Cheryl MacDonald has written extensively on the history of Haldimand and Norfolk, Ontario. One of her most recent books, Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes ~ Tales of Courage ~ and Cowardice, provides a tantalizing look at a few of the 6,000 ships that have gone to their watery graves on the Great Lakes, Canada.

2010, Amazing Stories, James Lorimer & Company Ltd., http://www.lorimer.ca/

Available at The Neat Little Bookshop $9.95

Also, click on Cheryl MacDonald's blog in The Neat Little Bookshop Followers. (See Colonel in red dress coat.)

Lore & Legends of Long Point, Lake Erie

A Perfect Gift: "An affectionate history by Harry Barrett, a life-long resident of Port Dover, a great grandson of a keeper of the Long Point Light, and an authority on the history of the area.

Even today, although modern ways are encroaching on the Long Point Country, this remains a place where the past is close and the stories of pioneering, murders, mysteries and comic escapades are kept alive in families that have had their roots here for more than a hundred years." *

* Cover excerpt, Lore & Legends of LONG POINT, 1977.

Available at The Neat Little Bookshop, Soft cover 2000, 240 pgs, 9" x 8 3/4" ~ $20

Early Post Card, B. B. London. Series No X72 Printed in Germany.

"Sometimes I think that I just like pretty books!" Some of you have heard me say this.

Aside from its value, I think this is a pretty book.

Surely Hemingway must have felt the same ~ lw

The Old Man and the Sea, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952

For those of you following the Canadaville/Magnaville story, visit http://www.fox8live.com/ Click on Fox 8 Video. Search: Magnaville Update.

Shane Carmichael, Project Manager, recaps the Magnaville story and updates viewers on the five-year project. Magnaville, Louisiana, is a village that was created by a Canadian after hurricane Katrina to provide safe housing for evacuees mostly from Ward 9, New Orleans.

Carmichael divides his time between Lousiana and his lakehouse on the shores of Lake Erie in Haldimand County.

Dedicated to our Friend who is stranded in the Sarnia/Strathroy, Ontario, Snowstorm:

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

The Snow Man, Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955), American.
Won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1955 for a collection.

Christmas Mistletoe


Mistletoe has a long history in folklore and legend going as far back as the Druids who deemed it to have magical healing powers and to be a token of peace. At York Minster during the Middle Ages, a branch of mistletoe was laid on the altar during the Twelve Days of Christmas and a public peace proclaimed in the city for as long as it remained there.

Christmas Ivy

In Oxfordshire, England, a 17th century custom held that if maidservants asked a man to bring ivy for Christmas decoration and he did not, they were allowed to nail a pair of his breeches to the gate and to deny him the "well-known privilege of the mistletoe."

The World Encyclopedia of CHRISTMAS, McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2000.

Original Post cards: 1912 & 1916.