Dear Donald:
In use today in Ontario is the expression "bear" as in .
It was a bear of a perfomance --- meaning that it was bad.
The ditty I learned as a child is a variant and not, in today's world, very
PC
"I see said the blind man
I hear said the deaf man
And a man with no legs kicked them both down the stairs."
Fair nonsense but somewhere back there it probably made sense in an earlier
version.
Rory
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald J Sinclair" <donsinc@shaw.ca>
To: <sinclair@quarterman.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 2:56 PM
Subject: Re: Different expressions
> My grandfather, John Sinclair, who was born in Wick in 1884 and came to
> Canada in 1914, had an expression he used frequently. For example if the
> officials of the day changed something, he would say "It's a bear", what
> they've done making that change. Or "It's a bear" the way they treat
> those people. Or "It's a bear, the price of gasoline these days.
[ Excess quotations omitted. ]
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