Weekend Living

SHOP LIKE A PRO

Check out these West-end shops for last-minute gifts, L4
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SECTION L SATURDAY DECEMBER 18, 2010 thestar.com

THE GREAT COOKIE COUNTDOWN

Ontario Craft Brewers introduce Ginger and Ale cookies, L5

TRAVEL

The egg Charlotte MacKays mother made for her in 1948.

Charlottes precious egg

A fragile ornament crafted in 1948 still sparks happy memories

CHAD MARTIN PHOTO

CHRISTMAS TREASURES EGG SHELL DECORATION

FRANCINE KOPUN
FEATURE WRITER

Chad Martin shows Flat Stanley the city skyline from atop an 85-metre-tall building crane at Queens Quay and Jarvis St.

Flat Stanley Star struck in T.O.

AGING

Jamie Oliver. Gordon Ramsay. A Leafs game. A paper doll from Cape Breton goes on assignment with Star staffers
AMY DEMPSEY
STAFF REPORTER

He has traipsed across all seven continents, orbited the planet in a NASA space shuttle and walked the red carpet with Clint Eastwood on Oscar night. Once, on an airplane, he met Muhammad Ali. And soon after the earthquake ripped through Haiti last January, he was there, helping victims pick up the pieces. The kid certainly looks good on paper. His name is Flat Stanley and children all over the world send their own versions of the cardboard cut-out to faraway hosts, then eagerly wait for his return along with letters and photos detailing his adventures. Well aware of the little mans big accomplishments, I felt incredible pressure when Josh, my 8-year-old cousin picked me to host a Flat Stanley for his Grade 3 English class at cole Beau Port in Arichat, N.S.

My goal was simple: When Joshs Flat Stanley returned to Cape Breton, I wanted his adventures to beat the pants off the others. Did I mention Joshs schoolmates sent Flat Stanley dolls to Sweden, Australia and Singapore? Stiff competition, but I was ready to put up a fight. For advice I turned to Dale Hubert, a school teacher from London, Ont., who created the Flat Stanley project in 1995. It is based on the main character in Jeff Browns 1964 childrens book, who survives a late-night squashing by a bulletin board and makes the best of his flatness. Stanley quickly learns he can do things other kids cant like travel via envelope. Like a proud Dad, Hubert ticks off even more of the paper kids feats, which does nothing to quell my insecurities about being the best ever Flat Stanley host. The bars been set pretty high, isnt it? he says.
FLAT STANLEY continued on L7

Signposts to the past

Memory boxes help ease fog of dementia by providing touchstone to lives lived
SUSAN PIGG
LIVING REPORTER

The gold and turquoise Chinese opera shoes are a shock of colour against the beige walls of the long-term-care facility Kui Min Lei now calls home. Theyre reminders of another time, another life. A stroke five years ago diminished her forever. Glaucoma has blinded her. Dementia has robbed her of her past. The embroidered slippers sit perched on white platforms in a glass memory box outside the door to her sparse room. They are reminders to the 86year-old grandmother, and the staff at Oakvilles West Oak Village Long Term Care Centre, that Lei once had a rich, full life. For those adrift in the confusing and often frightening world of dementia, memory boxes can serve as temporary anchors. Also known as way-finding boxes, the cabinets mounted in the wall
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outside each residents room are a familiar tool to help them find their way home, as well as figure out where they belong in a world that can feel turned almost upside down. A lot of other residents put pictures of their grandkids (in their memory boxes), but I wanted something that showed who she is as a person, says Leis son Henry of his mothers silk shoes. She used to listen to Chinese opera day in and day out and taught herself all the lyrics. When I was young I found it very annoying. I used to ask her, Could you turn it down a little bit? he says, smiling. As he grew older, Lei came to appreciate his mothers passion for performing the ancient spectacles of song, dance and drama on the stages of Chinese community centres. A photograph of her final performance in Torontos Chinatown area a dozen years ago in elaborate makeup, colourful costume and a headdress dripping with beads also graces her memory box.
MEMORY BOX continued on L11

SARAH DEA FOR THE TORONTO STAR

Reminders of Kui Min Leis love of music and dance in her memory box at West Oak Village in Oakville.

On Christmas Eve, 62 years ago, Dorothy Duguid hung a spindly tree with eggshells she had decorated for her children using oil paints, cotton batten and red tissue paper. The twins, Glenn and Grace were 18, John was 11and Dorothy Charlotte, who was just 4, still believed in Santa Claus. The Duguids were new to Toronto, having moved from Fort William (now part of Thunder Bay) that September after the optical company where Arthur Duguid worked as the office manager closed. Caught in the postwar housing shortage, the Duguids bought a summer cottage on Toronto Island and set about winterizing it. The night before Christmas, the children strung popcorn for their tree. It was barely taller than Charlotte. There were a few packages, containing handknit mittens and hats, beneath it. The children awoke Christmas morning to a stocking at the foot of their beds, each with an orange stuffed in the toe in 1948 oranges were an exotic luxury. Charlotte also found a colouring book in her stocking. But the real treasure was on the tree delicate eggshells transformed by their mother into Santa Claus ornaments. And beside the Santa Clauses, Dorothy had made an ornament for each of her children, with their name on it. Little Charlotte was enchanted. When we went to bed there were just strings of popcorn on the tree that we had put on. All of a sudden there were these beautiful ornaments, she recalls. The handmade ornaments decorated the Duguid family tree every Christmas until the children grew up and left home. When Dorothy Charlotte became Mrs. Charlotte MacKay, she took her ornament with her as well as some of the Santas. She too had twins. One December night, when they were nine, Charlotte was decorating her tree when her husband Jim stepped back, accidentally stepping into a box of ornaments. His misstep smashed every eggshell, except the one with Charlottes name on it. Charlotte cried. The twins cried because their mother was crying. Charlotte found a sturdy Styrofoam box to preserve the one remaining ornament. Today, Charlotte is a 66-year-old Burlington mother of three, waiting impatiently for grandchildren. Her children, who live in Mississauga, Burlington and Georgetown, visit her at Christmas. Her husband died 12 years ago. And every year, she hangs her Charlotte eggshell ornament on the Christmas tree and remembers her mother, who died in 1980. I can see my moms face and memories of her well up every time I see it.