Ice Reports, 2010-11
December 18, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010:
So it begins. From Hwy 15 in Portland today I could see snow covering the ice out as far as visibility allowed. The snow appeared to reach the large islands in the middle of the lake, though this may have been an illusion. One enterprising soul has placed an ice fishing shack out in the wide, shallow bay next to the park/boat launch ramp to the east of the village.
On Otter Lake I could see open water in the middle of the pool nearest the road, and open water in the larger pool to the northeast.
I’ll copy this post to a page which will appear on the right margin of my website. Updates will be there.
A Year in Forfar
December 12, 2010
It’s been an exciting year on Young’s Hill. The landscape has changed a bit, new toys and buildings have arrived, and we ended the year with a puzzle left to us by a surveyor in 1956.
The most prominent event in the scrapbook seems to have been the Canada-Russia gold medal game on the first day of sugar-making. Robert Ewart’s photos of the crew chewing knuckles in the living room during the overtime period will remain in our memories as long as these remarkable photos survive online at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rewart/sets/72157623383980467/show/
Sugar making ran for five weeks at the farm. The guests provided great entertainment during cabin fever season. I trust Dr. Armand Leroi returned to England and the BBC without ill effects from eating venison cooked on the corner of the maple sugar arch. Chef Matthew Swift has continued his experiments with salty pork in Toronto, winning contests on a regular basis and gaining column inches from appreciative food writers.
After sugar making Derek Dunfield dropped in to help pour the garage floor, then headed for Boston to post-doctoral studies in behavioural economics at MIT. Charlie and Roz are at Derek’s on a Christmas shopping expedition as I write this.
Martin and Charlie came back to put up the trusses after Bet and I lifted the wall panels into place with the tractor. Putting the roof on was a grind, but the rest of the garage project has gone well. Along the way Bet assumed the role of event photographer, and to her delight Howie Crichton ran one of her shots in the Review-Mirror. Bet had joined the rest of the gang as a published photographer.
In late April Jane McCann and her crew planted 8000 new seedlings at various locations around the property in a single frenetic day. These little trees provided many happy hours of mowing last summer, and the excuse to buy yet another diesel tractor.
On the subject of gardens, the toy-of-the-summer had to be the ancient Troy-Bilt tiller I found near Peterborough. As long as I followed the 180 page manual’s advice and walked one row over from where it tilled, the machine created a “dust mulch” on the surface which weeds seemed unable to pierce. For the first time in memory the garden remained quite neat throughout the year without extraordinary efforts on Roz’s part, hand-weeding.
This summer the raccoons did not raid the corn patch. At the time I credited the electric fence, but in retrospect it was probably the family of coyotes defending their field adjoining the garden. Petless dog lovers are easy marks for young coyotes, and Erin and her two siblings kept us amused all summer with their antics in the field and nocturnal concerts.
Just before it got cold we poured a second concrete slab for Charlie’s workshop. All of the Kingston crew were in the fall-madness phase of their working year, so we had some tricky scheduling to do. Graduate students seem to have the most flexibility, so Martin and Jess showed up to help Charlie and me with the initial pour. Jess had earlier impressed me with her construction smarts while shingling Martin’s roof in Kingston. At the farm she gave an excellent account of herself with shovel, rake, and trowel, as well. But she and Martin had classes in the afternoon, and Charlie had a meeting in Toronto, so they had to leave before we were finished. So Rob Ewart came to lift the power trowel onto and off the slab and do the hand finishing. Rob’s massive strength came in very handy that afternoon, as we couldn’t get the concrete to set up to where it would support the trowel. It took many tries, but then late in the afternoon the mix set and smoothed up to Charlie’s specifications. The frame and roof can wait until spring.
Last August for the first time I left the farm to do an interview for this column. The day on Michael Ignatieff’s bus had to be my highlight of the year. In person the Ignatieffs are a delightful couple, and I greatly enjoyed the day as part of their entourage.
Since its first adventure at the Santa Claus Parade in Westport last year, the Ranger has dutifully performed in seven more parades, culminating in the season’s finale in Merrickville this coming Saturday. Marjory Loveys and her husband Tony Capel have become adept at decorating the long-suffering brute. Evening parades mean the decorations have to go on and come off in the dark. Hours of idling in line are the hidden cost of parade participation. After the snow for the Mallorytown parade last Sunday, Marjory sent me an email: “The decorations are spread out to dry all over the basement floor.” Tough work, politics.
