The GTA is being hit by “April showers” from the NORTH POLE…and it is crippling us. The northerners in Ontario are laughing at us…and talking about ‘Spaghetti suppers!’
Spaghetti Supper
At the Legion Branch #116 Nakina. Sat April 21st starting at 5:30 PM! * Voted The ‘Best Spaghetti Sauce’ in the vast municipality of Greenstone by an “F/N” panel!! Also includes salads, rolls and desserts galore. Adults (still) Only $12 Children Under 12 Only $6 Kids 4 and Under Eat Free! Everyone Welcome!!! *Take out available…Bring your own containers. See you there!!
Riding The Buses
There is virtually nothing left to say about the Humboldt (Sask) Broncos Jr ‘A’ Hockey Team that hasn’t already been said dozens, if not hundreds of tymes, after their horrific crash enroute to an SJHL playoff game. It’s still a regular conversation topic around Nakina, and we have joined in the nation-wide tribute to the Broncos by setting a hockey stick in the snowbank down the front as well as displaying/wearing an old hockey sweater I had hanging in the closet. Then, in the ‘small world isn’t it?’ department, I spoke with a local who is apparently a distant cousin of the kid who suffered a broken back and will never walk again. Well, that young man has already said he is going to try out for the Canadian Men’s ‘Sled Hockey’ Team. But I keep on coming back to ‘riding the buses’, which Rotzy did plenty of a long tyme ago….not as a hockey player, but with football teams as a player and a coach. Our high school in Brantford would make hour-long trips to Guelph, Galt and Kitchener/Waterloo in ‘school’ buses and Btfd ‘city’ buses. Several years later as a Coach in the ORFU and the CJFL, the trips were MUCH longer, to ALL major centres between Windsor and Montreal….in what we called ‘highway coaches’, like the one the Broncos were in. I can still recall those trips vividly….at the tyme I had some (rather mild) ‘claustrophobia issues’ and I HAD to sit front row on the right side, next to the driver while another Coach took the window seat. The ride home wasn’t so ‘critical’ as there was usually some ‘brown pops’ available. Fortunately, in ALL of those hundreds and thousands of miles covered over 7 or 8 years…always different drivers and three different companies….I don’t recall so much as even a little ‘fender bender’. Meanwhile, a small prairie town, a province, and indeed, this entire country, try to carry on. It’s gonna be a LONG road…altho from what yours truly has seen/heard, the word ‘quit’ is not in the Humboldt Broncos vocabulary!
Diploma Update
My ongoing efforts to get my Grade 12 Diploma got a shot in the arm last week when my marks/credits from Pauline Johnson CVS landed at the Post Office. Well, not only the marks, averages, etcetera but my Grade 9 student picture! which was taken in Sept 1959. I’ve been showing it around to a few ‘select’ Nakinaites, whilst getting some good-natured ribbing on it. A 14 yr old kid with a flat-top brushcut, plaid shirt and not even a sign of ‘peach fuzz’ on my face! Anyway, now I gotta mail it down to Contact North and see where we go from there. Stay tuned.
Furthermore….
in addition to the above, and to try to perhaps become a ‘little more intellectual’ than I presently am….and hopefully, more ‘befitting a Grade 12 graduate’….I have taken to listening to CBC Radio in the early afternoons. You know, those ‘interview shows’ where very learn-ed reporters chat it up with even more learn-ed professors, writers, doctors, explorers, scientists….many/most of whom speak with heavy accents…on topics I know little or nothing about. But you know, I believe I’m making some serious headway. I was listening in one day two weeks back to a guy talking from Venezuela, and following up on the writings of some long-dead author from there….little of it makes ANY sense to Rotzy. However, undaunted, I tuned in again to the roughly the same tyme frame last week. And Ho-Lee Cow….it was like a light bulb came on in my head….and I said (to myself)….”Jeez Toad….you’re starting to get onto this ‘learn-ed’ stuff’…..you’re getting smarter, just like those CBC folks! Way to go”! Well, about a minute or two later I suddenly realized the show I was listening to, was a replay of the show from a week earlier. In truth, I have found that most of CBC’s programming is replays. Hey, I didn’t REALLY want to be an intellect anyway!
”Say It’s Not So!”(*see below)….
….I said….or something like that….after Miz. Jo read a news item to me the other day that I found very upsetting. So….SO….I pulled it up myself on my ASUS*tm PC, and there it was. Paul Bernardo is applying for parole! He was sentenced to ‘Life’ in 1995, with (the standard) no parole for 25 years….for what were/are the most heinous crimes in Canada’s history! Well, I dd some further checking and he is indeed allowed to apply for parole three years before it comes up, so sometyme later this year I expect he will proceed. And apparently, he has let it be known he wants to be in the GTA. Hey, why not, eh? Rotzy has a problem with this whole thing…firstly, that he is still alive…. and secondly that he would even be considered for parole. Ever! Why do I have this odd feeling that somebody….like our P/M….will say ”Mr Bernardo has paid his debt to society….justice has been served….therefore he is to be released”. Please say it isn’t so!!(*see above)
*Thought Of The Day…
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.
“From Nakina”….until next tyme.
