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Category Archives: Wedding

A Cautionary Tale

17 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by michelinewalker in Sharing, Wedding

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

a Cautionary Tale, Career, Health, Instinct, Marriage, McMaster University, Ryerson University, St. FX University

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Photo credit: Etsy

The Wedding

Before our wedding and our idyllic honeymoon at Wickanninish Inn, my future husband and I had to attend a rehearsal for the wedding ceremony. We loved one another, but to a certain extent, I married to please my mother. She would have been very disappointed, had I lived with a man without first marrying him.

As we were driving to a rehearsal of the wedding ceremony, my future husband told me, out of the blue, that there was a condition attached to his marrying me. He said he would leave me if I ever put on weight. I realised that the wedding ceremony would be a comedy and that the marriage would not be valid in the eyes of the Catholic Church. I therefore contemplated cancelling the wedding, but it was late and I was very confused.

Ryerson University

  • downtown Toronto
  • a secure position
  • a secure marriage
  • Canada’s best research environment

A year later, David started to work in Toronto, where I also found a position. I taught French at Ryerson Polytechnical University, in downtown Toronto.[1] I had to teach eighteen hours a week, but I was teaching French as a second language, nothing more, and I could devote the four Spring/Summer months to research. As well, I was in Canada’s best research environment. I worked near the University of Toronto and its research library. 

In other words, I was secure and nothing threatened my marriage and health, except being too thin. However, my husband wanted me to resign. He so insisted that I did resign. I changed my mind during the night, but when I phoned Ryerson, I was told I had already been replaced. I started teaching French as a second language to government of Ontario civil servants.

McMaster University

  • a fragile career
  • a fragile marriage
  • illness

A year later, after he read Open Marriage, my husband asked me to apply for a position at McMaster University, in Hamilton. He would stay in our house and I would rent an apartment in Hamilton. In my eyes, this wasn’t a marriage, but a mere arrangement.

One day, I was asked to see the Chair of my department who told me that the following year, I would teach courses in linguistics: theoretical and foreign-language didactics. I told the Chair that I had never studied linguistics and that preparing the courses might preclude my publishing papers on Molière and related topics. He, the Chair, made it very clear that if I refused to teach linguistics, I would have to leave the university. That is intimidation. I therefore learned and taught linguistics, but, as I feared, my contract was not renewed. I had written a fine article on Molière, but that did not suffice.

My marriage had ended, I no longer had a position, and my health had deteriorated. For the following months, I worked as public relations and admissions’ officer in a college affiliated with the University of Regina. I had to travel throughout the province, which I could not do for long. 

St Francis Xavier University

  • good years
  • too heavy a workload
  • illness

A friend suggested that I apply for a position at St Francis Xavier University, in Nova Scotia. He thought my chances were very good. I applied and moved to a small university town. I was no longer in a good research environment and had to use the interlibrary loan service. But I wrote articles on Molière and linguistics. In the mid 1980’s, I was elected President of the Canadian Association of University and College Teachers of French (APFUCC) and a member of the Board of Governors of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and served on its Executive.

But I had caught a virus and had lost a great deal of energy, so I was fragile. When a departmental war erupted (they are a common affliction), I fell ill (crippling fatigue) and decided to seek a diagnostic and treatment. A SPECT scan revealed myalgic encephalomyelitis. My neurologist told me that the damage was extensive and that he doubted I could return to work. There was no cure.

I had to earn a living, so I returned to work on a part-time basis. However, a new Chair decided to avenge a colleague whose contract was not renewed and would not allow me to work on a full-time basis. I re-entered the classroom on a full-time basis, when this Chair left the University to accept a position elsewhere. For four years, I was the victim of obstructionism.

The Moral

The moral of this story is complex, but quite obvious. All I will say is, first, that, although it was very late, I should have cancelled the wedding. Second, I will say that when I worked at Ryerson, I could combine a career and a marriage. That never happened again. While studying linguistics, I caught an invisible, but chronic and incurable illness. I managed to keep my position at StFX for several years because my workload was normal. I bought a house across the street from campus to simplify my life. But if my workload grew too heavy and my working environment was vitiated, I was at risk. My workload grew to include the creation of language lab components, and the preparation of courses one of which was a course in an area of knowledge I knew little about: Animals in Literature. These courses were prepared during a sabbatical leave. I could not refuse because I was afraid. I fell ill and extremely vulnerable.

At that point in its history, my university’s policy was to eliminate from its Faculty persons who might fall ill. This is what a vice-president told me, which raises bigger questions that I will not address.

