Christmas pagents are different today

When I was in public school almost seven decades ago, Christmas pageants were quite different. First they clearly called Christmas pageants. Today's event at École Élémentaire Marie-Curie seemed to be billed simply as the school's Winter Show.

There was lots to see and to hear⁠—students dancing, singing, playing musical instruments⁠—there was even a Santa Claus of sorts.

What was missing were camels, angels, a manger scene, wise men, shepherds and . . . Well, you get the idea. What may not be instantly clear is the missing strong religious connection may be a good thing.

École Élémentaire Marie-Curie is a French first language elementary school in the west end of London, Ontario. This is not a French immersion school with the goal of making English speaking children fluent in French. This is a school for families that speak French at home. This school is for parents who want their children taught in French, the language in which their kids are most comfortable.

While there may not have been any camels in the show, there was a dinosaur.

Labeling aside, there was lots of Christmas spirit filling the classrooms, halls and auditorium. Parents brought treats to share, the food drive boxes were filled with donations and in the auditorium families, clearly with different backgrounds, chatted and shared laughter.

And what did the children call the event. I talked with two and both agreed, it was the annual Christmas show.

The little guy is successfully competing with the chains.

It is just a small store but it often has just what you want and at a quality that puts the big chain stores in the area to shame. It's Remark. The family that owns it has one store in Windsor, one in Sarnia (I believe) and a third in London.

The other day my wife spent a quarter of an hour buying just three items at the Loblaws owned grocery store. Only two check out lanes were open.

We should have gone to Remark, as we usually do, ten or more check out lanes are usually open there. One is no sooner in than out. And the prices are very competitive. I don't know why so many folk feel big is better. It often isn't. Smaller is more competitive. It is successfully compete or wither and die.

Remark has been going for fifteen years in London. It shows no sign of withering and dying. And my wife and I, and even our grandchildren, are very thankful for this. We like the fresh navel oranges and the sparkling white cauliflower, the grandkids like the fresh, yeast-puffed, chocolate-topped doughnuts.

Heritage for Sale

York Developments, a local London developer, paid $30 million for some important land at The Forks of the Thames. Why is the land important? Some amazing heritage property is located there, such as a 19th-century courthouse featuring a unique castlelike appearance.

Rather than write a lot and quite likely get some of it wrong, I'm going to cut and paste from the Facebook postings of Butch McLarty, the nom de plume of a local historian who is quite vocal about the recent sale.

• Situated on a four-acre parcel of land, the old courthouse and gaol complex was designated a national heritage site in 1955.
• In 1980, many features of the interior and exterior were designated a heritage property under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act.
• In 1981, a heritage easement was registered on title of the property by the Ontario Heritage Trust.
• In 1986, a few features of the interior and the exterior walls of the old gaol were designated under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act.

The "Castle" Courthouse is not the only heritage property at risk with this sale. The old Gaol, located immediately behind the courthouse, is a busy conference, wedding and banquet centre.

The old Gaol was also designated under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act by the City of London on Nov. 17, 1986, protecting the exterior walls, the one preserved cell block and the interior trap door at the top of stairs and hanging hook (which were never used in an actual hanging since all executions locally were done in the jail yard).

Unfortunately, heritage protections on paper via laws and statutes don't always protect the heritage features of a property, interior or exterior, just like all laws are routinely ignored every day of the week. We've witnessed more heritage-related fiascos locally than I care to remember during the past 50 years.

The best use for this National Historic Site is to remain in public hands, as it's been since it was built in 1829. Private ownership by a land developer is not only long-term bad news for this site but also a breach of trust by Middlesex County that was gifted the property in 1979 by the Province, along with millions in cash by the feds and the province to renovate the old Gaol for modern-day use.

Seagulls: adaptable, quick thinking and bold

Out taking pictures downtown, I could not help but notice all the seagulls. The Thames River hardly counts as a sea. And both Lake Erie and Lake Huron are many kilometres away from the city. I wondered, "Why does London have so many gulls?" And it's not just London. My suburb, Byron, has oodles and the farm fields surrounding the city can have thousands of the raucous birds flying about.

