A Conflicted Canada Day

Today is Canada Day. It's a solemn occasion this year, as not too long ago, the remains of 215 Indigenous children were found beneath Kamloops Indian Residential School in  Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, BC.

If you're not familiar with the Canadian Residential School system, it was an early attempt to indoctrinate Indigenous youth into Canadian culture. Attendance was mandatory, with children being taken from their families around the age of four. They were prohibited from using their own languages, or following their own spiritual beliefs and cultural traditions. Rates of physical and sexual violence were high. Living conditions were poor, which contributed to a high mortality rate compared to schools attended by white children 

They were funded and facilitated by churches, with the Catholic Church running more than half of them. The last residential school was closed in 1996, so survivors of this system live with us today.

Mainstream elementary and secondary education in Canada has not always covered our history in relation with our Indigenous people, at least not in depth. To give credit to my own public school, I remember being taught about this, and even having a field trip to a longhouse and meeting with an Indigenous elder. But getting this early education was pretty hit-or-miss with people around my age, and uncommon for people a bit older than me. People a bit younger than me seem better educated on the topic.

So now that light has been shone on the situation for some years, the discovery of the 215 children beneath the school is grim but not surprising. It did result in a call to further investigate the former residential schools for more exact numbers on the missing children. While there was a documentation system, it appears that many of the children's deaths went unreported.

Since then, they've conducted several more investigations, finding 182 unmarked graves near former St Eugene's Residential School, BC, and 751 more at Marieval Residential School, Saskatchewan. Previous to the more recent investigations, they had found 104 potential graves at Brandon Indian Residential School, Manitoba. Further investigations are underway. 

Our Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report estimated the total number of deaths of Indigenous youth through the Residential School System to be about 3,200, but with these recent undocumented results, the real number is potentially much higher.

Many of the churches that ran residential schools, including the United, Presbyterian, and Anglican Churches have issued official apologies. The Catholic Church has also apologized a number of times in the past, however, following the discovery of the unmarked graves, a call has been made for another apology by Pope Francis, which has not yet been met. He made a public statement expressing his sorrow over the discoveries but did not apologize directly. This statement has largely been considered unsatisfactory.

Recently, five churches, four Catholic and one Anglican have been burned down, and other religious sites have been defaced with red hand prints and the phrase "We were children". They haven't found anyone involved in these actions.

A further event involving race and religion occurred in London, Ontario, in which a young man ran his car into a family of five, killing four of them. The victims were all Muslim, and the attack was unprovoked. Investigations determined it was a hate crime.

So with all this going on, there has been a call to cancel Canada Day. We're still having it as a Provincial holiday, but many people are explicitly opting out of celebrations, and others are choosing to celebrate Indigenous culture instead.

Second Dose Symptoms

I know I updated a few days ago, but I thought I'd follow up to let you know what my experience was after getting my second dose. The day after, I woke up early with some discomfort. Nothing too extreme. My left arm hurt like last time, but this time around, I was sore all over. Kind of like how you might feel the day after getting a really good workout in, or after a day of heavy physical labour. I also felt chilly. I didn't get around to taking my temperature until the afternoon, but when I did, I had a slight fever. I was lethargic all day. Today, I was back to 100%. No aches, no fever, and good energy.

I bought the thermometer yesterday after getting my shot. I realized we didn't have one when I was leaving for my appointment, and thought I'd want to keep track of it. I felt really self conscious as I walked into the pharmacy. They always have those COVID questions posted up front, saying that you shouldn't enter if you have a fever. Plus, with all the emphasis on not leaving your home more often than necessary, it feels bad to go in, buy only one thing, and that one thing being a thermometer.

I'll give a bit of an update on the situation, since I'm already here.

Waterloo Region is currently the hardest-hit place for COVID in Ontario. We're worse than Toronto, Peel, and York, which is a first. Not a lot of consensus as to why. I've heard it might have been because of the anti-mask protests, although Toronto's had larger ones, and I've heard it might be because of our Mennonite population, who often live in congregate settings and don't have the highest opinion of vaccines. Apparently it's ripped though our homeless population, but again, I don't know why this would be more of an issue for Waterloo Region than Toronto.

As far as our recovery plan goes, we traded out our colour system for a step system. So now we've started with phases, moved to colours, and now we're using steps. When we swapped phases for colours, I speculated it was because phases created a "linear" impression. We hadn't experienced the waves, and when we did, it was disheartening to see us go from "Phase 3" back down to "Phase 2". Plus, if they wanted to advance things but didn't think they could go all the way to what they promised the next phase would look like, they had to awkwardly make it a fraction, like "Phase 3.5".

