Erin's Journals

Looking for something to do this weekend, or perhaps in weeks to come? I wanted to share with you some thoughts on a movie Rob and I saw last week – before I tell you tomorrow about a film coming out that we will never be able to watch and why.
 

  
Rocketman is a fantasy directed by Dexter Fletcher, whose last credit was taking over the director’s duties on another little biopic you may have heard of called Bohemian Rhapsody. Like BH, Rocketman is based on an almost-incredible real life: this, of one Reginald Dwight, better known as Elton John. 
 
The movie grabs you from the outset. An enormous, costumed demon/god of a man storms through a series of hallways and doors in slo-mo, on the way to group therapy, which brilliantly provides the means for all of the film’s exposition. What got me right away, though, were not the sights so much as the sounds: the music of Elton John in a dreamy yet explosive score captures your attention immediately. While watching the film’s credits, we learned the reason for that.
 
The man behind putting Elton’s expansive and gold-dust-sprinkled musical catalogue to film was none other than Giles Martin. Giles is the son of oft-nicknamed “Fifth Beatle” producer/collaborator Sir George Martin. Giles and his now-late father collaborated on Beatles LOVE, the innovative and positively extraordinary re-imagining and remixing of the Fab Four’s hits that is the soundtrack for the Las Vegas show of the same name. (If you haven’t heard this album and are a Beatles fan, I cannot urge you strongly enough to download it. Now. Like, right now. Just come back when you have.)
 
So, the film is gifted with the musical pedigree of Elton John (played perfectly by Taron Egerton) and his mega-hit-writing partner Bernie Taupin (beautifully portrayed by Billy Elliot‘s lovely Jamie Bell), plus aforementioned producing royalty Giles Martin. Even if the story wasn’t gripping, gritty and well-told, you’d have a winner from the get-go. But the fact is, it’s a good film. A really good film.
 
We’d see it again, as it ended too soon for our liking and – spoiler alert – it has Smash! Broadway! Hit! written all over it. No doubt, Elton and his husband David Furnish have already taken steps towards bringing Rocketman to the Great White Way and London’s West End. They could only hope to find someone as talented as Taron Egerton, who not only acted, but also SANG (and danced) his part. For real.
 
Rocketman is well worth the price of admission. I couldn’t help but marvel how incredible it is that, after the years of overindulging and self-harm, this man is, to quote a song title, still standing. 
 
One caveat: this film is fantastical in many ways. In making it, they didn’t follow an exact chronology of Elton’s music. So if you hear a song from the 80s in a scene set in the 70s, just park your disbelief and go with the flow. Enjoy it for the frothy, furious ride it is. 
 
And what did Sir Elton think of this brutally honest portrayal of his life, tantrums, tiaras, OD’s, family drama and all? Tellingly, he and David co-produced the film so, yes, it had his seal of approval. A brief few slides at the end of the movie show their beautiful family (including two young sons) as well as updates on the monies he’s raised for charity and how long he’s been sober. Thanks to the amazing music he’s given us, Rocketman reminds us how wonderful life is while Elton’s in the world. 
 
Back tomorrow with the movie that will likely bend or break some box office records this weekend, but to which we definitely won’t be going. For all of the best reasons, I hope.
 

Summer arrives this Friday and, with it, the prospect of a little more outdoor entertaining. Last weekend, Rob and I were invited to a Rotary Club “friendship dinner,” wherein we meet up at a Rotary member’s house for dinner, bringing one of the courses with us. I chose appetizers.
 
Last year I showed you here my adventures in appies, with the tiny caprese salads: cherry tomatoes cut in half like a little hamburger bun, a slice of bocconcini cheese inside, a bit of basil and a drop of thick, syrupy balsamic vinegar.
 

 
I repeated that success with Saturday’s dinner offerings, but decided to try something else as well. If you thought that making those little tomato appetizers was fiddly, oh, honey – you ain’t seen nothing yet!
 
