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eG Foodblog: jamiemaw - In the Belly of the Feast: Eating BC


jamiemaw

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As the closing credits threaten to roll, I'll throw in another thank you for the blog Jamie. I found it both entertaining and enlightening: The photos of food (on the hoof and on the plate), women, terroir, women... All beauties. The message that came through loud and clear to me was that of the SLOW concept - you took our locality and showed it to the world (or the eG world at least). So thanks for that.

In reference to your foodblog title - and to borrow your double-entendre license if I may - there is nothing I encourage more than new and revived interests in eating BC.

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Jamie, this has been a Herculean effort on your behalf which has been greatly enjoyed and appreciated. Its bought back wonderful memories of my summer visit to Vancouver, the Okanagan, Victoria and Harrison Hot Springs and showed me some more places I need to get to on my next trip. Now looking forward more then ever to Rob Clark of C restaurant visiting the UK in February to recreate (and maybe even try to surpass) the Sustainability Event in that happened in Vancouver in June this year. I believe he may be accompanied by a familiar face or two?

Thanks, Andy. Great to hear from you; I hope that you can add Tofino and Whistler during your next sojourn here. And yes, we are very much looking to the Sustainability Dinner in London on February 6th and the attendant events surrounding it. Rob and his staff, Eva and I, Michele, and a number of other proponents of this delicious message look forward to seeing you in person then.

Cheers,

Jamie

Edited by jamiemaw (log)

from the thinly veneered desk of:

Jamie Maw

Food Editor

Vancouver magazine

www.vancouvermagazine.com

Foodblog: In the Belly of the Feast - Eating BC

"Profumo profondo della mia carne"

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As the closing credits threaten to roll, I'll throw in another thank you for the blog Jamie. I found it both entertaining and enlightening: The photos of food (on the hoof and on the plate), women, terroir, women... All beauties. The message that came through loud and clear to me was that of the SLOW concept - you took our locality and showed it to the world (or the eG world at least). So thanks for that.

In reference to your foodblog title - and to borrow your double-entendre license if I may - there is nothing I encourage more than new and revived interests in eating BC.

Thanks BC - and great line. :biggrin:

Edited by jamiemaw (log)

from the thinly veneered desk of:

Jamie Maw

Food Editor

Vancouver magazine

www.vancouvermagazine.com

Foodblog: In the Belly of the Feast - Eating BC

"Profumo profondo della mia carne"

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Cayenne,

No website, but here's Oyama's Christmas list . . .

CHRISTMAS

2005

*Terrine of Duck Foie Gras *Smoked Goose Legs

*Terrine of Goose Foie Gras *Smoked Duck Legs

*Duck Foie Gras Mousse *Boudin Blanc w/ Truffles

*Goose Foie Gras Mousse *Silesian White Sausage

*Veal & Pistachio Terrine *Saucisson Sec de Leningrad w/

*Fourme d”Ambert Terrine Mandarin Confit

*Wild Boar Terrine w/ Brandied Apricots *Saucisson Sec de Campagne w/ Sea

*Duck Terrine w/ Roast Apple Salt & hand selected White Pepper

*Confit au Armagnac *Saucisson Sec de Haute Savoie

*Creamy Goose Terrine w/ Forest *Saucisson Sec de Sanglier

Mushrooms *Saucisse Seche au Sel de Guerande

*Terrine of Beef Tenderloin w/ Winter *Salametti w/ White Truffle Oil

Vegetables *Venison Fuet w/ Red Wine

*Terrine of Turkey Breast in a Squash *Venison Salsiz

& Chicken Farce w/ Cranberry Jelly *100% Elk Salami

*Duck Mousse w/ Oregon White Truffles *100% Cariboo Salami

*Flemish Ham in a Gelee of Honey w/ *100% Venison Salami

Raisins *Summer Sausage w/ Green Pepper

*Boeuf a la Flamande in a Gelee of *Coarse Cervelat w/ Sea Salt

Rodenbach Grand Cru Beer w/ Prunes *Double Smoked Mettwurst

*Suffolk Gammon- an English ham cured w/ *Mennonite Summer Sausage

treacle & stout & smoked over oak *Russian Salami after a recipe from

*Corned Elk Brisket w/ Red Wine & Juniper 1898

*Our famous Swedish Hams- a raw, cured *Wild Boar Chorizo

ham, delicious & mild, w/ cooking *14 month aged, wine cured Wild

instructions - 3-6 kg Boar Ham

*Saucisson Bernoise in Butter Pastry *12 month aged Holstein Schinken

you bake, w/ instructions *Pork Loin cured w/ Sea Salt &

*Pork Pies Lemon Juice

*Porchetta *Venison Rillettes

GREAT GIFTS FOR TRAVELLING: Goose or Duck Foie Gras in Jars

...&, of course, all our usual favourites:

