-=> Quoting Jim Weller to Nancy Backus on 06-29-19  22:13 <=-

 JW>> large rooming house with several students from / around the world.
 JW>> a Lebanese guy / an Israeli and an Egyptian / had similar
 JW>> political views so we all got along quite well.

 JW> Both the Israeli and the Egyptian would be looking at a minimum of
 JW> one year's military service when they went home after graduation.
 JW> They both sincerely hoped that there would not be a Middle Eastern
 JW> war that year!

I trust that their hopes were borne out...?  Having to fight each other
would not have been a nice thing at all..... not unlike our Civil War,
when brother fought brother, though....

 JW> The Lebanese guy thought they were both crazy and he
 JW> himself planned to stay in Canada if at all possible. (He did. He
 JW> worked part time at an Italian restaurant where there were a lot of
 JW> Lebanese employees who jointly did an agreement for sale with the
 JW> retiring Italian owners. [This was a common phenomenon in Ottawa in
 JW> the 60s.] And even though he was getting straight As in computer
 JW> science, he dropped out to joined them. They kept on making pizza,
 JW> pasta, steaks and seafood but added kebabs, donairs and shawarma to
 JW> the menu. Sorrento's was already my "big date" place even before I
 JW> met Albert.) 

Good for him....   Did he ever regret the decision...?  

 JW> I just googled them and Sorrento's is still alive and
 JW> well after all these decades and still serving Italian and Lebanese
 JW> fare. It has new owners by now of course and changed locations as
 JW> well but it's still there.

Albert and his friends retired, I take it....?

 NB>> And with you all taking turns cooking, that would
 NB>> also broaden one's palate.... 

 JW> It surely did.

Nice to have had the experience.... 

 NB>> our denomination's missionaries would come for their furlough year,
 NB>> so we had a little experience with other cultures and cuisines
 NB>> through them

 JW> One of my uncles was a missionary and lived through some interesting
 JW> times. Uncle Clarence had degrees in English and Divinity and Aunt
 JW> Connie was a nurse. They were first posted to China in 1930 to
 JW> Moslem Qinghai province, northeast of Tibet and northwest of
 JW> Sichuan. By 1935 they had to get out because of the advancing
 JW> civil war with the Communists. They went down the Yangtze River
 JW> 200 miles by small boat. They ended up having to leave China
 JW> altogether in 1947 and ended up in post-partition India in 1951;
 JW> although the bulk of the killings were over by then there was
 JW> still a huge homeless refugee problem on both sides of the border and
 JW> all the misery that that implies. They returned to Canada in 1957. I
 JW> barely remember Clarence as I only met him once and he passed away
 JW> in 1959.

They had an interesting life, indeed... 

 JW> My three cousins have all lived interesting lives as well. Two of
 JW> them were academics, social justice activists and left wing
 JW> political activists and the third is in international trade and
 JW> finance where his multiculturalism and linguistic skills are a great
 JW> asset.
 JW> Gordon was born in China and learned Mandarin simultaneously with
 JW> English. Later on he was home schooled and also went to private
 JW> schools in England, Canada and the USA periodically. He was
 JW> teaching school in eastern Nigeria when the civil war broke out when
 JW> Biafra tried and failed to succeed, Later on, in Canada he became
 JW> involved with our socialist New Democratic Party and was national
 JW> general secretary and Ontario party president while teaching at
 JW> McMaster University. Later on he worked for Saskatchewan NDP
 JW> Premiers Blakeney and Romanow and was one of the advisors who helped
 JW> get the Charter of Rights into the Constitution, At the end of his
 JW> life he had returned to western china to teach,
 JW> Bruce was born in Sichuan, went to school in India, came to Canada,
 JW> went to university here and became a social worker and a newspaper
 JW> columnist, writing the "Toronto Star Youth Hot line" a syndicated
 JW> advise column. After his kids grew up he got divorced, came out of
 JW> the closet and married a guy.
 JW> Alan studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and worked for a
 JW> while in Kuwait before coming back to Canada to work at the
 JW> International Financial Centre in Vancouver.

Yup.... your cousins also are interesting people....   Was Alan also
born in China or India...?

ttyl      neb

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