The blue-white cold of Saturday and Sunday mornings heralded that winter was in its full delightful white dress. Hoar frost clung to the trees. Ice crystals hanging in the air created giant rainbows. The sidewalk snow squealed under the crunch of footsteps. Winter cold was penetrating everywhere. Winter has come […]
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
Those grey things running around neighborhoods, and using the power and telephone lines to cross streets, are a nuisance. There are always three in my yard and the mother kicks the young out of her nest in the early fall. Her nest is in a hollow of a tree near […]
Do you fist bump or shake someone’s hand when you meet them. In sports, you often see players bumping each other’s hands with a closed fist on a successful play or goal. They are not getting ready to fight. Michelle and Barack Obama bumped fists in Minneapolis and now regularly […]
There are times when I really enjoy snow. In the darkness of night, fat snowflakes drifting through the streetlights and covering the ground with a blanket of soft white wool is a beautiful sight. Wet snow falling through the black branches and clinging to the naked trees also is really […]
The snow sits firmly frozen to the ground. The temperature did not even reach the melting point yesterday. Stores have begun the changeover to the Christmas season, with local retailers planning special Christmas promotions across Rainy River District. My neighbours down the street, the Carlsons, already have their white lights […]
My uncle Ron posted a picture of Private Ronard Kleven of the 78th Battalion, Winnipeg Grenadiers, taken in November, 1918 on Facebook this past week. Ronard was my mother’s father. My grandfather, James Alexander, whose family had immigrated to Canada at the turn of the 20th century, was a medic […]
What do we know about ourselves? Even before we are born, medical records are being created about our well-being. Our earliest pictures are ultrasounds, which excited moms and dads post on Facebook. From scrapes and fractures to colds, sniffles, and tonsils, everything goes into our files. As adults, pregnancies, weight, […]
Will it be one, two, or three children? My wife and I have brought up two sons, and I can’t ever think of a time that we might have considered how much it would cost to raise each one. When they were babies, neither my wife nor I gave any […]
When I was young, I met many delegates to the Mississippi Parkway through good friends of the family, Kate and Bill Noden, who were my third set of grandparents. For many years, Fort Frances and area promoted crossing the border and proceeding north to Dryden as an extension of the […]
This coming Monday, families across Canada will celebrate Thanksgiving. By the second Monday of October, most crops already are harvested and are stored. The corn, wheat, oats, and barley have been tilled back into the ground. The last of the squash and pumpkins have been taken in, the onions have […]
National Geographic has labelled this area, and south into Iowa, Wisconsin, and North and South Dakota, as the centre of the continent. If one examines the crest of Rainy River First Nations, they, too, mark this area as the centre of North America. Archeologists who have dug at and researched […]
I was a fishing guide on Rainy Lake this past weekend when my brother-in-law, Tom, and his two sons, Kyle and Ben, made their annual pilgrimage to our cabin. They hail from Waterloo and Tom also has a cottage on Healy Lake, just south of Parry Sound. There are fish […]