Parfait de Foie Gras, Strasbourg Terrine, Duck Pate w/ Apricot, Duck Pate w/ Grand Marnier & Peppercorn, Pate de Campagne, Pate des Ardennes, Venison Pate w/ Cranberries, Creamy Porcini Pate, Rabbit Pate w/ Dijon Mustard, Goose Pate w/ Truffles, My Grandfather’s Favourite Pate, Terrine Landaise, Cognac Pate, Peppercorn Pate

ALSO: Sage Bangers, Nurnberger, Chipolatas, Suffolk Breakfast Sausages, Toulouse and much much more!!!

LIMITED AMOUNTS. WE MAKE EVERYTHING FROM SCRATCH. PLEASE PREORDER!!

from the thinly veneered desk of:

Jamie Maw

Food Editor

Vancouver magazine

www.vancouvermagazine.com

Foodblog: In the Belly of the Feast - Eating BC

"Profumo profondo della mia carne"

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The Twelve Days of Christmas

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A Christmas Wish List

1. I would like to have my friends back: Joel Thibault, Jean-Claude Ramond, Werner Forster. All died this past year. I and many others miss them.

2. More Time at Home . . .

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. . . With a healthy supply of apricots outside the kitchen door.

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. . . And walking here each day

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3. Quieter Restaurants

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4. More Naked Food

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5. Much more bratwurst Nurnberger

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. . . and some themes and variations

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A complement of leading German toothpastes

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6. The Occasional Indulgence of sweet, briny Dungeness

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And Easter Lamb at Joe and Georgia's

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7. Cleansing ales in abundance and profusion for all

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8. The Love of a Good Woman

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9. The Love of My Daughters - (Pictured here, 'A-1', named for the famous steak sauce.)

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10. The Love of My Friends

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11. The Love of My Life

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12. And Peace on Earth

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Edited by jamiemaw (log)

from the thinly veneered desk of:

Jamie Maw

Food Editor

Vancouver magazine

www.vancouvermagazine.com

Foodblog: In the Belly of the Feast - Eating BC

"Profumo profondo della mia carne"

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Hardly a modest effort, Jamie. Thank you so much for taking out the time to share a bit of your world -- and your humor -- with us. I just have to find a reason to justify a pleasure trip to Vancouver...

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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Jamie,

What a fantastic imagination you have !

A wonderful tale ! You have turned our rain soaked, barren wasteland, skunky beer, weak wined little corner of the world into a Garden of Eden all with a few pages of prose !

Lovely pictures !

Please folks,

Do not come here on vacation or, worse yet, move here.

It is not how you have seen in the pictures. The wine is bad, apples full of worms, acid rain, pot holes in the highways, single engine World War 1 planes as transport, smoky double decker busses with no tops to cram more people on. The only vegetables we have are carrots. That was the entire provinces herd of pigs. Not enough bacon to go around. I get to eat bacon every third Tuesday of even years ( shitty luck this year ! ). We do not have any salmon, only rockfish !

The only beer we have is "no name" Beer. Do not come here and drink our beer, worse yet, drink our wine.

Jamie, I can see you let this get away from you ! It is a good thing I was able to post and dissuade people ( and their friends )from coming here and eating and drinking the fantastic bounty that we have. Could you imagine this roving band of gulleters, flashing their decoder rings all over the place, drinking our allocations of Burrowing Owl !!

Stop this lunacy before this plague of locusts decides they are coming for summer vacation !

Neil Wyles

Hamilton Street Grill

www.hamiltonstreetgrill.com

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Delicious. Absolutely delicious, including the food & the company. Thank you.

Edited to add: Neil, it's too late. We're all drawn by the sheer beauty of British Columbia, not to mention the staff of Chez Jim. :wub:

It will get worse when the Winter Olympic Games finally come to Vancouver.

Edited by rjwong (log)

Russell J. Wong aka "rjwong"

Food and I, we go way back ...

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Hardly a modest effort, Jamie. Thank you so much for taking out the time to share a bit of your world -- and your humor -- with us. I just have to find a reason to justify a pleasure trip to Vancouver...

How about a whole mess of tour guides who can direct you to one or two places to eat? :cool:

I was teasing Jamie yesterday that Tourism BC must be paying him a hefty fee for all this publicity. The fact is, that he, like myself and others from this part of the world, LOVE this place. Truly and honestly. We just want the rest of you to come visit.

Oh, and bring your appetites.

And then go home. :laugh: BC is full.

