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Patrick's Blog
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Please Note:
I am no longer writing in the Vision Newspaper, due to their current policy of not carrying
non-employee material... money seems to be the bottom line. That happens when a newspaper is run by business people
and not journalists. I hope to get back at the same information through this Web page. In the meantime if you have
any story ideas you can e-mail them to me at:  or leave your own comments
on our Message Centre. Thanks
for your patience and support. - Patrick Meikle, Editor.
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Holiday Greetings from me to you
Remembering Rasputin's
Motorists Caught Using Cellphone
Email -vs- E-mail! Which is it? (and website -vs- web site)
Cairine Wilson - Canada's first female senator
lived in Rockland
The Moscow airport bombing - bringing it home
Hats off to tradition
City of Clarence-Rockland deserves better than gutter press
Dullard drivers irritate
Sunday family mass - Short Service, Short Sermon!
SOLO mobile actually works for me
My very first column is still up on the Internet! |
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 Holiday
greetings from me to you
Hi all,
Coming up to the end of another year, I never marked the passing of time with a New Year's Eve, but rather with
Christmas. Family was always most important to me and if I had a cho ice, whenever I could I would always choose Christmas over New
Years to take my holiday time...
The tradition carried on throughout my life and continues to this day... so when Christmas approaches and it seems
to come faster ever year, I
realize that time is passing by more quickly as I get older.
With grown children and no spouse, the holiday has lost a lot of its spark, but it is still a special time and
I keep the spirit alive through the memories I hold dear.
So it is that spirit that I wish you and the people that you hold most dear the very best of the holiday season,
and especially a very Merry Christmas.
(I would like to share this virtual Christmas card with all of you. Click here.)
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Remembering Rasputin's
on Bronson Avenue
(December 21, 2011) How many remember Rasputin's on Bronson Avenue? It was a great venue
for music, especially of the Folk kind.
It wasn't that long ago. Dean Verger was the owner and besides owning Rasputin's, he was also a dog behavioural
person. I met him years ago when I was working for Menagerie Magazine, a magazine for "pets and their people".
Dean used to send us his weekly newsletter which we passed on to WD-List members, then on July 6, 2008, fire gutted the
building and Rasputin's was no more. READ: Arson
to blame for $300,000 Rasputin's fire.
The café, which had been an Ottawa folk landmark for more than 25 years,
had only 40 seats and a scattering of small tables ringing a tiny stage. Well-known musicians who have played there
include Loreena McKennitt, Garnet Rogers and Bob Snider.
Dean, along with his mother Helen Verger, founded Rasputin’s Folk Café on Bronson Avenue
in August 1981. Sadly, the café closed three years ago following the fire.
Now the restaurant lives on through the "Spirit of Rasputin's" (Welcome to the Spirit
of Rasputin’s Arts Society website, the home for folk music in Ottawa. We organize over 130 events each year. ) and we are still on their
list for upcoming activities.
The Citizen recently published an article, "Spirit of Rasputin's lives on" outling
some of the activities which are regularly held at the Westboro Masonic Lodge... "Country-folk newcomer Amanda
Bon, blues veteran Gerry Griffin, witty Brit Julie Element and the folk-roots group Ottawa Valley Special were
all part of an open-stage concert hosted by the Spirit of Rasputin's folk-music organization at the Westboro Masonic
Hall on Saturday." Read more...
In October 2011, the Spirit of Rasputin’s Arts Society inducted Dean Verger as its first honorary
Lifetime Member. Read about it here along with a little history of Rasputin's... Read more... (Click on his picture
to enlarge...)
(Share the memories if you can, send us an email: )
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Motorists caught
using cellphones
(Let's ban them at council meetings too!)
(Rockland, March 15, 2010) There have been several references in the news these past
weeks of motorists using cell phones and other hand-held devices while driving. In spite of the fact that Ontario
introduced a law to ban such use over one year ago, and the fact that several serious accidents have been attributed
to driver distraction, many motorists ignore the law, and when they get caught they usually say, "well, I
didn't know."
No excuse! It is a common law principle that Ignorantia juris non excusat ( "Ignorance of the law is no excuse"), period!
Ontario's law prohibiting the use of hand-held devices while behind the wheel has been in place since October,
2009, with enforcement beginning in February, 2010.
A story in today's CFRA online news states: Motorists Caught Using Cellphones.
 As part of the Selective Traffic Enforcement Program, officers issued 174 tickets in February to motorists
using a hand-held communication device while driving.
In other related incidents, a number of bus operators (Toronto and Ottawa) have been caught on cameras, using their
cellphones or texting messages while driving. And in one high profile story, Alain Mercier, the head of OC Transpo,
was caught using his cellphone while driving a company car.
Ironically, the pictures and videos that have captured these infractions have been taken on personal cellphones!
One local OPP officer, speaking to the Canaan Connexion, said that catching the offenders is very difficult. "I
see all kinds of cellphone users when I am in my own car, driving around town, but when I am driving in the police
car, they can see me coming before I can spot them."
