National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation remembers the damage done to natives in Canada by the residential school system, that took children away from their families and tried to drive their native culture out of them  - it's also called Orange Shirt Day, because one girl, Phyllis Webstad who was sent to a residential school in B.C. had her orange shirt taken away as part of forced assimilation when she arrived and it was never returned to her. Hundreds of unmarked graves have been found at some former residential schools.

Dancing under a sun dog.

Quilt, collaboration between Francophones and Natives. Mohawks represented by the purple and Franco-ontarians by the green. Mohawks were forced to go to a residential school where they could only speak French and not Mohawk.

Vamps are like the tongues of moccasins - here they represent the interrupted journeys of missing children who went to residential schools and did not return.

Some of the vamps have seeds or plants growing on them, representing the potential lives of the children. 

Cornwall Police, including Chief Shawna Spowart, wore orange shirts as well.

Singers - there was a sundog in the sky over them.

Loved this jacket! Bear Claw represents the Bear Clan, part of the Mohawks and some other nations.

Mohawks served visitors fried bread, corn soup and strawberry juice.

 

Raccoon City Umbrella Corp. Police Car

With an off-character Chucky doll in back. Driver said he the detailing on his own. "It's my day off!"

Dry Wall

Inside wall - fill - small stones

Wall near completion

Finished

Dry wall being rebuilt at Salem United Church, Summerstown, Ontario.

Mason Mike Bettany says that the wall had moved over a few feet because a driveway had been built next to it and so the land on the cemetery side of the wall became higher and so pushed the wall over. Also when graves were being dug some large stones weighing several hundred were found in the soil (the glaciers dumped a lot of stones in fields here) and then were piled onto the wall, which did it some damage. A dry wall is made without mortar holding the stones together - here there are two rows of stones on the outside and the middle is filled with smaller stones and gravel. The ropes show how high the wall will be. and levels on the frame, well, keep it level. Bettany is originally from England, and actually knew the village in North Wales where my aunt lived. He said building drywall was "the best job in the world, out in the sunshine, talking to people!" Mike regretted not being able to interest others in taking up his trade. 

Cariboo Cameron's wife,  Margaret Sophia Groves, is buried there. She died in 1862 in the Cariboo gold fields of British Columbia, and he had made a vow to bring her body back home - it was an epic voyage by sled from the gold field, by ship and overland through the Isthmus of Panama to bring her back. The legends attached to it were that her body was held by corrupt Tammany Hall officials in New York who would not release her without a bribe, and that her body was preserved in alcohol for the voyage and it was poured out at the grave site, and for many years, grass would not grow there. I don't know whether this happened when she was buried or when she was exhumed in 1873 because of rumours of foul play. 

 

Apples and Art studio tour

 Cornwall Quilters Guild, Salem United Church, Summerstown

 

Cornerstone Farm, yarn shop and teaching centre, near Green Valley. The owner said he used to raise sheep and make his own yarn but it become impossible to do this, since local wool mills have shut down and it would take too long to make enough yarn on a spinning wheel.

Artist's cottage, Lancaster

Female monarch migrating to Mexico

 

Turkey

 

Mushrooms

Amanita Muscaria

 

Mural on CSL St-Laurent

" The Sea Keeper/Gardien des eaux" is this mural painted on the forward façade of the accommodations block on the bulk carrier CSL St-Laurent by four Montreal artists, Bryan Beyung, and FONKi, Ankh One, and Benny Wilding of the ASHOP art collective. It's a Canada goose in flight. Millions of the geese nest along the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes that this boat sails on. The banner on the side is for the Canada Games torch relay, which CSL sponsors. 

Kewpie Mayonnaise

Big pile of them in local store. Kewpie Mayonnaise - my Japanese girlfriend would put mayo on rice in a cone shaped nori (seaweed) wrap. I had not seen mayo in a squeeze bottle in 2000 until I went to Japan.

Pumpkin Wagon

 

Tinsmith shop, other things, early 2000s, Upper Canada Village

Banjo player

School desk

 

Io Moth Caterpillar

 

Io moth caterpillars have stingers all over their bodies - do not touch!

Fall Fest Extravaganza 2022

 Another thing that has returned after Covid, at the Williamstown Fairgrounds:

Brown Bag Coffee Roaster Van with great black and white artwork

Author Melissa Yi - also at the fair were Erin Lee promoting her children's books and retirement writer Natalie Corneau.

Green Party of Ontario candidate Jacqueline Milner threw her hat into the ring

Akwesasne Pow-wow 2022

Orange shirts were common this year - they commemorate victims of the Residential school system

 

Mushrooms and plants

mushrooms

Shelf mushroom on birch

Turtleheads

 

Groundnut vine - fruit are beans, can be eaten, also it has a large tuber like a potato