Transfer of the title to the farm meant a look through deeds, PIN diagrams, and a treasure we discovered in a file in Smiths Falls, a 1956 survey of the property. Then I tried to make sense of the documents with the help of Google Earth software. Over three days of puzzling, the surveyor Mr. Berkeley’s work has gone from bewildering to puzzling, to generally competent, but with a couple of gaps or errors which need correction. Maybe in a couple of more days it will all make sense, if the snow hasn’t covered the iron bars by then.
A visit from Joe and Christian
November 27, 2010
My grandfather loved his axe, and throughout his long life he wielded it with skill and pride. He heated his home with wood he split himself until it made sense to put in an oil furnace. Then he retired his axe and adjusted the thermostat.
My father never thought much of oil heat because it relied upon too many outside factors and might someday let his family down in a crisis. From the time I was big enough to lift a chainsaw I worked with my dad cutting firewood for heat. Much of the time we spent together over the year was devoted to this vital task. By the seventies it made sense to switch to oil heat, but he still insisted upon having a wood stove in his living room.
But during the ice storm it wasn’t the stove that allowed Mom and Dad to stay in their home, it was the generator that electrician Les Parrott bestowed upon them on the first day of the storm. From that time on my dad cherished his 5 kw Honda and the stove sat unused.
It turns out in the last year my sister and I have separately looked into the feasibility of buying solar equipment. As peak oil approaches it just makes sense to have an alternative energy source lined up.
Then realtor Allan Earle sent me an email this week asking me to meet with his clients who would be in the area for a day, so we set up an interview. I wanted to hear what they had to say and possibly get a column out of it.
I had done some reading about Northland Energy, a solar company developing three projects in the Newboro area, and I just assumed these guys would be representatives of this company. No. Joe’s from Tenedos Energy, of Toronto and London. Christian represents JCM Capital of Toronto, which provides funding for Tenedos.
They haven’t bought any farms in the area. That’s another company again. By now I had figured out that they have nothing to do with Renewable Energy, the developer of several projects just outside Smiths Falls.
So my first question was, “Why are you interested in this area, and this property specifically?”
Joe Lasko responded, “Tenedos Energy goes out and locks down sites. JCM provides the money to do that. We identify areas which are the most suitable. This location is of interest because it offers Class 4 land, and a spot close to a transmission station with capacity available.”
Rightly or wrongly, eligibility for Feed In Tarrif funding under the Green Energy Act is contingent upon locating the solar fields on land which is not classified as Class 1, 2, or 3.
The first thing I had done after Alan Earle visited the farm a couple of weeks ago was locate a soil map. Surely enough, on the Canada Land Inventory Agricultural Capability Map (31C9) the area around Young’s Hill is coloured white, indicating Class 1, 2, or 3 land, but Young’s Hill itself is brown on the map, and thus is eligible for FIT funding, regardless of the soil’s fertility. You can find this map quite easily on the Internet.
The Green Energy Act has produced a gold rush in Ontario. The Feed In Tarrif Program has succeeded in attracting world attention and companies such as Tenedos have sprung up to take advantage of the development opportunity. Tenedos personnel branched off from Greta Energy where they had specialized in wind power installations over the last five years in Bosnia, Estonia, Russia, Germany and Vietnam.
The rush is to secure access to class 4 land and a dwindling supply of unused capacity on transmission lines.
I asked Christian Wray what his firm brings to the table. “JCM Capital helps to fill a funding gap in Canada. European capital is cheaper for us because solar has a track record in Europe and there’s just more money available. Germany and Spain have had FIT programs for a decade now. They’re familiar with solar energy and not afraid to invest in it. There are solar farms in Germany that have been operating since the sixties.
“At JCM we have deep finance experience and are able to raise financing in the international markets through a deep network of relationships in this region. We understand what makes renewable projects bankable and can help smaller developers get to this quality threshold.
“Tenedos uses polycrystalline panels, not the new thin-film panels that use less silicon. These have various environmental issues. They’re not as green as the polycrystalline panels which are a proven technology, around since the 1960’s.
“Each developer has its own philosophy: we are focused on using green, proven, financeable products in our projects.”
I fired off a much less theoretical question: “A home generator usually produces about five kilowatts of power per hour. Assuming an hour at mid-day on a sunny day in July, how many sections of solar panel would it take to match that output? How many of these would be mounted on a single pole? Per acre?”
Christian responded, “Canadian Solar on the Internet will give the specs. We use a 230 watt panel, so that would be 21 panels. Various combinations of them get put together, depending upon the engineering of the site. We work with the engineer to determine the best solution for the site.”
Joe and I branched off into an animated discussion of Hunter Thompson’s writing. He did his master’s thesis at Brock on the guy. Allan grew quite restless at this, pointing out that they had other meetings scheduled, and they’d better get under way.