According to the BBC, seagulls are breaking their connection to the sea. With urban gulls, their only connection to the sea is their name and that connection is tenuous. There is no actual seagull. There are Great Black‐backed Gulls, Iceland Gulls, Kelp Gulls, Ring‐billed Gull . . . and more. Plus, no surprise, there are Hybrid Gulls. But there are no seagulls.

Quick thinking and very adaptable, urban gulls can be quite different than their waterfront cousins. They have learned how to live very successfully in the city. These are birds that most likely will never see the open water of the Great Lakes, let alone the salty, endless water of the ocean.

Shouldn't street lighting posts last longer?

While shooting pictures for this blog, I noticed that the concrete streetlight post I was using to steady my camera was cracked. It had a big, vertical crack extending for many inches right up through the centre of the post. This post would need to be replaced.

I'm not sure who made the post in question but I know a lot of concrete streetlight posts are made in Burlington, Ontario, by the StressCrete Group. These posts look good when new. That said, shouldn't these posts look good after a few years of use as well?

Cities are expensive. Replacing relatively new cracked concrete posts seems like an expense that would blind side the city. I wonder if these posts come with a guarantee or a promise of a minimum working life.

It was a fun, well-planned event but few came. Why?

Supposedly cities are great places to live as events held in a city draw on a much larger population base than events held in smaller towns and villages and therefore find it is much easier to attract enough folk to make the event a success.

Saturday, the locally-owned neighbourhood theatre, there is only one left in town, showed a family-oriented film. The tickets were $5. A combo of buttered popcorn, a child-sized drink plus a Christmas cane was $5. Tickets on the draw for a large, gift-basket were free to all children.

I took two of my granddaughters. One won the gift-basket and shared it with her sister. She wasn't as lucky as one might think. There weren't two dozen kids at the show. Not two dozen!

Neighbourhood folk had told the theatre owners how much they loved going to the theatre for a Christmas movie with their parents when they were young decades ago. How wonderful it would be, they said, if the little theatre would show a film aimed directly at families. Ah, the memories that could be created.

I bought our tickets online. I pictured a line-up going out the door and down the street. This didn't happen. I imagined my granddaughters having great memories of the day. They will have those. Winning the gift-basket was nice extra touch.

Did they enjoy the film? Yes. Had they seen the film before? Yes. Apparently cable had brought the film, Arthur's Christmas, right into their home and onto their massive 60-inch flat-screen television. It is getting awfully hard to get people to get out of their homes to share a community experience. The experience may very well have already been availble, and enjoyed, right there in their home.

Next time, I'm taking to Twitter and Facebook. I'm going to spread the word. I'd really like to see a lot more families taking part in the next family day event.

Twin towers overlook The Forks of the Thames

These two apartment towers are in the core of the City of London. The two towers are near the The Forks of the Thames. Although not the first downtown apartment towers, these two were among the tallest, if not the tallest, for awhile. The downtown core is slowly turning around and highend towers like these are indicative of the change in the fortunes of downtown. The number of people living downtown has gone up dramatically in recent years.

No home delivery

When I was a boy mail was delivered right to the home six days a week. The mail was left either in a mailbox beside the front door or the mail was slid through a slot in the front door to fall the the floor in the entry hall. Then, to save money, the delivery was cut to five days a week. Saturday delivery was eliminated.
 
Eventually some genius realized it would be cheaper cut out home delivery completely. The drop box was born. Today in many, possibly most, neightbourhoods in Canada, mail is not delivered right to the door but is left in a neighbourhood drop box for later retrieval by someone for each home.

There's been a lot of resistance to the drop boxes. I saw these in the first neighbourhood I lived in in London more than four decades ago. My present neighbourhood doesn't have these boxes. My mail is still delivered right to my door. How much longer this will continue is anyone's guess.

Water-blue panels in dynamic fan shapes once filled the arches

Looking carefully through my files, I found a photo of Museum London clad with the original deep-blue metal panels.

