Ted Barris

A veteran friend of mine and I happened to be comparing notes about an upcoming overseas trip we’ll be taking together. We were itemizing some of the clothing he might need for the climate where we’ll be travelling. I reminded him about the possibility of rain at night and the likelihood of warm temperatures in the daytime. I used some reliable advice:

“Pack layers,” I suggested, “so you can add or subtract as needed.”

“Why do you think I take several days to pack?” he pointed out. “I like to plan these things.”

“So that’s the secret,” I kidded him. “You take almost as many days to pack as we will be travelling.”

That said, I’ve always admired those who have mastered the fine art of packing, or more accurately, packing a whole lot of stuff into very little space, so that the luggage is limited. Whether someone is moving a household, backpacking a picnic into the woods, or travelling for about 10 days in a European country, as my veteran friend and I shall be, packing methodically is the key.

I have employed packing techniques, mostly learned from my mother, all my life. You know, tricks such as stuffing clean socks inside packed shoes, or rolling folded shirts like cigar leaves and placing them side-by-side like sardines in the suitcase, or packing a suit jacket inside out so that the outside of the jacket doesn’t get soiled or wrinkled in transit.

“Common sense,” my mother used to say.

“If you’ve been taught such things,” I remember thinking.

Packing to move a household is a science unto itself. During my university years, we students seemed to move from one apartment to another every time the rent was due. And, as before, I remembersed skills my mother taught me. Every plate, every glass, every cup and any other breakable utensil was always wrapped in crumpled newspapers. Books were always loaded into boxes spine-against-spine. In a moving truck, we always loaded paintings (covered in sheets or towels) between mattresses. And I never packed a household garbage can onto a moving van without first loading it to the brim with a gazillion tools. Rattled like hell, but it got the job done.

One unique packing technique I shall always remember dated back to the First World War. When women and children on the home front wanted a father or son to have a delicacy food from home, such as a freshly cooked hard-boiled egg, they gently spaced out and packed a tin with the cooked eggs and then poured hot, fluid wax into the tin, suspending the eggs. When the wax set, almost nothing could break the eggs. And if transit proved reasonably speedy, a Canadian Expeditionary Force soldier could open the tin near the front, strip away the paraffin wax and enjoy the cooked egg shipped safely from his mother’s kitchen half a world away.

Last week, I talked about my annual Muskoka canoe trip down the Black River from the Vankoughnet area southbound towards Washago. As I indicated, the trip only covered about 20 kilometres as the crow flies. It only involved one camp set-up and one overnight. However, each year’s trip includes a pretty extensive supper menu on the Saturday night and a reasonably substantial breakfast on Sunday morning.

I have always marvelled at the way our organizer and chief cook, Scott Crockatt, manages to organize, pack and stow all the elements we need for the cooking. Like my veteran friend, Scotty takes a fair number of days planning the way he’ll pack the kitchen and the food he’ll cook.

The supper, for 12 adult men with hefty appetites at the end of a full day of paddling, included – I’m almost embarrassed to say – fresh vegetables, including hors d’oeuvres of olives and baby onions, Caesar salad, onions cooked – no, I should say onions caramelized in a skillet on the fire – baked potatoes and steaks cooked to perfection. This is roughing it. The main course was followed by coffee – brewed from a pot literally placed in the red-hot coals – with Baileys mixed in and, believe it or not, fresh pies transported all the way downriver in the most unique fashion.

I know because each year I watch Scotty pack them. Each pie is carefully wrapped in an air-tight plastic bag, then placed in a custom-fitted cookie tin (the size of a film can). He then gently stuffs several layers of newspapers into any spaces inside the tin to ensure that the pies remain perfectly suspended in the tins. The tins are placed in one end of a plastic drum containing other kitchen staples.

Then, like a gourmet chef revealing his main course from beneath one of those silver dinner covers, Crockatt pops the cookie tin tops to show off the Saturday night dessert perfectly intact.

“Viola!” he says. “It’s all in the way you pack.”

And as my veteran buddy said, you’ve got “to plan these things.”