A Long Back Cast

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...

The Motley Crew on Ice Al's Crow Lake snow storm picture In my last post I touched on the challenges of ice fishing with grandchildren. I hypothesised that winter must soon be over because the trumpeter swans were flying overhead looking for open water on Black Lake. I hope they found somewhere to land that wasn't frozen. Another half an hour down the road and five days later, Mother Nature had other ideas about an early spring, as the Motley Crew, our group of old guys ranging in age from early sixties to mid-seventies-ish, gathered for an ice fishing junket, the first one for us since the Covid-19 outbreak in 2019 put the world on hold. Gary, the youngest member of the crew, invited us out to his beautiful residence set among the evergreens along the shoreline of Crow Lake, for a day of ice fishing followed by an overnight stay. His wife had flown out to Vancouver to visit their daughter, so the lonely bachelor opened up his place to our rag-tag band of retirees. Gary took th...