So away they went. Joe and Christian, two bright young guys. Smooth salesmen or business leaders of the future? We’ll have to see.
It’s the faces of the kids!
November 21, 2010
On a November day in 1905, a man wearing a white beard and red suit stepped off the train, met Timothy Eaton and his wife, and walked to their store through downtown Toronto. This marked the beginning of a tradition which outlasted the Eaton corporation and has become an important part of our Canadian culture: the Santa Claus parade.
In 1908 a truck and a band joined Timothy Eaton’s annual procession. By 1924 Gimbel’s in Philadelphia, Macy’s in New York, and the J.L. Hudson Company in Detroit had picked up on the idea as a means to kick off sales for the Christmas season.
After watching this year’s Toronto Santa Claus Parade on television, I found the only thing which rang true was the comment by Santa in answer to an interviewer’s question. What did he find the most interesting thing about the parade? “It’s the faces of the kids!”
As a veteran of three Santa Claus parades, the last two this weekend, I have to agree with this Santa’s assessment. I’ll never forget the girl in the T-Rex outfit who followed us last year in Westport. This year in Prescott and Kemptville I found it hard to believe that there are that many kids in the country.
Families love a parade. People of all ages come out simply to enjoy the spectacle and the company of others. Despite the department store hype, it’s not so much about Santa, or advertising, or the other crass aspects of consumption. From what I have seen in these parades the magic of Christmas is about parents celebrating an idea of a world they can make work for them.
Each community has a distinct identity. Prescott emphasized lots and lots of lights on Friday night. My first impression of the parade came when I parked beside the only other truck in the marshaling yard when I arrived at dusk. The back of its trailer opened and out backed a golf cart loaded with great gobs of lights driven by a straining generator somewhere under the dozens of strings of decorations. The driver in a clown suit stopped, made a few minor adjustments, then flicked a switch to inflate an 8’ clown on top of the cart. Then he turned on the stereo and his tiny float was ready to roll. It looked good.
Marjory went over to talk to the guy. He’s been attending the parade for ten years, adding a bit to his cart each year, and getting better at keeping the thing operating until the end of the route. We followed him back to his trailer after the parade. At full speed for a mile down the highway his inflated clown was still hanging on and all of the lights still worked. Apparently the only problem was his chilly feet and hands.
Prescott’s evening parade may be a victim of its success. Huge numbers of floats entered. Many heavy trucks wheeled in with trumpeting air horns and gleaming chrome. One minor hockey float had a rear-lit projection of hockey scenes. As we lined up my heart was in my mouth: a very young boy wearing a hard hat from a utility company I did not recognize was perched alone in the cherry picker on top of a large service truck.
The way Federal Liberal Candidate Marjory Loveys operates in parades, I drive my Ranger, decorated with wrapped gifts and carrying the candy larder. She walks or jogs the route, meeting as many people as she can. Her growing entourage of volunteers dressed as elves pass out candy canes to the kids and generally look supportive.
In Prescott the elves panicked when they saw the vast number of kids. Four kilos of candy canes disappeared in the first quarter mile. What to do? Elf Shawn spotted a likely store and dashed ahead, soon to return with another five kilos. With care the elves were able to make this supply last for the remainder of the parade.
Everybody was astonished and a bit stressed by the sheer number of faces at the Prescott parade. Though there were lots of people there as well, Saturday afternoon’s outing in Kemptville was a more relaxed affair with some time to chat with fellow participants and spectators. Kemptville merchants spoiled us with hot chocolate and cookies, dashing out from their stores to hand the goodies to us as we passed. The COGECO master of ceremonies parked himself squarely in my path while he had an on-air chat with Marjory. And there was the sandwich shop owner who adorned three young women (her daughters, I suspect) with exceptionally creative costumes depicting her wares. The veggie-sub costume I immediately understood. The others were a little trickier, but amusing to see. Mom pulled a wagon loaded with mini-sandwiches and the girls handled distribution. They didn’t have any trouble giving them away.
And then there was the huge, pink, propane truck. I had to ask. The driver was happy to tell his story. Superior Propane bought two $400,000 Kenworth trucks painted pink in support of the Breast Cancer awareness program, one for Ottawa and the other to work out of Guelph. A portion of the revenue from every litre each truck pumps goes as a contribution to the fund. On a busy day, “As much as a couple of hundred dollars from each truck goes to breast cancer research.” It takes a real man to drive a pink truck, but the guys at Superior seem proud to do it.
Next week is the Brockville parade, so wish us luck.
Movember
November 8, 2010
Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario, has a new buzz word: Movember. For the last two weeks hirsute students and staff have faced levels of apprehension on campus I haven’t seen since the American draft in the seventies. Even the clean-shaven guys asked themselves the question: “When I am called, will I go?”
