Back online with NYT

I was pleased today to sign up for another year with the New York Times, online edition. I first signed up back in 2011 and after many months, when I had gathered all the research I wanted, I quit. It works out to less than $3 a week.
Here's something interesting. The NYT has better archives about Canadian news than either the Globe and Mail or The Toronto Star. The Globe and the Star both began doing digital archives in the late 1980s. Their archives are pretty basic. The New York Times has incredible archives going back to the mid-1800s and they've been able to reproduce it in a nice PDF doc form. When I need to look something up about Canada, or even Timmins or Northern Ontario, I can search the archive and find what I need. Excellent! Below is a news clipping from the front page in 1928, when there was a disaster at the Hollinger Mine.

Concert season

Timmins is struggling with the fact that a lot of big name music acts don't bother coming here. The problem seems to be the fact that no one wants to buy tickets ahead of time and the promoters are not willing to take the chance of bringing in a big-name act without financial security of advanced sales. So a local committee has been formed to try to convince people to be more accepting. I agree with that. The Tragically Hip is performing in Kirkland Lake for two nights this week, and the concerts are sold out. Here's the thing. A lot of people will not pay $100 for a concert ticket but they will think nothing of going out of town, paying gas, paying hotel, paying restaurants etc to see a concert. I would rather go out to a great dinner with friends and then take in a nice concert right here in town. $100 would be a bargain!

Socks and suits

I mentioned I was in court last week. And the lawyers were there. Suits and socks. Did you know that it’s a fashion thing now to have loud colourful socks? Oh yeah! That’s the thing when you have to wear a suit now. So when you’re in court, you’ve got lots of time to look around. Sure enough, Toronto lawyer guy is wearing socks with big polka dots on them. Oh well, if that’s what you like, enjoy.

 

But then I noticed all these guys wearing suits that looked just so, so uncomfortable. I mean, the men’s fashion industry is just terrible. I know these people have to change things around every now and then make money, but holy moley, these new suits just suck. They may look pleasing to some people, but I think they look so uncomfortable to wear. I am sure I felt uncomfortable just looking at them. I dropped into a men’s store last week to check out some blazers. By mistake I grabbed a suit jacket, with my size, and tried it on. OMG it was terrible. The arms were so skinny and the armpits felt like they were up to my ears. I couldn’t possibly imagine wearing a suit jacket all day. The guy said it was the “European cut”. I mentioned that I thought we got rid of all the dumb stuff from Europe in the last war. The guy just looked at me. Blank. I don’t think he got it.

Anyway, I wore suits for years. Still have one, just in case somebody dies! LOL I am not being disrespectful to the courts. I like to wear a nice cashmere blazer, a crisply pressed shirt and my best jeans. I don’t have any loud socks. Just sayin’

Helicopters and Horses

It has been a crazy week for news in Timmins, but as I always tell the younger reporters, there is more news in Timmins than you can wish for. On Wednesday we learned there had been a break-in at Canadian Tire and that it was suspected an armed gunman was still inside the store. It created a huge response from local police and OPP. As it turned out, the guy who did the break-in got away minutes before police showed up, even though he was on the surveillance video.

Another story was a happy news story about our local firefighters were rescued a horse that fell into a mudhole in a gully. I was happy to be there and watch the rescue. And yes, at last word, the horse is okay.

My hands were shaking...

Okay some days, the news gets a little too intense. It happened on the weekend when a seriously disturbed young man set fire to a two-storey apartment house, while arguing with the Timmins police. The man was refusing to leave the house. He holed up in an upstairs room, while the fire burned and the smoke grew thicker. After several minutes, he opened the window and decided to get out. I thought, holy crap, he's going to jump. I didn't like watching this, but I knew I had to photograph it. I felt ill and my hands were shaking. As it turned out, he jumped onto the little porch roof at the left. After several more minutes, police were able to convince him to climb down a ladder. The guy was arrested and charged with arson, among other things. I hope he gets some professional help.

Photo by Len Gillis ©

Waiting on my pears...

