It took a while after the rather shocking U.S. presidential election results for me to recover and consider what I might look at doing around the old Hope Ness homestead to get ready for the American invasion. Continue reading
Government
We are one forest of family trees
Can you see the sunset rainbow? Yes, it is there, just above the trees to the left of the driveway. It is faint, but still wonderful, and full of Hope
My AncestryDNA kit has finally arrived.
Not that many years ago such a test might have cost thousands of dollars, to find out your ancestral genetic background. Now it comes at a tiny fraction of that cost. Continue reading
Tears on Mount Rushmore
I was browsing the troubling, even downright depressing news headlines of the day when I finally landed on Donald Trump and his half-hearted choice of Mike Spence, Governor of Indiana, as his vice-presidential running mate. Then, for no apparent reason out of the blue, so to speak, I thought about the intelligence of plants. Continue reading
On weeding the garden, here and there
The well-tended potato plants are starting to bloom north of the border
There’s a lot to be said for growing a garden, especially one as big as mine here at Cathedral Drive Farm in Hope Ness, on the Bruce Peninsula, in Ontario, Canada. It’s like ballet, or any other creative discipline that requires your absolute devotion and attention for hours a day, every day. You can get lost in it, but not aimless. It can be an escape for a while from the world of cares and woe and discouraging news about how the future is likely to unfold; and these days it’s not very good at all.
And, yes, I am referring to the infernal T-word. Continue reading
Driver’s licence no small matter in rural Ontario
Cathedral Drive, rural Ontario, another reality
I’d like to conduct a bit of a survey.
So, here are my survey questions:
Do you have an Ontario Driver’s Licence?
Do you live in an urban area with access to reasonably good taxi or public transit service, or friends and family to help you get to appointments, do your shopping, run errands, or just get out?
Do you live in a rural area without public transit, no nearby taxi service, and relatively speaking, compared to people in urban areas, not that many neighbours you might ask to drive you to the nearest small town, or Owen Sound?
Are you more than 70 years old?
Do you know that if you’re involved in a collision that results in you being charged with a Highway Traffic Act (HTA) violation, and you either plead or are found guilty, you will be required to pass a three-part re-examination of your fitness to have a driver’s licence?
That includes a written and vision tests, as well as a road test.
2016 Owen Sound Budget Discussions
Under present circumstances, the City of Owen Sound is in a no-win financial situation: Its municipal government can’t keep raising taxes four percent or more annually if it wants the city to have a prosperous future. Continue reading
Candidate Meet for Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound Riding
Well, nothing like a dose of cold reality to bring one’s feet down to earth.
Just a few days ago it was easy enough to be fooled into thinking it was still summer, that the possibility of frost and even snow was still somewhere in the future. But a couple of mornings ago I looked out the upstairs window of this old farmhouse and saw the cold, brisk east wind blowing the clouds in the wrong direction – always a bad sign; and the need to take certain steps to batten down the hatches for the winter, and so on, suddenly seemed urgent. Continue reading
Vote Strategically
So, the federal election campaign has suddenly got interesting.
To some extent it’s about competing polls. One surveying the national and province-by-province mood of voters was done by the polling firm Ekos for LaPresse newspaper in Montreal. The results were released just in time for the French language leaders’ debate this week. It polled 2,343 people for their voting intentions. The results are considered accurate 19 times out of 20, to within two percentage points, according to news reports. Continue reading
Harper Re-election Plans Thrown for an Existential Loop
There seems to be a pretty widespread consensus now among news media observers and commentators that the real federal election campaign has begun, now that the last holiday weekend of the summer has come and gone. Continue reading
Last Words of Jack Layton
The outpouring of public grief since Jack Layton died less than a week ago is the most interesting and significant aspect of one of the most important events in Canadian political history. That’s for what it reveals about the kind of person Canadians would prefer to see running the country on their behalf. And it extends all the way from Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, and cabinet minister, to lowly backbencher from any party, or no party. Continue reading
Finding Hope Ness 