South Huron District High School music director Isaac Moore leads the senior concert band at MusicFest Canada in Ottawa

Story and photos by Casey Lessard

They’re the best percussion ensemble in Canada, and they’re right here in our backyard. Led by music director Isaac Moore and coach Dave Robilliard, South Huron District High School’s percussionists won the Zildjian Outstanding Percussion Section Award at this year’s MusicFest Canada national competition in Ottawa May 22; graduating student Jon Gill of Grand Bend, who is attending UWO for music in the fall, won the Zildjian Outstanding Percussionist Award. Judge and seminar leader Wayne Toews called the group the best student percussion ensemble in Canada, and could challenge any group in the world. If that’s the case, says Robilliard, it’s because the students are fully committed to success.
“We challenge our students in a way that other percussion ensembles I’ve seen in Canada are not challenged,” says Robilliard. “We give them – and they’ve requested – very difficult material that requires extra time and rehearsal on their time. It’s one of the best things (judge) Wayne Toews has seen in high school percussion ensembles, so in his eyes, it’s world class. It’s a very flattering statement.”
The accolades came hours after performing at the nationals; the percussionists performed last and earned a gold standard, while two other groups led by Moore and fellow teacher Matt Weston – the senior concert band and senior jazz bands – performed earlier the same day, each earning the silver award.
“A lot of kids in the music program are goal-oriented students,” says Moore, “and they respond well to having a goal. Whether we go to nationals or regionals, that goal is one of the things that motivate them to continue to get better. MusicFest Canada is on a different level because you have 10,000 kids from across Canada who are passionate about music. Something really special gets created when you put them together in the same place.”
To compete at nationals, the bands had to earn either gold or high silver with invitation at the regional competition in London. When the nationals are held in Ottawa, South Huron finds it convenient to attend, and a great experience as well.
“Ottawa is a great place to play, and the National Arts Centre is one of the best concert halls in the country, as it should be,” Moore says. “The experience of playing in that building and hearing other bands in that building, it’s incredible for them. It’s probably something a lot of them won’t have the opportunity to do again, so it’s important for me that every student experience the nationals if possible.”
During the years when the competition is not in Ottawa, Moore and Weston take the music students on non-MusicFest trips, including last year’s trip to Chicago. It’s part of Moore’s mission to give a rounded music education.
“A teacher I had while at university asked, are you giving your students a fantastic four-year band program, or are you giving your students a fantastic band program for four years, as in the same program for four years,” he says.
“A lot of what we do is based on routine and tradition, and it called into question for me how you maintain tradition and routine, but also offer the kids a different experience over the four years they are here. It opened my mind to the different options of where kids can go and what they can learn. In the four years you’ve got, you can do a lot.”
This year’s trip to the nationals was the second for Robilliard, whose father Bob was music director at South Huron for many years. After returning to Canada from graduate school in Oklahoma, Dave Robilliard joined Moore and Weston – the three studied percussion together at UWO – three years ago to lighten their load.
“I am able to focus on techniques and sound concepts that Isaac and Matt can’t focus on in the large classroom or band settings,” says Robilliard, who, unlike education majors Moore and Weston, pursued performance at university. He now works with the Stratford and International Symphonies, serves as a substitute for the Kitchener and Windsor Symphonies, and performs in a percussion group called DuO. His contribution has led to great success for the students.
“We received a gold standard in 2008,” he says, “which was my first year working with percussion ensemble. There was still a large number of carryover of students this year – Jon Gill, Joe Pavkeje and Jeff Penn – and we won gold again. But we don’t do it for the awards. We want to see students grow as musicians and see their confidence grow on stage.”
While South Huron has a full trophy case – and that’s just from this year – Moore agrees that they’re not looking for pats on the back.
“The real measure of success is how we feel about our performances when we’re done. I measure our success as a teacher how we fare when we compete at a higher level (the 2008 bronze winning senior concert band competed in a higher bracket this year and earned silver). If we were not taking the kids to an uncomfortable place, it would be an exercise in self-confidence. It makes more sense to shoot a little beyond where you might be so you can develop.”
The success can be attributed to the approach of the teachers, and the commitment of the students.
“It’s a lot of practice, a lot of one-on-one with your section and Mr. Moore,” says graduating student Trish Pavkeje, who performed in the concert and jazz bands. “It helps that Mr. Moore and Mr. Weston are easy to talk to. It’s easy to ask them for help.”
“Everyone’s on the same level and enjoys being there with everyone else,” says Joe Pavkeje, a member of all three groups, winner of the national honour award for the jazz band, and SHDHS student of the year. “Our school isn’t segregated into athletic kids and music kids. Everyone is doing everything. It feels cohesive for that reason.”
Clarinet player Stephanie Pratt agrees.
“Kids from all over the school are in this, so you get a sense of diversity,” Pratt says, noting music is attractive because of the lessons you learn. “Self-discipline is important, you learn a lot of patience and togetherness.”
For Stephen Mills, who has experienced bullying at school, the inclusivity makes the music room a refuge.
“We have to work together to do anything in the band,” Mills says. “We all have to talk to each other, and when you have to talk to someone, you appreciate them for who they are.”
And that’s exactly what Isaac Moore wants to hear.
“If a student is willing to commit themselves to the educational experience, we try not to discriminate in any way. Students can find their place in the band based on their strengths and weaknesses. Without your strong players and weaker players, you can’t maintain consistency. Eventually the weak players become strong and take over the leadership roles.”
Now that many members of the successful bands are graduating, Moore, Weston and Robilliard look to the future.
“We take it year by year,” Robilliard says. “The younger students will now have an opportunity to succeed at a higher level than they’ve had in the past. We’re going to do a lot of different pieces in different styles, and give everyone an opportunity to learn and grow.”

Percussionist Jon Gill performs at MusicFest Canada

Jon Gill (right) of Grand Bend is a member of the 2010 Zildjian Outstanding Percussion Ensemble of the year (below), and winner of the Zildjian Outstanding Percussionist Award.

As told to Casey Lessard
Photos by Casey Lessard

When we won in 2008, it was the first time in six or seven years that any of our bands had earned gold at nationals. It wasn’t a tradition before, but over four years, we’ve earned seven golds at eight festivals. It’s a legacy of excellence at South Huron.
I still can’t believe it (the individual award). I know a couple of guys who have won it before, and I look up to them as amazing people who I want to be half as good as they are. To be compared to them on a national level, it’s mind-blowing for me.
I wanted to start playing drums in Grade 4, but my parents wouldn’t let me. They got me started on bass guitar, and then I came here to the high school. Mr. (Bob) Robilliard recognized that I had a sense of rhythm, so he gave me a pair of drumsticks and stuck me in the percussion ensemble. It really caught on and I really enjoyed playing. I bought my own drum kit and I started playing a lot.
A lot of us take lessons from Dave Robilliard, and he’s taken that percussion ensemble further than we could have imagined.
I don’t think we could do it without the help of dedicated professionals. It just gives us the real world experience and the ability to go beyond just playing. I’m hoping to be a high school music teacher (attending UWO in the fall), and I want to give back to students what my teachers have given to me.

A Killing Snow runs June 23 to August 13 and features Patricia Hamilton of Green Gables fame

Patricia Hamilton is a Canadian icon best known as Rachel Lynde in Anne of Green Gables and Road to Avonlea. A long-time stage performer at Shaw Festival and other theatres, she makes her Blyth Festival debut in Grand Bend resident Paul Ciufo’s A Killing Snow, which runs June 23 to August 13.
Nominated for the Governor-General’s award for drama for his play Reverend Jonah, Ciufo’s follow-up was inspired by the 2007 murders of Bill and Helene Regier, and focuses on the way people react to such events. “The panic people were feeling, and also the feeling of how could something like that happen here,” Ciufo says. “I explored that fear in a different way. My way of exploring that is writing a play.”
The play also examines the surprising complexity of small town life. One character is a pig farmer who also models. Patricia Hamilton’s character runs a lunch place in Clinton, but is also a psychic. Big cities aren’t always as dangerous as we think, and small towns aren’t always safe. These ideas are brought to light in a thrilling ensemble piece, and Casey Lessard spoke with star Patricia Hamilton to learn more.

Interview by Casey Lessard
Photo courtesy Blyth Festival

You are performing in Paul Ciufo’s play A Killing Snow. Tell me about the play and your role.
It’s a murder mystery about a group of people who get stuck in a farmhouse for four days because they can’t get on the road due to whiteouts. Murders ensue.
I play a middle-aged woman with a grown-up family who is on the road and ends up at this place. Her old lover owns the house and she hasn’t had anything to do with him for a long, long time. One of the other people stuck is her daughter’s ex-boyfriend. They all know each other, so when people start dying, you wonder who is killing whom.
It’s an interesting play by Paul because he doesn’t only write murder mysteries. He’s trying to broaden his writing. If you get a good murder mystery, it will do the circuit and can make the playwright some money.

I take it there aren’t very many older women in theatre; it’s really a young people’s game. Does that give you an advantage?
I think it does. There are a lot of plays being written about older people. The baby boomers are interested in people their own age and the problems of those people. I think you will see a lot of plays about people of that group. They’re going to see things that interest them about themselves. The second play I’m doing here at Blyth is called Pearl Gidley, and it’s about two elderly women living together in Blyth in 1969 who take in a boarder who is a deserter from the Vietnam War. It will speak to the audiences that come to Blyth.

Most people would recognize you from the role of Rachel Lynde, but you’ve been doing much more over the years as an actress. What has brought you to perform for the first time at Blyth?
I like the theatre more than I like television and film, although the Green Gables stuff was fantastic. I did it for seven seasons plus the four movies, so I played that role for about a decade. But I really am a theatre actress mainly, and I love working in repertory theatre, which is what they do at Blyth.
For the last 12 years, I have been at Shaw Festival, and I love doing that. Before that, I used to do a lot of new Canadian plays. There is nothing more wonderful than being the first person to say a writer’s words on stage.

Our most memorable moment from your career is in Road to Avonlea, where Rachel Lynde has a stroke. It’s such a touching concept.
That series was very good to work on, and it was given good production values from the beginning. And it was about an iconic book that every Canadian girl had read as a child. As we went along, the scriptwriter had already seen what I could do, so that script was written for me. When you got an episode where you were featured, like that one, it’s very exciting.

Sarah Polley was also in that show. She directed a film called Away From Her (adapted from a story by Alice Munro) about Alzheimer’s. It’s so interesting that you’re able to perform acts of reality for older people, for example strokes. Other Canadian films are also about this reality, for example Juno. Do you think we are different from the Americans in what we’re doing?
Yes. That’s one of the reasons we fight so passionately to have our own culture. We are not like the Americans in so many ways. Our culture should reflect who we are. We have to stand up for our culture, and Blyth is a place that really does that.

What’s special about Canadian theatre in particular?
It’s ours. We’re writing about what we know. And the actors who live in Canada have a better chance of being able to perform it because we know it. It’s fun to do plays about a place you know. That’s what Anne of Green Gables was about, too. It’s about doing things that are part of your culture.
I’m an actor. I’m a Canadian actor. I love performing on stage, and I love it in all its forms. There are plays from all over the world that attract me. I look for plays where there is a part for me, where it has something interesting to say, and where I can work with congenial comrades, all of which is true at Blyth.

Actress Cynthia Dale

Casey Lessard stole Dale away from her lunch break to discuss the role and how she ended up in Grand Bend.

Interview and photo by Casey Lessard

Cynthia Dale: Sweet Charity had been a dream role of mine for 30 years. It’s been the part I have wanted to do, and I’ve had some fabulous parts. In January, I was out with some girlfriends, and they said, well, why aren’t you doing it? I said I was too old, etc., but they convinced me to do it.

You’ll be 50 this year.
In August. It’s hard on the old bod. I am a dancer, thank God. I didn’t have to learn how to dance for the part. It’s a full part for anybody at any age. It’s just a lot of work, but that’s okay.

What attracted you to this role?
It’s who Charity is. She wears her heart on her sleeve and is full of moxy and sass. She’s a broad, but she believes in love and sees the world through rose coloured glasses and dreams of another life. She’s a part of everybody in the world because everyone has those qualities.
The show has some of the best music to sing and dance to. It’s just a fabulous show for music. It doesn’t come along that often. It had a revival on Broadway a few years ago and had a brief tour. If I didn’t step into it at this point, I may not get the opportunity again.

This is your first time with Drayton. What’s that been like?
It’s great because I know so many people in the cast. I’m doing it because it’s Michael Lichtefeld’s production. I did six shows with Michael at Stratford over the years. He knows me really, really well and knows what my strengths and weaknesses are. I knew I was going to be in really good hands with him.

You’ve been performing for a long time; most of your life. Do you find the roles you think you should be doing are changing?
No. I’ve been really lucky in the past two or three years. That hasn’t hit me yet. I played the crème de la crème parts in theatre for 10 years. There weren’t many more that I wanted to play other than this. There are others, but they are older ones. I’ve got some time for those.

You’ve also done some production work, including judging Triple Sensation (she spent the last two years co-producing a CBC movie). With your reputation, are you able to write your own ticket?
No, I don’t write my own ticket. I still audition.

But your name must carry some cachet.
I guess it does. I got offered a play in Toronto this week I’m probably going to do. I still lose parts I really want to do. Usually they’re TV or film roles. I’ve done pretty much every role I wanted to do in theatre. There are parts that come along and the director just doesn’t think you fit into his vision. That’s what theatre is.

There’s a mystique about people who are on television or film that they are different from other people, but it doesn’t exist.
No. We go buy groceries. We’re normal people and we have every single joy and hardship that everyone else does. I love performing, but it’s not the be all and end all for me.

This is your first time being to Grand Bend, but you haven’t been downtown yet.
I’ve been too busy. I started training in January, and Michael and I started rehearsals a month beforehand.

I see you also do art, and especially beach scenes. I’m surprised you haven’t been down to the beach.
I know, that’s what people keep saying. Go paint the beach. Part of the plan in July is to paint.

Looking at where you’ve been and what you’re doing, what would you like to do for the next 25 years?
I want to raise a good kid. That’s the dream. That’s all. If I work, that’s lovely, too.

The Grand Bend Strip and publisher Casey Lessard took home more awards than any other newspaper in Ontario Friday, May 14 at the Ontario Community Newspapers Association gala held in Toronto. Here are the results and judges’ comments:

Is mom stunned by the success of the Grand Bend Strip? Unfortunately, they only take one photo at the Ontario Community Newspapers Association awards banquet in Toronto, and this is the one they sent us. From left: publisher Casey Lessard, mom Rita Lessard, OCNA president Don MacLeod, and co-owner Anjhela Michielsen hold the most plaques taken home by any newspaper at this year’s awards, held May 14.

3rd place – General Excellence (best overall paper), circulation under 1,999
Note: Top marks in 4 of 11 categories, including Front Page, Presentation, Photography, and Production Quality
Judges Norm Park, Cindy Beaulieu, Kelly Clammer, Heather Thomson: The most eye-appealing publication in this class. No question about artistic quality and photo presentation. That is tops in the class. This paper also provides good, easy to read features with strong leads. It’s a home-spun feel-good paper with a professional flair.

2nd place – Photographer of the Year (competing with all newspapers)
Judge Bill White: Strong features. Some very nice lighting.

1st place – Best Creative Advertising (under 9,999) – ad promoting Casey365.com
Judge Wayne Aubert: Unexpected clean layout for the clutter of ads in a community paper.

1st place – Best Feature Photo (under 9,999) – cover photo from Parkhill fair
Judge Dave White: I think the photographer made some smart decisions regarding depth of field and camera angle to help us feel this child’s pure joy. The viewer is right there with her. I really love this image.

2nd place – Education Writing – SHDHS music trip to Chicago
Judge Richard Dal Monte: Great photos and a good idea going along for the ride on the band trip to the Windy City.

3rd place – Best Sports Photo – Hockey Night in Zurich dressing room photo
Judge Ron Scheffler: The photographer is commended for exploring behind the scenes to reveal a closer look at those who play simply for the love of the sport.

3rd place – Best Photo Layout – Parkhill’s Five Fun Days
Judge Joe Callahan: An uncomplicated layout and typography that allowed the photograph to communicate effectively.

3rd place – Best Rural Story (under 9,999) – potato farmer Marcus Koenig
Judge Jake Boudrot: Well written, well researched, significant local story, with a nice layout and excellent photographs.

Why you’ll see PVB on the beach this summer

PVB Enterprises runs Canada’s largest independent beach volleyball camps. When one of owner and former national team member Mark Reilly’s club players, Taylor Ivey, and her parents Charlie and Katrine invited him to Grand Bend, an idea was born.
Reilly proposed developing a program in Grand Bend similar to the one he started in 1999 at Ashbridge’s Bay in Toronto. With plans to operate youth and adult camps and tournaments on the town’s north beach, Reilly and PVB approached Lambton Shores council in October 2009 and entered into a contract March 29, 2010 to run 15 courts for ten summers for $1500 per year.
Residents were informed April 5, and expressed to Reilly and the Iveys at a PVB-hosted meeting May 1 that they disapproved of the project and wanted it stopped.
While council supports the project, contractual problems (discussed on page 4 of this edition) led Lambton Shores to give PVB the 60 days notice required to void the contract. Council decided Monday night to renegotiate, and the matter is before lawyers. The Grand Bend Strip spoke with Mark Reilly Sunday night, ahead of the meeting, to see what he’d like to see now.

Interview by Casey Lessard

Grand Bend, Ontario - Mark Reilly of PVB volleyball.

Some changes to your original contract have been made as of Friday. What is the status?
Following the May 1 meeting we had with the community, we realized and were sensitive to many of the residents’ concerns. We’ve scaled back the contract and nothing has been signed yet, but we’ve had discussions with the municipality on how we could change a few clauses. Essentially adapt the contract to better suit the needs of the community and the municipality. We realize that the nature of the contract will demand an exceptional relationship with the municipality.

Here are some quick facts about the program: the original contract pitched 15 courts on the north beach for 10 years at $1500 per year; basically 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week for 15 weeks. What is the new agreement you’ve come up with the town?
We’ve scaled back the number of courts from 15 to 10 in year one. We’ve cut out all of the adult programming, all of the liquor licences and the idea of running tournaments where liquor would be involved for year one. We’ve entered a profit sharing agreement with the municipality where registration that comes through on the tournament side would result in revenue for the municipality. We’ve taken all of their concerns and digested them and came up with a proposal we believe will be suitable to the municipality and the residents.

Is the time length pretty similar?
We’ve scaled things back big time. We’re trying to show the residents and the municipality that we are listening and we’re hoping the residents will be sensitive to the changes and aware that the changes were made on behalf of them.
The courts are not being used nearly as much as it appears. In terms of the beach being used 24/7 by the beach volleyball courts, that’s not even close to a true equation. We have three child youth camps in place that are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays, and that’s for a total of three weeks. We’re running three OVA youth tournaments; we cancelled our first tournament in June.

One big change is the venue.
Yeah, the venue is now being changed to the main beach. For us, it’s equally exciting. Each beach has its advantages, but the main beach, we’re very happy to be there.

Would you consider other venues?
The program needs to exist and function out of the Grand Bend beach. The beach is the lifeline to the success of the program. Tourists and volleyball clientele want to be on the beach and experiencing beach volleyball on the beach in front of the water. Grand Bend presents an exceptional beach to do that on.

A lot of people remarked on the dollar figure for the original deal. What is the situation now?
The municipality will be making more money now, but it’s a win-win. What will end up happening in the new deal, the town will make more money with more programming. Should we be offered more tournament time, the municipality and businesses will make more money. Should they decide to lighten the tournament load, they end up getting less revenue. They want more money, they’re getting more money. But with that, we have to have more tournaments.

What is your vision for beach volleyball in Grand Bend?
We’re going to take slow steps and see what the market yields. If you do your research, some of your top volleyball players, including the top male and top female, came from the London and Kitchener-Waterloo areas. Western Ontario has a great volleyball history, and that history will get better. You’ll start to see beach volleyball athletes develop. Athletes simply don’t want to travel to Toronto and Cobourg, so our hope is a lot of families will see an opportunity to stay close to home and invest their time and energy in Grand Bend.

What’s your reaction to the way the community reacted to your proposal?
You have a generational gap who don’t understand the demands that young children are faced with and the many routes young children and adults can take these days. They don’t get the PlayStations and all the other distractions life presents for these families and young kids. I’m sensitive to that. I’m not calling them naïve. I’m calling them unfamiliar with the environment kids are dealing with.
At the same time, I’m completely aware and sensitive to these families who are craving more for their children. This program, without a doubt, is going to give the community a healthy, athletic focus. There are many residents, older and younger, who are afraid to speak. The way the other side presented their case, it was quite bluntly very aggressive. Any time people are afraid to speak, you have a problem. People should be able to speak openly and voice their opinions, and that certainly was not the case with this item. A lot of misinformation was dealt initially, and that bred anger and created a revolt against the project. As a citizen, I don’t agree with that.

I understand you have received some threats. Do you have any safety concerns?
I don’t. I think there will be a lot of focus and attention dealt toward volleyball and I think it’s a good thing. People are going to quickly realize this is a good, sound project, and we’re doing a good thing for the community. People involved in the project are going to take a lot of pride in the program, what we’re doing. I’m not concerned about safety at this point. We’ve addressed some of the safety issues, and we made it very clear that we’re going to be watching very carefully for outsiders who are not in support of the program.

There have been suggestions that because of your relationship to Charlie Ivey, who is related to former mayor Cam Ivey, that some favour was curried here. Has your affiliation with the Iveys led to any special treatment at council?
For anyone who wants to know how the volleyball business works, this has been the most taxing volleyball project I’ve ever been attached to. For anyone who thinks this has been an easy journey and that the Iveys have helped streamline this process and make it easy for us to get a contract, they’re sadly mistaken. Of every deal I’ve ever put together – with literally 20 or 30 companies or municipalities – this has been an extremely detailed process. Charlie has been a mentor to me, but in no way, shape or form has the Ivey name taken this deal through the pipes easily.

How do you heal the gap between your company, which wants to be here, and the people who are already here, especially the group led by Ed Fluter? What steps can you and they take to heal that rift?
I think they have to understand that there is a generation looking for more. We’re very grateful and thankful to be on the beach. We plan on working through a program model that is respectful to the community. If they plan to continue to slam the program and ruin the program, if that’s how they want to spend their lives and create their legacy in Grand Bend, that’s their path. If that’s the path they want to take, no one can stop them. But I’ll tell you that they’ll be upsetting a lot of families if it continues.

What is Grand Bend missing if it decides not to do this?
It’s a watershed moment. In the community of Grand Bend, we’ve had countless people email us to say they’re scared and are starving for a program like this. There’s a group of people that yields a lot of power and they do it in ways like mobbing. That’s what this was. They created misinformation and have managed to get a whole lot of people angry.

What if you aren’t here? What will you do?
I’ll continue on. I’m a passionate guy who’s involved in a game that’s done a lot for me. I don’t plan on ever stopping my volleyball journey. The sport has done wonderful things for my life and I feel I’m a disciple of the game.
If we need to go an alternative route, we will. But my hope is we don’t have to go down that road. I’m really confident that Grand Bend is the right spot to be.

Ed Fluter is a Grand Bend resident and representative of a new community association supported by many residents in the area. Fluter and his group oppose the PVB project – and any others – using the public beach for commercial purposes.
The Grand Bend Strip spoke with him shortly before Monday night’s council meeting.

Interview and photo by Casey Lessard

What are your main issues with volleyball on the beach at Grand Bend?
This is not a volleyball issue. I am a strong proponent of volleyball and other sports. My career was as a physical educator and coach. I love volleyball and sports and the benefits of sports. This issue is about commercializing our beach, a beach that has been designated for public use. It’s my feeling and our feeling – I represent a fairly large segment of the population right now – that no commercial activity should take over any portion of any of our beaches.
Beach volleyball is big business. If you have John Morrison of Not So Pro owing the City of Toronto $328,000 (including, according to the Globe and Mail, $113,000 for three months rent), you have to know this is big business. Even if it weren’t a huge potential for business, it’s still a for-profit activity on our beach.

So what do you say to suggestions that many of those opposed are of a certain generation that does not understand the needs of young people?
It has absolutely nothing to do with it. We are trying to protect this beach for people of all ages. We feel it is totally unfair that an organization of any kind is allowed to take over and lease a portion of public beach for private use for four months. One of the great joys I’ve seen over the years, on that part of the north beach that is not used for bathing purposes, the area considered underutilized is often used for spontaneous free play for people of all ages. I’m a strong advocate of that. Zoning regulation states that lakeshore be used for such passive recreation.
This deal is a precedent we don’t want to be set. I’m not against non-profit groups coming in and using a portion of the beach for a weekend, preferably during the shoulder seasons. In fact, I would be a proponent of that.
That portion of the beach that will be used for beach volleyball can be used by nobody else if they’re running from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week for the entire summer.

You are part of a new group referred to at council as the Community Association of Lambton Shores. Can you tell me about that?
We felt that our voice was not being heard. When you can show up with 100 people at three or four council meetings, when you can show up with 200 at the only meeting we had any opportunity to have input in (the PVB meeting on May 1), when you can get over 1000 names on a petition, including 50 businesses, when you can get that kind of vocal majority and be totally disregarded, you have to take further steps to fight this and other concerns through a group.

This has become quite a heated debate. Someone suggested they would put spikes in the courts where the children were playing volleyball. Do you and your group condone such violence?
Absolutely not. We condone no form of civil disobedience.

What do you plan to do if the revised agreement with fewer courts, shorter hours and fewer tournaments goes ahead this summer?
We are against that because it still doesn’t solve the bottom line issue. We have a number of strategies planned that I would prefer to keep in confidence at this point in time. We’re not going away. We’re not going to roll over and give up on this issue. We’ll take it as far as we possibly can.
There’s a small minority – I call them the silent minority – who claim they haven’t been heard, but have made no attempt to be heard in a formal, professional way other than complaining and gossiping in the background. Let them step forward and speak out.
We’re not getting personal in this debate. I have no personal issues with the proponents. This is an issue we’re fighting because we strongly believe in it.

Grand Bend Speedway team in memory of his late son is a way to help others

Larry Whiting formed the Derik Whiting Foundation in memory of his son, who took his own life in 2006 at age 24. Derik was an avid racer at the Grand Bend Speedway, and Larry Whiting has started a race team to help stop other youth from sharing Derik’s fate.

As told to Casey Lessard
Photos by Casey Lessard

Amanda Welsh is this year's team driver for the Derik Whiting Foundation race team.

He said he was going to hang up his helmet in 2006. He wanted to try some other stuff. He was working for me doing some property management, and was in the process of getting a truck on the road. He had gone through school for tool and die, and had passed with flying colours. His school had five awards, and he won all five. I think it was because I told him that if he flunked, he was paying for it, and if he passed, I would pay for it, so he made sure he passed.
He had a job working in tool and die for a short time in Strathroy, but it was the beginning of the crunch and they were laying people off. He struggled to get a job in the industry and came back to work with me in maintenance.

It was May 29, 2006. It was the morning, and I was working at the medical centre around 8 a.m.. I used to have another shop with my friend Rick Maguire. Rick called and said, “Can you come over to the shop?”
When I got to the shop, Rick met me outside and told me that Derik had hanged himself. It was hard to believe. First you think, no, it didn’t happen. I put reality together and knew it had.
I was dumbfounded. Lost. I did go in and look. I felt I needed that to know that it really happened. Then the police showed up.
At the funeral, I didn’t realize he had so many friends. Jim Hoffman told me it was the second largest funeral they’d had. I can understand it because he was so well liked.

I don’t think there’s a day that goes by that I don’t think about him or wonder why. He was a vibrant young man who loved life and made the best of everything he did. People called him a greeter because he was so friendly. He was the life of the party. We were all very shocked when it happened because, to this day, we don’t understand why.
It was a real shock to the family. He did leave a letter to the family that he was tired of crying himself to sleep, which we found very shocking.
A depression that’s held inside is the worst kind. If he had reached out to my wife Marlene or myself, or to his sister, or to someone at the medical centre where I work, that might have changed something.

It took about six months before I came up with the idea for the Derik Whiting Foundation. Derik was working on saving the ball diamond, so I took that on. It was something I would never have done, but Derik started it, so I felt I had to finish it. So far, with Bud Desjardine and Vince Bury, we’ve got that done. We put an ad in the paper and in the first year, we had 35-36 T-ball kids. Today, we have five traveling teams and still T-ball. The diamond’s still there. The diamond’s used so much now, we have actually taken over Dashwood for the bantams, and hopefully we’ll add two more teams, the midgets and mosquitoes.
A few people commented that Huron County has a higher than average suicide rate. I realized there weren’t a lot of programs for kids to hear about this, and I felt I had to do something. I knew how much Derik liked getting into the race car, and thought this was a good way to get kids who were having a rough time in life, or couldn’t afford it, into a race car. Give them some self-esteem and help them get over that hump in life.
A year passed, and another. We got the charitable status, but didn’t have the funding. We’re at the stage now where we have enough funding to buy a race truck and get kids into the program. We don’t just race. It’s a program where they learn mechanics, auto body, all the way down to writing stories for the local papers and taking pictures, speaking, announcing at the track, and so many other things. If one likes mechanics, we’ll try to help get that person into a garage or school for apprenticeship. Same with auto body or photography. And provide counseling while they go through the program.

We have three kids in the program now, Amanda, JJ and Jason. Amanda is driving this year and we’d like to put another car on the track next year.
We don’t pick people off the street to be part of this. They have to be in a counseling program. They’re being counseled because they’ve either made an attempt on their life or they have a real rough life. If the counselor feels the person needs a boost and is stable enough after counseling, that person can come to us and be part of the program.
We welcome any volunteers. We are looking for people who would be interested in helping the kids. Over the next winter, we would like to build the trucks, so when they get on the track next year, they know they’ve built that truck.
The end goal is that if I can save one person’s life, I’ve accomplished it. I’d like to do more than that. I have a feeling we will do a lot more than that, and that the program will grow. The future doesn’t have to involve racing. They could build a house. Let them do it and learn that they did something. That they’re part of a team. That’s what it’s all about. At the end of the day, the team did it.

I feel like I’m doing something for Derik. I miss his smile, his jokiness, his little smirk. I miss everything about him. I totally miss him. I miss him every day. It’s been frustrating getting this foundation going, and I think he’s the only one keeping me going. It was at a point about a year ago that I almost gave up on it. I’m glad I didn’t, because now we have some kids – team members – in the program, and it’s really satisfying knowing I could be helping save their life.

Larry Whiting would like to acknowledge the support of the team’s sponsors: Prosper’s Garage, Mike & Terri’s No Frills, Track21 Graphix, MacTools, Four Seasons Performance, MacFadden’s Welding, TNT Security Systems, Warwick Collision, and Glassford Chrysler.

Watch for Cole Martin, 9, of Zurich in his second War Amps TV PSA

Cole Martin of Zurich is a fun-loving nine-year-old who loves to play soccer and swim. He’s also a double amputee appearing in his second PSA for the War Amps Child Amputee program. Cole was born with only three toes and missing parts of his legs, and doctors amputated his legs above the ankle at six months. The Grand Bend Strip sat down with him and his parents Dwayne and Claudia Martin to discuss their journey.

Interview and photo by Casey Lessard
Screen capture courtesy War Amps

Dwayne: We knew from an early ultrasound that there was something not right with his legs. That created confusion among the medical staff because they had never come across this kind of situation before. They realized that there was something wrong with the legs, so they checked other limbs. They dug further and looked at internal organs. They were pretty sure nothing else was wrong but that there would be something wrong developmentally. They couldn’t even guarantee that he was going to be a highly functioning child. Just before he was born, Claudia was referred to an orthopedic surgeon, who finally gave this condition a name: fibular hemimelia. It means the absence of part or the whole limb. If he could adapt to walking with prosthetic legs, he should be otherwise a healthy child. When he was born, they had a team ready in case there were other complications.
Claudia: We were pretty confident that he was going to be fine otherwise. It was pretty devastating to hear that your child’s legs aren’t developing properly, but we believe there was a reason for him and we would do whatever we needed to do. He walks and jumps and plays. Cole hasn’t read the manual that he’s not supposed to be able to do what he does, and we’re not going to stop him. It’s a little different. We have to find legs in the mornings sometimes, and remember where we put them the night before.
The biggest thing at the beginning was telling people that he was fine: “don’t feel sorry for him”. The more we baby him, the more disabled we allow him to become. He could become disabled if we allowed him to be.
The biggest struggle was at school. When he’s climbing the ladder for the slide, he can’t feel when another child’s fingers are under his foot. We went into his class and explained this to the other kids.
Dwayne: The biggest apprehension I had was peer acceptance. We’ve found that because all the kids he goes to school with have grown up with him, they don’t see him as different. In fact, there are kids that say they wish they could take their legs off. They think it’s cool. For us, it’s always been about educating people what it’s like having an amputation and prosthetic legs. Yes, you do things a little differently, but you can do basically anything that everyone else can do. You just have to adapt a little bit. He rides a normal bike; he needs to start and stop a little differently, but he finds his own way. With skating, he can’t feel the slipperiness of the ice, so he’s had to experiment on his own.

War Amps’ help is crucial
Claudia: He has a carbon-fibre foot that is responsive, so he gets lift off the toe. Right now they’re working on swim legs for him with an adjustable ankle so he can put flippers on. He’s also getting a pair of legs without the additional height so he won’t have the additional weight when he’s running. By that time, he’ll have three pairs of legs. War Amps covers everything. We just got the bill for the swim legs, and it was almost $25,000 for one pair of legs. Regular legs are slightly less than that. War Amps is covering everything. Without their help, he wouldn’t have them.
Dwayne: We would be very limited in what we could provide him. War Amps does an amazing job of giving kids specialized gear, whether it’s arms and hands or legs and special feet. They cover everything over and above what insurance does.
Claudia: Dwayne’s plan covers 80 per cent for one pair every two years. We also get help from ADP (Ontario’s Assistive Devices Program). But they don’t cover recreational legs. War Amps allows kids to be kids, to live a normal life. Because they’re normal kids.

Cole’s biggest challenges
Claudia: The biggest problem is stump sores. The splits, the blisters, the bleeding that happens. You deal with it. He doesn’t know any different. He was six months when he was amputated. This has always been and always will be.
(When he was learning to walk,) we didn’t do anything differently. When he was learning to crawl, we had to put pads on his legs so he could grip the floor, otherwise his plastic legs kept sliding away on him. It was a little more emotional the day he walked across the kitchen because this was a child that doctors said wasn’t supposed to live, and if he lived, he would never walk. The day any child walks is a huge day, but the fact that he did it at 18 months on the day, that was emotional.
Dwayne: We’ve always taken the viewpoint that if we don’t tell him he can’t do it, he won’t think he can’t, and he’ll try it. If he tries and decides it’s too difficult for him, he can pursue it or not. For the most part, he has always exceeded what doctors say he technically should be able to do. As he’s grown, he learns his limits and he has a lot fewer limits than we believed there would be.

Dwayne: We all have challenges. His just happens to be more visible. Because of certain limitations, he can’t become a firefighter, but otherwise, there are no limits to what he can do.

Some of you may recognize the name Murray “Slim” Gordon Lewis from his long and storied career as a musician in Ontario and across North America. For others, like the editor’s parents, he was your insurance salesman.
Slim Gordon, as he was called, was born in 1926 in Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia. Today, he lives alone in an apartment in Exeter. In December, he was diagnosed with cancer. A fellow reader, Diane Lovie thought you might like to hear his story.