Perhaps unwisely, I wanted to experiment. (Who in their right mind does that when you don’t know your audience?) Anyway, I chose to make deviled eggs, but with a twist: instead of chicken eggs, I made deviled quail eggs! First, we bought the eggs.
 

 
We found them at our local Fairway Market, which, along with regular grocery offerings, specializes in imported and Asian items. Those 24 quail eggs with their beautifully camouflaged shells cost just $5.99! I was amazed, thinking they were going to be upwards of $20. We boiled them for about 10 minutes, then peeled them. 
 

 
A bit of a thicker membrane (and thinner white) meant we lost a few in the process; they were still yummy to eat, just exactly like a chicken egg, but wouldn’t have looked nice deviled.
 

 
I gently prodded the yolks out of their white casings (most just plopped into the bowl) and proceeded to have fun with spices and flavours. I put in a bit of Asian five spice, some paprika, dill pickle juice, a bit of curry, some garlic, salt, mayo, dijon and honey mustards, white pepper and – the pièce de résistance – Sriracha sauce! This chili sauce will turn the yellow yolk mixture just a little bit pink but, oh, it’s worth it for that nice slow heat that shows up in your mouth. And no, I don’t measure anything…that’s how I love to cook. Just go by flavours.
 
Then comes the fiddly part. Now, please know that I had dedicated a few hours to this anyway, so I loved putting on a Terry O’Reilly “Under the Influence” podcast and just listening while I put these little guys together. Rob had barbecued some bacon earlier in the day, then crumbled it with a hammer so I’d have tiny pieces to work with. A few slices of green onion, some finely shredded old cheddar and away we went.
 

 
Once they were all done, we just had to cross our fingers and hope that having one platter resting upside down on top of the serving plate would keep these little guys from sliding around. (I could’ve used some yolk mix to affix them to the plate, I’m sure, but we decided to take our chances.)
 
Here’s how they showed up at our hosts’ house. We were driving like we were carrying nitro glycerin the entire way there, but they arrived beautifully!
 

 
So there you go – deviled quail eggs that were enjoyed by all. The reaction to people seeing these teeny tiny appies was worth everything. If you’re looking for a project for some younger visitors, this would be a great one, especially if they love spending time with you in the kitchen.
  

Happy 77th birthday to Sir Paul McCartney. This is one of my all-time favourite moments and memories, captured by someone who recognized Rob and me at the concert Sir Paul put on in Toronto almost a decade ago. On the left, Rob. On the right, Paul. The song: “Hey Jude.” Rob would like the caption to read: “The World’s Two Best Bass Players, Together!” Um, okay.
 

 
I have a few more recent memories to cherish and share with you today. As you know, last April, Mike Cooper and I were thrilled to host a group out of Toronto on board AmaWaterways’ Tulip Time river cruise. This evening (7 pm EDT) we’ll be taking part in a webinar to talk about the next big adventure: from Basel, Switzerland (right on the border of France, Germany and Switzerland) to Amsterdam. What makes this trip even more exciting is that we’ve set our sights on filling the entire boat with our group! 
 
The last cruise, we made up about 1/3 of the passengers. This time, we’ll take it over, have more than one Coop’s Classics dance and do some more stuff together when we’re not sightseeing.
 
So far there has been a really terrific response, so we’re trying to get the cabins all booked with our group before Ama’s deadline and they open it up to other folks. If you’re even thinking about it, listen in this evening. Tell friends or family that you want to travel with, and have them join in tonight, too. You need to register ahead of time for this webinar, and you can do that here.
 
So, even if you’re not interested, I thought I’d tell you a little bit about river cruising. Many people are familiar with the concept but know more about ocean cruising and ships, as opposed to these long, lean river boats.
 
The biggest difference for us (we already liked smaller ships like Oceania has, rather than the giant liners) was that every expense was covered. Every excursion – which can add up to thousands extra when you’re on an ocean cruise – is included. All you do is sign up and then, if you find yourself wanting to sleep in or skip a rainy day, you simply cancel. I love that freedom!
 