I don't really know why they've swapped colours for steps. Seems like the same problem of using numbers the way that that phases did. I guess they're feeling more optimistic with the vaccine rollout, and they want to give that impression of a linear route to success. If I'm being honest, the colour system was my favourite of the three, and I wish they stuck with it.

When they reveled the new step system, the step they said we were on was "Before Step 1". I don't know why you wouldn't just make the initial stage Step 1, and then continue from there. About a week ago, we moved to "Step 1" which means that some non-essential services were allowed to open. As far as I could tell, it meant you could go indoors to buy clothes. Still can't use the changing rooms, though.

Malls still aren't open, except for stores that have an external exit and entrance.

I celebrated Step 1 by going to Giant Tiger. If you're not familiar, it's a Canadian department store. I haven't gone clothes shopping since before the pandemic, and it's been a good lesson in how you don't need to shop all that often to still maintain a professional appearance, but it was time. Selection wasn't as good as I remembered, probably because they hadn't been ordering as much, and it had been worked over by people shopping using curbside pickup slowly over the last 14 months. Still got a few shirts and shorts out of it.

I know that clothing doesn't have the level of immediacy that food does, but it's felt weird that whenever restrictions are put into place, the first thing that gets taken away is clothes. Of course high fashion is frivolous, but my understanding is that at a most basic level, humans need food, shelter, and clothes. In fact, we have homeless people who are hungry, and they are allowed to live alongside us without food or shelter, but without clothes are deemed "indecent" and criminal. But now we restrict access to clothing. Weird.

We also have a new system for tracking the COVID variants. I mentioned in a previous post that while we condemned the phrases "China Virus" and "Wuhan Flu" due to being xenophobic, we were oddly okay to use national identifiers when the virus started to mutate. We had the "UK Variant", "Brazil Variant" and "South Africa Variant". This was corrected when an umbrella term was issued "Variants of Concerns", which could further be shortened to as "VOC".

But what if you did want to get specific about which strain you caught? Well, you could use the scientific terms, but to the lay person they sound like a random string of letters and numbers. The World Health Organization has put forward a catchier list of phrases for the different variants. Here they are:

COVID-19: The original strain. Believed to have originated in Wuhan Province China

Alpha Variant: Believed to originate in the UK

Beta Variant: Believed to originate in South Africa

Gamma Variant: Believed to originate in Brazil

Delta Variant: Believed to originate in India

Kind of odd that the US didn't get their own strain, since they're still leading in overall cases. The second and third countries with the highest recorded number of cases, India and Brazil, both got their own strains.

The Delta Variant is the newest of the bunch. It's sometimes referred to as a "double mutant" because it varies from the original strain in two ways, while the other variants only differ in one way. Our vaccines are built to combat the original strain, so the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma variants are a little more resistant, and the Delta is even a little bit more. But the vaccines are still effective for the most part.

At Max Vax

I got my second dose of the Moderna vaccine today. I'm at max vax. I've been double dosed. I was going to get it on July 16th, but a couple weeks ago I was told that I'd been moved up. So today I got to join the 16.5% of Canadians, and 20% of Ontarians that have been fully vaccinated.

Lee-Anne also got her second dose of Pfizer today. She got her first vaccine a few days before I got mine, but I managed to beat her to the second, although only by three and a half hours.

On my way to the pop-up clinic, I saw a dead fox on the road. My spirit name, which I got in a shaking tent ceremony in Chisasibi, is Fox Man. So this sight gave me an ominous feeling.

I got into the clinic fine. This time around, they asked me to swap my reusable mask for a medical one. When I did my First Aid training, they also required a medical mask, but last time I got a COVID vaccine, they were fine with a reusable one. In their invitation, they asked me to bring a mask, but didn't specify it had to be medical. It was fine because they provided one.

Before I got my shot, the person administering it asked me a series of question. Pretty standard, except she included the question "Are you pregnant or breastfeeding?". For a moment, I wondered, "Is it because my mask is covering my beard?" before I remembered that I'm still a hulking 6'3", broad-shouldered individual with very obvious male-pattern baldness.

