Water, the World, and a Sunrise Ceremony

Buses are plying the roads. Military vehicles are everywhere. There are high speed boats on Peninsula Lake. We were chatting with the vet who is on contract to take care of any issues for the Police Dogs K9 unit. The crash barriers are up on Hwy. 60. This morning the F18's were screaming overhead, wingtip to wingtip.

Everywhere else, in this bizarre scenario, life unfolds peacefully and as usual. There are parking spots in town. Lots of stock in the stores. Cheerful faces. Plenty to talk about... Nothing like an international Summit to provide talking points to one and all.

The International plaza built for the occasion in town is proudly flying all the 8 nation flags, plus one for the EEC.

Deerhurst is now closed to the public. It's a beehive of activity putting on the finishing touches. After all, Deerhurst will be front and centre in the Photo Op.

There's lots else going on as well. This Monday, June 21, the Summer Solstice, will see National Aboriginal Day taking place in Huntsville. If you get yourself up to the Memorial Park behind the new Summit Centre at 5.30 in the morning, you can take part in the Sunrise Ceremony. If you tend to rise a little later, the PowWow is on all day long. This event, honouring World and G8 Leaders is hosted by Chippewas of Rama First Nation and Wasauksing First Nations. The Powwow Grand Entry begins at 12:30

The Water Festival is on, June 20, at Rivermill Park in Huntsville. In its inaugural year, Huntsville Water Festival celebrates water and its life-giving qualities by educating and exciting our local community on water stewardship responsibilities and green energy resources, while raising awareness and funds for the growing world water crisis. There are a lot of events... you should go. Tell Jessica I sent you...

The second part of the Water Festival happens Thursday, June 24. The Girl 8 concert - with performances by Tina Turley, Sherisse Stevens, Linda McLean, Ruth Cassey with Ivan Blackbird, Sarah Spring with Tobin Spring and Amanda Penner, Chistine Heron, Meg Jordan, Jaime Payne and Sarah McNeil and the Huntsville Youth Choir.

Money raised from the Water Festival will go towards the purchase of respiratory masks for clean-up crews battling the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill in partnership with Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Waterkeeper Alliance; and to Huntsville High School’s Me to We Program – a program born out of Free the Children – recognizing students who have volunteered their time and enthusiasm to making Huntsville Water Festival and Girl 8 a success

After the Rain

We were suitably impressed last year when one of our young guests, Quinn, won the Robert Bateman Get to Know photogrpahy contest. Quinn, who takes all his pictures with a small Sony Cybershot camera he received when he was 12, has a remarkable eye for a picture. Not to mention an affinity for Nature and a prodigious talent for being in the right place (quietly, patiently, observingly) until the right time shows up. He takes remarkable images.

We couldn't have been more proud when he won last year.


So we thought. Now Quinn, 15, has done it again. For the second year in a row, his digital photography entry has won in the Robert Bateman Get to Know National contest. His winning entry is titled After the Rain.

Last year he got to meet Robert Bateman at the Ontario Legislature and received a hand written letter and card from him regarding this meeting which he cherishes.

The awards ceremony for 2010 winners was held this week, June 18, at the Toronto Zoo. We expect Quinn found some photo opportunities while he was there.

There is a one week Art and Nature Camp, in Waterton National Glacier Park, Alberta, offered to the winners of this contest. Quinn is over the moon about this, and so are we. Art, and Nature... and Quinn with a camera... anything could happen!


Congratulations Quinn, from all your "Bondi Family."


Isn't it truly marvellous what young folk can do when they get out into Canada's Big Backyard?

16 Things

Old Mrs. Sinclair, a true blue old-fashioned farmer's wife who used to live near Huntsville, had quite a philosophy on life and marriage.

Her son-in-law one day was teasing her as she made apple pies... His wife wasn't as good a cook as her mother; she spent too much of his money, not frugal like her mother; liked to get out and about, rather than stay in the kitchen and cook, like her mother; needed all kinds of fancy machines to get the work done, rather than just carry on with the old stuff, like her mother...

Mrs. Sinclair kept rolling out the dough for the pie, silent. When he ran down, she raised one eyebrow. "Is that all?"

Well, he allowed, with a smile, it probably was.

"That's four," she said quietly, adding cinnamon to the apples. "She's got twelve more."

What?

"When you married her, you took her FOUR better, FOUR worse, FOUR richer and FOUR poorer. You've only complained about four things so far, so she's got twelve more..."

It's a wonderful outlook. When Dawn and Andy Fisher were here to celebrate their 50th Wedding Anniversary with all their family at Bondi, we're pretty sure that they, too, know all about the secrets to a long happy life together, and the give and take of 16 things on each side of the marriage... It is a remarkable achievement to share 50 years of your life with your heart-mate, and it is something to be celebrated.

It was a joy to have them here with us, and we hope to see them back here -- long before another 50 years have passed!!

Getting Ready

Huntsville is getting ready to welcome the world to the G8 Summit. So are the blackflies, but that's another matter entirely.

The infamous G8 Fence is almost complete. It's not pretty. My suggestion that it be painted bright Pink to mimic the wrapped islands in the style of the artist Christo met with disapproval. One can but try.

