemies lie prostrate before us. The way of life which together we have defended still lives, and it will live so that all men everywhere may have freedom and happiness and peace.
I speak to you also as a Jew, as a rabbi in Israel, as a teacher of that religious philosophy which is dearer to all of us than life itself. What message of comfort and strength can I bring to  you from your fellow Jews? What can I say that will compare in depth or in intensity to that which you have suffered and overcome? Full well do I know and humbly do I confess the emptiness of mere words in this hour of mingled sadness and joy. Words will not bring back the dead to life nor right the wrongs of the past ten years. This is no time for words, you will say, and rightfully so. This is a time for deeds, deeds of justice, deeds of love . . . Justice will be done. We have seen with our own eyes and we have heard with our own ears and we shall not forget. As long as there are Jews in the world "Dachau" will be a term of horror and shame. Those who have labored here for their evil master will be hunted down and destroyed as systematically and as ruthlessly as they sought your destruction . . . And there will be deeds of love. It is the recognized duty of all religious people to bestir themselves immediately to assist  you to regain  your health, comfort, and some measure of happiness as speedily as possible. This must be done. This can be done. This will be done. You are not and you will not be forgotten men, my brothers. In every country where the lamps of religion and decency and kindness still burn, Jews and non-Jews alike will expend as much time and energy and money as is needful to make good the pledge which is written in our holy Torah and inscribed on that marker in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love.
We know that abstractions embodied in proclamations and celebrations must be followed by more concrete, more helpful, fulfillments. We do not intend to brush aside the second part of the Divine promise. Every man who has been oppressed must and will be restored to his family and to his rightful place in society. This is a promise and a pledge which I bring you from your American comrades-in-arms and your Jewish brethren across the seas:

You shall go out with joy, and be led forth in peace.
The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you in singing;
And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress,
And instead of brambles myrtles shall spring forth;
And God's name will be glorified;
This will be remembered forever.
This will not be forgotten. Amen.

Saturday, May 5, 1945 

Dachau survivor on the day of liberation.
[Photo Credit: U.S. National Archives, Francis Robert Arzt Collection
The End of the Holocaust, The Liberation of the Camps by Jon Bridgman 

In a sudden burst of energetic determination my husband, who always looks through the sales flyers which I never do, decided he wanted to change the toilet in our master bath. There was nothing wrong with the one that was originally installed when the house was built. But he had already changed another one downstairs in the powder room to a taller-sitting, dual-flush, low-flush model several years back and we both found the increased sitting height preferable to the original.

He is now past 79, heading to 80, anyone might think logically that someone of his age would no longer aspire to such physically demanding tasks, but you'd be wrong in placing him in that category. When he mentioned to me what his intention was, I did as  usually do, demurred, but to no avail. When he decides to do something he just proceeds unless I really strenuously object and give a good reason for it, which I seldom do. He is indefatigable, and he is impetuous, and when he wants to do something he just goes ahead, and so he did.

On Thursday he bought a new appliance and brought it home. Thank heavens it was a two-piece job since they can be awkward and heavy to carry. As it is, when on Friday he took out the old toilet, it was solidly melded together and he had to carry the cumbersome weight from the second floor of the house to the first floor and then on down to the basement where he will take it apart and dispose of it.

And then on to the installation of the new device. He found the installation instructions less useful than they should have been, but in his career as a home-maintenance-owner, this type of thing is not new to him. It took awhile, he had to go out for another part, but the job was done. And this is a man who spent his working life behind an office desk. His curiosity about how everything works and his capacity for physical labour, however, always led him to believe there was nothing he couldn't do, and throughout his life he has proven that he could do anything he wanted to.

Now he plans to focus on the millwork he intends to produce in finishing up the open area between the kitchen and our family room after removing a set of stained glass windows he had installed there several decades earlier. To put together moulding to match what he has installed in both the kitchen and the breakfast room. He's incorrigible about thinking up one project after another. When that's done with, he'll construct another door frame and fill it with stained glass, to replace the door that is currently at the entrance to the upstairs 'guest' bedroom. Something like those he has designed and produced at the entrance to our other bathrooms.

Yesterday turned out a peculiar weather day in an area of the world where the weather is always a topic of fascination. The temperature was unseasonably moderate at ten degrees Celsius, but there was nothing moderate about the suddenly-changeable atmosphere. Not that we weren't forewarned since a weather advisory warned of the potential for afternoon thunderstorms.

Which led us to venture out for our daily ravine hike earlier than usual in the day in the hopes of avoiding being drenched, optimistic that we could beat out the rain. And while we were out hiking the woodland trails we were treated to episodic appearances of the sun brilliantly lighting up the snow-bedecked forest floor, so bright that I regretted not having taken along sunglasses.

Wearing them in the winter months always seems so pretentious to me, but there's a good reason to do so; glare of sun on snow and ice is extremely uncomfortable, and has the potential to distort vision. In the high Arctic indigenous people know the symptoms of snow blindness very well. Their technical skills in coping with their environment included the fashioning of Inuit-style glare-protective eye coverings in such conditions.

