Jim Cumming – From the Publisher Emeritus’ Pen

The Christmas tree is down. The Christmas ornaments around the house have been safely stored until next November. I could pick up all the outdoor lights but will leave them through the historic Ukrainian Christmas. 2023 has come to an end and we have welcome in 2024. As I look […]

Christmas can’t come fast enough for my granddaughters. But then again travelling to Calgary to enjoy Christmas with our granddaughters can’t come fast enough for us. Just as four-year old Delsie is counting down the days until that gentle old elf comes sliding down their chimney, Marnie and I are […]

I wake up in darkness. For the third consecutive day the sky is clouded over and in late afternoon, we all will return to darkness. December leading to the winter solstice is a dismal time of year. After the invasion by Hamas and the slaughter of 1400 Jewish children, women […]

I will admit right off the bat that I am a diabetic. I will also admit that I began controlling my diabetes by watching and controlling what I ate. However, as time went by, I became dependent on oral medicine and then was transferred to insulin and trying to control […]

We are into the Christmas season of giving and being thankful for the blessings of our communities.  Nothing provides a clearer understanding of the benefits of volunteerism than the activities that will take place in Fort Frances and Emo this weekend. Now closing in on thirty years, Emo Holly Daze […]

If you live in a large city like Toronto or Calgary and you are running low on toilet paper, diapers for your newborn or need a case of bottled water you can log onto Amazon and those items will be delivered before the end of the day and you don’t […]

I recently completed the judging of the Manitoba Community Newspaper competition for the best overall community newspaper in the province. The best part of judging the competition was that old friends who are now publishers in the province continued to have the same feel for community journalism that I do. […]

Politics have shone through the Liberal carbon tax plan. Originally the Trudeau tax was to be applied to all carbon fuels in Canada. It had been implemented to meet Canada’s carbon reduction targets. However, inflation, and wars have driven up the cost of heating fuels across Canada. Yet now comes […]

Ann Lamott in Monday’s Washington Post titled her opinion peace “It’s good to remember, we are all living on borrowed time”. I chuckled at the headline as I read her piece and then thought around to this past weekend at a swim meet hosted in Fort Frances by the Cyclones […]

I look about the world and even the industry that I grew up in and marvel at the changes that I have seen in my lifetime. One can look back to the Gutenberg Bible. It was the first book printed using individual letters that were collected to make words and […]

“Truth is the first casualty of war.” The statement has been attributed to many different writers including Senator Samuel Johnson, but the first such statement is attributed to Aeschylus a Greek tragic dramatist who lived between 525 BC and 426 BC. Since then, the world has witnessed the truth of […]

Canada finds itself with a foreign affairs problem. Being rebuked by India for publicly accusing the Indian government of facilitating the execution of a Canadian Sikh person and then blundering by recognizing a WWII Ukrainian Nazi soldier during a parliamentary session attended by Ukrainian Leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy Canada has gained […]