PhD. candidate Martin Mallett filled me in: “One in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lives. 4,400 in this country die each year from it. The disease is fairly treatable, though. This whole Movember thing started in Australia when a bunch of guys brought moustaches back as a fund raiser for research and it caught on. There’s a huge Movember in Australia, Canada and the U.K.
“The tagline on their website reads: ‘Changing the face of prostate cancer.’ Guys register on Movember.com, then start November clean-shaven. They grow it out and collect donations throughout. At the end of the month a series of Movember galas occur where everybody showcases his moustache. It’s pretty amazing what some men can grow in a month.”
Martin went on: “This is the first time since grade 11 that I have had no facial hair. I feel I have been instantly taken less seriously. I feel I don’t project authority as well. This can only get worse as the moustache goes into the intermediate stages.
“When she saw me without, my wife was dismayed. Days later I would be talking to her and she would stare at my face as though I was a different person. And all of these sensations I’ve never had before: cold outside, sudden warmth on my face when I enter a room. But I’ve already raised over $100 in the first week. I think people donated just to see me shave my beard.
“The first night I went to a co-ed water polo evening. All the girls on the team were lined up against the wall. They started to squeal. That was the first time I have had that reaction from a large group of women. I don’t know if it was shock or what.
“Charlie’s making a video of my moustache growth over the month. I go to the studio every day, sit on a stool and do a full revolution in front of a fixed camera. He’ll stitch that all together and make a thirty-second video of the moustache-growth process. We’ll try for a twisted version of one of those David Attenborough time-lapse nature films.”
Like Martin, I have worn a beard since I realized the need to put some distance between my baby face and my older students. I was teaching grade 8 at the time. The moustache came a bit later, though, as my upper lip seemed to defy adulthood.
I still remember an encounter with a security guard spurred by my lack of a passable moustache. Some of you will remember Dr. Robin Staebler, the genius/gadfly who founded the Newboro Medical Centre. After Eastern Ontario, Robin became Head of Family Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Visiting the Staebler household was always interesting. One day we installed lights in his horse barn. The next he asked me to sit in on interviews for the fresh crop of resident physicians to staff his department. Of course Robin went on ahead and expected me to catch up with him. How would I do that? “Don’t worry. I’ll find you.”
So I drove the half-hour into Minneapolis, parked my Beetle underground, and wandered out onto the quad to take in the sights of the lovely campus. A security guard shortly walked up to me. “Rod?” I nodded. “Dr. Staebler will meet you in the conference room in his building. If you’ll come with me I’ll show you the way.”
“How did you pick me out of the crowd?”
“Dr. Staebler gave us a good description.”
The interviews were a highly interesting experience. Robin didn’t pick one brilliant young woman who would have been my first choice, but then I’ve never felt particularly threatened by students who were smarter than me. As we met for lunch I had to ask: “What description did you give campus security that let them zero in on me so quickly?”
Robin looked at me, savouring the moment: “I told them to watch for a young Abe Lincoln running to fat.”
It was time to grow that moustache.
I forget why, but once in my thirties I decided to shave it all off. My first day at school went smoothly enough until in my home form a fifteen-year-old named Rachel noticed me sitting at my desk, shrieked, ran up, wrapped her arm around my head and pinched my cheek. This astounded everyone in the room, including Rachel, I think, as she was normally a relatively undemonstrative kid.
Word got out and the rest of the students took it easy on me. That evening was a party, though, and my principal, J.R. Johnson, kept bringing staff members over to introduce me as “Clair Kelso, 1956!” Apparently without the beard I bore some resemblance to my friend and department head of the time.
Twenty years later I shaved again, perhaps looking to rediscover that baby face which had caused me so much grief in earlier decades. This time nobody reacted. Nobody even commented. So there didn’t seem to be much point in shaving every morning and the thing grew back by itself.
What it really means to have a Managed Forest
October 24, 2010
A couple of weeks ago I noticed something had broken a number of the white pines we planted just before the Plowing Match back in 2007. I suspected something had knocked them over, but when I examined another tree that looked sickly, it tipped over at my barest touch, severed neatly across the trunk about half-way up. With lots of sap around the wound and evidence of insect activity, I figured some sort of weevil had hit, so because these trees are part of a managed forest under the MFTIP plan, I dashed off an email to Martin Streit, Leeds Stewardship Co-ordinator, and asked for help.
