Posts

Showing posts from June 27, 2021

History. Herstory. Our story.

Image
We moved between Canada and Europe several times while I was growing up, so my formal schooling has some gaps. Notably, in math and history.  I can do simple math in my head, thanks to the rigours of my German middle school’s drills, but algebra and trigonometry escape me. Every school system taught math differently and I was never able to make it all add up. By the time I reached high school in Canada, I entered the remedial math stream and graduated with unremarkable knowledge in that subject.  History is non-existent in my school memories, except for King Henry VIII of England, whom I remember only for his six wives: Catherine of Aragon, Divorced. Anne Boleyn, Beheaded. Jane Seymour, Died. Anne of Cleves, Divorced. Catherine Howard, Beheaded. Catherine Parr, Survived. And my most vivid memory of those six comes not from the classroom but from a movie.  Genevieve Bujold played Anne Boleyn in Anne of a Thousand Days . The scene that remains crystal clear in my mind five decades on is