Tag Archives: Travel

Creel Flies to Paree

Creelman MacArthur built a vacation home in 1933, on the land where our house is located, when he was a member of the Canadian Senate. Before his time in Ottawa, he was a prominent Summerside businessman and a member of the provincial government.

In May of 1924, MLA MacArthur left on what seems to have been a business trip to Ottawa and then on to Europe.

Charlottetown Guardian, May 10, 1924

Of note is the flight he took from London to Paris. Commercial passenger air service between London and Paris started in 1919, according to a couple of sources I found. I’m fairly certain that there was no commercial passenger aviation in our part of the world at that time, so could old Creel have been the first Prince Edward Islander to take a commercial passenger flight? I’ll claim that for him and look forward to being proven wrong.

The image of him puffing away in a pokey plane cabin listening to a tinny BBC radio broadcast while looking down as the Dover cliffs give way to the English Channel is clear in my imagination. What a trip!

Charlottetown Guardian, July 15, 1924

—RETURNS HOME— Mr. Creelman MacArthur, M. L. A. returned home to Summerside last week from a visit to the Old Country and the Wembley Exhibition. During the trip he toured England. Scotland, France and other parts of Europe. In London he met quite a lot of Canadian friends, some visiting and others located there. He reports having had an enoyable time. Amongst one of his interesting experiences was a flight from London to Paris by the regular express air route which is not only a saving of time but a most comfortable mode of travel. Mr. MacArthur was allowed to smoke his cigar whilst travelling several thousand feet up in the air and to listen in at a radio concert picked up in transit.

10 Minutes as Thelma Medici

Ton’s lovely description of the unexpected pleasure of being the only visitors at a museum sparked warm memories of my visit to the Bargello museum in Florence.

It had been a dream of mine to visit Florence ever since I took a Renaissance art history course at Mount Allison University, so when I did get there 15 years later, I wanted to see every piece of art in the city, which is a mighty tall order! I did very well, cramming pretty much everything I had wanted to see into the four days we had to explore.

My sister-in-law and her then-partner, who live in England, had both been there before and took a much more sensible and leisurely pace. Dear Steven stuck with me for the first two days, but after I inflicted both the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace on him on the second day, he cheerfully waved me off early on the third morning and met up with me later.

I’m grateful I kept a good journal of that trip, pasting in tickets and cards of places we visited. It’s only because of that foresight that I have a good record of the morning I was Thelma Medici:

Monday, November 3, 2003

Up early and off to the Bargello via the San Lorenzo market, which opens at 7 am. Beautiful things everywhere, the vegetables so fresh and plentiful, so much to see.

Arrive at the Bargello at about 8, too early, so go for a cappuccino at a little place close by. The man behind the counter had a classic sophisticated look: well-groomed dark hair and moustache, dark trousers, freshly-pressed white shirt, maybe a little sad looking. No other customers.

I watch as he opens a bottle of sparkling wine or champagne with a pop, puts another stopper in and puts it away again. A few minutes later, an older man comes in. They say a few brief words to each other in Italian and the waiter pours the man a drink from the bottle he had just opened, like he had been expecting him, which I imagine he had.

Finish my coffee and head to the Bargello. It had been a prison at one time, as well as a place of execution. You first walk into the courtyard where the gallows once were. I go straight into a room where Verrochio’s David stood all on his own. After years of improper cleaning and restoration, they think they have him back in his original finish: dark with beautiful highlights. Also he is no longer standing on Goliath’s head, but rather the head is off to one side as they believe it was meant to be. Not a very big work, but powerful. Sweet face.

The museum is not particularly well signed, so I decide to wander up a staircase and end up in a room with various carved ivories, and into another room filled with a mishmash of antiquities, jewellery, and paintings.

The next large room turns out to be the Donatello room. What will always make this my favourite place in Florence is my great fortune to be here by myself for what seemed like a long time. There was the original St. George from Orsanmichele looking off into the distance and the stone relief below. Then his St. John and his two Davids. Also the competition panels for the Baptistry doors by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, more Donatellos, Della Robbias and Ghibertis.

So wonderful, and, for about 10 minutes, the beauty in this huge hall with its sleepy guard was miraculously all mine.

Finally, the doors swung open and in trooped a noisy tour, so I continue on to the Giambolgna loggia to see his amazing bird sculptures.

If I visited today I might snap a quick photo on my phone to capture the moment, but it lives only in my diary and in my head. The heavy quiet, the morning light through the windows, the hard floor. Donatello’s two Davids are especially clear: his early stiff marble giant-slayer, and the later sinuous, seductive bronze. My art history professor at Mt. A told us that the flirtatious pose of the bronze work clearly showed that David had seduced Goliath and then, when the giant was distracted by the youngster’s beauty, David cut his head off. The professor’s proof of this was that David is still holding the rock that the Bible says he hurled at Goliath to knock him out, not needing to use it at all to capture and defeat Goliath. Who knows? For a few minutes, it was all mine.