The doctor tells me I have to eat more fruit ... but nothing too sweet or sugary! What? Yeah, so he gave me a list of "good" fruits. Seems bananas are not on the good list, neither are grapes. I love grapes. So the other night, I closed the curtains and turned off my cell phone just in case. I ate some grapes. Oh god, they were so juicy and good. Now,  he says pears are good. I like pears. But you have to wait for pears to get just right, just when they're soft, and so juicy. I call it slooshy! So I am waiting. I bought these pears about five days ago. They're still hard, well not THAT hard. But I came home from work today just hoping to have them. They were not ready.  I figure sometime in the next day and half, they will be perfect. I can't wait!

Covering court

Spent a couple of days this week in court, covering police commission hearings, since our police chief was accused of improper conduct. It was all about a couple of traffic tickets and a member of city council. Here's the thing that worries me. There was very little news coverage of it since our local media companies are not willing to commit the time to sending their news people to cover local stories that requires some time and effort. The reporters are all great people. Young and hard working and willing to learn. Their bosses don't care. Only three reporters showed up the first day of the hearing. Four reporters showed up for the second day. I remember there was a time when our local radio station CKGB would run with a full ten minutes of news and sports every morning at eight oclock. Now they run 92 seconds of information, and it is certainly not news.
Rant number two: Court is boring. The lawyers and witnesses drone on and on, hour after hour, repeating the same testimony. It is hard to hear because even the air conditioning system is louder. Every now and then,  a real interesting bit of info comes up and you furiously take notes ... and then the reporter next to you, a smoker, breaks into a coughing fit and you can't hear a damned thing.

You still play CDs?

So when is the last time you played a CD? I was thinking about that last night just before I went to bed... You see my bedtime is something of a ritual. A glass of water, a book and music. I usually tune in to Grooveshark.com for my music, or CBC Radio and I set the time so the radio shuts off in 59 minutes. I am usually snoring by then and the book is stuck to my face. Eventually I will wake up, have a drink of water, turn off the bedlamp and go back to sleep.
Here's the thing. I found out Friday that Grooveshark was shut down for legal reasons. So there went my link to free music...  Music that I liked and that I picked. Oh well. So then I went to my ROKU box and picked up on another music service Shoutcast.com, which has thousands of free internet radio stations. Last night I found a very agreeable jazz station; Global Smoothjazz out of Monterey, California.  So I set the volume low and there was relaxing music all night. The other cool thing was that I could have chosen rock, country, classical or even folk. And that made me wonder, why do I even have CDs anymore. I guess every now and then, I can pull out an album, blow the dust off my CD player and listen to Bob Bylan or Jimi Hendrex, or even Shania.

Coffee

I have been on a real coffee jag in the past few weeks. I wasn't sure why but now I think I know. Usually I will drink tea in the mornings, which is great. But then during work hours I will run out and grab a hot cup of coffee to keep my engine running. So a few weeks back I had a really great cup of McCafe from McDonalds. It just hit the spot. So every morning now, and lunch too, I make my own coffee ... with the Keurig of course. My brand of choice these days is President's Choice, Costa Rica medium roast. I will go back to tea eventually, but only if I make a bad cup of coffee.

Work in the pit.

As the weeks go by in Timmins I have been checking out the work on the new Hollinger open pit. You can see the bowl developing gradually as they blast away the high ground that has been part of the landscape for the last 106 years. Actually the rock has been there for about two billion years, if you talk to any geologist. (Timmins has lots and lots of geologists, but's that another story).
So I am posting photos from the vantage point of the old golf course road, looking east. I will keep doing that as long as I can see the pit. They haven't put up the "berm" in that area yet. In the bottom photo here, you can see where they poured tonnes of concrete in the foreground. Somebody said that will become part of the road as the trucks will descend into the pit. By the way, some of those trucks are big. That truck near the upper right part of the top photo is as tall as a two-storey house!

