Look for the duck

Condo developments are everywhere in London, Ontario. Often condos like these attract seniors. With bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen and living room all on one floor it means there is little need to go up and down stairs. Also, condos like these are compact and that translates into easy to clean and inexpensive to light and heat.

Keeping the design simple and repetitious helps to deliver an attractive selling price. But there can be a downside to the look of the units. Seniors with grandchildren may find the little kids have difficulty telling one unit from another.

Hence the metal duck perched on the privacy wall pictured above. The grandkids look for the black-painted duck and when they spot it they know they have found their grandparents' place.

Tomorrow we'll take a look at what this type of condo looks like at the front and at the rear. You will appreciate why the grandchildren are glad to have the duck.

Columbaria: apartment living for eternity

Room for the living is shrinking. The planet seems be getting smaller. Room for the dead is shrinking too. Housing for both the quick and the dead just keeps going up in price.

Woodland Cemetery doesn't push its clients to choose cremation over traditional burial but the advantages are clearly spelled out: it's less expensive, simpler and saves valuable space. I'd call the columbaria for holding the ashes a green solution but the scatter garden is surely an even greener solution.

 I  haven't gotten the details about the columbaria straight from the folk at the cemetery but these units appear to be like those at other cemeteries. If I'm right, these circular structures come in a variety of standard sizes with each move up in size offering more niches for cremation ashes. Each niche often holds up to two urns. One good sized columbarium may have 84 niches holding as many as 168 cremation urns.

My wife is not keen on the scatter garden. I'm not even sure she would feel comfortable sharing a small niche for eternity. She's a private lady and never liked apartment towers in life. An "apartment tower" for eternity may not be for her. But me, I find the concept appealing. 

I confess, I find the immediate wild debauchery of the scatter garden appealing. And, when my ashes tire of the mixing, I would be off to see the world on a beckoning breeze to become one with the world. All very Zen.

Annie Pixley: Queen of the Victorian Stage

This is a photo of the Fulford - Pixley Mausoleum on the grounds of the Woodland Cemetery in London, Ontario. Annie Pixley was a popular stage actress of the 1870s who won international acclaim for her stage performances. 

After her marriage to fellow actor Robert Fulford, she frequented the London, Ontario, area, spending many summers in Port Stanley and occasionally performing at London's Grand Opera House (now the Grand Theatre). 

In July, 1886, Pixley’s 12 year old son Thomas died of what was then known as "brain fever". He was buried at Woodland Cemetery. Just seven years later, on Nov. 8th, 1893, Annie herself died while visiting relatives in England. 

In memory of his late wife and son, Robert Fulford built the Fulford - Pixley Mausoleum. It was completed in 1897. It is one of the finest funerary monuments in Canada. For more information about Annie Pixley, and about the Mausoleum, follow the link and scroll down to the two-part documentary with local London, Ontario, author and historian Victoria Purcell.

A Silent City

I had no idea that old cemeteries are such interesting places. Woodland Cemetery may be the last resting place for ten of thousands of London and area folk but it is also filled with memories and absolutely great stories. The trick is to uncover these secrets.

Many mausoleums have value as heritage structures. These two handsome mausoleums have been standing here for more than a century. I'm positive these two both have stories to be told. Sadly, I haven't been able to unearth either one.

I did discover that the cemetery has a blog. I found an entry that asked the question: "How can we re-animate Woodland Cemetery?" It went on to say, "Our dead stories don’t have to stay that way." That may be true but you can't prove it by me. When it comes to these two mausoleums the story seems to be "Dead men tell no tales."

In researching this post, I did find one interesting fact: the Victorians engaged in post mortem photography. In other words, the Victorians took pictures of the deceased. The following is from the cemetery blog.

Over a century ago, disease and infection increased death rates. It was common for children to die before turning five. Devastated, parents wanted something tangible to remember their late children. To this end, they employed photographers to capture the dead child's image one last time before burial. 

The children were dressed in their finest attire and were posed carefully to maintain the integrity of their forms. In some cases, an infant would be propped up with a post, or held by their mother who wore a black veil. 

Once the daguerreotype photographs were developed, the artistic photographer would paint eyes onto the child’s eyelids and add some blush tones to their cheeks (colour photography was not widely popular in the 1800s because of its intricate process and high costs). The goal was to make the child appear alive again. 

Though this post-mortem photography process seems morbid today, what with painting eyelids and such, the images brought comfort and closure to those who lost their loved ones back in the 1800s.

Visit Woodland Cemetery To See Some Deer

Woodland Cemetery is deep inside London, Ontario, and yet it the home to numerous deer. Visit the cemetery and see some deer. It never fails. Some days it seems there are at least two  good sized herds living on the grounds.

And these deer are semi-tame. My eight-year-old granddaughter, Eloise, took today's picture using my little Canon point-and-shoot. The deer saw the car stop and immediately, with just a little hesitation, approached us. The young deer had clearly never encountered a hunter.

Woodland Cemetery is a multi-faith cemetery owned and operated by St. Paul Cathedral, the Anglican cathedral in the downtown core of London. Founded in 1879 on the banks of the Thames River, today the grounds have expanded to almost 100 acres and hold more than 50,000 burials.

I  believe being on the banks of the river is important, at least when it comes to the deer. The deer population rises and falls and I think they come and go unnoticed by using the river valley for cover. The river in London is quite shallow, only inches deep in some places with numerous shoals. The Thames River would present no danger to deer on the move.

Roof Top RF Base Stations Everywhere

Look at the top of the apartment building. Do you noticed the array of antennae installed on the highest point of the multistory residential building? I believe this is called an RF Base Station. Google "RF Base Station apartment building" and click on images. You will discover that these installations are common worldwide.

Many people  question the wisdom of putting these towers on residential buildings. They are concerned with people living in such close proximity to a transmitter/receiver of RF (radio-frequency) signals.

Yet, others are ecstatic about such an installation. They claim they live in iPhone heaven. Maybe, maybe not. Others say great reception is not a give; they say it depends upon how the antennae were aimed during installation.

I don't believe these towers are not sitting there gratis. The owner of the building most likely collects a fee for allowing the cell phone company to locate its towers on the apartment roof.

When I researched the question of whether or not these towers are safe, I found lots of scare stories. That said, the Amercian Cancer Society doesn't seem to be too concerned. If you want to worry about RF signals, worry about the cell phone held to your ear and forget about the base station on the roof.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies RF fields as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” This is based on limited evidence of a possible increase in risk for brain tumors among cell phone users.

The IARC also noted that RF field exposure from cell phone base stations (mounted on roofs or towers) is usually less than 1/100^th the exposure to the brain from a cell phones. Should you be worried? For perspective, IARC also classifies coffee as "possibly carcinogenic to humans."

As a flip phone user and only sporadically at that, I am not in the least bit concerned. Now, I'm off for my morning coffee.  ;-)

On a walk, backlit, low-hanging leaves a highlight

For many people around the world, the maple leaf symbolizes Canada. When I was young, many young Canadian travelers identified themselves as Canadian by displaying a Canadian flag stitched to a jacket or possibly a backpack. The Canadian flag sports a stylized red maple leaf on a white background bordered by wide red bars.

Taking an evening stroll in my London neighbourhood, the backlit, screaming bright, red leaves are the highlight of the walk. The tree in front of my home, planted a few years ago by the city, may be a red maple. I say "may be" as there are a number of different maples and telling them apart is not my specialty. I'm Canadian but that doesn't make me a maple leaf expert.

Red maples have green leaves for the majority of the year and then they turn a bright red in the fall. My tree certainly checks that box. But whatever it is, it's beautiful.