Tag Archives: Ontario

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Those Crazy Americans

Almost every Canadian who has ever visited, or vacationed in the United States, can tell a similar story.  You’re having gas pumped by some hillbilly in Kentucky, when he notices your Ontario license plate, and says something like, “Y’all are from Canada??!  Do you know Bob from Calgary?”   😮  It’s three times as far from my place to Calgary, as it is to Lexington, and Calgary is three times as big.  There must be 3700 “Bobs.”

Not all hillbillies live in The States.  At cardio rehab recently, I was discussing with a little, 83-year-old lady, what people do in their retirement, to pass the time.  I told her that my wife didn’t want me under foot, and she and the daughter made me a blogger.  She immediately asked, “Do you know another blogger, from Cape Breton Island?” How would I know??! It’s only twice as far to Nova Scotia, as it is to Lexington.  I know relatively exactly where several bloggers live, and vaguely where several others are located.  I sometimes read posts from a blogger who has a Canadian flag on his page, and has mentioned Southern Ontario.

Reversing the usual migration path, her brother went down east on business, and liked it so much that he stayed and got married.  She has a nephew who is a blogger.  I gave her one of my blog-site calling cards, that the daughter designed and printed for me, but the nephew is away on a business trip, and she can’t remember his site-name.  I have two more rehab sessions scheduled.  My last should be on March 24th.  I kinda, sorta hope that she gets an answer by then, just for the curiosity value.  🙂

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She got back to me before I published this post.  As soon as I saw the site-address, I knew that her nephew was not a “Blogger.”  She said that I might find him a bit “peculiar.”  He and a friend host a podcast, where they do read-throughs, and discuss the likes of ‘70s and ‘80s speculative fantasy/sci-fi author, C. J. Cherryh.  I have a couple of her books, but sword and sorcery is not my forte.  The address is 2rash2unadvised for anyone who is interested.  😀

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’24 A To Z Challenge – U

UKASE

Directive, edict, injunction, fiat, order, rule, regulation, dictum, command
It comes from Russian, which language is used to issuing commands.  Putin is teaching Donald Trump a few new words.

UXBRIDGE

A small city in Southern Ontario, named after a small city in England which has been subsumed into the west end of London.  I wondered if spelling drift had allowed it to start out as an ox-bridge, or oxen-bridge.  Apparently it originally was Wixan’s bridge – Wixan being the name of a person who was skilled or adept in the practice of the religion of Wicca.  Wixan’s-bridge to Uxbridge is similar to the drift of Wotan to Odin.

UKULELE

The second-most irritating and useless musical instrument on Earth – right behind the bagpipes.  It drove me – and Spell Check – crazy, trying to get it up there.  Spell Check’s best guess was unkeeled.  Next option was Bekele, an Ethiopian long-distance runner, followed by tekele, a Finnish word indicating an example of poor workmanship.  AI is still a long time away from replacing me.

There you have it ladies and gentlemen – a second Smitty’s Loose Change this week, but all about words.  Word is, I have another Fibbing Friday ready to publish in a couple of days.  Don’t just lie around.  Stop in to read what I don’t show my therapist.

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Keeping An Eye On You

Old age is upon me, and The Game is beginning to be played a bit differently.  I turn 80 in September.  The Province of Ontario, in an attempt to reduce the number of incompetent drivers, insists that I be retested soon, and every two years.

I still think that I am as good a driver as most, and better than far too many, if a little aggressive.  My only worry was about my eyesight.  It continues to decline.  Recently, I had my yearly checkup with my ophthalmologist.  The technician asked if I had noticed any deterioration.  I said NO.  She then ran some tests, and showed me what I had not noticed.

After retinal surgery several years ago, I received a new, plastic lens in my right eye.  The vision is clear, except for a small divot/dead zone in the center.  I rely on ‘averaging’ with my left eye.  The tests showed that cataracts were clouding the left lens, so that my vision was down to 20/50, the Province’s limit.  The eye doc told me that she will schedule me for day surgery, to insert a new, plastic lens in the left eye, some time in June or July, depending on the hospital’s schedule.  This will give me time to heal and adapt, by my birthday.

I recently spoke to a lady who had just turned 81, and went through this last year.  She said that all they had her do was draw an analog clock, showing 10:15….  W.T.F!?  My Osteopath told me that she went through this with her mother and her progressive dementia.  Often, they don’t even check vision.  They are more worried about loss of cognitive ability on the roads.  As the son says, if you can’t find your car keys, that’s just memory.  If you don’t know what car keys do, they want you off the roads.

