Ellerbusch Day

St. Catharines Estonian Society summer celebration

In Port Colborne, on an absolutely beautiful Saturday (July 30), perfect weather to suit our mood, on the very shore of a sparkling azure blue Lake Erie, wavelets lapping at the beach, Great Lakes freighters going by into and out of the southern end of the Welland Canal, gulls swooping, the low lying Allegheny hills of New York State and Pennsylvania a dark green band on the southern horizon… and the slanting sails of a “tall ship” on the Lake to please the eye≤ we met, at the home of Toomas Ellerbusch, a setting as spectacular as it sounds, the St. Catharines Eesti Selts hosted at his place.

Anyone new to the St. Catharines Eesti Selts has to be awed and enamoured of the domains of the hosts of our monthly get-togethers. Each is spectacular in its own way. And each has unique character. And each is absorbing, welcoming and sets the tone for camaraderie, good talk and just plain happiness to be with people one loves. And each has a particular Estonian feel to it. Each hearkens back to the past but also is happy in the present and looks with purpose and confidence into the future.

And what all that ambience does, is draw forth the stories of us all.

And we have STORIES, us Estonians.

We have stories of our very souls, stories generated by war and loss, by travel and adventure, by necessity and just plain wanting to see what is “over the horizon”.

At Toomas’ place gathering I learned for the first time of an Estonian tiny “diaspora” in Brazil of all places! Now my wife of 53 years who has passed away was from Trinidad in the West Indies, so I knew, and all Latvians in the world know that Latvia at one time held sway over the “fair isle” of Tobago, nestled a few miles over the Caribbean Sea from Trinidad. So clearly Estonians had to go one better and “attempt” to colonize Brazil!

And the effort bore fruit, since one of my Estonian friends at our gathering told me tales of life and work in Brazil, with one of the world’s most successful corporations, IBM. His first language is/was Brazilian (Portuguese), second is Spanish, third is English and fourth is Estonian. But of course basically all Estonians are linguists – I have always had great difficulty trying to answer customs and immigration questions in Estonian on arrival in Asia or Latin America… so we become “naturally” gifted “multi-linguals” and thereby gain a wider understanding of and easier passage through our world.

Toomas was his usual genial host (sporting a foot long Cuban cigar!) with great humour and open-hearted camaraderie. He even disclosed his “secret” underground lair, replete with esoteric brands of the finest distillation can produce, many from Estonia! Plus of course he had his very own “brand” of “medicine” that would cure anyone of whatever “ailed” them. I was lucky to be able to get back “up to the surface” on my own steam. Everybody else seemed quite OK, so maybe more used to the medicine. It did go down very well, easily… perhaps that’s what creates a problem for some…

The other phenomenon I am in awe of is that absolutely great food appears as if by magic at our gatherings, one moment the table is bare, the next moment it’s full of very good things to eat… in fact so much we were replete very soon. Hats are off to the host and all who help to offer the gathering refreshment and sustenance. Each gathering has “behind the scenes” activity that often remains unacknowledged, but which makes each occasion such a resounding success.

KASPAR POLD

Toomas Ellerbusch