Last time, I complained that it was raining on the day I got my vaccine, and there was nowhere to wait indoors to see if you experienced immediate side effects. So I wound up huddled against a small overhang against the side of the building for the required fifteen minutes.  It was raining this time too! I was, however, relieved to see that this time around, there were a couple of rooms where you could wait inside. Maybe I somehow missed them the first time around. On the card they give you with instructions, they simply tell you to wait in your vehicle after you get your shot, and they let you know you have the option of getting your shot in your vehicle. There is nothing to indicate any accommodations for people who don't show up in one. The waiting room was also not marked in a highly visible way. This is a pop-up clinic specifically for people who work in, or receive services from, the developmental sector. I think it's kind of ignorant to make it so vehicle-reliant.

There still wasn't anyone monitoring the room. One thing that bothered me with the vehicle system the first time around, aside from the fact that it only works for people with vehicles, is that they instruct you to honk your horn if you feel like you're about to faint and someone will help you. But I've had multiple vaccinations where people have passed out in the waiting room, and no one has ever had the presence of mind to know in advance if they were going to pass out. If I passed out in this unmonitored waiting room, would it even be any better than passing out anywhere else?

There were instructions to sanitize your chair before leaving the room. I thought surface transmission was negligible, and health authorities were wondering why schools were still bothering with sanitization as a safety measure?

So now I just need to lay low for two weeks while the antibodies work their way through my system. I know four people who got their second dose recently that have felt like crap the next day, even though their first dose was fine. I'm happy I got mine on a Friday, because I've got the weekend to recover. 

I got ice cream sandwiches to reward myself for getting the shot. For some reason, people seem to associate ice cream as a reward for getting injections. It didn't seem like a bad idea, so I adopted it. I've got convenience foods and video games to help me live a low-maintenance life if I need to recover over the weekend.

Transit

During the first wave, Greyhound closed it's services in Canada. They pretty clearly couldn't take the financial hit from the reduction of passengers due to so many people staying at home. They claimed that this was a temporary measure, but recently they announced their permanent closure across the nation.

This sucks for me, because as you probably know, my mother and brother live in Guelph, and Greyhound was the only real transit option between Guelph and Kitchener. Despite the fact that it's not a great distance between the two cities, and there is a demand, it's far more difficult to make the trip possible than it should be.

Greyhound's competitor is Go Transit, which has buses and trains. The only option Go provides between Guelph and Kitchener is an incredibly minimal train service for people who commute for work. This means it runs only from Kitchener to Guelph in the morning on weekdays, and from Guelph to Kitchener in the evenings on weekdays. This sounds like it's for people in Kitchener who need to work or go to school in Guelph. I would've thought it would be the other way around.

There are Go bus stops in both Guelph and Kitchener, but they don't connect. If you want to take a bus between the cities, you need to go all the way to Brampton, which is an absurd detour.

I'm gonna miss those Greyhound ticket sellers. The one guy who was always talking about how much younger he looked than he was, the woman who always made a big deal about remembering how to spell my name, and the woman who kept trying to pitch payment plans specifically for Guelph-Kitchener. There was the guy with the forearm tattoos on the Guelph side but I think he got to keep his job, since the station he works at deals with Via Rails and Go as well. Never going to see him though, because I've got a Presto card that I can put money on anywhere. Even though I could buy Greyhound tickets online, I often seemed to wind up buying them over the counter.

I mean, I know it's a little premature to be making home visits anyway, but I don't like feeling trapped.

There's always the option of dropping like $50 on an Uber, but that's not fiscally responsible, and then you're stuck making awkward conversation for half an hour.

Since we're on the topic of transportation, let's talk about Uber vs. taxi. When I worked factories, I used to take a taxi into work on Sundays because the buses didn't run that late. I used to joke that on Sundays, I worked my first two hours for free, because what I made in that time was about what I paid in cab fare.

When I came to Kitchener, Uber didn't yet exist, and I occasionally used taxis. Somewhere down the line, Uber got big and I eventually transitioned to mostly using that service. Not going to lie, every once in a while I see a taxi and I'm surprised that they still exist. I'm still aware of the pros and cons of each system, so let's go over them.

One thing I like about taxis is that they're clearly marked. Uber vehicles often have the little sticker on the windshield but it's less distinct. You can hail a taxi if you're in a hurry (and this is the only reason I've taken taxis occasionally since Uber rolled in), but you have to order Uber through the app, so you can't really hail them. Taxis tended to congregate in certain areas, like Fairview Mall and Charles St Terminal, so if you were near one of those places, you could make a pretty reliable gamble that you could get a cab quick.