I was willing to draw a digital clock, with two squares and some numbers, but they insist on a circle, a center dot, a big hand and a little hand.  Anyone our age should remember what they look like.  With the lens/vision situation taken care of, I feel fairly confident, even if the retesting is more complex.

I’ll keep you updated, to know whether I’m allowed to do more driving than just making other people crazy.  So, Here’s lookin’ at you, kid. Soon.

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Reasons To Live In Canada

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA

  1. Vancouver: 2.5 million people and two bridges. You do the math.
  2. Your $1.400,000.00 Vancouver home is just 5 hours from downtown.
  3. You can throw a rock and hit three Starbucks locations.
  4. There’s always some sort of deforestation protest going on.
  5. “Weed”.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN ALBERTA

  1. Big rock between you and B.C.
  2. Ottawa who?
  3. Tax is 5% instead of the approximately 200% as it is for the rest of the country.
  4. You can exploit almost any natural resource you can think of.
  5. You live in the only province that could actually afford to be its own country.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN SASKATCHEWAN

  1. You never run out of wheat.
  2. Your province is really easy to draw.
  3. You can watch the dog run away from home for hours.
  4. People will assume you live on a farm.
  5. Daylight saving time? Who the hell needs that!

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN MANITOBA

  1. You wake up one morning to find that you suddenly have a beachfront property.
  2. Hundreds of huge, horribly frigid lakes.
  3. Nothing compares to a wicked Winnipeg winter.
  4. You can be an Easterner or a Westerner depending on your mood.
  5. You can pass the time watching trucks and barns float by.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN ONTARIO

  1. You live in the center of the universe.
  2. Your $800,000 Toronto home is actually a dump.
  3. You and you alone decide who will win the federal election.
  4. The only province with hard-core American-style crime.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN QUEBEC

Ahhhh….Give me a minute here to think…….Gosh, this is hard…….OK, here are some:

  1. Racism is socially acceptable.
  2. You can take bets with your friends on which English neighbour will move out next.
  3. Other provinces basically bribe you to stay in Canada …
  4. You can blame all your problems on the “Anglo A*#!%!”?

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN NEW BRUNSWICK

  1. One way or another, the government gets 98% of your income.
  2. You’re poor, but not as poor as the Newfies.
  3. No one ever blames anything on New Brunswick …
  4. Everybody has a grandfather who runs a lighthouse.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN NOVA SCOTIA

  1. Everyone can play the fiddle.. The ones who can’t, think they can.
  2. You can pretend to have Scottish heritage as an excuse to get drunk and wear a kilt.
  3. You are the only reason Anne Murray makes money.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND

  1. Even though more people live on Vancouver Island, you still got the big new bridge.
  2. You can walk across the province in half an hour.
  3. You can drive across the province in two minutes.
  4. Everyone has been an extra on “Road to Avonlea.”
  5. This is where all those tiny, red potatoes come from..
  6. You can confuse ships by turning your porch lights on and off at night.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN NEWFOUNDLAND

  1. If Quebec separates, you will float off to sea.
  2. If you do something stupid, you have a built-in excuse.
  3. The workday is about two hours long.
  4. It is socially acceptable to wear your hip waders to your wedding.

 😳

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’23 A To Z Challenge – I

Guess the American President

George, that washing looks like it weighs a ton.

The answer is Abe Lincoln.  The log cabin picture was the clue.

Names from names from names??!

A good number of English, family/surnames came from the towns/villages where ancestors lived, but where did those urban names come from?  The suffix “wick,” as in Warwick or Fenwick, comes from the Latin ‘vicus,’ a term for the civilian area next to a Roman fort.

The suffix “by,” as in Danby or Shelby, comes from the Norse word ‘byr,’  meaning town or village.  The ancestors of Floyd Thursby, the man who wasn’t there, in The Maltese Falcon novel or movie, came from ‘Thor’s byr’ – Thor’s town.

The first name for Ottawa was Bytown.  If ‘-by’ means town, that name seems redundant – Towntown.  It was named for Colonel John By, whose ancestors wanted everyone to know that they were not rustic farmers, but urban merchants who lived and worked in a municipality.  They were like the ancestors of Australian singer, Keith Urban, and New Zealand actor, Karl Urban.

