[Announce] On pilgrimage in Canada, a Fat Tuesday report

[Robert Waldrop]

On Pilgrimage in Canada. . . 

I spent the weekend in Pembroke, Canada, at a workshop sponsored by the Marguerite Center http://margueritecentre.com/Welcome.html . The Marguerite Centre is located in the former Motherhouse of the Grey Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, whose foundress was St.Marguerite of Youville, the first Canadian saint to be canonized by Rome. She founded a series of institutions in service to the poor. More information about her life and ministry is online at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15736c.htm and http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_19901209_youville_en.html where she is called "Mother of the Poor".

Some pictures of the weekend are at http://margueritecentre.com/Blog/Blog.html .

It seems to me that I started talking when I got there on Friday afternoon and didn't stop until the workshop was over Sunday afternoon. A great group of people came together for the event. We started on Friday evening with an overview of the present situation - the "New Horsemen of the Apocalypse", which I identified as resource exhaustion, environmental catastrophes, systemic collapse, and economic irrationality - and the importance of the little way of justice and peace, permaculture, and the acceptance of personal responsibility as ways to counter these threats.

On Saturday morning, we convened in the kitchen, where I taught them how to make Oklahoma-style bacon gravy (with milk), bacon and eggs, and then we made bread dough, enough for the entire weekend's meals. Their baker had made herbed biscuits for us, and they were very tasty with the gravy. The Centre's kitchen was a great facility, and the kitchen staff were wonderful to work with. They accepted our invasion of their territory with great grace and enthusiasm and were very helpful to us.

Our discussions that morning continued to look at permaculture design and how it could be applied to their task at hand, which was developing a more local food system for the Ottawa River valley. Paul Swartzentruber, the centre's director, made us a great lentil soup for lunch and we had the first batch of buns baked from our dough-making earlier that day. 

One of the great things about that kitchen is that they have a baker on staff, and thus they make most of their baked goods. Throughout the weekend we had the most marvelous whole-wheat cookies, the best I have ever et, eh. Paul has promised me the recipe for these whole wheat "Motherhouse cookies", and I will pass it along when it arrives, eh.

In the afternoon we began to look at the specifics of the organizing campaign and operations of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, and that was the focus for the rest of the weekend. Late that evening I did about an hour in the chapel, alternating between playing the piano and discussing the spirituality of the Catholic Worker movement and the little way of justice and peace, and telling something of my own journeys. I believe that Paul is going to make some of these sessions available as podcasts over the internet, and I will pass long word of that too. 

I got to meet a couple of long-time subscribers to several of our listservs, Kathleen of Ottawa and Joy of Hamilton, also Ian who is a student in the online permaculture design course that I am taking. It was good to meet and put faces on these people that I have known in cyber-circles.

Saturday evening we prepared a chicken and dressing casserole, along with some wonderful hubbard squash grown in the area and harvested last fall. We baked it, and it was so sweet it didn't need any of the real maple syrup they had on hand. For our Sunday dinner we prepared a glorious prime rib roast, brought by the same farmer, who's herd is free-ranging and forage fed. At each meal we had more of the rolls made from dough made on the first morning. I sometimes keep dough (covered tightly) in the fridge for up to a week, by the end of the week the rolls have a slight sour-dough taste. Throughout the weekend, we connected the intellectual and spiritual concepts we spoke about with our work in the kitchen and the table fellowship we also shared. 

We went to mass at the Pembroke Cathedral, and afterwards I got to meet their director of music and play their historic pipe organ.

Monday morning I spoke to about 60 students at the Catholic high school for the area, the school's principle also attended. Paul's wife is a teacher at the school. That afternoon we went back to Ottawa, where we had lunch in a great working-class Lebanese restaurant named Louie's, and then Kathleen and a friend of hers took we around town a bit. We spent about 45 minutes at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and I did not see everything there was to see there. It is truly a marvelous church. An attendant kindly let us into the organ loft where I got a close-up look at the massive organ, but no one had a key to the organ itself so I will have to go back to Ottawa some time and make arrangements in advance. We had coffee and a donut at a Tim Horton's, which I was assured was a typical Canadian experience. The coffee at the Motherhouse, however, which was certified organic and fair trade, was better. Earlier, on Friday, after I arrived, Paul had taken me to the Green Door vegetarian restarant in Ottawa, which I would certainly assign a "five pork chop" rating except of course that as a vegetarian restaurant it would be inappropriate to award them pork chops. So maybe for them I will create a new food rating, 'five home-grown organic cherry tomatoes", eh.

Besides the Cathedral, we also visited the Shepherds of Good Hope urban ministry, http://www.shepherdsofgoodhope.com/ , which offers a food ministry that feeds about 1500 people a day, and a shelter for 100-200. They have a locally-painted version of the "Christ of the Breadline" painted over one of the entrances.

One of the persons attending the weekend asked me when i thought the US would invade Canada. Having seen a number of Mcdonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in both Ottawa and Pembroke, my thought was that "the invasion had already begun". However, if they meant the military, that will probably wait until we are almost out of natural gas. When that happens, and that may be sooner than most folks think, Canadians should worry about the US government, driven by US consumers, casting covetous eyes on Canada's oil and gas wealth.

Even though the weekend was busy, for me it had aspects of a retreat, as I got to take a break from my typical day-to-day routine. It was very cold, -25 degrees F on Monday morning. When I stepped outside after taking a shower, my beard froze. Several people said that if I ever get kicked out of the US, I should come to Pembroke or Ottawa, they would offer me asylum. I've already had an email from Kathleen inquiring about when I could come and do some work at her Ottawa parish.

I had the opportunity to meet and visit with some of the Grey Sisters at their retirement home across the street from the Marguerite Centre, and played a few tunes on the piano for them. They have a shrine to St. Marguerite in the entrance way, and I stopped for a few moments of prayer there on my way out. She must have been a powerful and interesting woman to have gone against the tenor of her times and model such uncompromising love for the poor. 

"St. Marguerite, Mother of the Poor, pray for us and all the poor in the hour of our grave need."

Here are our recipes for the weekend:

Our dough recipe for the weekend was:

1 cup warm water

1 cup milk

1 cup yogurt 

2 tablespoons yeast

½ teaspoon salt

1/3 cup oil

1 egg

2 tablespoons brown sugar

white and whole wheat flour

We put the sugar in the warm water, and sprinkled the yeast on top and waited a few moments for it to bloom. We added everything but the flour and mixed it thoroughly. We added the flour, one cup at a time, mixing after each cup was added, and kneaded it. Then we let it rise. We made three batches of this, dividing the group into three groups, so everybody had a chance to learn how to do this.

Chicken and Dressing Casserole

Dried crumbled bread mixed with sage, thyme, parsley

cooked chicken

diced onions

shredded carrots

chicken broth

flour and milk to thicken the broth

Put a layer of the dried crumbled bread in the bottom of a casserole pan and then layer the carrots, onions, and cooked chicken. Put another layer of dried crumbled bread on top. Heat the broth and thicken it with a mixture of flour and milk (2 tablespoons flour per cup of milk), pour over the casserole until the breadcrumbs are all submerged. Sprinkle some more bread crumbs on top. Cook, uncovered, in a 350 degree oven, for 45 minutes.

Bob Waldrop, Romero House, Oklahoma City


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