A.

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Thank you thank you... You inspire me to be a better person... Much love and peace in the New Year.. That was just fabulous.. You are just such a poetic bastard.. I think they casted Witches of Eastwick all wrong.. :biggrin:

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Could you imagine this roving band of gulleters, flashing their decoder rings all over the place, drinking our allocations of Burrowing Owl !!

No worries Neil ... tourists get the "export" BOV. The good stuff stays here. :raz:

A.

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Wonderful blog Jamie!

I am sorry I didn't get to participate. I am on a business trip in Germany. Looking at wursten grilling at the beautiful Heidelberg Christmas Market.

I had 2 blueberry Gluehweins; one for you! :wink:

Have a Merry Christmas and peaceful New Year.

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Stollen Moments

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Coffee, stollen, chocolates

For a skinny guy, he takes up a lot of room.

Thomas Haas is a fourth generation pastry chef; he grew up in his family's pastry shop in the Black forest village of Alchalden.

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A German Santa from the Brothers Grimm. Or Billy Bob Thornton.

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Chocolates shells ready to take their liquid centres.

His great-grandfather opened the Café Conditerei Haas in 1918, shortly after the end of the 'unpleasantries'.

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Tommy, can you see me?

Thomas trained there, then moved on to work in several Michelin three-star restaurants before moving to become executive pastry chef at the Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver. During that time he participated in the North American Pastry Chef competition in New York City, finishing among the top three finalists in 1997 and 1998.

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Mystery solved: Centres filled.

In December 1998, Thomas moved to New York to help open Daniel. While in New York, Thomas was named one of the Top Ten Pastry Chefs in America by Choclatier and Pastry Art and Design Magazine.

In 2001, he so completely dominated the Valrhona National (North America) Pastry Team Championships in Los Angeles, Competition (winning all four major categories), that several of his competitors stomped off the stage in disgust. Or more accurately, clogs.

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Waiting for their final dip of chocolate and decoration.

He came back in to Vancouver in 2000; since then Thomas has been executive pastry chef at The Metropolitan Hotel and Senses Bakery.

He and his wife Lisa established Thomas Haas Fine Chocolates and Patisserie, a retail operation that also supplies some of the finest hotels and restaurants in Canada and the US.

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Haas is mischievous, funny, enormously hard-working, charming and the first to help out with charitable and industry events. He's also respected by his peers; he's a director of the Chefs' Table Society of BC.

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Another mystery solved. It's all done by hand.

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And as for lunch at the counter, a correctly-engineered brioche pannini, with Black Forest ham.

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The stollen production line. Haas's are moist and light.

Throughout the half hour that we spent with Thomas today, his order counter was lined two, then three deep.

Christmas orders were placed and paid for, coffees poured, pastries boxed, chocolates selected, humour dispensed.

This visit to another chef completes the cycle I set out to speak to this week: hands-on craftsmen and -women who labour early and late, source fine ingredients near and far, and only then get to do the books.

From Michael Alleiemer's gougeres and wild boar cheeks last week in Kelowna, to Andrwew Springett's and Lisa Ahier's fine coastal cooking in Tofino, to John van der Liek's immaculate charcuterie, and Thomas's elegant chocolates and pastries today, each found a way - a unique insistence for excellence - a way through.

And to think, this dialogue with chefs barely licked the surface of this place. That not unpleasant task, my friends, will be up to you.

Before I sign off, many thanks for your kind attention and feedback this week. My only disappoinment was that I couldn't show you a reason to give up wedding ring calamari forever - the baby pepper squid at one of my favourite restaurants here, Phnom Penh.

You see, I didn't want you to think that I eat truffles every day.

We send our very best wishes for a warm and loving holiday season to you and all who sail in you.

Come and see us soon, please

Jamie and Eva.

Edited by jamiemaw (log)

from the thinly veneered desk of:

Jamie Maw

Food Editor

Vancouver magazine

www.vancouvermagazine.com

Foodblog: In the Belly of the Feast - Eating BC

"Profumo profondo della mia carne"

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Thank you, Jamie. You make me miss BC so much. Not the restaurants which didn't exist then, but the beauty of the province. Not the north which holds sad memories but the year we spent in the Fraser Valley - dead broke, three children all under three. We lived on hot dogs and freshly caught rainbow trout. The people, the surroundings, the atmosphere, even the weather were beautiful. We still consider it the best year of our life. It was 1969 - a different era altogether.

Have a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year.

Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

...I just let people know about something I made for supper that they might enjoy, too. That's all it is. (Nigel Slater)

"Cooking is about doing the best with what you have . . . and succeeding." John Thorne

Our 2012 (Kerry Beal and me) Blog

My 2004 eG Blog

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At the outset of this blog, I expected nothing less than the best from our local emissary of good food and drink. Clearly, you've delivered in spades, Jamie... you even have the Vancouverites spellbound.

Thanks for whisking us away on such a magical, delectable ride. Warmest wishes for the best of the season to you and Eva.

Santé!

Joie Alvaro Kent

"I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2,000 of something." ~ Mitch Hedberg

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Jamie,

Thank you for answering my questions, providing information, and sharing your family recipes.

Thank you for the most delightful read, a visual feast for the eyes and mind. Beautiful thoughts and memories, amusing and informative at the same time. A real treat for all of us, a perfect lead into this special time of year.

Wishing you, Eva and all your family and friends a most joyful Christmas and a New Year filled with everything wonderful. :smile:

"If cookin' with tabasco makes me white trash, I don't wanna be recycled."

courtesy of jsolomon

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jamiemaw,

It sounds like you are the product of pretty wonderful parents. Able to live in the moment instead of chasing the next. Thanks for a glimpse into beautiful B.C.

If only Jack Nicholson could have narrated my dinner, it would have been perfect.

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Christmas Present

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

--Hebrews XIII-ii, The Holy Bible

What I know about angels I could write on the head of a pin. Sure, the fallen ones are easy to spot—Satan, Beezelbub and their bad boy cronies—they should get an afterlife. But lately I‘ve been looking for my own angel, an angel of goodness, the one I lost as a little boy.

To this day I can’t be sure if humans are the invention of the angels (virtual reality), or if the reverse is true—real virtue. What little I do know about them is that they are most likely to appear to us at times of mortal mercy, or unbounded joy, when we love for the sake of loving and not just for being loved: Christmas-time. The name of my angel was Bill Hockey—he was the guy who told me the reason he could fly was because he took himself lightly.

All children know that there is no such thing as an imaginary friend, there are just friends. Just as every child knows that there is no such thing as quality time, there is just time, denominated in the longer minutes and hours of childhood, when it has even been known to stop still.

Like you, when I was little I had the Christmas canon read to me—of the triumph of Tim Cratchit and of Scrooge’s timely redemption. And I heard the Christmas liturgy, over and over and then I sang the urgent descant of its hymns: “O Holy Night, the stars are brightly shi—ning, it is the night of our true saviour’s birth.”

I found Bill Hockey in West Vancouver, B.C.—at 726 Parkside Road, WAlnut 2-7997. Or maybe he found me. Bill would be my constant companion for all those moments of childhood that pass as slowly as years. Years that would end on Christmas night, 1957, when Bill Hockey walked away from me, almost forever.

Christmas rituals, then: That the painted Noma lights would be laid out on the living room carpet to be tested before they would begin to snake up the tree. That the large glass balls would go on the heavy bottom branches of the Christmas tree, the smaller ones above the candy canes and somewhere near the middle. And, inviolate, that the silver tinsel must be strung, one strand at a time, just so—a short loop over the branch to maximize length, reflection, drama. No tossing.

My brothers and I had already checked the Christmas Eve kitchen: The giant tom turkey with extra drumsticks lay in state at the bottom of the McLary refrigerator. It would be slow-roasted tomorrow, its back broken if it came in over 25 pounds so it would fit in Mum’s spiffy new Moffat range. The crates that Jack the vegetable man had hoisted over the Dutch door lay in the cooler: Brussels sprouts, cranberries, squashes, carrots, boxes of Mandarin oranges, celery for the stuffing, a quarter bushel of russets that would later test Uncle Pete’s wrist.

On the counters, under long sheets of waxed paper, lay the baking: shortbread, sugar cookies, cheese biscuits and mince tarts. Our grandparents would bring the Christmas Day pies tomorrow morning from the Dainty Maid Bakery on South Granville and the “special orange” cake from Notte’s Bon Ton. All was set.

*

Christmas Day. First up, silent house, too early. Smells of cedar—the tree and embers. My younger brother Ian and I paused like deer at the head of the stairs, looking at the presents. They had grown in our short night’s sleep—they spilled out to the hallway: Santa’s at the very front, with no wrapping, just manila tags with wiggly printing as if someone old, and very thoughtful, might have been struggling with each child’s wishes.

Then finally the protocol of Christmas morning. Only Santa’s presents and stockings before breakfast, plus another from Gramma in Montreal. This one a constant: A postal tube containing our Canadiens’ calendars and itchy woollen hockey sweaters. Then breakfast: a strip of sirloin steak, shirred eggs nudging buttered Irish soda toast, and a whack of Mum’s good marmalade.

