A Long Back Cast

Fox with a big one. Wolfie is impressed!   Today is June 21st, the longest day of the year and the so-called beginning of summer, although the local weather sure doesn't feel like summer. It's a great paradox because just as summer is officially here, the days will begin shortening on the slow march toward December 21, the winter solstice.  For me, I mark the beginning of summer with the opening of the bass fishing season which is the last weekend of June.  The post-spawn bass are ravenous and the angling results are usually good early in the season -- sometimes even spectacular right off the dock, as my grandsons discovered last year.  Most of my bass fishing over the years has been at the family cottage. Our daughter and her husband bought the place on Black Lake from my parents about 15 years ago. They have renovated it over the years from a simple summer-only cottage into a four-season lake house that can accommodate our extended family. It is a beautiful propert...

                                                       Iconic Canadian R&D Institution on Death's Door The Shirleys Bay Campus The large building in the centre is the CSA's David Florida      Laboratory, recently closed. This facility performed pre-flight testing on most of Canada's satellites before space launch. While shopping recently I bumped into Lynell Wight, a former work colleague at the Communications Research Centre (CRC) who always has the scoop, and she asked me if I had heard the latest news. Now retired, she spent her whole career working in senior administrative positions including for the Director General (before there was a president), and for several of the research vice presidents. What she told me was shocking, but not unpredictable. Our old employer is in the process of axing another 100 positions and th...

A mirror image of Thunder mountain and the clouds above it reflected in the evening light on Stewart Lake, Yukon Two summers ago I took a trip back to the Yukon to visit my Whitehorse friends John Firth and his wife Dawn, and to fly in to our much beloved Stewart Lake, a place we have been returning to from time-to-time over four decades. On this visit to the lake, John and I were joined by my brother-in-law Ted Vandenberg from London and my life-long Ottawa friend Alan Clapp. Our five-day Stewart Lake adventure is captured in a retrospective feature that I wrote for Outdoor Canada Magazine. The article is published in the May/June edition which hit the news stands this week. Shoppers Drug Mart carries it, so that's where I picked up my copy. I'll have to wait for my subscription copy which I guess is coming by Canada Post's slow dogsled service. The digital edition may at some point put the Stewart Lake feature online. The photos below are a sample of some of the sights an...

  From Lowly Dish Washer to Swabbing the Deck in the Navy – all in six Months Budding fisherman  At  the age of 18, like most youth I was rudderless. With a lifetime ahead of me, I hadn't a clue what I wanted to do, other than fish, and there was no way I was going to make a living doing that full-time.  After I obtained my driver’s license, Mom hinted, on more than one occasion that I should get a part-time job if I wanted to keep driving the family car. That was enough incentive to get me off the couch and out the door to find a job. On a frigid week-night in January, 1976 I told Mom I was going to the Bayshore Shopping Centre to search for work. My first stop was at Le Quickie, a lunch counter-style restaurant that catered to shoppers at the normally busy mall in west-end Ottawa. Having no employment history, I knew the barrier to entry for a dish washer would be very low. The mall was quiet and the restaurant near empty. I spied the one waitress on shift that ev...

John Firth, with Ted Vandenberg at Stewart L. In 1980 when my wife and I moved to the Yukon from Ontario , one of the first people we met was John Firth . He was the property manager for the apartment building where we lived in Whitehorse . John was an approachable guy who collected our monthly rent, plus he was the in-resident fixer for any problems with our basement flat. A one-bedroom apartment in Whitehorse rented for about $300 a month in those days, and our brand new unit was $320, if my memory serves me correctly. We soon became close friends, a friendship that has endured 46 years; this despite the fact we departed Whitehorse in 1989.  By virtue of his position on various national level associations over the decades, John has been a regular visitor to Ottawa. He and his lovely wife Dawn attended both our daughters' weddings, and over the years we have returned to the territory at various times to visit them and enjoy the Yukon outdoors together. During the early years in W...

Back-sliding towards winter                                          First Chipmunk of the year We had a five-day run of tantalising spring weather. The snow had almost melted away as the mercury hit a near-record high of 15 Celsius on Saturday. The last vestiges of the white stuff I shovelled off our back deck on Tuesday – just in time for winter’s icy return Wednesday night. Except for a few Juncos , the birds vanished, as new food sources were exposed by the melted snow. Chippy made a brief appearance to browse on the few seeds remaining on the ground and Frenetic Freddy, the red squirrel , made his rounds of the feeder participating in the clean up. Heavy freezing rain coated the trees and made the roads slick with ice, resulting in school cancellations and traffic chaos for anyone who had to drive on city streets. Early this morning, as the temperature continued to drop, a fre...

Junco We live one street away from the National Capital Greenbelt and during the winter months I like to watch the wildlife circus playing in our back yard from our kitchen bay window. In early December I put up a pole feeder to augment the finch feeder we have year-round to attract gold finches. Even though the finches rarely show up in the winter, other species of small birds eat the niger seed during the cold months. I get a kick out of observing the birds flit in and out all day long, picking at the sunflower seeds and bread crumbs I place in a tin pan set on top of a greased pole. A small flock of grey and white Juncos have been daily visitors. These little birds, blue-grey on top with a white under-body, have a definite pecking order as they alternate between the niger feeder and pole feeder, competing for food. When one has been too long at a feeding station, another will buzz it off. Every now and then a few Chickadees will drop in, pick up a few seeds, then fly off somewhere...