July 15, 1946. That was the date on the yellowed pages of Maclean’s Magazine that I tugged out of a blocked-up space in our foundation wall a few months ago, along with the Friday, May 20, 1949 edition of The Ottawa Journal. I had pulled down a section of drywall in the basement to check the insulation and spotted what appeared to be an old vent hole. Someone, many years ago, had packed the exit in the outside wall with cement, and simply plugged the inside cavity with old paper.
The Ottawa Citizen ran an article on February 17 on the report of the Senate Committee for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, which has been looking at foreign aid and CIDA for the last year or two. The article highlighted one of the options recommended for consideration, which was that CIDA be dismantled, and touched on several others. It also chastised the Agency for being inefficient and ineffective, and criticized it for its excessively high administrative costs.
It had almost become one of those some-day-when-I-win-the-lottery things. For years now, it had been that one day when Adriana got her driver’s licence we were going to take a road trip together through deepest Middle America, going to neat places and out of the way towns and catching up on some serious father-daughter bonding.
