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By Ms. G, August 5, 2022 8:03 pm

Mark S. Burnham in Douro, just outside Peterborough, is the smallest provincial park I’ve ever seen (not that I’ve seen that many). It has no staff, just paid parking.

We went on a very hot day and were met with a very cool forest. Unfortunately, the trail was blocked off at a certain point as they are still cleaning up from the wind storm in May. It feels pretentious to call it ‘derecho’ but I will.

At the entrance it says that the land was owned by the Burnham family who never cleared their land. Therefore, what you see is what the land might have looked like over a hundred years ago, probably more. The sign also says to look up as some trees have their ages on them from sometime before 1975. I’m guessing that’s when the land passed to the province? We only saw one such sign near the entrance to the trail. When I started taking pictures I didn’t notice that I had the camera set to “illustrated” mode. So here’s a kind of funny take on that tree. And then the actual sign.

Actually, the land came to be a provincial park in the 1950s. Here’s what its management plan says about its history: “This land was donated to the Province of Ontario in the1950’s, by the descendants of the Honourable Zaccheus Burnham, a judge from the Town of Cobourg, who originally acquired the land in the 1830’s. From the 1830’s to present day, the woodlot has not been substantially disturbed, except for the removal of fuelwood for the needs of the Burnham family.” (Source)

Even though the park is just off Highway 7 with quite a lot of passing traffic, including lots of trucks, I didn’t mind the sound: reminds me of walking in the Don Valley where you are usually not far from the DVP. It does not take away from the experience of nature, in my opinion.

There are a lot of trees down in this park, and a lot of signs down, too. So I don’t know what the signs said. The one sign still readable was at the start and it said to watch for woodpeckers. I didn’t see any but here’s some evidence that they’re present!

It’s a lovely small park, very accessible. I look forward to going back when the trails are cleared.

After visiting Mark S. Burnham we drove around in Peterborough, including on Ashburnham and Burnham. I must look into these Burnhams more. One funny thing: the locals apparently call the park Burnham Woods. That’s a nice little play on Birnam Wood in Macbeth. I don’t know if that’s intentional, or not.

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By Ms. G, August 31, 2021 4:48 pm

My sister-in-law Felicity and I went to the Van Gogh immersive at the Toronto Star printer building. Fantastic!

I absolutely love Van Gogh’s paintings. Seeing them deconstructed and highlighted at the same time using modern technology was fascinating and wonderful. We thought it was going to be a walk-through; instead, the audience stays still and the images project on the walls, moving and dancing to music almost.

While I thought the music was a bit overwrought, it was appropriate, generally following the flow of Van Gogh’s short life from Holland to France.

There are cafe scenes…

And agrarian scenes… with hillsides winding while cypress trees climb up the screen and clouds wander by..

And images from his famous paintings of irises and “Starry Night…”

We stayed for two loops of the show and were quite mesmerized by its animation of something old in a thoroughly modern way. To truly bring it to life.

The only bad thing was the usual exit from spectacular art to pedestrian commercialism as you move straight into the gift shop. That’s the same thing at museums these days too, sadly.

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By Ms. G, August 31, 2021 7:05 am

My aunt and uncle brought us beautiful sunflowers. Here’s the photo op:

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By Ms. G, July 12, 2021 9:45 am

Hopefully Ontario won’t screw things up and move too fast on re-opening. While I enjoy going out and into a few stores (as long as they are not crowded), I don’t want to take it for granted that Delta variant is out there and we are all still held hostage to it in a way.

So, my wishes are:

vaccination rates increase EVEN more

people get to see their family and friends (safely)

students read something NOT on a screen

the weather permits lots of outdoor gathering

everyone stays healthy and safe!!

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By Ms. G, August 25, 2019 2:10 pm

Val arranged an amazing bike trip for us again this summer. We just got back after six days of riding, starting in Cambridge and ending in St. Catharines.

Since the last day is freshest in my mind, I’ll start with it: the Welland Canal. Both Val and I (but more Val) love large industrial things. For instance, we enjoy going to the lift lock in Peterborough. Well, it’s mini compared to the gigantic locks in the Welland Canal which I have never seen. Val, he’s an old hat at it. We spent at least an hour, maybe more, watching a ship – the Algoma Equinox – enter into  Lock 7 at Thorold, rise as the lock filled, and exit on its way to Thunder Bay to pick up grain. It was awesome to see.

All photos by Val Dodge, with permission.

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By Ms. G, August 3, 2019 3:15 pm

Truly beautiful works of art, sculptures by Zimbabwean artists at Edwards Gardens. Each one is perfectly placed in just the right location in the extensive gardens. There are a few other photos in my July post. I’ve been twice now and would love to go back at dusk.

https://torontobotanicalgarden.ca/enjoy/special-events/zimsculpt/

This is not the first time I’ve seen Zimbabwean sculpture. Near our cottage is ZimArt: Rice Lake Gallery, another fantastic place to see outdoor art.