As told to Casey Lessard
Portraits by Casey Lessard
WSM images courtesy Slim Gordon

I had my own radio program when I was six years old in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. I had been performing with other kids on a children’s program every Saturday afternoon, and the Rawleigh man came to the house one day. He was so used to our place that he just walked in. My mother played the pump organ and she was teaching me a new song I was going to learn for the program on Saturday. When we were done, my brother came into the parlour room to tell us that he was out there, so we went into the kitchen. He had been listening to the rehearsal.
I was a boy soprano and he said to my mother, “The radio station is looking for someone to star in a program, and my wife plays piano for them.” He said, “Why don’t you bring your son down some evening and let my wife hear him?” She took me down and I got the program.
I did that for two years. The announcer was also the announcer for the show with the children. He retired to Newfoundland, so they didn’t have an announcer to do the kid’s shows. He was very good at it. I remember they didn’t have an adjustable microphone. It was a set height. If they stood me on a chair, I was too tall. If they didn’t stand me on a chair, I was too short. They had to sit me on the announcer’s lap to do the program. He was adjustable.

Boston-bound
When I was 15, I decided to start my own band. I rented a country hall for $5 per night, and we made our own posters. We had a full house. We charged 25 cents admission, and made $7 each. Farmer’s helpers were working a whole month for $10.
This was 1941. We didn’t have electric instruments. Everything was acoustic. It was a rousing success.
When I was 17, we had a dairy farm and a milk route and delivered milk by the bottle. I met a customer one Sunday, and his wife told him I sang cowboy music. There was no such thing as country music at the time. John lived in Boston, Massachusetts. He said I ought to go to the radio station and get a program on the radio.
I stayed with my uncle, who lived in Boston. While there, John took me to a country outfitters. My father gave me $100 to buy western pants, a western shirt, belt and boots, and a new guitar. John took me to a photographer and I had my picture taken. He took my picture around to the different nightclubs and tried to book me. Damned if he didn’t! I played a different nightclub every night. I was 17 and too young to drink, but that didn’t matter.
He took me to WMEX radio, and a fellow named Gene LaVerne had a country band and did a country show every day at noon. He listened to me sing and told me he didn’t have any work for me, but he got me some bookings.
John got me booked on the Boston Barn Dance, which was broadcast from the Armories every Wednesday night. I did one show and then the next week. We were leaving to come back to the house, and there were three girls standing in the lobby.
One girl came over, shook my hand, and said her name was Betty Lee. “I’m going to be doing a tour of Nova Scotia,” she said. “We’re going to be doing a radio show there and we’re looking for a boy who can sing, play guitar and act as straight man for our comedian.”
How much do you pay?, I asked. “You get $25 a week, even if you don’t work the whole six days. And you won’t have to worry about the fare back to Yarmouth because we have our own car.” So I had a job.
The next year, she was planning a U.S. tour, but I couldn’t get a work permit to work in the U.S. because they were still under wartime rules. The company I was working for offered me a position in Hamilton, and I took the chance. I worked for Cosmos Imperial Mills and I ran a loom that wove felt that was 40’ wide by 200’. It was used in paper mills.

The move to Ontario
I came to Hamilton in 1948 and started my band in 1949. We were doing a Saturday night show with three other bands at CKPC radio in Brantford. The Cockshutt plow company was hosting a show and they wanted a country band. The plowing match was coming up in Paris, and the announcer thought it would be fair to run a contest for the four bands to do the job. The audience chose. We got the job.
We had sporadic work. We rehearsed in case something came up. Then the band started pestering me. “We’ve been rehearsing two to three nights a week for two years. Are we ever going to go out and get jobs working nightclubs or something?” So I thought, well, we have a big enough repertoire – I could do 500 songs myself – maybe I should go see what I can do.
We had an audition at Hanrahan’s Tavern, and we got our first job. I told him what our price was and he accepted it. We didn’t have an argument. We had a two-week gig, which was normal. The first week, I noticed a guy came in and sat at the bar. He looked like a businessman. He came again the next night. He said, “I’m Harold Kudlutz, I book bands.” He became our agent. He booked us for quite a long time.
I had a good paying job because not a lot of people can weave felt. Now I had a problem. Halfway through the second week at Hanrahan’s, I was bushed. I went to my factory manager and explained the situation. I asked for Wednesday mornings off to get a day that I could sleep in and catch up. I didn’t want to quit what I was doing because I had been working toward it for a long time. He agreed to it.
Then, by golly, we started getting bookings in Toronto. So I went back to him. “Now what do you need,” he says. “Well,” I told him, “I’ll make it short and to the point. Can I get a six-month leave of absence?” It’s quite a question to ask someone. He said, “I suppose if I don’t give it to you, you’re going to quit.” I told him, “I guess you’re right.” He gave it to me.
That was the end of working in a factory. I never went back.
By this point, I had been married a long time. Since 1950. We met when I was trying to start a show in Hamilton at a supper club with a dance floor. I was hoping it would be a success, but it bombed. We ran it for four nights. My best friend was putting up the money for it, and he wasn’t a rich man.
Rita Muir was a girlfriend of my competitor, Mike Patoma. He came to one of the shows, and brought her and her girlfriend.
He took me down and introduced me to her. It was a mistake on his part, if he was serious. But then, it was a big mistake on my part because I married her. We were married for 12 years. Twelve years of pure hell. We had three daughters, but the last one, Leslie, wasn’t mine. That was the end of the marriage.
That didn’t stop me from loving the little girl. She had nothing to do with it. When we broke up, Rita took Leslie with her.
Last January, one of my daughters died of cancer. The night of her memorial, some of the family came and Leslie came, too. I said, “The last time I saw you, you were 10 years old.”
She said, “I remember the last time I saw you.” I asked how old she was, and she said 52. I said, “I haven’t seen you for 40 years.” She looked the same. I couldn’t believe it. Forty years. And she still felt like my daughter. She threw her arms around my neck and stood there and cried. It had to be 20 minutes. I haven’t seen her since.

Hit the road, Slim
(After my marriage ended,) I did a tour with George Jones and one with Hank Snow, each for a month. I’m still playing nightclubs, but now I play Toronto a lot. We didn’t have a holiday for two years, so I went back to Oshawa, where I bought a house. I gave Rita the house in Hamilton to take care of the girls.
I used to run Saturday night shows in the Red Barn. In the fall of ’64, a fellow came who owned a dude ranch north of Kirkland Lake. He wanted to know whether the band and I would do a TV show from the ranch as a form of advertising. We settled on a price for Sunday night.
The guy was going to try to pull a fast one on me. If you’re in this business long enough, you get wise to this stuff. He wrote me a cheque that night when the show was finished. I was up the next morning when the bank opened and I went into the bank. The teller told me they couldn’t honour any more cheques from him. I could see his idea of the TV show, but not with my money. Back to the ranch.
I pull into the yard of the ranch, and he’d just come out of the ranch house with a metal cash box in his hand, heading for the bank. He said, “Where’ve you been?” I said, “To the bank, they wouldn’t honour your cheque.” He told me to come back into the ranch house and he’d give me cash. All smiles, I told him that would suit me just dandy. His wife stood there gritting her teeth.

We wound up in Hearst, the last jumping off point in Ontario. You either have to turn east or west; you can’t go north, no highway. I met a guy who came and asked if he could play banjo on my show. His name was Smiley Bates. Not too many guys running around playing the five-string banjo. Hard to play.
He said, “I play everything. If it’s got strings on it, I play it.” And he did. He played them all equally well. I needed a smaller band to play nightclubs, so I thought I’d hire him. Before I left Hearst, I had a booking at the Franklin Hotel in Kirkland Lake.
I had two weeks off and I was in Oshawa. My agent called and said the band playing the Queen’s Hotel in Seaforth was from the United States and their banjo player ruptured his appendix. They can’t play a show without him. He asked if we would fill in. And here I thought we’d have two weeks off.
We had a ball. The second night we were there, Smiley said to me, “Did you see the blonde that came in here?” I said, “I’m not bothered with women, I just came through a bad marriage.” He said, “She’s really something. She’s got blonde hair she can sit on.” And she did. I like long hair.
He said he’d take me down and introduce me during the break. That was his mistake. I sat and talked to her until my break was over. She had a good head, and she was real pretty. Her name was Lydia Roelofs. Dutch. She was a dandy.
When we got married, she was 20 and I was 40. They told me I was robbing the cradle. We were married for 34 years. Had two kids that made us proud. Their mother, I give the credit for that because I was on the road all the time.
I took three weeks off, and thought, I can’t subject Lydia to life on the road. If I take her to Oshawa and dump her in my apartment, I don’t know when I’m going to get back and that wouldn’t be fair to her. I thought if she could stay in Exeter, that would work out because she has friends here, went to high school here.

End of the line
In 1970, I got booked in Vietnam, so I took it. The money was damn good. I was going to be entertaining American troops.
It was busy. You flew somewhere every day of the week. If you couldn’t fly, you took a train or a van. I was by myself, no road band. A lot of clubs had house bands. You want to talk about bands? Get a Japanese or Filipino country band; as good as anything in Nashville. Couldn’t speak a word of English. Well, there was always one guy who could speak enough that you could get by, but other than that, no. Did that for 17 weeks.
The closest I came to being in danger that I know of, I was flying from Manila in the Philippines to Taipei, Taiwan. When we got there, my road manager came running as I came down the gangplank. He said, “We were really worried. We didn’t know if you were going to get here or not.” I said, why?
He said, “What time did you leave Manila?” Quarter past twelve. He said, “Well, they blew up the airport at 12:30.”
I was over there in 1970 over Christmas, New Year’s, and my birthday, December 30. I missed my family, and I thought this is a stupid damn job. I’m 10,000 miles away from my family at Christmastime. I should start doing something else. I don’t think I’m ever going to be a big star. Just a little star. This is after 31 years in the business.
I came home and didn’t do anything for a month. I told my wife I wasn’t going to do anything for a year. I was going back to college for woodworking. I’ve always loved woodworking all my life. I took a course in fine carpentry and cabinet making. I loved it. Made loads of stuff.
I built my own house. I knew how to do that because we did it at school. I worked in insurance for 18 years until I retired. I lived in that house for 25 years.

A sudden change
In 1999, Lydia died. Heart stopped. She hadn’t been sick. Doctor didn’t know there was anything wrong with her.
It was two days before Christmas. Twenty-third of December. She was laying out her pies because we were going to have both of the children with their families. She said to me, “When you have your sandwich, could you go uptown and get the Christmas turkey?” Holtzmann’s had called and told us our fresh turkey had arrived from Hayter’s.
It was 2:20 because I looked at my watch. I went uptown, got the turkey, came back home, and my wife was dead on the floor. That’s all the warning we had. The end of a happy marriage.
I couldn’t believe it. It was days before I could think it wasn’t happening. A bad dream; I couldn’t wake up.
Phoned the kids and told them. Thursday. Thursday afternoon. Couldn’t believe it. Thought I was safe. I’m going to die first, for sure, because there’s 20 years between us.
I lived eight years in the house by myself. I was lonely there. The house had everything we wanted. Took me six and a half years to build it because I was working in the insurance office. All beams in the ceiling. A huge backyard. Four thousand square feet. Five bedrooms, pool room, a bar with more booze than some of the clubs I played in. But it became too much for me.
I never thought I’d wind up like this (living in an apartment). I thought my wife and I would live in our house.

A new battle
In December, I wasn’t feeling that well. I had trouble with my throat, and I went to the doctor. They decided to run some tests.
First, they did an ultrasound. Then they found something. They did an x-ray and a CAT scan. The CAT scan nailed it down. She said, “You’ve got cancer.” In my kidney.
I thought, you can haul one out and leave the other one.
I went to the surgeon in London, Dr. Chin. He’s the top surgeon in London. I told him I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, so I don’t take blood. He said, “Just a moment. You don’t have to worry about the blood because I’m not going to operate. You’re 83 years old. Most people don’t realize how complex a kidney operation is. It’s a hell of a shock to your system. I think the shock would kill you.” Shit.

So here I sit. I’m looking at alternative medicine. Conventional medicine won’t look at that at all. It’s a hell of an attitude. They’re killing people doing that.
It’s a pain in the ass, no, the kidney. When it comes to alternative health, you can control it through what you eat. The guy I’m dealing with now is Dr. Julian Whittaker in California. He’s been using this system for 30 years and never had a failure yet. I could be number one.
I’m not cryin’. I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. I’m not afraid of dying anymore. I was apprehensive before, but I’m not afraid now. There’s no such thing as hell.
I’ve got nothing to complain about. I’m happy I lived in the time that I lived. From 1926 to 2010, that’s a hell of a long time. Look at the changes I’ve seen. I think I’m pretty lucky.

Pinnacle of a career
In 1962, I was running shows at the Red Barn in Oshawa Sunday nights in the wintertime. I was bringing in talent from Nashville and Wheeling; both had 50,000-Watt stations. I had booked Skeeter Davis, who had about five gold hits by then. She was going to be flying in Saturday evening. I couldn’t go pick her up because I was doing the radio show, so I sent my wife down to pick her up at the airport. She brought her up to the station, so she was there when I signed off. I had written and rewritten the signoff about five or six times. “Mama, put the kettle on, I’m coming home.” Thanked the people for listening. Skeeter is listening to this, and when I got finished, I looked at her and she had tears in her eyes. She said, “That’s the most beautiful close I’d ever heard. Could you do that again on a tape not going out on the air?” I did it.
She took it home to Ralph, her husband, an all-night DJ at WSM Nashville. She played it for the board of directors. They said, that’s our next DJ.
I got a telegram from WSM at the end of October asking me to come to Nashville September 2, 1962. Nashville voted me Mr. DJ USA. I’m the only Canadian that ever got that award. I did a one-hour broadcast as a DJ from Nashville. We had five or six Opry stars lined up for my show.
Later, I walked out on the stage to perform at the Grand Ole Opry. In the floor of the stage at the Grand Ole Opry, there’s a circle there about 8’ to 10’ in diameter, where it’s new wood. That’s where all the stars perform because that’s centre stage. Walking out there, when you see that circle and you know you’re going to stand there, it gives me teardrops. You feel about two inches high. Really humble. I did a song, “I’ll Pretend There Was No Yesterday”.
That was the pinnacle.

Jolene Unwin of Crediton died October 9, 2007 after the car she was driving rolled on the gravel road near her home. She was a month shy of her 20th birthday. To remember Jolene, Jim and Donna Unwin organize an annual hockey game involving family, friends and the London Devilettes, a team she was about to start playing hockey with before her death.
This year’s game was held March 27 at the South Huron Recreation Centre in Exeter. Funds raised this year go to the Critical Care Unit at the London Health Sciences Centre, where Jolene spent her last moments.

As told to Casey Lessard
Game photos by Casey Lessard

Donna: She was almost born on Friday the 13th. She would stay up late at night, wouldn’t go to bed even when she was a baby. She’d be up in the morning at six o’clock when Jim would go to work. She just never wanted to miss anything.

Before she played hockey, she was a member of the Exeter Starlights Baton for two or three years, and she also played baseball. When she was in Grade 8, that summer she said, “I’m going to play hockey next year and I’m going to be a goalie.” Sure enough, they didn’t have one, so that’s when she started playing hockey and went into net.
Jim: I coached her for three years. I liked to see her play hockey because she always played road hockey out here with the boys, and she was the goalie. I tried to get her to use her glove hand a lot. I’d fire tennis balls at her all the time. The first year she played goal, she was voted to go to the all-star game.
Donna: With the hockey, because of her size, the first time she was skating around against Parkhill, the girls commented that the net was taller than the goalie. But she surprised them all.

As she was going through school, she was an artist right from the start. She was always drawing stuff or making stuff. She made her own doll outfits. As she got older, I don’t think she ever went anywhere without her sketchpad. That’s why we’ve got all these pictures here. If she got depressed, she would draw a picture and that would help her out.

Finding her way
Donna: She had just got her license in June, just before she started her course at Fanshawe College. She had taken a year off school and was here all the time. When we were away, she did a lot of cutting grass and taking care of the house. She’d help the boys with their homework if they needed it. It was weird to have her out of the house.
Jim: I didn’t want her moving to London, but it was nice for her to move on.
Donna: And she moved in with friends, two of them her best friends. It wasn’t like she was going off to be with people she didn’t know.
She came home on Thanksgiving Saturday and picked up Jacob to bring him up to Kincardine, to our place up there. My mom and dad, and aunt and uncle were there and we had Thanksgiving there. Jacob had a project, so she brought him home on Sunday and took him into town to a friend’s place.
For some reason, she came back here rather than going straight back to London. She lost control of the car on the gravel road. It was freshly laid gravel. They had just done it the past week. When Jacob come home from where he was doing his homework, that’s when we found out about it.

As soon as the police called us, all they said was we had to get to London. The hospital called and said we had to get there right away. They wouldn’t say anything about her condition. The police told us they don’t condone speeding, but we should get there as fast as we could. You have a feeling when they say that, that there’s something terribly wrong.

Jim drove and I was calling everyone so my mind wasn’t dwelling on what was going on. When we got to the hospital and they told us, it was very, very hard.
They were asking us to do organ donations. We decided to do that, and at about 11:30, they tested her and her brain was still alive, so they kept her on life support. Then at about three o’clock, she had no blood pressure and I heard one of the nurses in back say that if that keeps up, the organs won’t be any good. So we decided then to shut the machine off and there was no use to put her through any more. It was hard to do.
We turned the machine off and watched her pass away. I spent a little time with her and we came home. One of the longest days of our lives.
Jim: It still hurts. I go talk to her every day at the cemetery in Crediton. Every day.
Donna: We still struggle with it, even now. It’s going to take us a long time to get over it.
You just go a day at a time. That’s why we do this game to keep her memory going. Her friends have been a good support. I don’t really remember a lot of it because you go through on autopilot. It gets a little easier, but not much. There’s always things you know you’re not going to be able to do.
I don’t think she would want us to dwell on it. She would want us to get over it. But that’s not the way things are. I know she wouldn’t want us to be upset about it all the time. But it’s not that easy.

This year’s game raised about $6,000 for the LHSC Critical Care Unit. Jim would like to see the game grow to include a match with former NHL players. In addition to this fundraiser, Jim’s employer donates money for a scholarship in Jolene’s memory to help students interested in art or sports who need financial assistance to attend school.

High School Musical
Presented by Drayton Entertainment
Huron Country Playhouse
May 19 to 30
Tickets: $39 for adults, $20 for under 18
Box office: 1-888-449-4463

Photos and story by Casey Lessard

Aiming for fame, more than 100 teenagers joined auditions in Exeter and Guelph for Drayton Entertainment’s summer presentation of Disney’s High School Musical, which runs at the Huron Country Playhouse May 19 to 30. After a weekend of auditions, including a full Sunday at South Huron District High School, 80 actors were chosen to join the P.E.P. Squad, the play’s chorus.
“I saw it in the paper and right away I knew that it was something I had to do,” said Alicia Veens, 16, a student at North Lambton Secondary School in Forest. “I love the play a lot, and I love to sing. I love to dance, even though I’m not very good.”
Veens and the rest of the teens had to show their abilities in both areas. Director and choreographer David Connolly and dance captain Michelle Black taught the audition attendees one of the routines those selected will be performing in the play, “We’re All In This Together”.
“It was nerve-wracking,” said Viktor Coletta, a South Huron student from Parkhill. “I was scared out of my mind. I wasn’t expecting what they did. I felt better when we were in groups, but I think I did pretty good.”
The Drayton team acknowledges the fear auditionees have. After all, for some, this is their first time trying out for a professional role.
“We had kids coming to the door, still not convinced of whether they were going to do it at all,” Michelle Black said. “Still thinking it over and they got here. The fact is, they got the courage to learn the material and present at the end.”
The process is not new for Grand Bend’s Meaghan Forrester. She was in the chorus of last season’s Oliver!
“With my Oliver! audition, I screwed up, too, and let my performance suffer,” Forrester said. “This one I screwed up, but I felt my performance was better. You miss a step or have to catch up.
“I hope I get in, but if I don’t, I’m applying to university and those auditions need work,” she added. “If I do get in, I plan to work a lot harder than I did on Oliver!, because we had a lot more time and it was less complicated. This will be less time and more complicated.”
It seems Forrester impressed Connolly and Black; she was among those chosen to join the squad for eight performances this summer. But Connolly understands the pressure the audition process puts on a new performer.
“These kids are making courageous choices to be here,” he said. “For some, it’s an obvious choice; their parents support them and they drove them and it was a no-brainer. There are others who moved mountains to get into that room. When you know what an audition is, it’s scary enough, but they don’t even know what an audition is and they’re walking into a room to put it all on the line.”
Alicia Bradley, 17, of London put it on the line. The Central Secondary School student, who spends summers at a cottage in Grand Bend, has experience at the Grand Theatre in London, where she was a pianist. She was hoping to move from the orchestra pit to the stage.
“I love to dance and sing, Bradley said. “I want to go into theatre at university, but I didn’t realize that until last year, so I’m trying to get my show experience now. I have a couple of auditions at Ryerson, York and U of T. I’m a dancer, so I thought this would be a good chance to get on stage.”
Unfortunately, Bradley is not among those who will be on the Playhouse stage this summer. Neither will Beth Smallman, a South Huron student new to professional theatre.
“I want to go into acting after high school,” Smallman said. “This was my first audition. I’ve been in a lot of drama things through school. I wanted to see what an audition is like and see whether I get it.”
No matter, though. It was a worthy experience for the teen.
“It went really well,” she said. “I learned a lot. I tried my hardest and it was a lot of fun.”
That’s the kind of attitude David Connolly was looking for, even if it didn’t translate into a position with the cast. The overwhelming desire to succeed reminds Connolly of his early theatre years.
“My first big audition was for Alan Lund at Kitchener-Waterloo Musical Productions. I had done some dancing with dance studios and competed a little, but Alan Lund was standing in front of me with Cynthia Toushan Brnjas, who was his assistant, and I didn’t even know that choreographers had assistants. I remember being in awe of that. I must have been so bad and awkward. But we’re looking for passion, someone who can’t think of anything else they’d rather do, and I must have had that.”
It’s all about perspective, Michelle Black said.
“If they did it again, it’s less of an audition and more of a workshop on life. Every time I spend time with David, I learn a little more about myself. Today, if they don’t get the show, the confidence they’ll get from being in the room with him is huge.”
And it’s not for everyone.
“We had a girl yesterday break down in the middle and say, ‘I can’t do this,’” Black said. “You can see that, for some of them, it’s terrifying.”
It wasn’t a problem for Virginia Iredale of Exeter, who earned a spot on the squad.
“The hardest part is keeping it all together,” the Grade 10 student said. “I don’t get embarrassed on stage. The easiest part was coming. I just decided, I’m going, my mom will bring me. Then it’s like, I’m here, guess I get to do it now.”
Family support is important, and makes the process easier.
“My mom made me (audition),” said Viktor Coletta. “I did this in London with Original Kids. I was Zeke Baylor, the cook. It’s a fun show, a lot of energetic people.”
Alicia Veens came wearing a shirt that reads Born to be Famous.
“My grandma bought me this shirt,” Veens said. “She loves what I do and hopes for the best for me. I want to be famous really bad.”
And she knows what it takes to get there.
“If you have it, you have it. You don’t have to be good looking, as long as you have the talent and believe in yourself.”
Words David Connolly might argue were taken right out of his mouth. He hopes some kids discovered this about themselves during the audition process.
“You can tell somebody they’re great, but that will never replace them feeling that they did it themselves,” he said. “That moment of doing it for themselves will stay with them.”
Veens walked away wanting the moment to last.
“I would love to get a letter in the mail saying I’ve made it. I’ve always wanted to be in a play like this.”
“I’d like to see all the good people get it,” added Virginia Iredale. “I will definitely go see it now because it looks like fun.”
No need to buy a ticket, Virginia, because you and Alicia are in it. Veens and Iredale were both added to the P.E.P. Squad roster. And yes, High School Musical looks like fun. To see it for yourself, visit http://www.draytonentertainment.com

Fran Roelands is ABCA feature artist

21st annual Conservation Dinner
Thursday, April 15
South Huron Rec. Centre, Exeter
Tickets: $50
Phone: 1-888-286-2610
http://www.conservationdinner.com

West McGillivray watercolour painter Fran Roelands is this year’s Ausable Bayfield Conservation Dinner feature artist, and is offering her painting, Along the Banks of Mud Creek (above), to this year’s auction. The painting depicts a late winter scene at the back of her family farm on Creamery Road, where she has lived for 30 years with her husband, Matt.
Casey Lessard visited her home studio and gallery to discuss art and conservation.

As told to Casey Lessard

I’m an outdoors type of person. I enjoy the scenery and we’re blessed to have this beautiful climate we live in with all its seasons. I enjoy every kind of weather.
We live on the land. We appreciate the beauty that we’re surrounded by. We appreciate the clean water and clean air and try to keep it that way for generations to come. We tap into all the resources we can to do things properly.
I was inspired (to pursue art) years ago when I was young. My dad had a lot of books with drawings and I felt someday I could do that.

The artist’s way
My approach is very simple. If I’m driving around, I always have my camera with me, and if I see something interesting from a different angle, I like to capture that. I’m also interested in our modern agriculture. As much as I like the older antique nostalgic feeling, I appreciate the newer, more modern ways of farming as well. I’m interested in painting what I see as the way our future generations will be farming.
It all starts with the initial drawings, figuring out what lines of direction you’re going to use to get your viewer into the picture and to what you want them to see. You do a light and dark value sketch to make sure that image is going to work. You don’t want something that is off-balance or boring. Contrasting colours are huge; everything you do, you try to create conflict. You try to just bring that emotion out in the painting. That’s my goal.
I take lots of photographs and sometimes combine different images from different photographs. I’m very particular about the design and composition. I look at what’s important to me in this painting and I do everything I can to get my viewer to know that that’s the focal point.
My colour choices come into that. It shows what kind of day it was, or what I was feeling that particular day. Along the Banks of Mud Creek is a painting more of what I was feeling that day than the actual site. I just felt the warmth of the sun and thought, this is the best day to be back here appreciating this winter day. We’re lucky to have that in Ontario.
Local details add an emotional feeling that I want my viewer to get. I painted an old barn near Dashwood, and I love the aspects of decaying wood; I have an appreciation for things like that because I know they won’t be here forever that way. As far as animals in pastures, I see changing times. Life is change and I’m trying to capture images of this moment in time as well.
Light can give you the mood in the painting. I like to paint something that gives the viewer a positive feeling. It’s not part of the business approach; it’s my outlook on life. I try to be positive and have a good attitude about what I’m doing. I just feel I need to be true to myself when I paint. I enjoy the interaction with people coming and talking about the art, and it’s a really personal decision to them whether they would like a piece of art.
I hope people get a peaceful sense of pleasure looking at it. I did a painting once of a crazy storm in the summer time, and it was the wildest sky. Three quarters of the painting was the sky, and there was a streak of light on a farm. I did this painting and I got it framed. That was the first year of the studio tour, and I hung it up. A couple came in and said, “When we drive to our work in London, there have been so many storms this summer, and we saw that sky. And that is exactly what we felt when we saw that scene.” They bought that painting. When someone buys a painting of mine, they are buying something of me. It’s very personal.

Moving forward
I hope to keep growing and never lose enthusiasm about what I’m doing. I’m an independent spirit and I will go where I think I need to go. I hope to venture into more colourful scenes, and this one is part of that journey. I’m having fun with it, so that’s where I’m going now.

If you’re not passionate about what you’re going to paint, don’t bother because you won’t enjoy it. You have to know what inside of you drew you to that subject, and do everything you can to make your viewer know that, too.

Fran Roelands
Creamery Road Studio and Gallery
519-294-6710
http://www.franroelands.com
Viewings by appointment. Giclee prints available at Baillie’s Framing in Grand Bend and Beside Mom’s café in Parkhill.

The Grand Bend Strip leads all community newspapers in Ontario with eight nominations for this year’s Ontario Community Newspaper Awards, including best overall paper (a first for the paper) and photographer of the year for Casey Lessard, a two-time runner-up for this award. The paper also recently won two national awards, first prize ad design and third for photo essay in the Canadian Community Newspapers Association Better Newspapers Competition.
The top three OCNA entrants were announced March 1. The Parry Sound North Star has the second most nominations with seven. Winners will be announced at the OCNA’s annual conference in Toronto May 14. CCNA winners were announced March 15 and will receive their awards May 13 at the CCNA conference.
To learn more about the Grand Bend Strip’s history of awards since its first publication in May 2007, visit http://www.grandbendstrip.com/about/awards.

The Grand Bend Strip and publisher Casey Lessard are nominated in the following categories:

Canadian Community Newspapers Association

Best Ad Design (circulation up to 3,999)
1st place – Casey365.com – ad promoting website
Runners-up: The Chief (Squamish, BC), Wainwright Review (Wainwright, AB)

Best Photo Essay (circulation up to 3,999)
3rd place – Five days of good, clean fun – Parkhill Five Fun Days
Winner: The Provost News (Provost, AB)

Ontario Community Newspapers Association

General Excellence (best overall)
Class 1 [under 2,000 circulation]
Other nominees: Cobden Sun, Manotick Messenger

Photographer of the Year
Casey Lessard
Other nominees: Belleville EMC and Peterborough This Week

Education Writing
Chicago! – SHDHS music trip
Other nominees: Parry Sound Beacon Star and Richmond Hill/Thornhill Liberal

Best Photo Layout
Five days of good, clean fun – Parkhill Five Fun Days
Other nominees: Ajax/Pickering News Advertiser and North York Mirror

Best Feature Photo (circ under 9,999)
Best Seat in the House – Dashwood soap box derby cover photo
Other nominees: Aylmer Express and Bracebridge Examiner

Best Sports Photo
Hockey Night in Zurich – Mark Buruma in dressing room
Other nominees: Brampton Guardian and Mount Forest Confederate

Best Rural Story (circ under 9,999)
Fields of Gold – Marcus Koenig, potato farmer
Other nominees: Listowel Banner and New Hamburg Independent

Best Creative Advertising (circ under 9,999)
Casey365.com – ad promoting website
Other nominees: Mount Forest Confederate and Nunavut News/North

Photo and story by Casey Lessard

A sight to see, thousands of tundra swans are now back at the Thedford Bog behind the Lambton Heritage Museum. The bog is a natural staging area for the swans, who are on their way from Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, to cooler climates in Canada’s North for the summer. The trip is 6,500 km, so it’s understandable they’d want to stop for a rest and some food. Here, that includes the grains left in the fields from the fall harvest.
To celebrate the annual migration, the Lambton Heritage Museum (on Highway 21 south of Greenway Road) hosts the Return of the Swans festival. With displays, videos, and other resources, the museum is a good home base to learn more about North America’s smallest and most abundant swan.
For the month of March, the Lambton Heritage Museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors/students, $3 for children, and $15 for the family.
The best source of updates for people interested in watching the birds is the museum’s website, http://www.returnoftheswans.com, which has a migration report that is updated daily with locations where the birds are gathered. If you don’t have internet access, you can also call 1-800-265-0316.
If you go
Dress warmly and bring binoculars. If you plan to take photographs, here are some tips from the publisher:
- Assume you will need a long telephoto lens (at least 300mm). The birds are pretty far away, but there are locations where they fly over a road to move from field to field, and here you need only about 100mm. This is where I stand because you can capture them coming at you, and then over you. Just watch out for small falling objects.
- Remember to look behind you. If they fly toward you and over, they will come back later.
- Use a fast shutter speed (1/1000 or faster). These birds flap their wings quickly, so if you want sharp images, you need to freeze that motion. I try to get to about 1/4000 if I can. Can’t get that high? You might need to raise your ISO (but if it’s daylight, try to avoid higher than ISO 800)
- Use a slow shutter speed with a tripod. Breaking the rules can get some interesting motion photos. This works best in lower light.
- Use your burst mode or continuous shooting mode. You’ll want to take a rapid series of shots to get one you like. There are times when you wait five minutes for 20 seconds of action.
- If you use continuous shooting, make sure your focus is set to Servo AF, which means the camera continues to focus as long as you hold the shutter button down. Remember that the birds are constantly changing your focal point.
- Shoot at your highest resolution. You will have to crop most of these photos later.
- Bring lots of memory cards or film. You will shoot a lot, and you might get a couple of good shots from the whole day. It’s worth it, though.
- Try to arrive early. The light will give you good texture and colour, and you might be the only one there.

Linked fundraisers result in first hair cuts since birth, father’s death

Inspired by a desire to help raise money for residents of Haiti recovering from January’s earthquake, Ashlan Hollingsworth, 4, of Parkhill had her first ever hair cut at the hands of Rachel Michielsen of Beauty ‘n’ the Beach salon in Grand Bend. The $560 she raised went to support The House that Jack Built, a charity named in Rachel’s father Jack’s honour.

Her sister, Jessica Michielsen, also got a cut; she raised $12450 by cutting her dreadlocks, growing since Jack’s death in 2005. The money goes to Baptist Haiti Mission’s fund to rebuild Haiti.

Cutting Jessica Michielsen’s Dreadlocks from Casey Lessard on Vimeo.

Friends and family gathered Sunday, February 28 at the home of Jessica Michielsen to help her cut her dreadlocks for a Haiti earthquake fundraiser. Jessica cut her hair for The House That Jack Built, the charity named in honour of her late father, the builder Jack Michielsen of Arkona. The House that Jack Built builds homes for needy families in Haiti. In the wake of last month’s earthquake, the fund needs to be filled to help as many families as possible.
Jessica has been growing the dreadlocks since 2005 as part of the process of grieving their father. Each dreadlock was worth $100, and with 50 dreadlocks available, Jessica exceeded her $5000 goal, raising $8000 for the fund.
Jessica invites interested donors to make a long-term commitment, and says fund managers, registered charity Baptist Haiti Mission Canada, will be on hand to discuss monthly withdrawals; any sized commitment is welcome.
Since the earthquake of January 12, Jessica says donations The House that Jack Built fund have exceeded $16,000. Donations are collected by registered charity Baptist Haiti Mission Canada and donations over $10 are receiptable.

The House that Jack Built
Baptist Haiti Mission Canada
P.O. Box 11
602 Wellington Ave.
Wallaceburg, ON.
N8A 4L5

The Grand Bend Strip leads all community newspapers in Ontario with eight nominations for this year’s Ontario Community Newspaper Awards, including best overall paper and photographer of the year for Casey Lessard. The top three entrants were announced March 1; winners will be announced at the OCNA’s annual conference in Toronto May 14. The Parry Sound North Star has the second most nominations with seven.
To learn more about the Grand Bend Strip’s history of awards since its first publication in May 2007, visit http://www.grandbendstrip.com/about/awards.

The Grand Bend Strip and publisher Casey Lessard are nominated in the following categories:

General Excellence – Class 1
(Award for best overall paper from two random issues submitted)
Other nominees: Cobden Sun and Manotick Messenger

Education Writing
(Chicago! – SHDHS music trip)
Other nominees: Parry Sound Beacon Star and Richmond Hill/Thornhill Liberal

Best Rural Story (circ under 9,999)
(Fields of Gold – Marcus Koenig, potato farmer)
Other nominees: Listowel Banner and New Hamburg Independent

Best Feature Photo (circ under 9,999)
(Best Seat in the House – Dashwood soap box derby cover photo)
Other nominees: Aylmer Express and Bracebridge Examiner

Best Photo Layout
(Five days of good, clean fun – Parkhill Five Fun Days)
Other nominees: Ajax/Pickering News Advertiser and North York Mirror

Best Sports Photo
(Hockey Night in Zurich – Mark Buruma in dressing room)
Other nominees: Brampton Guardian and Mount Forest Confederate

Photographer of the Year
(Casey Lessard, photographer)
Other nominees: Belleville EMC and Peterborough This Week

Best Creative Advertising (circ under 9,999)
(Casey365.com – ad promoting website)
Other nominees: Mount Forest Confederate and Nunavut News/North

Crediton area rancher Julie Forrest is an animal communicator, which means she speaks with animals, expressing their thoughts to the people who take care of them. Forrest speaks to the animals – large or small – telepathically, and says they have a lot to say. She has used this skill to train the many horses and cattle on her farm, which are used as professional athletes on rodeo tours across Eastern Canada. Casey Lessard sat down with Julie Forrest, and invites you to sit back, open your mind and hear what she has to say about her work.