I thought that ‘ton’ which ended many municipalities’ names, was a shortened version of ‘town.’  TILWROT!  In most cases, that is true, but I found some odd exceptions.  Washington is straightforward.  It was a settlement founded by an ancient Celt named Wassa – Wassa’s town.

On the other hand…. Hamilton is a Norman name that came to Scotland from England. It is thought to derive from the village of Hamilton or Hameldune near Barkby in the county of Leicestershire. The village name comes from the Old English elements “hamel,” which means “blunt,” “flat-topped,” or “crooked,” and “dun,” which means hill.

Which brings us to the excuse for this post – the place-name

ISLINGTON

The origin of this term is, Gisla’s dun.  Gisla – not Gisela – was a minor female Norman noble, who apparently owned a small mountain.  The small city of Islington was on the East side of Metropolitan London, until it was finally engulfed.  Similarly, there was an Islington on the West side of Toronto until it too, was swallowed up.

It was the site of L.L.Bean’s aborted invasion of Canada, some ten years ago. The Americans are Coming  They’re back for a second attempt, this time with fewer lies and less pretention.  They dispatched an advance expeditionary force of Snowflakes and Woke Brigade Special Forces.  Canadians still seem unimpressed.

England exported the word ‘dun’ north, to Scotland.  The Scots waste nothing.  Scotland is a country full of hills and mountains that towns and villages could be named for, only with the ‘Dun’ as a prefix, rather than a suffix.  In the nearby, largely-Scottish area of Southern Ontario, municipalities twin-named for those in the old country sprang up.  Among others, we have
DUNKELD
DUNEDIN
DUNVEGAN
DUNDALK
DUNBLANE
DUNTROON
DUNROBIN
DUNBAR
DUNDAS
DUNGANNON

I’m dun with this post.  Stop around again in a couple of days.  Try not to arrive too early.  I might still be polishing my caber.  😉

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Trippin’ Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101 was tripping last week.  What would be your answers to these questions?

  1. You wanted to book a trip to Athens, but the agent misunderstood you…where did they send you?

Athens, Georgia!  At least I got there in time for the peach festival.  The pie was delicious.  I got my slices long before Reacher got his.  I did better than a British author, recently.  He booked a hotel room in Cambridge, for a book festival and signing.  His online confirmation showed him that he’d booked a room at nearby Cambridge, Ontario.

  1. What will customs agents find in your luggage?

Skid marks on my underwear.  After that, they just closed it up and pushed it through.

  1. What do you sneak aboard the flight, and what do you sneak it in?

Some ‘Adult beverage’ – Metamucil for the wife and I.  We put it in a plastic ‘hip’ flask, and she hides it in her bouffant hairdo.

  1. The plane crashes — everyone survives — where did you crash?

On a marshmallow factory, just outside Kankakee, Illinois.

  1. What are three things you find at your crash site?

Packages of Graham crackers and chocolate wafers, a dozen campfire toasting sticks, and a human-sized inflated Stay-Puft Man balloon.  We can all make S’mores, and sing Kumbaya till the rescue trucks get here.

  1. What is the first thing you do when you get back home?

Haul out the exercise bike, and vow to work off all those carbs and sugar calories.

  1. The airline offers you money, but you turn it down…what do you get instead?

I want my luggage and belongings returned.  They’re probably worth more than whatever pittance is being offered.  Besides, I gotta get my laundry done, and those stains out, or I’ll be collecting my cheque at a naturist park.  😳

  1. You decide that a cruise is safer, where do you go?

On an around-the-world trip – but I insist on a return ticket, because I want to be sure to get back where I started.   🙄

  1. Sadly, you get marooned on a deserted island but find huts and scientific equipment made out of coconuts…what do you do?

Fabricate a 67inch flat-screen HDTV out of copra, so that we can watch all the reruns of Gilligan’s Island.

