The day proved to be a milestone in a man’s life.

It’s exactly a year ago. Most of the community where I live – Uxbridge, Ontario – had plenty on its plate. But for anyone who happened by the Greenbank Airport, that day, the visit of a Canadian Forces Griffon helicopter crew en route to the Arctic for manoeuvers, was a spectacle. For the man who had been preparing the airport facility for this day, the visit of Capt. Jack Wesselo and his military crew proved a shining example of his efforts rewarded.

“Nobody’s prouder of this moment than Micky Jovkovic,” his wife Dorothy said.

Micky Jovkovic died last Friday in the crash of his ultra-light aircraft, not far from the airport he loved.

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Most people missed my high-wire act a few weeks ago.

My neighbours – smart people they are – went indoors when the lightning and torrential rains came down. I, on the other hand, grabbed the extension ladder. You see, I never got around to cleaning my eaves trough last fall, nor this spring, nor on any dry day this summer. Consequently, when heavy rain came recently, the water poured off my roof, swamped the eaves and cascaded down the walls of our house. I finally got the message. The eaves needed to be cleaned out. So, I climbed the ladder to the roof and emptied it. All in the pouring rain! That adage Mom used to tell us never even crossed my mind:

“If there’s lightning, don’t go near trees, towers or elevated places!”

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I spent last weekend in Saskatchewan, visiting family and friends while participating in the province’s annual writers’ gathering – Festival of Words – in Moose Jaw.

Between events at the festival, my niece’s husband Vern and I made our way through a prairie rain storm to Taylor Field in Regina. He had a pair of tickets to the Roughriders-Alouettes football game, but he’d packed the rain suits just in case. It’s a prairie trait, I think, hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. During the 1970s, when I worked in Saskatchewan, I learned an appropriate descriptive of the then ‘have-not’ prairie province:

“This is next year country,” they would say. “The best is yet to come.”

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I got talking to a friend in my small town the other day. She and her husband are about to refurbish an older downtown building for their business. She said she’d become a little frustrated, partly with the delays getting the project going. But she was also miffed at something she hadn’t expected. In anticipation of the refuse from the coming reno, she had hired a firm to drop off one of those large, industrial disposal containers. Not long after the bin arrived at the construction site, the contractor asked if she had dumped some garbage not associated with the planned business reno into the bin. She said no, she hadn’t.

“Well then what’s a sofa doing in the disposal bin?” he asked.

She was really perplexed. You mean, a stranger had simply dumped an unwanted piece of furniture – not a lamp or a card table, mind you, a sofa – into her large garbage container right on a main street? How bizarre is that?

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They didn’t realize that July 1 is Canada’s birthday.

That’s OK, because last month members of the Berardi family warmly welcomed a tour of Canadians (my wife and I were hosting) to their farm near Ortona, Italy. We Canadians had come to Ortona to revisit the site of the “Christmas battle” during the Second World War, when after a long siege, Canadians removed the occupying German army from that part of the Adriatic coastline. Sixty-five years after that historic battle, Lanfranco Berardi, who had survived wartime as a civilian, gave us visiting Canadians an early Canada Day present. First he reflected on the Canadian troops who in 1943 gave his starving family hot soup, medical attention, sweets and something more precious.

“The Berardi family was saved from German oppression by Canadians,” Signore Berardi told us. “Because of the Canadians, we found again a smile and humanity.”

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A few anxious moments preceded the opening ceremonies of the “100 Years of Anne/Tribute to Lucy Maud Montgomery” festivities in Uxbridge, Ontario, recently.

Our event chair, Coun. Pat Mikuse, got a distress call on her cellphone. The caller was Durham MPP John O’Toole, one of the dignitaries expected to speak at the event. As Coun. Mikuse explained to me later, our guest inquired: “Where are you?”

“I can’t hear you,” Coun. Mikuse said. “I’ll move away from the stage.”

“Where are you?” MPP O’Toole repeated.

“I’m behind the stage,” she answered. “Where are you?

“I’m in front of the stage.”

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I never met “the SARS lady,” but she met me through my fears.

Early in 2003, when a stroke debilitated my father, he was admitted to Scarborough Grace Hospital in east-end Toronto. Within days of his admission there, the first cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome popped up around him. His was the SARS ward. The resulting quarantine made it impossible for us to enter the hospital or see Dad. My family panicked. How could we be sure his aphasia would be adequately treated? We found some solace in the demeanour and words of then Medical Officer of Health for Toronto, Dr. Sheela Basrur. Responsibility for the city’s health recovery fell to her and nursing staffs across the Greater Toronto Area.

“If you’re sick, you should seek treatment,” she told a terrified GTA. “If you’re healthy you should live your life.”

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On the seventh day of our trip along the path Canadians followed to liberate Italy, 65 years ago, I learned a valuable lesson of remembrance.

One of our tour guests, the mayor of Shelburne, Ont, asked if he could address the group of 50 Canadian travellers my wife and I are accompanying. Ed Crewson, 48, carefully unfolded several fragile-looking newspaper clippings that clearly meant a lot to him. He explained that the mementos came from the Second World War effects of his father – Pte. William Crewson of the Saskatoon Light Infantry.

“My dad got bone cancer when I was eight,” Ed Crewson told us. “I didn’t look through these wartime papers and read them until long after he was gone.”

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If you asked young Valentina Distefano what life is like in her hometown, she’d probably tell you that nothing ever happens.

She’d probably add that most days she doesn’t meet many new people either. Midday on Tuesday, however, things changed dramatically at her high school – Instituto D’Istruzione Secondaria Superiore Michelangelo Bartolo – in the small Sicilian coastal town of Pachino, Italy. You see, during a special assembly at this school of 400, Valentina met 50 visiting Canadians. They (with my wife and I as hosts) had just begun retracing the trek of Canadian soldiers who liberated Italy 65 years ago this year. And the Sicilian teenager actually got the chance to interview one of those visiting Canadians, 88-year-old Gordon Major.

“What did you feel like after you landed?” Valentina asked.

“I was too young to feel anything,” Major said. “It’s a very long time ago.”

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During a recent editorial meeting with a class of journalism students, one young woman didn’t have a news story to offer. She asked if I could assign one to her, one that would offer her a challenge. I thought a second and suggested she cover the Ontario finance minister’s introduction of the provincial budget. She cringed at the thought and then looked to me as if to say, “Why would you choose that as an assignment?”

“It’s important that you learn how things work,” I said to her.

She nodded and said, “I’ll check the Queen’s Park website for the phone number of the Finance Minister’s office.”

“Well, the learning curve has just begun,” I said. “Have you ever tried using a telephone book?”

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