I also loved having a wellness instructor and bicycle tours available at each stop. What a wonderful way to see the countryside and ride across the cobblestones! It was a great added element to our trip. And again, no cost.
 
Booze is usually a huge cost when people sail; a bottle of wine with dinner and a beer or cocktail beforehand can certainly add up, and most cruise lines are super diligent about bringing your own bevvies on board. We found Ama to have handled this beautifully for our guests: a daily cocktail special that was free during happy hour, plus beer and wine (including non-alcoholic wine for yours truly) at dinner were complimentary. Another huge savings.
 
Finally – and there are so many pluses to river cruising that I could go on forever, but I won’t – the staff on our boat was amazing. We were thrilled to hear that our host, Nick (seen here second from the right), has agreed to join us for the October 2020 Canadian Thanksgiving trip.
 

 
Oh, and that gent in the white? He’s the captain. Youngest on Ama (and probably anywhere) at 28. He was raised the son of a captain and learned it as a child. The woman in the middle is the hotel manager.
 
Again, if you’re at all curious, do tune in for the webinar tonight. There’s absolutely no obligation and you’ll love Gerry Koolhof, our New Wave Travel host. Our fellow travellers just raved about him before, during and after April’s adventures. It’s going to be a great time – I hope you’ll be able to consider joining us tonight and in October 2020! 
 
Tomorrow: me making teeny tiny hors d’oeuvres again. This time using tweezers!
 

Welcome to a brand new week – the final days of spring before summer’s arrival on Friday – and I hope that your Father’s Day was a pleasant one. Ours was quiet: Rob opened (and loved) a card that Colin filled out for him and then chatted briefly with his grandson later. We went to a movie with friends. As I say, a quiet day. Or just the opposite of what today is going to be in Toronto!
 
If you could go back in time, would you attend one of those two Blue Jays parades in 1992 and 1993? Maybe you did! I don’t recall going and now wish desperately I had. Like the song goes, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
 
Here we are over a quarter century later and at long last the city of Toronto is holding a huge victory parade once again, from Exhibition Place to City Hall. Rob tells me back in the heady days of Stanley Cup victories that Bay Street used to be the parade route. I asked him if there was a problem getting all of the horses and carriages to pull over and get out of the way. I don’t know why he puts up with me, to be honest.
 
(And, yes, I know there have been parades for Toronto FC and the Argos in recent years, but not on this scale: some estimates say as many as two million people could be witnessing today’s festivities.)
 
If you’re wondering whether to pull your children or grand kids out of school or to play hooky for an hour this morning to go and cheer on the NBA Champion Toronto Raptors, I ask you this: do you remember the last victory parade you attended? Do you recall when last Toronto celebrated something that was on this huge an international scale? And can you be absolutely sure you’ll live long enough to see another one?
 
If the answer to any of those questions is “no,” then I’d say GO. Make some memories. Scream like a teen at a BTS concert. (If you think that was a typo and I meant BTO, just Google the biggest boy band on the planet.) 
 
Anything. Could. Happen. As cockeyed optimistic sports fans, we like to think this is the beginning of a dynasty. But too often, dreams like this die nasty.
 
Players leave, lured by the challenge of a rebuild elsewhere (or more likely, way more Benjamins) and team owners get greedy and sell off superstars or promising players. Sure, we heard the team owner say this was the beginning of a long run, but we remember. As much as fans would love a repeat, a three-peat or an honest-to-goodness dynasty, we in Toronto have scars too deep and memories too long to forget the way things really roll in pro sports in this and almost every other town.
 
Please, please, please don’t take a moment of this for granted – and most people are not. Hockey fans whose Stanley Cup memories are primarily in black and white will tell you that unless you live in, say, Boston, a day like today, on which a championship parade is held, is something you see very few times in your life.
 
Go. Surround yourself with joy. For sports fans and all Torontonians, it’s been a long, cold, lonely winter in every way – and you deserve this.
 
