A Long Back Cast

Family Weekend at the Cottage From left: Maeve, Cal, Fox, Wolf and Gramps Last weekend was Family Weekend and my daughter and her husband planned an over-nighter at their Black Lake cottage for a day of ice fishing . My niece and her two children also joined the adventure. My daughter Erin, who loves fishing, but rarely has the time to enjoy it, thought it would be nice to get out on the ice once this winter. She was talking up the event with her six-year-old Fox for the week prior to the event and he was excited to go. I managed to get three holes drilled through two feet of ice and then the auger conked out. As I was setting the lines, Fox, the ever curious one, decided to test the strength of the slush in the hole and his leg sunk down to his waist. That was the end of his ice fishing experience for the day. It wasn't much better for my daughter. She spied two does crossing the lake and walked out several hundred feet before one of her feet broke through the snow crust, plungin...

 The Wandering Northern Lights Aura Borealis over Kanata We almost never get to see the Northern Lights this far south in  eastern Canada  but last fall there was an exceptional burst of s olar flare energy that allowed one of nature's most spectacular light shows to entertain millions of viewers over much of North America on multiple nights and at locations far south of their normal geographical range. I had only witnessed one display of the Northern Lights since leaving the Yukon and that was in the early 1990's while visiting family in London Ontario , a most unlikely place to view this mostly northern phenomena. We had returned from an Ottawa Senators hockey game and just stepped out of the car, when on the northwest horizon there was a colourful mauve-green tapestry spread across the night sky. My son-in-law Charles captured the beautiful scene on his phone's camera. My son Scott and grandson Theo were also present for this special moment which lasted only a fe...