If you look carefully, you might notice the dynamic fan shapes filling the arches. These disappeared at the same time that the colour was changed.

It is too bad that the colour reproduction in the two images is so different. Different cameras, different chips and taken at different times. Ah, the weakness of photography. It has been ever thus. Film was just as bad. When I was studying photography I had to write a paper comparing skin tones when using Kodak film, Fuji film and Agfa film. Totally different looks.

Why is it a museum, not an art gallery?

Why is it Museum London? This question is so common that the museum has posted an answer online.

"Museum London is a multidisciplinary institution, housing and exhibiting works of historical art, contemporary art and historical artifacts. The term 'museum' provides a comprehensive description of what we do and references the artifacts we exhibit as well as both historical and contemporary art (i.e. Museum of Modern Art, New York). . . . The name was changed in 2001."

The museum likes to point out "the important historical aspect" of the organization. It presents itself as a guardian, if not "the" guardian, of great swaths of London history. Yet the history-oriented museum gets a lot of the history of its iconic building wrong—especially when it claims the original design of the building ignored its location at The Forks of the Thames.

Museum London brags that its current building, constructed in 1980, was designed by the renowned Canadian architect Raymond Moriyama. It was originally a deep, rich blue, a colour chosen to reflect its location at the historic forks location.

I attempted to get a photo showing the original appearance. I talked with a couple of people at the museum. When I mentioned the museum had originally been blue, they looked at me with complete surprise. Neither knew of any pictures showing a blue museum. It soon became clear that our guardian of local history knew very little about its own history, if a story going back less than four decades can be called history.

If Museum London wants to be an museum, it should act like one. It should address the changes made to Moriyama's creation and tell us why these changes, both big and small, were necessary.

Flood protection at The Forks of the Thames

Serious floods, ones inundating homes, are rare at The Forks of the Thames in London, Ontario, but they do happen. And when they do happen, they can be deadly.

Today there are measures in place to protect the low-lying area to the west of the North Branch of the river. One very important measure has been the increase in the height of the dike. When the water is not high, which is almost always, there is a well-used walking path along the waterway.

A perfect location for the seasonal newspaper staff reunion

The Marienbad Restaurant goes back some 45 years to March 8,1974. The historical building itself dates back to about 1854. It was the original home of Josiah Blackburn’s London Free Press. Later, it served as the Queen’s Hotel before being claimed by the Farmer’s Advocate from 1921 to 1965.

Saturday, it was the location for the annual holiday season reunion of The London Free Press retirees. A perfect spot for the meeting of the dwindling number of newspaper employees old timers. At one time, not that long ago, The local paper was a huge force in the city with hundreds of employees and work going on almost around the clock. The massive building plus its parking lots occupied a full block of downtown land.

Today the vast majority of the employees have been laid off, the giant Goss press silenced and the building closed and sold. The small, remaining editorial staff now works out of a collection of small offices in a building smack dab in the core of the city not all that far from the paper's original home in the Marienbad.

In many places brutalism needs protection

Brutalism was a global architectural movement exhibiting a formal quality both on the inside and on the exterior. Often built of poured concrete, hence the French name Béton Brut, or raw concrete, Brutalist buildings celebrated their constuction, presenting the building material boldly for all to see.

For three decades, 1950s through 1970s, Brutalism was the reigning style for institutional buildings such as Trent University in Peterborough, John P. Robarts Research Library at the U of T or the Ontario Court of Justice in London (shown).

At one time buildings lasted more than a century, often much more, before facing demolition. Today, 30-year-old buildings that are found to be completely out-of-fashion face the prospect of an early demise.

London's brutalist building is not threatened at the moment but, that said, the art in front of the building has been, to my eye, desecrated. Xabis, done 1974, was refurbished and during the redo the colour of the work was changed. It went from fleshtone to lifeless grey.

Beer here, beer there, today beer is everywhere

When I was a young man beer was only available from the Brewers Retail outlets. There stores were run by the major breweries in Ontario working together. They were relatively few and far between. To buy beer you had to go to the order desk, your order went to the back, filled and placed on an elevated line where it rolled to the front of the store, thanks to gravity. You picked up your order and left.