Cellphones going off at meetings and events
In related stories, the sound of cellphones going off during meetings and some public events is not only annoying,
but IMHO shows ignorance and a lack of respect.
Having attended the last few city council meetings in Clarence-Rockland, there has hardly been one meeting where
someone's cell phone has not rung, to the point of distracting both the councillors and the attending citizens.
Come on people... turn them off before you enter a meeeting room. If you must know when there is an incoming call,
put your device on vibrate... most of them have this option.
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"Email -vs- e-mail" and "web
site -vs- website"
The dawning of the Internet has brought on many changes in the way we write, including several short
cuts and acronyms such as "IMHO", "LOL", BTW, etc. Text messaging has even extended the brevity
to the point that old farts like me (I'm apparently not that old according to some of my 80+yer-old friends and
colleagues) when reading the younger generation's phone messages, almost need a translator as if we were learning
a second language... instead of ESL, it should be TSL.
One of the constant conundrums that I have is "Should I use 'email' or 'e-mail'?"
There apparently is no simple answer... like the song says (You say eether, I say eyether; you say neether, I say
neyether...) BTW, I personally like Ella Fitzgerald
and Louis Armstrong's rendition.
Email -vs- e-mail:
 
1.
In an article from The Fiction Desk blog, "Spelling: email vs. e-mail":
You might say, ‘nobody knows how to spell e-mail,’ but you’d be wrong. Or would you?
The issue of email vs. e-mail clearly raises blood pressures across the world. At the time of writing, the spelling
question is right at the top of the Wikipedia article on e-mail. Meanwhile, a group calling itself the Email Experience Council has declared the official term to be email. They’ve even got a petition. (You can read the rest yourself, here).
The article concludes by saying "At least there’s one thing that everybody is agreed on:
whether it’s e-mail or email, it isn’t capitalised. Unless it’s at the beginning of a sentence, obviously.
2.
An another article on the Motivated Grammar site, they write: "Stupid grammar
rules I: Email vs. e-mail":
There’s a big debate amongst prescriptivists as to whether one should write the term for electronic
mail with or without a hyphen — i.e., e-mail or email. That’s a really dumb debate. Why on earth should it matter?
3.
WebProNews has yet another take on the subject: "E-mail" vs. "Email"
What is the correct form? Is "e-mail" for stodgy pedants and "email" for
hip digerati? The bottom line? There is no consensus
So I think I will use "email"
Web site -vs- e-website:
Another spelling I have had problems with was "web
site" -vs- "website". However now that AP has official changed "web site" to "website",
I'll go with the latter. (SEE: AP Stylebook Finally Changes “Web site” to “website”)
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The
Writers' Deadline!!
is a locally based website for
writers of all genres... authors,
poets, freelancers, journalists
and people who would like to be.
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If you have an interest
in writing, be it mystery,
poetry, family history,
whatever, you may want to visit
The Writers'
Deadline!!
Join their free mailing list to see.
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Cairine Wilson - Canada's first female
senator lived in Rockland
(Rockland - Friday, February 4, 2011) It was serendipity. I don't always check the "Today In Canadian History" link on our "News"
page, but today I did, and I came across this item:
1885
And in Today's Canadian Birthdays...
Cairine Ray Wilson 1885-1962
Canada's first woman senator, was born on this day in 1885 at Montreal Quebec, the daughter of Senator Robert Mackay
and Jane Baptist; dies in Ottawa March 3, 1962. Wilson was appointed in 1930 by Mackenzie King. She was President
of the National Federation of Liberal Women 1938-48, the League of Nations Society 1938-42, and was Canada's first
delegate to the United Nations in 1949. |
I have been living in the area for over 18 years, and I learned some years ago that Cairine Wilson
evidently lived in what is now known as Cumberland
Village, in the old stone house on the main drag, Old Montreal Road. (Research showed
that this was incorrect.)
To find out how I learned that Wilson actually lived in Rockland, click here.
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The Moscow airport bombing - Bringing
it Home
(Tuesday, January 25, 2010) Far away events like the awful bombing at the Moscow airport often time don't get a second glance as we become
 inured to violence... names and bodies become a lost statistic in our daily lives.
In another field of interest, I am very much involved with the local (Ottawa) writing community, through a website and an electronic mailing list for writers, that I maintain: http://www.writersdeadline.ca/.
When scanning through one of my daily reads (the "Recent deaths" column on Wikipedia), I came across this item:
"Anna Yablonskaya, 29, Ukrainian playwright, bombing."
Doesn't say anything, but the word Playwright, then bombing prompted me to look at her Wikipedia narrative:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Yablonskaya
"Anna Yablonskaya (July 20, 1981(1981-07-20) – January 24, 2011(2011-01-24)) was born Anna
Grigorievna Mashutina (Russian) in Odessa USSR (now Ukraine). She was a Russian-language playwright and poet, and
one of the victims of 2011 Domodedovo International Airport bombing."
Brings it closer to home, doesn't it?!
