The opening paragraphs of Looking For Old Ontario ~ by Thomas F. McIlwraith

"Many people have looked at Ontario's landscape without really seeing it, or have been bored by what they saw.  Charles Dickens, writing in 1842, found Ontario very flat and 'bare of scenic interest';  the Canadian Illustrated News a few years later described it as 'tame and domestic.'  An 1894 tourist guide bluntly stated that between Smiths Falls and Perth 'the country is unattractive.'  John Kenneth Galbraith called his childhood area, west of St. Thomas, in the 1920s 'an uninteresting country.'  A Manitoban used words such as 'sober,' 'stable,' and 'serene' to describe his adopted province in the 1960s.  A British colleague of mine once spoke of 'beautiful monotony' after spending a day driving up and down the straight roads near Lindsay...
"The rumpled countryside is a marvellous place that Ontarians have inhabited and continually reinvented.  It may be ambiguous and perplexing, but surely not dull.
"To appreciate a living landscape we must also draw on the written record from such sources as biography and legistlative studies, to understand long-gone events."

~ University of Toronto Press, 1997
[Tomorrow:  more of Ontario.]

Thinking of enrolling in summer riding?  Storey's Guide to TRAINING HORSES ~

"Horses communicate their feelings and intentions, and you can tell what a horse is thinking by watching his body language.  Ears forward  means alert interest;  ears flat back signals a threat that could be followed by a bite or a kick; ears to the side means boredom  or sleepiness.  Tenseness of relaxation of the body can also be a clue to the horse's mood.  Tail swishing means irritation and sometimes anger -- a prelude to a kick."

~ Heather Smith Thomas, horsewoman, Storey Publishing, 2003.

Check out The Neat L'l Bookshop Nature/ Animals section.

See you next Wednesday, MARCH 4th.

Denise Hart & Dan Romanoski

Love Trees?  Contact any of the dedicated stewards in your area.

Denise Hart of Haldimand Stewardship Council

www.hnstewardshipcouncils.org 

Greg Greer, Field Adviser with Trees Ontario ~ one of several guest speakers at PLANT TREES

Getting ready for PLANT TREES workshop are Stephan Prior, Chair of Land Care Niagara; Michelle Martin, LCN staff and Denise Hart, Resource Manager HNStewardship Council

Stephan Prior, Michelle Martin & Denise Hart

Smile for Today ~

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." ~ Ernest Hemingway

"I am not a great cook, I am not a great artist, but I love art, and I love food, so I am the perfect traveller."
~ Michael Palin (b. 1965) English actor, writer, known for Monty Python.  (b. 1965).

"When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable.  It is designed to make its own people comfortable."
~ Clifton Fadiman, (1904 - 1999) American writer, author, T.V. & radio personality. [Opinion:  Can we post this in every airport? lbw]

"Our desire to find or create the perfect home can be sentimental or practical; aesthetic, or deeply emotional.  The compulsion is often fierce, obsessive, even reckless.  The longing emerges out of a private mythology, formed from dreams dreamt long ago in childhood, from images found in children's books, and in reveries of the past.  "Home" takes imaginary form as a place where people are kind, where children flourish, where profound ceremonies are celebrated.  At home there is warmth, light, and comfort.  There is food in abundance; full tables give shape to our idea of holidays.  To these quiet, essential human imaginings, the paintings of Canadian artists offer their own special tribute."

~ Joan Murray, Oshawa, Ontario.  CELEBRATING HOME ~ A Collection of Canada's Best-Loved Painters, Prospero Books, 2008.

Journals can be as sophisticated or as simple as the writer chooses.  In Sophia MacNab's journal she wrote, "I have now finished writing this book through and it has taken me nearly seven months.  I am twenty one.  My dear Momma told me to keep one always and if I keep it until I am twenty one I will have written thirteen volumes.  I only hope that I may have the perseverance to continue it," Sophia wrote on July 8th., 1846.

Some of us may feel like Sophia did on one particular day:

"I think is would do almost as well to write one day and copy all the next from it, there is so little variety....it is useless to give such a long detail of each day, so I am merely going to put that we went through the usual 'routine'."

THE DIARY of SOPHIE MACNAB, written at Dundurn Castle, Hamilton, 1846 age 13.  W.L. Griffi Printing, 1968.