  1. A fishing boat rescues you, but you have to pay Poseidon for safe passage…how do you pay?

I download him a digital copy of the new live-action version of The Little Mermaid movie, but he’s angry that the character of Ariel is played by a Negro girl.   👿

  1. He rejects your fare and throws you across the world…you land safely, but where do you end up?

From the Pacific, I soar over North America and the Atlantic Ocean, finally whistling down into the little English village of Scunthorpe, which Google didn’t used to admit even existed, because of the 2nd through 5th letters of its name.  I crash through the front window of a quaint bookstore and come to rest against a bank of shelves with such a thump, that a copy of Gulliver’s Travels falls out and hits me on the head.  😥

  1. How does your story end?

I suddenly wake up in my own bed, and realize that it was all just an entertaining dream

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’23 A To Z Challenge – A

 

 

 

 

 

 

I do not promote any commercial venture on this blog-site, and I am definitely not receiving any sort of recompense for the following post.

In the past, as I have encountered odd or interesting words, I have added them to a Word file as prompts for the A To Z Challenge.  Somewhere, sometime, I found and added the word

ALSYM

By this spring, it had oozed its way to the front of the line.  If I ever knew what it meant, I have long since forgotten – like breakfast.  My favorite dictionary program just shrugged its tiny electronic shoulders, so I threw it against the wall over at Bing.

It is not a word, as such.  It is the name of a company in Massachusetts.  Alsym™ Energy, a developer of next-generation rechargeable batteries, recently announced that it is emerging from stealth to offer energy storage solutions for electric vehicles (EVs), stationary storage, and marine applications. Alsym’s battery technology promises to provide the performance of lithium-ion batteries at a fraction of the cost and without the inherent risk of fire. The company’s batteries are also less sensitive to raw material shortages and price volatility due to their use of low-cost materials with robust supply chains.  Alsym’s inherently non-flammable batteries, made from readily available materials without lithium or cobalt, will be produced for EVs, stationary storage, and marine applications.

I think that this is a great idea, and I hope that other companies are following suit.  It will get us out from under the thumb of, and free of the threat of financial or political extortion by China, where the largest deposits of the Rare Earths like Lithium and Cobalt are found and mined.

In today’s Electronic Age, they are essential for batteries and chips.  We used to say “Computer Chips,” but they are now in EVERYTHING, cars, planes, cell phones, right down to electric toothbrushes.  If China ever cuts us off, three-quarters of Americans will get cavities.

I hope that Alsym can improve the quality of EV batteries.  Right now, only a few nerds and hipsters want electric cars.  (All too) Soon, the rest of us will have them thrust upon us, whether we want them or not – or whether or not they WORK!

The total, potential power of a battery is greatly affected by the temperature of its surroundings.  Where I sit – here at just about 45 degrees North latitude in Southern Ontario, a mere halfway from the equator to the North Pole – almost all of Canada, and a good chunk of the United States is north of me.  Spring, summer and autumn are one thing, but in the winter, it gets COLD!

In Minnesota, North Dakota, Manitoba, and Alberta, when outside temps get down to minus 20, minus 30, MINUS 40!!, a Tesla battery expends much of its power just keeping warm.  The remaining driving range is not much greater than a long extension cord.  And this doesn’t begin to take into account, places like Canada’s Northwest Territories, or Alaska.  To get anywhere after a cold night (or day) you’d have to park your EV over a coffee mug warmer, or a lap heating pad.

Interestingly enough, in Northern Ontario, around Hudson’s Bay, it is no longer volcanic, but is called The Ring Of Fire.  Diamonds have been discovered – nothing to compete with South Africa – jewellers are not impressed, but commercial diamond users are getting truckloads.

Recently, Lithium and Cobalt, and some other rare earths have been discovered.  The Premier of Ontario grandiloquently declared that, if he had to get on a bulldozer himself, he would drive a road through the ice and muskeg to convey workers and supplies to mine the ores.

It is ironic that diesel and gasoline-powered vehicles will be needed to transport minerals to build electric vehicles.  It gets so cold that truckers fill hub-caps with diesel fuel, place them beneath engine blocks and set them on fire to warm the congealed oil enough to be able to start their vehicles.

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TILWROT II

Take me out of the ball game.

In the early 1960’s, before I arrived in this burgh, interest in, and support for, Junior, City-League Baseball was waning.  One local team felt that they needed $10,000, a considerable sum, to pay for a year’s uniforms, equipment and transportation costs, and no sponsors were coming forward.

One 16-year-old, baseball-crazy boy had an idea.  He would sit on a 6’ X 6’ platform on top of a 50 foot flagpole in the ball park, until the amount was raised.  He lasted three days, until unexplained stomach pains caused the same fire crew and ladder truck that put him up, to lower him down again.  His almost-feat was recently recounted in the ‘Flash From The Past’ history column in a Saturday newspaper.  His name was Ken Fryfogel.

