Our Message Archive
July 2023
Monday July 31
A lily in Guy and Susan's garden
One of our biking friends, Jane, who lives in an apartment, looks after the garden of our neighbours Guy and Susan. Jane invited us to a party in the garden last Monday. I took my camera and took several photos of the flowers (predominantly lilies) while Ann cooled off in the pool.
We have been out biking several times this week, trying to make up for our relative inactivity over the previous month. On Monday we joined the Railers on a ride along the Shearwater Flyer and Atlantic View Trails as far as Lawrencetown Beach. Then, on Wednesday, we rode with the Roadents from Laurie Park around the Enfield loop and back. That was followed by a barbecue lunch at our friend Dick's house in Fall River. It is on "A" Lake, so Ann and a bunch of the other Roadents went swimming. We were out again on Saturday morning, this time with the Ramblers on a pretty ride from Martinique Beach to West Petpeswick and back. We had lunch and a short walk along the beach before returning home.
On Thursday, we had plumbers in to upgrade our kitchen and bathrooms: three new faucets, new cartridges in the showers upstairs and downstairs, and a new toilet in the upstairs bathroom (the old one has not flushed well for years). Everything works much better now.
Very early on Sunday morning, Katy, Ben, Andrew and Alex arrived having made the long journey from Renfrew in one go. Having had a decent sleep in the car, Alex figured it was time to start his day, much to Katy's chagrin. Yesterday, we all laid low while they recovered though we did manage an excursion to the playground at Crichton Park school.
This morning I was up early to watch Canada get smoked by Australia in the Women's World Cup: a very disappointing game. Ann and Ben took Alex and Andrew to the Halifax waterfront to play at the submarine playground, though I'm told that other attractions were also found (including ice cream). Katy stayed behind to handle a crisis at her work. After dinner, we tried out the playground by the boat clubs on Lake Banook.
Sunday July 23
Lacrosse at NAIG 2023
What a bizarre year we are having for weather: our mayor is calling it our local tour of Armageddon. After Hurricane Fiona last fall, the driest spring in memory, wildfires in June followed by the wettest July in memory, we were hit on Friday and Saturday with continuous violent thunder and lightning (almost unheard of when we first moved here) and almost unprecedented amounts of rain. Roads and culverts have washed out, including some of the major highways, a dam came near to bursting, there is flooding in most low-lying areas and, sadly, four people are missing after being caught by a raging river. They are only now beginning to assess the full extent of the damage.
Over the past week Ann and I have been volunteering at the North American Indigenous Games (NAIG 2023). Ann was on the transport team working in the dispatch office and I was on the photography team. On Monday morning and Tuesday afternoon I shot lacrosse at the RBC Centre, the sports centre in Burnside Industrial Park that has four indoor rinks and outdoor soccer and football fields with artificial turf. The lacrosse games were all inside which made the photography conditions challenging since the light was low and we had to shoot through scratched and grubby Plexiglas. The game is also very fast, so fast exposures and quick reflexes were needed.
On Wednesday and Thursday, I changed to canoeing and kayaking which was conveniently on Lake Banook within walking distance from our house. The principal challenge there was that I was using a 70–200mm lens with a 1.4× extender (so equivalent to a 100–280mm lens) which was not quite long enough to reach all the way across the lake. That meant to get good shots I was limited to one side of the lake where I could be closer to the boats; but then the position of the sun in the late afternoon caused a lot of glare off the water. However, I managed to get a reasonable number of shots that I was happy enough to submit to the NAIG photo pages. You can see some of my photos (in addition to the two I have posted here), and those of the other photographers, on the NAIG 2023 photo site. Mine are the shots after this one on July 17, most of the 35 or so shots following this one on July 18 (a few by other people are interspersed with mine), the shots following this one on July 19, and most of the shots after this one on July 20.
On Friday morning I switched to a curating role, meaning that I had to weed out unsuitable photos that were submitted by other photographers before posting them to the photo web pages. That turned out to be a lot less work because I was done as soon as my shift was over. When I was taking photos, I shot for four or five hours, then I spent at least as much time downloading, the photos, choosing the 35 or so that I was expected to submit (from about 150 to 300 each session), then cropping them and adjusting the brightness and white balance, renaming them to the convention required, and finally uploading them. That meant that I was doing very little else from Monday until Thursday.
Canoeing at NAIG 2023
I was done after the curating session on Friday, since we had both left yesterday free so we could go biking (which obviously didn't happen given the weather). Ann was asked to go back in again this morning to work a final shift to dispatch cars to the airport. She biked to the dispatch building in Burnside to be there for the start of the shift at 6 a.m. (uggh!). I biked over when she finished at around 11 a.m. and we rode for a while through the back streets of Burnside (very little traffic on a Sunday) before returning home.