But it would be my opinion that there are times when one should listen to one’s instinct and stay where one is safe and happy. I resigned from a good position without making sure there was a way back to safety. I lost my marriage, harmed my health, and put my career in jeopardy. But I’m a survivor and I’m happy where I am.

PS, I have never put on weight.

RELATED ARTICLES

  • The Miller, his Son, and the Donkey: quite a Tale (16 May 2013)
  • You can’t please everyone: Æsop retold (21 March 2012)
  • Le Chien qui lâche sa proie pour l’ombre (La Fontaine)
  • Etc.

______________________
 [1] Ryerson Polytechnical University was Canada’s MIT. It is now called Ryerson University.

 

Love to everyone 💕

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© Micheline Walker
17 January 2020
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La Fontaine’s “The Two Doves”

24 Thursday May 2018

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Beast Literature, Jean de La Fontaine, Wedding

≈ Comments Off on La Fontaine’s “The Two Doves”

Tags

Gustave Doré, Jean de La Fontaine, Les Deux Pigeons, The Fables of Bidpai, The Two Doves, Walter Thornbury

laf_head_177

“Les Deux Pigeons,” Gustave Doré [EBook 50316]

Les Deux Pigeons
Recueil 2(IX,2)

Amants, heureux amants, voulez-vous voyager ?
Que ce soit aux rives prochaines ;
Soyez-vous l’un à l’autre un monde toujours beau,
Toujours divers, toujours nouveau ;
Tenez-vous lieu de tout, comptez pour rien le reste [.]

The Two Doves
Vol. 2 (Book IX, Fable 2)

Ah, happy lovers, would you roam?
Pray, let it not be far from home.
To each the other ought to be
A world of beauty ever new;
In each the other ought to see
The whole of what is good and true.

The Two Doves

“Les Deux Pigeons,” a fable by Jean de La Fontaine finds its source in The Fables of Bidpai, Les Fables de Pilpay ou la Conduite des Rois. As we have seen in other posts, after publishing his first volume (recueil) of fables, based on Æsop’s Fables, La Fontaine drew much of his material from Gilbert Gaulmin’s Livre des lumières ou la conduite des roys, a translation of Bidpai’s Fables, published in 1644. These tales are rooted in the Sanskrit  Panchatantra (300 BCE) and were translated from Middle Persian into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa’, at which point they became The Tales of Kalīla wa Dimna.

Frame Stories & Obliqueness

These works feature a story teller (Pilpay or Bidpai). They are frame stories. The characters are animals and the stories are told by a story teller, not the author. Such a structure serves two purposes. First, it engages the reader by leading him or her to a storyteller: Pilpay. It is as though the author stepped aside spelling a cast. Second, Pilpay’s characters are animals, whose eloquence is based on silence. Animals do not speak. They may say nearly everything. This literary device is often called obliqueness.

Interestingly, Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, 1721, Les Lettres persanes, feature Usbek and Rica, Persian noblemen visiting France. Their comments are the comments of strangers. As such, they may be dismissed, freeing the author to be critical of the land he inhabits, but in a discreet manner and with impunity.

Whatever the origin of Les Deux Pigeons, the lines I have quoted have no source other than the poet’s soul. La Fontaine gives his two pigeons/doves fine advice: be everything unto one another. There’s always a person who makes all the difference and whom we must always cherish.

Love to everyone ♥

RELATED ARTICLES

  • The Golden Age of Illustration in Britain (30 October 2015)
  • La Fontaine’s Fables Compiled & Walter Crane (25 September 2013)

Sources and Resources 

  • The Fables of La Fontaine, Walter Thornbury (transl.) and Gustave Doré (illus.), 1886, are Gutenberg’s [EBook #50316]
  • Livre des lumières ou la conduite des roys
  • La Fontaine (Site officiel)

André Messager:  “Les Deux Pigeons,”  1889

two-pigeons

© Micheline Walker
24 May 2018
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A Royal Wedding

19 Saturday May 2018

Posted by michelinewalker in England, Wedding

≈ Comments Off on A Royal Wedding

Tags

19 May 2018, Meghan Markle, Prince Charles, Prince Harry

Henri Fantin-Latour Roses, 1894, The Guardian, UK

A few hours from now, Prince Harry will marry Meghan Markle. She’s a lovely woman, and I am certain she will be good wife to Harry and Harry, a good husband to her.

They will live at Nottingham Cottage, which is a little house and could be called a starter home. I am certain they have already made it inviting and very much theirs.

I’m glad Prince Charles will walk Meghan down the second half of the aisle. He will therefore play a meaningful role in Harry and Meghan’s wedding ceremony. He may well become a second father to Meghan.

I wish the two of them every happiness.

Love to everyone 💕

© Micheline Walker
19 May 2018
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