Back then beer came in stubbies, short, somewhat thick, dark brown glass bottle which boasted of a number of advantages. They were re-useable and because of their short, fat shape, a truck could carry more bottles of beer than when compared to today's tall, thin bottles.

Since every brewery used the same bottles, stubbies did not have to be sorted. If a store sold 45% Labatt beer, then 45% of the returned bottles were returned to Labatt. It was a slick system and many would appreciate it today. Sadly, the system was jettisoned.

Today beer comes in an assortment of bottles, different colours (green, brown, clear), different shapes and some carry their name in raised letters. A truck today cannot carry as many bottles of beer and sorting is a must. At least, the bottles are still returnable and most are returned as there's a deposit.

The Brewers Retail is now called the Beer Store and it no longer has a monopoly on selling beer, Some grocery stores also sell an assortment of beer. The grocery store shown is clearly proud to announce that it carries beer.

Should newer construction be given the respect given heritage property?

I bet you're thinking that this is just a picture of a suburban home. If so, you'd be both right and wrong. Note the siding and then look at the garage door. They match. Another home in my area had the same treatment but the front door at that place also featured the home siding.

As a general rule, the siding colour matches or, at least, coordinates with the colour of the garage door and front door in new homes. These two homes are the only ones I know where it is not just the colour but the actual siding that matches. It must have been an extra cost exterior accent offered by the subdivision developer thirty years ago in London.

The second home no longer has the rare matching features. The garage door was replaced with a dark grey one and the front entry door has been replaced with a black door. It matches the new, black eave troughs and the black matches nothing else. The once unique home has lost its uniqueness, unless you count the fact it now sports lots of uniquely unmatched colours and shades.

You may not agree but I feel the way we treat our built heritage is wrong. If it's old, it gets almost automatic respect. If its not old, too bad. Our art gallery, at the Forks of the Thames in downtown London, was originally blue to refect its location at the forks. Today the building is dark grey. I guess the architecturally designed building wasn't old enough to rate protection.


A lot of buildings do not age well. Features that gave them visual sparkle are lost with the passing of decades. It doesn't take many years to mess up the look of a structure. How to provide protection, guidance and assistance without making people get their knickers all in a knot over losing their god-given-right to mess up the look of a building is one tough question. (Often it comes down to cost.)

I've noticed that by the time a building is being argued over as a heritage structure, the building may already have been modified. If the building under discussion is still visually intact, the remainder of the streetscape may not be. Buildings do not exist in a vacuum. They shine best in the right environment. Think of Old Quebec. Now there is place with sparkle.

My Byron neighbourhood in London originally had some unique properties. One by one these places are being modified and updated out of existence.

An Alternative Beauty Store: Huh?

An Alternative Beauty Store: Huh? A store for the attractively challenged?

Are you wondering what exactly this store is or does? I was curious and stopped my car in front in order to take a quick picture. Immediately a lady came out and began quizzing me. I never did find out what this place is about. Possibly it sell beauty parlour supplies? Your guess is as good as mine.

Lots of icicles but not much storm

It was billed as an fearsome, winter ice storm and there was certainly ice. If I had been caught on the road and had to drive on the stuff, I'd have been concerned. But the storm didn't leave many areas devoid of power. Few, if any, powerlines were downed and the salt trucks quickly had the roads clear of ice. The ice coating just wasn't all that thick and nor all that heavy.

Still, the winter season is young. Technically, it hasn't even arrived at this point. Southwestern Ontario may yet get hit with a bad ice storm. When a storm is bad, one can be without power for days. This is something that rarely happens but when it does it is a true disaster.

Braving the Cold for Santa

Thankfully the Hyde Park Santa Clause Parade is held during the day. It can be awfully cold in London in late November. One can get very cold waiting for Saint Nick to make his appearance when the temperature is hovering under freezing.