As told to Casey Lessard
Photos by Casey Lessard

I have communicated with animals since I was a kid, and I always thought everyone did. I didn’t realize it was a special gift or that I was different from anyone else. I always heard their voices. I’ve always heard them talk. People would say, I wonder what they’re saying and I’d say what they were saying. Everyone would laugh and I thought they heard it too, that it was no big deal. Then a friend of mine and I went away for the weekend to a course about 16 years ago, and it ended up being a telepathy course. I thought, I do that, but I didn’t know that was what it was called. I had always done it for family and friends, but from there I started doing it for other people. I came out of the closet.
It was a very big social issue. People asked me, what makes you so special that you think you can talk to animals. But what I get from the conversations, it’s definitely a validation to the owners that that is their animal.
They say one in 10 people can talk telepathically if they choose to focus. I can do people, but I choose not to for the simple fact that people are so hung up on themselves and the social or religious whatever. People are more critical.
Animals say what they need to say. They don’t sugarcoat anything and they tell you like you need to hear it. End of subject. It’s not usually opinionated things. They’re telling the truth because animals show our truths.
I always ask the animals to describe their essence, to tell me something that the owner knows they always do. It’s not like I go and tell them that they like to roll over and have their bellies scratched. Every animal’s different. Their response validates to the owner that it is their animal. Then we ask them their problems and what’s going on.

An ongoing conversation
They can hear you all the time. Animals speak telepathically, so whatever you picture, they’re also able to pick that up. People say dogs can always sense when you’re afraid of them. Chances are pretty good that when you walk away from that dog that you’re thinking in your mind, please don’t bite me. You’re picturing this dog coming from behind and grabbing you, so you have actually given that dog permission to do that. You’re giving him that visual image.
The level of a conversation from an animal is so much higher than we can imagine. They have so much more knowledge of the universe than we do. Some can be extremely deep.
The owners will write up a list of questions they want to ask the animal and I sit down and write out the conversation so they have a copy of it and I always have a copy. I’ll read it back to the person and see if there are any other questions from that. It’s important that the animal is able to convey what they want their owner/guardian to know or understand about their problems. I always read it back first to be sure it’s explained on that proper level, the way they want it. You could put out a piece of paper and 10 different people could read it 10 different ways. That’s why I always want to interpret it the way it is meant to be interpreted.
Every animal has its own voice. Some have accents. I did a horse that had a really strong English accent with ye and thee, and it’s important to put that in the conversation as I hear it because it means something to the owner. He ended up being shipped here from England. They all have different personalities the same as we do, so of course, they’re going to have different voices the same as we do.
They speak English. I’ve done some from Quebec that are raised French and I ask them to come to me in a universal language that I can understand. There may still be the odd French word in there and I write it down as it sounds because I don’t understand French, but the owner will know what it means.
There’s none that are ever too shy to talk. As soon as you’ve given them that opportunity, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, I can finally be heard. Yes! They’re getting it. I can convey what I want them to know.’ Animals all already speak on that level, and that’s why we have so much more to learn from them than from each other.
The only animals that are really hard to work with are chickens and emus. I’ve done every other animal and they’re thrilled to be able to talk. I’ve done seven or eight pages of a conversation. Small animals like a cat or dog can take anywhere from 30 or 45 minutes to an hour. Some conversations with horses and dogs can take from two to four hours. I did a conversation with one horse that had hopes of being a Pan-Am horse racer and heading to the Olympics, and we talked for four and a half hours. That was almost a whole notebook. We wanted to make sure everything was covered.

Communication and rodeo
I’ve been riding since I was three and showing competitively since I was seven. When Ed and I got together, he decided he wanted to do a more manly thing, so that was the rodeo and we’ve been together for 16 years now. We started off just competing in steer wrestling, barrel racing, and roping events, and it’s been about nine or 10 years now that we’ve been the stock contractors for the rodeos for Eastern Canada. We supply the stock (steers and calves) for the rodeos for steer wrestling, team roping, breakaway roping, tie-down roping and junior steer riding. That covers five of the seven mandatory events.
We have always integrated the two businesses, communicating and rodeo. With the average calf-roping horse, it typically takes a full two years to train them to do that. I can do it in three to six months because I can talk to them and tell them, “This is what I want you to do. This is your job. Do you understand?” If I can’t explain what I want verbally, I show them a picture. I show them an image of, for example, “I want you to do a sliding stop when the rope becomes tight on that calf, and you have to face up to that calf and be in control.” Then I’ll ask them, “What’s the best time for your rider to get off? When you’re squatted or just as you go to stop? That rider has to come off and you’ve got to help send him off. Do you like the rope where we have it positioned on your face? ‘No, I don’t like it there, I want it lower.’” Then it hooks underneath instead of coming by his eye. Different things like that.
We can really tell him, “When the gate cracks, you’ve got to follow that calf out.” Other people have to keep drilling it and drilling it, whereas I can talk to him and tell him what we need him to do, “Now what do you need us to do to make it better for you?” It makes for a better relationship and a faster training process. It makes everyone happier.
Not all horses want to do that type of job. You could spend a full two years on a horse and it’d never be able to step up to the plate to be that champion horse or do the job to the best of its ability because it doesn’t want to do that. We’ve had some like that. That’s fine. We change their career or we sell them to somebody who’s going to be compatible with that animal.
All our stock has to be trained prior to going to the rodeo. You can’t just pull a cow out of the field and say, you’re going to go and do this, so they’re trained so their muscles are stretched equally as well to ensure they don’t get hurt. It’s inevitable that at some point, some of them may get hurt, but we’ve had a really good record of not many getting hurt. You lose more from a sickness in a barn; we look after our rodeo stock very well. It’s our livelihood. It’s mandatory that they are looked after; it’s no different than our horses. They are athletes, so they need the best care and upkeep because we’re traveling. It’s nothing for us to travel 2100 km in a weekend. We leave on a Thursday, go to Quebec for an 18 hour drive, show there, travel all night another 12 hours to another rodeo, and from there another 10 hours home.
I get lots of emails saying, “If you’re an animal communicator, how come you’re promoting the sport of rodeo? That’s cruelty to animals.” It’s not. It gives them a career. It’s no different than us having a career or the horses having a career. If those cattle are not used for rodeo, their only other option in life is to be in our freezer. These animals have a career for two or three – and some even four or five – years depending on what they’re doing. They follow the ranks up, starting with calf tie-down, then breakaway, then steer wrestling and team roping, and then to junior steer riding. If they’re good and like what they’re doing, they keep on going. Otherwise, most of them are butchered before they’re two years of age. Now they have a career. Being longhorns, they’re extremely smart animals.

We can learn so much
I don’t believe there’s any such thing as a stupid animal. Animals are the same as people. You can be an old soul or a young soul. If you get a dog that doesn’t listen, it’s because their either don’t associate with their name, or because they’re a very young soul and it’s your job to teach them the ways of the world. You get some, that old soul that picks up things so quickly and is so intelligent and that’s because they’ve been here many times. An animal’s purpose in life is to be taught and to teach. To help us along the way.
There’s so much that animals have to offer. Beavers build a dam that we have to blow up with dynamite. Why couldn’t we learn how to build something that strong? Birds build nests that can withstand tornadoes. Spiders’ webs are the strongest substance in the world. Ants build colonies that don’t destroy our land. People are destroying our natural resources and destroying different animal species for our own selfish, ignorant purposes. People are using monkeys for their gall bladders and eating their brains for a delicacy.
They show us so much, like unconditional love, responsibility, not to be so endeavoured into ourselves and to think of others. Animals are a huge part of our lives. Our kids can grow up and move out, but our animals are still here.
I’ve always been the type of person who gets along better with animals than I do with people. I always believe that animals have so much more to share with us than the average person does with each other.
They’ve proven that a lot of animals – for example, gorillas – can speak by hand language. Animals whose owners are hearing or speech impaired learn those hand signals and know what they mean.
Most people only use eight to 10 per cent of our brains. A lot of people are so caught up in our social and cultural structures that we’re not open enough to accept other forms of communication. Telepathy can be done through audio, pictures, feelings, or colours.
When I first started, there were a lot of skeptics. People would say, ‘I’m going to let you talk to my horse just to prove that you’re wrong.’ And I did that in the beginning to prove that I was talking to their animal. I did that for the first two years, but now I don’t have to prove myself to anybody. If you want my services, you’ll ask for it. These days, there are a lot of people who do believe in it, and are looking for methods to help their animals other than pharmaceuticals.

Lessons from furry friends
It’s just kept me very humble and not judgmental. Through the eyes of the beholder, it has made me realize that I’m equal with everybody. I don’t ever think I’m better than any one else. We’re all equal, and we have to be equal to coincide with everybody. I am not my dogs’ master. I may be their guardian and I am looking after them, but we are all equal. We have to learn from each other and teach each other.
Every conversation with an animal is new and fresh. It never gets old. I love my life and I love what I’m doing.

Julie Forrest offers animal communication sessions for $75 for small animals (cats/dogs, etc.) and $125 for large animals (horses/cows, etc.). To learn more, visit http://www.julieforrest.com or call 519-234-6130.

By Casey Lessard

Sisters Rachel Michielsen-Gray and Jessica Michielsen are running two hair-cutting fundraisers this month to benefit a charity honouring their father, the late builder Jack Michielsen of Arkona.
Rachel, a hairdresser at the Beauty ‘n’ the Beach salon, will be cutting hair this Saturday, February 20 at the salon’s temporary location, 20 Ontario Street South in Grand Bend (across from New Orleans Pizza). She and Barb Speirs will be donating all proceeds from hair services bought that day to The House that Jack Built, a fund named in her father’s honour that builds homes for needy families in Haiti. In the wake of last month’s earthquake, the fund needs to be filled to help as many families as possible. The salon will offer draw prizes, refreshments (by donation) and hand massages. To book an appointment, call 519-238-6520.
Rachel’s sister Jessica is running a separate fundraiser that involves donors cutting the dreadlocks she has been growing since 2005 as part of the process of grieving their father. Each dreadlock was worth $100, and with 50 dreadlocks available, Jessica has already exceeded her $5000 goal, raising $8000 for the fund.
All dreadlocks are accounted for, but those interested in donating and being part of the cutting process (if dread purchasers don’t show for the event) are invited to an open house at 27 Eastglen Drive in Arkona from 3-6 p.m. on Sunday, February 28. Jessica invites interested donors to make a long-term commitment, and says fund managers, registered charity Baptist Haiti Mission Canada, will be on hand to discuss monthly withdrawals; any sized commitment is welcome.
Since the earthquake of January 12, Jessica says donations The House that Jack Built fund have exceeded $16,000. Donations are collected by registered charity Baptist Haiti Mission Canada and donations over $10 are receiptable.

Richard Webb wins second Canadian Poker Tour title

Story and file photo by Casey Lessard

Canadian Poker Tour champion Richard Webb will retain his crown after winning the championship this weekend in Calgary, Alberta. The Grand Bend resident beat the tour’s 50 best players, and wins a second $100,000 contract that pays for his travel and entry fees to tournaments around the world.
“I think I’m happier the second time,” Webb said in a phone interview from Calgary. “It was a tougher field this time with even better players.”
In addition to the $100,000 contract, Webb took $120,000 in winnings from the tournaments he entered last year on behalf of the Canadian Poker Tour, among them a win at the Regina Harvest Poker Classic and a second place finish at the Barcelona Open, a stop on the European Poker Tour. The Canadian Poker Tour takes 20 per cent of his winnings, and he donates an additional 10 per cent to charities, including the Grand Bend Public School playground and Grand Bend Rotary.
Considering he spent 90 days on the road this year, he is thankful for his brother and staff for keeping the family business running. One of the highlights of his year was traveling with his wife, Jackie Stenhouse, and their daughter Sarah. This week’s he’s off to join Jackie in Phoenix, Arizona before tournaments in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. In addition to visions of Germany and Greece, a trip to compete in the EPT event at San Remo, Italy, is one he’d like to repeat.
“I love the place. The country is wonderful, the city is wonderful, and we’re going to go back there.”
Webb’s win will be available for viewing at canadianchampionshippoker.com soon. His 2009 win continues to air on The Score.

Summer resident Carla Johnston set to spend winter, spring in central India

A summer resident of Grand Bend, Carla Johnston is known to many in the area as the daughter of Chris Bregman, manager of the Grand Bend Chamber of Commerce. Johnston is finishing her last semester at F.E. Madill Secondary School in Wingham before flying February 1 to Indore, in the state of Madhya Pradesh in central India. There, she will volunteer until June 8 at the Barli Development Institute for Rural Women, a vocational and residential school for rural, tribal and village women to learn basic domestic, literacy and job skills. The trip was suggested by Grand Bend’s Gord Britton, who visited the institute in December after several years of interest in their project.
“So much of social and economic development does not hit the mark,” Britton says. “The West tends to see social and economic development delivering a package from developed countries to undeveloped countries. We’ve been doing this since the mid-20th century and the formation of the United Nations in 1948. The greatest minds came together to solve global poverty, and all these NGOs started. The United Nations contracted a study in 1968, and it showed to everyone’s dismay and complete surprise that poverty got worse in those 20 years. Ten years later, they did another study and got the same results.
Economic development is not about delivering a package, but rather developing the capacities of the people themselves. This institute views the person as a noble being lacking some capabilities that they have the capacity to learn. Local people teach local people. It’s peer mentoring.
When a woman is not educated, they’re told what to do by their fathers, brothers, husbands, and the local village leaders. The women have no power to make any decisions whatsoever. They literally don’t know how to make a decision because they don’t need to make any.
“(At Barli) they’re taught is to speak the national language, Hindi, and then they’re taught to read and write Hindi. These women go back and transform their families. A literate woman will educate her kids. An illiterate woman will not. The cycle of poverty stops by simply focusing on women, on mothers.”

As told to Casey Lessard
Portrait by Casey Lessard
India photos courtesy Gord Britton

Even though I live in a small area, I’ve always wanted to learn about other cultures. Small town life is great, but I’ve always wanted to see more and see the world. I’ve always wanted to break away from the small town, but I know I’ll probably get into the big city and find out that I want to go back to my small town. I’ve always wanted to bring some sort of positive social change to the world.
I will be working in the office and I will also be helping teach a computer class. They do gardening work because they are self-sufficient, so everything they need they grow, except for rice. The gardens are extensive, so all of the trainees – the women who come to the institute – work in the gardens, and I’ll get to help out with that.

Indore is in the state of Madhya Pradesh, in central India, and it’s one of the poorest states in India. Indore is a city about the size of Toronto. It’s not very well known because it doesn’t have any tourist attractions. It’s a relatively poor city because Madhya is so poor. It has a very low education rate in that area. One in 100 girls who start high school graduate. In India, the national average is 14 out of 100.
Women are in this situation because of the social issues that have always been there related to the social inequality of men and women, the historical prejudices of what a woman’s role is supposed to be there. They’re not supposed to be the head of the household, and that’s why they don’t get an education and further themselves.
The institute was started 25 years ago by Dr. Janak McGilligan, who is a Baha’i interested in doing something good for India. It started as a three-month program and turned into a six-month program. The women come from all over India, but most from Madhya Pradesh.
They learn domestic skills, job skills and social and community skills to build their communities and the people around them. They give them job skills, but simple job skills. They give them domestic skills, like sewing and cooking. Things that they can bring back to the community that are modest in the amount they’re moving forward. They give them skills that wouldn’t isolate the women from the community. They want them to be a special part of the community to help it develop.
Most communities are actually very welcoming to it. There have been some communities where the men try to sabotage the institute representatives going in to talk to women. They’ll say you have to pay to go to the institute when it’s actually free, they’ll make up rumours that they teach evil things or will make havoc for the community. There are some men who aren’t happy with this, but most communities are happy because the women don’t just develop themselves; they’re learning skills to help that whole community to come out of their poverty. They have prejudices that women should have certain skills and a certain place in the community, and that they should stay in that place.
The families that send the women to the Barli Institute are very supportive. They want the women to go there because they want them to develop and be a strong part of the community. It’s usually other community members who are holding them back.
One woman, before she went to the Barli Institute, couldn’t read or write and one day, a group of men came to her door and told her she had to sign a contract. She didn’t know what it was about, and they told her it was a building contract. Later, she learned she was signing off on a loan that was very substantial with interest rates that she couldn’t afford. After the Barli Institute, she now has her own job, she can read and write, speak a little bit of English, and she got out of the loan. She has confidence now that she doesn’t have to follow what people say; she can make her own decisions.
You need to be able to make your own decisions to break out of poverty. You need the education that can get you a job to bring development to your country. We take our education for granted here in Canada. It’s the social norm to go to school. We get it and don’t realize it’s the education that has developed our country. In India, to get a simple education can bring the standards of a village up much higher.

I think I’m going to learn more to appreciate education. I know that I’m very privileged living in Canada. They’re getting the simplest education they can get. I think I’m going to learn to value the education we have available to us and make that part of my life.
In June, I’ll be coming home to work in Grand Bend, and then I’m off to university for International Development. I’d love to work for the UN; that’s my dream job. I’d like to do what I’m doing in India for the rest of my life.

Police seek driver, family seeks closure after Jason Pearson’s death near Grand Bend during Not So Pro volleyball weekend

Originally from Regina, Saskatchewan, Jason Pearson of Waterloo was an avid volleyball player, and serious about taking part in Grand Bend’s Not So Pro tournament each year. After the first day of competition at this year’s event, Pearson was killed while walking back to his campsite at the Grand Bend Motorplex when a truck hit him at 5 a.m. July 26. The vehicle and its driver are still at large.
Days after what would have been Pearson’s 32nd birthday (November 29), Casey Lessard visited Waterloo to speak with his fiancée Erin Jobidon and their friend Drew Neath.

Erin: We hit it off right away. He just glowed. He drew everyone into him. He’d go out of his way to do whatever he could for you. He was always up for something new and was good at everything he did.
I came here to go to the University of Waterloo, and I met Jay at the Boa Nova, a Portuguese-style high-class restaurant. I was working there with Drew’s ex-girlfriend and Jason’s roommate. I was serving and bartending, and he was working there as well; he had a share in the restaurant.
I was getting a tour of the restaurant after getting hired, and he was working in the back. I think even then, there was a sparkle in his eye that caught my attention.
We did everything. Skied, kayaked, fished, played volleyball, traveled, you name it. He got into horses with me. Name a sport, he was probably into it and good at it.
Drew: The first time I ever heard about Jason was from my ex-girlfriend. He was looking for people to play volleyball with him, but I had to try out because he would only play with people who were good. We ended up playing together at the pickup courts at University of Waterloo. I still have a lot of close friends from elementary school, and Jay was one of my first friends outside of that group of friends, and I’ve gotten to know a lot of people through Jay.
Erin: We moved in together after a year of dating because we were at each other’s house every night anyway. We lived in a house for a year and a half after that. He made a point of bringing me everywhere. He was like that with his friends, too. He had five groups of friends that co-mingled.
We lived together almost two years. He was great to live with. We had talked about getting married, but we had a mutual agreement that nothing would happen until I finished school. We went away to Kicking Horse, where his brother has a condo, and he proposed without a ring, but our intentions were known to his family. Our long-term goal was to have a farm for our horses. This house was our first step toward that.
Drew: I remember him saying the weekend in Grand Bend, “Save up your money, because when we get married, we’re going to go away somewhere.”
Erin: We were going to go somewhere warm and have a wedding.
He traveled way more than me. I had never really gone anywhere before I met him, and he used to go to Europe every year. He lived there for a year and played football. His family’s out west, he went out east every year, he went to Europe every year. Just a busybody.
We had known each other three months and he asked me if I wanted to go on a cruise to Greece in November. I said sure, but thought it would never pan out. But November came and we planned a trip. We stayed in Paris for three days and he knew every corner. It was crazy. The Greek cruise cost him $80. He could get anything for a deal. Anything. He wouldn’t tell anyone how he did it. Tickets for plays and concerts. He had connections everywhere.
Drew: For example, we went to last year’s Stanley Cup finals. His brother got us tickets and we all went down.
He told me two days before the game and we just packed up and went down to Detroit for the night. I think we paid $230 US, and we were very close.

For the love of the game
Erin: His friends were his life. His friends and volleyball. I wasn’t allowed to play on his volleyball team. I wasn’t good enough.
Drew: Jay was always the team captain. If someone was playing badly, he was the one to get them going. He’d have everyone’s spirits as high as could be so they could play well. We followed the Not So Pro tour. Hang and Bang was our team name most of the time.
He always wanted to win. In Grand Bend, we played intermediate because the competitive teams were fours, and he wanted everybody to play, so we played the intermediate sixes. It was still really competitive, and this year we probably would have won if this hadn’t happened. The year before we got third and second in the two tournaments I played in.

The fateful weekend
Drew: I got to Grand Bend two hours late. Jay saw me and looked at my girlfriend. He was about to say something, but he said the look on her face was so bad that he couldn’t get mad.
(At the end of the day,) we sat in the beer tent for a bit, and there was a girl trying to learn how to jump serve, so we stayed a while teaching her how to do it. We went back to the campsite and started partying.
Erin: I got there later. I had to work the Saturday night and I got there at midnight. We went to Gables and were there until close.
Jay and I got into an argument hanging around the bar waiting to go back to the campsite at the Motorplex. One of the girls we were with hadn’t been drinking, so she was going to drive my car. There were four of us, and Jay was being stubborn as usual. He said he was going to walk and stormed off. There’s no arguing with him when he’s like that. And it’s not unusual for him – he walked everywhere.
In the morning, he still wasn’t back, which was kind of weird, but he’s slept in bushes before. I was just going to head home for the day, and I saw there was an emergency road closure. I went back and started getting a little worried. There was a rumour that a girl had been hit. I kind of brushed it off but I had a bad feeling. I drove into town because, with volleyball starting in half an hour, I knew he wouldn’t be late for that. He still didn’t show up, so I drove back to the roadblock and the officer wouldn’t say anything.
One of the girls went back to the campsite to see if he went back there. She ended up talking to the investigator, and she said it sounded like it was him.
She came back to the beach. I remember sitting with Drew’s girlfriend watching them play a game and I saw Sarah, the girl who went back to the campsite, walking with the police officer, and my heart sank. I just remember looking at both of them and no one would say anything to me. They just stared blankly. I knew. I fell.
Drew: I remember driving and saying to my girlfriend, if he’s not at the courts, something’s happened. As soon as I saw her, she said yeah, and I collapsed. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say.
We just sat around waiting for the officers to do what they needed. We stuck around for interviews and headed home after that.

The aftermath
Erin: I waited in Grand Bend for my mom to come so I didn’t have to drive home. By the time I got home, everyone was calling. They all knew. It traveled so fast, and everyone was horrified. It seemed unreal and still does.
For me, one of my biggest fears was getting in a fight with someone and something happening. That’s how you ended it. That’s something I’ve always been terrified of. But it doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. A little fight is nothing. I know he still loved me.
The officers said they’re shocked nothing has come out yet. They interviewed hundreds of people. From what I know, they looked through the list of everyone registered at the Motorplex. They highlighted everyone who they think might have been leaving that evening. Their vehicle of interest is the truck with the trailer. But that could be from anywhere in Ontario or the States. We don’t know.
They did a reconstruction, and they think he was on the west side of the road walking back, and then may have been crossing the road. He was 100 meters from the Motorplex, and was hit at a low speed by a vehicle heading toward Grand Bend. It happened between 4 and 5 a.m. To their knowledge, they found him within 15 minutes. It was not very long.
I think about it and wonder why I torture myself. I hope it was someone who was driving and didn’t see him, and then freaked out.
Drew: They obviously didn’t stop. If they’d known, I’d hope they would have been nice enough to stop and get help, but from the sounds of it, they didn’t do anything.

Moving forward
Erin: I didn’t even know where to begin. I stayed with my mom for a week and then went to a friend’s house and stayed with her. We went out to Regina for the funeral and stayed with his family for a while. It was really important for me to be up there.
When I came back to reality, it was a huge slap in the face. We were living here, and I thought about moving out of this place, but I finally clued in that that’s not the way to deal with it. This is where there are memories and I want to hold on to that. Remember good things and try not to run away from thinking about it.
Drew: He was just a really good guy. The Monday after Jay died, a bunch of us gathered and everyone realized none of us had each other’s numbers because he was the one who got everyone together. He was that kind of person.
Erin: Our group of friends isn’t going to be the same. He always managed to get people together for something all the time.
It’s causing ripples in his family, for sure. His mom and sister are in horrible shape. His brother is super strong, and he’s held the family together while working full-time as a doctor.
For me, I do what I can to keep myself busy so I don’t have to think about it all the time. I’m not sure that’s a good thing. I work full-time and go to school full-time, and he’s on my mind every minute of every day. I can’t imagine moving on. I can’t imagine his clothes not being in the closet and his pictures not being on the wall. But I know that will happen one day.
For me, I didn’t think it would make a difference if we found someone. But I want to know what happened. He was always with people, and I just feel terrible that he was alone.
As Jason’s dad, Carl, says, “Someone knows something.” I can’t imagine being that person. I can’t imagine knowing something that horrible and not feeling the need to say anything.

In hopes of encouraging information that leads to the case being solved, Pearson’s parents posted a $25,000 reward, which was recently bumped to $35,000.
Any information is welcome; you can call Huron OPP at 1-888-310-1122 or CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.

Public policy and regulation among subjects of winter Partners in Learning discussions

The winter season of Partners in Learning, a discussion group that meets at the Southcott Pines clubhouse, runs Wednesdays from Jan. 13 to Feb. 10 and then March 3 to 31. This season’s topics include Science, Serving the Public Interest?; Has Big Brother Gone Too Far?; Theatre, Behind the Scenes; and The World of Books. Socrates Café runs Thursdays from 2 to 4 p.m. every other week from Feb. 4 to April 1.

“Has Big Brother Gone Too Far”
Molly Russell, moderator

I find that hardly a day goes by that I don’t hear on the news that there is some law being instituted to “protect” the public. I think these laws have gotten out of hand. That’s the premise of my course.

Give me some examples.
For instance, when the actress went skiing in Quebec and died of a head injury, they wanted to bring in a law that said everyone has to wear a ski helmet all of the time. And people are saying, come on, that’s too much.
Seat belts are another example. Most people would agree that seat belts are probably a good thing, and they have saved lives. My mother was in a car crash, and in those days (1952), they didn’t require seatbelts. My dad was saved because he had the steering wheel. But my mother was tossed from the car and she died. So seatbelts are at least rational for most people.
Another one: people were in a boat, and had lifejackets in the boat. The boat capsized and they weren’t wearing them, and one of them drowned. So now in a boat you have to wear a jacket at all times. How are you going to get a suntan or swim off the boat in your bikini, etc.?
To protect us, they put laws in, but they base it on a small part of the population. What are they really afraid of? I think people are afraid of being sued. (Demonstrating a coffee cup cardboard sleeve) This is from VIA Rail. They decided they had to do this to protect people from the heat of the cup. Is this really necessary? It’s very costly.

But laws are made by people. How do these laws come into place if people don’t think they’re a good idea?
I disagree with that statement. Laws are not made by people; laws are made by politicians. And politicians wish to be reelected. They get on bandwagons and lose the rationality that’s really behind a lot of human behaviour. Most people would say there is too much regulation because we are not making these laws, but are subject to these laws.

So what would you like to see? What is the solution?
I’m going to throw that out to the participants. I think there are two things: one, the politician thing; and two, people protecting themselves from being sued. Should we have people sign a waiver saying, if they get hit by a car and they’re not wearing a helmet, that they can’t sue?
The problem lies where laws infringe upon my freedom. Human beings are individuals. Every one is different. You can’t do a blanket law and treat everyone the same.
I feel we need more examples of people taking responsibility for their actions, and not having Big Brother telling them what to do.

Science, Serving the Public Interest?
Mike Ash, moderator
It’s exploring whether science supports or doesn’t support the benefit of society. And how that connects with public policy because public policy gets formulated by interest groups and input from the public, but also hard information – let’s call that science. How do those things all connect?

What are some issues you are looking at that are hot topics influenced by public policy?
With the Copenhagen conference going on, what is science telling us about the future of the environment and sustainability? This is probably one of the areas we will explore. For 20 years, scientists have been warning us about global warning, but why hasn’t this translated into public opinion and public policy action to make a change and an improvement? What’s the problem there?
How is science providing information to predicting the future or the formulation of public policy that supports the public interest?
How well can we predict the future? Do we believe these predictions? Does the public understand what science is telling them? How good is science at communicating that to the public? Why are there contradictions in scientific evidence, for example when one group says one thing and another says the opposite?

Why is this topic important right now in Grand Bend?
I think probably because there’s so much conflicting information out there and I think there might be a perception that science isn’t held in the esteem it once was. Why is that? We need to know why we can’t have fact based, research based decision making for the betterment of society. I know people think that happens a lot, but I’m not sure society is taking full advantage of scientific information.
Certainly locally, there are some issues to talk about. Wind energy; are there really health issues related to wind energy?
One interesting topic might be whether public opinion and public interest are one in the same. This comes across in the balance of the welfare of individuals and special interest groups and society overall. How does that translate into the best solutions and policies overall?
Today, public input seems to be dominated by opinion and communication through social networking tools. Fact based decisions are less, rather than more, common at all levels of society. Today, with the Internet, anyone can put out information and sway the public without any basis in fact.

It’s a challenging and demanding topic, and I think it will be very interesting for the group.

To register, visit partnersinlearning.ca

Lambton Shores mayor wants low-pressure sewers before infrastructure funding runs dry

The Lambton Shores sewage treatment plant and Zone 3 sewer network could be the last project mayor Gord Minielly is involved in before he retires. Casey Lessard sat down with the mayor to discuss the projects.

Why is this project necessary now?
We just spent a big chunk of money on our beach, and any day you have a beach closing, it’s a negative for us. The Blue Flag designation will put up with two or three per summer. Our water comes south from Bluewater. If we can get them on sewers along with South Huron and us, we’re not going to be affecting the quality of the water in the Grand Bend area. It makes it safer for our visitors and our residents, and gives us a positive over some other areas in Ontario that are having more pollution days. We were lucky last year and had very few, but if you look a few years ago, we were closed many days. Whether it was our fault or animal runoff, we don’t know. If we can take care of our part, then we’ll know.

Where are you at today?
I’ve asked Maria (Van Bommel, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex MPP) to set up a meeting with the infrastructure minister for us to firm up whether there’s going to be two-thirds funding for us. When we met with David Caplan, he thought it was a great idea; “Do the plant first and come on back.” We’re going back to see if we can get that two-thirds funding, and if we do, Caplan told us 2014 was the cutoff. I would hope we can get some funding by 2012 and be completed along with Bluewater and South Huron by 2014.
There are effects going on in the water table that are not positive. I know people in Grand Bend are environmentally friendly, so I think we will get this done to the liking of the majority. Right now it doesn’t seem that popular, but the reality is, we are treating that water in a negative way. The lake water and the groundwater levels are the same, so it’s flowing into the lake. If we clean up our act, we can’t be blamed any more when there’s high E. coli; it’s got to be coming from runoff or something else.
One of the main reasons you feel you need to do this now is because of the money, right?
Two-thirds funding is not going to be here long. I suspect based on the deficits the province and Canada are going to have, there won’t be any money past 2014 while they try to clean up their debt. I think now is the most financially possible time to do it. If we can get two-thirds funding, it’s not going to be a burden. If we can spread it over 12-15 years, I think it will be doable for most people.

I was reading in the tri-municipal meeting minutes (where the three municipalities are discussing plans to build a shared treatment plant) that South Huron CAO Roy Hardy had spoken to someone who said there was no money.
I was at the same meeting that Roy was at, and I didn’t hear that. He was talking to people who were nervous about the downturn in the economy, but I have spoken with some of the ministers and as far as I know the stimulus package is going to continue because the economy is still in a trough, and they plan on doing what they planned in the beginning, which is going to 2014 and spending that money. Roy has his opinion about many things, and we don’t often see eye-to-eye, but the fact that we’re on track to get an appointment with the minister tells me they’re willing to talk to us; they must think this is going to continue on.

Is that the stumbling block from South Huron’s perspective? Is it the money or something else?
I have no idea. If you read the Lakeshore Advance, I made the comment that I thought we had a deal. Mayor Oke commented that he thought we had a deal but it wasn’t in the minutes. Mayor Oke didn’t come to the next meeting and it was in the minutes. It’s ready to be signed and we’ve invited them to come to a meeting in a couple of weeks and Bluewater and South Huron will hopefully sign along with us and then move on to the collection system.
That’s the sewage processing plant, which is quite a big project in itself. But that’s a separate project.
We got $15 million of infrastructure funding, and we have to add in another $5-7 million depending on how the tenders come in. But we have additional funding for energy efficiencies like solar panels.

And you do have that money secured?
Yes, we have $17 million of the total cost, so we’re well on our way to having that looked after. When that’s done, we hope to have the collection system ready to go if not in the process already.
Do you think that regardless of whether South Huron comes on board that you will go ahead with it?
We’re definitely going to build the plant. We have the funding, and it’s needed. We have no capacity for development, they have no capacity for development. Certainly Bluewater wants to get in there so they can clean up their beach-front. So for me, we have to go ahead. There’s no debate.

You’ve said changes are “coming down the pike”. What did you mean by that?
I’ve chatted with people from the ministry, and you can see that in Bruce they’re doing mandatory inspections of septics, and if your septic isn’t working, then you’re being forced to upgrade. The upgrades are not typically the normal. A gentleman told me the other day that he paid $18,000 for one that he had to redo. Would you rather do that and have something that will last 15-20 years or a permanent collection system you can depend on?
The question of whether it’s low-pressure or gravity is still being debated. Maybe we can do a combination. I know in Bayfield they have several low pressure tanks operating for the last 10 years with no maintenance. Maybe in the less dense areas we can use those and in the more dense areas, we can use gravity. But it’s twice as expensive, so it’s a debate that hasn’t been completed.

I’ve seen the numbers; will it be twice as much overall or per house?
I think it’s an overall view. Where I live, my sewer is 17’ down. When you excavate that far down, you have to have a much wider hole. In places like Beach o’ Pines, we’d have to excavate the road and probably damage many trees trying to get down so you do have a flow. We have to look long and hard. Doing gravity feed is not environmentally friendly; if you have a greenfield site, it’s not bad, but when you have a woodfield like that, it’s pretty bad for devastation. Then you have to rebuild all those roads and it’s part of the cost. The low-pressure system is less intrusive.

The gravity system construction would also take the roads from having a cottage feel to having new roads like downtown, right?
People like it that way (narrower roads) because it forces people to drive slow. Fix them up and put them in (to standard) and they’ll be like speedways. Walking to the beach will be more scary than it is today. But the fact is it’s much more expensive.

You spoke of development at the meeting. What is the vision for how these communities should look in the future? Should they always have the style of roads they have now or should they be at today’s standards?
Any new development will have 66’ roads with proper sewer lines. Southcott Pines and those subdivisions built them purposely (narrow) because they don’t want visitors coming in and out. Unless their board makes a decision, the roads will be like that until they change. They were designed that way and will stay that way. (But with gravity) there certainly would be a lot of damage. I suspect they would have to be (restored to the new standard).

Of the three options – gravity, low-pressure, and septic tanks – which one makes the most sense to you?
In my opinion, in the areas along the lake, the low-pressure is the least intrusive, the least expensive, and based on what I know about those pumps, should be as good as the gravity feed.
The issue with no power, I don’t know how many of the folks in there have generators, but I suspect it’s a lot. Our power grid around here is not what it used to be, and when you’re out for 24 hours, especially when it’s cold, you either have to move or have some form of heat. Especially along the lake in the gated communities, the low-pressure makes the most sense.
In new developments, the gravity feed makes sense. It makes lots more expensive because the contractor is responsible for that cost. I don’t know if we can do this one way and the other. That’s why it’s hard to answer questions because we don’t have the answers. Hopefully by this time next year, we’ll have a plan in place they can go forward with.

