A few days ago, a “sold” sticker was slapped on the Realtor’s sign in front of the Burgess/McCormick home at the north end of Church Street. Old timers know the house as the Old Carpenter Place after Johnny Carpenter, a fiddler and beekeeper who it was rumoured used his dug well as a beer fridge. With their four young children in tow, Miranda and Andrew are moving to a much larger house on Bush Road. I’m very familiar with their new home and know that it matches the needs of their growing family perfectly.
I asked Miranda how she felt about the move. “We are excited about the bigger house and property, the children don’t grow smaller,” she replied. “However, we have loved our house and the Dunvegan hamlet. Being able to walk to festivities at the DRA, museum and church hall has been a great joy to us.”
Her brother, Sean Burgess, who lives next door in the old brick schoolhouse is sad to see the family moving on, a sentiment that was echoed by Miranda. “(Sean’s) help with our brood, his quick wit and good company cannot be expressed in words. I will miss him not being next door.”
As for the new owner who will be taking over Andrew and Miranda’s former home, I’m pleased to report that she hails from the Dunvegan area. So she’s already familiar with our small community and its quirks. I’ll leave it at that until I check to see how much she’s willing to share.
A stone church Christmas
A number of folks were kind enough to share their impressions of the Children’s Christmas Service at the Kenyon Presbyterian Church on Sunday, December 13th.
For starters, Dona Addison kindly sent me an overview. She tells me that Ashley (MacLeod) McRae’s young fiddlers, the Mini Music Makers, entertained parents, grandparents and friends following the special church service. For that old-time touch, the concert also included children’s recitations. “Afterwards a social time was held in the hall with lunch,” reported Dona. “And last, but not least, Santa Claus made an appearance with gifts and bags of candy.”
According to Miranda Burgess, the lunch in the hall appeared to be a big success and the concert was a hoot. “The kids did great and Ashley is to be commended.” She was also impressed that Santa seemed to know all of the girls and boys in attendance by name. What a guy!
Dona also wanted me to invite everyone to the Dunvegan church’s Christmas Eve celebration to be held at 7:30 PM on December 24th. The service will be conducted by members of the congregation and will feature carols and readings. All are welcome.
Not holding my breath
I’d like to wish honourary Dunveganite, Robin Flockton, luck. His excellent letter to the editor in the News a couple of weeks ago clearly outlined the virtual “lumps of coal” rural Ontarians can expect from Santa One in their Christmas stockings this year.
He also invited our MPP, Mr. Grant Crack, to explain why — when the Auditor General of Ontario has declared that the McGuinty/Wynne governments have so mismanaged Ontario’s energy portfolio that taxpayers have paid $37 BILLION more than they need have for their electric power — the government is still ramming ill-conceived and poorly-implemented green energy policies down our throats.
As Auditor General, Bonnie Lysyk, pointed out in her report, most of the increase in electricity costs is due to rising generating costs. Natural gas, wind, solar and bioenergy account for 16% of total production, but account for 36% of generation costs.
When the of the Liberals’ Green Energy Act was passed in 2009, insanely generous subsidies or “Feed-in Tariffs” were introduced. And even though, globally, wind and solar prices have been declining for the past seven years, in Ontario we pay double the market price for wind and three and a half times for solar. And, more often than not, we end up losing greenbacks when we’re forced to export this “green” power at a loss.
In the very unlikely event that Mr. Crack does accept Robin’s invitation and agrees to face the local citizenry’s concerns about out-of-control energy prices and steamroller wind turbines, I would love to help organize the “town hall” meeting. But I’m not holding my breath.
Focusing on the three Rs
This past fall, you might have noticed an unfamiliar car in the Glengarry Pioneer Museum parking lot. It belongs to Christin Senn, a newly hired intern from St. Bernardin. A recent graduate of Ottawa University, Christin has a degree in Communications and minor in Translation. She also has experience delivering education programs while at the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum in Ottawa. Which is why the museum brought her on board: to help update the GPM’s Education Outreach program.
Designed to support the Grade Three curriculum’s module on “Pioneer Life,” the Museum offers teachers a pre-visit orientation package complete with a PowerPoint presentation (that Matt Williams is converting to the “whiteboard” technology used in so many classrooms today). This helps prepare the students for their visit to the museum where they are divided into smaller groups upon arrival. They then move from station to station, interacting with pioneer craft experts like a blacksmith, spinners and weavers and a leatherworker.
Christin is also working on a new “One-Room Schoolhouse” program. It too has a pre-visit package for teachers, which is probably wise given the potential cultural shock students will experience. As they step over the threshold of the museum’s Big Beaver school house, the students will enter a whole new (or rather, old) world.
Under the direction of a schoolmaster or mistress, boys are seated on one side and girls on the other. Then, they are exposed the “3 Rs” (Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmatic) as they used to be taught, back in the day. They are also given a memorization exercise and chalk slate boards on which to write their lines. It’s an eye-opening lesson that is sure to be a hit, at least with educators and parents.
As well, the young intern from St. Bernadin is helping to develop themed “education kits” that dovetail perfectly with the Grade Two “Celebrations” curriculum. Packed with a lesson plan, replica artifacts and student handouts, the kits will be available for classrooms to borrow. Last of all, Ms. Senn is working on incorporating Canada’s upcoming sesquicentennial (that’s 150th anniversary to us ordinary folks) into various museum programs.
As you can see, even though the museum’s doors are closed to the public over the winter, the hard work of bringing our community’s history to life goes on.
“… a man from a different age and time”
One of the sure signs of aging is a growing compulsion to read the obituary notices in the newspaper. Recently, there was one in the Ottawa Citizen for Oliver BOLDIZAR that caught our eye. Oliver was obviously a very unique individual… as was his obituary. So much so, that I wanted to share it with you.
Oliver passed away in Santiniketan, India at 11:11 AM on 11-11-15 from complications resulting from living life his own damn way. He lived about as far from the mainstream as it’s possible to go, free from the bonds of 21st century self-repression, a man from a different age and time. At 38, he died too young, but he spent more than half of that travelling and lived far more than double that in intensity, as his liver attested during the autopsy. He didn’t drink alcohol, but he did experiment with various forms of bio-hacking in his search for knowledge and immortality.
He had no patience for organized structures of any sort, including school, but would have no problem doing 200,000 prostrations to get to the next stage in some Tantric teaching. He gave himself the equivalent of a Ph.D. in several subjects, including ancient Tibetan texts, chemistry and eastern religions. He spoke English, Slovak, German, French, Spanish, Tibetan, Bengali, Hindi, Pali and possibly other languages he learned while living in caves, meditating for months at a time while villagers —in India, Nepal, Brazil, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, California, or any of the other odd places he lived — brought him one bowl of rice a day.
He had a beautiful mind and generous soul and was loved as a son, brother, uncle, cousin, nephew, friend, but he would come back and haunt all of us if we gave him a mainstream funeral. In his honour, we have decided not to hold a standard memorial ceremony. Instead, we will plant him illegally under a tree in the spring so he can laugh at the Man one last time and his body can reincarnate along with his soul.
Seasonal greetings
I wish you a Happy Christmas,
I wish you a Happy Christmas,
I wish you a Happy Christmas,
And a Merry New Year.
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