You can pay cash in a cab, unlike Uber. I know that it's an assumption nowadays that everyone has a smart phone and credit card, but that's not always true and in this way the taxi system is more inclusive.

Taxi companies have a certain number of wheelchair accessible vehicles on standby. Since Uber uses the personal vehicles of their employees, it's very unlikely that you will be able to get one of these through that system.

Taxi companies are more forgiving. In an Uber, the end of each trip, the passenger and the driver get to rate each other. If your overall rating dips beneath a certain level, the drivers can reject you, and if the driver's score dips low enough, they might lose their job. There is no such system for taxis.

Some cab companies are small enough that you can make deals with them. For example, our accessible public transit system hasn't always reached everyone that's needed it (although it's improved!) and Waterloo Region's local cab company stepped in to fill the void, giving discounted services to specific people and locations. That level of communication is difficult to have with a company as large as Uber.

So those are the benefits of taxis. You can hail them, you don't need a credit card or smart phone, you can get a wheelchair accessible vehicle, you're less likely to get banned from the service, and it's easier to communicate with the people who run the organization.

As far as Uber goes, it used to cost a third of the price of cab fare. That's mostly why I originally switched over, but it's not true anymore. Both services cost roughly the same now.

It's still more convenient. With taxis, you have to pay after finishing the trip. With Uber you just hop out and go on your way. You also don't have to call anyone, you just plug your info into the app. This is very appealing for an introvert like myself.

But... and I feel bad for saying this, the biggest difference for me concerning my average experience between the two is that Uber has a better customer service. When I was talking taxis, I said that their system is more forgiving and phrased it as a positive, but there's a clear benefit to having the rating system. When passenger and driver have the opportunity to wreck each other, they're incentivized to get along. I've met a number of creepy or erratic cab drivers in the past, but I've never had trouble with an Uber driver. 

They don't carry cash, which is less accessible, but this way there isn't the danger of passengers trying to rob them, or passengers running away without paying fare since it's already been automatically charged.

I've had taxi drivers try to scam me by intentionally taking longer routes. Uber has an electronic system that indicates how the driver should reach their destination. Apparently whenever cab drivers said their debit machine was broken and you needed to pay cash, sometimes offering to drive you to the nearest ATM, that was a scam too, because if they get cash they're paid immediately, while card had a delay.

So in the end, I kind of like taxi companies, especially smaller businesses, because they're overall more accessible, but Uber feels safer and has better customer service.

Throwing Things Out

 A little while ago, the bundle buggy I've been using for the past eight years finally broke. I was wheeling it back from Food Basics and one of the wheels popped off. At first I thought I could just screw it back on, but it had cracked in an awkward spot. The buggy managed to deliver its final load home, but I've since had to get rid of it.

Using something to its fullest potential, even something like a bundle buggy, almost gives me a sense of peace. Like it fulfilled its purpose, even to the point of carrying out its final voyage and delivering its final load. Thank you, bundle buggy, for carrying my burdens these past eight years.

Another time I've felt this way was when I used to sleep on a couch bed. One day, after taking a nap, I got up and it collapsed behind me. I couldn't be frustrated. After all, it hung on long enough to make sure I got one final nap in.

During a cultural competencies course I took in college, we were taught the Iroquoian concept of the Orenda. To my understanding, this is the idea that everything in this world has an energy and life, both the animate and the inanimate. Not only that, everything has a purpose and desires to fulfill its purpose. The example given in class was that a table was fulfilling its Orenda by holding up a cup and a binder. So, my bundle buggy carrying loads of groceries until it could do so no more, and my couch bed providing me rest until that last nap, were able to fulfil their Orenda.

I got that bundle buggy back when I lived in student housing from a hardware store near my college. It's seen me through four living spaces and was even used to transport many loads of possessions in the gap month when I had the leases for both my old place and this one, to lighten the load of the final move.

I also had to get rid of an old cup recently. It had suns, moons, and stars, all with faces. I brought it with me to college from a set my mom had. This is going to sound a little less sweet, but you could measure the appropriate amount of your adult beverage of choice by filling to different rays of light from the sun displayed on the cup. For liquor, fill to the first spoke of light, for wine, go to the second, for beer, the third. I don't think it was intentionally designed for that purpose, but I figured it out.

