The minister of Canadian Heritage has told me that my business model is broken. She indicated I should be partnering with both Facebook and Google to deliver the news of our community. I guess that after more than 120 years of publishing the stories about the lives and businesses of […]
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
Life can be full of surprises. Sometimes we learn a little bit of family history from the items we acquire. My grandparents moved from Hudson, Ont. to Neepawa Man. as my grandfather took up a new position with the Canadian National Railway in 1952. They moved from a small two-bedroom […]
Sometimes you fail to understand what a wonderful place we live in. Watching the devastation from the two hurricanes that struck the southern United States, we can appreciate the fact that the extreme weather condition we might encounter would be a metre of snow overnight. It will seem nasty but […]
I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in the city of Houston these days. Following Hurricane Harvey, the citizens of that U.S. city and the 50 surrounding counties are facing torrential rain that was more than double the annual rainfall there. Some places already had exceeded more than 30 […]
There are now windrows of golden oats ready to be combined in fields west of Fort Frances while fields of golden barley are ready to harvested. I’ve driven by these fields almost every week for a year now and watched how the earth has turned to vibrant green, canola has […]
My mother moved from her home and has told her children to deal with her belongings. I don’t think we realized how much stuff my father and she had accumulated in their lifetime. For instance, we discovered she had kept every report card for every year the three of us […]
A mother’s job is never finished. Nor do parents ever stop worrying about their children. Marnie and I have a tradition of calling our sons every Sunday night to hear their voices and those of their spouses. Both live more than 1,000 miles in opposite directions from Fort Frances. One […]
There is an interesting court case involving 454 bottles of beer that could very much open up free trade across provincial boundaries. The Supreme Court of Canada will hear an appeal of the New Brunswick Provincial Court’s decision. Gerald Comeau had bought several cases of beer and some liquor in […]
I was just as surprised as most people were in Fort Frances when the community learned that the trees on the 200 block of Scott Street were going to be removed. I sat on town council back in the early 1980s when the decision to plant trees along the street […]
Our bay on Turtle Island of Rainy Lake traditionally has had some thick aquatic plant growth. It harboured northern pike and bass, and was a great growing ground for the schools of young bass that were hatched on beds in early summer. Most of those weeds have disappeared this summer–much […]
Have you ever been asked the question: “Do you have a hobby?” It is an easy question as most of us probably do have such a hobby. I know that I do. So do my wife, my brother and my sister, and many of the employees here at the Times. […]
We don’t have a television at the cabin. The radio, which is tuned to CBC, seldom is on. Yes, we do have the Internet. iPads and cellphones are logged in, but the search of news seldom is happening. Instead, in our quiet way, time often is spent reading hardcover and […]