More gifts from the tree then, lunch and off to play—Meccano sets to assemble, chemistry sets to blow up, Strombecker road racers throttled till the hand controls melted in our hands, Lionel train track tacked to the flipside of the ping pong table.

*

In Mum’s kitchen, the giant tom had long ago entered the Moffat. It was sitting in an old and trusted roasting pan under the shade of a brown paper shopping bag, doing a slow brown. This was her trick, that mother of ours, how she could crisp a bird exactly the colour of our Laurentian burnt-sienna crayons, cook the drums through, and still keep the breast meat moist. Now I know how it’s done, and I can tell you only this: It requires saltwater, strong arms, no small joy, children and uncles and witty aunts and friends crowding the stove, and a tumbler of Dewar’s, maybe a few.

Then Uncle Pete would take his cufflinks out, roll the sleeves of his best Straith’s shirt to the elbows, and begin to attack the potatoes. He would add cream and butter and more butter with abandon, and whip the glorious mixture until it began to shine.

Would you know the rest? Distended bellies on little boys? Parents and relatives, and their friends who had no other place to go to, laughing into the night? Or the Christmas my brother Kit arranged the seat on our great-aunt Datie’s chair (she of the generous posterior) so that she fell through and became firmly wedged. It took two men to pull her free, while she laughed on. Good sport.

Or the wistfulness that can follow Christmas dinner, when the carcass of the turkey is returned to the kitchen for Boxing Day sandwiches and the laughter dims a little when someone at the table feels the pull of someone not there.

This was the day my life was to change completely and forever. For this was the Christmas—after the extra leaves had been placed in the dining room table, the places set with best silver and Christmas crackers, the bowls of fresh cranberry and orange sauce placed down the centre of the table under the candlesticks, and just as our parents were enjoying their first drink—that I realized that something was terribly wrong. Bill Hockey was late for dinner.

“Bill Hockey isn’t here yet, Mum.”

I went and sat in the den window. I looked out on the snow under the streetlight.

Mum made quiet arrangements, and soon an extra place and Christmas cracker were set beside mine for the absent guest of honour. I looked through the den window hoping that Bill would step out from behind the big cedar tree at the end of the driveway; I knew he was standing there, in the shadows, in the quiet of the snow and night.

When the turkey had come out of the oven to rest, and the gravy was being started, my father came into the den. He looked out the window with me. He was smoking his pipe. “I think we should go and look for Bill Hockey, Dad. He might be lost,” I said, quietly.

We got our coats from the hall closet and walked to the garage. Without a word, Dad started his Oldsmobile Super 88, backed out, and we drove off down Parkside Road. For almost an hour we searched the roads and parks for Bill Hockey. “If he’s lost he must be cold,” I said. Then, except for the Christmas carols and Bing Crosby on CHQM: just silence, as we looked some more.

And when we could look no longer my father said, “I think that Bill must have joined his family tonight, and perhaps he couldn’t let us know. Why don’t we see what Mum has ready.”

And so we did. Walked into the kitchen that held all the warmth and smells of Christmas. Mum came to me, kneeled and asked, “Any luck?” “No, we think he’s gone home to his family tonight, in Montreal,” I said. She hugged me, rubbed my cold ears, and asked me to help her with the gravy boat.

My brothers, despite an impeccable record, didn’t rag me that night. The place for Bill Hockey sat empty the whole dinner, through two servings of turkey and mince pie à la mode, while friends and relatives wore tissue paper hats, laughed, proposed toasts to the cook, to the day and the year, and when the fine-hipped bottles of Lindeman’s Riesling cut in, to just about anything at all.

And then Dad said, “And here’s to Bill Hockey, who had to go home to Montreal to see his family. I hope that he’s having turkey and happy too.”

And then my father looked at me, the way he looks at my mother on their wedding anniversaries.

I looked for Bill Hockey many times after that Christmas night, wondering what new boy he might have befriended and if he was someone who needed him more than I did. I looked especially hard on the nights when the Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup—Jean Beliveau was skating around the Forum, the trophy held high. I always hoped that Bill would rejoin me to share in the rejoicing of all the fans.

Bill Hockey was the last one to know my every thought. And it is only as I close this book of childhood Christmas photographs that the pictures are revealed: That the wonder of the child is not to ask if the angel might come back to save him—but what virtue the boy must come to know, to save his angel, unawares.

Edited by jamiemaw (log)

from the thinly veneered desk of:

Jamie Maw

Food Editor

Vancouver magazine

www.vancouvermagazine.com

Foodblog: In the Belly of the Feast - Eating BC

"Profumo profondo della mia carne"

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