It should be interesting to see how long the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care’s “Food Handler Certification Program” sticks around in its present form. If you’re unfamiliar with the issue, as of last Sunday, there must be, at the very least, one Certified Food Handler at each food premises in Ontario when victuals are being prepared or served. And this includes the DRA’s crokinole & taffy party, the bake sale and sandwich table at the Kenyon Church’s annual social and the volunteer appreciation BBQ at the Glengarry Pioneer Museum, to name but a few.
What’s wrong with food safety? Nothing. But in my experience volunteer organizations serving it already take extreme care. They don’t want to risk knocking off their friends and neighbours. The Food Handler Certification Program as it applies to church suppers, strawberry socials and the like is regulatory overkill. It’s just one more hurdle in the way of attracting new volunteers and retaining old ones.
I’m told that South Glengarry’s representative at Queen’s Park, Jim McDonnell, has been deluged by calls from upset citizens and volunteer organizations on this issue. I only hope that Dunvegan’s brand new MPP, Amanda Simard, is being similarly swamped.
Of fleeces and more
Unless you cohabit with one, you might not realize that, in the last thirty or so years, the interest in the fibre arts has exploded. From spinning and weaving to knitting, crocheting, rug hooking and more, women and men of all ages are rediscovering the skills that, in the days before industrialization, were primarily used to put clothes on one’s back and coverings on one’s windows and floors. Today however, contemporary textile artists are freed from the shackles of strict utilitarianism. Pieces need not be solely functional.
In a recent article on the My Modern Met web site entitled Art History: Ancient Practice of Textile Art and How It Continues to Reinvent Itself, Sara Barnes provides some stunning examples of this trend, includingthe carpets emerging from the loom of rug weaving artist Faig Ahmed. In an M.C. Escher-like twist, one of his rugs starts out in the timeless tradition of a Persian carpet that then dissolves into an abstract riot of colour. It’s as if the formal design had momentarily become liquid and a hand had smeared it. Another artist spotlighted by Barnes was fibre sculptor Gabriel Dawe. In a stunning installation, Dawe used thread to construct giant rainbow-like rays in an indoor gallery.
Now, the pieces on display at next weekend’s “A Stitch in Time” event at the Glengarry Pioneer Museum may not challenge the boundaries to the same extent as Ahmed and Dawe. However, if the 2014 and 2016 shows are any guide, the event is still well worth a visit.
The list of local fibre enthusiasts who will exhibit works and demonstrate their crafts reads like the program from a Renaissance fayre: The Twistle Guild of Glengarry, Highland Quilters Guild, Vankleek Hill Quilt Guild, Wild and Wooly Rug Hookers and the Swedish Weaving Guild of Glengarry. In addition to exhibits and demonstrations, you’ll be able to try your hand at spinning, weaving, knitting, crochet, smocking, bunka and penny rugs.
And new this year, fleeces from conventional and heritage breeds (such as Cotswold, Tunis and Shetland) will be judged and then auctioned off. For those not in the know, a fleece is the wool coat that is harvested when a sheep is shorn. Boasting prize money kindly donated by the Canadian Cooperative Wool Growers, the competition and auction has been organized by the Ontario Sheep Farmers and the Heritage Livestock Club of Eastern Ontario.
The “A Stitch in Time” event takes place in Dunvegan on Saturday, July 7thand Sunday, July 8th— from 11 am to 4 pm each day. Admission is $10 for non-members, while kids under 12 years old get in free. And, a word to the wise, if you purchase a GPM membership at the gate, the entrance fee is only $5. Plus you get 50% off all of the museum’s featured events in 2018 and more!
Tale of meandering alligators
In the Dunvegan column for January 7th, 2015, I introduced readers to Dunvegan’s (and one of Canada’s, for that matter) leading expert on roads —Donaldson MacLeod — on the occasion of his presentation on permafrost roads to the Glengarry Historical Society.
Donaldson MacLeod lives with his partner, Isobel Clark, on Syke Boundary Road. Their home is a siding-clad log dwelling that has been in his family for so long that the “Century Farm” plaque out front sports a bonus bar proclaiming a state of single-family ownership lasting over a century and a half. Late last year, I consulted Donaldson about roads in general, and Dunvegan Road in particular. As it was winter, we agreed to meet in the spring and take a real “road” trip.
After graduating from Glengarry District High School, Donaldson went on to earn a Bachelor of Engineering at McGill, a M.Sc. from the University of Saskatchewan and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Like many career choices, Donaldson’s decision to specialize in the technical underpinning of this nation’s highways and thoroughfares came about largely by happenstance. As did the opportunity to study permafrost roadbeds up close when, in the 1970s, he helped design and build a 650-mile road to Hydro-Québec’s James Bay development in just 450 days.
Our two-hour tour of the roads of Dunvegan took us north out of Dunvegan on County Road 30, east along Skye Road, down the Skye Boundary Road to Highway 34 and then south to Dunvegan Road along which we made frequent stops to access the ribbon of asphalt that flows by our doors. My goal was to get an expert’s opinion on the state of County Road 24. Was it really in as sad a shape as I perceived it to be?
Before we even turned out of my driveway, I took a crash course in crude oil distillation and the two main asphalt-based road construction techniques: hot-mix paving and bituminous surface treatment or BST for short. It turns out that “asphalt” (the black, gooey stuff that gets mixed with aggregate to produce the hot-mix material that is spread on our roads and then rolled into submission) is the end of the line in the refining process. Top dog is naphtha, then comes gasoline, followed by diesel oil, lubricants and finally asphalt. And don’t do as I did and use the words “tar” and “asphalt” interchangeably. Tar is a byproduct of coal. And asphalt comes from the black gold of Jed Clampett fame. This introductory seminar also covered the three primary factors behind road deterioration: the percentage of silt in the roadbed, the incursion of water through surface cracks and frost. (See, it’s not just in fairy tales that three is a magic number.) These lessons learned, we set out for the school of bumpy roads.
Our first classroom was the roadway north of the hamlet. There I was introduced to the Pavement Surfaces Data Input Form. Daunting at first glance, this checklist helps quantify the evaluation process by allowing one to record the road surface “distress” indicators. Like every profession I’ve encountered, road surface analysis has its own unique lexicon.
“Raveling” refers to those indentations where a stone has popped out and left a hole. It’s measured with the heels of your two feet placed at right angles to form an imaginary square foot and counting to number of pop-outs. Transverse “singles” or “gators” are cracks that develop as a result of road expansion and contraction due to temperature fluctuations. “Gator” in this context means “multiple”… as in resembling the hide of an alligator. “Meanders” are the same animal, only they propagate longitudinally.
The story of roadway failure is really a perfect example of entropy or the gradual decline of all things into disorder. Some of the blame for this can be laid at Old Man Winter’s door. However, the other culprit is commercial truck traffic, given that the impact from just one eighteen-wheeler equals that of 10,000 passenger cars.
Donaldson showed me the telltale signs of truck damage. For example, “rutting” often occurs as a result of the tremendous compression these 36 metric tonne trucks exert. The compressive force wielded by axles and tires also result in “longitudinal wheel track cracks” (LWT), both single and gator.
As I’m running out of room this week, we’ll save our report card on County Road 24… and the story behind chip seal roads (the ersatz pavement that dreams of being hot-mix)… until a future column.
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