There are floats and marching bands and oodles of free candy given out by passing paraders but eventually the wait for Santa begins to feel impossibly long. Everywhere there are kids  huddled together for warmth or snuggled with a parent under a warm blanket and wrapped inloving arms.

At that point, Santa makes his appearance. He passes by, the children cheer and the parade is over. It's time to go home and get warm.

A Rainbow Post for December 1st

When my granddaughter Fiona was only 5-years-old I took her to Niagara Falls. She loved it and immediately asked for "her" camera. She had claimed my aging Canon S90 point-and-shoot as her own.

She shot this and that, aiming the camera here and there, she even shot almost straight up into the sky. I was puzzled. The Falls were immediately in front of us and yet she was swinging about excitedly shooting pictures.

Fiona had realized there were more pictures to be taken than just falling water and a rainbow in the mist. There was the blue, cloud-specked sky with soaring gulls.  And Fiona shot these other pictures as well.

I'm sure everyone at The Falls Saturday came away with a shot like the one on the right. The image that was missed by many was the rainbow high in the sky above the falls with soaring gulls adding extra interest.

Fiona didn't miss this picture. Now, I'm trying to open my eyes to all the picture possibilities around me. I'd like to shoot like a 5-year-old.

Santa is on his way

Today was the annual Hyde Park Santa Claus Parade. Although you can't tell it from this picture, there were thousands of Londoners lining the parade route to see Saint Nick.

London has two Santa Clause parades: a city run parade that takes place at night on the city's main downtown street and Hyde Park event that takes place on a Saturday morning in a northwest suburb.

The Hyde Park parade is a community event attracting lots of local participation such as the Western University marching band.

Some prefer to mow and not blow or bag

I find one of the strangest urban practices to be the bagging of fall leaves. I find it downright weird. I didn't do it as a kid and I don't do it now.

My dad was a farmer before his health forced him to quit and move to the city. He taught me that leaves will break down and disappear back into the soil if treated correctly. He called leaves nature's fertilizer. We were poor and my dad was not about to discard free fertilizer.

We had a small, open-topped, caged-off area at the back of our yard, created with a heavy gauge wire mesh. We tossed our raked leaves, along with any grass clippings when we had them, which was rarely, into that cage. The coffee grounds from our percolator, if you have to ask google it, were also dumped there to be mixed with the leaves. The leaves always took longer to decompose than anticipated but they did break down eventually.

The London Free Press reports city leaf collection extended.

Today, I have a different, even easier, approach. I mow them rather than rake them. My electric lawn mower is called a mulcher and does not even have an ejector shoot. Grass clippings and leaves are chopped small and left on the lawn.

When I started writing this post, I realized it was all conjecture. I did a little research. It didn't take long to confirm that dad was onto something. According to the Princeton Primer, the makers of Scotts Miracle Grow have studied this approach and concluded mulched leaves not only provide valuable fertilizer but the mulch does not result in problems with thatch as some have argued.

Whether ground up or piled in a corner, leaves serve as a natural fertilizer and increase the capacity of the yard to absorb rain. The more organic matter a yard contains, the more moisture it can hold, which helps buffer the yard from extremes of rain and drought. A soil rich in organic matter welcomes the rain, which in turn reduces runoff into the streets and, collectively, the amount of flooding downstream.

One doesn't have to be a Princeton grad to understand that when "nature's miraculous trash-free economy is allowed to function, we're spared a big mess in the streets and the considerable municipal cost of hauling, grinding and mechanically turning leaves at a distant composting centre."

Is this an invasive species?

Is this a miscanthus grass species? If it is, then this may well be one of the grasses often found along roadsides and agricultural fields. It is called an invasive species but it didn't invade; it was invited in to be used as a decorative ornamental plant.

Miscanthus grasses are native to Japan, China and Korea. They made the leap to North America near the end of the nineteenth century. Fast growing, the foreign species spreads fast, displacing native plant communities.

The dense, dry stands are highly flammable and have even been spotted in distant California. Just what that state needs: another fire hazard.

And why did I start this post with a question? Because this might also be pampas grass. In some areas, like California, pampas grass, cortaderia selloana, is considered invasive but not in Ontario.

