CANADA THROUGH THE EYES OF HERCULE POIROT AND AGATHA CHRISTIE

The maple leaf is a national emblem for the state of Canada. Here in our own local area the grounds of the Anglican church, St John's in the Fields, contain a driveway flanked by a row of ornamental maple trees. The borders of the grounds are planted with a mixture of ash and sycamore trees. The sycamore is also called the English maple tree; their leaves are a similar shape. The maple emblem is one I know and enjoy. 

Canadian Red Maple

Canadian flag sticker 

Canada is a nation we have never visited but we have important friends who have made their lives sing more sweetly by moving to that country. John Reid, a contemporary of mine at Catz in Oxford (1967-70), moved to Canada to follow an academic path of distinction that now sees him a professor emeritus at SMU - Saint Mary's University, Nova Scotia. Mel and Dan Read are a couple we knew when we lived in East Anglia who moved to Canada with their two young boys to start a new adventure - and over twenty years later have reaped such rewards. 

This blogpost is therefore dedicated to John and his wife, Jackie, and their extended family, and Mel and Dan and their two sons, Jake and Finn. 

The trigger to create it came when the inimitable Sir David Suchet who played the part of Agatha Christie's Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, for around twenty-five years made a BBC series shown this year, 2025, which traced in five episodes the journey around the world undertaken by 

FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (16) - MOIRA FITT (2022) 'THE GOLDEN THREAD IN MY LIFE - A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY WITH QUAKERS'

 In the last year of her life, in late May 2022, Moira paid a visit to our Stennack home in St Ives to thank us for a message of support we had sent. 2022 was our first year as Quaker attenders, not in person but through Zoom because we were fearful of the threat of Covid infection. When Moira came, Louise was gifted with a half-hour meeting; I was walking our dog. Moira left a handwritten card thanking us for holding her in the Light of God's love and healing. She wrote: 'The Meeting House is a very special place for me, somehow it has a "spirit of place" where the 330 years of Quaker worship seems to emanate from the walls and seep into us as we worship. Thank you for joining us.' That card has a permanent place on our mantelshelf.  

Moira's story of her spiritual life was the fruit of her last years as she sought to pull together her experiences so she could share her journey with others. In 2022, dying of cancer, she never gave up writing and editing to the very end. Her daughter, Penny, and husband, Tony, have published this book as a tribute to her passion and out of deep love. 

Moira Fitt (1940-2022) wanted to share her spiritual journey with others. 

Moira was convinced that her life experiences were linked by a single 'golden thread' which was a 'leading of the spirit'. In that odyssey, specific places helped nurture the development of Moira's faith over a span of sixty years, drawing her closer to understanding the mystic roots of the core Quaker belief: We, being human, all have access to that of God within. 

Moira was a bright child who passed the 11plus exam to gain a place at Watford Grammar School for Girls. Unfortunately, she was stricken by illness in her teens, suffering from both T.B. and meningitis. Slowly recovering but missing a whole year of school Moira passed her O-levels and went to secretarial college. Around this time she met her husband-to-be, Tony Fitt. He had started to attend Watford Friends Meeting and Moira began to attend too. A Quaker wedding followed in 1960 in Watford and Moira and

FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (15) - ALTERNATIVE DEFENCE REVIEW (MAY 2025)

 This Alternative Defence Review was proposed and undertaken by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in response to the RMT union's decision to convene a labour and peace movement summit to work out the basis of a new foreign policy which would promote peace and social justice.

The Alternative Defence Review, published in May 2025

 

It is so refreshing to read a document that offers a new vision for peace, justice, and security - and challenges the war narrative that is becoming louder and louder, played out by the political elites, the military-industrial complex, and the mainstream media.

In summary, the Review shows how militarization:

• distorts national priorities
• fuels global instability
• undermines international law
• harms the environment
• diverts investment from public services and social infrastructure. 

Increased military expenditure will be economically inefficient, environmentally destructive, and socially regressive, offering limited job creation while stifling a more sustainable and just economy. 

We need a significantly demilitarized defence strategy rooted in human security and common security - prioritizing diplomacy, global cooperation, conflict prevention, and investment in health, education, climate resilience, social care, and the creation of well-paid, secure, unionized and socially useful jobs. 

We call for:

•  a significant reduction in military spending
• an immediate halt to arms exports to countries involved in active conflict or human rights abuses (including Israel and Gulf states)
• a Just Transition for defence-dependent workers and communities.

Unfortunately, the present Labour Government plans to increase defence spending from 2.3% to 2.5% of GDP, financing this escalation by cutting international aid and domestic welfare - directly undermining

FACTS OF LIFE FOR YOU AND KEIR STARMER'S LABOUR GOVERNMENT TO PONDER

 I am grateful that Tax Justice has been created and that we still live in a society where its truths can be disseminated. Here is its latest mailing - but first an image that illustrates the first cycle of austerity this country was compelled to endure between 2010 and 2015 under Cameron, Osborne, and Clegg.

