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Well it may have been a great moment for a bunch of fellas in Timmins who got together for a hockey game at noon hour at the McIntyre Arena, today. Who knew that hockey great Ken Dryden was having lunch next door in the coffee shop and dropped by to say hi to the guys on the ice. Dryden, who was in Timmins campaigning for the Liberals, was good enough to shake hands with the guys and pose for a team shot with the gang. It was a cool thing to see. 
Can you believe it, now that Autumn has officially arrived, the weather across the North has been gorgeous. We've had lots of sunshine and warm days. Oh well, I won't complain about summer anymore. I snapped this shot last night as I was leaving the Mac community building where the city hosted a Baby Boomers and Seniors Fair... jeez, i guess it won't be long before I qualify in THAT category! By the way, sad news today. Poor old Paul Newman died. He was one of my favorite actors. If you get a chance, go find a copy of the film Cool Hand Luke. It's a classic from the 60s. It won Newman an Oscar nomination. Great movie.
I was out in a plane this weekend and snapped a couple of shots of the Dome Mine superpit... that's the big hole in the ground there. Something interesting about gold mines... they usually last ten to twelve years, a real good one might last twenty. This is the Dome Mine in Timmins, probably one of the greatest gold mines in modern history. It was discovered in 1909... and it's still in operation today. That's 99 years!!! Next year, they're planning a big party. People make a lot of fuss about the great California gold rush, The Cariboo gold rush and even the Klondike gold rush. Well the Timmins gold rush... the one that began in 1909 here in the Porcupine Gold Camp, has to be the biggest of all. It never stopped. All the guys who lost their shirts in the Klondike eventually made their way to Timmins and made money. All the other gold rush towns are dusty old tourist traps. They're still finding gold in Timmins, in huge quantities. Lake Shore Gold opened a new mine this year... They've just reached the 100 metre mark, as of last week and already they've identified more than a million ounces of gold! And next week, another big announcement. Goldcorp is about to announce plans for a new open pit gold mine... combining the famous Hollinger Gold Mine with the equally famous McIntyre Gold Mine. Interesting times. We'll keep you posted.
You know I had such a good time, I almost forgot to mention that my favourite son came home to Timmins last week. Neil was here for a few days and he managed to drag me out, not once, but twice to go drinking beer! After a few days he said he had to go back to Vancouver. I think he just got tired of having to pay for his own beer... apparently when you run a brew-pub on the west coast, beer is free. By the way, did you notice how high his forehead is getting! LOL
It took some time but I finally managed to recover the documents and photos from the old hard drive from my last computer. I thought I had fried the drive, but it turns out the problem was only a bad video card… either that, or I played too many video games. Anyway, it took about ten months of research and trying different things before I finally convinced my new computer to accept the old hard drive (80 gigabytes) running in parallel with the new hard drive (320 gigabytes). How cool is that? The drive is right there in the plastic baggy (centre left) on my first trial run. It has been running for about six hours now, with no glitches! (knock on wood!) I think I am officially a computer geek now… I know how to put together a motherboard, swap out DDR2 Ram, the differences between CMOS and BIOS and how to hook up ribbon cables in the right order. OMG can you believe i had a hard drive running in a baggy? LMAO
This thing is a one-function wonder... you can't run several functions at once, so you end up closing and opening programs all day. What a massive pain in the ass that is! - lol - Oh well, the powers that be in the publishing business are all convinced that macs are the best. Hmmm... maybe if they used a real computer, they'd have to hustle. Oh well, at least now I have an excuse when things don't get done. Psssttt... there's a reason why Bill Gates is the richest man in the world. He uses a PC!
Yes, we've had tonnes of rain in Timmins this summer, but every now and then, there's a rainbow. I snapped this shot coming out of the office yesterday on the way to a shoot. And yep... took the shot with the new cam. Nice eh.
So i looked around at the price of a new lens... I should mention that I have tons of lenses from my old film Nikons, but they won't fit the new digitals. The prices were ridiculous of course, so i broke down and bought a new cam. It's super fast, super light and has that amazing NIKON quality. This way i can still use my old D50 with the telephoto lens and used my new D40 with the short lens. Hmmm... thanks goodness for credit cards eh.
Well the house smelled steamy, fruity and sugary for several hours on the weekend. All those fat, ripe choke cherries are now reduced to a sweet jelly. Actually we got more than a dozen jars of fresh jelly. Now I will have to stock up on some low-calorie bagels and enjoy!
It's been two years sinced I made my last batch... I walked by the tree this morning and was surprised at how ripe (and how many) the choke cherries were. We grabbed the ladder and started picking them after work today. Claudette is better on a ladder than I am... and she had a better eye for the ripest fruit. I just spent two hours washing and sorting the choke cherries. Gonna cook 'em up and put 'em jars tomorrow. 
A friend at De Beers sent this photo from the opening day at the new De Beers diamond mine last month. With all the running around, the newsies got a chance for a minute to stop for this photo - from the left is me, Jessica Young with Timmins Press, Natalie Geddes with Rogers Radio and Erin Howe with CTV. You can't really notice it, but we all had wet, muddy shoes from from running around on the muskeg. For some reason, the gals seemed more interested in seeing diamonds than I was! : )
The rain, the clouds and the sun all sort of came together at the right time last night to make a very nice sunset over Timmins. I wasn't quite sure how to record it, so I snapped a couple of pictures... one beside the cathedral on Pine Street, and then I zipped over to the north end to grab a shot from atop the big rock on TV Hill.
Anyway, this was part of the gang from De Beers in Timmins having a bit of a celebration on Wednesday night.
No I wasn't trying to get the truck washed for free. As the photo shows, the truck was parked close to a brush fire on the weekend as the helicopter water bomber flew in ... but no we didn't get wet. One firefighter told me there was a situation a few years back where a pick up truck was hit by a water bomber and there was a very nice dent in the roof. Sunday was hot and windy in Timmins, but the fire was knocked down in less than an hour.
My CB cousins would be interested in knowing that Timmins-James Bay MP Charlie Angus was there... as we chatted I discovered that Charlie has roots in Cape Breton. His grandmother was a MacNeil from a place called Iona.