Resource technician Donna O’Connor responded to my plea, combining the visit with a survival assessment of the new seedlings planted last spring as part of the Trees Ontario program. She listened to my theory that somehow the western pine weevil had made its way east and vectored in on my trees, then suggested that this looked more like white pine blister rust, a common affliction in white pine stands in Eastern Ontario. It’s a fungus which settles in on the trunk of a pine and causes a series of little holes to appear in the bark. The holes, of course, fill with sap. Secondary insect infestations likely account for the boring through the trunk.
While there’s no real treatment for blister rust, it’s not a new problem and the stand will generally survive it. Donna will definitely report the problem to Martin for further investigation, though.
Then she moved over a couple of rows to the new seedlings the crew planted this spring. I’d kept them mowed quite carefully all summer, so they looked pretty good. She was pleased with the survival rate, which she placed at 98% in the first field she examined. It seems that pine seedlings in good soil are pretty resilient: until I bought a narrow tractor and mower, I had stubbornly tried to mow the plantation with my 5 foot Rhino. This produced several rows of seedlings just as lively as the others, but several inches shorter (oops!).
This summer the Roundup ran out long before the grass quit for the season, so I had to mow the new trees out of overwhelming vegetation a couple of times. By this time of year, though, the 5000 young pine, tamarac and hardwoods were clearly winning on the north side of the property.
Donna applied the same survey method to the five-acre walnut/pine patch on the south face of the drumlin. The survival rate for the white pine seedlings there was considerably lower, almost entirely due to my mowing habits. A walnut field must be mowed both down and across. I avoided all the pine seedlings I could with the narrow mower on the cross cuts, but the walnuts came first. To my credit, Donna admitted that the pines still standing are in excellent health. “Mind you, if you couldn’t grow trees with the climate this summer, you can’t grow trees.”
She checked the progress of the butternuts. The hundred or so viable trees from the 2006 stand are doing very well, with good growth on the trunks. Of the thirty blight-resistant stems I planted three years ago, all but two remain healthy but most are in serious need of pruning. “These butternut have excessive lateral bud growth due to twig borer attacks on the branch leaders, Rod. Butternut don’t normally have the kind of sprouting that yours are showing.”
Because these are test trees Donna suggested I contact the Butternut Lady, Rose Fleguel, for further instructions about a pruning regimen for these valuable young trees.
Back in the woodlot Donna wanted to see the cherry and red oak we planted four years ago to see how they are doing in the clearings we created for them within the canopy. Red oaks are easy to find at this time of year because they retain their dark red leaves. Most of the oaks are hanging on, but could use more sunlight, so she suggested cutting some of the tall ironwood and basswood to allow more light into the two cleared areas. The young maples in that area are fine trees and we should be able to work around them.
Donna found a group of young cherry which have grown much taller than the others. She used them to illustrate how the seedlings will grow if they get the correct amount of sunlight. Some of the little bushy ones will either need more sunlight or perhaps relocation to the front lawn. “They grow outward looking for the bits of light instead of upward. We use the term ‘umbrellaing’.”
A quick lesson on pruning the double-stems of some new spruce seedlings, and away she went to meet with another landowner. These visits from Donna O’Connor and Martin Streit give me much of the support I need to look after the property, and to my mind they are the biggest advantage of the Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program.
The Potato Digger
October 13, 2010
We were keen to plant things this spring and I had two garden plots all worked up, so in one we put lots of corn and then finished it out with last year’s Russet potatoes cut up as seed.
All went well until we began to worry about a raccoon attack upon the corn. There was nothing for it but to put up the electric fence. It clicked away and we relaxed. No raccoons attacked, even though I noticed some weeks later that the end of the wire attached to the fencer was hanging down behind the generator, grounding against it. So there never was a shock in the line, but the raccoons stayed away anyway.
The unintended consequence of this was that the potato patch was protected not only from raccoons, but also from the roto-tiller. The weeds joined in with the rampant growth of potato plants to make a thick, green mass.
It all came to a head last weekend when my wife announced that it was time to plant the garlic. “Uh, there are still four rows of potatoes in that space.” Bet waited until I was away and had at it with a garden fork. She made good headway, filling a wheelbarrow with a frenetic morning of digging. Then she could barely move for the rest of the week.
I decided to grab a fork and dig the things and be done with it, but I didn’t last as long as Bet before my back showed signs of giving out.
There’s nothing like a lame back to make a man think.
When I was little, my dad used a walking plough behind Old Jess to furrow the potatoes in and then dig them up again. He and Old Jess would roll them out neatly, and Glenda, Mom and I would scramble to pick them up before the next pass.
First I tried and discarded the furrower attachment for the tiller because it didn’t dig deeply enough to root out the potatoes without making gritty French fries out of them. Removing the tiller’s tines would be a lot of work, and the purpose of this procedure was to save labour, not increase it.
