They seemed to pop up overnight. One day I was driving through Pickering up Brock Road and there was the Greenbelt land – fields, gullies and natural forest. The next day, following the same route, there were signs as big as all outdoors shouting out to all who passed:
“100-foot by 300-foot lots!” those signs proclaimed.
As I recall, it was just before the recent Greenbelt controversy erupted that I first saw the signs. (more…)
It happened when I was about nine. The public-school playground got a little boring, so a bunch of us found a maple tree just across the back fence of the schoolyard to climb, sit in and hang from. Word got around to the principal, Mr. Palmer Kilpatrick. If for no other reason than fear of liability, he announced that the tree was off limits.
That didn’t stop us. Next day, we headed back over the fence and scrambled back up the tree. Suddenly, it got quiet. All my fellow tree-climbers disappeared. I was alone. I looked down and there was Mr. Kilpatrick standing at the foot of the tree.
“Ted, come down,” he said sternly. “You know you’re not supposed to be up there.”
“Yes sir,” and I came down. Everybody else who’d climbed the tree with me that day had taken off. And I could have too. But something inside me said, “Fess up and face the consequences.” (more…)
He preferred to present the government’s first-quarter fiscal results, focus on Ontario’s deficit projection for 2023-24. But reporters preferred a response from Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy to the Greenbelt controversy in his riding.
“The 100 people I talked to say ‘build,’” he answered. “That’s what I hear and that’s why we’re going to continue on our build.” (more…)
There was a short news clip about a week ago. It captured the Canadian minister of energy and natural resources smiling for the cameras. The video showed him joining the mayor of Surrey, B.C. Together, Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and Mayor Brenda Locke planted a tree symbolic of long-range plans to help restore Canada’s tree population, reduce the effects of severe weather (flooding or drought) and rescue a warming planet.
“Planting two billion trees over 10 years is a key part of Canada’s plan to fight climate change,” Wilkinson said on August 2. “Every tree planted is a step toward a healthier, more sustainable Canada.” (more…)
I’m not exactly sure when it happened. My pal and I had gone out for one of our regular runs. He tends to run much faster than I can. But suddenly he pulled up and began to limp. I don’t know if he twisted his leg on a stone or a pothole or what. But we were soon at the hospital where I got the word.
“Looks like a torn ligament,” the doctor said. “May need surgical treatment.”
“Really?” I was incredulous. (more…)
I was told he was coming. John Watson arrived a few minutes before I began a presentation about a major Second World War story, last Wednesday night in Swift Current, Sask. Watson is a tall man. He wore a red jacket, a scarf, and had a twinkle in his eye as we shook hands.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Watson,” I said. “I understand you’re a veteran, that you served overseas in the last war with the Regina Rifles.”
“Yes, I did,” he said. “But don’t forget the ‘Royal’ part.”
“The Royal Regina Rifles,” I corrected myself, then added, “No doubt ‘Royal’ because of you.”
He laughed and said, “I was just a rifleman.” (more…)
The festival began the way most events do these days in Canada. With respect. Last Thursday evening, the creative director of a festival in which I was participating, came to the microphone at the lectern, looked at the assembly of novelists, non-fiction writers, poets and all the other festival-goers. With appropriate sincerity and solemnity, she read the local land acknowledgement.
“We acknowledge that we are on Treaty 4 land,” she said, “encompassing the lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dakota, Nakota, Lakota and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.”
That’s the way the 27th edition of the Saskatchewan Festival of Words began in Moose Jaw, last week. (more…)
The first indications were the odd-coloured new signs. All of a sudden, the regular logo where we normally make our deposits, pay our bills and withdraw our cash, began disappearing in literature, pamphlets and, as I say, on the signage inside and outside the building. Then, we received email notification.
“We’re making changes so that you can experience the good in banking,” the email said. “We’re transitioning banking systems.”
As of the July 1 holiday weekend, the Credit Union, at which we have conducted the majority of our financial dealings since we arrived here in 1988, is no more. (more…)
He almost could not speak, the response around him seemed overwhelming. But he finally raised his hands in gentle protest to the standing ovation and when the applauding stopped he offered these words:
“Today, I rise for the last time in this chamber,” MP Erin O’Toole said in the House of Commons on June 12. “It’s been the honour of a lifetime to serve Durham in Parliament.” (more…)
I’d got lost in the main square at Ypres, Belgium. I’d asked for directions from the man at a reception desk inside the town’s massive Cloth Hall. As I thanked him for getting me reoriented, I asked him about the story of Ypres’ recovery and restoration after the Great War in 1918.
“You know that the war levelled the city, yes?” I nodded, and he continued. “It was the forethought of the mayor and aldermen and others that saved our city after World War I.”
“I’d heard that,” I said.
“They gathered all the diagrams of buildings in Ieper (as Belgians call Ypres) and hid them in France,” he said.
