Dragfin!

 Just going to the hardware store - huge SUV with California plates and something weird mounted on the roof. It looked like the camera Google uses in its Street View but only with a small pod. Had to ask - the passenger explained that it was to see how the local air conditions would affect drag. Their company, makes fins that break up the vortex that forms at the back of a truck increasing air drag, is called Drag Fin .

No, Mark Carney isn't recycling Seinfeld or buying hydro plants.

Mark Carney has used the phrase "We are masters in our own home." in the current tariff war with the United States, and people have thought he's either copying Seinfeld's "Master of my domain" from an episode about who could go the longest without masturbating, or Quebec Premier Jean Lesage's campaign slogan, Maîtres chez nous, for his successful 1962 election bid that had to do with buying more hydro plants for Hydro-Quebec. It's not. It's really from the poem 'Our Lady of the Snow', which had the unique subtitle "(Canadian Preferential Tariff, 1897)", probably one of the few poems that do refer to tariffs, written by this guy:

Rudyard Kipling, 1895, via Wikimedia

Kipling was an Imperialist and white supremacist, and he admired Canada for setting its own tariffs. After a long trade war with the USA (One that was amped up by hefty tariffs imposed on Canadian goods by Trump idol President William McKinley) the 1897 National Policy gave reduced tariffs to UK imports.

The poem repeats "Daughter am I in my mother’s house,/ But mistress in my own."  , something that Sir Wilfrid Laurier quoted when talking about Canada's place in the British Empire, and follows with "Soberly under the White Man’s law/My white men go their ways.", something Laurier omitted!

Crocuses 2025

 

Ice storm

https://youtube.com/shorts/Ans7Db9guhA?feature=share

Ice storm, south eastern Ontario,  March 30, 2025, not that much ice on trees as of 12 noon, temperature is rising and it's changing to rain

 

Geneva Convention

"Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity." - Article 13, Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War

Adopted 12 August 1949

 I had a nightmare about that prison in El Salvador, When I woke up I thought it was a bad dream until I remember it really is happening. I've visited a few prisons in Canada - at least the prisoners were issued proper clothing.

Dramatic clouds and contrails

 

First crocus

Red moon rising far to the south behind maple flowers

Red moon rising far to the south behind maple flowers. About 3.22 A.M., March 22, 2024

 

Lunar Eclipse, March 14, 2025, 4 AM EDT

 

Tiger, Spot and Smudge

Smudge the kitten

Tiger and Spot

 

LCBO removes US booze in response to tariffs

 

Sign at LCBO (Provincial liquor store in Ontario). Store removed all US made liquor from shelves in response to US tariffs.

Lady Santa, Bank Street, Ottawa

Sometime around 2005. I think she said she just liked dressing up as Santa.

 

Double rainbows over St. Lawrence, c. 2005

Double rainbow over St. Lawrence, c. 2005. Across from Cariboo Cameron's house in Summerstown - the pillar is gone but there are still two identical ones on the north side of the road at the entry to his house with the house's name, Fairfield, on it. There was a private park that was attached to his house on the south side of the road that was used by students when it was a private school, but it has been developed into houses. 

Scanned print p. 874.

Story Slam

 Story Slam at the Glengarrian pub - I told the story of Qadesh the Tiger 

 

Frost barn

scan from print, maybe 2005

 

New York Dolls

David Johansen died on February 28, 2025 - he was the last living member of the New York Dolls, a proto Punk Band. I'll never know how this LP made it to a sleazy junk store called the Wagon Wheel on Montreal Road in Cornwall, Ontario, where I bought it around 1977 - the Wagon Wheel was decrepit - there was a counter and it looked like it had been a soda shop in better days, and there was lots of cheesy porn on the wall, like an older woman holding a ketchup bottle between her breasts. The guy who sold me it marveled at how 'you could see the bulge' on the Dolls' costumes.

 

Green and Red Mushrooms

Mouse-pee Pinkgill, Entoloma incanum (from google) Both caps and stems of these mushrooms are green. Supposed to smell like mouse pee!

Hygrocybe cuspidata, waxy cap mushrooms

St. David's Day

 This time it was Loblaw's potato leek soup, made in Spain. Happy St. David's Day,

Squirrel strikes odd pose

Squirrel strike odd pose in crabapple tree. It was still for a few minutes.

 

Wild Turkeys in the snow

Turkeys had been wiped out in regions of Ontario by 1909 due to overhunting. In 1984 the province began a program to reintroduce them and now they are all over the place, even recent sighting in downtown Montreal.

Little Free Libraries in Winchester

 

Two Free libraries in front of neighbouring houses.

