Walkerville Collegiate Institute - Blue and White Yearbook (Windsor, Ontario Canada)

Page 26 text:

BLUE AND WHITE realize that music was not for amuse¬ ment only, but that it was a self-con¬ tained art. Being human, he did not reach his ideals, but he strove after them. It was beyond his power to obtain a fellowship of artists because of his egotism. He considered Richard Wagner most important and this brought to death the idea of fellowship. Wagner had his humorous side. One night he conducted a brilliant symph¬ ony before an equally brilliant audience. To the amazement and shock of the peo¬ ple, he did not use a score. Wagner was reprimanded for this, but he said that he conducted better without the hindr¬ ance of a score. However, he had to pro¬ mise that the next time he would not do such an atrocious thing. Well and good! On the night of the next concert. Wagner conducted with the score be¬ fore him. Everyone sang his praises. He had never done so well before or con¬ ducted so brilliantly. However! what they did not know was that Wagner had had the score upside down and the mus¬ ic before him had been in no remote way connected with the music he had con¬ ducted. Wagner left behind him an outstand¬ ing heritage. His operas! At the time of his life, his music was not fully apprec¬ iated. After his death, the effect of his work was tremendous. He influenced many smaller composers. The most im¬ portant of these was Engelbert Hump- endinck whose opera “Hansel and Gret- el” is loved. Wagner’s operas exhaust the human emotions. There is his most loved one “Der Meistersinger von Nu- remburg” which is a comedy. There is the passionate love story “Lohengrin”. These are only a few of his wonderful works, all majestic, soul-stirring and beautiful. Wagner, as a man, annoys me. Wag¬ ner as a musician delights me. Wagner, as a whole, is the most interesting per¬ son I have ever known. —Anne Tukkunen. GALLIFORMES The Ruffed Grouse, or Spruce Part¬ ridge, and the Pheasant are two of Can¬ ada’s most interesting gallinaceous birds The Ruffed Grouse is a large game bird which lives almost entirely in the heavily wooded parts of Canada. Its col¬ ours are for the most part wood-brown and grey. Soft black features make a ruff at the side of the neck. The female and the male are much the same in col¬ ouration except for the tail. The male has a very beautiful, long tail, which he spreads like a fan when he flies. The basic colour of the tail is brown, finely vermiculated with black. The ends of the feathers are tipped with white. This beautiful, large bird is called a partridge by most Canadian sportsmen. Since it has learned to be extremely wa¬ ry, it is considered one of the best up¬ land game birds. It has the habit of ly¬ ing very closely in a heavy patch of cover, then bursting into the air with such a tremendous roar of wings, that its would-be tormentor is thrown into confusion. The ruffffed grouse is distinctly a bird of the woodland and is never seen far from this environment. Its drum¬ ming is well known to all frequenters of the northern bush. The drumming is a hollow, reverberating sound that ech¬ oes and re-echoes throughout the woods. It is peculiar in that the direction from which the sound comes is not easily dis¬ cernible. This drumming has been the subject of much controversy among or¬ nithologists, for although the actual drumming has been observed many times, yet the bird’s wings moved so quickly during the process that the nak¬ ed eye could not see whether the bird produced the sound by fanning the air with its wings, or whether it actually beat upon the object upon which it stood. Eventually, motion pictures were taken of a drumming grouse, and when they were reproduced in slow mot- tion it was found that the bird simply Page Twenty-four

Page 25 text:

BLUE AND WHITE a, b •e 7 a g !8 « ■r iy d. f. t is ?• ft li¬ lt 2! Ig I X- IS ti¬ lt ' ill d at I a I Id st to It V- ul d, 2(i I ut d- to to ?h id A Midnight Incident The island, about five hundred miles from Walkerville, is picturesquely situ¬ ated in the blue waters of Lake Kashe- gabogamog. The island is not large, nor is it far from the mainland, but to one living upon it, the distance of two miles to the nearest neighbour seems vast. The realization of this distance was made far more clear, when while calmly fishing near the opposite shore one early morning, the only man of our party not¬ iced a large black shape moving among the bushes. This new neighbour of ours was the largest black bear he had ever seen. As could w’ell be expected, the only topic of conversation for the next week was the bear. The feelings experienced by the sightseer, who slept alone on the ground floor, can be well understood when, around two o’clock one morning, he woke to the sound of loud snuffs and snorts at the back of the cottage. After ten minutes under cover, al¬ though the noise continued, he gathered courage and made his way to his only weapon, a small .22. Candlelight only is possible there; matches evaded his seek¬ ing hands, therefore it was some time before he could find a cartridge. Find¬ ing this, yet being unable to see, he was forced to seat himself upon the edge of his bed, gun in hand, to await the dawn of the day. For nearly three hours he sat, alter¬ nately thinking and listening. At five, when dawn broke, our protector caut¬ iously advanced toward the back door. Thoughts w hich had passed through his mind while he was sitting in the dark, all were brought before him. Would the next snort that the bear gave be extra loud ? Would he accidentally rub against the ice-house, get a splinter in him, be¬ come angry, and try to break in? All s»rh thoughts became immediately pos¬ sible. Taking courage, he opened the door. He peeped around; he took a step for¬ ward. Nothing was in sight. He crossed the porch and moved slowly down the path. Suddenly he came face to face with his quarry. He shot one—the animal advanced; he shot again—though partially wound¬ ed, the beast still came forward. With the third shot he fell, and there at our brave hunter’s feet lay the sweetest lit¬ tle specimen of a porcupine that I have ever seen. —Helen Clegg. The Most Interesting Person I Have Ever Known. I do not actually know this person; I have never met him or talked to him. His image has never appeared to me, ex¬ cept in pictures which, since no two show the same features, have scarcely suc¬ ceeded in helping me visualize his face. He is Richard Wagner, the genius of opera in the ninetheenth century, the man who won so many followers and made even more enemies. The first time I read about Wagner, he created in me the heartiest dislike. Just to think that I would have to study his life, his musical compositions and his travels disgusted me. The reason he was so repelling was that he was a sup¬ reme egotist, not an ordinary egotist, for nearly everyone feels “I” to be quite important, but a SUPREME egotist. What he desired, he was certain he must have, if not by his own efforts, then through his friends. If he saw something he liked and wanted, he bought it, quite nonchalantly, charging to his friends. All through his life everything and ev¬ erybody was made to conform to his will. Then I began to study Wagner’s life. Soon the man began to become fascin¬ ating. His egotism and self-assurance still did not appeal to me, but everything else did. He had high ideals. He wanted a fellowship of artists; he wanted to im¬ prove opera; he wanted the audience to Page Twenty three

Page 27 text:

BLUE AND WHITE i- ;! e e I- r. a e I- e e e y e a x i- b )f h it ;o a •n li¬ ra is v s. m s le r- ai iy so k- •d ir iy it es id •t- iy fanned the air. The wing motion was so extremely fast that a thunder-like sound was produced. The male bird is the one which does the drumming, and usually in the spring, during the mating season. Each drumming period lasts about five seconds. Since this bird is the scratching type it lives and feeds its young, which at the age of two hours, are already lively little furry balls of vitality, almost en¬ tirely upon insects. In winter, when this type of food is not obtainable, they eat wild grain, poplar, and cedar buds. The ruffed grouse is an entirely beneficial bird and does no damage to farm crops. The pheasant, another bird of the scratching type, is by far the most beau¬ tiful among Canadian game birds. The male bird will often weigh four pounds. This bird belongs to a large Old World order which has no American repres¬ entative. Because this bird has taken so well to domestication, it has been carr¬ ied to every part of the world. Fortun¬ ately, a specimen of the order known as the ring-neck pheasant, thrived in the warmer parts of Canada and the United States, and is considered one of the most popular game birds of these countries. These birds, as I have previously stated, are very magnificently plumed. The male is by far more beautiful than the female. He has a gracefully pointed tail of about fifteen inches in length. The back is a beautiful mixture of black, cream, maroon and emerald green with metallic sheens. The breost is a solid sienna with metallic reflections and black-tipped feather edges. The abdo¬ men is purple-black. The head and neck are steel black with green metallic lus¬ tre. Patches about the eyes are red, and the crown of the head is greenish ochre streaked with fine white lines. The black head and neck ends in a significant white collar. The long, gracefullv pointed tail is a dull olive-ochre, barred heavily with jet. The female is entirely unlike the male. She is considerably smaller and is mottled in colour. Her colours blend so perfectly with her surroundings of dried grass and fallen leaves, that if she re¬ mains motionless she is invisible to an inexperienced eye at a distance of ten feet. Since the pheasant is a large bird and has a comparatively small wing sur¬ face, it refrains from taking long flights. I don’t want you to think that this bird cannot fly; he most certainly can. He has a maximum speed of about seventy miles per hour, and such powerful wings that this speed is attained when the bird is only a few feet off the ground. A pheasant does not often fly farther than eight hundred yards. Greater dis¬ tances are likely to cause heart failure. Since he is a poor flier, he often relies upon his legs to carry him away from danger. A pheasant can run faster than the average fifteen-year old boy. Pheasants sleep and nest in swamps, and feed in neighbouring fields. There are from twelve to twenty eggs in a nest, each about half the size of a hen’s egg. They are green-grey in colour. At the end of twenty-eight days of incub¬ ation, during which time the eggs are kept by the mother at about 100 degrees fahrenheit, they gradually split open, exposing little brown chicks which re¬ semble big bumble bees ready to face the wiles of an evil world with the help of a powerful, hard-fighting mother. I have found these two birds the most interesting of the birds I have studied. One is a native of Canada, the other an alien, but both are magificent specimens of the tvpcal game bird. —George Patillo, 1.3-C I have a car. It never skids, It never breaks down. It never gets a puncture. It never falters on steep grades, It never gets in a collision or accident— Gee, I wish I could start it! Page Twenty five Tv i 1 77- r UDllC -L iDrar