Internet research suggested that garden tractors don’t do well on ploughs. For example the leading maker of garden ploughs uses a 33 hp, 4WD tractor to pull the little single-bottom 12″ unit in demonstrations. Turning the soil requires weight and traction.
But I have two 35 hp tractors. Why fool with a toy when I can use the real thing? Out I went to the pile of weeds by the barn. My first plough, a 3 pt. hitch 3 X 16″, lay mouldering there, easily the worst implement I have ever bought. It was so poorly balanced, bent and awkward that I put a hole in the floor of my trailer just loading the thing. Later I tried removing one of the moldboards to see if that would help. It didn’t, but my friend Tom ended up with a brutally effective anchor for a floating dock from the left third of the plough.
I resolved to build an adult-sized, single-bottom plough from the remaining scrap iron and use it as a potato digger. An hour of fruitless grinding at the bolts at least allowed enough time for the penetrating oil to work, and after a few satisfying smashes with an eight-pound sledge the nuts turned right off. I dropped the right third of the assembly and put it back together with just the centre section remaining.
The only way to keep the thing upright while I hitched it to the TAFE was to hold it off the ground with the Massey.
Away I went to experiment on the potatoes. Down went the plough point. Ahead surged the tractor. A magnificent furrow appeared behind. Perfect, except that I didn’t see a single potato.
Maybe I missed the row. Tried again. Now I had two, almost parallel furrows, and no potatoes. Now what? Keep trying? A third pass between the others and a few fractions of potatoes appeared.
I walked along the row. An occasional potato fell out at my kicks. Before long I was digging through the debris by hand, looking for survivors. Most showed grievous injury, though a few small tubers had escaped.
More passes with the plough and the garden took on the appearance of a compost heap after a good turning. But the potatoes weren’t coming out of the ground the way they did for my dad and Old Jess.
So I gathered up the pitiful survivors in a large plastic pail and set it in the loader for the ride to the house. Started off. Heard a “crunch.” Somehow the pail had fallen out of the loader and I had crushed it under the tractor. Once again I rounded up the dwindling supply of potatoes and trundled them up the hill, ruing yet another session with this last remnant of the sorriest of all possible ploughs.
The little project that could
September 12, 2010
You can’t predict how people will use something new. The Internet began as a way for scientists to exchange information, but its early growth was driven by pornography. Broadband Internet has brought tremendous communications technology into virtually every home. Facebook and a few other social media take credit for the election of U.S. President Barrack Obama by mobilizing an otherwise-fragmented base and pulling in millions of small donations. Surveys and online polls have sprung up to take advantage of new marketing opportunities in the medium. One of these promotions is a summertime poll by the World Fishing Network to select the Ultimate Fishing Town in Canada.
I encountered Seeley’s Bay Newsletter publisher Liz Huff at a picnic this summer where she told me about the Seeley’s Bay bid for the WFN title. She took the time this week to bring Review-Mirror readers up to date:
“Liz Rudd, co-owner of Seeley’s Bay Retirement Home, first noticed the contest. She and local crafter Edwina McMaster told me about it and I submitted the first nomination for our town on the World Fishing Network site. We thought it was a great idea. We ARE a great fishing town, we need the $25K prize for fishing improvements, and hey, it’s way more fun than writing grant applications.
“Roger White of Rideau Breeze Marina got on board quickly and started filing supporting nominations on-line at the WFN site. Dale Moore, owner of The Nest Egg, a popular ice cream shop in our village, got very excited about it. She made a big sign for her bulletin board and prodded us all to put up posters around town.
“The WFN TV site encouraged people to load up videos as well as photos to support their nominations, so we made a little video featuring Shane White, son of Roger and Tracey White. With Shane’s words, ‘I want to help the fish,’ we realized that we had found our goal – and our spokesman.
“By the time the nominations phase ended, Seeley’s Bay had more supporting nominations than any other place in Canada: 147 different online submissions. Next came a public voting round in which of all the towns that had received a nomination competed. WFN announced that they would put the top two towns from the each of the West, Ontario, and the Maritimes, plus four wild-card towns, onto the final ballot of 10.
“During the second round we had hopes that we might be able to charm our way into a wild-card spot. We didn’t think we had much of a chance of landing in the top two in Ontario, given that big places like Ottawa, Kingston, Windsor and Thunder Bay were all in the running.
“But our local fishing fans were mobilizing (Postmistress Karen Simpson, Councillor Kellington, Mayor Kinsella, the Legion, the Lions Club, First Impressions Committee, etc.). More and more people were giving us permission to vote on their behalf, and before long many of us were staying up late, entering long lists of email votes on behalf of family, friends and other fans of Seeley’s Bay.