I remember the rainy early morning drive from my sister-in-law’s house in Ipswich to the Stansted airport for the cheap Ryanair flight to Pisa. I wasn’t giving any thought, as I would now, to climate change or my carbon footprint because that wasn’t at all part of travel for most of us then. All I was thinking was that I needed to make the most of that quick trip to Florence because I might never get another chance. Age and circumstances have made me more grateful for such luxuries of time and opportunity, but it was a rare conscious acknowledgement on the part of my younger self that I was about to do something to carefully imprint on my memory.

It was the last trip I made to Europe, though time will only tell if it will be my final trip; if it was, I am content. David was all mine for a few minutes.

Miami Beach, February 1964

60 years ago tonight, Cassius Clay beat world heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston at a match in Miami Beach. Soon after that fight, Clay would take the name Cassius X and then Muhammad Ali.

A few days earlier, the Beatles returned to England after a successful short tour of the US, the start of Beatlemania on this continent. They appeared three times on The Ed Sullivan Show, the biggest variety program on American television, watched by tens of millions each week. Their second appearance was broadcast live from Miami Beach on February 16.

It just so happened that my parents, Harold and Vivian, took their first vacation to Florida in February 1964 and were in Miami Beach on February 16. They were both 41 and had been married for 19 years. They had worked hard to build up their general store business, so were overdue some fun and relaxation. They travelled with my mother’s cousin and her husband. By all accounts, they all had a marvellous time soaking up the sun and seeing the sights of Miami and Daytona.

Harold and Vivian Phillips, Miami Beach, February 1964. They obviously had a snazzy TV in their room, but my mother doesn’t remember if they watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan on February 16. With few stations on the TV, my guess is they did, but she was more a Perry Como fan and never really got the Beatles.
Bill for nine nights at the Golden Nugget motel, Miami Beach, February 1964.

My father lugged his 8mm Kodak film camera with him, taking plenty of shots of palm trees, orange groves, alligators and swimming pools. He took some footage of BOAC and KLM airplanes outside a terminal somewhere along their Summerside>Moncton>Montreal>NYC>Miami route.

BOAC and KLM planes, 1964

Their handwritten tickets listed their NY airport as IDL for Idlewild, except Idlewild had been renamed JFK in December 1963 just after the assassination of the US president, but obviously the change had been recent enough that no one was used to it.

Moncton to Miami $132.99 return via Tran-Canada and Eastern airlines.
YSU (Summerside) to YQM (Moncton) $14.00 return

One day, the four travellers hopped in their rented convertible and drove around the Miami area, my father aiming his camera at the passing buildings and advertising banner towing planes. When we watched this reel when I was a child, this short sequence would just slip by, but when I had the film digitized, I was able to pause it and have a better look, and quickly fell down a rabbit hole of early 1960s popular culture.

Miami Beach, February 1964, showing advertising banner towing planes, Sonny Liston’s training headquarters at Surfside, Florida, and Hotel Deauville with Mitzi Gaynor on the marquee.

I knew who Mitzi Gaynor was from her movie roles and appearances on television variety shows when I was a child. I looked up the Hotel Deauville and learned it was where the Beatles had stayed in Miami and where their second Ed Sullivan appearance had been recorded, a show that also included Gaynor. Then I read about Sonny Liston’s training camp in Surfside, just north of Miami Beach, and of him appearing on the Ed Sullivan show the same night as the Beatles, and the Beatles also meeting Cassius Clay and posing for a famous photo, and the February 25 boxing match. So much was going on!

The Beatles meeting Cassius Clay/Muhammed Ali at the 5th St. Gym, Miami

I’ve done a few presentations about my father’s film footage to local groups and have used this little clip to encourage people to look at their own photos and videos and to save, document and share what they have. It might take many years before something becomes important or interesting, but if you haven’t saved it, you’ll never know.

What my father filmed isn’t as important as footage of the Beatles or Liston or Ali or even Mitzi Gaynor would be, certainly, but he did capture a few seconds of a time in US history when the country was still trying to come to terms with the assassination of their president only three months earlier, square old Ed Sullivan was kicking off Beatlemania using the huge influence of his television program, and Clay/Ali was on his way to becoming an important sports star as well as a towering figure in the black power, civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements. 

What do you have in that cardboard box in your attic or closet? Nothing much? Look again.