One Secret Is to Save Everything

Today is Canada Day in London—Canadians might be a bit confused by this statement, since today is June 29th and Canada’s birthday is on July 1st, and believe me, I share your confusion. Nevertheless, Canada-Day celebrations were held today in Trafalgar Square and Bob and I decided to stop by to see how Canada would be summed up by entertainment, food, and cultural activities. I should preface my review of the event by mentioning that many summers ago, Bob and I did a summer roadtrip across Canada. We drove across every province, including Newfoundland, which we almost balked at after we found out how much the ferries cost, but we rightly figured that it would be a very long time before we were out that way again and so we shelled out the cash in the name of the experience, and I never regret that we did. The more provinces, cities, towns, and countryside we saw, the more our existing belief that any cohesive notion of Canada as singular entity was preposterous rang true, so any attempt at pushing Canadian identity, Trafalgar-Square style, to an audience comprised of Canadians living in London, Londoners curious to see what Canada is all about, and Canadians on vacation in London (yes, I overheard quite a few conversations that suggested that many in the audience fit this description—you’re only in London for four days and THIS is what you want to do while you’re here?) is bound to be rather simplistic, and today’s event was just that—shockingly so. According to today’s lesson, Canadians like listening to folk music (although in all fairness, there were other acts that spanned different genres later in the evening, not one of them my taste),

while snowshoeing

and eating bison burgers (the advertised “Café Québec was nowhere to be found, and this appeared to be the only food kiosk at the event).
Apparently, Canadians are also lacking in proofreading skills: the brochure handed out at Trafalgar Square promises that the last musical performer “will be brining her majesty, artistry and power to ‘O Canada.’” It would almost have been worth it to come back at 21:25 just to see the brining. All of this would have been a bit more palatable if the brochure hadn’t opened with this spiel: “We want to tell the world about the real Canada. Our Canada. It’s vibrant, colorful and filled with progressive people.” The absurdity of using the American spelling of "colourful" in a promise to deliver the “real” Canada just about sums up this embarrassing event. Luckily, we had somewhere else to be this evening, and as we walked across the Thames, we noticed this flag by the London Eye:

“One secret is to save everything” is an installation by British artist Tracey Emin, and I'm not sure how we didn't spot it until now, since the flag has been flying for a few months. Anyway, after stopping on the bridge to ponder what "everything" could be, we got to Southbank a bit early and Bob wanted to sit for a while, so it was a perfect opportunity to pop into the British Film Institute’s Mediatheque for a few short films. They’ve added quite a few films to the database since we were last there and, as with our last visit, the Mediatheque wasn’t full, so it seems like it would always be worth a visit when we’re in the neighbourhood. After we left BFI, we headed next door to the Queen Elizabeth Hall for the opening event of the London Literature Festival. I bought us tickets to the reading by Roger McGough and Brian Patten as part of Bob’s birthday present, since McGough is a poet that Bob has mentioned liking on several occasions. I was unfamiliar with most of McGough’s work and hadn’t read any of Patten’s until I head about this show, but can happily balance out my scathing review of today’s Canada-Day event with a much less grouchy one of McGough and Patten, who put on a fantastic performance, full of engaging backstories, humour, and longing. Bob and I agreed that McGough was our favourite of the two, but both poets read out gems, elicited noisy laughter and applause from the audience, and also managed to leave us silent as we reflected over the little sadnesses found in their poetry.