The sky was darkening as I headed out the door Monday morning to have my first haircut in over six months. I doubted that I would be seeing any rain. It was not expected, having waited for two months to see some rain. Storms and rain have dodged around us […]
Jim Cumming – From the Publisher Emeritus’ Pen
Jim is the former publisher of the Fort Frances Times Ltd. He writes a weekly column and can be contacted at jcumming@fortfrances.com
Early Monday morning as I listened to the sounds around the cabin, I thought I heard falling rain hitting against the walls of the cabin and falling to the deck. It was not until I finally crawled out of bed and went outside, that I realized the sounds were from […]
An old Irish saying “Children are the rainbow of life. Grandchildren are the pot of gold”. I really had not given a lot of thought to my granddaughter until she arrived with her parents last Friday. As our first grandchild, she was already special and held a special place in […]
We often forget how vulnerable we are to diseases that were part of our history. Canadian statistics show that 1 in four children died of some cause by the time they were five in the first decade of the twentieth century. We have come far in preventing death through disease. […]
This will be the second year that Canada Day will be quiet in Fort Frances. There will be no parade. There will be no children’s parade. There will be no gathering of the community at Point Park. There will be no baseball tournaments. There will be no fireworks. Instead, we […]
This Sunday marks Father’s Day. It was not until 1910 that the day was celebrated in North America. Then Sonora Smart Dodd marked the third Sunday in June to recognize fathers. Historically the celebration of fathers began in the Middle Ages and was marked by Saint Joseph Day in the […]
I asked a group of people of different ages on Monday whether they would continue to wear masks once they had been fully vaccinated and the government had declared the pandemic over. Almost everyone agreed that they would continue to wear masks when shopping throughout the community. It is a […]
The last federal election occurred on October 19, 2019. Canada formed a minority government with no party having the majority of seats in the House of Commons. Speculation soon expected that the government would be hard pressed to last a year. The leader of the opposition Andrew Scheer, resigned in […]
Many decades ago, the Town of Fort Frances acquired property adjoining Riverview Cemetery, from a citizen named Roscoe Richardson. Mr. Richardson had planned a tree plantation on that property and took great pride in having every tree and shrub species found in the district planted there. It was an impressive […]
Our household watches the daily number of new Covid cases across each of the western provinces and the rest of Canada. We monitor the number of doses of vaccines arriving in Canada and are excited to see that by the end of June there will be a total of 38 […]
My two sons work from home. Prior to the pandemic, they would commute to their offices and work from there. Both have saved thousands in commuting costs and business clothing. In Canadian cities and towns across Canada many are now working from home attending to the lockdown orders from provincial […]
What a difference four days make. Rain Thursday night, a little more on Friday and then lots of heat Saturday and Sunday and my lawn has become a dark green mass of growth. My flowering crabs are bursting forth with lots of deep red buds ready to transform into a […]