Blue one is at The Lofty Nest Lodging & Events, 498 Ottawa St, Winchester, Ontario

Dutch immigrants

 I heard a lecture by local historian  Helena McCuaig about Dutch immigrants in the postwar era in Glengarry County, eastern Ontario, Canada  - she said that the Dutch children were let out of the local school 15 minutes early so the bullies couldn't catch up with them on their way home! She was a Dutch immigrant herself. 

Kumquats

I only knew kumquats as a funny word from comedy shows, like this W.C. Fields movie. I saw them in stores but I didn't buy them as I thought the small fruit would be too hard to peel. Then today I read on the package you could just eat them whole, peel and all.  

Tasty, but I wonder why Mr. Fitchmueller wanted 10 pounds of them.

 

Fake Facebook Friend Request

Hmm, maybe a spambot....

 

Magic Show

When you have to use the drink trolley from the theatre you're working in as a prop. And they've marked it so no one will steal it?

Michael Conway at the Old Town Hall, Winchester, Ontario - impeding blizzard, only about 10 people in the audience and most were from a group home. He still put on a good show and worked one of the developmentally challenged people into the act. 

 

Caligula upset at losing long-standing title of "Most eccentric cabinet appointment"

𝘑𝘰𝘩𝘯 𝘏𝘶𝘳𝘵 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘳 𝘊𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘶𝘭𝘢 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘙𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘚𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘪𝘯 "𝘐, 𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘶𝘴", 𝘉𝘉𝘊 𝘛𝘝, 1976

 

Michael Leunig 1945-2024

photo: Bahudhara , via Wikimedia Commons 

Michael Leunig, one of my favourite cartoonists, died late last year. I watched part of his memorial service from St.Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, Australia. 

He had an uncanny sense of humour.

Link to his Instagram

 

Tariff threat reactions

 The shoppers in the grocery stores in Cornwall were checking the labels to make sure they weren't buying American.

 

Finding Krystal

 I just found where Krystal's remains are. She's where her grandmother said, but I couldn't find it until someone uploaded the info to Findagrave last month. It's a great relief to me as I wasn't sure if she was even buried. I hope to go visit the grave.

John Baker

Slavery was legal in Canada until 1834, when it was abolished by the British parliament. Upper Canada, now the southern part of Ontario, had limited slavery in 1793, when it passed an act that stopped the importation of slaves into Upper Canada, and freed the children of enslaved people when they turned 25, but one source I read said there were still were some enslaved people in Upper Canada until August 1, 1834, still celebrated as Emancipation Day in Canada. I first heard about this from Canadian singer Faith Nolan in Hamilton, Ontario in 1987 at the Festival of Friends in Gage Park  - I never learned about this in school. Listen to Emancipation Day by Faith Nolan , I finished writing my last exam I would ever have at the University of Guelph and walked across Gordon Street and stuck out my thumb and hitchhiked down it as it turned into Highway 6 and then to Gage Park.

John Baker was born into slavery in Lower Canada (now the southern part of Quebec), and was brought with his mother into Upper Canada. Baker had been freed in the will of his enslaver, and he joined a Canadian regiment and fought against American invaders during the War of 1812, notably at the Battle of Lundy's Lane in Niagara Falls, and the Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon. When Baker died in 1871, he was the last known surviving person to have been enslaved in Upper and Lower Canada.

Text on sign by historian Natasha Henry-Dixon and can be read here: One too many.

CBC story

 

Lunar New Year trinkets

Acrylic rolling pin with stars floating in them. I don't know what this has to do with the Lunar New Year.

Serving tray with zodiac.

 

Après nous, le déluge

Chicken pox is old news

Ottawa Hospital for skin cancer check. Had two actinic keratosis spots frozen off, since they can mutate into squamous cell cancer (not a high concern cancer) , but otherwise OK. Two doctors in their twenties looked me over very professionally and gave good advice on avoiding the sun (hat, shirt) and upping the SPF on sun tan lotion to 50. I told them I'd had chicken pox in case there was anything that looked like shingles. They both said 'chicken pox!' as if I was talking about a long forgotten disease. Since the vaccine was released around 2000 chicken pox cases in Canada have dropped from ten of thousands to a few hundred each year, and I don't think either doctor had seen a case in real life. 

Celebratory automatic gunfire on the St. Lawrence, New Year's 2025

The usual gunfire to welcome in the New Year. The sounds are coming from both the US and Canadian sides of the St. Lawrence.

Happy New Year!

Postcard from 1936

 Santa: Well So Long Pals! I'll see you next year/Old 1935 in outhouse/Baby 1936: For the love o'Pete! Old Drizzle Beard Make It Snappy I'm Next

Copyright 1935 Caption: The Same old Crap, Greetings