I love the variety of subjects: human, animal and geometric.

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By Ms. G, July 31, 2019 5:59 pm

A few pics from July.

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By Ms. G, July 20, 2019 7:51 pm

With more time to read, I’ve recently finished Ross King’s Mad Enchantment. It’s the story of Claude Monet and the painting of his water lilies. Obviously I’m a fan of Ross King having read five of his other art history books. I quite liked the style of this one but I can’t quite say the same for Monet. A person can love his art yet think he was a big whining old fart. At least in the later stage of his life, Monet was a disagreeable codger who got a lot of favours done for him during World War I. Otherwise, it’s an interesting portrait of Georges Clemenceau, a figure I knew little of.

I’m nearly done Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, a really intriguing book. To say that Temujin had a hard life is a gigantic understatement. But to say that he was smart is too. The author is fairly heavily biased toward the great khan, but he backs it up with a lot of details about how he unified the Mongols. Unfortunately not all of his children and grandchildren were so intellectually inclined. I’m just at the part now where Kublai Khan takes over China. It’s quite a different story than what we read in the textbooks. Where the truth lies, I’m not sure. I’ll have to research that more. One thing that has struck me is the religious openness of the Mongols – aside from their own form of spiritualism, there were also Mongol Christians, Buddhists and Muslims. In this book the Mongols are painted as early globalizers. Fascinating and timely.

I’m well into The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. However, I can’t seem to keep with it. I absolutely love the writing and am enamoured of the main character, Aminata; it’s just too sad. It’s rare for me to read fiction so I’m kind of daring myself to finish it despite the horrible subject matter.

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By Ms. G, August 5, 2018 11:02 am

I have been organizing my bookmarks on my laptop, which means I have been procrastinating: avoiding school work I need to get ready and blog writers I need to search out for the fall issue of Rapport.

I checked out a bunch of vegan blogs thinking they’d give me lots of ideas. They have, of course. I’m not culinarily creative so I rely on other people to catalyze my thought process. However, I find very few vegan recipes I can use “as is”. That’s because I have a list of things I can’t or won’t eat (in addition to the basic things vegans don’t eat). My poor mother!

• chocolate or cocoa
• nuts and seeds (except for peanuts and peanut butter)
• beans and lentils in large amounts
• tempeh
• nutritional yeast
• pre-made vegan mayo or butter
• fake cheese/vegan cheese
• pickles
• deep fried food
• fake bacon and veggie dogs
• any kind of “milk” (with the exception of vegan ice cream)
• most desserts (with the above-mentioned exception of vegan ice cream and sorbets/gelatoes)

Practically a staple in our house.

I hope you can see my problem. Yes, it is self-imposed due to stomach problems and personal dislikes (or super likes, as in the case of chocolate). But it’s my reality. Again, my poor mother!

I wondered what my title would be if I were to start a vegan blog. That’s how I came up with “The Vegan Who Can’t”. Sounds bad. Sounds bathroom-related.

Maybe this fixation on a vegan blog is just summer boredom. Or maybe it’s just to keep my mind occupied so I don’t think about all the bad things that have happened lately (the barn burning down, Danforth shootings, Bailey’s death).

Sometimes my fixations turn into real things; I did learn to play guitar in this obsessive way. And anyone who does macro photography knows it only works (not to say mine does) if you’re obsessive. Yesterday, I went out around the golden hour and took macro photos down by the shore of the lake. Only a few worked out despite the time it took to set up the tripod and get down on the ground to be at eye-level with the “greens”.

Tangled garden twirly is minuscule in real life.

Other times, fixations don’t work out for me. After going to one of those group painting sessions, I bought a small set of acrylic paints and some starter canvases. I tooled around for a few weeks and even created a little kit that would make it easy for me to set up and clean up. But nothing came of it, mostly owing to my very uncreative mind. I love colours but I don’t know what to do with them.

I have even been practicing taking food photos. Val definitely sees this as a fixation. I told him it won’t last once school starts; who wants to see photos of a frozen meal fresh out of the microwave?

Panzanella

Maybe I’m just temporarily challenged by the “if they can do it, I can do it” of looking at so many blogs. I already have a blog – why not do it? Maybe the fear is that it would just become one more project started and not finished. Probably the fear is that my life is just not that interesting. I’m not complaining: I have a great life for me.

At any rate, if I do decide to blog about my version of veganism, I’ll wait until I’m finished with Rapport. My history blog – as I call it – is taking up too much of my time during the school year so I am sadly but smartly (I think) quitting as editor as of mid-November.

For now, I will just go along with whatever happens. It is summer, after all.

At the lookout near our house after my 43 km ride day.