“And lo and behold, we actually ended round two in the #2 spot in all of Ontario. Only Nestor Falls beat us, from way up in the north-west corner of the province near the Manitoba border. Nestor Falls is the base camp for over 20 fly-in fishing lodges. We figure they were able to mobilize a lot of votes because all of the lodges have long contact lists of clients, and they really are dependent on fishing – totally.
“Over the next week while we waited to see for sure we were in the top ten, we tried to work on planning a campaign. We know that without the support of neighbouring towns in eastern Ontario we don’t have a chance. In fact we really need support from the Greater Toronto area. The towns across Canada that had piled up the most votes by the end of round two were Port Alberni BC, and Dauphin, Manitoba. We could see from online research that they both had great local support from their papers and TV stations. So we have been madly trying to figure out how to get people in eastern Ontario to log on and vote for us.
“Now we are indeed in the final ten. It’s a big fight. We have had great support from CTV Ottawa, CBC Ottawa, CKWS Kingston and the Review Mirror, but we need MORE.
“If Eastern Ontario residents would log on and vote for us as often as every 12 hours between now and Sept 28, we could beat the West and show fishing fans across North America that Eastern Ontario has some of the finest fishing in the country. The winning town will win $25,000 for a project of their choice and be the subject of a half-hour show on the World Fishing Network, which claims 42 million viewers across North America.”
To vote just log onto
Blasted tractor’s wrecking my body!
August 7, 2010
This latest tractor keeps finding new ways to wreck my back. Take Friday’s misadventure for example: Bet and I had to run up to Kingston to pick up some new pulleys for the mower which runs on the back of the little Bolens tractor. Trouble is, the thing eats belts. Inside a month I have gone through four. They are scarce and expensive, though I have found a Belarus Tractor dealer in Wisconsin with a sideline in v-belts who sends them to me from an outlet near Stratford.
A talk with Peter Myers narrowed the problem down to the sheaves (what I would call pulleys) which were severely pitted from corrosion. V-belts are tough, but they must have a smooth surface on which to run. He suggested the sheaves are a stock item and that I should simply replace them.
And so I did. Then I dropped Bet at a supermarket and had an hour to kill. The other trouble with the Bolens is that its seat doesn’t have any springs, so I have to pad my spine with two pillows if I want to stay on the tractor for any length of time. The big Canadian Tire next door to the food store should have parts for lawn tractor seats. I’d find a way to adapt them.
CTC didn’t have any compression springs for the purpose, but I ran into something else which made me forget all about the tractor project. It also let loose the latent Walter Mitty in me: next to the sports department they have set up what looks like a narrow plexiglass squash court, but at the end is a hockey net. Monitors across the ceiling display information about the moving pucks. A rack with several dozen carbon fibre hockey sticks stands outside.
I wanted to try it. It matters not a bit that I am no hockey player – nor that I haven’t had skates on since a field trip to the Rideau Canal Skating Rink during my rookie year as a teacher. Nor that my two elderly colleagues, Ralph Greenhorn and Ernie Hogan, had to tow me against a stiff headwind the 4.8 miles back to Dow’s Lake from the Chateau Laurier. The muscles in my back had seized up and I simply couldn’t move. So much for skating.
Nonetheless, I wanted to try to fire a slapshot through a radar gun, just to see.
I paid my money and a bemused hockey jock from the sports department set me up with the softest, shortest, right-handed stick he could find. He joined me in the shooting court to control the flow of pucks from the pitching machine and offer advice.
He warned me to shoot, not to hesitate, or I would “get buried under pucks.” The first white disk squirted along the “ice” from the machine at a steady 22 mph. I stopped it and took aim at the net, noticing a little light had illuminated the lower right hand corner of the net. I shot at it and hit the net, along the ice, dead centre. It must have been that blinking light throwing me off, because I discovered my chances of hitting the target at a range of twenty feet were about as good as those of hitting the areas to either side or above the net, or even the face of the pitching machine. This was the most inaccurate hockey stick I have ever handled.
What’s more, it was one of the slowest. Like anyone else’s, my memory is full of cannonading blasts past goaltenders on the ponds and rinks of youth, even though most of the time I played goal because I had a good glove hand and couldn’t skate.
But in the cruel glare of the radar gun, my best slapshot — the one that caught the upper left corner of the net at the same time the light blinked in the lower right — clocked in at 35.1 miles per hour. Thirty-five? But Zdeno Chara fires a slapshot over a hundred!