Not that many folks are going to see those fences, if all goes according to plan. Vehicles will be detoured around Hwy. 60. So we have to enjoy this while we can. There are new stoplights, and the road is down to one lane -- this is to let the workers erect the fencing without risking being run over. Good plan.

Not taking any chances, however, it's not enough to set up stoplights. You have to wait to follow a Pilot Vehicle. Just in case you've forgotten that red is for stop and wait until the lights turn green. One can never be too careful.

A low flying Hercules aircraft causes the ground to shake and rumble. We know. One flew over us almost low enough to hand up a cup of coffee last week. This is the chapter in which we learn that the ground shake produced by such a big engine overhead is enough to trip car alarms. What fun!

The town looks very nice. There are tons of flowers, everything is clean and shiny. Dr. Hunt, who founded the place in the 1800's, would be very pleased.

You can buy an Obama Muffin at Soul Sistas restaurant, a Canada Maple Leaf at Seven Main. The Chip Truck by the bridge is into political lobbying. Obama for Prime Minister... maybe... perhaps we could just do a straight swap: give them Harper, we'll take Obama. Just a thought.

Army trucks are everywhere. The boys (and no doubt the girls) in camoflage are in all sorts of unlikely places. Deerhurst is now closed to the public. Last minute details are being fine tuned, and the clock ticks forward. It's all got this frenzied sense of something impending and huge on the one hand.

While on the other, at Huntsville's waterfront, life could not look more serene.

For our guests arriving this weekend, it will be a curious adventure coming face-to-face with the preparations underway. Next week, we will have other guests, more familiar with this sort of game.

And then it will be summer, and life will ebb back to the normal. We'll be able to hear the loons over the rumble of the F18's. Boats will be back on the lakes. Detours will come down. The last Obama muffin will be munched. Muskoka -- who never asked for all this fol-de-rol in the first place -- will return to her natural beauty, imbuing a sense of well-being into all who visit her.

So, folks, get off the shore of Lake Waste-of-my-Taxes in Toronto, and come on up. It's fabulous here!

Foxes

Gloria lives on the South Shore of Lake of Bays. From time to time she sends us photos of life at her end of the lake...

Right now, she is enjoying watching a family of foxes growing up nearby.

We're all for wildlife... we enjoy watching the fox kits tumble, rumble and play as much as the next person. They are beautiful creatures, superbly adapted for their fox-world.

They are also, of course, keen and merciless hunters. You can't blame them... A vixen with mouths this hungry has to work hard to bring home dinner. We do, however, have an issue when the dinner she brings home is chicken take-out from Bondi Village.

We also have a fox family nearby. Last week, a fox came ripping down off the hill, past our neighbour who was mowing the lawn, past Elli who was riding her horse, and snapped up a chicken. It killed two actually, and made off with one while the rest of us chased it away from the others.

Brian found our elder chicken, 'Greenback Bob', looking alarmed, perched on the high deck railing at Wheelhouse cottage. The chickens scattered, and it took almost two hours for them all to come creeping back out of their hiding places.

A guest, seeing chickens on the lawn, asked if these were free-ranging, organic chickens. "Yes." They receive no medications or growth supplements, they forage freely, they are about as natural as a chicken can get and still be carried around under one's arm from time to time...

"The problem," I pointed out, as I put the finishing touches on a fenced-in chicken run, "is that the free-ranging and organic fox is picking them off."

"Oh, my goodness," replied our innocent. "What makes a fox 'organic'?"

Well, really, aren't they all? Realizing what she'd just said, the lady broke into huge laughter. The fox, somewhere not far enough away, is doling out the wings and thighs to her hungry cubs, and commenting on the flavour...

All of which is fine for the fox, but a problem for those of us who are trying to co-habit here... The chickens are grumpily allowing themselves to be herded into their fenced run when we aren't around to keep an eye out for them. The fox, we predict, will be back.

Background Noise

The volleyball game was a rousing one on the weekend. Not to mention a colourful one.

But the best part of it? It was not accompanied by those incredible vuvuzela horns that are deafening the crowds at the FIFA World Cup.

If you are unlucky enough to have a vuvuzela just behind you in the stadium, you’ll endure more than 125 decibels of sound, which can hurt your hearing.

The vuvuzela is louder than a chain saw or lawn mower at 110 decibels and an ambulance siren at 120. It plays a consistend B flat... and when you get a group of them (like they do right now in the stadium in South Africa) it sounds like a gigantic swarm of very angry bees.

This volleyball game was a noisy one -- but a fun kind of noisy. You could hear the players' laughing, for instance... and a loon in the distance.

Sounds that I, for one, would prefer to hear...

Something Fishy

It took Achmed the Cat almost no time at all to notice that there was a new Beta fighting fish in residence.

While Finnian was exploring his new habitat, Achmed was exploring Finnian.

Since he wasn't able to get a paw into the tank, he tried the next best thing -- an attempt to lower the water table.

This is the most curious of curious cats, and one of the most interactive. He still loves to ride on the roofs of cars, and on the golfcart. Never misses going for a walk. And remains a little holy terror about bringing in mice or flying squirrels and setting them loose in the living room. There is never a dull moment with this cat...

Of course, the fish may have something to say about cat tongues in his space... stay tuned.