It was the last survivor of the set. This past week, I looked at how faded the decals were. You could barely make out the sun, and I made the hard decision to get rid of it. We have a white board over here with a wish list, and I put "fancy cup" on it, even though I don't think I can replace it. I'm just keeping it on there until I can come to terms with the fact I'm not getting another one.

We also got rid of my old deep freeze. I bought it from a woman in my old neighbourhood. It served me well until we moved it over here. It worked at first, but it's temperature dial was stuck and when we tried to adjust it, it died. We kept using it as additional counter space until we recently got a new one. Apparently deep freezers, (as well as printers and breadmakers) all trended during the pandemic, so I felt kind of vulnerable without one.

We put it out to the curb to be taken as bulk pickup on garbage day, but someone took it almost immediately. Those people are going to be real disappointed having gone through the effort to take something so bulky and find it doesn't work, but what do you expect when it's been put out with the garbage?

I recently updated most of my other blogs:

Gryphood (broccoli cheddar soup): Broccoli Cheddar Soup (Panera Copycat) (gryphood.blogspot.com)

Gryphon's Reviews (Kim's Convenience, Korean-Canadian sitcom): Gryphon's Reviews: Kim's Convenience (Sitcom) (gryphonsreviews.blogspot.com)

Gryphon's Gallery (three new paintings): Gryphon's Gallery: Elephant Sunset, Fruit Bowl, Peppers (gryphonsgallery.blogspot.com)

Vaccines and Things

Mom recently got her COVID-19 vaccine and had a fever for a week. I'm still pro-science and pro-vaccine, but seeing how much media is being pushed to emphasize the safety of getting vaccinated, I feel like they weren't completely forthright about the severity of the potential side effects. I can even see why some people are saying that the vaccine gives you the virus. I'm sure it wasn't COVID, but the side effects were similar to the symptoms of the virus and could be misinterpreted as such. I'm already nervous about her getting the second dose, because I hear the second one is harsher than the first and the side effects this time around were already so intense. Oh well, if her sensitivity to the vaccine is this bad, maybe she would be even more sensitive to COVID, so this is still the less dangerous option.

My brother also got his first dose. He'd been wanting one for awhile since he works a front-line job, and he hasn't had any side effects. I think he's the last person in my circle to get the vaccine, but apparently only about 45% of Canadians have received their first dose.  Crazy that over half of Canadians still don't have it, but everyone I know does. I even know some people with both doses. Must just be the circles I run in.

Most of the people I know have gotten the Moderna vaccine, but apparently Pfizer is most common, and we'll be leaning mostly on that going forward. China's developed the Coronavac, I think better known as Sinovac, and Russia's developed Sputnik V. Everybody's disparaging each other's vaccines nowadays, saying that they don't work. I don't know why. I hope that everyone's vaccines work.

Sputnik V has the funniest name though, because "sput" sounds like "spud", which means potato, and it's from Russia, and vodka is made from potatoes. I had a Russian studies class when I was in university too, and learned some classical Russian medical practices, including the use of vodka presses.

Canada is developing its own home-grown vaccine, Medicago, but it's only in phase 2 clinical trials. At the earliest it won't be ready until later this summer, after most people have received their first dose. We're not mixing vaccines at this time, so what's the point?  Apparently we might put it toward countries that are still in need of vaccines, which isn't so bad.

I was disappointed to learn that looking at efficacy rates for vaccines is fairly unreliable. The reason for this is that the way trials are done is by having some number of people take a vaccine, an equal number take a placebo, and then have them integrate into a community that is known to contain the virus. From then on, they keep track of who gets sick and how sick they get. This is how they rate the level of efficacy.

The unknown factor is how much of the virus is present in the community. For example, Pfizer and Moderna have some of the highest efficacy rates, whereas AstraZeneca has been held under scrutiny with a much lower rate. However, Pfizer and Moderna held their clinical trials in a time and place where the rate of COVID was much smaller than when AstraZeneca conducted there's. I'm not saying AstraZeneca is as good as Pfizer or Moderna, but it's not accurate to compare them based on their efficacy rates at face value. Somehow, I thought these clinical trials were being held in a controlled environment, consistent across all vaccine trials. I guess that would ignore a lot of human rights.

India's COVID rates are spiking fiercely nowadays. During the first wave, I speculated how they could be doing as well as they were, considering their high population and population density. Well, it looks like it did get to them eventually. Despite having a comparable number of total cases, their deaths per million rate is still only a fraction of the US or Brazil's, due to the sheer number of people living there.