When I look at the numbers of people affected by this, the count I saw was 1500 homes in Lambton Shores that don’t have sewers. How many people are there year round?
I don’t know. In Beach O’ Pines, it’s likely the majority (that aren’t there). That’s changing. If I look down the road 15 years, I see Grand Bend having two-storey buildings all along Main Street with business on the main floor and apartments above.

How important is it to have services like this?
I’ve moved around Ontario and I always tried to find places that had sewers. I’m sure the tiles in Huron Woods are being filled with tree roots. A sealed low-pressure system doesn’t allow roots in, while a gravity feed does.

What is your current feeling about what people think about what you’re proposing?
I’ve been elected one way or another, sometimes in and sometimes out, over the last 30 years. Change doesn’t come easily to the average person. Here in Forest, the fire hall had been let go and we decided to build a new one. People threatened us and we had public meeting where people yelled at us. Carnegie Library wasn’t wheelchair accessible and we built a new library; I lost an election over that because I was the chairman of the committee that put it together. But the reality is that once it’s done, people go on with their lives and say, “Isn’t that a lovely library? What a beautiful fire hall.” People have difficulty with change and if it hurts them in the pocketbook, they have greater difficulty.

What is the actual cost per household expected for the sewer project?
We haven’t figured out the final numbers. I suspect that probably by spring, we should have those numbers down. We have to go to the ministry with firm numbers. I’d like to get them done sooner, but there are some decisions we have to make first. If your septic system is five years old, how long will you be grandfathered? If you grandfather nobody, there’s more people to pay for what you’re doing. If someone put one in yesterday and spent $20,000, it’s hard to ask them to cough up another $12,000-15,000.
The other thing we have to do is, if someone wants to build tomorrow, do they put in something less expensive than a whole septic system?

If the province and federal government do not have the money for this project, will it happen?
I guess I could answer that by saying I won’t be the mayor when that decision is made. Depending on the council of the day, and how much they think this is important, they will make that decision. Personally, I think there’s a 50-50 chance we will get funding. We have a good argument to make: we have a great beach, we’re trying to be as environmentally friendly as we can, and we need their help in getting us there. Tourism has been down in Ontario, but we are a destination and they know that. I have a good feeling we’re going to get some funding. I said that about the plant and it came through, and I hope it carries on. We’ve been very fortunate.

What is the timeline on this decision?
We’re trying to get a meeting for mid-December with Gerry (Phillips, infrastructure minister), and if we get some positive news there, I suspect we’d talk to him at the OGRA (Ontario Good Roads Association) convention in February, give him an update on numbers. The environmental assessment in Bluewater and South Huron, so they should have good numbers by then. I emailed them to say we were arranging this meeting and to ask if they’d be interested in coming. I got an immediate response from Bluewater and I’m still waiting for South Huron because they don’t want to play with us. Hopefully they come around. We’re meeting in Varna again and hopefully they’ll be there and sign the agreement so we can go to Toronto.

When do you think you’ll have something to tell people in the community?
At the latest in May, and at the earliest before we go to Toronto in February. I don’t think we need to have a meeting. We’ll put it out at a council meeting and I’m sure everyone will hear very quickly. Toronto and Ottawa have treated us very well, and other municipalities are jealous of the success we’ve had. I don’t think there will be money after 2014 for a long time.

The Grand Bend Chamber of Commerce named its 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year and Business of the Year at its annual general meeting November 12. Colonial and Gables won the business award, while Paddington’s Pub owner Jen Gaukroger won the entrepreneur honour.

Interview and photo by Casey Lessard

What makes you successful as an entrepreneur?
I’m trying desperately to get business owners in Grand Bend to work together. When I first came to Grand Bend, I met so many nice people and I was surprised at how they weren’t supportive of each other. I’ve designed this logo and program called the Grand Bend Dining District. I’m trying to say to the restaurants, we’re all very diverse, we all have different things to offer. If you have regulars, and we all do, they don’t want to sit in the same restaurant every time. And instead of tourists going to the first place they see, how can we give them to the type of restaurant they want?
The municipality supports the idea of a sign with a You Are Here locator that has all the restaurants on it. I’d really like everyone to pay into a pot so we can all advertise as a group and cut down on our marketing costs. If we all work together, we can do more.
For the Winter Carnival, this being the Olympic year, I’ve designed a passport with each page representing a country, and each page would be dedicated to one business. Instead of buying a ticket to be entered into the cash draw at the end of it all, each page would be a ticket and as soon as you redeem your coupons, you get a ticket into the draw. Up to 40 businesses can be involved. It’s about trying to get more people and more businesses involved.

You have all these ideas about marketing Grand Bend and the business community here. Why do you care?
People ask me why I bother. But it’s what this town needs. Why would a clothing shop downtown say they don’t know that there’s a pub down the street? I’d like to be in this town long-term. A lot of restaurants pop up and leave, and I don’t want to be one of them. I want to stay and sustain here. I don’t like the idea of having to move my daughter. I like it here and I’d like to see it grow. But I’m very anti-franchise; big box stores hurt little businesses.

How did you get into this business?
I was in radio for nine years, and I loved that but it became very corporate. At my first station, I worked with an owner whose office was in the building so we did some cool stuff. We threw pumpkins off a firefighter training tower for Smashing Pumpkins concert tickets; as creative as you could be, you could do it. As these stations were bought by bigger companies, with liability and corporate policies, all the fun went out of my marketing job.
I was living in Grand Bend and commuting to London. I got the opportunity to open a restaurant for a silent owner, and that was fun, and then I thought, why not do it on my own?

It’s quite a risk to take to do this on your own. Tell me about that decision.
My first thought was I didn’t want to do it because of the risk and start-up money it takes to do it. But if you want to live in Grand Bend, you need to either make yourself a job or travel outside the area to work, which is too bad. We shoestring-budgeted the little place and it was two solid months of 12 hour days of dealing with Alcohol and Gaming, and building code.
In England, people go to pubs like we go to coffee shops. It’s very social. Here, I’m trying to create that, but Canadians associate that lounging around with coffee. In England, people bring their kids and partners to the pub. If you don’t have good food, you’re sunk.
Pubs in England can be anything from a hole in the wall, beer only joint, to a fancy pub. I wanted it to be somewhere in the middle. Grand Bend had a variety of places to eat, but they were either burgers and wings on one end or very fine dining on the other. There wasn’t anything middle range. I knew I wanted to find that middle range before I knew it would be an English pub.
The beer is my favourite part. We carry 50 at any given time. We carry a lot of wine, too. We’re going to start promoting a wine luncheon that is social and laid back. We also have 30 types of tea if alcohol is not your thing.

You’re the Chamber’s Entrepreneur of the Year. Do you have any advice for people considering starting their own business?
I really believe you need to have the funds behind you. The first few years are really tough. You have to love what you’re doing; otherwise, it’s not going to last. You have to love every aspect of it, including cleaning the bathrooms and vacuuming the floors. There is a not-so-glamourous side to it.
I live on life balance. If I wasn’t a parent, I don’t think I’d ever leave work. My daughter keeps life in balance. You don’t want to work too much, party too much or parent too much. You have to get it all in there.

Darlene O’Rourke taking part in torch relay

Story and photo by Casey Lessard

This is one flame Dashwood firefighter Darlene O’Rourke won’t want to put out. O’Rourke is on her way to Summerside, PEI this week to take part in the 2010 Winter Olympic torch relay. She will run the torch November 22 at approximately 5:56 p.m.
O’Rourke won the chance to be part of the run after submitting an entry each day through the Vancouver 2010 website sponsored by Coca-Cola and RBC. She was asked to submit a choice of three cities, and her choices were London, Vancouver and Summerside. She passed into the second round and was asked to submit a 200 word essay about how she lives an active lifestyle and inspires others to do the same. July 30, she was notified that she was being considered, as long as she passed legal muster, and was notified October 2 that she would be carrying the torch.
“Being a part of the torch relay is very important to me,” O’Rourke says. “I have competed in world championships for tug-of-war and won a bronze medal and know how proud it makes you feel to represent your country in such an event. Words can not describe how great this opportunity is to be a part of the Olympics in your country.”
It’s taken more than a ballot to make this happen. O’Rourke has to cover the cost of travel and accommodations in Summerside, and has received support from friends, family and neighbours. She gets to keep her torch bearer uniform, and thanks to a $350 contribution from her work, Hayter’s Turkey Products, she will also get to bring home the torch she will be carrying.
To follow her progress, you can visit iCoke.ca, CTV.ca, or her blog, which she will start posting Friday:
darleneorourketorchrelay.blogspot.com

Locally, the torch comes through the London-Strathroy area December 27.

Zurich photographer opens shop in Exeter above Village Vines

Story and photo by Casey Lessard

One of our favourite area photographers, Sandra Regier, opened a studio and office above Village Vines in Exeter in July. Regier hosted an open house Friday to show the new place, which is a photographer’s dream. The former apartment has two floors: the floor above the flower shop is her office, and the top floor is a wide open loft ideal for studio portraits and classes.
“I wanted to separate my work and family life,” Regier says, noting she was previously running the business from her home. “I got busy a lot faster than I thought I would. When I was at home, I was always working. Part of it was to separate that. I also wanted to show people that it is my business and I take it seriously. I love doing it, but it’s not just a hobby.”
Now that digital photography has made photography a hobby anyone can do, it seems like many are trying to also make it a business. The Strip asked Regier what she thought of the trend.
“For me, it’s making sure the images last a lifetime and are well taken care of,” she says. “I also want to make sure your children and grandchildren have pictures to look at. It’s not just about having pictures on a disc, but also prints that can become family heirlooms. Digital is really easy, it seems, but if you never make a print or album, there’s nothing for people to look at. It’s important to me that you have something that has lasting power.”
To get a sense of Sandra’s work, visit http://www.sandraregier.com or stop by her studio at 391 Main Street in Exeter.

SHDHS receives $10,000 CARAS instrument grant

Story and photos by Casey Lessard

Music students at South Huron District High School are blowing new horns after the school’s music program received a $10,000 equipment grant from the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS).
“You’d be surprised how much equipment costs,” says music director Isaac Moore. “We were able to refresh every section a little bit and that helps us out in terms of the longevity of the program’s equipment in general. We got three flutes, three clarinets, three trumpets, three trombones, one new baritone, one tenor sax and two alto saxes.”
Close to 70 senior band members use a school instrument, and the intermediate band adds more users, so the need for decent equipment is high.
“Having one that works well makes a huge difference,” says saxophonist Trish Pavjeke, who uses her own instrument. “Some of the older saxophones are gross. They’ve been used for 100 years. The keys stick and the necks swivel back and forth. I’ve tried the new ones and they’re really nice. They work perfectly.”
While Pavjeke’s 100 year estimate is a bit off, former music teacher Bob Robilliard says some of the equipment was due.
“When I first came here, the equipment was one year old,” Robilliard says, noting the program started in 1986. “Most of that equipment is still here and still being used. Most school line equipment has a life of 25 years. It gets a lot of use.”
CARAS issued 60 MusiCounts Band Aid grants across Canada in 2009, and South Huron is one of the only rural schools in Ontario receiving the grant. Letters of support from the community were key to getting the grant on the first attempt, Moore says, noting some schools try many times unsuccessfully.
“It came around at a nice time for us,” he says. “The instruments have been heavily used. I wasn’t sure how we would pay for new ones. Having good equipment for the kids to play is really motivating. Without this, I’d have to build a case to the board, which has been very supportive of us, but its budget is finite like ours.”
As a result of the grant, some of the school’s older equipment will be transferred to another school in the board.
The band showed off the equipment for the first time at this weekend’s school concert, but Moore suggests the audience may not see a noticeable difference in sound, but it certainly makes playing easier.
“It’s like buying a new car. It’s not like it takes you anywhere faster, but it’s a more enjoyable experience and lasts longer. Eventually things need to be replaced. Plus, the older it is, the more you have to put into repair, so that will save us a lot.”
And while the actual sound may be the same, music council president Joe Pavjeke thinks the musicians will sound better because they’ll have more confidence.
“It’s like we’re getting recognized for our work. The students notice that. It shows that what we’re doing is a big deal.”

The Grand Bend Chamber of Commerce named Paddington’s owner Jen Gaukroger its entrepreneur of the year, and named the Colonial Hotel and Gables Bar the business of the year for 2009.
The awards were presented at the chamber’s annual general meeting Thursday night at Hessenland Country Inn in St. Joseph.
Guest representatives from Saugeen Shores also shared their first impressions of the area at the meeting (see our story from our visit to Saugeen Shores and my editorial comment).
The Grand Bend Strip will profile Jen Gaukroger in the November 19 edition, and the owners of Colonial and Gables in the December edition.

Father Brad Dunbar has been rector of Trivitt Memorial Church in Exeter and St. John-by-the-Lake in Grand Bend for the past two years, and recently presided over Trivitt’s 150th anniversary celebrations.

As told to Casey Lessard
Photos by Casey Lessard

Trivitt has begun to recognize that we live in a post-Christian era. The days when everyone went to church Sunday mornings are gone. Families are way too busy. So what’s been happening is a looking back to the early church and trying to do the things that started Christianity: feeding people, housing people, and trying to be a voice for people who don’t have one. It’s active, not passive.
We have a three pronged approach: we look to our world, we look to our region, and we look to the town of Exeter. With our global view, Trivitt has been active in the construction of an AIDS clinic in South Africa, and that’s been a big project. In our area, we’ve been sponsoring Huron University College to support their trans-cultural projects. And in a big way, we’ve worked aggressively in being part of the town of Exeter. The money raised at our Thanksgiving celebration went to the Habitat for Humanity in Exeter. We have a weekly Alpha program that includes a free meal. There’s a free monthly meal hosted the third week of the month for the needy, and we go to the different agencies that help people who are on social assistance, and the end of the month is a tough time for those people, so Trivitt tries to feed them.

Spirituality’s important, and how it is expressed can be varied. We’re trying to bring a message of hope and good news to Exeter, but being creative about it. We’d like to make our physical space available for the town when it’s needed. We want to be a civic church and a centre for the community.
I’m involved in Fresh Expressions (www.freshexpressions.ca), and the idea is to find new ways to meet people half way. The folks who are in their 20s and 30s don’t necessarily have a church memory, but they have a strong spirituality. If you go to Chapters, the best sellers on the shelf will all be books on spirituality. So it’s important for people. What we’re trying to realize and live out is the traditional method isn’t going to work in the reality we live in. We’re looking toward the church of 2050 as opposed to the church of 1950, and I think that’s going to look quite different.
The building will still exist – it’s architecturally significant. The church will look different. The interior will not look like it does today. Just like banks and schools have changed in the last 100 years, so will the church change to meet the needs of the community using it. What the people in their teens and 20s are going to look for is different than what it looked like in 1950. You can’t avoid technology, and I think it will be a big part of how the church looks. Kids today are the generation of the screen. They work and learn and play using the screen. It will be a significant change for the Anglican church. New churches look more like gymnasia than churches, and it’s intentional. People are more comfortable walking into a gymnasium than they are walking into a church. Our building will show the history of the church, but will change to meet the needs of the emerging generation of churchgoers.

For a lot of people, walking into a church building – and we look like a traditional church – can be a very intimidating thing. It can be a barrier for people, so when we hold concerts and shows and other events, and people are able to come in and enjoy, they get a little more comfortable with coming into our worship space. If they don’t go to church, it’s a gentle way to say, Hey, we’re here. If they have something in their lives that makes them need to speak to a pastor, we want to be an option they consider. We also see it as a benefit to the community; we have the physical space to put on big productions and we would like to bring them to South Huron, and we don’t think you have to drive to London for that.
We’re looking at a couple of very contemporary services that we’re hoping to start in Exeter at a different time than Sunday morning. Often, that’s the only time of the week you can relax, sleep in and have bacon and eggs or whatever. We’re going to offer church in a worship sense at different times of the week. We’re also looking at programs that feed someone’s spirit but don’t seem like traditional worship.

The parish spent some time doing some soul searching, and we discovered that music was very important to us and to Exeter. In bringing music director Janet Heerema in, we’ve brought a music professional in full-time and she has made a dramatic impact right from the start. She does an adult choir, children’s choir and a hand-bell choir, which are community based, and the Trivitt choir. The community choirs have people from various churches in the area, and some who don’t go to church. As a church, it’s a gift to the community: we pay her salary and she spends a great deal of her time working on music for the community.
We have an aggressive arts agenda over the next 10 months. We created an arts and culture community and started brainstorming what people might enjoy in the area. The Three Cantors came up on the list, and they work out well for us because they donate from the proceeds of the show to the Huron Hunger Fund, which is affiliated with the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund. It becomes a charitable event, and they’re a big draw, so it will sell out.

Future concerts include a children’s choir concert Dec. 6, and a Christian rock concert in March. The Three Cantors (www.3cantors.com) perform Wed., Nov. 18 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 available online (www.trivitt.ca).

Story by Casey Lessard
Painting by Helga Otton

After a trip to Cuba, an inspired Helga Otton returned to Grand Bend with plans to document the town in the way Caribbean artists do. The result is Dreamin’ Grand Bend, a surreal collage of favourite Grand Bend landmarks painted in acrylic on canvas, as seen at left.
“I put in what I wanted, but I’m sure some business people will say, ‘How come I’m not in there?’ But I was looking for interesting architecture.”
The buildings that are included are iconic, Otton says.
“I knew I had to have a steeple in it for the skyline, and the rest are landmarks of Grand Bend. The church is a landmark as are the lighthouse and the bathhouse. I used a couple of cottages from the old village. Dairy Dip is pretty important; you can’t come to Grand Bend without having an ice cream. FINE is a cute little building.”
Otton, who is inspired by Lake Huron and often paints the lake, admits she left out some iconic parts of Grand Bend.
“I don’t have any sand. I couldn’t put sand in it. (Casey: “No bikinis either.”) I do have T-shirts in the Island Beach Company window!”
Several prints have already sold, including one on its way to Florida, and another to Toronto. It’s enough to inspire Otton to consider more using this technique.
“With the response I’ve gotten, I think I might do more.”
If you’re interested in getting a print, Otton will be part of the Sunset Arts Christmas show November 7 and 8 at the gallery in the River Road art complex. Otherwise, you can contact the artist directly at 519-238-6671.
Prices are as follows: 8×10 matted prints are $55, 8×10 framed prints are $100, 16×20 prints on canvas are $275, and 20×25 prints on canvas are $385.

Inspired by Brian Dale’s Miss Grand Bend, a group of radio listeners is fighting to win CBC’s Great Canadian SongQuest

Story and file photos by Casey Lessard

Only days remain to vote for Grand Bend (or its competitors) in CBC Radio 2’s Great Canadian Songquest, a contest to choose one town from each province to be immortalized in song. Grand Bend made it into the top five for Ontario thanks to some aggressive voting by enthusiastic radio listeners, including Brantford resident and Klondyke Park trailer owner Frank Beattie, University of Western Ontario sociology student Heidi Klopp and others.
“It’s about getting Grand Bend noticed and recognized,” says Klopp, 20, a Zurich veteran who now considers Grand Bend home. “It’s an awesome small town with as much to offer as the big towns.”
Beattie and Klopp thought the contest would be a good way to promote their favourite iconic song about the village, Brian Dale’s “Miss Grand Bend”, which is now available on Dale’s peace/love/waves/song CD that came out this summer. Plans to promote Dale’s music changed somewhat after nominations began and the nominators realized the contest wasn’t to recognize songs that already existed (vis-a-vis “Miss Grand Bend”), but rather to find 13 places across Canada that would be written about by an artist from each province. For Ontario, the artists are Jully Black (R&B/soul), Hawksley Workman (alternative), Shad K (rap), Lynn Miles (folk/roots), and Justin Rutledge (alt-country).
“It’s too bad they’re not using local artists like Brian, Greg Gallello, Natalie Tobin,” Klopp says, “but it’s still a good thing for our town.”
It’s a misunderstanding shared by early Grand Bend bid supporter Frank Beattie, 56, who heard about the contest from a friend.
“All I could think about was Brian’s new album, released after all these years, and thought maybe this is a place to suggest ‘Miss Grand Bend’ as a candidate for the contest,” Beattie says. “They had a few blogging tools that allowed you to create a blog to promote your place. Every time you logged in, you could nominate your town, so on the first day while updating the blog, I voted enough to get us off to a pretty good start.”
A good start is an understatement. At times, Grand Bend was in the lead, and finished in the top five, good enough to be a finalist. After a week of voting, says CBC Radio director of music Mark Steinmetz, Grand Bend was fourth after Algonquin Park, Sleeping Giant (Thunder Bay) and Toronto; Picton was fifth. It’s a proud accomplishment for Beattie, who nine years ago had no idea where Grand Bend was.
“After finishing a big project at work, my boss said we needed to get away,” he says. “There were eight of us involved in that project, and our entire company was dependent on our group, so he decided to leave them on their own while we went away during the middle of the week. We rolled in on Wednesday night. I remember calling my wife and saying, ‘This is unbelievable. It’s an hour and a half away from home (Brantford) and it’s got everything we want.’”
Two weeks later, he brought his wife for a stay at the Oakwood.
“We sat in the dining room for a late dinner and the sunset coming down Oakwood Drive hooked us.” Later that summer, they bought a used trailer at the Klondyke Trailer Park. “Best investment we’ve made,” he says.
His passion for the village is apparent, and his love for local music – among the reasons he and his wife decided to stay – makes him want to promote it across Canada.
“Brian has been adamant since this started that we promote the town, not him. To me, Grand Bend is a secret and a gem. It’s priceless and not well-known. Do we want to lose our paradise? The answer is no, but I’ve been promoting Grand Bend for eight years and the only person to ever take me up on my offer, my neighbour at work, is now my neighbour at the park. He and his partner just love it.”
“It’s a town for everybody and every age group,” Klopp says. “No matter how old or young, there’s something for you.”
For Klopp, the people are the main attraction, then the location. And of course, there’s the music.
“We’re a very musical town, and everyone feels the music. Even if you can’t get up and dance (at a Gables jam night, for example), you can bop to the music.”
For Beattie, the location is the inspiration.
“The beach, the lake, sunsets, the strip, the atmosphere. It’s like Gravenhurst, but it’s 40 minutes from London and an hour from Stratford.”
That’s why CBC Songquest is a good fit, Klopp says.
“I thought it was exactly what Grand Bend needs with the new downtown and beach renovations. What’s the point of spending those millions of dollars if no one comes? Tourism has definitely been down these past few years. It’s great that the locals get to enjoy it, but we want to share it with everyone else as well.”
Just the type of message CBC hopes will come out of the contest, in addition to raising awareness of a recent format change at Radio 2.
“We wanted something to engage Canadians, the artistic community, and our people here to come up with 13 new songs commissioned by the CBC that represented towns across the country,” Mark Steinmetz says. “Rather than us dictating how it was going to go and who we would commission, we thought it would be great to open it up to Canadians.”
While expecting major urban centres to make the top five for each province, he notes that smaller centres are leading the pack. “It’s a tight race right now for what people are voting for,” he says. “It’s a way to discover new artists in this country. We play a diverse range of music, and there are so many great artists out there that don’t get played on private stations.”
Plus it’s a good way to create new music about Canada.
“I don’t know if you know this, but Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Canadian Railroad Trilogy’ was actually a CBC commission (for the centennial year, 1967),” Steinmetz notes. “We’ve commissioned many types of music. That came from internally. Now Canadians get to help us decide who we’re going to commission. And who knows, one of these songs could become a song that gets embedded in the nation’s consciousness.”
Local listeners hope Grand Bend inspires that song. The final days of the contest will be tough, but Beattie remains as optimistic as he can.
“I think it’s going to take a miracle now to win. Toronto has a few million people, while we have a few thousand. Brian Dale says it right: to be successful in the music business, you need luck and connections, and for us to win this contest, it’s going to take a lot of both.”
“Vote as much as you can,” says Heidi Klopp. “You can vote once a day. Tell everyone you can. Listen to CBC radio, and spread the word.”
To vote, visit: http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/songquest/

What do you do without demolition derbies? Race lawn tractors, of course.

Photos and story by Casey Lessard

Most people don’t get a rush of adrenaline from hopping on a lawnmower, so it’s easy to be surprised by the idea of challenging a few friends to a lawnmower race. It’s something a group of guys in Thedford thought would be a good alternative to the demolition derbies so often seen at local fairs.
“We couldn’t get the insurance or location for a demolition derby,” says Rob Anderson, president of the Thedford Spirit Club. “Four or five of us decided to get a bunch of guys together and make some lawnmowers go fast.”
The first race was at Thedford Funion Days two years ago, and the feedback was positive.
“There was a good crowd,” Anderson says. “Everyone seemed to like it, cheering for all the local racers.”
It was a novel idea to the Thedford gang, but they soon discovered it was not a new one. A town in Indiana has been running an annual lawnmower race since 1963. There are clubs across the United States and in the United Kingdom, and the Thedford group has been active in forming Western Ontario Outlaws (http://www.westernontariooutlaws.com), which now has 60+ members ranging in ages from six to 61.
“I try to tell people what we do, and they think I’m a redneck,” says Brittnee Kerr, whose family is actively involved, including her five-year-old son who is hoping to start racing next year. “He saw his uncle do it and saw him going fast. Now he’s got fuel in his blood.”
Kerr doesn’t race herself, and so far there are only a few female racers including one woman and several girls. But the sport draws a diverse crowd of men and women.
“Speed,” says outlaw class racer Rob Arnel, is the attraction to driving one of Thedford’s 14 tractors. “It’s like a go-kart with a lawnmower motor in it.”
“It’s exciting,” says racer Shane Ross of Thedford. “Just another sport to get together with friends and have fun. And you get trophies.”
The group travels together to venues around the province, and tends to race the same people each week. Not to say that each week is the same, though.
“You never know what you’re going to find for a track,” Anderson says. “We raced today (Sunday) on grass, so it was a bumpy track. It brings the different driving styles out.”
Regardless of the conditions, safety is always a concern because the riders ride roll-cage free lawnmowers packing up to 22 horsepower; the outlaw class tractors even use racing fuel. Tractors are fitted with safety equipment to kill the engine if a rider falls off, and riders have plenty of protective gear. Luckily, organizers realized from the beginning that the best way to keep riders safe is to remove the mower blades.
“We’re always changing our safety rules,” Anderson says, “and we are 100 times safer than when we started.
“(Lawnmower racing) has all the same aspects as racing a car, say at Delaware. It has the build and set up, the thrill of racing and the adrenaline. It’s more than just putting a lawnmower out and going around a track.”
“Everyone laughs and thinks it’s crazy,” says Brittnee Kerr, “and then they come and see what it’s about.”

To see for yourself what it’s all about, visit a race (schedule at: http://www.westernontariooutlaws.com/.

Let’s Play Bridge

Musical comedy presented by the Grand Cove Musical Theatre Group
Fri. October 2 – 7 p.m.
Sat. October 3 – 7 p.m.
Sun. October 4 – 2 p.m.
Grand Cove Caddyshack. Tickets: $7.50; on sale Mondays and Fridays from 1-3 p.m. at Caddy Shack or call Jo Dabrowski at 519-238-5156.

Grand Cove’s actors are back at it with another adaptation of life in the Grand Bend retirement community. This year, writer-producer-director Doreen Newell took her inspiration from the Cove’s most popular card game: bridge.
“It’s about the people playing bridge,” Newell says. “It highlights the type of characters we have in the Cove and the different walks of life. Everybody here has lived their lives, everybody has been captain of their own ship, everybody has their own ideas of what it should be.
“The Cove’s a melting pot. We’ve all walked our lives all over the world. We’re getting old. We have to come somewhere to melt down, and this is where, and this is a show about the meltdown (laughs).”
Building on the success of two sold out productions in a row, Let’s Play Bridge gives audiences what they expect: familiar music, great costumes, and local flavour.
“We incorporated the gossip of the Cove and the Bend,” Newell says, noting the importance of this last aspect, “and all the little funny things in every day life here. The familiar put into a story that’s not old hat.”
Newell writes what she sees, and the story is inspired by the characters she casts.
“Isabel Sweeney is the hostess with the mostess. Seeing Isabel walk around the park, she’s an elegant lady. She’s an immediate part. And she sings beautifully.
“Georgina Bellamy originates from Liverpool. She was at the wedding of one of the Jerry and the Pacemakers! She was a policewoman on duty for several of those things. She can slip back, after 30-odd years in Canada, into the Liverpudlian mode. She knows it.
“Peg Seller does all the costumes for here. She’s a magical fairy. She belongs in fairy land. She loves pretty things and creating. She lives in Never Never Land; make-believe land.
“Bev Breen is fairly new to the Cove. I felt when I put her in there, she could relate to the country scene. She typifies the typical Canadian from the country.
“Brenda Clark is the clown. When we had a winter teach-in, we gave everyone parts. It didn’t matter what we gave her, she could clown around and do it.”
To Newell, life at the Cove is “one big pantomime” and the play is a projection of what its characters believe are “the highlights of their lives”.
“It’s a really good sing-song with good humour,” Newell summarizes. “They’ll have a really enjoyable evening. It’s going to be a fun show with a lot of class.”
Tickets sell fast, so act soon.

Story by Casey Lessard

Although it’s not very common in Canada today, polio had a serious and sometimes deadly impact on Canadians until the 1950s. Today, polio (or poliomyelitis) affects about 1,000 people worldwide, with almost all cases occurring in India, Afghanistan and Nigeria. That’s down from 350,000 cases in 1985, when Rotary International pledged to eradicate the disease from the planet. Since then, Rotary has raised billions of dollars to fight polio, and plans to continue until it’s history.
“There is no cure for polio,” says Grand Bend Rotary’s Foundation coordinator Brian Hall. “The only cure is to wipe it out.”
Hall’s father contracted polio at age two. The virus destroys neurons, stopping communication between the nervous system and muscles. This can cause temporary or permanent paralysis.
“They told his parents that he would never walk,” Hall says of his father. “He did ultimately walk, but the leg that the polio affected was two inches shorter than his other leg. He could never run, skate, or walk like a normal person. He limped and was lucky to be able to walk at all.”
For Rotary, the only solution is to immunize all of the children in the countries where polio still exists.
“Our big push this year is the Rotary toll road on the Labour Day weekend,” Hall says. “This year, our club has committed all of the funds from the toll road to polio.”
Each shot costs between $0.50 to $0.80 to administer, depending on the child’s location. India alone plans to vaccinate 172 million children in a series of six national vaccination days, and another 69 million children after that.
“No question we’re going to eradicate it,” Hall says. “The quicker we get this done, the sooner we can direct the funds toward other causes.”
To show your support, the Rotary club will be at the main lights in Grand Bend on the Labour Day weekend collecting donations. Anything you can offer will help.

Survivor stories:
Hugh Marsh
Reg Copeman
Marian Maguire

“It’s always with you.” – Hugh Marsh

As told to Casey Lessard

Hugh Marsh is a former area resident whose family ties remain in and around Grand Bend. He has lived in California most of his life, and spent much of his career teaching engineering writing at the University of California Santa Barbara.
A polio survivor, Marsh has long fought for improved accessibility for people using wheelchairs.

I had just turned 14 in the summer of 1948; it was August 19th as I recall. We went to a family picnic at Springbank Park in London. My friend Greg Seabrook and I were playing miniature golf and running back to the picnic table where our families were; I could always beat in a foot race, but this time I couldn’t keep up with him.
That was a Friday night. Late afternoon Saturday, I went to go to the bathroom and I fell on the way to the bathroom and had to crawl in. That was the last time I walked.
I don’t remember the moment when they told me I’d never walk again. I don’t remember it being a traumatic time for me and I never had any psychological trauma from it. I’ve thought about the months in the hospital, and there must have been times when I was depressed, but I just kind of took it as it was. I always expected I would live a normal life, and my parents made my life as normal as possible.
I was in the War Memorial Children’s Hospital (in London, now Children’s Hospital of Western Ontario) from the 21st of August until the following May. For the first month, you’re in an isolation ward and really sick. The polio virus settles in the spine and, depending on where it settles, it affects you from below that point. If it settles behind your belly button, you become paraplegic. Mine was a wee bit higher than that, so it also affected my left arm a little, but that appeared later.

Those were the days when they kept you in the hospital. I recall it being a rather enjoyable time. There were five or six of us boys, and an old lady teacher would come in and give us our lessons, so I didn’t miss a grade of school as a consequence.
I don’t remember anything bad about the hospital at all. We were always getting into mischief. In the spring, there was a roof garden, and we would go up there and play on the roof. I had a big old wooden wheelchair and we were racing around on the roof one time. It had a board floor, and one of the wheels caught between the boards and flipped the chair over. It shattered into a pile of kindling.

Moving on
I was treated pretty much as an ordinary kid, except for the fact that I had a wheelchair. My parents did what the doctors told them to do and that was not to do anything for me that I could do myself. I was taught to be independent and I pretty much was. When I was old enough, I got a driver’s license and hand controls for the car.
The biggest change was figuring out ways to get around. My dad always made it happen. But it was always something that we as a family had to deal with. I’ve dealt with access issues all of my life.
London Central High School had steps into it. My brother Barry, who was a couple of years younger than me, would simply pull me up the half dozen steps into the first floor. If I had to go to the second floor, a few of the boys would grab my wheelchair and lift me up the stairs. We’d find a way around it. Now, it looks a lot the same, but there are ramps and elevators, so you can get everywhere.
We moved to California in 1953 when I was 19, mostly for my father’s health because he had asthma. I went to college and did some graduate work. In my last year of college I was working full-time. I had married young and had a baby girl, so coping with polio had a real life lesson for me to deal with the issues I had to deal with myself. Polio taught me how to do that.
I got a job in the aerospace industry as a publication editor for a while. I started to run technical publications groups in the California area for a company making infrared spy satellite technology. While I was there, I was asked to teach a class in engineering writing at the University of California Santa Barbara. I taught one class and then they asked me to teach two. A few months later, they asked me to teach three and that meant full-time. I left aerospace and spent the last 20 years of my professional life at the university teaching, and I just loved it.

Pushing for access
I’ve been involved in all sorts of disabled rights groups here in California, and as a matter of fact I was information officer for the state’s department of rehabilitation for a couple of years between my years in aerospace. I’ve been very involved in getting access here. I’ll continue to be involved. It takes people who care about it to get in and do it. Change doesn’t come unless people who are involved participate in that change. That’s a must.
For every disabled person who needs access, there are up to a dozen people who the lack of access affects if they want to go places together. It’s taken a long time, but it’s slowly changing.
I remember I got a job at Aerojet, a big corporation. I was hired May 9, 1960, and they had to modify bathrooms so I could get into stalls, and offices had to be enlarged where I was working. There had to be access into the buildings I needed to go into, and there were some buildings that wasn’t possible, so I just wasn’t involved in working in those buildings. The publications department I worked in eventually got to be pretty accessible. Later on, when I worked in Sacramento for a few years, when I was part of the state government, I was essentially advocating for more access to businesses and public buildings in California. I’m still involved in that on a city council committee here in Santa Barbara.

Post-polio syndrome
It turns out that polio isn’t a disease that, once you’ve had it, you stay pretty much the same. I began to notice symptoms of increasing weakness and pain around 1980. My slightly weakened right arm became much weaker, and about 10 years ago I had to go from a manual wheelchair to a power chair. And, the progression of the weakness and pain hasn’t slowed down, even though I’ve been through various courses of physical therapy and pain management. Pain management has brought new problems that accompany the “hard drugs”, OxyContin and Norco in my case.
After the the Salk vaccine in the early 1950s, most research on polio stopped. Now it has picked up again, but – to my knowledge at least – no explanation for the phenomenon of post-polio syndrome has appeared, to say nothing of a cure.
Organizations like Rotary who put their financial resources behind the project are doing a tremendous amount to finally get rid of polio. It’s absolutely important to get to that final step. It was getting to the point where it was almost eradicated and a generation of young parents came along who weren’t sure that all of these vaccinations were good for children. There was an uptick again because parents weren’t having their children vaccinated. It’s a simple thing to do and it needs to be done.

