CANADIAN NOSE JOB
“In blizzardly cold Canada where lives depend on stopping coughs quick, people take Buckley’s Canadiol Mixture,” the announcer boldly proclaimed with wolves howling and winter winds raging in the background. Listening intently, I cringed and shivered.
My name is Joy Ann and, at the time, I was a kid living with my family in a small flat above my dad’s butcher shop in a seaside suburb of Sydney, Australia. My ears were glued to the only broadcast medium we had for overseas news—a small radio.
The family included my dad Lochlan, mum Gladys, my two sisters Marie Dawn and Shirley (also Dad’s cashiers), and me, the baby. I only appeared on the scene once we’d won second prize in Sydney’s state lottery—lucky me!
“Mum, those poor kids in Canada must be freezing,” I wailed over the announcer’s voice. “It sounds awful there—and there’s wolves, too!”
My gentle mum reassured me in her soft voice, “Don’t worry, pet—i’m sure they have really warm coats for the cold weather and probably thick boots, too.”
Well, I discovered gloriously cold Canada for myself many years later, when I lived and worked in Toronto as a secretary in a publishing firm. An American couple, Ann and Gilbert, owned a large house in a Toronto suburb and rented furnished suites to working couples and single people like me from overseas. The residents blended together nicely, especially at parties and during outings to the scenic Lakes District.
I remember not long after arriving in Toronto, I was walking home from the train station one evening, which was a fair distance, and when I put my hand to my nose, I could not feel anything. Where’s my nose, I thought in complete bafflement. Then, comprehension and fear suddenly gripped me—it must have froze and fell off!
The notion of “frostbite” was completely foreign to me and so never even entered my mind. My tears were icing over and sticking to my cheeks as I hurried home, trying not to panic. Banging on the front door, I fell right up against it when Gilbert appeared and opened it; actually, I almost knocked him over—mumbling incoherently through my tears and pointing clumsily at my face, to where my nose was supposed to be.
“It’s okay,” he said, giving me a warm hug.
Darling Gilbert coming to the rescue, reassuring me that my nose was indeed still attached to my face, is my coolest memory of coming to Canada—in more ways than one!