My doctors tell me having a dog is good for one's health. I think it may be the exercise that caring for a dog entails. Despite the weather, dogs have to be walked. In the middle of winter snow storm, my neighbours are out walking their pets. And today, in the middle of the heaviest rainfall in months, the sidewalks were filled with folk out walk their dogs.
Celebrating travel is the featured topic for the start of June. With the pandemic hopefully wrapping up as more and more people get vaccinated, places like the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota will again be open to visitors.
Before the arrival of covid-19, two 10K walks from the base of the mountain to the top were held annually. If it goes off as planned, the spring walk will be held this weekend. The fall walk is slated for Sunday, September 26. In 2010, I made the hike and documented the day in pictures.
But there is more to do at the Crazy Horse site than just view the sculpture under construction and you can discover all by clicking the link.
According to the info posted by the Crazy Horse Memorial, Crazy Horse or Tasunke Witco was a member of the Oglala Lakota. Born around 1840, his world was one of clashing cultures with land a big point of contention. Native ways were threatened and oppressed and Crazy Horse responded to his people's plight. Not yet 40, a soldier shot Crazy Horse on September 5, 1877, at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.
It looks like it was a simply farm operation located between London and the once nearby town of Lambeth. Today the boarded up farm home and the abandoned farm are inside the city limits as it the town of Lambeth.
In Ontario it is claimed that something in the order of 175 acres of farmland are taken out of service every day. Homes, apartments, strip malls, parking lots and streets replace the crops.
As another poster to this group pointed out recently, the population explosion seems to be fading, birth rates are falling and the need for a lot of new homes and apartments may be coming to an end. The loss of farmland to growing cities may become a feature of the past.
The current town hall in Strathroy, Ontario is the fourth for the town. This most recent city hall building was erected in 1928 at a cost of $34, 323. And that was not even a depression number. Makes one wonder what it would have cost if built just four years later.
When its was built, the architectural style was described as combining beauty with utility, reminiscent of a New England style of architecture not found elsewhere in the province. Personally, I think it is no where near as grand as the city halls found in New England and elsewhere in the States.
On the other hand, it does seem to have met the utility demands, being it is still in use today. In a few short years it will be a hundred years old and getting a century of use from any municipal building is awfully good.
A photographer with whom I once worked at the daily newspaper in London retired to Strathroy. This beautiful home is located just a few doors down from where my friend lives. I took this picture from my friend's driveway.
It didn't take much searching to discover something on the Web about this large, striking home. The following is from The Strathroy Historical Society Facebook site.
The home originally had 14 “very large”
rooms. There was a drawing room, sitting room, dining room, kitchen,
Pantry, china and cutlery room, conservatory, library, front foyer, two
bedrooms, and a servant’s bedroom plus two bathrooms. It is surprising that such a large home originally had only three bedrooms.
After Cyris died in 1895, his wife Emily married Duncan Campbell Ross who went on to become a
member of Parliament for the area. In 1922 when Ross was made an Elgin County court judge, he and Emily moved from the grand home but the mansion stayed in the family until 1957. When the place was sold in 1957, the new owners made some changes to home's layout. For instance, the home gained an additional bedroom.
The new post office in Strathroy looks like so many other post offices in Ontario. The new post office is as ordinary and plain as the former post office was extraordinary and beautiful. The old post office was an architectural gem.
That said, I have had more packages of goods purchased online mailed to me in the past two years than I had in all the previous years of my life. Until relatively recently, other than at Christmas, I simply never mailed a package nor had one mailed to me. I can understand why Canada Post closed so many of its offices both large and small.
But, maybe Canada Post moved too fast. Today I get shirts sent to me directly from L.L. Bean and when I bought a replacement computer the other day I had it mailed to me from the Hewlett Packard offices in Mississauga, outside Toronto, and using Canada Post software I tracked its progress as it wended its way to my home over the course of two days.
I have never used Amazon and I rarely use Fed Ex. When I buy stuff online it usually comes via Canada Post. I wonder if the newish, smaller Canada Post offices will prove to be too small for the increased traffic.
The old Strathroy post office was built in 1889. Although there is still a post office in town, and close to the old one as a matter of fact, the heritage post office with its visually wonderful clock tower is now a restaurant and hotel with eight luxury suites. You can read about it and see more pictures by clicking the LINK.
With covid-19 making shopping in person impossible at times, I am finding I have had to buy a lot online and have it delivered using, you guessed it, the post office. Seems funny that as postal demands increase, the post offices we are left using are much smaller and less spacious than the original post offices that dotted the province.
If the original, large post offices had been maintained, it is quite possible the old, heritage buildings would be finding their second wind today.