“You either get better or you die.” – Reg Copeman

Reg Copeman of Port Franks grew up in London, and in early 1952, he contracted polio at age 10. He has few aftereffects today, but the memory stays with him.

As told to Casey Lessard

I came back off summer holidays, and the first week of school I got feeling sick. They thought I had the flu or something, so they kept me home, but it kept getting worse. My doctor was an older fellow and didn’t really know what he was getting into.
It got to the point where I couldn’t swallow food at all. My aunt would make me mashed potatoes, but it was like soup. I got really sick and the doctor sent an apprentice doctor to look at me. He put his hand on the back of my neck and pushed my forehead back. It was just like someone drove a knife into my back. He said, “Get him ready and call an ambulance; I think he’s got polio.”

A scary experience
I was ten years old and really scared. I remember going from the main hospital where they did the tests on me down this long tunnel into the children’s hospital and into isolation immediately.
The type of polio I had, you either get better or you die because it affects the muscles around your lungs. They get deteriorated to the point where the muscles don’t work.
It kept getting worse and worse and they put me in an iron lung for a couple of months. You’re sealed in there. They alternate putting air pressure in and taking it away and that’s what makes your lungs work. There were two or three in the room where I was. The iron lung totally covers you and your head sticks out of the end. It’s sealed at the neck. They had sealed holes that they could stick things in or turn you over. Your whole world is a mirror in front of your face.
Your relatives couldn’t come in the room with you. They stood outside in the hallway and talked to you through a window. If they brought you something, books or toys or whatever, the nurse would bring them into you. If you dropped an item on the floor, you couldn’t pick it up. The nurse would come in, pick it up and sterilize it, and it would be three or four days before they gave it back to you.

Survival story
Once they got my lungs working again, it was back into isolation. That’s when I saw some of the other kids who were a whole lot worse than I was. There were crippled babies whose bodies were wasting away. I don’t know how many of those small kids survived.
I kept in touch for years with one boy my age, and the last I heard he was still in Paris. He never did get the use of his legs back.
I have no lasting effects that stop me from doing anything. I still have problems swallowing, and I have to be careful what I eat. To eat steak or any kind of beef, I have to make sure I cut it up into really small pieces and chew it well or I’ll choke.
The rest of my body, the right side muscles are smaller than the left side. I have very little reflexes in the right side of my body. I have a lot of fun with doctors at examinations.

A sleeping giant
I think about it all the time. They brought the vaccine out a year after I got out of the hospital. I remember my mother taking me to get the vaccine shot, and they told her I didn’t need it because I would never get polio again. It’s just like having chicken pox. Well, my younger sister adamantly refused to have her three kids vaccinated. When I found that out, I was very upset. We had little kids of our own at the time and I gave her quite a talking to. She figured no one gets it anymore. But that’s why we vaccinate.
It’s a monster still out there lying there waiting for enough people foolish enough not to get the vaccinations. Once you’re affected, vaccinations won’t do anything. We’ve got it licked. Let’s keep it licked.

“There are different ways you learn to cope with it.” – Marian Maguire

Although Marian Maguire of Grand Bend had a mild case of polio as a child, the disease has more of an impact on her life today than ever. She, like so many others, has post-polio syndrome, which progressively disables nerves and muscles in polio survivors.

As told to Casey Lessard

There was an epidemic in the summer of 1938. My cousin had it and I had been visiting her in Parkhill the week before, so they were keeping an eye on me. They caught mine very early because of that.
I was only about four at the time, and all I can remember is being in the hospital in isolation. My mom and dad would come to the hospital but they couldn’t come into the room.

Giving it a second thought
My parents told me I had had it, but I never had any aftereffects from it. I never gave it a second thought until 1970 or ‘75. Someone noticed that I had a slight limp.
It progressively got worse. The muscle in my right calf has deteriorated. The second toe also drops, and you have to watch it or you’ll trip very easy. In the last couple of years, I’ve also noticed my right arm getting weaker.
When you’re younger, some of the nerves will take over and compensate for the ones that are dying. When you get older, they can’t compensate. That’s when you really notice it. They call this post-polio syndrome. I was diagnosed in 1996.

Coping mechanisms
I get muscle spasms, especially at night. You have to get up and move or it drives you nuts. I’ve been dealing with this for 20 years at least.
We used to do a lot of walking, and you can’t do that as much. Fatigue is a big thing.
The drug Mestinon had side effects that I thought I was better off without. But I was on another medication that really helped. No more aching leg at night, and I could sleep. After about two years, it wasn’t working as well and got to a point where it wasn’t working at all.
There are different ways you learn to cope with it. If it bothers me in the evening, I go out for a walk. You need something to get it off your mind. If I have company playing cards, it doesn’t bother me. If I’m sitting watching TV, it bothers me.

Prioritize
Until recently, I have been able to do pretty much everything I wanted. I’m 75, so you can’t expect to do what you did when you were 50. But I notice now that I prioritize things. I don’t want to do something I won’t enjoy because I know I can’t do everything; I can’t stay at something as long as I used to.

Marian’s experience led her to discover post-polio support groups, which she attended for some time. The one she attended was in London, and meets the third Saturday every other month including October. Call Heather McAdam at 519-764-2481 for more information. The March of Dimes (http://www.marchofdimes.ca/) is also active in supporting polio survivors.

Needs supporters to maintain River Road presence

Story and photos by Casey Lessard

The Grand Bend Art Centre could give up the lease on its River Road space if a fundraising effort fails to generate enough interest before October. Artists (including this reporter) use the space to teach art workshops to community members. Artist Teresa Marie, who launched the centre last summer, hopes to sell enough books of coupons valid year-round at local businesses ($40 each, available at the River Road Gallery and elsewhere locally) to pay the rent and secure programming for the fall.
“We have to let Milford know by October whether we’re going to keep this facility as an art centre,” Teresa Marie says. “If we can sell 150 coupon books before the fall, we can probably pull ourselves out of this. Then in April we’ll do the coupon book again with more coupons and have a fresher book for the new season.
“I’m looking for people who want to support the art centre, and this is our gift back to them and our gift to the community to keep the money spent in the community.”
The centre has $15,000 in annual expenses, and rentals and workshops do not cover the cost completely. Even with donations from Rotary and some private donors, the centre has not been able to cover costs.
“We fell short of our budget last year. Milford Purdy, who has been very forgiving, has let us continue to have the place and we’re paying him on a catch-up basis right now.
“As a painter, I was trying to get all of the painters in town together to form groups to use the art centre. For the short term summer season, I wanted it to be available for visiting artists who would stay for the weekend, take some workshops, meet some artists, spend some money in town, and get to know our community through the art.”
Regardless of whether it has a permanent physical space, Teresa Marie says the centre will continue to operate.
“If we can’t come up with the funds to keep that location, I will have to farm out the workshops elsewhere. I will continue to do this on a smaller scale, but I would like to see it continue here.”
Judy Steeper of Corbett hopes the space can maintain the status quo.
“I love the classes,” Steeper says. “They’re Grand Bend’s best kept secret. We’re really fortunate to have it because it’s a treasure. It’s great, especially for me. I work as a wedding planner and designer, and this helps me keep my creativity up.
“It’s handy and it’s close to home. It’s adding tourism and it’s a plus all around.”
Marie Hughes of Bayfield agrees.
“I hope it keeps on going,” says Hughes, who has taken several classes at the centre. “I’ve been hoping to do this for years and years. It’s an opportunity to do some learning close at hand without driving to the big city.”
Hughes notes that the centre is special because students of all abilities are welcome.
“It’s suitable for people who have never picked up a brush. I like that everyone in the class is at different stages in their ability.”
That’s what attracted Rosemary Stevens of London to the Teresa Marie’s painting workshop.
“I always wanted to find out if I could paint,” Stevens says. “I just retired in January and I established a bucket list of things to do that I never had time to do. My mother painted for pleasure and I always admired her work. I thought I’d like to try that and come down and take a class.”
How has the experience been?
“It was very scary when I first started, but now I’m developing some self-confidence. It shows you that you just have to try.”
“People don’t always want to buy things,” says Teresa Marie, “but they want to do things. Grand Bend needs to offer that so people can stay active physically and mentally.
“I started to paint when I was 28 years old and I learned to paint from Barry Richman, David Bannister, and Klaus Verboom. Through them, the art gallery developed. Good things happen when good people get together. Out of that has grown a second gallery. I was taught by other people hands-on, and I want to share that with other people.”
For Rosemary Stevens, supporting the art centre is important for Grand Bend, not only for the students but also for the greater community.
“I think it’s an expression of people in the community and their appreciation for where they are. It’s very important.”

To show your support, buy a coupon book ($40 at River Road Gallery and elsewhere) or sign up for a class.
To find out more, call 519-238-8978 or email grbartcentre@hay.net.

Taste of Huron
August 24-30
Full list of dinners, workshops, and other events: http://www.tasteofhuron.ca

Food for Thought
Dinners at Huron County restaurants
$35 per person (excluding alcohol, taxes and service) Book through host restaurant.

Tuesday, August 25
7 to 9 p.m. – Hessenland
$35 – Reserve: 1-866-543-7736
Tasting and discussion with Pelee Island wine master Walter Schmoranz. Features dishes paired or prepared with Pelee Island brand wines.

Wednesday, August 26
7 to 9 p.m. – Eddington’s
$35 – Reserve: 519-235-3030
Evening with author Jennifer McLagan, winner of the 2009 James Beard Cookbook of the Year for Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes.

Friday, August 28
7 to 11 p.m. – Bayley’s Barn, Hensall
$20 – Corn and Pig Roast
Corn, pork, baked beans, fiddle music and square dancing.

Two-time James Beard Single Subject category award winner for Bones (2005) and Fat (2009), Jennifer McLagan is also the 2009 winner of the James Beard Cookbook of the Year for Fat. McLagan will join James Eddington for a meal consisting of her recipes August 26.
Casey Lessard (a strict vegetarian, by the way) spoke with McLagan about her views on food.

CL: How did you get inspired to write about bones and fat?
JM: I’d done a small piece for a magazine on bones, and my agent thought it could develop into a larger idea. I liked the concept because I had worked for a long time as a food stylist and was doing a lot of boneless and skinless meat, and it drove me crazy.
Bones were fascinating because they’re taboo. Everyone’s buying everything boneless and it seemed the right topic because it could be more than just a cookbook. Bones appeal to the primal sense in man, and there’s a lot of history attached to it.
When I was with my editor in New York, someone asked me what I was going to do next, and I joked that I was going to do a trilogy: bones, skin and fat. I was joking, but when I thought about fat, that was another topic that interested me. Fat is where the flavour is, and it was a topic no one was touching other than no-fat or low-fat. But it was a hard book to sell (to publishers), and it was a Canadian publisher that picked it up.
To me, it’s about writing something that is interesting and saying something that needs to be said, contributing to culinary knowledge.

CL: What do your books contribute to the modern eating culture?
JM: In the last five years, food has become a political topic. People got lost; they got disconnected from their food in lots of different ways: in the source of it, but also how to make and cook it. That’s what’s made a mess of people’s diets and health. I want people to think about what they’re doing and eating. Food is vital to our culture, and I want people to understand that something like fat isn’t bad just because the media tells you it is. Fat’s a very important part of your diet and it won’t kill you.

CL: What are you trying to argue in Fat?
JM: That the low-fat, no-fat thing was pretty much wrong and it did us more harm than good. We need a mix of different things, including fat, in our diet. Our brains are made of fat. There are a lot of vitamins that are only fat-soluble. They put vitamins in low-fat milk, which is a waste of time because those vitamins require fat.
If you put fat into your diet, you’ll probably actually lose weight. It not only makes it very tasty, but it also makes it very satisfying. You’ll eat less of something that’s better for you instead of eating empty carbohydrates.
If we all just ate a normal, regular diet, we’d all be a lot healthier.
Essentially, Fat is a cookbook, so I’m showing people how to cook with fat and how it’s a good medium to cook in and how they can get their hands on fat.

CL: Why is it important to cook with animal fat?
JM: Animal fats are better to cook with than vegetable oils because animal fats have a better balance of Omega-3s and Omega-6s. They’re also very stable. What you do with fat when you cook is you heat it up. Highly polyunsaturated (vegetable) fats break down and become rancid very quickly. A lot of oils we buy in bottles are already rancid but you can’t tell because of the way they’re being processed. With an animal fat you can tell straight away if it’s rancid.
Bones are also something we think is too much work. But there’s lots of great stuff about cooking with bones. You get collagens and gelatins, which are good for you, but you also get a wonderful base for a sauce. When you braise on the bone, you get this wonderful, unctuous sauce that has all the flavour and goodness in there. Bone marrow is an extremely good source of unsaturated fat. All this stuff is good for you, but we’ve forgotten that. We’re not willing to do any work to get our food, and that’s a shame.

CL: The next book you’re doing is about the oddities of food.
JM: I’m calling it Odd Bits – what to do with the rest. These are the second cuts. Every cookbook uses the prime cuts, like chicken breast and tenderloin. They’re good, but sometimes they have less taste than pieces like the brisket or the neck or the shoulder. People don’t use those cuts anymore because they don’t know how to deal with them. I’ll also cover parts that people are scared of, like brains, kidney and liver.

CL: How do you think that book will be received?
JM: I think it needs to be done. It’s very hard to find any sources for what to do with these parts. What do you do with liver and how do you tell whether it’s good or not? What can you cook with it? How do you handle it? Brisket makes wonderful gravy and hamburgers. Get that information out for people so it’s out there.

CL: As a world traveler, do you find the Europeans are adopting the bad habits of North Americans?
JM: I spend a lot of time in France, and while there’s a certain generation that still eats real food from markets, and you can get raw food in the supermarket, that’s changing with the younger generation. The older generation sits down at a table with smaller portions, while the younger generation eats fast food and there’s a rise in obesity. In England, there’s a lot of fast food, and it’s a huge problem. In North America, we’re swinging back the other way. Especially in the cities, there are a lot of people eating the 100-mile diet. People are looking locally, and this is all good.

CL: Why should people buy your book, Fat?
JM: I want people to realize that fat’s not a four-letter word. Fat’s good for them, it’s essential, and best of all, it’s tasty.

Jennifer McLagan’s Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes is published by McClelland & Stewart.

The Band In You is building a following for bands that might hit their peak 10 or 20 years from now

Photos and story by Casey Lessard

Sitting outside a basement studio in the Dalton Subdivision south of Grand Bend, four teenagers wait their turn in Ken Dinel’s domain: his professional music recording studio. Surprised by the success of his project, The Band In You music school, Dinel has had to abandon basement space to expand the studio and the lounge, which is still in the renovation stage.
“I thought I might get five students and teach a little music,” Dinel says. “I didn’t expect a big turnout, but it just took off. And it took off fast. I didn’t do any advertising other than in the Strip, and the word of mouth spread. Kids started telling their friends they were in a band. My five-year-old group members are six now, and they went to Florida for a month; they drove their mom nuts telling everyone they’re in a band.”
Their passion for being part of something bigger than themselves has led to performances by The Band In You students at various community events this summer, including at the Canada Day celebrations and the Relay for Life.
“It’s different from what I’m used to, but a good different,” says 14-year-old Blake Percy of Grand Bend, a guitarist in the band Sweet ‘N’ Toxik. He joined the school after his mom saw the ad in this paper.
“I’m learning a lot of new things. Before I would learn how to play the guitar and go home and practice for hours and hours. Here, you’re learning how to play with other people in a band. The timing is a whole different thing. It’s like comparing an individual sport like tennis to a team sport like soccer.”
The band members range in age from three to 18, and there are seven bands in total. Band members come up with the names, such as Famous, Victim, and Rocket Stars. Everyone is involved in songwriting, which is the main thrust of the school.
“They come in and sit down, and we start writing,” Dinel says. “We’ll rewrite together until the song’s somewhat complete, and then it’s introduced to the band. If the bands are less capable of writing, we each take a turn writing a line and then it’s edited that way. The Rocking Kids are five years old, and they all wrote me a bunch of lyrics about being rock stars and I put it together for them. With Sweet ‘N’ Toxik, Kyla came in with a semi-finished song (“Building My Time Machine”), and we tore it down and rewrote it with new elements. Then we sat down and worked on the music for it. It all came together very quickly.
“From there, we go into the studio and lay down a bed track where the band performs the song together to a click track. Then we just start replacing parts one at a time. We redo it until it’s radio-worthy.”
That level of professionalism and solidarity is what attracts Dinel’s students.
“I thought I was the next Taylor Swift,” says Sweet ‘N’ Toxik singer Megan O’Brien, 15 of Zurich. “But then I got into the band and this is so much cooler because you get to share the hard work and pride with other people. I really want to hit it big with the band. I love sharing our music with people. When I’m listening to the radio, I’ll hear a song that makes me say, ‘I’m so glad they wrote that.’ I want to share that with people.”
Sharing the music is part of the appeal for Kyla Hunt-Beach of Grand Bend, also a singer with the band.
“I like being able to perform and entertain,” says the 17-year-old. “I like being able to work in a team as a band. It’s been really amazing.
“The highlight is playing at concerts,” Kyla says. “The first one at the Grand Bend Public School Family Fun Day was amazing. I loved how there was a big crowd and how enthusiastic they were. I loved how they came up afterward and complimented us.”
Blake Percy agrees.
“It’s great seeing people come out to watch you play because I’m not used to that. Our band is good, so we get good applause and that’s a rush.”
Dinel estimates the school’s show has about 200 loyal fans, so he’s looking forward to taking the bands on tour locally. Coming off well-received shows this summer, Dinel has started picking up paying gigs for his students.
“The original goal of the school was to teach them how to write songs and record them,” he says. “Now that the school’s full, we’re going to develop a show. They’ll write and perform originals and covers, and each band will have its own set.
“We’ve been promised radio. Next year, I want to take these kids on tour locally. Then it’s TV. They’re very young, but there’s an It factor. We’ve performed with some bigger bands, and the bigger audience seems to be when the kids are on. We don’t see kids play, so it’s a rarity. And it’s coming out of Grand Bend.”
That said, the performers are still kids, so they’re not polished professionals, although there are a few prodigies. For Dinel, career longevity is the key, and that comes from accountability and desire, even if their age sometimes shows in the lyrics and sound.
“There’s a lot of editing at this stage,” Dinel admits. “But they get better each time they do the process. They’ve been here six months, so imagine them in two years. Grand Bend’s going to have some serious music out of this. Victim is a very committed band; my daughter’s in that one. They’re the real deal, and in two years they’ll only be 10!
“Most garage bands typically envision these ideas (touring, recording, etc.), but don’t go any further because they don’t have anyone to help them get there. I always push them to look forward. It’s more of a preparation mentality than a practice mentality.”
“I had lessons before,” adds Megan O’Brien, “and you go home and play, but it’s not fun. With a band, people are depending on you. We’re looking at the bigger picture.”
Mom Yvonne O’Brien is impressed.
“On several occasions, our daughters have been jamming and performing with other friends who have a lot more formal or traditional training. Their experience with The Band In You’s format was very apparent, and helped produce a more confident performance.”
Shannon O’Brien, 13, plays drums and is learning the bass. She agrees that the experience has helped boost her confidence in performance.
“Before, friends would come over and I’d be totally lost,” she says. “Now I can play with bands and it’s a lot better.”
“Ken is phenomenal,” Kyla Hunt-Beach says. “He’s really good to work with and easy to get along with. He gets you on track when you need to. It’s really fun and you don’t even realize when you’re practicing because you’re having so much fun. You get lost in the music because it’s so much fun.”
Dinel believes his process helps students relax, creating a desire to come back for more.
“When Kyla came in, she was conservative, safe and tense. Now, you see her in there and she’s a whole different person.
“I’m trying to put together bands that really get along well. There’s no inner dating. They’re respectful to each other. For the sake of longevity, they have to share the limelight, be respectful and encouraging to each other.”
That was a challenge at first for Kyla and Megan, who share the stage as singers in Sweet ‘N’ Toxik.
“At first, when we didn’t know each other, we kind of competed,” Megan says. “Not too bad, but we’d almost scream trying to get over each other. Finally we said, we want to sound good, and we sound good together. We’re both equally in this, so let’s just do it. Now we hang out all the time. We’re good friends. It wasn’t like that before, but now it is.”
Together they are stronger, they say, and they’re in it for the long haul.
“I want our band to get big and become well known, ” Kyla says. “ To be able to travel and tour. I just hope it grows. It’s going to be hard, but that’s how you get big.”
Thirteen-year-old Shannon’s prepared for the ride.
“I’d like to see people know our band. That would be the coolest thing.”
For Dinel, the end result is up to his students.
“It’s a self-defined experience,” he says. “We have a great time, but I do have expectations. If they don’t come in prepared, it’s not cool. As a band, they all feel part of something greater than their everyday life.”

The school’s roster is full, but has a waiting list that could be drawn upon in the fall. To join the waiting list and be part of the process, contact Ken Dinel at thebandinyou (at) hay.net

Hard worker makes cozy nest for himself and cat by restoring century home across the street from his parents

Now 23 years old, Tom Love got the idea three years ago to buy the home and acreage across from his parents after it came up for sale. After a year of hard work, with help from his parents and grandparents, he’s living a comfortable life with his cat Tye in the century home at the intersection of Highway 81 and Crediton Line.
“There’s no house around here like this one,” says Tom’s dad John Love. “We knew Ila, who lived here before, and she had Alzheimer’s, so her son was taking care of the place,” Tom’s dad John Love says. “We said to him that if he ever wanted to sell it, we’d be interested. In 2006, he came along and said he was ready to sell.
“It was a lot of work,” John adds. “We pretty much ripped it down to the 2×4 studs and started over. We put spray-foam insulation in the outside walls and went from there.”
The restoration took a year and a lot of savings. “I’ve been pretty good with my money,” notes Tom, who has been working since he was six. “I was nine years old when I bought my first lawnmower. I sold pumpkins, cut grass, washed windows at the drive-in, worked at POG, Sobey’s and Best’s. Now, my dad and I do grass-cutting, leaf cleanup, painting. If I saved up enough, I could buy good things to make more money.”
With a little bit of help from mom and dad, and a mortgage, the result is a spectacularly restored turn-of-the-century beauty.

As told to Casey Lessard
Photos by Casey Lessard

This was once a village named Harpley. There used to be a post office on the northeast corner that was owned by my great-great-grandpa. There was a hotel across from the post office, and a shingle mill on this farm originally. David Hollenback started building the house in 1877, and when the supply of cedar shakes ran out, that’s when he decided to move. James B. Hodgins bought it in 1877, and it was in his family (Hodgins had three granddaughters, Nola, Beulah and the youngest Ila, who last owned the house) until I bought it.
The house came up for sale in April 2006. It was a pretty good deal because we didn’t have to go through the real estate broker. It’s a good place to live and it’s right across from my parents’. I wanted it to be a nice place, a place that was good to live in.
The house needed a lot of work. It needed all new electrical and insulation, and we had to put a new furnace in. The whole house had electric baseboard heating, so we tore that all out and have a gas furnace outside that also has air conditioning in it.
We finished the floors and put new drywall in and painted it. We tore out the laundry room beside the kitchen. It was rough; the floor had tile on it and we needed an electric cleaner to get the glue off.
We had to refinish the staircase spindles in place because if we took them apart, we figured we might not be able to get them back together again. My mom did it. There was a lot of wax on them and it was difficult for her to get it off. They are a mix of walnut and pine. I think the pine spindles were put in because the people who lived here wanted to stop the kids from getting stuck between them.

I figured since it was an old house, we should go with the antique theme. The trim we got made in Exeter to make it look like antique trim. We got an antique stained-glass window from an old hotel in St. Joseph, and made a matching one at Sunrise Windows in London.
I have one grandfather clock in the living room that my grandpa made when I first moved in, and I have a wall clock for my bedroom that he made 10 years ago.
The Hodgins family came to my open house last year, and they were very interested to see the place. We planted three trees to remember the girls who lived here: Ila, Nola, and Beulah.

It’s nice, and it’s convenient because my mother can do my laundry.
John: Notice he doesn’t have a laundry room?
It’s nice and relaxing. No one bugs me when I’m trying to watch TV. Eventually I hope to get a plasma TV to put on the wall, and I hope to build a new deck. The current one’s in rough shape.
In my spare time, I enjoy cutting the grass, and going outside at night in the summer time. But I don’t have a lot of spare time.
Nobody else has anything like it. Everything’s new these days. Figured I’d have something different.

Story and photos by Casey Lessard

Master boat-builder Skip Izon has been working on a non-aquatic project for the last little while: restoring what’s believed to be the oldest horse-drawn ambulance in Canada. The ambulance, built in Petrolia in 1908, spent the last 25 years at the Lambton Heritage Museum after it spent ten years at a private museum.
“It was originally built by JR Fennell of Petrolia Wagon Works, who signed the work February 4, 1908,” says Tom Moore, a Lambton County paramedic raising funds to restore the wooden vehicle. “It was kept in Petrolia and used at the town hall, which was also the fire hall. It was used up to about 1919. What’s special about this one is it’s the last horse-drawn ambulance in Ontario, and probably the oldest in Canada.”
While it is relatively well preserved, the two side-boards and some other parts were damaged because the vehicle was kept outside under a lean-to for the 10 years before LHM curator Bob Tremain acquired it.
“It was exposed to the elements so the original basswood was cupped and split on the back and one side worse than the other,” Moore says. “We went and got the exact kind of wood and Skip milled it all down to the 3/8” that it was. He’s put it on in the exact way it was, using the same screw pattern and techniques with a few more modern materials.”
For Izon, it’s a relatively simple, yet delicate, operation.
“Compared to what I do on the boats, this is pretty straight ahead. For me the challenge is to do it exactly the same as they did it.
“There’s a connection (to the original builder),” Izon adds. “I’m using most of the same tools they use. Hand tools, chisels and hammers. They used metal screws with wooden plugs, and mine are the same.”
Not much has changed
Both men, Moore a paramedic and Izon a firefighter, see similarities between how emergency vehicles were used then and now.
“I’ve been a firefighter for 18 years,” Izon says “and Tom’s been a paramedic for 25 years. I will often go in the back of the ambulance to perform CPR, so this looks very familiar to both of us.”
“It’s kind of the same configuration as we have today,” Moore notes. “We have room for the bed, a medicine cabinet, a seat for the attendant, who likely would have been the doctor in 1908 in Petrolia.”
When it comes to history, the ambulance has a great deal of significance for paramedics and firefighters across Canada.
“It’s an important part of our heritage. A lot of firefighting apparatuses have survived, but not a lot of ambulances. There’s not a lot of heritage pieces for paramedics across Canada, so I think once word gets out that this has been restored, there will be quite a bit of interest.
“For the public, we can say there’s been an ambulance service here in Lambton County for over 100 years.”
And for Moore, it’s a special piece because unlike other ambulances, this one served only in its designed role.
“This ambulance was built and only used ever as an ambulance,” Moore says. “A lot of ambulances were also used as hearses and some for delivering milk on the weekends. This was only ever used as an ambulance. The oil and petroleum industry around Petrolia was very dangerous at the time, so a lot of people were getting hurt, and badly. I believe the town of Petrolia commissioned this to get the people from the oil fields who were hurt and bring them back to town.
“We actually know the last patient” who rode in the ambulance, Moore notes. “The guy who restored the bell told us it was his mother’s first husband, who was transported to Petrolia hospital in 1919 after being electrocuted. He died at quite a young age and his name was Howlett.”
Once Izon’s work restoring the siding is done, the foot-operated bell will be returned to its place, as will the lettering and logo on the side.
“I’ll paint it black again,” Izon says, “and we’ll find an artist to paint the red and gold cross like it was. It’s going to be quite striking.”
Moore has raised $10,000 through corporate sponsorship, personal donations, and the Association of Municipal Emergency Medical Services of Ontario. A memorial fund for Paul Patterson, a Kerwood-born paramedic who died in the line of duty two years ago, also contributed $2,100 to the project; Moore says the restoration will be dedicated in Patterson’s memory in September.
Moore would like to see the project finished by early that month so the ambulance can take part in the Petrolia Fair parade. There’s one catch. “We’ve yet to find a skilled horseman to pull it,” he says, noting Izon hasn’t volunteered.
“It’s almost a kind of time machine,” Izon says. “It goes from this time back to 1908. It’s a common bond between those two times. We haven’t changed much in what we’re doing or who we are.”
For more information, or to donate, visit http://www.horsedrawnambulance.com

Story and photos by Casey Lessard

When Deb and Jim McCann bought a lakefront cottage last year, it came complete with a dead tree. Of course, they thought what anyone would: make a pirate.
“It’s an elm tree that was hit by lightning about four years ago,” Deb says. “The bark flew off it one winter and we got it cut down last fall. We left the stump, and Jim thought a pirate would look good looking out to sea.”
They asked around if anyone knew a carver, and the Wilhelms of Exeter suggested Paul Frenette, who had carved one of their trees. Frenette, of Kitchener, has been carving for five years.
“I carve all kinds of stuff, but my favourite to do is stump carving,” Frenette says. “Bring a tree back to life and give it a second life. I’ll do pretty much anything they ask, but if it’s up to me I do something mythical, like spirit faces, dragons, or gargoyles.”
For this project, he took his inspiration from the Wexford shipwreck off the Lake Huron coast, and from popular culture.
“I like pirates, so the Pirates of the Caribbean movie was the ultimate resource. I did a clay model of what I wanted to do, and I do that for complex jobs. Otherwise I carve what feels good.”
Neighbour Daphne Johnston is impressed.
“It’s terrific. I think it’s a very creative way to use a dead tree stump rather than cutting it up. It’s neat to have pirates guarding our little section of Elmwood.”
The pirate took several visits to complete, and is all freehand carving using a variety of tools.
“It’s about 99 per cent chainsaw, so I have five chainsaws of different sizes, and when I get to the details, I use chisels for eye balls and fine details I can’t get into with the chainsaw.”
With proper care, the carving can last a long time.
“I’ll use a wood hardener because it’s already been dead for four years. I’ll treat it and finish it. This should last 15 to 20 years if they take care of it. Ideally you would cut it off at the bottom, seal it and reattach it. Then it would last forever because water’s not getting into from the bottom.”
Frenette’s clients include homeowners like the McCanns and several Kitchener area golf courses. For more information, visit http://www.rantandrave.ca or call 519-744-9544.

Story by Casey Lessard

Fresh out of college, fresh-faced Thomas Alderson of Strathroy is hogging the spotlight in Camelot, playing now to July 25 at the Huron Country Playhouse.
“It’s a dream come true,” says the 21-year-old, whose mother Mary writes theatre reviews GrandBendStrip.com and other newspapers. “I grew up coming to see every show here for the last 20 years, and I always joked with my mom that if I ever lived in Grand Bend, I would come and live with her. I was thinking that would be a few years from now. I just graduated from Sheridan College two months ago, and I was so lucky to get this job.”
Luck seems to have little to do with it; Alderson perfectly portrays the conniving Mordred, who draws the play to its climax. Still, Alderson believes fortune played a role in getting him here.
“It was all luck,” he says. “Drayton Entertainment did High School Musical live and because I look young, that’s a show I can be in, right? Through that, I got an audition for Camelot and the stars aligned.”
The role of villain is a new experience for Alderson, and he says he needs to stay focused because of the fact that he plays such a pivotal part.
“I don’t come in until intermission, so I have time to do my hair the way I like it and get ready. Then I hide in the tree before I come out, and I listen to their (Arthur and Guenevere’s) song. It’s like Mordred’s actually spying on them. I’m able to plot and then I come out and give ‘er.”
And he’ll be “givin’ ‘er” for a while. The show is going on tour across North America from October to March, with a stop at the John Labatt Centre in London.
“When I heard the possibility this would go on tour, I thought that was crazy. That IS my dream come true. That takes us through to March. After that, who knows? Maybe back here again.”
And back in with mom. Why not? At this pace, he’s got a long career away from home ahead of him.
For tickets, call the box office at 519-238-6000 or visit http://www.huroncountryplayhouse.com

Bob Teskey was “a good listener and companion.” This week, his wife Barb pays tribute to his legacy by walking in the Relay for Life. Her lesson: live your dreams.

Originally from Sarnia, retired teacher’s assistant Barb Teskey, 58, and her family are participating as team Family Ties in Grand Bend’s 12 hour Relay for Life at Klondyke Sports Park July 10 and 11. The survivor lap starts at 7 p.m.
Teskey’s husband Bob was a teacher for 30 years, and was six months away from retiring from Cathcart Public School when he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Two weeks later, doctors had bad news: he had lung cancer, and it had already spread to his bones. Despite radiation on his hip, Barb and Bob received disheartening news on February 14, 2005: Bob would have to move into palliative care. Bob Teskey died two months later aged 54. He left behind two sons, and an expectant daughter-in-law.

As told to Casey Lessard
Photos courtesy Barb Teskey

Bob was a good companion. I miss his presence. I used to go out and walk all the time and knew that he was there waiting for me. Coming home at night and knowing that he’s not here to greet me and be here for me – you just have to cope. You have to go on.

Bob and I were born and raised in London, and we went to the same high school. There were a bunch of us who hung out in a coffee shop after high school, and we knew each other and had been friends for a long time.
We were very good friends, so it was difficult to make that leap into romance. It just happened. Then we decided that we would be together. He had a wonderful sense of humour, and I think that’s why I was attracted to him. We had a lot of the same interests. Our favourite thing to do in Sarnia was walk in Canatara Park, and we spent a lot of time at a cottage in Kettle Point until the boys were 16. We always loved being at the beach and having a cottage. When he passed away, I knew a lake setting was where he would have loved to have been.

With the pneumonia, we just assumed he would be okay. He was on medication for a couple weeks and it wasn’t going away. He went in for another x-ray and they saw a mass on his lung. In the original x-ray, it wasn’t there. You’re in a state of shock, and that point we weren’t aware of how aggressive it was. But it became very apparent that it was moving very quickly. It was Valentine’s Day that he had to go into palliative care. The cancer left him paralyzed from the waist down from that point.
It doesn’t even give you enough time to think and to process it. You’re also in some denial that this is meaning that it’s the end. We hadn’t really wanted to believe it.
He never once complained. He told me, “Barb, there are worse things with parents losing children to it.” He didn’t seem frightened. He didn’t say, Why me? He was very brave through the whole thing.
His battle with cancer was very short. It was such an aggressive cancer, and for the last two months of his life, I lived in palliative care with him. We had all the comforts we needed, but it was a difficult time, especially at the end when he lost consciousness. The last few days were very tough, just sitting beside him.
He was so looking forward to retiring and pursuing other interests, such as traveling. In an instant, your life is changed.
When he was in palliative care, he was quite ill when I found out that our son and daughter-in-law were going to have our first grandchild, so I very much miss that he didn’t get a chance to meet his grandchildren. That’s one of the toughest things because we were looking forward to being grandparents. I believe he is with us and knows that he has a lovely granddaughter and grandson.

He asked my daughter-in-law to make up photo boards for the funeral home, so she made them up really quickly so we could have them. We had the pictures in his room so that when people came in, we would talk about all the different pictures. It made it easier because we would talk about old memories. We didn’t really talk about his passing that much, other than he and I personally. We would just talk happy memories. A friend taped an interview with him for many hours, which I haven’t yet been able to listen to. He tells me he hasn’t yet, either.
Because he was a Grade 8 teacher and young – he was only 54 when he died – of course, the children were devastated. He received all kinds of wonderful messages from the kids and parents.
This was the first time my children had to go to a funeral, and it had to be their father. They were both overwhelmed by the number of people who were there. It was very difficult for them.

