The leaves are falling from the trees around my home. Already one maple is bare and half the golden leaves from the birch trees now sit upon the grass. Water has been drained from my system at the lake and a fond farewell was said to the cabin as I […]
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
I have written about doom and gloom and the issues facing councils across the district. To be sure, some of the financial issues facing councils this year are not pretty. This week, though, I would like to talk about what challenges municipal governments will face should both the mill here […]
Last weekend was my annual fishing weekend with my brother-in-law, Tom Foster, and his son, Ben, here on Rainy Lake. My son, Brendan, who came in from Calgary, joined them. Tom and Ben live in Waterloo while Tom has a cottage on Healey Lake (near Parry Sound), which has more […]
There is something about the smell of wood smoke in the fall. We arrived at the cabin Friday night and the temperature inside read barely 10 C. It was chilly and called immediately for a fire. Stored in an old trunk was the kindling created by my brother-in-law this past […]
We are going to have a municipal election here in Fort Frances. As of early Monday morning, there were two candidates for mayor and 13 for the six seats on town council. The election will be interesting to say the least. Mail-in ballots will be distributed early in October and […]
According to the Windsor Star, the province of Ontario pledged $385 million in assistance to Ford Motor Company and the feds are looking at matching that. It works out to better than $1 million per job created. Apparently southwestern Ontario has been hard hit by the loss of manufacturing jobs. […]
With sadness we face the last long weekend of the summer. Here at the Times, our summer students are returning to their respective schools. Meanwhile, friends from the lake are departing. Classes start next Wednesday across the district. The bright yellow school buses will be back on the roads. The […]
There are times that you often regret not doing something. I hadn’t thought about this until I received a call from Irene Baranowski at my cottage on the weekend. Her husband, Mike, had been determined that I should catch a musky and for the last few years, we have arranged […]
Just as the horse-and-buggy changed the mode of transportation, driverless cars are set to change our lives dramatically in the coming decades. We already have witnessed the self-parking vehicle. And Google has pioneered a fleet of cars that currently are travelling hundreds of thousands of miles to prove they are […]
We have begun marking the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I. It supposedly was the “war to end all wars” but looking back, issues that caused the war—and the festering in nations created by the Versailles treaty that divided up the world again—are causing worry and problems […]
Volunteers help make the world go around. And as we examine all the activities that take place in a year across Rainy River District, it would be difficult to measure the value volunteers contribute to the economy. One only has to follow the Fort Frances or Emo minor hockey programs […]
For the past two weekends, I have been helping my brother build a deck at his cabin. I chuckle when I think about this and our competitive nature when my father used the two of us to carry lumber to our cabin on Turtle Island. Over 45 years ago, we […]
