The window of time is rapidly closing on your chance to purchase tickets for Friday’s concert at the Dunvegan Recreation hall. The event is part of Ontario’s Festival of Small Halls, an innovative project that more than lives up to its tag line: Big music in a little place. This year’s concert in our hall features a trio of Celtic musicians from PEI who go by the name Inn Echo. To quote from the Small Halls site, “Inn Echo weaves hundreds of years of traditional tunes with contemporary originals… that both soar and make you catch your breath simultaneously.”
But that’s not all. Late last week, the DRA learned an opening act had been added to Friday’s concert: Jessica Pearson & The East Wind. While cast in the role of a warm-up band, the write-up on the Small Halls web page makes JPEW sound like a headline act. “The stories she tells are like lovingly sewn patchwork quilts, stitched together by soul-stirring melodies and gorgeous modern folk-country arrangements.”
If you’ve already snapped up tickets to the concert, the good news is that you’ll be seeing two performances for the price of one. And if you haven’t taken the plunge, don’t delay. Tickets are available for $25 per person (tax in) on the Festival’s web site: ontariosmallhalls.com. The doors open at 7:00 pm, and the show gets underway at 7:30 pm.
Velma’s daughter wins
The Cow Pie 50/50 wasn’t the only raffle at the 2022 Harvest Fall Festival. As a 40th anniversary project, the Twistle Guild of Glengarry raffled off two lovely afghans to raise funds for flooring in the museum’s Williams Pavilion. Each member received natural colouredwool and was told to spin it into yarn and knit, crochet or weave an eight-inch square. These were then pieced together into a large and smaller ‘lap’ afghan. “The project reflected the talents of Twistle Guild members,” Laurie Maus told me, “and the long term relationship between the Guild and the museum.” BTW, Jennifer Hancharuk, the late Velma Franklin’s daughter, won the large afghan. And Carol Hall won the lap afghan. “It was fitting that Jennifer was one of the winners,” Laurie noted, “since Velma was a long-time Guild member and supporter.”
No speeding back then
Sunday saw a surprise visitor drop by: Jim Fletcher. During the 1940s and 50s, Jim grew upon the farm right across the road from Terry and me. He was back in Dunvegan checking on his mother’s final resting place in the church graveyard. As regular readers may recall, we first made Jim’s acquaintance in January of this year. And while I have communicated with him on many occasions since then, this was the first time we had met in person.
As these things do, the brief hello turned into a lengthier stopover. We even took a mini road trip to see where Henri Seguin’s cabin had once stood. In the summer of 1952, Seguin robbed and murdered Leonard Hurd of Maxville. Jim still remembers the excitement of seeing OPP cruisers, with flashers flashing, screeching to a halt in front of Seguin’s little house. There’s no trace of it today, but according to Jim, it was on the south side of Dunvegan Road in the brush at the north end of Lot 19, just east of our property line. Lot 19 holds a special place in Jim’s heart as he was born eighty-some years ago in the log farmhouse that once stood there. It burned in the early 70s, but the house that rose from the ashes (and is commonly known as the Grier house) still contains one of the original log walls, unless its been covered up.
It was fascinating to see our tiny slice of Dunvegan Road as Jim remembered it when he was growing up. The road wasn’t widened until 1961, let alone paved. And, before then, there was no shoulder. Properties grew up right to the edge of what was more like a country lane. Today, the tiny rise just east of our place is hardly worth mentioning. But back in the day, in the muds of spring, many a car would struggle to reach its crest and have to back down and take a run at it. There were also far fewer trees. These were working farms and every acre of cleared land was needed for a farm’s survival. To this day, Jim recalls cutting hay with a team of horses on his family’s field across from our house and waving to Mogens Jensen, the then owner. I look forward to Jim’s next visit and another trip down memory lane.
Telephonic tourniquet
The synchronicity of life can often be staggering. Well, perhaps ‘staggering’ is overkill. At the very least, it can give one pause for thought. One such occurrence happened today as I was writing this column. Reader Ken McEwen and I were emailing back and forth about witchingfor water when he happened to mention “blood stoppers,” persons of the male persuasionwith the ability to staunch the flow of bleeding wounds with just their thoughts. “It was attributed to the ‘seventh son of a seventh son’,” Ken wrote in an email. Which, given Canada’s abysmal birth rate, he mused, “Would be few and far between in the current era.”Where the synchronicity arises is that during his visit yesterday, Jim Fletcher mentioned that his brother’s jaw stopped bleeding when his mother spoke with a blood stopper on the phone. Two independent mentions in two days have piqued my curiosity.
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