Because this happened so quickly, we didn’t have time to prepare. If there’s anything you want to do in life, don’t put it off. You don’t know when your day is going to come.
I was nervous I wouldn’t have a travel partner, but people always call. I basically say yes to everything people offer. Wherever they want to go, I’ll go. It’s very important to be happy and live your dreams before anything happens to you. Do what you want to do.
We shared wonderful times together. I know he would have loved being up here at the water with me. It’s very difficult that he’s not able to share this with me.

Barb recommends everyone should attend or participate in a Relay for Life. To donate, visit www.cancer.ca/relay

Hotel management sends message of thanks to all those who helped preserve and restore the beachfront landmark

Heading into their 52nd year as a beachfront inn, The management of Bonnie Donne Manor-on-the-Beach are thankful that a small March 29 fire contained to one room didn’t destroy their entire business.
Although small, the fire led to two months of restoration; luckily, the inn was able to open before the summer season’s onslaught. General manager Kristie McIndoe explains what happened and the fallout.

As told to Casey Lessard
Photos by Casey Lessard

Mom and dad started 52 years ago with five closet sized rooms, one shared bath but no tub or shower. Everybody washed their hair and bathed in the lake 52 years ago. There were no locks on the doors; every door had the little hook and eye job, so you could lock yourself in, but you couldn’t lock your stuff in when you left the room. Life was pretty simple.
By the sixth year, they winterized it and we moved up here permanently. They slowly acquired the property around it. They lived in the business for 32 years, and eventually built their own home on one of the cottage properties.

The fateful morning
In a typical year, we get a drain snaked from the top of the manor to the sewers. It’s a typical thing that Andy O’Brien (of Grand Bend Sanitation) comes and does. We had set it up for a month earlier because, although we usually do it at the end of April, Dave saw Andy at the Tim Horton’s and said, let’s do it.
They were here the next morning, and they were digging a hole to send the camera down. Dave had turned on the hydro just prior to that, and Andy handed him the cord to plug the camera in. Dave went inside and smelled smoke. He came out and asked Andy if he smelled smoke, too.
Dave tried to go upstairs, but he couldn’t because the smoke was that intense. They figure it had been 10 or 15 minutes, tops. Dave called the fire department. The firefighters were so happy to save the building because in most cases, they just can’t get there in time or no one was around to see it start.
The fire was contained to one room. They threw everything out the window and got the fire out.
We called the insurance company who called in the restorers, WinMar. Literally within an hour-and-a-half, we were underway with restoration. We had vanloads of people here.
They say they have a 48-hour window to get the soot off so it doesn’t etch. Even with all the doors shut, there was soot in every room upstairs. Because it was cold, the hot fire led to condensation of soot. It was dripping down the walls and looked like someone brought in a hose and sprayed it down with tar.

A new experience
I’d never experienced a fire, and I had no understanding of devastation that was involved. I give WinMar so much credit. Everyone involved was so empathetic and knew their jobs inside out. They seem to understand that everything starts from scratch and you build on that.
They understood that we are a family business that has a regular clientele and we didn’t want to disappoint them because of the many months we had prepared to get open. The insurance company cooperated with us on that, and gave us a six-day workweek instead of five.
The month of May was gone. There was no office, no area for us to receive people. The building was turned back over to us June 1. Our season starts May 1, so we were a month behind. It took another two-and-a-half weeks to get the rooms rentable again.
We didn’t have an area where patrons could approach us, so it was frustrating because no one could approach us other than by phone. Our biggest concern was that you build on the regulars with newcomers. Because they weren’t able to come and look around, for example if they come to the beach or for a drive and notice us, and we give them a tour, we lost that opportunity.

Preserving the business
Not a lot has changed here. We replaced our TVs with flat screen TVs, and any flat goods had to be replaced, like beds, linens, fridges and carpeting. But your perspective changes. You don’t worry about the little stuff so much. We’re very happy that we didn’t have to turn all our people away. It would be a horrible thing not to see our regulars again. We were very fortunate. The fire was going to happen, but if we hadn’t planned to clean that drain a month early, I’d be pulling my hair out right now.
This week, we have people in their 18th year of visiting, and Shirley has come here 30 years. That’s what makes it all worthwhile, when those people come back and you get to see what has happened in their lives. That’s really why we’re here.

Caroline Bruce creates exotic accessories at home in Parkhill

After spending a couple of years working in Jamaica, Caroline Bruce decided home is where her heart was. The 28-year old recently launched Tweak jewelry (http://www.tweakboutiqueonline.com/), her line of unique hand-crafted accessories made from semi-precious stones, metals and woods.

As told to Casey Lessard
Photo by Casey Lessard for Casey365.com

The biggest compliment is when someone sees what I make, falls in love with it, and can’t resist wearing it three days in a row.
I make necklaces, rings, earrings, and bracelets. I want to be sure I’m making things people couldn’t just go out and buy at the mall. If it doesn’t make sense to be hand making it, I don’t. The collection is pretty narrow, but it’s stronger because more time has been put into the composition and base design of the pieces.
I’ve been making jewelry for about seven years as a hobby. Then I started selling things so I could buy more beads. People liked it and I liked it even more, so it grew from there.
I grew up in Parkhill and went to school in Toronto for human biology. I decided that wasn’t for me, and did a degree in interior design. I spent a couple of years in Jamaica doing interior design and decided I wanted to be back at home with my parents. I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted to do more than turn something that had been a hobby into a business. My bills are reduced, and I don’t have any other commitments, so I thought, go for it.
I had seen before that it was possible to preserve orchids in resin, and I was enamored by it. I bought a few brooches and things, but they were gilded with metals like gold or silver. I thought it would be better to see the entire flower. One day, I found exactly what I was looking for on the internet. I eventually found someone who would do the colours and sizes I wanted. The process is complicated and because orchids aren’t native to Canada, I get them from overseas and they do exactly what I want.

The challenge of starting out
It’s easy to waste your time and not to realize that your time is your money when you’re trying to make a business out of something you’re doing personally. Since I’ve narrowed down my collection, I can be more productive in purchasing my materials, in the design time, in the time to put things together. I don’t create things I don’t like.
It’s not profitable for creative people to make what everyone else is making. You need to set yourself apart. Quality raw materials are a big thing. I’ve learned to find out exactly what the stone is and whether or not it’s been colour enhanced so you can tell the truth about your raw materials. Know as much as you can about it. You also have to learn what your niche is and how to portray your company. You want people to know something about you when they look at your advertising materials.

Advice to other creatives
Take to heart what people are saying about what you’re making. You’re making it and you love it, but other people have to love it, too. It can’t be all in your head. If you’ve given people things, listen to how it’s working for them. Don’t get caught in trends or fashions, and don’t compromise your dream for what you see out there.
Home is the best place to be when you’re starting out. You know everyone, you have family and friends to help you, you can ask advice from people who you know are experts. Businesses are smaller, so the wait time is less. Even running errands takes less time because it’s close. Living with my parents has made this all possible. They’ve helped me in so many ways.
I’ve done private shows, which are put on by myself for friends and family. I find them productive because everyone who comes wants to see your work. I’ve done craft shows and clothing shows, but the sales are proportionally less because people didn’t come specifically to see you.
I’ve realized I have to broaden my base by creating a website (http://www.tweakboutiqueonline.com/) that can showcase the work and where people can buy it. E-commerce is the way to go right now, and is probably the best bet for me.
My dream customer is anyone who loves unique accessories; anyone who’s going to love their piece is a customer I want.
To learn more, visit http://www.tweakboutiqueonline.com/

Grand Bend Canada Day 2009 festivities
Wednesday, July 1 – Main Beach
4:30 p.m. – Ken Dinel’s The Band In You students present rock music
5 p.m. – Ruth’s Hat, Lance Bedard, Brian Dale, Vintage Moments
10 p.m. - fireworks

Zurich native Lance Bedard is on a roll after launching his debut solo CD, Restless, this spring; he’s already working on the second.
“I just went back in the studio last week,” Bedard says, “and I’m waiting on a reply for another (recording) grant so I can release a CD in the next year and a half.”
Bedard’s debut was recorded in Goderich at Dig Productions, where Rob McKercher blended Bedard’s sound with guests Nick Haberer, Marcel Gelinas and Mike Klaassen.
“You write a song, but you hear everything else,” he says, describing the value of collaborating with other artists. “You hear it in your head, but you can’t do it all at once. So when you finally get a chance to build a song from a small four chord progression to a full band production, that gets you fired up to make more music.”
Success at local gigs gave him the push he needed to record the songs he started writing more than five years ago. Early experiences with the Pillowheads and Point of Impact gave him his first exposure to putting together a studio album, but this time, he took the process much more seriously.
“To put this out on my own was something I always wanted to do and to get it out to everyone was the greatest feeling in the world. It’s probably my biggest accomplishment since I entered the music industry. To get everyone’s positive feedback made it all the better.”
Now the push is on to sell, sell, sell. He recently hired a manager to promote his work.
“This guy could take me to the next level. If I hadn’t made the CD, I wouldn’t have this opportunity.”
So it’s back in the studio for round two.
“Hearing the way the music is played and changing is an addicting process. You go there every day and you’re excited about making music. Just hearing yourself and some of the things you can do, it’s like raising a child.”
To hear samples from Lance Bedard’s Restless, visit http://www.myspace.com/lanceromance01

Grand Bend Canada Day 2009 festivities
Wednesday, July 1 – Main Beach
4:30 p.m. – Ken Dinel’s The Band In You students present rock music
5 p.m. – Ruth’s Hat, Lance Bedard, Brian Dale, Vintage Moments
10 p.m. - fireworks

Long-time Grand Bend performer Brian Dale has finally gotten around to putting together a CD for his fans, and he can’t wait to get it in their hands. There’s a catch, though; a manufacturing delay means it will be two weeks after the July 1 launch party (as part of Grand Bend’s Canada Day celebrations) before he can deliver the product.
“I could have done it a long time ago and pushed it and rushed it,” Dale says. “I didn’t want to force it.”
After all, after 15 years performing, you can wait two extra weeks for your first CD, right?
“I’ve been putting it off for close to 10 years,” Dale says. “It always seemed like whenever I got the time and money to do it, I would go on vacation and spend all of my time and money.
“I came home for Christmas from Costa Rica and was planning on going back. I went up to this little studio in Goderich that Lance Bedard was recording at, and he introduced me to the engineer. I finally decided I needed to get this done. ”
Although he won’t have the CD, tentatively titled peace/love/waves/song as a tribute to his email signoff, ready by the Canada Day event, he will be distributing free preview copies of a single from the album at the event. The CD will have 11 tracks, all originals written over the last 15 years. Some are old favourites for fans, while others are new songs to most.
“The songs were always written and performed acoustically. I always had a picture in my head of what the songs would sound like and I had never put it together with a group. Once I started recording, the songs matured, even more than we were expecting.”
“It’s been a long time coming, but we’re really, really happy with the way it’s turned out.”
Just what fans want to hear.
Brian Dale’s CD peace/love/waves/song will be available for $15 at Archies and local bars where he performs, and through online retailers. To learn more, visit his facebook fan page.

South Huron DHS’ cafeteria operator reflects on turning 80 and the funeral celebration she wanted to be alive to see

Jennie Rowe on her 80th birthday

As told to Casey Lessard

I have always worked where there has been food. Beaver Foods had the service here (at South Huron) and when I went to apply for the job, someone called me and told me that they thought this would be the job for me. I went to see this guy, and he was a tyrant. I thought, I can’t work for this guy.
But by the end of that school term, the board came to me and asked me if I would take it on and I said yes. At that time, I did work for the board, but after about a year, the board wanted to walk away from it, and they said it was mine. It became my own enterprise. We didn’t even have a contract; it was just by word of mouth back then.
Ten years ago, the board came and said that all of the contractors had to buy what was in the kitchen, and I said I wasn’t afraid to buy. Everything in the kitchen belongs to me, and it’s my little corner in the school.
I’ve only had a contract with the board for the last ten years, and it’s renewed every five years. It runs out this August. I talked to one of the other contractors and we haven’t heard what’s going to happen. But I’m not going to let them take it away from me. If they have to buy everything in the kitchen, I’m going to price it so high that nobody will want to buy it.
I don’t do it for fame or glory. This is my life. One time I realized that I could cook anywhere. I can’t meet these kids otherwise. So it’s basically all about the kids. And I have had the most amazing employees. Whether they were students or grown women, they have made me what I am today.

Jennie Rowe on her 80th birthday

Despite the fact that I’m 80 and people ask me when I’m going to retire, well, I’m widowed now and what do you do? What would I do if I retired? I think I’d be totally lost without it. Anyone that can work should, if your health is good and you’re in a position that you can. I feel too vibrant yet to want to go home and sit on the back deck. Because I live such a busy life, I don’t bowl, I don’t golf, I don’t curl. What do I have left?
When you look at the people in the Villa or the hospital, they get stuck there. It’s not that family doesn’t love you, but they’re busy with their lives. Kids move on.

Jennie Rowe on her 80th birthday

My husband Elmer died four years ago of a heart attack. He was 76. He always said, “Jennie, when I die, don’t have a flowery splash. Tell people to come in their work clothes and just have a good time.” Elmer liked his Scotch, so he said to line up a bar full of Scotch and everybody had to have one drink of Scotch on Elmer.
We had it at our farm and people were told to dress casual. Some came dressed up. My kids came in shorts and sandals because it was the 15th of June. Our son Jeff got up and spoke, and people said the comments he made about his dad sounded more like he was roasting him. I said, Then you didn’t know Elmer, because that’s exactly what he would have expected. But he wasn’t there to celebrate.
When you die, they always say they’re going to celebrate your life, but you’re not there anymore. You’re gone. I decided that after making all the arrangements for my funeral and for celebrating Jennie’s life, I decided I wanted to be part of it. I wanted a great big tent open to whoever wants to come, there would be loud music playing (ABBA), there would be an abundance of good food to snack on, and just lots of love and friendship. I wanted to be part of that. Not a dead body.
A one day deal turned into three days. It was lucky that my birthday was on a Friday. If they had done this when I died, I wouldn’t have gotten to enjoy it. I highly recommend this. Think about it. I said to my kids, when I die, bury me. That’s all. This is my day in the sun.

South Huron District High School’s music department spent four days from May 13-16 in Chicago as part of an experimental type of band trip. The Strip’s Casey Lessard tagged along.

Story and photos by Casey Lessard

“Two years ago in Cleveland, I met Benjamin Washington by happenstance,” says South Huron music teacher and band director Isaac Moore, speaking of Chicago King College Prep High School’s band director. “He needed a bass amp and I needed a trumpet, so we ended up talking and exchanging instruments for an hour or so. Because of that, we ended up talking about where each of us was from and how neat it would be if we tried to do something together. ”
Each year, South Huron’s music department takes a trip, but most of the recent trips have been for competitions.
“We could have done that again this year. But I wanted to give the kids a varied experience; we had never gone to Chicago, and a lot of kids were interested in going there.”
Sixty-six members of the band joined the trip, along with eight chaperones. The visit to America’s third largest city included sightseeing, a trip to the famed Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Sears Tower, and lots of music. The band performed all day its second day, starting with a master class at a college for music teachers, followed by a jazz combo performance at Buddy Guy’s Legends bar. Then it was off to King College Prep for an afternoon and evening collaboration, which started with watching the one of the city’s best marching bands practise.
“Our marching band is everywhere, winning competitions,” says Benjamin Washington. “We’re like the Soul Train of Chicago. Just last year, we opened for the Stone Temple Pilots concert, Wynton Marsalis dropped by and played with us here. [U.S. President Obama’s house] is about three or four blocks from here. Marching around in the summer time, we would pass by it. I didn’t even know he lived there until the presidential election.”
Whether Obama ever noticed King’s marching band or not, percussionist Joe Pavkeje of Exeter found it valuable to see how King’s musicians perform, bobbing their heads while playing.
“It showed we could be doing a lot of things we’re not doing. Not that we’re not doing enough, but they have a different style that I thought was interesting. They really got into their music, which helps them with their stage presence. It makes them sound better. If they’re more into it, it makes it more enjoyable for everybody.”
While Pavkeje noticed the contrasts, Moore hopes he also noticed the similarities.
“We often think these major cities are better than what we’re doing here. Rural schools are have not and city schools are have. It shows the kids how special this school is and gives them perspective on how great they’re doing and how wonderful the music they’re doing is.”
Kristy Pavkeje is thankful for the experience, and knows who should get the credit.
“It’s a really high quality program. If you look around (elsewhere in our region), we seem to be more dedicated or something. A lot of that is due to Mr. Moore. He knows how to get the most out of this program for us. With the SHSM (Specialist High Skills Major) program (in Arts & Culture), it looks good when you go to university or college, and he worked hard to get it at the school.”
For Moore’s part, he notes he couldn’t pull it off without the overwhelming support of the community.
“The community is so, so important to what we’re doing here. They support our concerts to show our kids that what they’re doing is important. The fact that we have this extremely supportive community and excellent tradition of music at this school, it’s a machine that doesn’t seem to stop. Every day I come here, I don’t know who I’m thanking, but I’m thanking someone.”
Moore is eager to show the music program’s supporters what King College Prep is doing, and hopes Washington is able to bring his students to Exeter next year.
“Having the opportunity to see their marching band and the enthusiasm they have for music, it was infectious. Our kids loved watching their band perform, and this community would love seeing it, too. It’s really fun to watch.”
Washington is on board, too, and hopes it can happen.
“It gives the kids the opportunity to see children from other areas and see we’re doing the same thing,” he says. “I’m sure Mr. Moore is saying the same things: you’ve got to practise, you’ve got to listen, you’ve got to watch the rhythms. It gives the children a chance to see that what I’m trying to provide for them is what others are trying to do as well.”
Looking back on the trip, Moore hopes his students got enough time to interact with their Chicago counterparts.
“The students said the best part of the trip was socializing with students from the other school, and you can’t plan that. It would have been nice to have more time for that. It’s through that social bond that they see that we’re doing the same things here.”

Cooks working for one of Canada’s top chefs are peeling potatoes grown in Corbett

Marcus Koenig, potato grower

As told to Casey Lessard
Photos by Casey Lessard

We had a mixed vegetable, dairy and cash crop farm in Switzerland, very small and very intensive. When we came here, we took over a potato operation that grew roughly 800 acres of potatoes conventionally. I had more and more trouble with chemicals, health-wise. In 2001, it was very bad and I could hardly work. Just by accident, I got a book about a different way to look at the soil from an organic, natural standpoint. That got me started on the organic thing. I needed an eye-opener to see there was another potential way to do it. I couldn’t keep spraying. For us, it was either sell the farm or go organic.
The University of Toronto needed a local (meaning Southwestern Ontario) supplier of potatoes. We are not a large acreage grower, but for an organic grower with 30 to 50 acres of potatoes, we are one of the larger ones. They needed someone who could give them a continuous supply of potatoes. They called me up, and I said they should go to Pfennings, and because they sell my potatoes. They said, “No, we’re not going to do that. When we pay a premium, we want that premium to end up in the producer’s hands. Otherwise, we’re not going to do it.”
I think that’s a very healthy way of thinking, and I was impressed, so we thought maybe we should supply them. They liked our products because we supply them with the varieties they need and we know how each variety behaves in the kitchen. We give them new stuff to try, and if they don’t like it, we don’t supply it. They get what they need and for us, it’s more work because we have to go to Toronto, but we are able to capture the wholesale premium, the delivery premium, and keep it for ourselves. On a long-term basis, we can justify it.
A Toronto farmers’ market focused on bigger volume producers approached us. Most farmers’ markets want people who will supply quarts of apples or quarts of potatoes, but they wanted people who could supply bushels and bigger volumes. I wasn’t really interested in doing it, but they kept asking us if we could come. At exactly the same time, a friend said he would have time to help us part-time on the farm, so we could justify trying it out. We started at the end of September, and we immediately got positive results from it.
The first day, chef Alex Johnston from Jamie Kennedy’s restaurants came and asked what we had. We told him we had potatoes, and he asked how we grow them. We told him we grow organically and use some biodynamic processes. So he took a 50lb. bag home.
The following week he came back to our truck. He’s a very quiet guy and doesn’t talk much. But he was very excited and said, “Hey, we had these potatoes, and these potatoes are awesome. We’re going to buy your potatoes.” We didn’t discuss price. He just said these were the potatoes they were going to buy. That’s it. No discussion.
They take quite a volume, so we gave them our volume discount and that was it. We have done business with them now since last September. I go to his restaurant every week for breakfast and coffee.
We now supply four restaurants in Toronto, including Jamie Kennedy’s chain; we supply all his potatoes. We supply Crush, Cava, and a new restaurant. They’re not all top-end restaurants, but good ones that want to use the potatoes mostly for fries. We have enough sales to justify driving to Toronto on a weekly basis.

A better way of life
I enjoy farming this way better. It’s more independent. In conventional farming, you rely so much on external input. You buy the fertilizer, you buy the chemicals, and the only thing you do is apply the stuff. You supply the land and they take your crop. I never really liked that system because it’s not truly independent. The farmer is the supplier of the soil, but someone else does the managing. It’s going more and more towards that.
Don’t misunderstand me: there are good conventional farmers. This way is more independent because you rely on your own knowledge and your own labour, and you produce your own inputs by composting and animal production. That’s what I enjoy about organic farming.
Also, you have a product that the market wants. I don’t have to go to market and ask, “What will you give me for that?” We are in a strong position: we produce for a market that appreciates our product, and we deal with customers that say, Thank you.
In conventional farming, your customer doesn’t really need you. For them, they are so big worldwide, that one farmer doesn’t make any difference. With organic, you deal with smaller companies that need you, but you also need them. It’s a much healthier relationship between the customer and the producer.
Local food will be way bigger than organic in the future. This is the real way to go. This is going to be the big thing and that will give anybody who produces good stuff on a local level a chance.
Energy has to go that way, too. We should be putting a wind turbine up and one guy can supply our neighbourhood with power from it. The guy who has 1000 pigs should put a manure digester up and produce electricity or natural gas for his neighbourhood. The economic situation now will drive more people to that.
Our so-called leaders talk about how important it is to keep up free trade, but that’s because they’re afraid free trade will collapse. That’s exactly what’s going to happen because it has no future. It gave us all these problems. Worldwide trade and all these products from China gave us the problems we have now. So the solution is to keep going the same way and expect different results? It doesn’t make sense.

Looking for a better future
We as suppliers are not taken very seriously by our suppliers and customers anymore. As a farmer, it is very nice to work with people who appreciate what you are doing. We are not going to get rich quick, but we can survive and increase our wealth slowly. I’m pretty sure I can provide a future for someone down the road.
Every person who lives on this Earth has a purpose, and some people are just born and naturally find their way to that purpose. Some people never find their purpose. I don’t know what my purpose is, but right now, what I could do to bring humanity forward is by supplying good quality food that makes you think straight. Good food, good thoughts; junk food, junk thoughts. It’s that simple.

Parents hope for new jungle gym for kids to monkey around on; need to raise $70,000

Story and photos by Casey Lessard

Concerns about safety and the prospect of a child who uses a wheelchair being unable to enjoy the playground have triggered a push by the Grand Bend Public School’s Home and School Association to fundraise for new playground equipment. With designs by Active Playground Equipment of Point Edward based on wish lists from teachers and parents, the association’s proposed equipment will cost $70,000 to make and install.
While some of the money may come from pending grants, fundraisers expect they will have to find most of it through donations from local businesses, community organizations and fundraisers.
“It’s a lot of money,” says Amy Wiseman, who is on the playground committee. “Half the price goes to making it wheelchair accessible. My hope is to have it by this summer, but it may be 2010.”
Wiseman is hoping a Hydro One grant for $25,000 comes through to excite others in the community.
“I’m hoping the community does step up. These are our kids and we’re doing this for the community.”
“It’s a great idea,” says principal Susan Manz. “The children need it. But it has to be safe and accessible to everybody.”
“There’s a small playground now that is about 15 years old,” Home and School Association president Andrea Matheson says. “The new one will be four times the size and wheelchair accessible. It’s quite an improvement, for sure.”
Currently the equipment services only kindergarten to Grade 3, and Grade 8s do a souvenir photo on the climber at graduation. There are limits to when the equipment may be used and also how long it is open in the fall and spring. The new equipment would extend all of the above, Manz said.
Despite previous reports to the contrary, the board of education will not be matching funds raised. The board’s beautification grant is about $5,000.
So far, fundraisers and requests have raised several thousand dollars, including fundraisers (Little Caesars Pizza Kits, Mabel’s Labels, and Ian’s Kitchen) and donations (Stewart Webb & Sons, and Grand Bend Women’s Institute). Tim Horton’s has committed to donating the proceeds of its Smile Cookie Campaign, Mac’s is putting a donation box on their counter, and Hayter’s Turkeys is donating food for a fundraising barbecue May 16.

To donate or for more information, contact Amy Wiseman at 519-238-1116 or Andrea Matheson at 519-238-1710.

Anne’s Yoga Works – Yoga and Pilates
annesyogaworks.com
info at annesyogaworks.com or 519-243-3552

May 4 to June 29 – Mondays
10:30 to 11:45 a.m. – Port Franks studio
8 weeks $72. Drop in fee $10.
6:45 to 8 p.m. – Port Franks studio
8 weeks $72. Drop in fee $10.
(Drop-in fee allows participant to try one class without committing to whole session)
Classes offered: Yoga Your Way; Beginner Pilates; Teen Yogilates; Trim and Tone Yoga; Restorative Yoga; Yoga/Pilates for Golfers; Private group and Individual Yoga or Pilates classes by appointment only; Two hour Workshops will also be available.

Story and photos by Casey Lessard
In these stressful times, you may be exploring ways to reconnect with your body and slow down. Port Franks yoga teacher Anne Chute believes yoga and Pilates can do both.
“It makes people feel better and sleep better,” Chute says. “It allows the body to heal itself from the inside, and creates a feeling of contentment. It helps you learn how to focus what’s happening in your body.
“For the most part it’s people who already recognize they should slow down,” she says of her typical clientele. “People that push themselves really hard should come, but they tend to be the last people who want to come to a yoga class. The type of yoga I teach is hatha yoga, but I teach on the gentle side.”
Hatha yoga, which Chute teaches, involves a holistic approach that includes physical postures, yogic breathing and meditation. Because of the type of focus needed, Chute says yoga has advantages over other health programs.
“In a lot of facilities, the music is cranked so loud and there’s so much other noise that you can’t focus on what your body is saying,” she says. “Yoga focuses on the abilities of your body and strengthening that.”
Chute has been teaching yoga for five years, and has earned her Yoga 500, which involves doing 500 hours of instruction. It’s a long road that started with watching yoga on TV and discovering the pitfalls of that route.
“It’s hard to do it that way,” she says. “A lot of them (DVDs and books) don’t give you the opportunity to find out what you’re doing wrong.”
Regardless of how you do yoga, Chute sees the value of getting started and staying focused.
“The healing always starts from the inside, even when you cut yourself. Yoga is no different, but it unites the mind, body and spirit. You end up with a better attitude about yourself and your surroundings. You let go of things you don’t need, whether it be ego or money. Yoga says, I’m here right now. I need to enjoy this moment.”

Grand Bend gambler Richard Webb will travel globe after winning the Canadian Poker Tour crown

Richard Webb hit it big January 21 when he won the Canadian Poker Tour Invitational Finals at Ocean World Resort and Casino in the Dominican Republic. Webb was the best of Canada’s top 43 players, who were invited to the Caribbean resort to compete for the $60,000 title and a sponsorship contract worth $100,000. With the win, Webb will represent Canadian Poker Tour as the Canadian poker champion, and the company will pay his entry fee and all expenses when he competes in tournaments across Canada and around the world this year. He also gets to keep most of his winnings from any tournaments where he places “in the money”. It’s a high level of success for this 48-year old Dashwood native, who grew up playing cards and still plays poker weekly with his friends and family.

Photos and photo illustration by Casey Lessard
As told to Casey Lessard

When did I start playing poker? Probably with my dad when I was a young child. He would deal hand after hand of seven-card stud, and practice and play. He was a card player, and I learned my card skills from him. As we were growing up, we played cards all the time: euchre, solo, hearts – all the card games you play as a family.
Along came the charity casino days, and I played poker at those not knowing much of what I was doing. It was mainly limit poker, so there’s a fixed small blind and large blind, and there are only three or four raises. Each game would be $5 to $20 per game.
We started playing out at a local establishment in Exeter on Monday and Tuesday nights, and we moved out here for a regular Tuesday night poker game (his basement has a poker room complete with a beautiful poker table, comfortable chairs, and a painting of dogs playing poker). We had been playing various types of games, but we could see that no-limit hold ‘em was where the future of poker was. In no-limit, you can raise any time. This was in the fall of 2004 after Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker, which really was the start of the explosion of the poker trend.
In February 2005, I entered my first tournament, the Bluewater Championships at Point Edward charity casino, which was their first. There were about 400 people putting up $500 each. Lo and behold, I finished second. That was a good start. I took a good portion of the winnings and took a month long motorhome trip across Canada with my family.
I played the Bluewater Championships again in February 2006, and won it that time. They had another one in September, and I won that, too. I think first prize was something like $50,000 each, so that set me off. I made headlines in poker magazines, and the international poker rankings mentioned it because it’s unusual to win back-to-back.
In 2007, I made the money again at Bluewater, finishing 12th. Then I went to Regina, where I won a tournament. It’s not the biggest tournament in Canada, but it’s one of the best.
In 2008, I came back and won the Bluewater for the third time. That gave me entry into the Canadian championships, which were put on by the Canadian Poker Tour. They decided to have a tournament for the top point getters throughout the year. In any given year, I’ve never been the top points person, but I’ve always come close. Historically, since I started, I am number one overall.

Canadian championships
It was a very good field of experienced players, all of who had won tournaments or come close, and we played in Puerto Plata. It was well put together with a big reception party. I went through day one, not as the top chip player but as one of the top 12 moving into day two. By the time we got to nine players, I started to take the lead. When we made the final table, I was the chip leader. Not by a lot, but I was chip leader.
I played well. I made two bad calls throughout that time where I actually got in the hand when I was behind. In one case I lost the hand, and the other I drew out on a guy from Toronto. He had an ace/nine versus my king/jack. You get two cards and you’re trying to make a five-card hand. Three cards are flipped – the “flop”. The “turn” brings another card, and then there’s the “river”. I got a jack on the flop to make a pair and that eliminated him.
That was good luck. You want to get in when you’re the favourite. His hand was 55 per cent favoured to my 45 per cent because he had the ace. He had one card that was over my two, but my two were over his bottom card. He had to hit an ace to win. It worked out for me.
I proceeded to knock out the rest of the field. I got down to playing heads-up with a guy named Robert Beveridge, who won two Grey Cups as a CFL player and now coaches football at the University of British Columbia. I trapped him on a hand. I had pocket queens and he had ace/seven. I was 75-80 per cent favoured to win the hand and luckily he got an ace in the flop. The very next hand I picked up pocket sevens and moved all in against his ace/queen. A seven on the flop gave me three of a kind and I won the tournament.
With the $60,000 prize, I get a $100,000 contract to go around the world and play poker. I give them 20 per cent of what I win and I give 10 per cent to charity in the city where I win. If it’s an international win, I’ll donate it in Grand Bend, Dashwood or Calgary, where the Canadian Poker Tour is based.
I’ve worked my schedule so I can still run my business (Stewart Webb & Sons septic systems, which he runs with his brother), and have already started touring. I went to Los Angeles for the LA Poker Classic, which is one of the premier events. The winner takes $1.7 million, and I played well, but didn’t make it into the top 63 to get into the money. I jumped on a plane a couple days later to Calgary and finished 38th, which was in the money, and came home.
I’m going to Regina this month; to Sanremo, Italy in April, to play in the European Poker Tour event there; Calgary for the Canadian Open; Las Vegas for the World Series; Barcelona, Spain; hopefully the North American championships in Niagara; and a whole bunch of tournaments across Canada to represent the tour coast-to-coast.
For the World Series of Poker, there will be 7,000 players putting up $10,000 each, so first prize is about $9 million. Last year there were two Canadians at the final table.

Keeping everything in perspective
Cards are a hobby for me. You see the glamour and glitz on TV, but there’s so much more that goes into it that it isn’t something I would want to have to depend on for rent payments at the end of the month. It would certainly subsidize my income if I decided to retire, but the pressure wouldn’t be there to perform.
I’ve been fortunate. But if I never won another tournament again, I’d be quite satisfied with what I’ve achieved. That said, the Canadian Poker Tour wants me to win. Next year they’re planning to do the same thing but offer contracts to all of the players that make the final table.
If I walk into a poker room anywhere in Canada, they know who I am because of the previous years. I play as hard as I can, but it’s always about the W for me. I don’t look at the money – I look for the win. That might help me be more relaxed at the end, and I think that’s one of my strengths. Plus I have a lot of final table experience.
I wear sunglasses and a hat, and I’m listening to music a lot of the time. I try to establish how good someone’s hand is, and if I’m right 60 per cent of the time, I’m doing well.
The more hands you see, the better. In no-limit poker, there’s raising (the stakes) and folding (your hand); no calling. Calling will just get you into trouble unless you’re trying to trap somebody. A good fold is as good as a good call. Maybe better. You’ve got to be able to fold when you’re beat. If you don’t, you’re going to be out of the tournament in a hurry.
It doesn’t matter if it’s for $10 or $10,000; it’s still about winning. I still like to play. Cards are a social sport. At tournaments, you’re sitting at tables for 10-12 hours, so I want to be able to talk to the person next to me. If you’re likable, maybe people don’t try to knock you out as hard. I always shake hands and say goodbye to everyone.
I’m definitely living the dream. It’s always nice to take Jackie and Sarah with me to places where it’s nice and warm, or places they want to see. Jackie will be going with me to Italy, and hopefully Jackie and Sarah will go with me to Barcelona. When I’m there playing, I don’t do anything other than play, but if I take an extra week, we can enjoy the places together. The money I’ve won has been used for things for my family and extended family, so it goes to good use and isn’t wasted.
We still play every Tuesday night with the boys, and they beat me all the time. I play with my father every Tuesday and he beats me quite regularly. I like the ability to play with my dad. I’ve taken him to some tournaments; he sees the success I’ve had, and he’s proud of that.
If I win $50,000 Sunday night, I still go to work Monday morning. If I were given a long-term contract to represent an organization, I probably would take it. I like the ability to get out there and meet people. If they want me to do charity events, I’m happy to do it. If I have interviews to do, I’m happy to do that. If I win one of the big tournaments this year, it’s not going to change the way I am and I’ll probably still come to work the next day. Well, maybe I’d take a couple days off before coming back.

To see Richard Webb win the Canadian Poker Tour Invitational Finals, you can watch The Score in April. Air dates and times are not yet set, but will be listed at thescore.com

Tim Hoffman of Dashwood and Cathy Costello of Mitchell met through a mutual friend two years ago, and started dating. They got married February 14 on a three-layer cake made of snow as part of the Grand Bend Winter Carnival.

Interview & photos by Casey Lessard

Take me back to when you first met.
Tim: It was a blind date, so I had no idea what she would look like. You never know what to expect, but it was good. We had good conversation that night and everything went well, and when I left, she told me to come and give her a hug.
Cathy: He was a gentleman. Very nice. He seemed really down to earth. He deserved a hug.

The first date is one thing, but what was the impetus to say this is going to work?
C: I brought him to a party with the girls I work with, and the Mitchell girls are pretty wild. He fit right in with them. It was very important that he could put up with their craziness.
T: They all seemed to enjoy a good time and were fun to be around. Then Cathy came up and gradually met my family more and more and fit in really well.

Family is really important to both of you. What was it like to think about merging the two?
C: We just felt it was the next step to take. I was ready to move out of Mitchell, out of the small town – and into another small town. We were driving a lot; he came up pretty much every night to Mitchell. We just thought it would make more sense to be in the same household.
T: As time goes on, you can see you will be compatible together and it makes sense to take the next step.

