More Than A Pie or Jack-O-Lantern:

Let’s Talk Pumpkins

       

        Whether it’s before, during or after Halloween, pumpkins are versatile and have many different uses.

        While it will always be traditional to bake a pumpkin pie and carve out a pumpkin in order to place a candle inside to light up the spooky Jack-O-lantern, the lowly pumpkin has too many uses to stop there.

        Here are suggestions to make your holiday more ‘pumpkiny’.

 

·         If your kids or even people in nursing or special care homes want to stick with having Jack-O-Lanterns, cut down on the mess and possibility of injury by getting creative. Let them draw the faces on the pumpkins or use white glue or even tacks to decorate the faces with the shapes, sizes and colours your provide. If you still want to carve a face, use battery powered candles instead of real ones.

·         Mix the pumpkins with gourds and fall foliage to make a table center piece or to decorate a hall table runner. You may choose a larger pumpkin for the centerpiece surrounded by various gourds intermixed with fall branches or foliage tied together with a fall themed ribbon. Fill and add a bowl full of apples on each side of the pumpkin and your theme will pop even more with colour.

·         Add a flare of fall to your place settings. Whether it is for a private dinner party or a wedding, small pumpkins with the addition of a name printed right on the pumpkin, or with a toothpick stuck into the pumpkin with the name attached to the toothpick, they add a touch of fall to the table.

·         Get two or three small pumpkins and gourds (depending on how many kids you have). On a nature walk pick up things such as fallen leaves, tree bark, pine cones, thin sticks and maybe even pick up some corn husks. Purchase several different fall colour themed paints. Put plastic or a sheet over your table to protect it. Cut the pumpkins and gourds into various pieces of variable sizes. Put the paint in shallow dishes. Give the kids a blank canvas and let them each create a fall scene by dipping the items in different paints to make designs and using the twigs to paint with. You can proudly display their creations in a grouping on a wall. Have them ‘sign’ their paintings with a hand print and be sure to write the date on the back.

·         If you are hosting a Halloween party, use a pumpkin or two to hold the ice. Remove the insides of the pumpkin, add a plastic bag and store your ice – complete with a cover!

·         Draw black eyes on a pumpkin and cover it with a white sheet with the holes cut out for the eyes and you have a ‘ghost pumpkin’ decoration.

·         Use strips of old rags with some glue to hold them in place, again cutting out the black eye holes and you have a ‘mummy pumpkin’ decoration.

·         Looking for a kids Halloween Party game? Try pumpkin bowling. Paint 5-10 2 Litre plastic soda or water bottles white, drawing two eyes and an oval elongated mouth on the face. (Tip – Save time and fill them with white stuffing or cotton balls). Try to find smaller pumpkins that are uniform in size to use as bowling balls. Fetch some score cards and let the games begin!

 

Heather Stone of Sackville, N.B., went to a fall festival years ago where participants carved the pulp out of giant pumpkins. In their individual pumpkins, they had a race on the water in the vessels that actually floated.

 

A preschool teacher from Saint John, N.B., Karisma Page, sometimes hollows out a pumpkin and uses it to make a Halloween themed volcano for her students.

 

After Halloween

 

        When the spooky time is over, give your pumpkin a continued use with some of these ideas:

 

·         Think bird feeders! Cut off the top part of the pumpkin to make it shallower for the birds to easily reach inside. Add their favourite birdseed and treat them to some pumpkin seeds too.

·         Use pumpkins as fall planters for your fall flowers, including colourful mums, to decorate your doorstep or porch.

·         Trim down your existing centerpiece to fall foliage with the empty pumpkin as the vase. (Tip – Place a cutting board or other protection under the pumpkin vase to avoid moisture damage to your table)

·         If no longer using it, remember to add your pumpkin to the compost bin instead of sending it to the landfill.

·         Your local zoo may appreciate a donation of left over pumpkins as a treat for their animal residents.

·         Save some of the unroasted seeds and store them in a cool, dry place over the winter. In the spring, start growing your own pumpkins!

 

Don’t forget your pets

 

Posted on the site ‘Bella and Duke’, Jude McCoy reminds us that pumpkins and their seeds are healthy nutritional supplements for our dogs and cats.

