Weighing in at 848 grams, this crystal ashtray is from my mother, who in turn inherited from her father. As a child, in the 1960s, I remember buying him cigars for Christmas, each one individually packaged in an aluminum tube. He had a little humidor tucked away in the corner of the dinning room. It looked like a cabinet, but when the front door was opened, you could see the interior was lined in metal (I don’t recall which it was). Regardless of its function, it was a beautiful piece of furniture.
The University of Waterloo, citing various sources, shows smoking in the general Canadian population has dropped from about 50% (1965) to 15% (2017).
This decline clearly marks a distinction between the past and present, and most will argue for the better. Many things associated with smoking have fallen by the wayside: cigarette girls, selling cigars and cigarettes in restaurants. Smoking on airplanes, in the office, in class at university, among other places.
To recall the residual smoke, lingering in the air after some event, is to make more tangible the potential longevity of COVID virus-containing aerosols in indoor locations.
Leave a Reply