Missed the Boxing Day sales!
by
Robert LaFrance
Although an edition of this very
paper hit the streets on Dec. 26, Boxing Day, it never crossed my alleged mind
to refer to that fact in my column for that day. The ancient brain cells let me
down once more.
Perhaps I should begin with the
history of Boxing Day. Although it is said that the tradition and the name
began in England where the better-off people packed up extra gifts (the stuff
that didn’t fit, turkey bones, etc.) on the day after Christmas and distributed
the BOXES of them to poor people, that’s nonsense of course. Pure baloney,
twaddle and drivel.
The tradition really began in the
late 1800s in Tilley, New Brunswick, where my ancestor Olivier Pinel dit
LaFrance (1846-1932) first started (as they say, redundantly) the tradition we
know today as Boxing Day.
On Dec. 26, 1882, four years after
the Pinel dit LaFrance (later LaFrance) family took up land grants in North
Tilley, Olivier was driving a team of horses down what is now Churchland Road
(then called Block X Trail) when his way was barred by a huge black bear that
scared the horses.
“Allez! Allez!” he said to the bear,
which to his misfortune, understood only English with a smattering of German.
“Allez!” and the horses bolted down the road with the bear close behind.
On the wagon Olivier drove were a
dozen hardwood boxes he had been taking down to the store in Tilley with the
idea that he would bring back some canned goods in some of them and flour and
sugar in the rest. Well, Mister Bear had to decide whether to attack the horses or the man and he chose the latter.
Wrong option. When the bear leaped onto the wagon, Olivier (my
great-grandfather) grabbed one of the boxes and took that bear right between
the eyes with the corner of it. Whether or not he understood French, from that
moment Monsieur l’ours was ‘hors de combat’, which means knocked out like a
light, even though incandescent ones hadn’t found their way to Tilley yet.
So, those of you who are gathered
round the fireplace hearing this narrative, that is the true story of why
December 26 was called Boxing Day from then on.
I suppose you want to know what
happened to the bear; somewhere between the point of Olivier’s battle and the
farm of Herman Goodine, the bear regained consciousness – sort of – and leaped
off the wagon, right into the path of the Medford-Lerwick Stagecoach Line’s
3:32 coach on its way to South Tilley. The four horses of that particular
Apocalypse trampled the bear real good.
I thought I would start out the new
year with a true story, so people don’t keep accusing me of lying on my column.
I get a lot more criticism for that than I do for lying in bed while my wife
shovels the driveway.
*******************************
Rudolph Seere (known in the club as
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rain-Beer) asked me if I intended to make any New Year’s
resolutions. Indeed? “Why should a perfect human being, good-looking and
admired, need to make such spurious promises to himself?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “I am asking about
you, not this other person to whom you refer.” Rudy’s first language is one of
the Chinese dialects known as Mandarin #16 and so he’s very careful with
English. “Did you or did you not made any New Year’s Resolutions?”
I had to admit that I have made a few.
The first was to make a better effort to remember people’s names. There is no
one in Victoria County who has a worse memory for names than I do. This is NOT
a good characteristic for a newspaper reporter. I was interviewing Premier
Allerdyce only last week about the price of something-or-other and I could not
remember his first name. Prime Minister Harvey is not a problem, because I
don’t get to interview her.
There was a second resolution. Wait,
wait, don’t tell me. It was about being more tolerant of politicians – such as
those two I just mentioned – and making an effort to understand that several
Canadian politicians are hard-working and honest. Defence Minister Peter McKay,
for example, must have his good points. Perhaps he’s kind to dogs.
The third resolution had to do with
speed bumps. I should do a 1500-word story on the history of speed bumps, or
maybe not. Some people on Birchwood Street in Perth-Andover were happy to have
them there, others hated them, and now the latest I heard was that quite a few
people on Hillcrest Drive on the Andover side would be happy to have them if
Birchwood Street residents don’t want them. “It has become a racetrack,” one
woman told me.
I don’t think there was a fourth
resolution unless it had something to do with winning the lottery. I have had
many people tell me that the odds against or the chances of winning a lottery –
and I mean one in which the word ‘million’ is used – are astronomical and tiny.
However, what are the odds of anyone paying at least two dollars a week since
the 1970s and winning a total of less than $100? If I can beat those odds, I
should be able to beat the odds against winning a lottery. I’ll just check the
Mayan calendar. Maybe it will provide me with a clue.-end-
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