Things I Learned While Researching Other Things – Act 2 – Fryfogel

The name Fryfogel is very uncommon.  Ancestry.com only has 298 listed in North America.  The unnumbered few in Canada are all in Ontario, and I suspect, most right here in Southwestern Ontario.  I decided to research.

Fryfogel appears to be a Germanic name, like Vogel – which is a bird, or Logel – who was a cooper.  Surname-meaning websites just shrugged.  I tried a translation website, but got nothing.  I tried changing the spelling from ‘el’ to ‘le.’  I tried pulling it apart, into Fry, and fogel – nothing.  I tried entering ‘fogel’ into a dictionary site.  I got, No listing for ‘fogel.’  Did you mean fodgel?’

I don’t know.  Do I??!  I’ve never run into the word.  What does it mean?   Yorkshire/Scottish dialect – a short, fat person-by extension, a fat hen.  So, a Fryfogel is someone who cooks up a big fat chicken.  Twenty miles from here, at the intersection of a concession road and the highway, halfway to Justin Bieber’s ex-home, stands the historic, 200-year-old Fryfogel Inn.  😎  What better name for an innkeeper than one that says that he’ll serve you up some fried chicken along with your ale?

I’ll be serving up some more interesting drivel in a couple of days.  Hope to see you then.  😀

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Flash Fiction #191

Vacation

PHOTO PROMPT © Ceayr

AM I BLUE? NO!

Ah, to be a Canadian Snowbird in South Carolina, for a week in October. Not really Snowbirds – snow hasn’t actually fallen in Southern Ontario – yet. Warm like summer at home, but not yet crowded with boorish, Speedo-wearing Quebecois.

The beaches are delicious – tanning and soaking up sun. It’s easy to tell tourists from townies. Canadians are frolicking in the surf, while the natives are dressed in down-filled coats, like Canucks will be in a month, when they have to shovel that snow. They stare, wondering why we build sand-castles, and not igloos.

Nobody in Canada owns a powder blue villa. 😀

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Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Friday Fictioneers

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Auto Prompt – Knowledge Challenge – Combermere

It all started so innocently, as most of them usually do, though this one was unusual, because it involved my often less-than-innocent Scottish ancestors.

Scottish Flag

I needed a four-letter crossword solution for ‘sea’, starting with M. Five minutes later, working sideways, I had ‘mere’? 😕 Quick Archon, to the dictionary. I soon found that the Scots, through a mouthful of oatmeal porridge, had turned the French word ‘mer’ into ‘mere.’

Through my Scottish heritage, I knew that there was a small Southern-Ontario town named Combermere, and one back in the UK. The word ‘comber’ has two pronunciations. There is the usual English Coe-mrr, which is a person or device which combs. Also, a large, long wave, which can strip (comb) things off a beach as it crashes ashore, is a comber. Then there is the Scottish Comm-Brrr, which is used for personal and place names. I once heard two women refer to a man, whose name of Comber they’d read but not heard, as Coe-mrr. As a Scot, I knew better. What did those old kilt-wearers mean when they put those two words together?

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I quickly learned that the mere was no vast sea. It was merely a wee mountain lake – a tarn. The ground around it was too rocky for agriculture, so sheep were raised. However pronounced, the word comber had the same meaning. Once the sheep were sheared, and before the wool was spun to thread and woven into bright Tartans, it was combed (carded), whether by hand, like the hand-carders above, from my Gadgets post, or with a hand-cranked, mechanical device.

The shearing of hundreds of sheep produces a lot of fleece. While the men were busy tending to the now-nude creatures, the women combed, and combed, and combed. Combermere became the name for a pastoral little village which grew up at the lower edge of a Scottish lake, renowned for its yarn and woven cloth.

Don’t look for it there now. Time, and society, and politics changed over the centuries. All that’s left is the Combermere Abbey, in England, near the northern border of Wales. It was named for an Earl of Combermere, which title was given to an Englishman, after James VI of Scotland became James I of England.

If you’re interested in some hand-carded fleece, or hand-spun yarn, or hand-knitted or crocheted apparel, join the daughter, Ladyryl, at her blog, or at http://www.facebook.com/frogpondcollective. She’ll show you how it was done in the Goode Olde Dayes.