Hello and welcome to a hunterly Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is November 14th. Lately, the social media algorithms have been enticing me with videos about viral recipes (Hype or hack? Gas or trash?), good 90-second exercise routines (lymph node drainage, better balance, improved posture), and organizational tips. (See what you can accomplish in only 10 or 20 minutes a day!) While the viral recipes produced some interesting results - a "chocolate mousse" made from an avocado, a banana, and some cocoa powder - I saved many of the exercise routines (as well as some home decor ones my kids insisted were AI-generated. (Mom, how could she do all that in one weekend ?) It was the time-lapse videos of 10-minute increments over the course of a year of organizational home transformations from trash to smash (as in smashingly organized) - from "This" (ugh) to Bliss (ah!) - that made me feel a little jealous and super motivated. I once wrote a speech (which be...
Americans Take Montreal! That was the headline after the Continental army occupied Montreal on this day in 1775. It took an express rider a couple of weeks to get to Philadelphia so Congress didn't get the news until the end of the month. England had taken possession of Canada from France just twelve years earlier. Most of the people in Canada lived in Quebec in the St. Lawrence River valley and were overwhelmingly of French descent. When Congress authorized the invasion they were counting on the Canadians helping to liberate themselves from Britain and joining the Thirteen Colonies. Historians say about twenty percent of the Canadians favored the invasion. The rest were neutral or sided with Britain. There were around 100,000 people living in Quebec. The 20,000 people over in the Maritimes were mostly English settlers. The rest of what would become Canada was populated by a few traders and trappers along with many thousands of indigenous peoples. Quebec was lightly d...