March winds in late November

A special weather statement was issued this morning forecasting wind gusts up to 80 kilometres per hour. Homeowners, outside the city, living in farm homes exposed to the full force of the windy weather could experience gusts as high as 90 km/h. Environment Canada said a sharp cold front would blast the London area Wednesday afternoon.

By mid afternoon the neighbour's flag was flapping wildly in the wind, neighbourhood trees were threatening to topple onto lawns and the air was thick with wind-blown leaves.

The Lego public school

Byron Somerset Public School was opened in the early 1990s. It and the many suburban homes surrounding it were all built on land reclaimed from a former gravel pit. A new school on new land in a new neighbourhood demanded a new look. Byron Somerset got the new look in spades.

My kids went there. It was just a short walk away. Did they like the look? No. The little school, it has less than 400 students, was called The Lego School by the students.

Today, almost three decades later, some of metal panels are badly chipped, some are bent and there are many signs of wear and tear. Still, I must admit, it has aged better than I ever thought it would. It is aging rather gracefully.

Over-the-air television signals facing phase out

When I was a boy all television signals were free, picked up by a rabbit-ear antenna sitting on top of a massive television set filled with tubes. We were only able to view about four channels but three were the American network signals, ABC, CBS and NBC and the fourth was the local CBC outlet.

There are still two tall television towers in London but it is a question as to how much longer these will  remain standing. The one shown was slated to be shut down a couple of years ago. At the last minute, it was given a reprieve.

Cable has replaced rabbit-ears almost everywhere. Television is no longer free. It can cost the better part of a thousand dollars annually. On the plus side there are so many extra cable channels. On the downside who cares as sometimes there's less to watch today with 50 or 60 channels than there was in the past with only four.

Some nights the same program is playing on as many as three channels at the same time. It doesn't take long before one has seen every episode of Frasier, Seinfeld, The Big Bang Theory or Modern Family. Other times a Living Dead festival will commandeer one or more channels to present days and days of solid gore. Ugh! The Living Dead is one series that is dead to me.

We get three network news channels: CBC, CNN and FOX. CBC is essentially a loop a lot of the time and some days it can be an awfully small loop. CNN get hung up on a story, for the past few months this has been Trump, and like a dog with bone CNN just won't let it go. Both CBC and CNN can be downright boring on account of the repetition. And watching Fox News is simply bad for my blood pressure. Interestingly enough, repetition with Fox News would not be boring but I might pop a blood vessel as my blood pressure climbed.

So what did we watch on our in-house entertainment centre last night? My wife found Roman Holiday in black and white and starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck showing on TCM, Turner Classic Movies. I can recall watching that film on an old Coronet television set when I was a boy. Of course, Roman Holiday wasn't a classic back then.

Space Scooter sold briefly in Canada

Reportedly, the Space Scooter was developed in the Netherlands, is now sold across Europe and in the States. For the moment, it seems to have been pulled from the Canadian market.

I'm posting this older photo as a follow up to yesterday's submission looking at an Ontario toy store that's expanding across Canada. Mastermind Toys was the only store stocking the Space Scooter a couple of years ago. It's an imaginative toy sold by an imaginative retailer.

Mastermind had a unit available for testing right on the floor. Online retailers can offer a lot but they cannot offer an immediate, hands-on testing experience.

My granddaughter discovered the Space Scooter had no learning curve at all. Rocking the platform came very naturally. She simply got on and took off.

I've often wondered how common these are in the Netherlands. I understand the latest model, the X590, has two speeds and dual brakes. I could see using one of these for neighbourhood shopping runs.

London has two of these toy stores

I used to think selling toys was easy. Then Toys R Us in the States filed for bankruptcy. That was an eye opener. Then the Scholastics chain sold its toy store in London to the Mastermind Toys group. Soon after that the small, locally-owned toy store in North London was sold to Mastermind Toys as well.

