The first time I saw the prairie, I was struck by the vastness. It went on and on and on. My husband-to-be had taken me to his home province of Saskatchewan to meet his parents. On the way, he stopped at some farmland he owned to check the crops. He […]
Columnists
Well, last week was ruined by the crazy amounts of rain that fell across the district late Monday night. We had 2.5 inches, which left windrows of hay in standing water, while my west-end friends saw five inches of rain and fields that looked like lakes. The water is not […]
I’ve become a “sleep geek.” In fact, most of the time I get enough good sleep (seven-eight hours most nights) that I can wake up on my own at a predetermined hour without an alarm clock going off first. Of course, that is if I’m not stirred from my biorhythmic […]
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 […]
I said good-bye to my pony last week—a task I had been procrastinating about for months, maybe even a year. Just a few weeks ago, we were commenting on Forewarned’s rotund belly and sleek coat, and wondering if he might be able to do another winter (because winters are very […]
The 20th-annual Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship took place this past weekend on Rainy Lake. It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since the tournament started thanks to a group of people in Fort Frances who saw the great smallmouth fishery that exists on Rainy Lake and made it […]
Last week, Canada’s economy was downgraded by the International Monetary Fund, new statistics showed the widespread pain of those who recently have lost their jobs, and the Harper government continued to embarrass us internationally by reneging on a deal to help a country in desperate need. Both the Bank of […]
The last week of July is a week that I look forward to as much as any throughout the entire year since I started fishing the Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship back in 2000. That first year my buddy Pat James and I got into the tournament off the waiting […]
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 […]
Homelessness. We who have homes tend to think of homelessness as an inconvenience to witness, sometimes, if not always, judging those who live on the street, classifying them as lazy losers, an eyesore in the downtown areas of our cities. I wonder how we would adjust our point of view […]
Now this is the weather that we have all been waiting for! Bring it on and please don’t complain about it being too hot—this is long overdue and won’t last long enough! I was away most of last week in New Liskeard. I had a two-day meeting but it took […]
Unfortunately, I’m a complete pushover for a smiley face. I stick them on my mirrors and my computer. I paste them into my Word documents. And all an author has to do get my attention is put a yellow smiley face on the cover. As a result, I sometimes purchase […]
