March 31, 2021
-by Frank Macdonald
Spring, for the most part, has been a disappointment to me.
I was among countless Canadian school kids weaned on, and made to memorize, British poetry about daffodils and other horticultural wonders of spring. Meanwhile, our own spring yards emerged from a snowbank bearing no bouquets, only ankle-deep mud that mothers needed to scrub from the knees of our dungarees and the backs of our ears. I suppose those different experiences of spring was one of those disconnects between a colony and mother country.
I never really discovered a spring I recognized in poetry until university where I read T.S. Eliot’s line from The Wasteland: “April is the cruelest month...”
It was a line that evoked the mud of my boyhood, mud blooming with winter’s blown trash, chip bags, cigarette packages, empty beer bottles, broken Pepsi bottles, stick and stones, and some unfortunate kitten’s bones.
Eventually, though, even here in western Cape Breton, something like a Wordsworthian poem would happen, although the sight of colourful lobster boats was more springlike that a host of dandelions dancing on vacant lot.
Regardless of its arrival, spring is always welcome because it is on the road to summer, whether that road is lined with flowers or axle deep in mud. And summer is what the heart yearns for. This heart, anyway.
But spring also brings with it a cargo of head colds, people barbecuing in their parkas while sitting on a snowmobile or, like last spring, COVID-19. This spring, brings the good news of a COVID vaccine while at the same time scientists tell us that Canada can expect more Vespa mandarinia, a.k.a. murder hornets.
Last summer, British Columbia and Alberta had a mild invasion of these giant hornets that begin their nesting in spring. They are among the largest hornets in the world, with female workers that can grow up to four centimetres in length. Their stingers are about the length of claymore, and they can slay a honeybee’s nest in a matter of minutes. This year, they are expected to make their way east.
Eastbound murder hornets is a reason not to hang this year’s hummingbird feeder because they seem about the same size. There is no record of anyone being stung by a hummingbird. There are records of people being stung by murder hornets, scientists warn, stating that murder hornet venom contains a neurotoxin called mandaratoxin. A single sting isn't normally lethal, but multiple stings can kill a human. I would prefer not to be one of them.
There is a good chance that murder hornet scare is just that, a scare.
What we people in Eastern Canada need to remember is that we are geographically marginal to the nation as it understands itself. We’ve heard Western Canadians lambasting the East for decades now, going back to former Alberta Premier Ralph Klein’s compassionate understanding of the country’s needs when he said “Let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark.”
What is important about this statement was that Klein was talking about Ontario and probably Quebec. Like so many Canadians, he had a poor grasp of the nation’s geography. There is Western Canada (prairies and BC) and Eastern Canada (Ontario and Quebec). As for the Maritimes and Newfoundland-Labrador, we’re a national afterthought that gets quickly forgotten no matter how often we remind them. Forgotten, that is, until one of those other regions hits an economic lottery and then remembers that Canada has a migrant workforce at its beck and call, meaning we Far Eastern Canadians.
I give this brief geography lesson simply to offer local honeybee keepers the hope that the murder hornets, as they journey east, have gone to school in Alberta. There, it would learn that province’s version of Canadian geography, so are in fact heading for Toronto and Montreal and surrounding fields of honeybee hives, oblivious to the fact that we east-of-Eastern Canada Canadians are even here with our fields and our honeybees.
I do hope that they are not partial to golf courses!
