Sunday morning special

An Irish breakfast

Mariette and I just got back from a great Sunday morning. We started off with an Irish breakfast at our local pub, Greenfields (www.greenfieldspub.ca), with my brother Gerry and his wife Arlene, our son Tyler and his wife Miche and our darling granddaughter Rachel.

I was especially pleased to see Rachel as I haven’t seen her for a while now. I was ill the last couple of times Mariette provided babysitting services.

I hadn’t seen the others for a while now either, so it was great to finally get together again. As usual, there was much catching up, as well as the almost mandatory stories and jokes. There was much laughter between mouthfuls, which is just as we like it.

Rachel was, as usual, on good behaviour and feasted on fruit — mostly grapes — and sausages that her mom cut up and placed on her plate. She’s still at the “no utensils” stage and greeted each handful with a wide grin.

I even managed to describe some of our train trip to Gaspé and back without getting lost too often or talking too long. (At least it didn’t seem too long to me.)

Eventually we were all pleasantly full and looking for our waitress to bring our bills. As planned, we were taking Tyler, Miche and Rachel for a visit to the Canadian Museum of Nature, housed in a landmark stone building down on Metcalfe Street here in Ottawa. It’s the building that looks a bit like a castle.

We invited Gerry and Arlene to come along but unfortunately they had other commitments.

The Canadian Museum of Nature

The museum — http://nature.ca — is an old favourite. On the drive downtown, it struck me that as kids, and even as teens, my brothers and I, and our friends, would regularly hop a bus downtown to hang out and explore this, our favourite museum.

It seems funny now, the idea of kids regularly and voluntarily going to a museum, without any parental or adult influence.

Looking back, I kind of like the idea that amidst the host of our boys-will-be-boys activities, a love of museums blossomed all on its own. I also look back and wonder at how independent we were. How readily we’d take buses downtown to attend movies — Disney films played exclusively at the Elgin Theatre and the lineups were always around the block — sporting events — stock car races at Lansdowne Park — and cultural sites — like museums.

We never asked our parents for rides, even when we lived in what was then known as the near-west — first near Carling Avenue and Bayswater Avenue, and later near Richmond Road and Island Park Drive. For us, drives were what we gladly took with our parents on Sundays, most often in the country.

The Museum of Nature, formerly the Museum of Man and Nature, has changed over the years. In fact half the museum has been renovated and the other half is closed for renovations until next year. (The entire museum closes on Monday, Oct. 5, for a month for further construction.)

Fortunately for us the half still open on Sunday housed the sections we most wanted to see — the mammal displays, the bird displays and of course the dinosaur displays.

Mammals

I chose first and we took the only working elevator — large but slow — to the Mammal Gallery (2nd floor). Despite the more modern look all around, the dioramas featuring mammals of all sizes, from the largest moose to the smallest vole, are much as they were, just cleaned up, freshened up and repainted.

Rachel, who loves her book about Brown Bear — “bwown burr” — was a little intimidated by the two stuffed grizzlies on display, but the more I referred to them as “brown bears, brown bears,” the more she got into them. Of course the huge polar bear, and her cub, were “white bear and her baby.”

Though the musk ox and the bison and the caribou were all rather large, she quickly learned to take them in stride. It was cute to see her walk up to the glassed-in dioramas and give a little reassuring shout to see if any of the animals actually moved.

It was good to see all my favourites still in their favourite surroundings.

Birds

We coloured and cut out paper birds in a craft area near the Bird Gallery (4th floor). Some rather cheerful assistants put them together for us so that they hung from a piece of yarn and the wings flapped as the yarn was pulled up and down. Rachel’s bird, coloured by her and her dad, was most energetic in flight as Rachel moved her arm up and down rather rapidly. But the smile on her face as she “flapped” about was priceless.

And when that one got a little mushed up, I gave her mine.

The birds on display were so abundant, we fairly zipped through this area. Rachel continued to alternate between running around and being pushed in the stroller. Good thing it came with a seatbelt, her dad being such a speed demon at times. 😉

Dinosaurs

In Miche’s favourite area, the Fossil Gallery (1st floor), there were the usual displays of full-sized skeletons of various dinosaurs, plus fossils and hands-on stuff, including, as on other floors, a lot of touch screens on which to check out all kinds of related information.

I actually didn’t like this new gallery; too bright and white, and somewhat sterile. I preferred the old rooms that were darker. One could stand among the towering skeletons and let one’s imagination generate a certain awe.

Still a new section, filled with several full-sized replicas — dinosaurs with bodies and colourful skin, and eyes and tongues and such — was fairly cool. I had Miche take a picture of me holding the end of one dinosaur’s rather large and long tail. Of course with limited room in which to back up, all she got was me and the tail. Viewers will have to imagine the rest of the dinosaur.

What was neat though was that in the picture I seemed to be standing in a mist or light fog.

I later joked about getting a picture of me bent down looking up under a horse-sized dinosaur to see if it was male or female. I was just kidding but when Miche raised her camera, I figured, what the heck, why not. Unfortunately the angle didn’t work as well as hoped. The flash on my bald spot created a distracting white glare. 😆

There was so much to see and hear that we had to move fairly briskly through most of the areas — trying to do a quick visit to the three floors we wanted to see before Rachel or I tired too much. (I didn’t fade first, but in the end I faded the most.)

We all agreed there’d be many more visits in the months and years ahead and that as Rachel gets older, we’ll probably be able to take our time a bit more. As for Grampa, well he’ll probably end up being the one who gets pushed around — in a wheelchair rather than the free strollers provided by the museum.

Of course our final visit was to the Gift Shop where the grandparents got to slightly spoil their granddaughter. I kept seeing such cute stuffed toys but the rule is no more stuffed toys, or other large items, as even though they’ve just moved into their first house this summer, space is still at a premium and they’re still feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the toys and stuff.

I did find a grizzly bear about 3¹/₂ inches long, “sculpted” in that hard rubber. I quickly got permission to buy Rachel this brown bear and got to experience the joy of seeing her eyes light up when I gave it to her.

I also spotted something for me. A grey T-shirt with the silhouette of raven in black, beneath which were two words in black: Raven Lunatic. I told Mariette it was so appropriate for me, I just had to have it. While picking up my T-shirt I spotted a kid’s T-shirt with a funky (aka cute, cartoonish) dinosaur on the front. The thing was the dinosaur was kind of quilted and its face was attached in such a way that you could lift it, like a flap, and reveal the mouth and teeth underneath.

It happened to be in orange, one of Rachel’s favourite colours, and a size 2, slightly large but still small enough to fit. So Oma (grandmother in Dutch) got to buy that for Rachel.

In the end, we all went home quite tired,  and quite happy.

And now that I’ve finished this, I can go for a much needed nap. 😉