 

·         Roasted pumpkin seeds are good for your dogs and cats too!

·         Slice the seeds into manageable bite size pieces that fit your pet after being roasted.

·         Seeds can also be ground into a powder and served over their food as a special nutritional bonus.

·         Remember to chop up the pumpkin pulp into bite size pieces as it can be difficult to swallow due to its stringy nature.

·         Pumpkin insides and seeds are a great source of zinc, fiber, among others.

·         You can also simmer the raw pumpkin pulp on the stove. It will boil down so you may need to add water during this process. When the pulp is well combined and boiled down to about half, it can be stored in an air-tight container in the refrigerator for about 2 weeks.

·         Pumpkin pulp is also a natural remedy for occasional loose stools.

 

Tradition is okay too

 

          Even if you decide to go with the classic custom of picking out pumpkins with your family and then carving them together, that is certainly okay too.

        All the time spent away from a screen in order to spend family time together can only strengthen the bonds between you and make lasting memories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9|11 - Requiem for the 10 Second Falls

 

        Whether you stood on a sidewalk in Manhattan or watched via live television as the disbelieving seconds of September 11th, 2001 ticked by, you may have witnessed what you thought, at first, was debris falling from the upper floors of the World Trade Center buildings only to slowly realize it was not inanimate objects, but people. It has been reported that as many as 200 victims jumped or fell to their deaths, but their mode of dying has remained almost unspeakable, even a quarter of a century later. Perhaps it is time to confront the unsettling truth and give those souls a final voice.

        Conditions on the upper floors must have been horrendous. Though the jet fuel would have burned off within minutes, the contents of those offices would have given off toxic smoke the kind of which stings eyes and sears lungs with each breath. It was reported by one family member that their loved one "couldn't move", a phrase which sounds ominous when considering the circumstances. Were they pinned in by pieces of the airplane or fallen debris or boxed in by a wall of flames? It is expected if they could have bettered their situation, they most certainly would have. For those who fell from the towers, they provide, perhaps, the most insight into the dire predicaments caused when airliners ripped through office space.

        Some may have clung to a small hope of survival as they repurposed table cloths or drapes as makeshift parachutes. Others, unaware, ignoring, or oblivious to the laws of physics, may have envisioned outstretched arms at the bottom, catching them seconds before hitting the ground. Though hope may have trumped logic, most would have known that jumping meant certain death.

        So, why then do people shun any talk of those who leapt from the windows?  Possibly, it is because we think those victims epitomize a horror that is too much to bear even though their fate was the same as those who perished in the collapse as one floor pancaked onto the next. However, maybe we should be looking at them in a different light, one that can give us all strength even in the direst of situations.

        Terrorists may have orchestrated the fate of almost 3000 people, but, by stepping out into the cool fall air, giving them one last pure breath; those who jumped on September 11th, 2001 decided how and when they would die. 

        Some have felt compelled to identify those who fell from the towers but maybe it is good that no one can really be sure who the individuals were in those grainy images. Collectively, those victims demonstrate that even if someone else's actions seem to dictate the outcome of any situation, some form of control can still be mustered.

         When we think of their silent journeys, we should remember the last 10 seconds of life for each person who jumped as acts of defiance when faced with an impossible choice. Their very public way of dying shows how they took some power away from the hijackers that day, a final act that should never be forgotten.

 

 

 

Through the Years:

Why Labor Day matters and why you should care

        Keeping our lives moving in perpetual motion and maintaining an orderly society would not be possible without the workers that layer every aspect of our world.

        No matter how technology keeps pushing us forward, people will always be needed to develop the strategies with workers implementing their visions.

        Some employees are openly valued with appreciation for a job well done with a simple thank you and covet raises and bonuses while others schlep daily to and from their place of work without even a nod of thanks from colleagues they meet.

        A special day set aside for members of the workforce that began with great celebration has seemingly been mostly downgraded to a long weekend marking the unofficial end of summer and the start of a new school year.

        Perhaps an informative history lesson will turn the tide back toward the real meaning of Labor Day – acknowledgement and gratitude for the workers that keep the wheels turning.

