More Canada in Taiwan

Today we made the trip out to Tamsui to visit Louise Gamble at the Tam Kang High School. Loiuse is a member of my church doing work at the high school here. As we walked up the hillside from the metro station we passed by a huge head monument to Dr. George Mackay and then along a narrow passage to the church he established and the clinic he operated out of. This whole part of Tamsui is very reverent of Rev. Dr. Mackay and his story with them. Dr. Mackay was a missionary of the Presbyterian Church in Canada sent to Taiwan in the late 1800's. Once we entered the Tam Kang school grounds we had a very pleasant day of visiting. As we are Canadian, they seem to treat us with extraordinary respect - I think they think we are more important than we really are.

Louise met us at the gate and started to give us a tour but we were soon met by the principal, Albert Yao, who insisted we join him and about seven other international teachers for lunch at a near-by restaurant. These were all teachers of English from places like Australia, South Africa, and USA. We went to a spot that served Italian style spaghetti. Back at the school Albert and Louise gave us a royal tour of the grounds and of their museum. Their collection includes many original articles of G.L. Mackay and of his son, George William Mackay, who is actually the founder of the school. I was impressed that despite the turbulant times for the school during Japanese occupation and KMT oppression they are willing to include the leaders of the school in those times in their museum and records. Many institutions attempt to deny those embarassing times of their history.

Take a good look at the orchids behind us in this photo.

The school teaches about 2,500 students. It has pool larger than the YMCA Owen Sound. In one corner of the school grounds is the cemetery for Mackay, his wife and few other members of his family. All the students seem to like showing off to us visitors so I would occasionally pop my head in a classroom to take a picture - probably causing mayhem for the teacher but hey - it's fun for the kids. This school also takes its rugby team very seriously.

Louise described her work to us and showed us her living quarters in the new building. As well as teaching at the school she is working at transcribing the writings and letters of G.L. Mackey into an electronic format to have them compiled in one place. The originals are held by the United Church of Canada but they have made photocopies available to her. Some of the pages are incredibly challenging in their smudges and missing words. I do not envy this work.

It was a wonderful visit with an Owen Sounder on the other side of the world. We ended with tea and waffles in the campus coffee shop joined again by Albert just before he had to conduct an interview with another prospective teacher for their English program. Louise brought out a bottle of maple syrup from the Gamble Maple Syrup producers of Chatsworth, Ontario - a little bit more of Canada in Taiwan. We parted again at the front gate and went back to the metro station by way of the harbour. Then on to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial - but that's another story.

The CKS Memorial is an overblown egotistical testament. Anne thinks he's compensating for something - whatever that means.

Supper was "third-world." For $80 NT (about $3.75 CDN) we both got fed at a storefront buffet of semi-identifiable edibles and ate at a roadside table surounded by the traffic of trucks, buses, scooters, bikes and humanity and chaos. Yum

Scott