h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

That sounds far enough up to see Gordon Brown's shoes.....

(If you lived here I would have referred to Stevie's loafers..)

"Having spent a year in Hamilton one week" [clzoomer]



It can't be totally without redeeming features. There's a lady in Hamilton from whom I've bought a lot of stuff on eBay.

Growing up, we always referred to Owen Sound as some variation on the butt hole of the elephant. If you turn a map of southern Ontario so that West is at the top, you may be able to discerne the origin of the idea: http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=owen+sound&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&hl=en&hq=&hnear=Owen+Sound,+Grey+County,+Ontario&ll=43.568452,-80.90332&spn=5.818636,11.195068&z=7

It's very juvenile, really.

Here's a followup story about one of the local soldiers killed in Afghanistan the just before Christmas: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2010/01/04/edmonton-students-remember-george-miok.html

'He always wanted us to be peaceful and not to fight with anybody'

>>.. It's very juvenile, really. <<

It`s the place I called home from age 11 months to six years.

It was the source of all my primary childhood discoveries - bee stings, almost drowning, barb wire scarring, playing with matches, trying to figger out why little girls didn`t have penises, running away from home, x-ray machines in shoe stores, movie theatres, how the moon seems to follow you when you walk down the street, Halloween masks, what happens to cats when cars back over them, why puppies from the `pound` often die of distemper as soon as you get them home...

Oh I could go on and on.
Suffice to say that when I was in my early 20s and working for a living, I made a conscious decision to return to Owen Sound to re-discover my youth and the sources of my persona. I got a job as a bartender (no experience before or since) in the very first and only legal drinking establishment to open there in more than half a century.

Owen Sound was indeed (and almost officially) called the Hell Hole of the Great Lakes, because the port was a halfway point in the inland waterways. Ocean going ships came up from the St Lawrence and the Great Lakes fleets all stopped there too, especially the grain ships.

In terms of drunkeness, fighting and sailor on sailor action it was the equal of any of the more famous seaports around the world. And one of the last of the North American seaports to be cleaned up by authorities in the Temperance movement days between the 1880s and American Prohibition era of the 1920s.

It was just about a hundred years ago that an army of Ontario Provincial Police were sent in to close it all down. This was a large and significant military style opertion on a par with putting down the Riel rebellion. It was like a scene from `The Untouchables` but years ahead of Chicago.

The town stayed dry for more than 60 years.
For six decades nothing happened there except Tom Thomson.
And my youth.

Here`s the Owen Sound Sun, June 13, 1917
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/thomson/tragedy/search/4974en.html

peace
jwf

Canoe tell us what happened next? was he ever found?

His body was found shortly after. His death was a truly tragic loss for Canadian art, although the Group of Seven certainly built something great on what Thomson had begun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Thomson

His canoe was hung in the rafters (exposed interior roof beams) of the Owen Sound public library when I was young.

I never understood why it was there or even who he was when I was a child, but it was one of those mysteries that haunt childhood imaginations.

When I 'went back' in my 20s it was gone. And none of the librarians I spoke to could remember it ever having been there. Another kind of mystery altogether.


jwf

He was a landscape painter, so was he maybe trying to switch to painting wetlands? Or was canoeing something that pretty much everyone did in that time and place?

canoeing is something that pretty much everybody still does in that place. I spent pretty much all of five summers in a canoe when I was a kid in Sudbury (that canoe is hanging from the rafters in my brother's garage). Nowadays I usually only get into a canoe for about an hour a year.

From whence we get the good old Canadian saying *He wants it in the worst way- which of course is standing up in a canoe*

I'll get my coat, don't get up....

I like that saying.

I remember some canoe trips with my family when I was younger.

Hands up those who have memories of encountering the Voyageurs in the flesh in 1967: http://archives.cbc.ca/sports/exploits/clips/7716/&ref=spe




Now that's extreme canoeing!

Finally, they have been given the opportunity to see the light:

http://www.tpoutine.com/

http://www.tpoutine.com/menu/


Of course, a Canadian is behind it. . .

'Pimp Your Fries'

With '09 fading in the rearview, Mr. Dyer(as do most writers)has a wrap-up/retrospective...& yes I have been tardy in posting it, but -

http://www.vueweekly.com/article.php?id=13951

I'm tired of retrospectives about 2009. That year is best forgotten, or at the very least buried in at least 16 feet of manure.

That bad Paul?

Very very bad. Actually, I could argue that there was *already* a layer of manure on 2009 before it was over.