Smart phones not made here

Everywhere I go I see folk using their smart phones to take pictures and to text and even, sometimes, to talk. These new tools seem to be ubiquitous.

As a Londoner, I see something else. I see a technology that slipped from our grasp. At one time, London was home to a massive Nortel plant. It made telephones, and not just for Canada but for the world. When I was in Tunisia back in the 1990s, I saw a Northern Telecom building outside Tunis on the way to Sidi Bou Said.

Nortel was such a powerhouse of a telecommunications giant that at one point more than a quarter of the value of the Toronto Stock Exchange was claimed by Nortel.

But that was then. Today the plant is gone. The company almost forgotten. Telephones and most state-of-the-art telecommunications equipment are now made offshore. About the strongest lasting memory of the once giant company are the ones held by the workers who found themselves without jobs and without the pensions they had been promised. 

Giants can be very disappointing.

London kids love snow. No surprise here.

The last school day of 2019 is just around the corner and Christmas is less than a week away. And yet, snow is hard to find. Making a snowman is impossible and a snow fort is out of the question.

These two London kids aren't taking it lying down. They not only shoveled their grandparent's driveway, they shoveled the front lawn. And what did they do with the shoveled snow? They packed the snow in a large, canvas wagon and in a number of large, plastic garbage cans.

Now, they have enough snow to make a giant pile of the fluffy white stuff. And we all know what big piles of snow are good for, right? Jumping! And if it warms up a little, the stuff gets packable and a snowman becomes a possibility. These two are prepared.

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.