There was little wind on our circuit, and no other people out with their dogs, which was unusual, though not rare. Jack and Jill took the opportunity to dash about madly any time we stopped briefly to catch our breath after one of the many ascents we regularly come across. Just as we were approaching the last part of the usual hour-long circuit, the glimpses of sky through the bare canopy displayed breaks in the clouds where the sun shone, and also, further on the horizon, dark clouds looming ahead. Very painterly.

By the time we emerged from the ravine, we could hear the first rumblings of the new season, the always-thrilling sound of approaching thunder, and above, those dark clouds were assembling much closer. In fact, close enough so that by the time we had entered our house, rain came pelting down with enough force to convince that had we been caught out while in the ravine we would have been very uncomfortable. That's the kind of luck we appreciate.

Rolling thunderstorms and episodic rain events described the remainder of the day. Particularly sudden, unexpected cloudbursts. Beautiful, when you're not caught out in them.

When this house was newly built and we moved into it in 1991, it was an open concept house. A new design, we were informed, that was brought back from Florida to see if it could find buyer-traction in Ottawa at the time. The house was built as a sample to be kept in inventory to determine buyer-interest. It did evoke plenty of interest but no offers to buy. So the priced was dropped by $20,000 and around that time we came along looking for wallspace and a house different than what we had been accustomed to in the previous house where we had spent 20 years raising our children to adulthood.

As soon as we moved into the house my husband assessed how he might go about transforming the house partially from its open-concept to a more traditional, closed-concept home. And he started with the kitchen and adjoining breakfast room, both partially open through sightlines in the kitchen and access in the breakfast room, to the great room beyond, a two-story affair with ample walls of a suitable height to please my husband's aesthetic.

The opening between the kitchen and the great room, an unglazed 'window' situated over the kitchen sinks, soon was filled with stained glass and one could no longer look from one room to the other. And the wide open space inviting one from the breakfast room into the great room was closed off with a line of six glazed doors. And for the next 25 years this is what we enjoyed living with.

Suddenly my husband ventured the opinion yesterday that he thought he might remove the stained glass windows between the great room and the kitchen. He would either, he said, replace the windows with others he would design and piece together because he was tired of looking at the woodland landscape that the current windows represented, or he would leave the opening blank. Once the windows were removed we both agreed that we liked the open effect, and we would leave it that way.

Looking into the kitchen from the great room we can see the stained glass he had designed and installed above the banks of kitchen cupboards and around the central light fixture, so there's no loss of stained glass whatever. And looking into the great room from the kitchen we can now see the stained glass windows looking out over that room onto the backyard. So, no visual loss of brightness whatever; a gain, in fact. 

Strange, isn't it just!

Now he's planning to remove the sectioned mouldings and to install other mouldings along with side pillars to match other areas in the kitchen he has worked on before. This is born another project.

Our dogs are no different than we are in needing routine to bring order to our daily lives. On the other hand, unrelieved routine with no breaks from the expected can become stiflingly boring. We need the occasional unexpected, out-of-the-ordinary occurrences to break the cycle of predictability to pique our interest in life.

When our miniature poodle Button was young she accompanied us on many out-of-the-ordinary excursions. With us she did some canoe camping, and she did an awful lot of alpine hiking. She climbed Mounts Clinton, Eisenhower, Mooselauki, Little Haystack and numerous other peaks through the years on our regular visits to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. And when our toy poodle Riley joined us he also did some climbing along with Button, like Indian Head and the twin peaks, the Welch and Dickey-loop in the Waterville Valley. They loved the adventure of it and revelled in sharing those opportunities with us.

They went on countless day hikes with us throughout Gatineau Park and both experienced canoe-camping and portaging in Ontario's incomparable wilderness area, Algonquin Park.

Riley would become bored with the same old daily hike through our neighbourhood woodland ravine and he would just trot along for the most part, barely interested But take him to a different trail, and better yet an area we were completely unfamiliar with and he would become excited enough to rush at the trail, perked up beyond the tiny dog we were more familiar with.

We know that our twin poodles Jack and Jill enjoy hiking in the woods. But each day when we prepare for the daily circuit, Jillie's response is to hide under the coffee table, while Jackie's response is excitable enthusiasm, hardly able to contain himself with expectation. Once we're out on the trails it's Jillie who runs ahead curious to see what's around the bend, with Jackie right behind her.

Now that spring is beginning to evince its initial signals of imminent arrival, snow is beginning to melt. Not so much in the forest, but certainly on our property where enough snow has melted here and there for us to see that lilies and irises, heucheras and other early-eager garden denizens are beginning to push up fresh green shoots (the heucheras are simply there where fall left them, fresh and vibrant ready for spring). Our two little devils seem puzzled by the transition, and concerned over the whereabouts of the snowpack.

When the snow does depart, it will be an unhappy occasion for many dogs, accustomed to its presence. Large dogs in particular like huskies, Shepherds and hounds will miss the snow. They're far too hot and uncomfortable in the summer months, and they have a tendency to enjoy the cool comfort of a deep snowpack, revelling in it, wallowing in it, swallowing it.