Dreams and good smells

As I woke up a short time ago I realized I was dreaming about cigarettes. I have not smoked since 1986 but I remembered a good smell one morning this week as I was heading in to work. It was one of those really nice mild, sunny mornings with a light breeze. A guy on the sidewalk had just lit a smoke. As I walked by, I realized that I really liked that smell. For just a few moments. I remembered being a smoker and lighting that first cigarette in the morning, and inhaling it deeply. Yup, I liked that. Okay, so I am glad I quit, but there were some things about smoking I liked.
That reminded me of the time I worked a whole summer on a tobacco farm, near Simcoe, ON. It was hard work, but the money was good and I needed the money for school. The summer of '73. I have a great memory of a wonderful smell from that time. I worked for a farmer named Hank Bakker and he gave me responsibility for my own field of crop. I never worked in farming before, but I enjoyed it and so Hank kept me on beyond the greenhouse season, which was late May.
I don't know how big my field was, but it was several acres. I had to cultivate it, disc it,  plant it, hoe it, irrigate it, do the topping and suckering and by early August, it was one beautiful field of shoulder high tobacco plants. The plants get topped with very nice white flowers and I remember being out at about 5:30 one morning to admire the field. It's kind of like looking in the mirror when you're a teenager. That's when I realized how amazingly good the field smelled. The flowers give off a fragrance that is a cross between honey and vanilla. I won't forget how nice that smelled.

Timmins is changing...

Just a photo I was able to shoot today, showing the change in Timmins as the Hollinger Open Pit mine continues to progress, as you can see in the left side of this photo. Algonquin Boulevard runs along the right side. That's the water tower in the upper left corner. Click on the photo to see a larger size.Too bad it was raining. A sunny day photo would have been nicer...

Fish from China ... I don't trust it!

I was shopping for groceries today when I decided that I should buy more fish. I like frozen fillets because they're easier to prepare when I am in a hurry. So there was Captain Highliner haddock in a nice package with several nice portions. The fine print said Captain Highliner of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, which is fine by me. I looked closer and the package said Product of China. What the heck? No Thank You! I threw the package back in the freezer bin.
From what I have read, the preparation and packaging of fish by fishing companies in China sees different chemicals added to keep the fish "fresher" for longer periods. That's just not appealing.
So then I saw another package of frozen fillets. Alaskan Pollock it said. Sounds good. I picked up the package, which said it was "imported" by some USA company. Okay, fine. I looked closer. Product of China. No Thank You!
So now when I want a fish dinner, I will have to go out and buy "fresh" fish, the non-frozen fillets you see in the glass case, on those beds of ice, in the grocery stores. I just hope that stuff doesn't come from China either.
So there you have it. The only China I want with my food is the Royal Doulton dinnerware I serve it on.

On being impatient ... or I am bored?

Okay so I am disappointed with myself for being, hmmm… for being impatient I guess. Here’s the thing. I rented a movie this week. It was okay, but predictable. So I was watching the movie, got the gist of the story and grabbed the remote and zoomed ahead by about 35 minutes. Watched a few minutes more then zoomed ahead to get the ending. It was okay.

Good thing I didn’t have company eh. But hold on, it gets better … or worse. I was reading a book, one of those adventure thrillers. The good guys are chasing down the bad guys, except in one part, they have to crawl through a tunnel. Hell no, it wasn’t a tunnel, it was a pipe! About 22 inches wide. So the story goes on for about 25 pages describing how they get through it. So I just said blah, blah, and skipped ahead. There was still about 150 pages page, so I knew the good guys were going to make it. Now I am angry at myself for the principal of it. If I am going to read a book or watch a movie, I promise to read ALL of it. As for movies, if I don’t like it, well that’s it, I just stop watching.

Things change in Timmins.

The landscape in Timmins is changing quickly with all the work going on at the new Hollinger mine open pit. In the first photo you can see the rocky area behind the fence, which is just across the road from the Food Basics store and the  Salvador soccer field, taken this morning. In the second photo you can see a nice photo of the blast this afternoon of that same area. Nearby, work progresses on the berm, the big wall of broken rock that is going to surround the pic. That bulldozer in the third picture is a big D9, one of the larger Caterpillars out there. It is indeed big. But in the fourth photo you see how small that D9 looks next to a Cat 75 tonne mining truck. Click on the pic to see them large size.

That's right, snow in Timmins on May 19th.

Yup, this is what Timmins has been talking about today. SNOW! On the day AFTER the May Run long weekend. Oh well, that's just Timmins...

Timmins is sure changing...

This is the new Hollinger Pit, looking eastward and this area used to be the Hollinger Golf Club. looking toward No. 1 hole. And that high spot near the water tower is where the No. 2 tee off used to be. Things sure do change...