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Hats off to tradition
 Is
it just me, or is it Rockland? Where do men get off wearing their headgear in restaurants, City Council chambers
and church... yes, church! More specifically it's caps... the good-old-boy caps, the wannabe-rapper-put-on-backwards
caps, and in the winter, toques.
Taking one's hat off shows a sign of respect and good breeding. Back in the days (click on the picture) when men
 always
wore hats (I come from that era, so maybe it is me!), they took
them off when entering a home, a church, a public building, etc. They even tipped their hat as a sign of respect
when meeting a woman or a person in a position of authority or leadership (ie. priest, mayor, senior, judge, etc.).
If you were a member of the Legion, the RCMP, or the Armed Forces, and you wore your hat into a mess, bar, or dining
room, you would be ridiculed with shouts of protest, loud clapping, even stamping of feet. You ought to hear that
in a dining hall with some 300 or more men in boots!
So back to Rockland and men wearing their, mostly caps. Must be a sign of the times. Restaurants? O.K. times have
changed, but City Council meetings? Church?! Where is the respect?
I wonder if they wear their hats in the local Legion? I don't think so!
Other references:
In the Western culture derived from Christian tradition, removing one's headgear is a sign of respect (ref.)
Why is it that Women wear hats in Church but men take theirs off? More...
Now if you feel strongly about it one way or the other, you can join in on a blog on this very subject... "Wearing hats in Church".
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City of Clarence-Rockland deserves better
than gutter press
(Friday, November 5, 2010) I was pleased to see that the City of Clarence-Rockland received an
award this week. It was for Workplace Health. The City does not get much recognition from Rockland's only
real newspaper, and has been dumped on for a long time by an opinion rag that started over a year ago. The City,
council and some employees have been constantly and consistently under attack by the rag. I believe that criticism
is good when it is constructive, but to provide a negative slant, month after month, without some objectivity is
simply bad journalism. In fact calling it journalism is a misnomer. It's more like "gutter press"*
And on that I am "Standing Pat".
Definition:
*gutter press - press that engages
in sensational journalism (especially concerning the private lives of public figures)
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Dullard drivers irritate
Funny, there doesn't always seem to be a happy medium when I visit downtown Rockland. I either seem to meet the
nicest people and have positive encounters, or I seem to run into some real slugs! The latter seem to be mostly
drivers. Examples:
1. Driving north on St. Joseph Street which runs
along the east side of the LCBO building, I was about to turn left into the LCBO-Giant Tiger lot, when I spotted
a pedestrian who was walking north on the sidewalk and about to cross the driveway that I was entering. When I
stopped to let him continue, young driver with a young passenger, both wearing crooked baseball caps, windows down
and music playing, came up behind my vehicle, pulled out and turned left into the parking lot, cutting off both
the pedestrian and myself. As soon as I was able to park, I walked up to the young dolt, and told him what I had
seen, and only wished I was one of the local "men in blue" so I could write him a ticket. I didn't have
my camera on me at the time.... too bad!
2. Next day, driving west on Laurier Street, I slowed
down and turned my right signal on to warn drivers as I was about to park my vehicle in front of the Compufix store. I stopped in
order to parallel park, but as I started to back into the parking spot, a woman who had been following me, honked
her horn, evidently to warn me that I was about to hit her vehicle. She was within a few feet of my car. When I
turned around, I observed that this (expletive deletive) witch was talking on the phone, cigarette in one hand and
a kid in the back seat. I yelled at her to get off the phone, but she was totally oblivious to my voice. Even the
driver behind her gestured that she was a little crazy. As soon as I was out of her way, she gunned it, still talking,
still smoking and still with a child in the car. Doesn't she know that talking on the phone while driving is now banned, as is
smoking with a child in the car? Obviously not. Again, no camera! |
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SSSS!
What does SSSS stand for you ask? It means "short service, short sermon!" Ste.
Trinité Roman Catholic Church in Rockland offers a Sunday service (a family mass) at 4:00 p.m. It may be
a convenient time for late risers or those who cannot make it on Saturday evenings. Best of all the service is
short and so is the sermon. Father Jean-François Morin is the priest and he is very dynamic, catering to
the families and children who are present. The background music is inspiring, perfect for mediation, and Father
J-F has a pretty good singing voice too.
I like the motto on their bulletin: "Un phare au milieu de sa communauté depuis...
1889". ( A lighthouse in the middle of the community since 1889.) For more information,
click here.
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SOLO Cell Phone Service with three month Bell Sympatico
trial
(I recently signed on with Solo cell phone service (Solo is owned by Bell), through Wireless Wave in Place d'Orléans
and I am now actually able to send and receive calls in and around Rockland and my home area, for the first time
in years! The package also came with a free three-month trial of Bell sympatico Internet service. Read on...)
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Click here for previous blogs
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| First Column - My very first Canaan
Connexion column is still on the Internet. Click here to read it. |
( Patrick Meikle is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Blue Jay and operates
the Canaan Connexion Web site. If you have an opinion or comment, he can be reached at: . )
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The Canaan Connexion is looking for writers
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Would you like to become a "Country Correspondent", contribute
a column, voice an opinion, share information?
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