CAPE 2026

 

Black suit Spiderman, John Constantine

Cornwall & Area  Pop Event - CAPE 2026, Benson Centre,  800 Seventh St W, Cornwall, Ontario, April 26, 2026

Spray Paint Art by Nathan Salmon

The Ottawa Tardis. Nicely made!

Daffodils

Mom planted these daffodils years ago. Still coming up.

 

The lonely death of Chanie Wenjack

 

Secret Path, by Gord Downie and Jeff Lemire

In 1967, Maclean's published a story about a 12-year-old boy named Chanie Wenjack, an Ojibwe who had been taken from his family and sent to a residential school in Northern Ontario. This happened for years to native children in Canada.

The residential schools were places of abuse, usually run by churches, where natives had their identities stripped from them. Chanie ran away and tried to walk back to his family, but died of exposure. Even after this story, the schools remained open until the last one closed in 1996. Mike Downie gave the article to his brother Gord, lead singer of Kingston's Tragically Hip. 

Gord did a CD, graphic novel and film called Secret Path in collaboration with artist Jeff Lemire, even though he was dying of cancer. 

Wendy the Chihuahua mix in Value Village

I think it was a Yorkie mix.

 

Space food stick memories

 

Image via General Mills

We had them in Grade 6, 1971 or1972, where we were following an educational TV show in our class - we were supposed to be on a space ship, made a wall out of cardboard to separate the class into two groups, and the educational part seemed to be record keeping - we had to keep track of who got what stick, and decode a message that told us that some of them might have been contaminated and we should isolate the ones that had eaten them. I've never used that particular skill in my later life.

They weren't particularly tasty, and they were marked with a square, triangle or circle on the foil wrapper for us to keep records of.

Stereotypical Canadian Scene

CSL Welland heading for Montreal. Canada Goose overhead. In St. Lawrence River.

 

Marc-Antoine Gagnier, author from Embrum, Ontario, and his series «Renarde-Woman»

Marc-Antoine Gagnier, author from Embrum, Ontario, and his series «Renarde-Woman». at École élémentaire publique Rose des Vents, Cornwall, Ontario

 

Woman's laugh made the show

Hash the 1, https://www.instagram.com/hash_the1/, 

had this woman in stiches.

I was sitting right behind her! April 17, 2026, 

420  Comedy Show, 

LoL Entertainment, MO Events Cornwall SD&G, 

17369 Cornwall Centre Rd, Cornwall, Ontario

Osprey in rain

 

Osprey in rain, Glen Walter, Ontario, (Pandion haliaetus), Balbuzard pêcheur

Wayne Gosselin Wood Carvings

The round bowl with cover will be his wife's urn. He said he made one for one woman who died holding it and her crucifix.

The Little Prince (from Saint-Exupéry's novel), carving in foreground. I told him I'd interviewed the Little Prince's brother. During the war, Saint-Exupéry visited the De Koninck family in Quebec City. Thomas De Koninck, who died earlier this year at the age of 91,  was thought to be the inspiration for the Little Prince character, and I interviewed his brother, Jean-Marie De Koninck (both brothers, like their father, were professors at Laval University), about Operation Red Nose, the program he developed for volunteers to drive home people who have drunk too much during the winter holidays. 

 

 He talked about Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, the wood carving capitol of Canada, which I didn't know about even though I'd lived in Quebec City. They said the numbers of wood carvers still at work there had declined in recent years. New word: Pruche is French for Hemlock (tree).

 

Wooly bear wakes up

Wooly Bear, Pyrrharctia isabella, the Isabella tiger moth caterpillar, freezes solid during the winter but revives in the spring. Do not touch as the hairs are sharp and can make you itch. April 11, 2026, Summerstown Trials, Ontario
 

Crocuses 2026

 

B.A. Johnston

B.A. Johnston at Lola's Pub and Grub, Cornwall, Ontario, 5 April, 2026

 

First crocus of 2026

Cool and rainy so they weren't open

 

Made a little heart

I made a little hanger in memory of Krystal at an arts gathering at Carrots n Dates hosted by Yafa Gowily.

 

Not the Easter Bunny digs a burrow in a lake

 

Peter Edwards' excellent book on Banks that corrected some errors in the NFB's documentary, Canada's Sweetheart. (1985) 

Hal C. Banks lived near my family's home in Pointe-Claire, a suburb of Montreal. He was an American mobster and labour organizer who came to Canada with the approval of Prime Minister Louis St-Laurent and Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis to bust the Canadian Seamen's Union, which their governments thought were controlled by Communists, and replace it with the Seafarers International Union . My mother told me that Banks was a nice guy when he wasn't beating up members of the CSU, loved giving out candy on Hallowe'en, and every few weeks there was a new Mrs. Banks at his place. However my sister says he just gave her a piece from a box of chocolates when she went to his door. He lived on Lake St. Louis and had a big boat that was too deep to dock by his house, so, without asking permission, he brought in a dredge on Good Friday and started digging a channel through the lake to his dock, finishing up on Easter Monday. Of course, no civil servant was working on the long weekend, so he got away with it. He ultimately fled Canada after being charged after one beating, and stayed in the USA after his extradition was refused by Dean Rusk, US Secretary of State.