Buying online... not right now!

I have become an online shopper. I am not one of those people who enjoys wandering around a store looking for sales. If I need something, I will buy it. If it is on sale, then all the better. The nice thing about online is that you can search out the one thing you really want or need, and then get it. I do support shopping locally, but I have to say, many of the things I want, I cannot find in a store.
That being said, I haven't purchased anything online since before Christmas. The value of the Canadian dollar has really tanked in recent months. On Friday, the U.S. dollar was at $1.20 compared to our canuck buck.  So even though I was thinking of getting some new shirts, I am going to wait.
Oh here's the other thing. I like to buy shirts at L.L.Bean ... They're usually at a very good price, AND the quality is great. I am still wearing shirts that I bought five years ago. They just don't wear out. But I will not pay the inflated U.S. price... well, not unless they're on sale at more than 20 per cent off!

Five CN towers!

The May long weekend has finally arrived and so I guess I can safely put my parka away for another year (Knock on wood!). Although I remember one year, maybe about ten year or 12 years ago, there was still ice on some of the lakes around here.
In Timmins, the weekend is called the May Run and it is sort of a rite of passage for young people about to graduate high school to get out in the bush and have one last party with all your school chums. The other tradition is that we always seem to have rain on the May Run weekend. Sure enough, there was rain last night and early this morning.
I had another good week at work and one the stories I was writing was about the big mining show coming at the end of the month. Now for those in the know, there is a slump right now for mining exploration.
That’s the process where prospectors, claim stakers, geologists and other rock science people are out there looking for new mineral prospects.
The price of gold is in a slump and so the investment money is in a slump too. All across Canada. But not in Timmins; well not as bad as other places.
Yup, the prospectors here are still hard at work and a lot of diamond drills are still active. Now a diamond drill is a machine that bores deep into the earth and pulls up rock samples in the form of rock core. They’re called diamond drills because the drill bits that cut into the rock are actually hollow tubes crusted with diamonds that allow the bits to drill a nice circular hole in the rock. Imagine digging into wet sand with a paper towel tube and bringing up a sample of sand. That’s how it works. So there is still that optimism here that you don’t see in some other mining towns.

The other interesting thing is that the world famous Kidd Mine (famous for copper, zinc and silver) has only six years left before the mine is empty. Well, that’s not all true. There is still ore at the Kidd Mine, but it is too deep… more than 10,000 feet, to get at it and bring it to surface economically. So how deep is 10,000 feet. Imagine FIVE CN towers stacked one on top of the other… And it is still deeper than that.
So a lot of people are putting their hopes into gold again. By the time the Kidd mine is ready to close, the price of gold should be back up there close to $2,000 per ounce.

Rambling on

Went out with the gang Friday night to a sushi restaurant. So I am not adventurous with food anymore. I ordered rice and steak. I don't know where the seafood comes from for these restaurants and I have heard of fish farms in the far east located next to sewage plants. So I passed on the fish. From now on I am only buying fish caught by U.S. or Canadian fishers.
By the way, I left my vehicle parked downtown, in the company parking lot Friday night. Took a cab home.  So I got some exercise Saturday walking back downtown.
Things are slowly changing at work, now that Sunmedia has been purchased by Postmedia. We had the eastern Canada vice president visit last week. She spent a day meeting with all the staff. She gave the gang a pep talk on the importance of print journalism, how it will continue to be vital to small communities especially as radio and television keeps cutting their news departments. These things never happened with Sunmedia. She even had dinner with the mayor. . I think the best change was the decision to shut down anonymous comments that we allowed on the website. Thank goodness. There is enough stupidity in the world without encouraging people to leave anonymous comments. It was obvious that the same handful of people were the only ones leaving comments and more often than not, those commenters resorted to attacking each other. I think some bright-eyed university student could do a sociological study on the degrading behavior people display when anonymous commenting is permitted. It's like the moment people go online, they step into a bubble of dumbness. I can't figure it out. I used to get upset about it. Now I just get embarrassed for those people.
Neil's birthday happened last week. So we had a quick online chat. He is happy. Life is treating him well in Vancouver. I don't think he plans on returning to Timmins. That's okay. But OMG, he is 35 now. Can you believe that?