Fate has a habit of steering flute and saxophone player Jane Bunnett in unexpected directions. If tendinitis hadn’t forced a break from her intense piano practice regime, for instance, she might not have gone to San Francisco and met Charles Mingus’s pianist, Don Pullen, who would become her mentor, friend and musical collaborator. If she …
I’ve already mentioned how easy it was to provoke calls on my radio open-line show in Charlottetown in the 1970s, by inviting listeners to share either recipes or gardening tips. One desperate morning, I stumbled across a topic that lit up the switchboard for three days before I had to call a halt. I started …
Members of the Haines Junction Junior Canadian Rangers (JCR) attended the annual JCR National Marksmanship Championship in St. Catharines, Ontario, in early May.
When one walks along the rim of the autumn of one’s life, they can’t help but to look back to the yesterdays – the “good old days.” At the same time one questions if the “tomorrows” will also be filled with equal memories, when they too become the yesterdays. I suggest everyone should take time …
Two art shows at the Yukon Arts Centre Gallery explore the tension between the human and the natural world.
Before I was married, and my wife Lisa and I moved to the Yukon, my home was built on the northern borders of the Township of Oro-Medonte, in Central Ontario, where I just happened to be the deputy mayor. It is a land of rolling hills, valleys and rippling cold water streams, where many a …
Evolution is an amazing thing and for the beaver, it has taken millions of years. Once almost 8 feet long some thousans of years ago, now the beaver, even though it continues to grow all its life, it will be lucky if it reaches four feet in length and hardly more than 65 pounds. If …
Anyone who has attended a Kim Beggs concert, or listened to one of her CDs, knows that the subject of death often shows up in her lyrics. It certainly did on October 12, during the sixth of 41 stops on her current two-month marathon tour. Earlier that day, the Whitehorse singer-songwriter and her tour partner, …
My dog, who I called The Barron, had an all brown head and a brown patch on his shoulders, but otherwise, was all white and, shall we say, not really accepted by the rich and mighty of the bird dog organizations.
The 20-year-old Whitehorse All-City Band Junior and Senior Wind Ensembles have been honoured to receive their first invitation to compete at MusicFest Canada, a national music competition in Toronto next May.
Diary of a Big City Girl’s experiences in the land of the midnight sun. Adventures from summer of 2017 in the Yukon.
As family reunions go, the event I attended in Ontario’s Georgian Bay district on a recent weekend was a fairly small-scale affair. At its peak, a mere 24 people were in attendance. Officially, it wasn’t really a reunion, just a gathering in Canada’s quintessential cottage country to mark my oldest brother’s 80th birthday. Judging by …
Times have changed since 1933. Monopoly was invented, Joan Collins; Joan Rivers; and Willie Nelson were born. So was this columns author.
Did I just miss skipping and hopscotch season? Marbles and jacks? No matter. For me, this is, and always will be, bicycle season. I don’t test my mettle on the pedals very much these days, but I confess to having a lifelong passion for bicycles. It began on my ninth birthday, when I received a …
In 2015 my husband, Roger, and I visited Newfoundland; we rented a vehicle and hit the road. The breathtaking western shore drive took us through Gros Morne National Park and along the coast to L’Anse aux Meadows. A knitter for most of my life, I was struck at the knitting industry alive and thriving on …
Somebody once said a gardener is just a philosopher with dirty hands and an aching back. Well, maybe nobody actually said that until I just did, but I believe it to be so. Of all life’s pursuits, few can match gardening when it comes to bringing body and soul together. Why? Because it’s hard to stay mad …
When Michael Heney was just 14, he ran away from the family farm in the Ottawa Valley to work for an uncle who was building a portion of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) near Georgian Bay. His father quickly dragged him home to finish his education, but four years later he was off again, determined …
I’m from Ontario, but boy let me tell you I would much rather be out here. Where I come from the only outdoor activities families engage in are taking the bus, and burying their heads in technology. You know that the next generation is going to be smarter than you when you’re watching a baby …
I suffer jokes and insults & many others suffer the same fate, but we persevere. We understand that we are different. We are from Ontario.
The child’s heart that beats in my aging breast is breaking. They’re shutting down the circus. After 146 years (exactly twice my life span so far), the iconic Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is turning off the lights, packing up the Big Top and sending home the clowns. In May, the roar of …
Full disclosure: Steve Maddock and I have a few things in common. We’re both PKs (preacher’s kids) who grew up in southern Ontario adding our piping, angelic treble voices to the choirs in our fathers’ churches. Point of departure: I struggled through the guy-hood change of voice as a scholarship student of an Ursuline nun, …
Do ghosts exist? For some they do. The main character in Marcelle Dubé´s novel, Shelter, moves into a haunted house in a small town in Ontario. Dubé started the story as a gothic novel and in the end it became a ghost story. Marcelle Dubé is well known in the Yukon and she usually publishes …
From the moment that Jacquelyn van Kampen stepped off the plane in Whitehorse, she felt that she had arrived in a magical place. Growing up in southern Ontario, she thought of the Yukon as a cold and dark place that she would likely never visit. But that was before she saw an application form for …
As a Conservation Officer in Ontario in the late 1950s through the 1960s, I patrolled the St. Lawrence River to the Quebec border. I came upon a very strange group of people between five and 90 years old. They were in search of a specific species whose ancestors date back 100 millions years ago and …
I bought a nectarine in Juneau a couple of weeks ago. It looked large and rosy and promising. The flesh was firm and yet it gave slightly under the pressure of my fingertips and I thought, “Wow, a real nectarine.” But when I cut into the fruit, the flesh was mealy and dry, lacking even …
