The world travelers made it home safe and sound. I spoke with Brenda yesterday afternoon and she was just heading off for a nap. It's going to take a few days to get back into this time zone for them. The kids greeted them with carrot cake and tea when they got home at 1:00 so it made for a bit of a late night but I'm sure they were glad to finally get off to sleep in their own bed once again.
Our cooking class last night went okay in spite of Brenda's absence ( I hadn't expected she would be there). We were doing slow cooker meals and it's a difficult thing to do in class as you really can't cook anything in the slow cooker in two hours - kind of defeats the purpose! I put the first one in the cooker in the morning - an Italian Pot Roast, except I substituted a pork roast for a beef roast (budgetary restrictions!) but it turned out delicious. Then there was a second recipe that used the leftovers to make Calzones. So I had the class make pizza dough while we cooked pasta for our first course. So we had the first course - Italian pot roast served on pasta then finished with the calzones. Well, actually we had to take them home with us as they just came out of the oven in time to leave. I had mine when I got home and had everything put away, and they were actually mighty tasty.
I was quite saddened to read on Monday about the passing of Sam Sniderman - aka Sam the Record Man. You have to have grown up in the sixties and lived in Southern Ontario to truly appreciate what an iconic place his Yonge Street store really was. I lived approximately an hour away from Toronto and people just didn't travel like they do now. To go to Toronto for the day was a really big deal. From time to time we would have field trips from school and they always gave us a bit of free time. I treasured those trips more than you can imagine because a trip to Toronto meant a trip to Sam the Record Man. Walking into that enormous 3 story building was like walking into heaven for any music lover. Any piece of vinyl you could dream of was available at Sam's including some you'd never imagine ever finding.Certainly you could get all the latest albums but you could also get obscure discs that you didn't even know existed if you spent some time digging around. After the Beatles broke up and there were no more of those hits coming our way, I gradually shifted over to folk music which was becoming the big trend at the time. It was the late sixties, early seventies and artists like our own Gordon Lightfoot were coming of age, thanks in great part to the likes of Sam Sninderman. I found a copy of an old Lightfoot album called Early Lightfoot that had a very young sounding singer that was barely recognizable as the voice we all came to know and love. Because of people like Sam the Record Man a good number of Canadian musicians were able to become the established performers that we would all enjoy for many years - he truly believed in Canadian music and pushed for the then controversial Canadian content regulations that were established in 1970. and he helped organize the first Juno awards to celebrate Canada's musical talent. Those awards have grown from very humble beginnings to a major event for Canadian musicians. It's ironic that I now live here on the island that he also called his second home. He and his late wife, Janet May, were seasonal residents for many years and was a great contributor to UPEI, implementing the Sound and Film Archive at Roberson Library. But islanders don't understand just how much of an impact his stores had on young music lovers of another era. He will be missed.
 |
| Even though it's been gone for years, this picture stirs up so many memories for so many people! |
No comments:
Post a Comment