Watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again

[sovay]

At first we couldn't figure out why there would be mounted Boston police in front of the Omni Parker House on Tremont Street, especially in company of city officials and Mounties in dress uniform. Then we couldn't figure out why Boston Common was covered with crowds and corporate sponsors and considerably more in the way of security. spatch confirmed that it was Saint Andrew's Day, which maybe accounted for all the pipers, but maybe not. The penny finally dropped that we were attending the annual lighting of the Boston Christmas tree, this year commemorating the centenary of the Halifax Explosion and the aid Boston extended, in recompense for which the province of Nova Scotia gifted the city of Boston a significant tree for Christmas in 1918 and has continued the tradition every year since 1971. We watched the ceremony open with a performance by American and Canadian pipers and then there was a lot of Christmas pop and smokers behind us wherever we went and there seemed an insufficient percentage of CanCon in the festivities (I would have led with both national anthems, not just ours—it's an international event, come on) and the tree-lighting itself was an hour and half away and Rob got tired of me shouting "Just sing 'Northwest Passage'!" so we caught the Red Line from Park Street and fed the cats as soon as we got home and made biscuits for ourselves with milk gravy and the ground goat we had bought earlier that evening at the public market, a life decision I can enthusiastically recommend. And maybe there was more from Nova Scotia and less from Boston later on, but I think we would have needed to plan to spend the evening on Boston Common to find out. Here is Nathan Rogers singing "Northwest Passage" with Dry Bones in 2014. I hope people in this city remember the origins of their tree.

Comments

[cmcmck]

That is such a fine song.

I heard Stan do it many years ago and it has never left me!

[coraline]

My mother just sent me this:
https://shar.es/1M2n3A

and said "This is the most complete account that I have ever read. Your grandmother was four months old and her father, a deep sea diver, was on a boat in the harbour at this time." (Said grandmother and two of her sisters later emigrated to MA...)

[asakiyume]

I read this last night and said to Wakanomori, "Did you know that Boston extended aid after the Halifax explosion?" and he *did* and rattled off all this info, and I looked at him flabbergasted and asked how he knew, and he mentioned that it had been covered when we visited the Citadel fort.

I never pay enough attention!

Anyway, what a great thing to have stumbled upon.

Hmmm, I need to import a winter icon.

Cancon

[lauradi7dw]

I watched parts of it on TV. There was a band from Nova Scotia near the end. The lead singer remarked that not only was it their first gig in Boston, it was their first outside of Canada. There were camera shots of the family from whose farm the tree came, and a promise from the NS politician to return next year. Some of the other performers were very local (like the Boston Pops Gospel Choir, which I didn't know existed).

[moon_custafer]

shouting "Just sing 'Northwest Passage'!"

\o/


Thanks, Boston.
Sadly, this reminder came up yesterday that we still have to acknowledge racism in the relief distribution.

[movingfinger]

Oh, so lucky to be there! One of my great-uncles was present at the explosion---under a pier, working on some dirty job the men didn't want to do!

[pameladean]

I looked at my reading page last night just before bed, and burst out laughing at your post title, because I was reluctantly tearing myself away from a YouTube extravaganza of different versions of "Northwest Passage." I periodically get a yen to hear a woman or women sing it, but that's a bit hard to find. There is one woman in The Fugitives and I like their version; and there's a slightly alarming one by String Theory, but they botch my favorite line ("this tardiest explorer driving hard across the plain") so that's not as much fun as it should be.

P.

[umadoshi]

I saw the tree being prepped for its send-off! How lovely that you got to see it. *^^*