The big game hunting season in Northwestern Ontario wrapped up Monday (Dec. 15). As has been a tradition for a group of my friends and I for the past several years, we headed north to the Red Lake area to spend the last week of the season moose hunting. Typically, […]
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As a child, I believed in Santa Claus. How could I not believe! Every Christmas, Santa gave me wonderful gifts–gifts any little girl would love. Dolls with real hair, baby dolls, a Flossy Flirt doll, a wicker doll carriage, and paper dolls (a three-foot Shirley Temple and the Dionne quintuplets […]
This week’s column will be my last one for 2014, so it seems only fitting to provide a recap of the some of the main stories and issues of the year. •Veterans’ office closure On Friday, Jan. 31, the Veterans’ Affairs office in Thunder Bay fell victim to the Harper […]
In the summer when I fly to Toronto or Calgary, on a clear day I can look out the airplane window and marvel at the patchwork quilt of crops below me. I have flown to Calgary and, looking down, have marveled at the brilliant yellow canola plants right up next […]
Breaking points. We all have them. And sometimes these breaking points come at times that seem slightly strange, hardly warranted, but it is the accumulated affect usually—the last straw so to speak. I witnessed someone hit that wall during my Christmas shopping (not on my top 10 list of favourite […]
As I watched the thing jettison across my kitchen floor and catapult into the spare room, it reminded me of the “Tasmanian Devil” of the “Looney Tunes” cartoon series I used to watch on television when I was 12 years old. Then the fur ball ricocheted back into the kitchen, […]
“Practice makes perfect.” That’s what your mother said when it was time to sit down at the piano. And what your father said when you first learned to bat a ball. Although they probably didn’t know it, your parents were quoting an old proverb dating back more than 2,000 years. […]
The Emo Agricultural Research Station will be closing for the season this week. I finally finished all my data and took it off to be copied. The reports will be available from me or Emo Feed this week. I encourage everyone to ask questions about the trials since time always […]
A few weeks back, my staff and I uncovered a huge amount of what is known as “lapsed” spending—money approved in the federal budget but never spent—at Veterans’ Affairs Canada. Sadly, this past week we also found the same thing is happening at FedNor—and at the worst possible time. Aside […]
Since 2005, I’ve spent the first weekend in December down in Minnesota at the annual St. Paul Ice Fishing Show. It is a big ice-fishing event held at the Xcel Energy Center, the same place the Minnesota Wild play, in a large event centre next to the arena. It’s a […]
I have my father’s camera—the one he took with him to India when he was stationed there during the Second World War. I’m not sure where and when he bought the camera, but I’m guessing he had it tucked into his kit when he ferried a Liberator from Gander, Nfld. […]
I like the lights of the Christmas season and especially enjoy the variety of styles that people use to decorate their yards. I hope we have enough snow to cover the leaves and brown grass, but not too much to bury the lights in the yard. Before the new LED […]
