Danskcolin: Monday July 12th 2021

08:00 Lois and I have our shower, and then I look at my smartphone. One of our favourite quora forum pundits, Scott Welch, has been weighing in on the vexed question of how come Quebecker Mary Simon, the new Governor-General of Canada, and the Queen's representative in the dominion, the first indigenous-born holder of the post, doesn't speak French.

Mary Simon, Governor-General, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

We've been wondering about that too, I have to say!

Scott Welch, quora forum pundit

The fact is, apparently, that an awful lot of the residents of Quebec province don't speak French, which comes as news to us.

Lois and I didn't know that when Canada was coming together as a unit, Quebec was restricted to the area by the St Lawrence River - like this:

And the massive piece of the continent with the mysterious name of Rupert’s Land, which Lois and I had never heard of till recently, was at the start not even part of Canada: it was owned by a department store (The Hudson’s Bay Company).

Rupert’s Land was eventually ceded to Canada, but was administered by the Canadian Federal government. This was the picture in 1898:

Scott comments: "Then in 1905, the Feds gave Ungava to Quebec. But Quebec didn’t actually want much to do with it, and in fact in the famous court case of 1935 - [are the Eskimos (Inuit) of the area "Indians" in the meaning of the British North America Act (1867) ? - Colin] - the case of "In Re. Eskimo" - Quebec claimed that the "Eskimos" were none of their business.

"So the Federal government stepped back in, and ran all of the schools which Inuit attended, including the ones in Quebec. And for bizarre historical reasons, they used the Alberta (!!!) curriculum, which at the time did not include French."

What madness!!!

Scott continues, "The upshot of this is that the Inuit living in Arctic Quebec had almost no dealings with the Quebec government, went to English-speaking schools run by the Federal government, and were (and are!) culturally a part of Nunavut. In fact, the islands of Ungava are part of Nunavut!

"Oh, and the other hilarious thing is that in the 1970s, when Quebec figured out that there were actual humans living in the Ungava, they tried to force the Inuit to learn French and abandon Inuktitut, because they were “Quebecers first”. The Inuit told them oh-so-politely to go f*** themselves."

What a crazy world we live in!! But Lois and I are very grateful to Scott for his very clear explanation, that's for sure!

11:00 Otherwise, after Scott's bombshell, it's been a quiet day for Lois and me - we go for a walk this morning and have an ice-cream each at the Whiskers Coffee Stand. And later I do a 4.5 mile ride on my exercise bike.

we buy two ices at the Whiskers Coffee Stand this morning:

Lois chocolate chip, me mint chocolate chip - yum yum!

16:00 A phone call with Alison, our daughter in Headley, Hampshire. She says Ed was out strimming the long grass and hedgerows at the weekend, when he accidentally started strimming a hidden wasp nest - oh dear! He got 5 or 6 stings, and then when he went to the bathroom to strip off, he found a rogue wasp still in his clothing. Luckily he managed to flush the little bugger down the plug-hole. What madness !!!

flashback to June: Ed in happier times, at work on

the family's 6-acre back garden, before the wasp nest was discovered

19:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's weekly Bible Seminar on zoom. I settle down on the couch to watch a bit of Danish Scandi-noir. Last week I finished watching the first series of "The Killing", and - call me reckless if you like! - I'm going to skip Series 2 for the moment and go straight to Series 3, which the BBC are currently in the process of airing.

It's always difficult for me at the start of a new Danish crime series to figure out who's who. Again in Series 3 there's a mix of crime and politics, which doesn't help. By the end of Episode 1, I gather that some tattooed guy has been killed on an old hulk of a ship in the harbour, plus a couple of the "holding" crew, detailed to keep an eye on the old vessel.

Plus there seems to be some kind of election, probably parliamentary, in the offing, with the usual Danish jockeying for coalition partners. The big talking-point is the shipping company Zeeland's plan to relocate to somewhere cheaper, in Asia I think. This move will be bad for the Danish economy, so the governing party want to offer the company some sort of "sweetener" and "special treatment" to stay in Copenhagen, while at the same time avoiding the impression that they're piling money on to the already rich, which won't look good in the election.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!

There's obviously some connection between the murder and the politics, but I can't quite figure it out yet - oh dear!!!

Coalition politics, Danish style: the Prime Minister makes overtures

to Centre Party Leader Rosa Lebech - what madness!!!

21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session. She's dead keen to watch an old episode of Doc Martin, the comedy drama series about an uptight Cornish GP, Martin, and his wife, Louisa, headmistress of Portwenn's Primary School. Their marriage has been having problems, to put it mildly.