What were you looking for? What was special about Cathy?
T: Someone who takes interest in what I do, and we can have a good time together and laugh together.

What was special about Tim?
C: He had to be compatible with my daughter Olivia. Whenever they met, they just clicked. That was nice to see.

Cathy, you had a family already. How did that play into things?
C: It was hard. I didn’t trust many people. I could see with Tim that he was a genuinely nice guy and treated her and me with respect.
T: I just tried to be a good role model for Olivia and build a family with them.

How did you propose?
T: We were going on a camping trip to Tobermory last August, and I knew prior to the trip that I would do it. There’s a high cliff on the Bruce Trail, and it’s the most beautiful spot that I’ve ever seen. There’s nothing manmade as far as you can see. Years ago, before I had met Cathy, I said that would be the spot if I ever had to propose.
We had quite a challenging time to get to that point. It was a holiday weekend, so you had to take a narrow provincial park road and I was towing a big trailer. It was pretty much impossible for two cars to go side-by-side. Someone pretty much ran me off the road and I ended up getting stuck in the gravel going partway up the hill. We thought we were going to be there for the day. Finally, a bunch of good old Canadian boys came along and gave us a push out.
We got it out and got over the hill, and we couldn’t go any further because there were all these cars parked there. So we pulled off the side as far as we could and went swimming. When I went back to the truck, the cars were gone and I was able to move the truck to the parking lot.
I told Cathy I wanted to go for a hike before it got dark, and luckily enough, Cathy, Olivia and my nephew were willing to go. Olivia was apprehensive because she didn’t want to walk, but she got in her head that she was going to be the leader and she beat us to the top.
Once we got to the high cliff, I told the kids I needed to talk to Cathy in private for a minute.
C: I didn’t know what was going on. We had gone up the trail the year before and up to the cliff. He shooed the kids away and proposed. It was very sweet. Olivia didn’t know what to think, but she was fine. She gave Tim a big hug and she was happy.

Then this contest comes up. Whose idea was it to enter?
C: We had gone out to supper with a bunch of people from his work, and the whole month before they had been saying, You’ve got to enter. They were on us all night long and we came home and decided to put our names in. We didn’t think too much about it.
I was at work and it was 7:50 a.m. They said “Cathy Costello, Line 1.” I picked up and the voice said, This is so-and-so from 104.9 The Beach. Do you have a few minutes to talk to us? I was like, not really, I’m at work. I tried my best to get out of the phone call, but he said he would call back in half an hour. My heart was racing the whole time. All the girls were wondering what was wrong with me.
They called back and gave me the spiel about how we had won and would be the couple on the cake. I went to my supervisor and asked if I could make a long-distance call to Tim. His boss answered and she started screaming. It was crazy.
T: We had only entered the week before and the wedding was two weeks later.
C: We hadn’t told anyone at all that we had entered. People were calling and it was crazy that day.

The big day comes around, and you’re on a big snow cake. What was it like?
C: I was really nervous until I got on top of the cake and it was so calm and quiet up there. It was fine once we were up there.
T: You’re kind of apprehensive about the crowd of strangers watching you, but it was just us up there.

What was most interesting about getting married on the snow cake?
T: Getting Cathy known in the community. Everyone’s going to know her now! We pretty much went for a month straight being on the front page of the paper.
C: At the time, it was so completely stressful, but I look back now and think it was a cool way to do it.

Tim and Cathy will have another wedding this summer. They are thankful for the work of Linda Hillman-Rapley and Diana Simpson for organizing the wedding.

Red Hand Day demands United Nations action

Story and photos by Casey Lessard

Our Lady of Mount Carmel students were caught red-handed February 5. They were painting their hands red and sending a handprint to the United Nations to put pressure on the international body to stop the use of child soldiers globally. The project is an initiative of Human Rights Watch, and Mount Carmel’s social justice club supports the move.
“We’re children and we can connect to the children who are fighting,” says Lauren Stewart, who formed the club with fellow student Jessica Lavery after seeing Free the Children founder Marc Kielburger speak. He told them that if they wanted to make a difference, they should start a social justice club. With 29 members, the club makes up almost 20 per cent of the school population.
“For these kids, putting a red hand means more than just finger painting. We are going to send these to the United Nations and hopefully it will make a difference.
“We want to see the decrease of child soldiers around the world.”
Principal Todd Chisholm is impressed with the students’ initiative.
“They make the decisions about their projects. It’s purely student-driven,” Chisholm says, noting such concern is nurtured in the classroom. “We talk about outreach and doing social justice for others. That’s already embedded in our classroom teaching, and at the school level, we have a philosophy about being a Community of Caring.”
Teacher Carrie Ducharme-Ivatts is the school’s Community in Caring leader. The project’s goal is to promote social justice and environmental awareness.
“You educate the whole person, and not just one aspect,” Ducharme-Ivatts says. “We focus on the spiritual, academic and intellectual components.”
Lenten activities will support Mission Services in London, with projects that include a raffle to support shelters, donation drives for clothing, lunch bags, and juice boxes.
“When the kids actually do it,” she says, “they get the value out of it. They feel they are making a difference.”
Lauren Stewart agrees, noting the students want to volunteer, but opportunities are limited for elementary students.
“They want high school students,” Stewart says. “It’s hard to find volunteer work off-site. We’re hoping they’ll see how hard we try and let us come on-site. It’s better for us.”
The group aims to accomplish one project per month, focusing on wide-ranging social justice concerns at home (such as bullying), in the community (Blessings and Mission Services) and around the world. Guest speakers and field trips are also planned.

The ultimate benchwarmer, Brett Leonhardt of Grand Bend lived a dream and almost became tallest NHL goalie

The son of “Hardt of Huron” bed and breakfast owners Brian and Karen Leonhardt, Brett Leonhardt moved to the United States after receiving a hockey scholarship at NCAA Division III SUNY Oswego in upstate New York, where he majored in communications and media arts. His background made him the perfect candidate when the Washington Capitals made a push to improve their web presence last season. Now living in Washington, DC with his girlfriend Logan Kapinus, Brett Leonhardt made international headlines December 12 when his job put him in the right place at the right time.

As told to Casey Lessard

My parents got me into Learn to Skate when I was four years old, and I started playing tyke hockey when I was five. At six or seven I started liking goaltending. My older brother was a goaltender so it was natural for me to want to do it and I never looked back.
I was invited to Kitchener Rangers camp, and I was there two or three weeks and it was down to three goalies. I played in an exhibition game, and that year they had two goalies that were drafted higher than me, so I just went down and played Junior ‘B’ in Cambridge and kept my college eligibility.
Getting a scholarship was a goal of mine. I did well in high school and was definitely going to university afterward. I applied to Laurier, Waterloo, and U of T, but if I didn’t get a scholarship I was definitely going to go to university in Canada.
I got a scholarship to SUNY Oswego, and after two years transferred to Neumann College near Philadelphia, about two hours from Washington. My girlfriend graduated the year before I did and took a job in D.C., so when I graduated, I looked for a job here in Washington. I called the Capitals, and from what I did in college and my résumé, the perfect job opened up. I went for two interviews and got the job.

Dream job
There are two things I love doing. One is video and film, and the other is hockey. Not only at college, but after graduation, to be able to have the job I have is a dream come true.
A lot of people forget that there a lot of people behind the scenes that keep everything going in the office other than what’s on the ice. You take away the fact that there is a pro hockey team playing, and it’s run just like any corporation. There are so many different departments: sales, marketing, and communications, which is on the rise right now. I do most of the video on the website and that’s something the NHL started last season. That was when my job opened up.
Our owner was one of the founders of AOL (America Online), and everyone tells us that we have the best website in the league. We track our views and people are starting to rely on us for our video work. Whenever there’s an event, I cover it with video; our team writer is my boss and I try to include him as a personality in my videos so he is with us in this transition from the written word to video.

Special qualifications
When I got the job, the sports information director at Oswego knew a guy named Nate, the director of media relations here. They went to school together and Nate told him that he had a guy from Oswego who had just gotten a job here. “What’s his name?” “Brett Leonhardt.” “Oh, he’s a good kid, a good goalie.”
Nate was talking to our goalie coach and told him that a college goalie had just got a job if he ever needed anyone for practice, but he was just joking around.
That’s when Olaf Kolzig, who was our goalie last year, started taking morning skates off; he was older and felt more energized when he didn’t skate the morning of a game. So last year, the goalie coach came up to me and asked if I wanted to go home and get my gear to practice with the team. I was floored. It happened once every few weeks and rolled into this season.
It was crazy (facing NHL players). It was a huge jump. They shoot so hard and so accurate. The skating and shooting, everything is so fast. Everyone is so big and so good. You naturally just find a way to play better, so I started making saves and did what I knew what to do, and started to fit right in.

The fateful week
Brent Johnson was a little sore after a game, and our coach was asked in a post-game press conference, “Johnson looked a little sore; what are you going to do?” He was like, “I’ll give him the day off. Our practice goalie is right beside you,” and they all looked at me and had a chuckle. That was Wednesday night.
Friday morning, the goalie coach called me in my cubicle and said our other goalie, Jose Theodore had been nursing an injury, and that I should come down and take some shots. I knew something was up but they wouldn’t tell me. I ran down, and they still had my equipment from the day before, so I suited up two practices in a row.
I showered and went back to work, editing the video of what the coach had to say at practice. The general manager, George McPhee, came up and put his arm around me and told me they were calling up a goalie, Simeon Varlamov. “Theodore cannot dress and cannot play, and the backup might not get here in time. Make sure your equipment’s ready because you might have to dress.”
I had to sign a one-day emergency tryout contract and fax it to the league. At 3:30 they called to tell me that Varlamov couldn’t get here until just after 7:00 and I would have to be on the bench for warmup and for maybe the whole first period.

No. 80
When they have rookie camp every year, they make a jersey for everyone there. On the depth chart of the team, I guess I was the 80th guy, so they made me number 80. When I got there at 5 o’clock, I went back into the trainer’s room to get some socks because I only had dress socks on, and I there was the trainer sewing the letters into the back of my jersey. That was pretty cool.
Warmup was the thing I was most nervous about. People are watching to see if you’ll make saves, and you’re skating around seeing Spezza and Alfredsson across the red line. I just did my thing from college, recreating my routine like where I stretch on the ice. I just tried to stop everything and look like I belonged. It was pretty cool. It’s so bright out there and to have an NHL jersey with your name on the back is pretty incredible. It was one of the greatest moments of my life.

Game time
I had a pretty good warmup and coming back out to the bench, it was dark with no lights on. The fans were going nuts. Sitting there on the bench, it just felt like college again. You hear the guys talking, like “I need tape; my skates aren’t sharp.” The coaches saying, “Come on, let’s go.” I was on the bench when we scored a goal so the guys came down the bench giving high fives and they treated me like I was one of them.
I later found out that Ottawa knew what was going on because we had three goalies on the lineup when you’re only allowed two. I wasn’t too sure how they were going to take it. Johnson would make a crazy save from outside, and Alfreddson would come in way after the whistle and bump into him. It started a couple of scrimmages and there were two goaltending interference calls. People were trying to say that it was something to do with me, but I just think there was some bad blood between the teams from previous games. During warmup, no one looked at me or stared at me; they just acted as if it was business as usual.
People asked me if I was nervous when that was happening, and I can’t lie; I definitely was. I knew Johnson was sore earlier in the week, but he looked good in warmup.
At around the 10:00 mark, Simeon Varlamov arrived; it was the first NHL game that he dressed for, too, and he was a first round draft pick. He walked down the tunnel and the trainer hit me and we just switched positions. I was a bit relieved because these guys are professional athletes and I’d been out of the game for more than a year. I’m not saying that I didn’t deserve to be there or belong there, but it was definitely right to see an NHL player replace me.

Post-game
The local cable network always does one interview during the break, so when I came back into the room, they grabbed me and did an interview there. The VP of communications said to me, “You’re not going to believe this, but you’re the top story on ESPN, TSN, and SportsNet, so be ready when your equipment is off.”
I got showered and put my suit on. Usually I do a lot of pre-game and post-game videos, but during the game I sit in the press box and watch so I know what to ask after the game. I went to the press box and our media relations officer said, “Everyone wants to talk to you. Let’s do one big scrum.” I did a quick interview with our radio guy and did the scrum. It was pretty crazy.
Everyone had the story: our local NBC, Fox, and I even saw it on ESPN and CNN Headline News the next day. (Sports Illustrated later ran a brief on his appearance.) I never thought it would be this big.

Perfect storm
We always joked that for this to ever happen, we’d have to have the perfect storm. A guy would have to get hurt the day of the game, and both of our farm teams, Hershey and South Carolina, would have to be in the middle of nowhere on the road in a small market. We always joked that someday it might happen.
My parents are just floored. My dad was pretty happy when he found out that I got to practice with the team, so he couldn’t believe it. They were speechless. That’s the first time in my life I’ve seen them like that.
I got all these emails and letters mailed into the office, like “You’re my hero,” and “You give regular guys a chance.” Around the rink I’ve seen three or four of my jerseys on people I don’t even know. I made sure my family all got one for Christmas for sure.

I love being around the sport every day. No one likes getting up Monday morning and going to work. It’s my dream job. I wouldn’t change it for anything. No matter how many days in a row you work or how many nights you’re out late after a game working, the next day it’s right back to hockey. I can look out of my office, and there’s Alex Ovechkin skating on the ice. I just love that I’m doing something that I’ve been passionate about since I’ve was so young.

Grand Bend holds a special place in Leonhardt’s heart. Growing up, the family spent summers here, and now that the Leonhardts are based in St. Joseph, Brett visits when he comes home. “I still have my membership at the Grand Bend Fitness Centre and I’d always work out there. Every time I come home, it’s Tim Horton’s, the gym and Sea Jewels. Our whole apartment in D.C. is decked out in Sea Jewels stuff.” He says he and Logan would like to move back to the area when they retire.

Draft makes beer league thrive “112 leagues below the NHL”

Story and Photos by Casey Lessard

It doesn’t draw the crowds like Toronto or Detroit, but the Zurich Recreational Hockey League, or ZRHL, certainly draws the players.
“We have a waiting list of sometimes 20 players waiting to get in,” says convener Jason Schilbe. “We have guys coming from London, Clinton, St. Marys, Exeter.”
The league draws them in because they know they have a chance to win in any given year. Unique to beer leagues in the area, the ZRHL operates a draft every year where two captains from each of eight teams pick players from the pool. No two years are identical, and that keeps everyone on their toes.
“The draft means you’re with different guys every year,” says Jamie Rader of Zurich. “Any team can win on a given night. Seems to work well.”
The draft has helped Zurich’s league stay alive while others have faltered.
“A couple leagues in Exeter tried it where you picked your own team,” Schilbe says. “The same team won every year so it faded out. This league has been around for 52 years, I think.”
The league started after the junior team left town, leaving young men with nowhere to play. It started out with two teams and now has eight.
“The idea is to pick a goalie first,” he says, explaining how to succeed as a captain. “If you have a good goalie, you’re all set, so usually the goalies go first.”
One other twist was introduced a couple of years ago when the NHL did the same: shootouts to resolve ties.
“You always have a winner,” Schilbe says. “When the NHL went to it, everyone saw it and liked the idea.”
Varna’s Mark Buruma is impressed with his experience. This is his second year playing in ZRHL.
“It’s probably the most organized rec league around,” he says. “It’s all about the beer. This is a beer league.”
Brent Durand of Zurich concurs.
“I’m a lifer. Love of the game and playing with friends. Plus the arena’s beside the beer store.”
Then there’s the allure of winning it all in the league self-described as 112 leagues below the NHL.
“I actually scored the overtime goal to clinch the championship one year,” says Bryan Denomme of Exeter. “We went undefeated that season.”
Nevin Hodgins, a five-year veteran, hasn’t been so lucky.
“I haven’t. This could be the year. It would be the dream of a lifetime.”
Playoffs start this week with the Devils and Bruins leading their respective divisions.
“Playoffs are best of five, so each team is guaranteed two rounds,” Schilbe says. “The season runs 17 regular season games, and up to 15 playoff games. It’s a long season.”
Almost as long as the NHL’s.

For game times or more information, visit http://www.zrhl.com.

Grand Bend artist Josy Britton was recently honoured with entry into the Society of Canadian Artists. For each submission, the society’s jury looks at five paintings made within the last two years, examines the artist’s résumé and determines which would be a good representative of current art in Canada.

At told to Casey Lessard

We lived in Freelton and had 10 acres of maple trees. Gord’s work got transferred to Sarnia, and we were looking for a place there. Then Gord worked at the Bruce nuclear station and had to drive to his office in Sarnia. He had to pass through Grand Bend, and knew I had camped for years at the Pinery, so he timed how long it took to get from here to Sarnia.
He blindfolded me and brought me to what I thought was one of the houses in Sarnia. We stopped here on this lot and took off the blindfold with me looking up, and all I could see was this canopy of trees. He said, “Could you be happy here?” That’s how we ended up living here.

I have to live in a forest because I like feeling like I’m part of nature, and I think people can live in harmony with nature. I love every day looking outside when I wake up and seeing what kind of day it is.
Right now I’m working on a series of water paintings. I find it an exciting subject because water doesn’t stay still. The movement is fun to create.
My calling is to paint and I find it really easy to paint, but the other part of being an artist is the promotional part, which doesn’t come naturally to me. I’ve had shows in Toronto, but I don’t have a gallery that represents me there. I think the next time I approach galleries, this will help give legitimacy to my request.
My long-term goal is to have work in the National Gallery or the Art Gallery of Ontario. This is a vote of confidence from my peers that my work deserves to be there. That’s what I’m hoping.

Paintings by Josy Britton
http://www.josybritton.com
http://www.societyofcanadianartists.com

How a day at the beach changed Reagen Robinson’s life

Exeter toddler Reagen Robinson’s life will never be the same after an outing to a private beach near Grand Bend in August. Soon after arriving at the beach with his parents Brad and Katrina and brother Jordon, Reagen ran toward an extinguished, but still hot, firepit and suffered third degree burns to his hands and second degree burns to parts of his legs.

As told to Casey Lessard

Katrina Robinson: We’re lake people. It’s nice to live next door to one of the most beautiful places in the world, and we take advantage of it. We have two small kids and two dogs who enjoy to swim. We’re beachgoers. It’s a fun, inexpensive day to have family time.
It was a Friday afternoon, and after Brad finished work we decided to go to the beach.
We were at a private beach. We had just sat down and I noticed he went toward the fire pit and I literally just about had him. I couldn’t catch him fast enough. He fell into a fire pit full of ashes that were still fairly warm. I picked him up and threw him in the water with me. I didn’t know what else to do. Brad came down and took one look at him and said we had to go to the hospital. It all happened so fast. It seemed like we got there one minute, and the next we were driving back down the road with a screaming baby.
Shock took over. Usually I’m a very queasy person, but for some reason I was the pillar of strength. I carried him into Exeter hospital and they took him from me so I could give them information. I went back and all you could see was his skin was charred. It was all grey. I don’t know how else to describe it because I try not to think about it; it’s so horrific.
I remember having to stand in the hospital room and hold cold cloths of saline solution over top of him. They explained what they were going to do and gave him a drug called ketamine to knock him out. Before I knew it, he was being taken to Victoria Hospital. We dropped Jordon off at Brad’s parents’ house in Ailsa Craig, and it felt like forever to get from Ailsa Craig to London. We got lost and finally found where we were supposed to be.
I don’t think the severity of it sunk in until the next morning, Saturday. Having been brought up to speed by his team, the plastic surgeon came in and had a look and said flat out that Reagen had to have skin grafting. He said he would wait until his normal surgery days, which were Wednesday and Thursday, but then he came back and changed his mind. He said if it was okay with us, he would do it the next day, Sunday.
On his first surgery, they skin-grafted up his forearms, the back of his hands and the fronts of his fingers. They placed pins in his fingers to keep them straight so he didn’t move any of the skin grafting. It takes between three and seven days for the skin grafts to be fully attached.
Originally they thought they would have to skin graft his palms, a spot on his knees and a spot on his toe. But after two hours, the surgeon came to us and was excited, saying he didn’t think his knee or his palms needed the surgery.
We were in the hospital for four weeks. They were shocked at how fast he healed, and Dr. Scilley was calling him his Superhealer. They were pleased enough to let us go home, but reminded us that we would have to have home care come in every day because he had sores that would need dressings. We went home with some dressing instructions and we were to wrap Cobans (a type of compression bandage) to add some tension into form before we got into gloves. We were home doing that for about a week before we had to go see Dr. Scilley. The Coban, because it wasn’t wrapped properly, started to cut into the bases of the fingers and added new wounds. Unfortunately, because of the way the health system works, no one from the hospital could come out and teach our home care workers how to use them properly, and you have to be a pro at it for it to work properly.
The physical therapist, surgeon and a couple of nurses went to a conference in Montreal, and discovered gloves that had some tension in them with silver to help the healing. These were eventually replaced by the full pressure gloves he uses now. His left hand was burned worse than his right hand; he has about 95 per cent use of his right hand, and we’ve had issues with his left hand. His web spaces grew in a bit and the gloves are cutting into the web space. We’re trying to get it to heal, but you need pressure on it to keep it functional. It’s just getting better now.
The body is still trying to repair its own skin because it doesn’t understand skin grafting. The blood vessels are still up at the surface, so if he were to pick his finger, it would bleed like crazy. The gloves help put pressure on his blood vessels and add form to his fingers. His fingers will never look like yours and mine, but he’ll be able to bend them.
With the home care workers, I hold on to him and we go through six exercises to bend his joints and stretch the skin to its maximum potential. Even in a 24-hour period, you can have a lot of contraction, so you have to manipulate it while it’s still not completely healed.

Inflicting pain daily
They’re hopeful that he will have full mobility. With his left hand, he doesn’t do a whole lot because it’s still sore. He favours his right hand, and we hope the mobility’s there in his left hand, but he can’t talk so we don’t know.
It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s not an easy thing to watch a child go through pain. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t have to assist in inflicting pain on him. I honestly thought when they first taught me how to do the exercises in the hospital that it would get easier. It doesn’t. In fact, it gets worse because it’s been four or five months continuous.
When you have a burn, you have a burn for life. He will require surgeries until he is fully grown because his fingers and arms will grow but his skin won’t grow with them.
It has its downfalls for being as young as he was, but it has its upside, too. He’ll never remember what happened, and he’ll never know any different. He’ll just have to adapt. It’s life. You can’t go back and it’s never going to get any worse than it was that day. We just have to teach him that everyone is different, and you can do anything you want as long as you set your mind to it.

A November fundraiser in Parkhill raised almost $20,000 to offset the medical costs. Reagen needs gloves, which are covered 75 per cent by OHIP every six months, but the family has to pay for any additional gloves in the interim. Medical supplies and other expenses, such as parking for regular visits to the hospital, also come out of their pocket.
Donations are still being accepted. Cheques made out to the “Parkhill Lions Club in trust to Reagen Robinson” can be sent to the club at P.O. Box 207 Parkhill, ON N0M 2K0. Tax receipts will be issued.

By Casey Lessard

The end is near for Crediton’s only retailer, and its owners hope that end refers to construction on the town’s only bridge and main road, not the end of their 15-year business.
“There are no guarantees,” says Diane Faubert when asked if the business will survive to the January bridge repair completion date. “We don’t know. We’re going to try.”
Jordy’s Gas Bar, one of the few businesses in the village, has been hit hard by three years of road construction caused by sewer installation; this year’s discovery that the bridge had a crack was the straw that threatens to break Jordy’s back.
“I’ve taken a leave of absence from my bus,” Faubert says, “I’ve laid off my (three part-time) employees, I’ve unplugged a couple of fridges and freezers to cut back. We’ve cut back our hours because there just isn’t enough business. It’s pretty tough.”
“We became aware in late 2006 that it’s the same type of bridge that collapsed in Laval, Quebec,” says Acting Director of Public Works Dave Laurie, who notes they’ve been keeping tabs on the bridge since then. Repairing the bridge was Huron County’s least expensive option, estimated at $430,000.
“The bridge was built in the mid-50s, and it was a design that was popular, the cantilever beam design. We had done some repairs earlier in 2006 to address other issues, and early this summer realized there’s a crack in one of the beams critical to supporting the bridge. It probably was a flaw in the bridge from the time it was built. Luckily it’s the only one of that type we have in Huron County.”
Traffic is rerouted around Crediton at Parr Line until next month. Consolidated Sign & Lighting is at the Parr Line end of Crediton’s main street, and its lit sign is visible from the detour.
“It’s not an issue for us,” says Consolidated’s Larry Eveland. “I’d rather see it happening rather than not happening.
“We’re just lucky our bridge isn’t the one that collapsed and killed somebody. It had to be fixed before someone got hurt.”
The discovery of the crack is important to public safety, but an unlucky case of bad timing for Faubert, whose business has already suffered from construction that deters traffic en route to Grand Bend and the Motorplex.
““We used to get a lot of Motorplex traffic, but they don’t want to go over rough roads,” Faubert says. “After three years of this, I don’t have any financial savings or extra money to tie me through. I have another month and a half to go. I’m taking it day by day and hoping that I’ll survive this.”

Exeter writer Rick Hundey set his first novel Death at the Bend in Grand Bend. It was released in November by Faux Pop of Goderich.

As told to Casey Lessard

I’ve been playing around with writing for years. I didn’t get serious about it until about six or seven years ago. I joined a writers’ group and we would share our writings and critique. I sent short stories to various contests, and I finally won one in the summer of 2005, and that was the Alice Munro writers’ festival and short story contest. It made me feel I was on to something.
I had been working as a management consultant and had enough contracts to keep me going, and I had some wonderful clients, but I wasn’t as interested in what I was doing as I should have been. I was working on manuscripts, and I got to the point where if I got a phone call from a client while I was working on a manuscript, I saw it as an interruption. That’s when I thought it was time to get at it full-time. That was a year and a half ago, when I was in the first draft of Death at the Bend.
I worked at it quite steadily and did seven or eight major rewrites; some authors do 20. Realistically it was two major rewrites with the rest fine-tuning.
The last few drafts were the result of the review process I went through with a couple of people in the writers’ group, a friend of mine who judges short story contests, and a couple of author friends. Then I linked up with Faux Pop in Goderich and decided to go with it.

In a nutshell, it’s about a coffee shop owner in Grand Bend who used to be the town’s police chief. I know they haven’t had one in recent memory, but I made up an amalgamation story where he turns down a job offer with the OPP and decides to put up his shingle to run a small consulting business and buying a small Main Street coffee shop with his girlfriend.
An ex-girlfriend reappears and she was a major problem in his life; yet here she is, needing help, having been charged with the murder of her spouse.
I found that the characters would end up telling me what was next. I always knew the ending and the main events, but the shifts along the way added more suspense. I’ve read a fair number of books on writing, and these people tell you that this happens to you. One writer in particular said to write biographies of your main characters. I did, and they’re fairly detailed biographies. You find yourself getting to a point where you know what your plot outline says but you ask yourself, what would he do? If he did this, what would happen?
I was done in the early summer and I was hoping to have something by the end of the summer, in time to catch the Grand Bend cottagers. I discovered that my expectations were unreasonable. There’s a copy editing process where revisions can affect other parts of the book. There was also a fair amount of work regarding decisions about the cover.
We weren’t ready for a launch until three weeks ago, and we’re thinking for our first stage that we’ll print three blocks of 300, and two-thirds of that first block are spoken for. That part has gone pretty well when you think that it’s only been two or three weeks.
Most of the sales have been by word of mouth or through library readings. After this stage we want to go to independent bookstores and possibly the chains. I think this is the more common approach than it used to be.

This is fun. Especially the writing part, and I really enjoy interacting with people at readings. If you’re a painter, you either sell your painting or you hang it on your wall. Either way people are going to look at it, and that’s your goal. When you write a book, it’s not just for you. Your only proof of its merit is that people buy it and tell you that it’s good. It will make a little bit of money, but that’s not the goal; if that’s your goal, there are better ways to do it.
For more, visit: http://rickhundey.fauxpop.tv/

Rick Hundey’s writing advice:

Just do it
I was writing when I was working full-time. This is as much a lifestyle decision as anything else. If you can write short stories with success, then you can do it part-time and it’s a great leisure pastime. I don’t think working on it full-time is required.

Hone your skills
I now think it’s more a skill than a talent. There are a lot of good books out there, and good courses. I took a fantastic course at Fanshawe with Susan Regier, who is this sister of our fire chief John Morgan.

Find others
It also helps to get in with some people that write. Talk to them, and exchange your work.

Write, write, write
The other thing you have to do is write a lot. If this was the old days, I would have a cedar chest full of manuscripts. My computer’s full of stuff. Just write and keep trying. Throw stuff out that doesn’t work or that you’re not happy with.

Favourite authors: Walter Mosley, Robert Crais, Tony Hillerman, and Elmore Leonard

By Casey Lessard

Capture action
Like our cover photographer Kelsey Brand’s photo of her sister Logan, your photos will be better if you capture life in action. Experiment with fast shutter speeds (like the cover) or slow ones, in which case you should move with the subject or stay perfectly still (i.e. use a tripod).

Find a great venue
Darlene O’Rourke’s photo of the McCarthy family shows that sometimes a portrait is as much about the venue as it is the people. Build a database of great places to take photos, remember when the light is good there, and bring your subjects when the time is right.

Be ready
Great moments like Jenn Moxham’s photo of her son Grayson aren’t waiting for you to pull out your camera. Have it ready, then shoot until you get the picture you want. It might take one shot, or it might take 50. Don’t let your guard down if your instinct tells you something great is going to happen.

Look around
Lea James’ detail of a knot is one of those shots you don’t see every day, yet it’s there every day for you to see it. Look up, look down, look around. Often the best photos are the ones you can’t see because you’re too busy looking at something else.

Change your schedule
Want to get a photo like Brenda Parsons’ of the wind turbines near Ipperwash (#1)? Brenda was up at 5 a.m. Now that’s taking photography seriously. By the way, bring your tripod and leave the shutter open as long as you can. You may need to use a night setting or bulb depending on your camera. Make sure the flash is off.

Use existing light
Andra Brand’s photo of her daughter Logan (#2) looks great because she’s using the light from the Christmas tree. You could use window lighting or really any light, even a street light. Just watch your white balance setting to make sure the colour looks the way you want.

Bring in several layers
Thinking of shooting another sunset? The reason Lynn Wilbur’s sunset (#3) is so beautiful is that she brought in several layers: a foreground (sand), middle ground (water), and background (sun). Try looking for those three elements, and then incorporate people.

Composition rules
Emily Marks’ photo of two people walking down a wooded road (#4) takes advantage of one of several composition rules, including balance, rule of thirds, dominant colour, leading lines. Wondering what these are? Visit http://www.grandbendphoto.com

Don’t be afraid of people
Karen Brown’s photo of the South Huron senior concert band in action (#5) requires the photographer to overcome the fear of being embarrassed by getting close to the action. If you get a good photo, and the subject is okay with it, it’s usually a good idea. See also Jane Miklovic’s photo to its right (#6).

Macro for flowers and bugs
Shooting flowers? Find the macro setting, which looks like a flower. Use it for bugs, too. Maggie Brennan used it for both (#7).

Frame within a frame
Look for opportunities to shoot people framed by an object such as a window or other frame, like Anita Deline did (#8). The frame acts as a foreground element, as discussed earlier.

Make your subject comfy
Once your subject is comfortable with you photographing them, interesting things happen, as Judy Jewell discovered (#9). Just tell people to pretend you’re not there, and act as comfortable as you want them to act. It takes a few photos for people to do that, but keep shooting and don’t draw attention to yourself.

Look for abstract details
Vreni Beeler was carving a pumpkin when she looked closer. She’s glad she did (#10). The closer you get, the more abstract everyday objects become.

Use your tools
Mies Vandeleygraaf’s photo of sunbeams through smoke (this page) incorporates several of these lessons. The more you bring together, the better your photos will be.

Keep your sense of humour
Martin Page’s raccoon photo and Paul Maguire’s photo of his granddaughter share a sense of fun that forces the viewer to smile.

To learn more, call Casey Lessard at 519-614-3614 or visit
http://www.grandbendphoto.com.
Future classes will also be posted on this website. Special thanks to the Grand Bend Art Centre and to the students who shared their work with the Strip.

Story and Photos by Casey Lessard

They may not have won the national championship Vanier Cup, but the University of Western Ontario Mustangs football team continues to win the hearts of boys and girls at East Williams Public School in Nairn. Several of the team’s players are taking part in a mentorship program to help the children improve their literacy while learning the fundamentals of football.
“One of our students wrote in his journal about his love for football,” says principal Vivienne Bell-McKaig, who spearheaded the program last year.
“We asked if he would like to meet (a player), and he was quite excited about that opportunity. So we wrote a letter inviting the Stangs to our school, and this has grown from a one-buddy opportunity to a whole school mentorship program.”
“It started off small with a couple of guys,” says linebacker and long snapper Conor Elliott, who is a friend of Bell-McKaig’s daughter and leads the program. “It’s blown up and been going strong ever since.
“I love it. I love seeing the kids. Their reading has gone up. It brings you back to why you’re doing what you’re doing. It makes you work harder and when you see how well they’re doing. I’d always wanted to pursue education, but this made it clear in my mind.”
Inspired by Elliott’s commitment to education, left guard Matt Norman is now interested in pursuing education as a career.
“I love helping them learn and it’s a great pleasure,” Norman says. “These kids really look up to us, and I was taken by surprise how they welcome us. It’s a great feeling.”
And it’s a great feeling for McKaig, who has seen progress already.
“There is a gender gap in learning and it really shows in the Grades 4-6 age groups,” she says.
“This shows that boys, and even football players, like to read. We already have seen big, big improvement in our reading and writing scores since these guys have been coming out. It’s improved the motivation and purpose for reading and writing.”
Plus, it brings a smile to the faces of the students.
“It’s really fun,” says Grade 5 student Adam Galloway, “because they’re really smart and it’s fun to play with them and read with them.”
The program also reminds the players of the importance of school.
“It makes us realize we have to buckle down at school,” Elliott says. “It’s a good reality check.”

Grand Bend playwright Paul Ciufo nominated for Governor-General’s literary award for Reverend Jonah

Born in Toronto, raised in Guelph and Mississauga, Paul Ciufo has called Grand Bend home for more than two decades. His first professional play, Reverend Jonah, was recently nominated for the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Drama.
“It was probably the most pleasant surprise of my life,” says Blyth Festival artistic director Eric Coates of his response to Ciufo’s news. Blyth developed Ciufo’s and produced the play for the festival’s 2007 season. “It was one of the most gratifying moments in my career as someone who develops and produces new Canadian work.”
Blyth scripts have been nominated for Governor-General’s awards twice over the years; both plays, The Drawer Boy and Quiet in the Land, won the award.
“Competition is stiff,” Coates says. “Paul’s work stood out among the best new plays in the country.
“This play really forced people to take a look at faith, tolerance and inclusion, and they responded very well to it.”

As told to Casey Lessard

Reverend Jonah is inspired by a couple of ministers, primarily a minister I know who got into conflict with the powerful families in the church where he was a minister, and there was a real clash, and it was quite devastating to him health-wise. It was quite poisonous for the church; quite a few members of the congregation stopped going over this because they disagreed with the antagonism toward the minister. I got incensed about that. This is a church, a place of love and support amongst its membership. I felt angry and sad that even that kind of human institution can be so flawed, that people can be seeking power there. I also had a relative who was a minister and it was quite taxing on him. He struggled with addiction issues and died at a young age. These are the starting points.
I went to Blyth Festival and presented my idea for the play, and they said they liked it and would commission me. ‘We will work with you and we’ll get the first opportunity to produce the play when it’s done.’ That was a long process because it took me a long time to get this play right. When I started, what caused the conflict in the fictional church was much less controversial and smaller than what ultimately is the cause of the conflict in the church. The people at Blyth Festival were the ones who said, ‘Choose a bigger issue. It’s not realistic and it’s not incendiary enough.’
So I thought, why not choose the biggest issue facing churches right now, which is acceptance of gay and lesbian people. I’m really glad I did.
This wasn’t the only thing I was working on for those years. I’d take a run at it and take it to Blyth, and they’d say, ‘It’s getting better, but it’s still not ready.’ We did readings of it with actors, and they did that several times. This process started in 1999, and it wasn’t until 2006 that Blyth said, ‘Yes, we’re going to go ahead with this.’ And in summer 2007, it finally made its way to the stage.