        In the year 1894, Labor Day officially became a holiday in Canada but its inception took over 20 years to come to fruition.

        Beginning in January, 1872, what was penned as the ‘9 Hour Movement’ was an effort to reduce working twelve hours a day to nine. Also known as the ‘9 Hour Workday’ and ‘Nine Hour League’, it was initially unsuccessful but the leaders who began the movement should not be delegated to the annals of Canada’s history books but rather continue to be celebrated. Were it not for their efforts, the benefits now taken for granted by workers, such as legislated vacation time, fair wages and hours may not exist today.

        Knowing the existence of strength in numbers and collaborative efforts, four main leaders travelled between Canadian cities drumming up support.

        James Black, an employee with Grand Trunk Railway in Montreal; James Ryan, an engineer with Great Western Railway in Hamilton together with John Hewitt, a cooper (one who makes or repairs casks or tubs) and J. S. Williams, a printer from Toronto, led the charge.

        Black became the leader of Montreal’s ‘Nine Hour League’ that included 2,000 members.

        In a show of solidarity, ‘Nine Hour Leagues’ were formed across Canada with union and non-unionized workers standing shoulder to shoulder toward the same goal – better working conditions and rights for all.

        On March 25^th, 1872, it was the Toronto Typographical Union (TTU) that went on strike after soliciting and been denied a change from the 12 hour, six day work week to a nine hour day by Globe Publisher George Brown.

        A full fifth of Toronto’s population attended a rally to support what became known of the ‘9 Hour Movement’.

        With Union movement’s illegal under Canadian law, strike organizers were arrested for committing criminal conspiracy.

        Toronto’s support for workers did not go unnoticed by Ottawa who, on September 3^rd, 1872, organized a conglomerate of seven unions who, together, led a parade that stretched for more than a mile. Ottawa’s fire fighters marched, led by an artillery band.

        Surely by design, the procession swept past the house of Prime Minister Sir John A. MacDonald.

        MacDonald, determined to abolish the “barbarous laws” used to incarcerate Toronto’s TTU workers, championed the Trade Union Act the passage of which protected and legalized union activity within Canada.

        Despite the fact that ‘Nine Hour Leagues’ eventually became defunct, they did lay the foundation for the formation of the Canadian Labor Union (CLU) in April, 1873.

        Leading up to the CLU, workers fought long and hard battles to obtain concessions such as rights to form and be members in trade unions along with changing legislation that had previously prevented them from taking action against their employers.

        After the establishment of Labor Day, great planning went into celebrating all workers and their contributions to society.

        Across Canada, on the first Monday of September, in cities, towns and villages, citizens marched in parades followed by a day of speeches, entertainment, community picnics and specially dedicated church services. Sports also figured prominently with lacrosse matches and various footraces. Among the activities, workers were reminded of their rights by prominent banners and posters being carried in the parades and displayed throughout the festivities.

        By the 1950s, parties mixed with a day of leisure became the norm and while parades are still held, Labor Day is not paid the significance it once held.

        Even with the festivals being downgraded over past generations, Labor Day has spawned other traditions and beliefs.

        Canadian Football League’s Labor Day Classic is held over the long weekend, adding fun competitiveness for fans across the country.

        Since 2005, motorcycle enthusiasts have flocked to Digby, Nova Scotia for the annual Wharf Rat Rally which runs for five days beginning on the Wednesday before Labor Day.

        In the cultural sector, Labor Day has also had influence. Owing to changes in acceptable social norms, the once hard and fast rule of not wearing white clothes after Labor Day has fallen by the wayside.

        While not official events representing Labor Day, the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) held in Toronto and the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) held in Vancouver are highly anticipated annual festivals attracting visitors from across Canada and beyond. Attendees enjoy entertaining shows, rides and delicious eats reminiscent of early Labor Day revelry.

        Even as modernization has given way to automation, society can never function without human hands.

        No matter how you choose to spend Labor Day 2026, taking place on September 7th this year, take a moment to pause and think of how we got here and the strife endured by so many to earn workers the rights and respect they all deserve.