Home again: Pilot Chris Boyer reported he just flew his Air Canada plane back from India and I believe he said there were 90 passengers with him. But I forgot to ask why that trip is so popular!
Chris is a friendly guy with a great grin. Married locally, he never fails to recognize our hometown faces despite meeting so many others in his travels.
And if you forget his name between visits, he helps out by supplying a reminder: “Just think of Charles Boyer, the movie actor!”
For those who cannot remember, that actor was famous for his romantic roles.
Judging from his close haircut, Chris flies into the tropics regularly.
The lady from Peterborough sharing our Dial-A-Ride cab reported her well-known tourist community is fighting to hang onto association with its nearby fishing lakes which lure Americans. Another community is advertising its proximity to the same lakes in an attempt to entice anglers there instead.
Peterborough was pleased to share our early summer, though, as she noted with its trees in the same state of budding as those around us last weekend.
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But the lady of a family I wanted to mention here objected about “having our name in the paper” while attracting plenty of attention for buying breakfast for a dozen young relatives–and that took a large load of pancakes!
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Ashley is about the cutest and tiniest person you’ll ever meet! She brought her parents, Craig and Leah, out to lunch and they announced her first birthday comes up May 7. She’s really a charmer!
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After 53 years, the Allan Cup is back in Northwestern Ontario, it’s reported by a former Fort Frances sportswriter.
“Just call me that little Filipino guy who used to work on sports for your paper,” my informant said. “And you used to tell me how important the Allan Cup was to your town!”
I didn’t get his name down but he has joined a Thunder Bay paper and couldn’t wait to tell us our old Allan Cup team should know a Lakehead team has repeated their feat!
He was sounding very excited about that victory which happened out west.
Hockey does get exciting at this surprising time of year. Just as summer is being awaited, our sports fans are being turned on by the hockey playoffs!
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So here comes Gordie Calder who grew up across Nelson Street from our old hockey rink, played with the senior Canadians enroute to our Allan Cup and never got far from hockey.
He’s still with it, having just handed me a clipping that’s all about the Fort William First Nations team now aiming for the Dudley Hewitt Cup.
Gordie expects that team to compete for the Royal Bank Cup. He played with the North Stars assistant coach and “Len Pelletier told me they’re going all the way!”
Gordie inherited the right to pull for a First Nations team, his own mother being an Ojibway from the Northwest Bay reserve who married popular Valley Calder. His older brother, George, was also busy in hockey. Their family included seven sisters.
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During a review of the end of the Second World War, 60 years ago, TV reported loss of 42,000 Canadian Servicemen—almost five times the present population of Fort Frances.
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There is quite a program going on, both for town and district, I understand with older citizens. I’ve been in contact with the teachers who stress a variety of subjects, including cleanliness and general lifestyle ideas.
I hope they succeed here because I’m told it’s too easy for the seniors to fall behind in so much! Leaders in this program are currently making house calls.
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And aren’t the little folks full of appreciation for the annual Shrine Circus which comes to our Arena on May 9! If they’ve been there before to enjoy watching the clowns and elephants, don’t try holding them back!
I attended with my own children years ago and hope to accompany the grandkids this time. The Shriners deserve applause for this event which the youngsters never forget!
Tickets are available through Bonnie Blue, Safeway, East End, McDonald’s and others.
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That one foot of snow that landed on Michigan over a week ago was obviously intended for us because we hardly missed any snowstorms all last winter. Now, despite the late date, snow came again a week ago and was still being noticed at times.
Our summer weather seems to be coming on only spasmodically while our winters are trying to become longer, along with our heating and gasoline bills!
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The name of our only lady town councillor keeps coming up in conversation, but Myrtle Williams was not the cranky older woman as some seem to remember her best.
Allan Bedard was another former councillor whom Myrtle befriended and complimented on occasion, and I enjoyed meeting Myrtle, too.
Others will have stories on her behaviour, but many stayed on her side of battles that occurred.
Her husband was the late Cliff Williams, a customs officer of the same era, around the fifties.
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I scanned the large, coloured flyer we received with the Bulletin last week for some name of the business offering clothing deals, but no name was noticeable! Those ads also withheld the prices, except to inform us they were lower. Good luck to the advertiser here!
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I’m all set to welcome Meals on Wheels, a service tailor-made for lazy older or handicapped older citizens like me, and the price sounds terrific too. There seems to be a growing number of volunteers to deliver these meals, following a shortage of help earlier.
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While we keep wondering whether our community will ever welcome other new industries, we might borrow an idea from Manitoba where grain is not the only crop because wind farms are becoming popular for generating electricity, I’m told. As around Portage La Prairie, it takes a lot of wide-open space to produce power in profitable quantities and the main clearings we have around us are lake, but let’s investigate the power farm idea for feasibility anyway.
I am struck by surprises concerning some sizes this spring: For one thing, not having much reason to drive around it before this, Confederation College seems as big a college should be, but for all I knew, its main function began was to be for computer training and forestry courses, both important to the modern scheme of things.
Many oldsters like me have been taking the computer course which is something I’ve managed to miss so far, but hopefully not for much longer.
As for forestry, many of us older Canadians learned early how to handle axes and saws, but now there is growing need for reforestation and continuing to protect this resource so long merely taken for granted.
And maybe, although I haven’t heard, Confederation College also carries a course to replace Grade 13 in high school which disappeared long ago. It sufficed as replacement for first-year university before I quit school, a less expensive way to start college.
Now the high schoolers are finished as before, at Grade 12, unless Con College is filling in.
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Another odd size is for the birds! I’ve been noticing what seems to be a crow, you know, smaller than a raven but bigger than a blackbird.
But the first crows here this spring have a touch of red in their tail feathers and, while almost as tall, do not seem to weigh nearly as much as crows used to.
Maybe there was less food wherever they wintered, but this is poor advertising even if our birds keep on shrinking.
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Our West End McDonald’s opened in 1978 and popular Marylou Boileau started working there ten years later. Despite her duties taking her constantly upstairs or downstairs, the size doesn’t seem affected: Marylou was actually that small before she started there!
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And despite her attempts to maintain order, a bunch of the boys were whooping it up (but not in the Malemute saloon as the old Yukon poet said.
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They were all in favour of having the town install benches here and there along Scott Street, it seems as happened once before. Fellows like Lloyd Langstaff, Joe Gray and Orval Eyolfson declared the benches along the river are a great idea, but what about a break for tired shoppers?
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Canada, besides its great fishing, continues to make the Americans jealous, with our pensions for oldsters! As a U.S. newsman remarked “We can’t even help our seniors in their so-called golden years.” This came up while the Americans were mulling over their current budgeting problems.
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Harry Jones and wife have been visiting their old home in Cardiff, Wales. So he’s really a Welshman!
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Amazing results are being clamed for purchasers of the Q-ray bracelet, but I don’t see many around here. Of course, we don’t hold marathon races often enough here to test how much better they can make you run! I’ve only noticed one such bracelet, and that was on a visiting banker’s wrist, but I doubt he was running away!
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