Late on Friday afternoon, we went to a surprise 70th birthday party for our friend, and my fellow Dave Brother, Chapman. It has been planned for several months but still managed to catch him by surprise. In attendance there was an interesting mix of family, neighbours, musicians, astronomers and ex-DRDC colleagues. Pizza and cake was eaten, alcohol was consumed and, of course, tunes were played.
Yesterday afternoon, after the worst of the rain was over, Ann and I went to visit our Syrian friends the al Gawabra's. There are now four generations living in the same apartment so Ahmad and his family are hoping to move out into a new one if they can find something suitable.
What with the weather and volunteering for NAIG, we have not been on our bikes much recently. We did ride with the Roadents the week before last, but we had to turn back a bit early to get Ann to a dentist appointment. With the prospect of drier weather this week, we are hoping to get out more.
What little of my time there was left I spent trying to whip the garden back into shape after two weeks of neglect while we were in Ontario. I have also begun digging up more of our yard where the grass has been overpowered by weeds. That job is expected to last for the rest of the summer and probably until next spring.
Tuesday July 11
Andrew and Alex in the chariot
Ann, myself, Morgan and James spent the week before last in Sarnia with Ann's mum. For the most part it was a very relaxing time. Although we had our bikes with us and planned to get some exercise by using them, the air quality was very bad due to the forest fires in Quebec and all recommendations were to stay inside. We did manage to ride out to Camlachie on Thursday but I had a flat tire just as we were approaching the end of the trail. I fixed it easily enough but we were later than expected returning. Martha and Thom arrived on Friday.
Saturday was Canada Day. Ann and I biked down to Canatara Park to watch the parade and to listen to some music at the bandstand. Meanwhile Morgan and James walked there and spent most of the afternoon playing in a pick-up beach volleyball game. In the afternoon Ann made a strawberry pie which I decorated as a Canada flag (now one of our Canada Day traditions) which we took as our contribution to dinner at John and Halima's.
We left Sarnia on Sunday and drove back to Ottawa staying with Morgan and James for the night. The next day we drove downtown and met Ann's nephew John and his partner Chantal at their apartment then went for lunch at a pub on Elgin Street. After lunch we drove to Renfrew where we spent the next week.
Our principal job for the week was to look after Andrew during the days while Katy and Ben worked and Alex went to day-care. Katy and Ben have a chariot which can be attached behind a bike. On Tuesday we attached it to Ann's bike and took Andrew downtown, first to Ottawa Valley Coffee to get chocolate balls, and then to the library to attend a workshop on rocks and gems. A couple of Andrews school classmates were also there and they all seemed to have a great time. While at the library we signed Andrew up to a reading challenge which required him to read various categories of books in order to advance his flag on a board. For us that meant reading several Captain Underpants books over the next few days. After returning home for lunch, we spent most of the afternoon in the pool having water fights with large spongy squirt guns; that was also to become a standard feature of the next few days.
Alex playing with his wall climbing car
The next day we rode back to the library to advance Andrew's flag and to get a couple of new books for him to read. Then home for lunch and more water fights.
On Thursday we drove to Robert Simpson Park in Arnprior. We played soccer for a while then took Andrew to the Splash Pad though he seemed intimidated by the other kids playing there. Instead we went down to the beach where he and Ann went wading before we packed up, got ice cream and freezies at the canteen, and returned home for lunch. That afternoon's swim was cut short by thunder so we played inside instead.
On Friday, we drove drove to Ottawa to go to the Museum of Nature where we saw exhibits on the Arctic, mammals, wolves, insects, sea creatures, insects and owls. We also watch part of a movie which showed an eagle mother protecting her baby in a thunderstorm, polar bears catching beluga whales, and fireflies. We ate lunch in the museum cafeteria. When we were done at the museum, we looked up the closest ice cream store but when we got there we found that it hadn't opened yet (apparently ice cream is an evening activity in Ottawa) so we got mango smoothies instead. We arrived home in time for a swim before a Chinese take-away dinner.
On Saturday we rode to the library again, this time with both Andrew and Alex in the chariot. Due to a staff shortage, we weren't allowed in the library but the lone librarian chose some new books for Andrew and Alex and advanced Andrew's flag once again. We stopped by the swinging bridge on the way home then had a swim after lunch. In the late afternoon we all drove to Cobden to have dinner at the Whitewater Brewery. The week's activities caught up with Andrew as he fell asleep on Ann's lap part way through the meal.
On Sunday morning, we packed up, said our goodbyes and started the long drive home making it as far as Montmagny that day. We arrived home at around 9 p.m. yesterday.