They call me Mister Simmonds
One of the pieces in the Globe and Mail that my wife and I both enjoy reading is the ‘moral dilemmas’ advice column authored every Friday by David Eddie. And one of his recent columns has caused quite a division of opinion, judging from the letters to the editor. Mind you, so did a column […]
Saving for the future
My love of Ontario’s built heritage goes back a long way. The place that did it for me was the Schmidt- Dalziel Barn, located in the Humber Valley. Decades after my very first visit to The Barn I had an opportunity to take my love to new heights. In the ‘90s as a volunteer at […]
Tennis and Baseball on a Sunday afternoon
Damn! Within a matter of thirty seconds, my Canadian pride was wounded on two separate occasions last Sunday. First of all, Milos Raonic from Thornhill, the best Canadian tennis player ever to lace up a pair of tennis shoes, lost in straight sets to Rafael Nadal. Nadal hails from Spain, and has been at the […]
Lost in translation
If you take into consideration the range of grape varietals grown in Prince Edward County and the wide, eclectic selection of wines produced, you can say, without a doubt, that the local wine producers punch way above their weight. It is true the majority of these varietals are of French origin, however, you would be […]
The masterpiece
Most readers will know my compatriot at The Times, Conrad Beaubien, as a man of many parts—filmmaker, musician, visual artist and playwright, to name a few. But perhaps not everyone knows him as a man with a sharp eye for a bargain, and as an inveterate collector of things that might prove useful someday, even […]
Enquiring minds
Last week one of the Belleville Radio personalities regurgitated a Huffington Post online news article about a café owner in Germany who decided to charge the customers for the time spent in the café, not for the coffee consumed. Time is money, dont’cha know? Apparently, the first half-hour in the café costs the customer about […]
The piano
a…A…A …the music note rings constant throughout the empty hall. Traffic hurries beyond the window. Grenville Wilkinson stands at the piano hitting one note over and over with the front panel now open, I watch as the felted piano hammer lands amongst the weft of strings that grow from the belly of the thing. Grenville […]
The RBC Canadian Open—A final look
The Professional Golfers’ Association has set up shop in Rochester, New York, this week. Last weekend, Tiger Woods again asserted himself, running away with the Grecian urn at the Bridgestone Invitational. The golfing world keeps track of its better players through a statistic called the “Fedex Cup”. Players are allotted a certain number of points […]
Growing hops
Have you seen the supersized trellis just west of Hillier? Inquiring minds are told it’s for growing hops. While I knew that hops were vital to brewing beer, I had never seen how they are grown. (I also knew that, prior to the Middle Ages, bitter greens such as dandelion, marigold or burdock root were […]
Nudge, nudge
One of the most excruciating experiences of my life was to sign up for an introductory economics course. I think I lasted three lectures. What got my goat was the assumption that one of the most basic predictors of decision- making was ‘economic man’ – the creature who ruthlessly cacluated and maximized his own self-interest. […]