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Speaking of FUN…
 
Join Mike Cooper and me tomorrow at 7 pm EDT for a webinar with AMA Waterways and the guy who puts the Kool in cruising, Gerry Koolhof from New Wave Travel, as we fill you in on an all-Canadian river cruise that Mike & I are hosting in October 2020 at Thanksgiving. From Switzerland to The Netherlands, it promises to be huge fun. But you need to register ahead of time. Here’s the link and we’ll both talk to you tomorrow!
 

Are we home yet? Is the NBA championship “home” yet? I wrote almost all of this journal during our 90 minute ferry ride at the end of our journey from Kelowna on the mainland to our island home yesterday. Here we go.
 
I’ll tell you, last evening was the aural equivalent of having my eyes just slightly crossed to make sense of one of those 3D posters that used to be everywhere a few decades ago. Except, instead of trying not to focus so we could see, we were endeavouring not to hear so we could later learn a basketball score!
 
After a windy and windy (you’ll get it…) five-and-a-half hour drive through some of the most beautiful scenery you’ll ever encounter…like this…
 

 
…we arrived at Tsawwassen near Vancouver to board our ferry back to Vancouver Island at 4:00 pm.
 

 
While on the boat, we peered out the large dining room windows watching for whales and wondered if the Toronto Raptors were about to make NBA history and hand my former home city its first championship in this sport!
 
As our massive ferry pulled into Swartz Bay harbour, just a few kilometres from our home, we weren’t looking forward to watching the game just yet: we came back especially for our semi-monthly Rotary Club meeting at 7 pm.
 
Rob was to be official greeter and note-taker and I was to act as Sergeant-at-Arms for the first time. My duties would include “fining” members who had forgotten their Rotary pins, taking donations in the same happy piggy bank for people who want to donate “happy” dollars (ours would be for the St. Louis Blues’ Stanley Cup win and for being able to spend a few days with my dad and sisters).
 
Uh-oh. Who knew what time the meeting would end? There was a guest speaker who was very carefully showing pictures from a Guatemalan project that other Vancouver Island Rotarians had taken part in, bringing gas stoves to impoverished families.
 
I felt like an awful person wondering just when we were going to get home. Our friends the Woodses were to be at a dinner last night and couldn’t text me back a simple YES or NO as to whether the game was over. Should we watch the waning minutes or roll back the PVR? Turns out we had no choice.
 
We got home and the dreaded message showed up on our screen: absolutely everything on our PVR, including the NBA game we had set the machine to record just a few hours earlier, had disappeared. Gone. Vanished. Vapourized.
 
We decided that we’d better stop looking for a way to make the PVR find the show, and just turn the game on. Talk about tense: there were some 36 seconds left on the clock!
 
As you now know, those final 36.7 seconds turned into quite a few minutes and in the end: victory. History. A new Heritage Minute in the making, thanks to a 114-110 victory.
 
Oh my, but it’s been a good bandwagon to be on: until a month ago, I thought Kawhi’s name was pronounced “cowwee” and that Pascal Siakam’s last name was “see-a-cam.” You see, I didn’t have to talk about it on the air anymore, so I simply didn’t pay attention.
 
But as the playoffs got longer and the Raptors were still in them, we sure did start watching. Something special was happening. And last night, a whole lot of dreams, decades in the making, came true.
 
Savour this moment, especially if you’re a long-time Raptors’ fan. You’ve earned it. This looks fantastic on Toronto and, yes, the entire country. Brought together over a game that was invented here. Welcome home, Basketball.
 
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Finally – as we switch lanes back to reality – there’s something that came into my inbox the other night that made me want to share it with you.
 
It’s not without a lot of careful consideration that I tell you stories of my Dad, as I did this week. I realize that a great many readers here don’t have their fathers anymore and this weekend can carry an awful lot of emotional weight. My heart goes out to you.
 
So I was grateful to see this piece from one of my very favourite blogs: WhatsYourGrief.com. Here’s a link to “Surviving Father’s Day Grief: When Sadness Meets Storytelling.” You may well find comfort in these words; I HIGHLY recommend this site, no matter who or what you miss in your life. 
 
And Happy Father’s Day.