One thing I learned along the way was the process of a theatre company commissioning a writer. I always envisioned just sort of going off and doing your thing and then making the approach. I didn’t realize that you could go to a theatre company and say, ‘I’ve got an idea. Here’s an outline of the plot and the characters,’ and have them jump aboard with you in the process.
I didn’t realize it would take so long. I almost totally lost faith in the project several times and gave up on it. The fact that it finally occurred was somewhat surprising. I got to a point where I thought, I just can’t get it to be good enough to be worthy of being on stage. But something about that story got me to give it another try. It finally paid off.
The monetary payment is a very modest amount, and it’s in several installments. It’s not a lot of money (for seven years work). Do you want to do the hourly rate (laughs)?
Knowing that someone is waiting to read your draft gives you extra motivation to get done, apart from your own satisfaction. Of course there’s always the chance that they might say, ‘It’s ready to be produced.’ That didn’t happen until the summer/fall of 2006.

My emotions would ebb and flow. I would be out for a run in the Pinery and suddenly think about the play and say, That’s how I solve that problem. I’d come home and spend all weekend working on that. I’d get excited and that process of working on problems, deleting some characters, adding some subplot would lead to a new draft. I’d take it to Blyth and wait expectantly. In the early days, the artistic director was Anne Chislett, and she has won a Governor-General’s award for her play Quiet in the Land. She would say, you’re on to something, but you just need to keep working on it. To show you how long it took, there’s a new artistic director there. Fortunately, Eric Coates, who took over, also saw the value and potential in the play and kept encouraging me.
When they say there’s something here, but it’s still lacking, it’s like you’ve completed a marathon and there’s another one in front of you because you put your best into that draft and it wasn’t good enough. Sometimes that meant putting it away and working on something else. For example, I did a radio play for CBC in 2002. Or I got a new idea for a play and would work on that. But I always circled back to Reverend Jonah and tried to get it right. It was this flow of hope followed by despair, followed by hope, followed by despair.
There was a further complicating factor, and I’ll never know how big of a factor it was. I believe Blyth Festival saw it as a risk to put the play on because they have a core audience that may be deeply offended by a play with sensitive religious issues. The play had to be bang on artistically, but there was always the question of what the impact would be. Would sponsors stop supporting the festival?
Eric Coates had a public reading of the play in the summer of 2006, and that may have been as much to road test it from an artistic merit standpoint as from a community reaction standpoint. The feedback was incredibly positive. The ministers at that reading stood up and said, ‘Paul, you got that right. That’s what ministers go through.’ Or, ‘Thank you for tackling this issue.’ Or, ‘This isn’t a play about one issue; it’s about community and acceptance.’ A lot of people connected to it in all sorts of ways.

I’m also a rookie. I’ve only written one stage play before this called On Convoy. That got a tremendous non-professional production at the Livery Theatre in Goderich, and was produced as a radio play for CBC. But this was my first professionally produced stage play, so I had a lot to learn.
I learned some things doing that CBC production working with very knowledgeable people there, such as executive producer James Roy and script editor Dave Carley. They really helped me understand parts of the craft, like how to structure a scene, how conflict works to drive a scene forward; basic things that are essential.
I learned that writing is not just a talent. It’s a skill you have to hone and hone and hone.
(When Blyth said it was ready,) first of all I felt joy. Yes! It’s going to see the light of day. It’s actually going to reach people and be seen. I was really excited and I essentially had the goal of having a play produced by Blyth for about a decade, so it was a realization of a long-term goal. I was very excited and very happy.
Then there’s the buildup as the season was approaching. Then there was, surprisingly to me, a lot of work to be done on the script over the winter and spring. I was asked to be at the first week of rehearsals. I thought there would be some tweaking as the actors were rehearsing, but major rewriting happened that week. I’d wake up in the morning and email the new script to the actors and the process would start again.
What you’ve written on the page, when it’s a play, doesn’t tell the whole story. Actors move around, insights emerge into what’s working and what’s not. The major realization was that with one of the characters, I hadn’t done a very good job with her. The actress bravely said, ‘I don’t know who this character is; she’s just angry all the time.’
I was taken aback, but then I realized it was true and I had known all along that was true. I tried in the course of a very short time to flesh out that character. That has impacts on everything else when you’re adding a character and scenes. She is the life partner of arguably the most important character in the play.
Bottom line, I learned a lot that week about the process. It was very intense.
They rehearse for several more weeks and opening night arrives. To my surprise, I wasn’t very nervous. I knew they were going to do a good job. I will never forget that night because I just sat and watched these incredible performers totally nail it. The audience was so receptive. They were laughing at the funny parts and very moved at the poignant parts. There was so much energy in that. I was sitting among my family and friends and I got to watch their reactions. It was odd because I knew where every line was coming from. Two of the characters are based on my in-laws, so when Fred sings in the shower, I’m laughing, and the character based on my mother-in-law says ‘I can’t get him to sing a note in church.’ And she actually said that. It was really neat to watch it and be there in the moment while thinking of the background leading up to it.
Paula Citron, a reviewer from Toronto, wrote the review every playwright hopes for when she said, ‘The play was beautifully written.’ That’s a wonderful thing because so often theatre reviews focus on the performance.

I started sending the play out to other theatres, and nothing. I was told, ‘The cast is too big.’ A year goes by and there are no other productions. I had been hoping that since it was such a success that it would go on.
I got contacted by Scirocco Drama publishing house that wanted to publish it.
A play is in its most fully realized form on stage, so you don’t often think of plays in books except for Shakespeare. But plays are often published, and that’s how they are studied in classrooms and that’s how theatre people get access to them and get inspired to put them on stage.
It was really exciting because since the age of seven, I dreamt of having a book published. My first book idea was a mystery novel in the Hardy Boys style called the Mystery of Shadow Ranch. I had never thought that it would be a play that would get published. I also thought it would be a real struggle to find a publisher. You hear all these stories of authors who get 49 rejections, but here was a publisher who sought me out, so that was great.

I knew theoretically (because only published plays may be nominated) that it could be nominated for the Governor-General’s award, but I had no expectations of that. The publication date was September 30, and I just got a phone call the other Tuesday (Oct. 21). The woman said, ‘I’m calling on behalf of the Canadian Arts Council,’ so my wheels started turning and I wondered why they would be calling, and ‘I’m calling to inform you that you have been nominated in the drama category…’ and I’m thinking, Oh my God, it’s the Governor-General’s awards, which it was.
It was quite a moment. I was really moved. I was at a business conference in Toronto, so it was a voicemail message I was listening to, and I was immediately a mess. All my writing life flashed through my mind. I saw myself as a kid working on that novel, as a very nerdy high school guy working on a spy novel in high school, and studying literature in university.
Whether you paint or write, artistically it’s completely subjective. It’s tough to know whether what you do is good. There are always varying opinions on it. I tend to suspect the negative opinions are right. When something like this happens, a national award, it’s tough to dismiss that.
Perhaps now it will be considered for more productions, so that’s positive. For new work in the future, it will be easier to have people consider it.
Blyth has commissioned me to write a play called The Five Day Whiteout. It’s a thriller/murder mystery. The plot is that four people traveling separately by car are blinded by a whiteout and stranded on the side of a country road. A retired schoolteacher brings these five people into his house, and there’s a killer in their midst.

My family is really excited for me. Julie is really happy for me and it’s her success, too, because she has to make sacrifices when I’m writing. I get the sense that she also thinks the sacrifices are worthwhile.

Paul Ciufo will find out November 18 whether he has won the Governor-General’s award. The winner will attend a December ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa hosted by Governor-General Michaëlle Jean. The awards are Canada’s oldest and one of its most prestigious literature awards.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
- T.S. Eliot

Story and Photos by Andy McGuire

For two weeks in mid-September I traveled to the Canadian Arctic with a group of nearly 100 other travelers, organized through Adventure Canada. After flying from Ottawa to Resolute (which lies at the 75th parallel), we boarded the Lyubov Orlova – the Yugoslavian-built, Maltese-owned, Russian-manned, Canadian-chartered, double-hulled ship that would be our floating home for the next two weeks.
From Resolute the ship travelled down the east coast of Baffin Island, crossed the Davis Strait for a three-day visit to Greenland, and returned to Baffin to complete the east coast of the island, ending in Iqaluit. The trip was sponsored by the Walrus Foundation and was as much a tour of Canada’s polar region as it was a crash-course on all issues Arctic – and I was eager to learn. We were equipped with a resource staff team of about 15 professionals ranging from marine biologists and other scientific folk to musicians, writers, and academics working in the humanities. Every day three different resource staff members each delivered lectures on various topics pertaining to Arctic wildlife, Inuit life, and northern political issues, which were followed by discussion. Needless to say, much learning happened during the trip, academic and otherwise.
There were many things I witnessed that I was only accustomed to seeing in movies, magazines, and books: snow-capped mountain ranges littered with glaciers; icebergs the size of city blocks and stretching higher than apartment buildings; watching one hundred walrus sunbathing on a tiny island in Frobisher Bay. We visited many small Inuit and Greenlandic communities and were warmly received at each destination as guests rather than tourists. What follows are a few excerpts from my journal noting a few of the moments that will remain highlighted in my own memory of travelling through the far north.

Saturday, September 13, 2008
This morning the ship anchored off of Beechey Island. This small, desolate island situated near the 75th parallel is a significant site in the history of Arctic exploration, specifically the quest for the Northwest Passage, a trade route that, when mapped, would historically link the Pacific and Atlantic oceans via the Canadian Arctic. In 1845, Sir John Franklin set sail in search of the Passage, yet he and his entire crew would eventually perish as a result of hypothermia, tuberculosis, and lead poisoning. It is here on Beechey Island that the graves of three of Sir John Franklin’s men were discovered in 1851 by British and American vessels. The common belief among forensic archaeologists and many academics is that the men died largely due to lead poisoning, caused by the lead-soldered cans storing their food. To this day, the three men on Beechey Island remain the only members of Franklin’s crew whose bodies were ever found.
It was an appropriately gloomy day for our visit. Stepping out of the zodiac and onto the beach I felt a very real and pressing sense that this small patch of land demanded my respect. It was the sort of feeling one usually gets when visiting important historical sites, but this place in particular was terrific in its remote barrenness. It was difficult to reconcile the fact that three men – including one my age, 25 – died marooned on this island at the edge of the world, yet I had just enjoyed a coffee and muffin before going ashore. Our fellow passenger and resident Newfoundland musician, Daniel Payne, sang the traditional song “Concerning Franklin and His Gallant Crew” a capella as we stood in front of the graves. It was a very moving and fitting tribute to Petty Officer John Torrington, Royal Marine Private William Braine, and Able Seaman John Hartnell, who are still stranded in the imagination of Canadians on Beechey Island.

Sunday, September 14, 2008
It’s now late afternoon and I’m back on the ship after visiting Pond Inlet, a small community with a population of about one thousand people on the northwest corner of Baffin Island. Houses in Pond are modest in size and unornamented; they are built simply for living. There is little industry in this remote Arctic town. The town’s Economic Development Officer Colin Saunders tells me that, from an economic standpoint, the community relies heavily on the annual seal hunt, which last year brought in over $100,000 for the community. Because the town lies quite far north geographically (around the 72nd parallel), the cost of living is astronomical compared to the south. To get goods to Pond, the shipping cost is about $14/kg, and federal subsidies reduce the cost to about $12/kg. As a result, the Inuit woman in front of me at the local co-op grocery store spent over $430 on a single, small box of canned and boxed food, plus some bread and milk.
Saunders also gave me insight into the seal hunt, which Sir Paul McCartney opposes. Our southern view of the hunt ignores the reality of the intimate and respectful relationship between the Inuit and the seal. As a southerner it was very interesting to learn, in the most direct way possible, about the dynamic existing between southern perspectives on life in northern communities such as Pond and the reality of life in such northern towns.
The reality was that everybody I passed smiled and said hello to me, and almost all of the children I passed would stop to ask where I was from and chat. I enjoyed myself tremendously in Pond, wandering around town, talking and laughing with locals – simply being there. Although the box of Pop Tarts I treated myself to cost six dollars, I would highly recommend that any Arctic traveler add Pond Inlet to their itinerary.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Today was a full day of chugging across the open waters of Davis Strait en route to Greenland. Earlier this afternoon, Franklyn Griffiths, a resource staff member representing Walrus magazine, lead a discussion entitled “The Politics of the Northwest Passage”. The issue of Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic, and, in particular, our claim to ownership of the Northwest Passage, has been debated for some time between polar nations, including the United States, Russia and Canada. Griffiths explained that other polar nations agree that the Passage – that is, the water and its contents – belongs to Canada. However, the United States and others maintain that the Passage is an international strait because it connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Beaufort Sea and eventually the Pacific, and thus it is not necessary for foreign vessels to “ask permission” before using the waterway.
The issue is management. For instance, consider a hypothetical situation involving an ill-equipped, poorly maintained and perhaps even poorly-manned foreign vessel entering the waters of the Northwest Passage, crashing and spilling its contents into Canadian waters. Perhaps the most obvious question would be who would “pick up the bill” for such a massive clean-up endeavour, since the cost of operating in the Arctic is enormous. Griffiths suggested that spending money to defend the passage against such disasters is senseless considering the narrow window of usage (approximately two months during the summer). Instead of focusing on Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic, Franklin suggested the dialogue be focused more on the idea of stewardship: management rather than protection. “If the Arctic were to become a geographical area of conflict,” he says, “we would all be in trouble.”

Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Early this morning the ship anchored offshore from Uummanaq, Greenland, population 1,500. Translated as “heart-shaped”, the small community on Greenland’s northwest coast derives its name from the immense heart-shaped mountain adjacent the town. In Uummanaq one sees a handful of beautiful small, pastel-coloured homes and a modest harbor, suggesting the presence of a fishing industry. Besides the presence of a vibrant fishing industry, the visible differences between Greenlandic and Canadian Inuit communities can also be attributed to the fact that Greenland, although governed by home-rule, still receives around three billion dollars annually from Denmark.
The highlight of my visit to Uummanaq was hearing a performance by the local church choir, which had just returned the previous day from a European tour that ended in Paris, France. Unfortunately, between Paris and Greenland a few members came down with bad colds. Despite being a few members short, the small choir beautifully performed a number of Greenlandic hymns and traditional songs. The performance was made more special by the church, built in 1935 from Precambrian granite taken from the heart-shaped mountain. Although the church itself is not yet 75 years old, physically it is much older as it was made from stone approximately 2.8 billion years old. It seemed to me profoundly poetic that any church, let alone a small church in a remote Greenlandic community, should be built from nearly three billion year-old stone taken from an immense heart-shaped mountain. To further this romantic image, after construction was completed it was realized that the mountain’s contour had coincidentally been traced in the contour of the mortar holding together the wall directly behind the altar. It was nothing short of magical listening to the local choir perform in this church that quietly exists on Greenland’s northwest coast.

Friday, September 19, 2008
At mid-morning the ship arrived in Ilulissat, Greenland, after successfully navigating through the minefield of icebergs ranging in size between a truck and Prince Edward Island. Running along the south side of town is the Jakobshavn Fjord, a watershed of ice stretching 200 miles back up the Greenland icecap that drains the fastest-moving glacier on the island. In the warmth of the summer, the glacier can advance up to 100’ per day.
I walked to the far edge of town, up a path leading to a viewpoint nestled in the rocky hills that surround town. Standing on the hillside, one can overlook the traffic jam of icebergs slouching towards the sea from the mouth of the fjord, and at the same time turn and follow the fjord itself stretch inland in a compact cluster of ice as far as the eyes allow. Strangely enough I didn’t feel the urge (or perhaps the need) to bring out my camera. A photograph wouldn’t properly convey the sheer immensity and scale of the natural wonders to be found here. This was the type of place where one needs to simply spend time and be there, a place where giant white remnants – ruins if you like – of the last Ice Age are still visible.
Many fellow passengers kidded me for being the youngest person on the trip (by an average of about fifty years), but standing on the hills outside of Ilulissat and beholding the surrounding landscape of Precambrian rock and the ice fields, I hoped that everyone felt quite young.

Returning from the trip was only the beginning. The first night back I found myself outside of Kingston driving 60km/h on an 80km/h road, feeling as though I was driving ridiculously fast. The pace of life is one of the most distinguishing features of my Arctic experience. While there, I was too immersed in the immediacy of it all and didn’t consider things that now seem obvious, like the fact that no roads led out of the remote communities we visited. These internal roads weren’t even conducive to driving 50km/h, meaning that, our southern concept of pace is fundamentally different than that of the Inuit.
The pace of Inuit life is a reflection of the landscape that is their backyard. Change in the Arctic landscape tends to occur in centennial increments. For instance, since the glaciers have receded, the land itself is rising out of the water due to the alleviation of the weight of the glaciers—a process called “isostatic rebound” – the effects of which take the form of one-meter ridges, visible on most beaches, which mark old shorelines, occurring roughly every one hundred years. It is as though the land keeps a slow record of itself, one that is “readable” and available to anyone who takes the time to notice.
After having been in such a “slow” place – not to mention watching the land crawl by from aboard a sluggish ship – it was quite a sharp contrast returning home and being catapulted back into the fast-paced ways of the south, which, ironically, involved riding the clutch from mid-Toronto all the way to Milton on my way back to Waterloo. Two entirely different worlds converged in my head. And I thought of the Eliot lines that introduce this article.

Chamber’s top entrepreneur and business agree: it’s about customer service and quality

2008 Entrepreneur of the Year
Shannon Ryan
The Garden Gate Gifts & Florals
15 Ontario St. S., beside New Orleans Pizza
Opened March 2007

“I think people wish Grand Bend were a more intimate town like Bayfield,” Ryan says. “I wish there were more stores like this that would draw a different age group than already comes here faithfully every summer.”

Challenges:
“Renovating the store was a huge challenge. So was trying to source the products that I wanted and trying to figure out what customers wanted before I got here.

What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?
“We definitely strive for the best customer service possible, and the best quality product. Listen to your customers, and if they come in and say so-and-so has this product for this amount, try to source it for that price. It’s also important to be able to have an appreciation for your staff so they’ll give the same customer service when you’re not there.”

About winning the award:
“After they called my name, I said to the president, Are you sure? I was so nervous I couldn’t say anything. I’ve been dreaming of what I would have said, and I would have thanked my staff because I couldn’t do it without them.
“It’s just been such an exciting adventure, from finding the building and painting, to finding staff and learning how to use the till.
“I’d like to say thank you to the people who nominated me, to my girls, and to my family and husband who gave me that little kick that I needed to finally get out and do it.
“I wish I had done this earlier.”

2008 Business of the Year
Grandpa Jimmy’s Scottish Bakery
Bob & Ruth Hosford
36 Ontario St. N. since May 2008, previously at Dale’s Antique Market on Hwy. 21 S.

What does it take to succeed in Grand Bend?
Bob: “Customer service and quality are both on the same level. Be nice to people and helpful, and get to know your customers.”
Ruth: “Uniqueness. We have something no one else has. We appeal to the Scottish/Irish community, but we find a lot of Canadians trying our product and really liking it.”

About winning the award:
Ruth: “We were told one day by Carol MacDougall that we had been nominated and that in itself was a huge surprise, and we were floored, really, because this is what we do.
“This is our work, this is our business. We weren’t expecting any honours for it. We were totally overwhelmed. We didn’t realize we had so much support behind us.”

You can now check out the video for Faith by Joseph Arthur and the Lonely Astronauts, filmed in Ipperwash, on YouTube:
Faith on YouTube

For more details about the video’s filming, see our story:
You’ve Gotta Have Faith

Congratulations to Grand Bend’s Paul Ciufo, who was nominated Tuesday for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, according to the Canadian Press.

Winners will be announced November 18 in Montreal.

The Dashwood resident isn’t eager to tie into Grand Bend’s sewage line. Are you?

Story and photo by Casey Lessard

Sewage collection system information session
Tuesday, September 30
7 to 9 p.m. – Grand Bend Public School

Standing in front of a lagoon that currently services the sewage waste of 1100 residents, John Mason wonders how these same lagoons east of Grand Bend will hold the waste of 11,000 in 2031. Yes, there will be a new sewage treatment facility at the site (once the tri-municipality consortium of Lambton Shores, Bluewater and South Huron approves it), but the Dashwood resident questions the decisions that are leading to the future he fears.
“People are upset,” Mason says. “I had a neighbour come over the other night crying; she can’t afford to keep going right now, let alone have a $26,000 sewage bill to tie in. Then there’s the $150 monthly cost. Mother Nature is doing it for free right now (Dashwood is on septic). They’re just putting undue hardships on everybody.”
Since the Walkerton E. coli tragedy, wastewater at all Ontario lagoons (Grand Bend’s was installed in 1979) must be treated through a treatment plant. Following Crediton’s and Hensall’s lead, Dashwood, St. Joseph and Grand Bend must now convert from septic to sewage with a plant at the present lagoon site on Mollard Line.
“Last year in Hensall, the costs that were presented to us then were $26,000 for each lot in Dashwood to tie into the system,” Mason says, “but that’s at today’s rates and we might not tie in for 10 or 12 years. Who knows what the price will be then.”
Mason is concerned that not everyone in the project’s zone is aware of the fact that they’ll be paying big money to tie in.
“Along the lake it’s $24,000 each to start,” he predicts. “A 3,000 gallon tank is $5,000. The other tank is $5,000. Plus they have to tie in from the road, so all told it’s about $40,000 per lot from St. Joseph to the Pinery.”
Lambton Shores community services director Peggy Van Mierlo-West says she can’t confirm a projected per household cost because the firm handling the project, Dillon Consulting, is not finished its proposal and has not set a cost estimate.
“They are working on that right now,” she says, “so I don’t know where people are coming up with those numbers.”
Mason figures that with Dashwood home values in the $150,000 range, it’s not a stretch to suggest that most families there will have to refinance their homes or move.
“We recently put my mom in a home, so we have her home for sale. It’s 30 years old, brick with a full basement on an acre lot. Double-car garage. We got an offer on it the other day for $147,000. A house just like it just sold in Exeter for $349,000. Wait until we get assessed for sewage, and we won’t be able to give this house away.
“Dashwood’s the last teepee standing, where we can live cheaply. Where are our poor people going to live? The Bible says, ‘The meek shall inherit the Earth.’ Where are we meek going to live?”
Mason has some solutions that could help pay for the project. They include making such infrastructure expenditures tax deductible; offering government loans at the prime rate; and canceling the project by diverting the affluent to fertilize trees at the Pinery.
The public input phase for the tertiary plant is complete, Van Mierlo-West says. Promoted as a superior environmental alternative, the new facility would use top of the line technology, including UV radiation, to purify water and eliminate not only bacteria but also nitrates and phosphates, along with any toxic materials residents put down their drains. Solar, wind, and geothermal technology would help power and heat the plant.
The lagoons on Mollard Line currently drain into the Shipka Drain, which feeds the Parkhill Creek, which takes the water to Lake Huron south of the pier. While the new system will manage 10-times as much water, Van Mierlo-West says it will reduce the amount of waste that goes into the lake – by a long shot.
“It doesn’t eliminate the risk, but it reduces it most drastically. Very low actually,” she says. “We’re sizing it for that capacity, and we’re looking at a method that will have the water treated by UV light before it’s released.”
The September 30 meeting is a chance for residents to tell Lambton Shores council which system they want to transport the waste from their home to the plant. The two options are: gravity to a municipal pumping station; and privately powered pumps that force the water into the main pipes. With the first system, small buildings with control panels will be erected in strategic locations; with the second, each homeowner will pay hydro to pump the waste out.
“We haven’t made a decision yet on which method we’re looking at,” Van Mierlo-West says, noting the cost for each will be presented at the meeting.
After receiving more than 100 comments from the last public meeting, Van Mierlo-West is eager to see a strong community turnout; community associations in Southcott Pines and Huron Woods, among others, are encouraging residents to attend the meeting.
“A lot of people are going to be showing up for this meeting,” she says. “It’s nice to know there’s interest in this project. If there wasn’t, I’d be worried.”

Devon Weeden
Principal, North Middlesex DHS
Raised: Kingston
Lives: London
Experience: Napanee, Strathroy, Glencoe, Saunders (VP), Arthur Voaden (VP). This is first principal position.

Coming to North Middlesex
It is a big change. I’m looking forward to working with the community and the kids. I’m working on the school improvement plan with the staff. There have been lots of things since I’ve arrived. We have been working on the Grade 9 successful start program, where kids come in and meet with the Student Administrative Council and Marauders Athletics Association. They’ve learned about transition and using the library as well.

New this year:
I’m interested in working collaboratively with school council and as part of our school improvement plan, we’ll be working on merging the board goals with our tailored goals here.

Focus for the year:
We’re taking a very active role to improve student learning. The goal statements we’re merging are to improve student learning, reduce identifiable instruction gaps, and to increase graduation rates. We’re putting a large amount of effort into our Grade 9 successful start program so they earn their eight credits for the year and they’re in good stead for the remainder of their high school career.

To students:
My overall vision is that we’re all people first and nothing is insurmountable.

To parents:
We’re all working together. At school, it’s not only about the curriculum, but also the leadership skills and the opportunities to be exposed to different things.

Outside of work:
I don’t have a lot of hobbies because school keeps me busy. I like to be physically active and on weekends I bicycle through the Springbank Park system. It’s a gorgeous area and a great opportunity to stay in shape and spend time with friends.

Urban vs. rural:
There’s a connectedness here. Urban kids have access to different things, but here people are very supportive of each other.

Scale model drivers hit the track at Grand Bend Speedway

Story and photos by Casey Lessard

Grand Bend Speedway’s existence is only half a secret, with many people seeing the sign south of the Motorplex but never really knowing what goes on at the oval half-scale track. Built in 1996 and expanded last year, each summer weekend, the track hosts drivers from ages seven to adult who participate in racing that resembles NASCAR, but with cars half the size of the models you see on the road.
“It seemed like a good way to spend Saturday nights with the kids,” says Mike Koricina of Ailsa Craig, whose son and daughter are Speedway veterans. “We’ve been here eight years. I do all the work on the cars to prepare them and make them go fast. Sometimes it’s too much (to handle), but it gives you quality time. It’s not a big money game. It’s not a lot of return. You do it because you like it.”
“Every time we come here, we have a good time and it keeps getting better,” says Dillon West of Aylmer, who drives mini-trucks that reach speeds of up to 80 mph.
Michelle Koricina, 19, is a two-time 6.5 HP micro-sprint champion (2003, 2004) and currently leads the 9 HP mini-sprint standings heading into the tail end of the season.
“My brother did it first and I copied,” she says. “I’m a dancer, too, so it’s like opposites. But I wanted to try it and I really liked it. I like starting at the back and having to pass everyone to get to the front.”
In a sport dominated by men, women like Koricina and Katlynn Freel don’t let the pressure get to them.
“You kind of get looked at differently but once you get in the car, it’s different,” Freel says. “It’s good to be a role model for the younger girls.”
The 16-year-old Londoner takes her share of knocks, hitting the wall at the Flamborough track when she was nine years old. She’s stuck with it and plans to move up to the four-cylinder street stock class next year.
“I’ve hit the wall a few times, but you have a full roll cage and five-point harness, fireproof suit, Snell rated helmets,” she says. “Some guys roll and are back the next week. They get up and walk away. You can’t ask for anything else. You want to be safe.”
For Michelle Koricina, her career may take a safer path as she pursues hairdressing at Marvel in November, but her passion remains on the track.
“I’d like to race at Delaware,” she says as she drops a hint while her dad listens, “if my dad buys me a truck.”

Races at Grand Bend Speedway run Saturdays at 6 p.m. until October 4.To learn more, visit
http://www.grandbendspeedway.com.

Story and Photos by Casey Lessard

It was a leap of faith, but a former Hollywood actor, a New York musician and a London (Ontario) camerawoman converged on an Ipperwash trailer park this summer in hopes of creating a music video that will also showcase the park to the nation and the world. Stephen Shellenberger, whose art is regularly shown at group shows at Bliss Studio in Port Franks, left Hollywood several years ago and directs the video for “Faith” by Joseph Arthur, a folk-rock musician based in Brooklyn. They teamed up with a friend of Shellenberger who owns London’s video production studio CIVA Communications, and who provided the team with Sylvana Liebregts, who shot and edited the video. It should hit MuchMusic this month if accepted by the music network, and there’s word it will air in the United States and France.
“I’ve done some music videos in the past,” Liebregts said, “so I was thrilled when I was asked to do it. I’m crazy about music, so to be able to do this and combine my passion for filmmaking with music is incredible. Joseph’s a really nice guy and talented so it was an easy job to take.”
Arthur has enjoyed moderate success in the U.S., with one of his songs featured on an EP as a tribute to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The song was recorded and remixed six times on the EP by such artists as Peter Gabriel (who signed Arthur to his Real World label), Chris Martin of Coldplay, Justin Timberlake, and by Arthur himself in a duet with Michael Stipe of REM.
“I kept telling Stephen about Joseph,” said Arthur’s manager Peter Wark, whose office is down the street from Shellenberger’s Montreal home, “and he came out to see him play solo at the Montreal Jazz Festival. We gave him the record and Joseph said we should do a video. Stephen started calling me and he brought a lot of energy to the process. He had the idea from day one to do it at this trailer park.”
“It’s amazing,” Arthur, born 36 years ago in Akron, Ohio, said of the area. “It’s a beautiful lake and I like this trailer park because I like the characters and the people here. It was Stephen’s idea to come here. It’s a song about faith, and I just trusted his instinct and I feel like it’s something interesting we’re making here.”
Shellenberger lives part-time at the Huron Shores Trailer Park. He recruited some locals, including his neighbours and Miss Kettle Point, to perform in the video, which was filmed over several days at the park and at Ipperwash beach.
“I’ve never shot a rock video before,” Shellenberger said, “and I love Joseph’s song and I though if we’re going to do it, let’s do it at my trailer park.”
Shellenberger turned to art while acting in Hollywood, with roles in 30 films including A River Runs Through It with Brad Pitt, directed by Robert Redford.
“I was always painting along the way,” he said, “and then I went through a rocky breakup and my kids were taken to France and I started painting more and more. If you’re an artist, you will do whatever is necessary to create. Arthur hyper-focuses and puts out three albums a year. It’s a compulsion to do it.”
Arthur’s album Temporary People will be his first full-length album for 2008, following four EP-length albums released in March, April, June and July.
“When you’re really productive, you flood the market with your psyche,” Arthur said. “The Internet is a digital manifestation of humanity’s subconscious and it’s limitless. You can do as much or as little as you want. You could put out a record every five years or blog like crazy every day.”
Arthur is a busy man, not only touring and producing music, but also running a New York art gallery, which is shutting down this month because of problems with the landlord (according to stereogum.com). He sets off for a tour of France and North America October 6.
“Joseph does well, but he’s still struggling to get to the next place. I think everyone is,” his manager Wark said. “Success for artists is getting to the point where you can do your art and you don’t have to work a day job. Then you aim for the sky and hope you play for thousands and thousands of fans every night.”
Canadian fans should get at least one glimpse of Arthur when his video hits the air on MuchMusic; he recorded an interview that is expected to air when the video makes its Canadian debut. The album hits stores September 30.
“Our aim is to do something more with this and see if we can expand on the idea of what a music video can be and is,” Arthur said. “Through all these avenues of distribution, we’re no longer limited as artists to formulate our products into a fixed idea of what is commercially viable.”
“Having the video air on national television is probably the coolest thing to happen in my career to date,” camerawoman and editor Sylvana Liebregts said, “and it motivates me to make it really cool and really good.
“The theme of the video is faith, and it’s a spiritual, personal song to him. I like a handheld feel; it’s more intimate and you can get into the action. A steady, tripod look is nice, but it’s sort of dry and more standard; there’s not much too it. In post-production we’re going to give it quite a distinct look. I want to make it look really cool, so I’ll spend a lot of time on it.”
For first-time music video director Shellenberger, who has directed some shorts, it’s a brand new experience.
“I’m flying by the seat of my pants,” he said. “I don’t watch a lot of videos, but I know what I would like to see. You have to trust yourself and believe it’s all going to be perfect. I’ve worked on films where you have so many cooks that the flavour is cooked out of it. You have too many people overseeing everything. The beauty of this is I do what I feel and that’s how it’s happened.”

Babes of the Bend recalls music and lifestyle of the early 20th century

Babes of the Bend: A Musical Comedy
Based on events in Grand Bend between 1915 and 1945
Grand Cove Caddyshack
Friday, October 3 – 7 p.m.
Saturday, October 4 – 7 p.m.
Sunday, October 5 – 2 p.m.
Tickets – $7.50 each, available to non-Cove residents starting September 1 at the Caddyshack Mon & Fri 1-3 p.m. or Call Jo Dabrowski at 519-238-5156

Photos and story by Casey Lessard

Photo textures courtesy www.flickr.com/photos/ghostbones

Grand Bend has its share of babes, and if you ask the folks at Grand Cove, a lot of them live in the retirement community at the town’s north end. Babes of the Bend is the Cove’s latest musical theatre production written and directed by resident Doreen Newell.
“I’ve always been interested in light theatre and after doing the Fred and Ginger show last year, I thought it would be nice to do something that reflected the community this time,” Newell says. “It brings in the beach and the main street. It has a little bit of historical background, but it’s so farfetched now that there is no history left in it except that it is set in Grand Bend.”
Even still, Newell consulted local historian Dorothy Graff, who grew up in Exeter, where her father owned the canning plant.
“A whole pile of us used to come over to Grand Bend to the dance hall,” Graff says. “It was 5 or 10 cents a dance. Eric McIlroy had the dance hall when I was there. The thing that I remember the most was when I’d walk up the stairs it had a big sign that said ‘Gentiles Only.’
“The air force was based at Centralia and Clinton and that’s how I met my husband Jack, who was at Centralia graduating as a pilot. I was 15 and he was 20. He told me to come back when I grew up and I did. I went into nursing training at St. Joe’s in London.
We kept in contact with one another and when I graduated we got married.”
Graff’s local knowledge helped guide Newell’s sense for what was happening here in the time during and between the two world wars; Newell also brought her experience growing up in England’s Channel Islands.
“Although it was a sort of sad time in England and we were getting the Blitz and the bombs and that around us, we still had the Americans and the soldiers around us, coming in and dancing with the local girls at the salons,” Newell says. “I can remember how the Londoners used to come up to where I lived and they were always singing. They sang a lot of the songs that we have in the play. I’ve tried to get the real feel of Grand Bend, but not promote the sadness of war, and show there was a happy side to the war era.”
One of the challenges to recreating the era was finding music true to the time.
“You can’t buy any sheet music from that era to any large extent,” Newell says, “so we’ve had to rely very much on memory and old discs that we’ve got and that sort of thing, and Sylvia the music director has been absolutely fantastic. You can go to her and sing her a song and she’ll work with you and be able to get it on the keyboard.”
“It is a lot of work,” Sylvia Rees says, noting she does this type of recreation work through manual dictation, “but when you know what the end product is going to be, that spurs you on to do it.”
The music will be familiar to most audience members, even though some of it is more than 100 years old.
“It’s a very wide spectrum of music because it goes from the early part of the century up and past World War II,” Rees says. “We have the Victorian Era, which would have been called top music at the time; Betty Boop music from the early 1920s; Irving Berlin ballads; well-known dance numbers; music fro