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Dear Rob,   The Times Rich List just revealed how much wealth is concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of people. Let’s unpack what it showed. Firstly, the number of billionaires in the UK has increased from 15 in 1990 to 156 in 2025. Secondly, the scale of their wealth is comparable to nation states’ economic output: the 350 richest individuals and families on the Rich List hold combined wealth of £772.8 billion, more than the GDP of countries like Belgium, Argentina or Ireland. Thirdly, wealth inequality is surging: the UK’s 50 richest families hold more wealth than 50% of the population. Our partners at The Equality Trust analysed the rich list and found that billionaires have become ludicrously more wealthy since the rankings have been published. Their research found that over half of total billionaire wealth comes from property, inheritance and the finance sector – all sources of wealth that significantly contribute

ITHELL COLQUHOUN - A RADICAL VISIONARY ARTIST'S EXHIBITION - 'BETWEEN TWO WORLDS' - AT TATE ST IVES IN 2025

The Ithell Colquohoun exhibition at Tate St Ives will finish soon and move to London; I am very glad to have had the opportunity to see it but emotionally I was more gripped by the three major exhibitions in Tate St Ives during 2024 featuring the Sami-Finnish Outi Pieski, the Portuguese Beatriz Milhazes, and the Polish-Roma Malgorzata Mirga-Tas - see these blogposts below:

https://robdonovan.blogspot.com/2024/05/exploring-new-worlds-outi-pieski-at.html 

https://robdonovan.blogspot.com/2024/07/beatriz-milhazes-at-tate-st-ives.html

https://robdonovan.blogspot.com/2024/11/malgorzata-mirga-tas-polish-roma-artist.html

These three women had visions of colour and shape that took my breath away at times and always excited. Ithell Colquohoun is an English artist who came to Cornwall in search of spiritual understanding. I can admire her work but she only thrilled me with her vision occasionally. My response remained at a cerebral level most of the time.

Ithell Colquohoun (pronounced Eyethal Kerhoon) - born in British India in 1906 and died in Cornwall in 1988, aged 81 - educated at Cheltenham Ladies College and the Slade School of Art - Surrealist painter and writer.

 

Her story, though, is fascinating. She was an important figure in British surrealism during the 1930s and 1940s who brought her own twist to artistic work through her belief in occultism. She experimented in unconscious picture-making. Seeing the world as a connected spiritual cosmos, she came to Cornwall to explore the ancient landscape with its Celtic traditions and sacred sites. Sexual identity became a major

FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (14) - MARCUS REDIKER (2017) 'THE FEARLESS BENJAMIN LAY - THE QUAKER DWARF WHO BECAME THE FIRST REVOLUTIONARY ABOLITIONIST'

Marcus Rediker, the biographer of Benjamin Lay, is Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh and Senior Research Fellow at the College d'etudes mondiales in Paris. He is from a working-class background and the first in his family to attend university but dropped out in 1971 unable to cope with the elitism he encountered. Already the protests against the Vietnam war were shaping his radical activism which was further honed by three years working in a cellophane factory. When he was laid off, he enrolled on a university course and graduated in 1976. After his doctorate, Marcus Rediker emerged as an outstanding advocate of a 'history from below approach' shaped by a Marxist awareness of the nature of capitalist society. His main focus has been on slavery and the slave-trading ships, showing the influence of the sea in the history of countries bordering on the Atlantic. He is the author of The Slave Ship as well as The Fearless Benjamin Lay. 

The response to his biography of Benjamin Lay has been very positive:

The Publishers Weekly review states that the book "successfully rescues Lay from obscurity" and that Benjamin Lay "deserve[s] to be remembered."^[12] The Guardian included the book on their list of the best biographies and autobiographies of 2017 saying that the book is "micro-history at its best".^[13] Christianity Today commented on the book saying that it "brings vividly to life a near-forgotten figure".^[14]   Benjamin Lay's life story unfolded in England, the Caribbean and the American colonies in a remarkable fashion in the course of which he emerged as a critically important figure in the turn against slave ownership. Lay was a radical, free spirit abolitionist. 

I am impressed with Marcus Rediker. He is a fine historian. As for Benjamin Lay, I find him truly inspirational, as does Marcus Rediker. Lay deserves a prominent place in the larger drama of American history and we Quakers need to know about his remarkable life and learn lessons from his fortitude and spirit. Benjamin Lay embodied a set of principles that fit well with American and Western ideals of democracy and equality too often breached in the real world. Benjamin Lay cared for the world and all its creatures. He wrote on the margin of one of the two hundred books he kept in his cave: "Dear souls, be tender hearted." 

Benjamin Lay - this portrait by William Williams in 1758 depicts Lay in front of his cave in Abington but makes no reference to his deep commitment to the cause of abolitionism. Benjamin Lay would not have given his approval for such a portrait; he would have seen it as an expression of vanity. 

Benjamin Lay's family had lived in the small village of Copford in Essex, around sixty miles from London, for several generations. His grandparents, William and Prudence, joined the Quaker movement sometime after 1655, towards the end of the period that encompassed the civil war from 1642 to 1649, the execution of the king, Charles I, in 1649, and the Cromwellian Protectorate that came to an end in

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM - THESE ARE THE POLICIES NOBODY IN THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT IS TALKING ABOUT

TAX JUSTICE has published a paper on how to manage our economy and be true to the values of social justice. Here it is below; it's well worth a read. I shall print it off and inwardly digest and spread the word. Just a couple of pictures this time:

Osborne was the chancellor between 2010 and 2015; he and Cameron followed policies that meant the poor, weak and vulnerable bore the brunt of their plans to reduce the size of the state. Now Reeves and Starmer are also targeting the most needy in our society - and yet there are billions of pounds of surplus wealth waiting to be redistributed in the interests of a fair and decent society. Why are they not following