We’ve had a third-party report with detailed recommendations. We’ve had all kinds of discussion and recriminations. There’s been finger-pointing and counter finger-pointing.
And now, apparently, a police investigation.
Does this “investigation” reflect a change in course? A change in tempo? A change in anything?
Something will happen today that doesn’t happen very often, if at all.
Parliament re-opens today, or at least that part of it known as the House of Commons, and all the recently elected MPs, or Members of Parliament, will take their seats and ready themselves for the Throne Speech, or Speech From the Throne, an event that officially opens any new session of Parliament.
The Throne Speech is usually a task undertaken by the Governor-General, in this case the Right Honourable Mary Simon, on behalf of the sitting monarch.
But today, Governor-General Simon will yield that privilege to the monarch himself, in this case King Charles III, King of England and Great Britain, and also King of Canada.
To my knowledge, a reigning monarch has read the Throne Speech twice in our nation’s history, with Charles’ mother Elizabeth II having done so both times, once shortly after taking the throne, and the second in 1977.
So why now?
Continue reading “CHARLES III COMES TO CANADA”
When Sears went swirling down the drain a decade or so again, I don’t recall shedding any tears. I mean I shopped at Sears, more for something to do than anything else, but I had no real attachment to the place, even though I’d been around since it was Simpson’s, then Simpson-Sears.
I have to admit that Eatons hurt a little more when the doors closed, probably because it was a high-end department store and the place I used to get my Simon Chiang dress shirts, back when Simon Chiang used to make me dress shirts. And Eaton’s, like Simpsons, was one of the Big-Two department stores that boasted a catalogue that would arrive quarterly, including the Christmas catalogue that kids from my generation would remember well. They weren’t
wrong when they called it the Christmas Wish Book, because that’s exactly what it was, a book of Christmas wishes.
Plus the models were pretty.
Continue reading “THE STRIPES OF HBC”
You can go ahead and call me crazy if you want, but I’m adamant in my belief that Catholic kids have the same right to eat as their non-Catholic counterparts.
And, of course, who’s going to argue with that?
Times are tough all over, as the saying goes, and when times are tough, it’s often children that bear the brunt of it. And sadly, they often pay the price for tough times by going hungry more often than they should.
It’s easy to say that no child should ever go hungry, ever, but the sad truth of it is that it happens all the time. Derelect adults, neglectful parents, down and out care-givers more concerned with their next fix or hit, all of this kind of stuff happens in the world, and you’d have to be wilfully blind to think that it does’t happen right here in Renfrew.
Right under our noses.
Continue reading “FEEDING KIDS AT SCHOOL”
“Well, at least you graduated.”
I think all of us can remember our own graduations, and how important they were to us. The poor cousin of prom, grad was when you were recognized for four, and perhaps five years of secondary school study and achievement. It was a night of speeches, awards, and pride of achievement for both graduates and their families alike. The pomp and pageantry is almost a once-in-a-lifetime event.
It can be emotional.
For most of us, maybe all of us, it will be the last time we’re in the same room and at the same event with all the people you shared the journey with. And although the friendships crafted in high school are the most vital, you realize that many of these relationships, even the tight ones, are now going to drift as you, and your peers, go your own ways and chart your own course in life.
So it’s kind of bittersweet.
Nevertheless, it’s a day and an evening that we’re likely to remember for the rest of our lives.
Continue reading “TABLE FOR ONE”
It gets its start in Hurd’s Lake, and from there it winds and m wanders its way through McNab-Braeside and Horton Townships, before entering the jurisdiction of the Town of Renfrew and eventually emptying into the Bonnechere River across and just downstream from Air Force Memorial Park.
Smiths Creek — aka Smith’s Creek — is one of those things that you see just about every day, but the familiarity of it allows you to just walk on by, or drive on by, without giving it a thought, much less a second one.
My doctor told me to start walking routes that are different from my go-to route, something to do with mixing things up being good for me, especially if, while mixing things up, I incorporate some hills and terrain into my walk.
Never one to dismiss the advice of my doctor, I did just that, mixed it up a bit.
Continue reading “SMITHS CREEK”
I’ve listened to all kinds of music in my time, and my interest crosses multiple boundaries of multiple genres. But for whatever reason, the head-banging screamer-rock of the late eighties and early nineties sort of escaped me.
I was once a head-banger, in the late seventies, but I had obviously mellowed out a decade later, and preferred to stick to my Phil Collins, Genesis, and Stevie Nicks, among many others.
And then, suddenly, 2019 was upon me, and my music interests were unexpectedly added to with the emergence of one of those same long-haired screamer bands onto my music radar, in the form of a live concert.
You see, Def Leppard was making a cross-Canada tour, and one of the stops was at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa. Normally, something like this would come and go without catching my attention. I mean, I had heard of Def Leppard and everything, but they’d never been a band that grabbed too much of my entertainment attention or dollars.
This is where my daughter, Avery, enters the story.
Continue reading “A NIGHT WITH DEF LEPPARD”
For something different, I grabbed the camera and tripod, and went to visit the Bonnechere Algonquin First Nation, or BAFN.
To be completely fair, I had no appointment, but then again, nobody needs an appointment to walk around the exterior. It’s the interior where the mystery lies.
It certainly looks like Charlene Jackson is gone as Renfrew’s treasurer.
Earlier today, I was given a heads-up about a job posting on the employment site Indeed, where sure enough, there’s a posting for a position that sure sounds like the one she’s held down until just recently.
That posting appears below.
Budget deliberations were brutal, and there’s no time in a treasurer’s annual calendar where almost every road, every request, and every question lands squarely at your door as it does at budget time.
Also, Renfrew is in the middle of some bad times, especially money-wise, and that’s something that’s not going to change any time in the near future.
So I guess I’m saying that being the treasurer of an entity that teeters on the edge of financial ruin can’t be the easiest job in the world.
Continue reading “JACKSON RESIGNS POSITION AS TREASURER”
And then there was Dave.
It’s not his real name, but it’ll have to do for the purposes of telling my story, a story that needs to be shared. I also don’t want to use his real name because I don’t want to embarrass him, and more to the point, his family. Because, Dave is no different than a lot of other Dave’s out there, so why single him out, right?
You see, Dave is a racist. Not even a little bit of one, but rather a racist with a paid-up-in-full membership to AOA, or Assholes of America, a subsidiary of ROA, or Racists of America, a family-oriented group complete with chat lines where you can spend time dumping on those goddamned immigrants you saw at Walmart earlier in the day, when you stopped in after church, the place you pretended to be a Christian for reasons unknown.
Dude, if there’s a God, he already knows you’re a racist, so you might just as well carve an extra hour for yourself on Sunday mornings rather than go to all the work of showing up and be a hypocrite. But then again, you don’t go to church for God, do you? For you, it’s mostly about the appearances you put in so that other folks think you’re a great guy. And after all, it’s not like you’re the only racist sitting in church on a Sunday morning, right? For heaven’s sake, the place is full of them. Go ahead. Tell me it’s not.
It’s like we’re going to need Jesus to come down and throw one of those money-lender freak-outs to reclaim his Father’s house from the imposters who take up space within it. No doubt I’ll get all caught up in the mayhem, but hey, I went to Confession just a little over a week ago, so how much sin could I have possibly accumulated?
However much sin I’m burdened with, I’m not a racist.
Continue reading “SMALL TOWN RACISM”
NEWSMAGRENFREW 