The attendant told me my shots were about average for a fourteen year-old hockey player. “Lots of junior-level players fire wrist shots over 80 mph.” The store doesn’t let them try slapshots in the confined area, but my coach didn’t seem too worried about my flailing attempts. In fact he loaded the machine up again, twice more. The pucks off my rented stick didn’t get any faster, though once I stopped staring at the flashing lights in the corners of the net my response time became much better. I even hit the correct corner of the net the odd time.
Eventually my spine had taken on an interesting new shape, my arms felt like lead, my head pounded, and I decided to call it a day. I thanked my coach and reeled out of the store thinking, “That hockey booth is a really cool thing to try. Now whom could I lure into it for a puck-blasting session?”
By the following morning I could hardly get out of bed. I moaned around the house for the rest of the weekend, all the while blaming that blasted tractor for wrecking my body yet again.
On the Newboro Waterfront
August 2, 2010
Saturday evening I set out in my little aluminum boat without a fishing rod. It was time to take a look at the boat’s new home, the Newboro waterfront. We made our way over to the lock where the Land Trust Festival was in full swing. The sizable crowd seated on chairs for the classic rock concert seemed older and more orderly than the revelers of earlier years at the Chaffey’s Locks Corn Roast. The spacious Newboro Lockstation seems well suited to hosting an event of this sort.
The green enamel security fence around the grounds was an impressive touch. I guess there must be miles of the stuff left over from the G20 Summit in Toronto and Huntsville, so it might as well be put to use.
Two young men in a triangular craft laboured through the water below the lock. They struggled to a gap between the cruisers on the 48-hour dock and were helped ashore before they sank. Out came the unpainted plywood dinghy. One of the instant boats had obviously survived the afternoon competition for another voyage.
I drifted over by trolling motor to inquire. Neil McGuire and Thomas Jordan crew The Unsinkable Rideau Ferry. Michael McGuire and my former S.F.D.C.I. student John Jordan rounded out the build team. Their creation placed second in the afternoon competition, but as John’s sister Helen explained, the winners were experienced boat builders, so The Philosophers had an unfair advantage in their use of the three sheets of plywood, a few 2X4’s, some trim and a few tubes of caulk provided for the competition. John added, “They also gave us a pound and a half of assorted nails. No screws were allowed.”
The Unsinkable Rideau Ferry seemed to have a lot of support from the group of boaters on the 48-hour dock for the weekend.
Finger docks have produced many more spaces for cruisers below the lock at Newboro. This is good for special events and day-to-day use because the steady breeze makes this a pleasant summer destination.
Quite a few runabouts had come in off the lake to drift in the bay and enjoy the music on the calm evening. Over next to the resorts, though, the docks were still alive with fishing boats running in and out.
I made a mental note to get over to The Poplars for lunch. As a transient guest you eat whatever they are serving that day, it’s always fun in the informal atmosphere of the fishing camp, and where else are you helped into a slip by dock attendants when you arrive for a meal?
On Water Street the new owner of the cottages on the point has done a very classy renovation of the small dwellings, definitely raising the tone of the Newboro waterfront with unified architecture, landscaping and docks.
Over at the foot of Bay Street her neighbours are delighted with the return home of longtime resident Mrs. Rose Pritchard after a long and difficult recovery from a fall.
Several times I have talked to a fellow from Ottawa who fishes the same area Tony and I do. He mentioned building a house on Swallows Lane over the winter. I finally worked my way down that way to have a look. That’s a lot of house. I think the guy builds better than he fishes.
I’d spent a half-hour earlier in the day on Tony’s new deck under a huge oak tree at the end of Bay Street. It’s always a surprise how comfortable the air along this Newboro shoreline feels with the breeze pushing down the lake from Bedford Mills.
Of course weeds and debris pile in with the wind, but at least the boats are sheltered by the hill from a northerly gale. Speaking of debris, Thursday evening something really gross drifted in. I knew Tony and Anne had a family event planned for the next day, so the dead thing had to go, but I didn’t even want to look at it, let alone touch it. So I started up the outboard and strained the mooring lines as I pushed the unidentifiable thing with a sizable mat of weeds out of our little harbour and around the stern of The Big Chill, Tony and Anne’s cruiser.
But then the weed patch responded to a gust again and headed in towards the launch ramp. Oh well, it was out of my space and no longer my problem.
Turns out it then landed next to the boat of local volunteer firefighter Bob French. Bob apparently thinks differently than most, because instead of passing the dead raccoon on down the line as many had no doubt already done over the previous week, he pulled the thing in, bagged it up (wow!), loaded it into his van, hauled it away and buried it.
I guess Bob looked at the carcass, thought of the trouble it would bring to the people down the shore, and took action. That’s what firefighters do. They think of everybody. You’re a better man than I am, Robert French.
the Walnut Diary 