A good argument can be made that Toys R Us folded in the U.S. because it was bled dry by its hedgefund owner. Backing up that belief is the fact that Toys R Us is still operating in Canada. The Canadian division was bought by a large, Canadian investor and the stores remained open. Are the stores profitable? I believe so, but stay tuned.

The first Mastermind Toys store opened 35 years ago in Toronto. Within a decade there were about ten more stores scattered across the Toronto area. Today there are stores in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba as well.

Mastermind Toys is doing more than simply opening new stores to guarantee its survival. It has entered into a partnership with the WE Social Entrepreneurs Initiative. The Mastermind Toys folk have carefully nurtured a reputation for caring for their customers and for the communities in which they operate. And the company likes to brag that it is Canadian—a real plus in today's market place.

Supposedly, American and Canadian builders understand cladding

Look carefully at the above apartment. Note the beige-painted, metal skinned, insulated cladding on the top two floors of most exteriors walls. This exterior, retrofit over-cladding is very common on older mid-rise buildings, usually apartments, in London. The new cladding may be used on the the top floor only or it may extend down six or seven floors or more.

I had never given retrofitted cladding any thought until an architect I know asked why it was there. I shrugged my shoulders. I assumed it was for insulating reasons but, if so, why didn't it extend down the building all the way to the bottom?

Questions about retrofitted exterior cladding on midrise apartment building took on added importance after the Grenfell Tower fire in London, England. The 24-storey building was gutted by a fire that moved rapidly up the building under relatively new retrofitted exterior cladding. At least 72 people, maybe more, died in the resulting inferno.

I am now investigating cladding as it is being used in London. When I have some answers, I'll update this post. It's an interesting story as insulating a building with the addition of exterior cladding is not a simple job as the Grenfell Tower fire demonstrates.

A coarsening of Canadian culture

Back when I was a boy in the '50s, I cannot imagine a restaurant chain promoting a name containing the words "Fat Bastard". Not so today. Apparently this restaurant chain was born in Canada; it's a Canadian concept. And it's a Canadian concept the many of us find exceedingly offensive.

Researching this, I came across an article in Now magazine: Fat Bastard Burrito's racy hustle. It said about the company logo at that time:
"Its logo trades on the worst stereotypes about Mexicans. It features a fat man with a mustache and a gold tooth. He's wearing a poncho and a sombrero. And he's riding a donkey while eating a burrito which, for the record, is Tex-Mex cuisine as popularized in North America, not Mexican."

As I write this, I wondered if I was being overly sensitive. I googled it and discovered: research shows that the word "bastard" is generally deemed to be offensive. Criticizing the use of bastard appears to be a safe, conservative position.

OFCOM, the Office of Communications in the U,K. warns regulated broadcasters to stay aware of the 'cumulative effect' of casual swearing. But, you may ask, what is the 'cumulative effect'? These are just words goes the defence.

Casual profanity is rude, its use coarsens society and culture, while the flip side of the coin is that it even ruins the usefulness of swearing itself. A lose-lose proposition.

I still call these 25-cent car washes. Not!

It was when I was a teen that these types of do-it-yourself car washes began appearing. At that time, the mid '60s, these cost 25-cents for five minutes. A friend's father had a car rental business and during the winter we took the rental cars to these to be washed. Working together we would wash each of the small cars within the five minute limit.

These car washes today may look the same as those of old but there are some important differences.

For one thing the dirty water from the washing of cars no longer goes down a storm sewer as it would if you washed your car at home. Using these for washing one's car is easier on the environment.

And today there is not just one hose delivering either a harsh blast of water or soapy water. Today there is also a second hose with a brush at the end. Using the brush dislodges the dirt on a car's finish much better than the hard spray alone. At the end some booths now have a separate third hose to finish the  cleaning.

One other thing has changed as well: the cost. It now costs $3 for five minutes. Pop in five bucks, many booths accept bills, doubles the time.

Icy sidewalks: a winter hazard

A common winter complaint in London is the condition of the sidewalks in the city. It is not uncommon to find a sidewalk unshoveled and lacking both salt and sand. Under the bright fall sunshine, snow melts and then the water freezes. The sidewalks become a threat.