If anyone's COVID numbers are suspect, it's Tajikistan's. They have the highest number of total cases to have fully recovered. Their trajectory during the first wave was pretty standard, but at one time, their numbers tapered away and just... stopped, and they declared themselves to have eradicated COVID. This is despite the fact that they haven't reported any special measures taken against the virus, and their neighbors all report cases. This goes to show you that, just like vaccine efficacy, COVID tracking by nation can't be taken at face value.

Alberta's COVID rates have become worse than Ontario or Quebec's, who previously had the highest numbers. I've got to be honest, when I imagine Alberta, I picture wide open plains, not necessarily conducive to viral spread. They do have Edmonton though, which is a large urban city.

I recently got some masks from Old Navy and they really are superior to the five-pack Hannes brand I got from Walmart that I've been using. The ear straps are adjustable and generally just gentler than what I've been using. Plus, my Walmart masks were all a solid black, and set against my nearly black beard, so they just made it look like my facial hair was covering my mouth. I have a number of new patterns that show up well against my beard. I bought a pack of warm colours and a pack of cool ones, so I can match to what I'm wearing. I have solids of both warm and cool, as well as plaids. Probably my most fun mask is one with anchors on it, and my tackiest is blue camo.

Masks are now not just utility, but also fashion. I remember taking an uber, and the driver was dressed exceptionally well, but he was wearing a red plaid mask which clashed with the rest of his attire. I noticed.

We finally got through the last bag of oats and capellini pasta (the only pasta left after all the others were panic-bought) that I got while supply shopping during the first wave. We finally got through the rice I had pre-COVID and got into that giant sack of rice I was so proud to get. Obviously I've been eating things other than first wave rations, but still, other than rice, I've run down my initial stock.

Friends of the Forest

Since we talked about memories in my previous post, I thought we could talk a little bit about a childhood memory of mine.

When I was a kid, my favourite show was Friends of the Forest. It aired on YTV and was about the adventures of various woodland creatures. The main characters' name was Rocky, and I could never figure out what animal he was.

It had a little jingle that went, Friends of the forest, there's room for everyone.

As a teenager, with the Internet still somewhat young, I tried to find my old favourite show. While I didn't get exactly what I wanted, I did find this:

A Japanese version of Friends of the Forest!

Turns out, it had been originally created in Japan under the name Rocky Chuck the Mountain Rat (so now I know what animal he was supposed to be, although I don't know what a "mountain rat" is). It was later translated and released in Canada. So technically, I was into anime before it was cool.

I even found an episode of the Japanese version on Youtube. I went as far as to get it transcribed into English by someone I knew who spoke Japanese.

Several years forward, and I've been keeping my eyes on the situation to see if there are any developments. Eventually, I strike gold! A whole library of episodes of the English version is released! Except this is what the title looks like

 Whaaaaat?

And the chorus to the theme song goes

In the greeeen forest, the greeeeen forest

Instead of

Friends of the forest, there's room for everyone

Here's a link to the theme song of Fables of the Green Forest, if you really want to hear it: (455) Fables of the Green Forest Intro (70's) - YouTube

So I have really mixed feelings. On one hand, I have an English translation of my beloved childhood show. On the other hand, it's weird and different. Everything is a little different than I remember, and there's no evidence that the show I remembered ever existed.

Except that, when I asked my brother if he remembered Friends of the Forest, he was able to sing part of the chorus for the theme song.

Anyway, this year I found an article on Lost Media Wiki about the translation I remember.

Apparently Fables of the Green Forest was aired in the late 70s and into the 80s. Friends of the Forest was the second translation to be aired, with an entirely new voice cast, music, and altered storylines.

For example, in Fables, they made Peter Cottontail the main character and renamed Rocky as Johnny. So much disrespect to the Japanese source material, Rocky Chuck the Mountain Rat.

No home videos of Friends of the Forest are known to exist, and nothing has surfaced online.

This is all bittersweet. On the one hand, I now have evidence that my childhood memory was real, but on the other, I've confirmed there is no evidence that it exists in any current form. The sound of the theme song is in my head, but that's the only way that it's still alive.

What really burns me up is that we had stacks of home-recorded VHS tapes because it was my favourite show. But we lost all of them over a couple of moves. If I still had those, I would be the only one in the world to have copies of Friends of the Forest. I would have uploaded them to the Internet, and that would be my contribution to society. Oh well.