97 Yukoners aged 55 to 91 participated in the 2016 Canada 55+ Games in Brampton, Ontario from Aug.16 to 19.
The Teslin Arena is going to be rocking on June 25. Canadian country acts Aaron Pritchett, Cory Marquardt and Roger Gabriel are coming to town to put on a country music show. It benefit the Teslin Minor Hockey Association and the Teslin Recreation Society. About 450 people live in Teslin. This is the biggest event …
In Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th century collection of novellas called The Decameron, seven young women and three young men entertain each other with stories for 10 days inside a secluded villa near Florence as they tried to escape the Black Death. More than 650 years later, Toronto playwright and multidisciplinary theatre maker Jordan Tannahill found himself …
When Chris Quinn exchanges his banjo for a guitar, and Chris Coole makes the opposite switch, that’s the signal the Foggy Hogtown Boys are about to move from bluegrass to oldtime Appalachian music. Apart from that, and some “subtle nuances” in how mandolin player Andrew Collins approaches the rhythm, you may not notice much of …
Scott Price has come home to Whitehorse from a year away in Guelph, Ontario. His new sculpture show, called Separate Realities, emerged from the process of inhabiting these two places. Separate Realities is on exhibit until the end of April at the Northern Front Studio, in Waterfront Station. It includes wall pieces and sculptures. The …
Separate Realities come together at Northern Front Studio Read More »
Alex Goodman doesn’t really cross borders so much as straddle them. Although the Toronto-raised guitarist and composer has made his home in New York City for the past three-and-a-half years, he seems to keep one foot planted in the musical soil of his homeland. “I think of Toronto as a very vibrant music scene. The …
It will not surprise many that this little planet called Earth is covered by seventy percent water. What may surprise many is that the water on this planet holds close to an estimated 17,000 different species of fish. Fish have been found in waters in altitudes of 15,000 feet and in waters 35,000 feet in …
If you’ve got a yen to hear some some good old-fashioned country fiddle playing, you won’t want to miss April Verch. Verch, along with bandmates Cody Walters (banjo and electric bass) and Alex Rubin (guitar and mandolin) will be stomping, singing, fiddling and strumming their way into Whitehorse Friday, March 4th. A self-described “Ottawa-Valley Girl,” …
I will try anything once; twice if the first time doesn’t kill me. Which is fortunate, because that’s how many times I had been skiing prior to my lesson at the Mount Sima Ski School: exactly twice. I was 17 and had gone on a “romantic ski date” with my then-boyfriend at the Batawa Ski …
Donnell Leahy remembers exactly how he felt when he made his stage debut as a fiddler at the age of four. “Mom and Dad had a band when we were growing up as kids. They played locally at round dances and square dances and weddings and things,” he says. “One night they took me up …
Trees grow differently on mountain pass. It’s harder to grow. Compare to the southern trees, mountain trees are facing a disadvantage.
Back in the early 1960s, I spent a couple of years banding waterfowl in one of the newly-created marshes of the hydro project in Lake St. Lawrence, just west of Cornwall, Ontario. This is when I really got the opportunity to know the many features of waterfowl (duck, geese and swans). The flooding of the …
After months of slowly working on my camper, I pull an all-nighter on the last day of April, frantically paring my possessions down to what can fit inside my new miniscule home. Innumerable donated garbage bags later, my bedroom is stripped to its bones and inside my camper sits a very pleasing little pile of …
Perogies have always been a part of my life. Every meal that includes homemade perogies is a special occasion. Learning the best way to make them has been a lifelong process. I am the child of first generation Canadians. My mother’s family emigrated from Finland; my father’s from the Ukraine and Poland. My father, who …
I ran away from Toronto like a rabbit from a wolf. Moving to the country’s largest city from my smaller Ontario hometown had been like poking my head above ground and entering the wide and open field. It only took two years of exposure and uncertainty before I gathered my courage to bolt – across …
We are back from an astronomical holiday and raring to go. It is great to be back in such dark Yukon skies with no light pollution. Upon arriving home and taking in the Yukon Night Skies, it is reassuring to see all of the familiar constellations like Cygnus, Lyra, Cassiopeia and Pegasus. Jupiter and her …
Has my gast ever been flabbered! Trolling through Randy Quaid’s IMDB (Internet Movie Database) listing, I was shocked to discover that someone already had the incredible foresight to green light “Christmas Vacation 2.” And I had had high hopes we were going to make that sequel here in Canada. For those of you who have …
Friday was day two at Starfest, Canada’s most amazing astronomical gathering [Aug. 12-15, 2010], and we were not due to be on stage till 7 p.m. We’d only got back to the hotel room around 4 a.m. that morning, and were at the Starfest observing site at 10 a.m. So what do you do at …
The night sky has all but disappeared leaving local amateur astronomers with only solar and lunar observing. There are many perks to solar observing using only solar safety approved filters and gear. First of all, the sun makes for an easy target to find, and second, it is very easy on the budget. The best …
When I travelled to Toronto for work in March, my first impression was how I desperately needed new shoes and maybe a decent city coat not covered in lint and dust. My second impression of Toronto was that of a beer wasteland. Beer selection is controlled by the good people of the Ontario Government. You …
Summertime is here, and it is going to be a rip-snorting good time, astronomically speaking, that is. Let’s get started with holidays and star parties. If you heading out of the territories for the summer, take a few minutes before you leave, and check out the star parties in a Sky News Magazineor on the …
Starfest 2010, Summer Star Parties and The Solar Express Read More »
