Hill Street
It was an evening back in September that I found myself on Hill Street in Picton. Hill Street? There is no hill on Hill Street, unless I guess you refer to the steep road that runs off it and descends to the yacht club below. The street could be called Running at the High Edge […]
Backing up a zombie
If I’m free on November 17, I can go to the Regent Theatre to watch Abbamania, where lookalikes perform note-perfect renditions of the ABBA songbook. On the same bill, just to cover the bases a little more broadly, I can also hear Cher and Bee Gees impersonators knocking off the greatest hits of the star […]
November remembrances
Remembrance Day. The first time I was aware there was such a day I might have been about eight or nine years of age. My dad and my uncles were veterans of the Second World War, but I don’t recall hearing too much about it when I was a kid. Dad’s uniform hung in my […]
For the sake of remembrance
It is mainly this morning when I attempt to mind-connect recent events. I sit in the company of my simmering woodstove as a mean November clatters at my window. Just beyond, a robin is perched on a branch of a buckthorn tree. The bird awaits gusts of wind to fetch the fine endtwigs that hold […]
Goodbye parks
The government of Doug Ford is getting pretty serious about cutting back expenditures. Got to fix that deficit problem. So the chopping has begun. And now comes the rumour that next on the chopping block will be provincial parks —all of them, closed down tight, with just two exceptions, namely Sandbanks park and Algonquin park. […]
November normal
On the Prairies, we are. From the moment we stepped out of the airport, hopped into the rental car and headed west, it was easy to see we weren’t in Ontario anymore. From Winter- peg to Brandon is about a two-hour drive. The landscape is so flat it’s almost possible to see Brandon from the […]
For the sake of remembrance
It is mainly this morning when I attempt to mind-connect recent events. I sit in the company of my simmering woodstove as a mean November clatters at my window. Just beyond, a robin is perched on a branch of a buckthorn tree. The bird awaits gusts of wind to fetch the fine endtwigs that hold […]
High stakes drama to cheap soap opera
Julian Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for six years now. And the standoff about his tenure there continues. Assange—who founded Wikileaks and attained fame when he published a bundle of top secret US intelligence cables, and then from his post in exile managed to post a bundle of documents […]
In the moment
By the time some of you read this, I’ll be on my way to Brandon, Manitoba to spend some precious moments with our new grandson. I can’t believe November is just around the corner. I’ll be wondering what the heck happened to October? How did it get to be one day until November? Didn’t we […]
Vital signs, vital info, vital mesage
Into the turbulence of the municipal election period drops the The County Community Foundation’s 2018 Vital Signs report, available online or at local library branches, its second such report. The Foundation issued a first report in 2013, and a progress report in 2015. The Report is a ‘state of the community’ snapshot, condensed in about […]