Will the problems clear up as the winter progresses? I wouldn't count on it.

A Beetle facing extinction

It was back in early July when the last of the recent run of VW Beetles rolled off the line in Mexico. Born in 1938, the People's Car may officially be declared dead in 2019. But one never knows the future. Who knows? Maybe it can be brought back from the dead one more time; this time as an electric car. But, don't hold your breath.

The nearby VW dealership, there are two in London, Ontario, has about five Beetles still in stock. One is a convertible. They are all expensive, at least they are expensive to my way of thinking. More than $31,000 for a small, four seater when a much larger Jetta with room for five passengers is thousands less.

My wife loved this little car. She didn't love its big price tag. We drive a Jetta. Bigger, more luggage capacity, even better gas mileage. It's not surprising that many thought of the Beetle as the little car that couldn't, didn't and now is fittingly gone.

Where do businesses locate? Inside or outside the city they serve?

My home was built in the mid 1980s. My wife and I have kept our garage door operating by calling Stewart Overhead Door each time it failed. The repairs were excellent. But after 35 years our door-lift motor finally failed. The bearings were shot and replacement parts no longer available. We had Stewart install a new unit.

What I find most interesting in this story is that we live in the far southwest, right on the edge of the city. Yet the Stewart company is located some kilometres west of our home. Originally the Stewart building was surrounded by farmland and I'm sure there were cost savings linked to locating there. For instance, property taxes were most likely much lower for companies serving city residences but locating outside the city.

The other story I find interesting is how the location of the Stewart building has changed over the years, and all without moving the building one inch. Look carefully at the top left of the posted image. You will see a home. The farmland that once surrounded the company building is disappearing. The city is coming.

Getting cirrus about weather

There are some things that I've learned from the other images submitted to this group; all cities enjoy beautiful clouds. Clouds, such as the cirrus shown, are both unique and found everywhere.

Before posting this I looked up clouds using Google. I'd heard of cirrus clouds but it was only a name to me. No longer. A cirrus cloud is a type of cloud characterized by thin, wispy strands. The name, cirrus, comes from the Latin word meaning ringlet or curling lock of hair.

Cirrus clouds develop above 20,000 feet (6,100 m)—an altitude where low temperatures encourage the forming of tiny ice crystals rather than water droplets.

Typically, the weather is fair when one spots cirrus cloud formations. But one shouldn't count on the fair weather lasting. As sailors often warn, "Mares' tails (cirrus) and mackerel scales (altocumulus) make lofty ships to carry low sails."

I checked the forecast for Sunday: sunny. Hmmm. Makes me wonder what do sailors really know about the weather. In my personal life, I have often found sailors to be nothing more than weather worry-warts.

It's location, location, location.

Clearly this is an old picture. It's not that old, a couple of weeks or so, but I didn't have time to post it earlier. But, I think this is an important post and interesting to folk who love cities. Why? Read on.

The home above is in Old North London. My guess is that it sold for more than a million dollars, much more. It is a fine home. It's a classic and in London in that neighbourhood it is easily worth every penny the buyer paid. But, the important information here is that this home is in London, Ontario, and that it is in the Old North neighbourhood.

If you head south about two hours to the Boston Edison Heritage District in Detroit, you can find comparable homes for much less—15% or more less.

The heritage property shown on the left has gone up in value over the last few years as the City of Detroit has taken steps towards recovery. Yet, this home is still priced less than the home in London.

And it may be location, location, location but the next word is time. The London home has always attracted a good price. Over the past six decades it has steadily appreciated in value. The London home has been not just a fine place to live, to raise a family, it's been a great investment.

Fifty or sixty years ago my guess is the Detroit home was a true bargain. Time has been kind to the Detroit home and its heritage neighbourhood. Both survived a very difficult time for the City of Detroit. A lot of properties didn't.

When I went to art school and university in Detroit many of the vacant lots of today held fine homes that proved to be very poor places to raise a family and were also very poor investments.

When someone tells you that one never loses money buying a home, don't believe 'em.