Bitumen has been flowing naturally into the Athabasca River for thousands of years. This is the way most of us think of the Alberta oil sands: humungous equipment and open pit mining. Surmont project north of Fort Macmurray – Newer projects in the oil sands do not use open pit mining. Most Canadians are blissfully

This week Apple CEO Steve Jobs criticized his main competitors in the smartphone market place – RIM and Google (owners of the Android operating system). Legions of Apple lovers hang on every word from Jobs, and that includes many journalists and bloggers. So it is no wonder that this story got a lot of widely

The future king and queen of Canada? In an article published in the Nov 13 2009 issue of Macleans magazine Andrew Coyne, Maclean’s editor made a valiant attempt to Defend the Royal Family and the monarchist status quo in Canada. Sorry to dredge up this (relatively) old article, but I thought it was relevant given

If you’ve followed the career of comedian Steve Martin you’ll remember some of those early stints where he would fire off a mean riff on his banjo. Well SM has been touring his banjo talents over the summer. The gig mentioned below (in Montreal) is long over, but he recently appeared on the CBC Radio

I’ve recently been searching for blogs focusing on Canadian politics and history. This is something I hadn’t actually done until a few weeks ago. Searching in Google doesn’t turn up much. There’s a few of the usual rant-style blogs modelled on US talk radio shows. The point of these blogs seems to be to whip

The failure of Canada’s political elite to cut formal political ties to Britain is an insult to Canadian independence and should be an embarrassment to all Canadians. This once again became apparent in the installation of our new Governor-General, David Johnston. Not that I have anything against David Johnston. He seems like a very nice

I am currently doing some research into the history of the Grand River land grants made to the Six Nations after the U.S. Revolutionary War. The village of Conestogo sits on these lands – not to mention many of the cities and towns up and down the Grand River Valley: Kitchener, Cambridge, Brantford, Elora, Fergus,

The Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) has been around for a long time. It was established in 1897 by the Province of Ontario as the “Ontario Railway and Municipal Board”. Its role was to oversee the finances of municipal governments and supervise and coordinate the expansion of the railway system between different municipal jurisdictions in the

In this video guitar teacher Mark Easley explains how to play the Beatles “In My Life”, one of the more touching and enduring tunes created by the famous group. Mark is not the world’s best singer, but his approach to the song is simple and straightforward and relatively easy for a “beginner” like me to

In this interview author Charles C. Mann discusses some of the “myths” about North American pre-history that he exposes in his recent book, 1491: New Revelations of the Native Americans Before Columbus. Disclose.tv – 1491: Interview w/ Charles C. Mann Video Some of the more important assumptions challenged by the “revelations” in the book are

I wanted to get some pictures of early fall colours at Glen Abbey in Oakville, Ontario this morning. Unfortunately it was quite dark and dingy and was raining most of the time while we were playing. #3 green take from the tees at #1 Once again I forgot my better camera, so these pictures were

We headed over to Toronto a couple of nights ago to the Blue Jays final home game of the season against the Yankees. It was Cito Gaston’s final home game before his retirement as manager of the team at the end of this season. The crowd at the game was one of the larger ones

Back in 1997 Blue Springs Golf Club was the first “championship” course I had ever played. I can still remember the feeling I had for the place. I could barely believe I was actually playing golf at such a beautiful facility. Looking back on #10 fairway at Blue Springs. This is the Championship course. Just

Congratulations to Jose Bautista for hitting his 50th home run of the season today. The Toronto Blue Jays’ right fielder and 3rd baseman has been the story of the year for Blue Jays fans.

Three golfing buddies and I headed over to Wyndance Golf Club in Uxbridge, Ontario this afternoon (Sunday, Sept 19, 2010). Wyndance was designed by Greg Norman for Clublink, Canada’s largest golf course operator, and opened in 2007. Wyndance is built on the site of an old quarry and uses the contours of the quarry to

Over the last few days I’ve been reading the book called “A Fair Nation” by John Ralston Saul. The main argument put forward by Saul is that Canada’s development for at least 250 years after “contact” – the early 1500s when Europeans first started coming to what is now Canada – the territory that eventually

On our way back from our annual September getaway to Muskoka we got off Hwy 400 just before coming to the Holland Marsh and took a detour along Canal Road. We eventually ended up in the small town of Sharon just outside of Newmarket. Sharon is the site of what is now known as Sharon

Tarandowah Golfers Club is located just outside of Avon, Ontario, a little more than 5 minutes off the 401 highway between London and Woodstock. It is your classic “out in the middle of nowhere” course, seemingly built in a farmer’s field. But this is not just any golf course. It is an example of what

The “Iron Bridge” is a single lane bridge spanning the Conestogo River about a half kilometer up stream from where the Conestogo meets the Grand River. I’m sure there is a history of this bridge somewhere, but I wasn’t able to find it. The Township of Woolwich has been pretty non-committal about keeping it in

One of the most celebrated encounters in the late 1800s between the U.S. Cavalry and a band of Indians was also the last. So typical of the “Indian Wars” of the late 1800s, this one was between the army of the U.S. authorities charged with managing the settlement of the west, and a band of