The Squamidian Report – June 7 / 14
Issue #628
Including:
The Ontarion

Hi All,

Everyone is probably pretty well fed up with me going on and on about the Sea to Sky Gondola, so, I won't bother yapping about it this time. I won't bore anyone with the fact that both of us have been up there 25 times or so now, or that we've made it part of our normal morning routine where we walk the dog, then drop her at home and head up for a nice coffee on the lodge deck and then enjoy the 1 mile stroll along the ridge that takes us to the viewing deck that overlooks the Chief. Also won't bore anyone by mentioning that the best time to be up there is first thing in the morning before too many others get there, and its also nicest when the weather is somewhat less than perfect because then you get those incredible 3D effects. No point in pointing out that one morning this week the valley was still covered by morning marine cloud and that we rode up through the cloud to the lodge. The top of the clouds were just above our heads so we were in bright filtered sunlight yet all around us was swirling mist. The suspension bridge disappeared into the mist, seeming to be held in place by nothing. I won't go on about how as we watched, the clouds parted giving an incredible view of Sky Pilot. The clouds would then close back in and open again. Each view being different. No need at all to mention that as we walked the Panorama trail the mist would move through the trees, creating a magical setting, then open up creating a sun-lit alpine setting. And you'd just find it boring again if I were to talk about how we leaned on the railing of the cantilevered viewing deck that looks down on the Chief and the Squamish Valley with a brilliant white blanket of cloud below. We could look down at the treetops just below us, yet the rest of those trees were invisible, wrapped in billowing mist. Then the clouds opened again bringing the Chief and the valley into view. No, no point in going on and on about something you are probably already pretty tired of hearing about. So, I won't. I'll talk about something else instead.

That 'something else', I guess, would be that I needed new guitar strings. Guitar strings only last so long and then go dead. They lose that bright, sustained sound that makes your guitar sound good. I had to ride into the city last Tuesday for my bike chapter meet anyway so I headed in an hour early and rode down to Long & Mcquade music in North Van. Of course I'm not going to just go in and pick up a few packs of strings and head right back out. That would be silly, although it would tend to keep me out of any possible trouble I could get into while prowling the displays of instruments. They have a room with several dozen acoustic guitars hanging on the walls and the one wall is dedicated to the higher end units. As I headed directly to that wall, a couple of salesmen who were standing there asked if there was anything I needed or that they could help me with. I told them no, I'm just sort of looking, but if I were 'actually' looking, I'd be interested in looking at a Martin HD 35. They looked at each other and said “Wow”. So, that got us chatting. I explained that while I was certainly not in the market for a new guitar right now, if I were at some point to be looking seriously, it would be the Martin HD 35 but that I'd want to test play it and the Taylor 814 and the Gibson J-29 and a few others just to be sure I was making the right choice. There is more to a guitar than just its sound, there is also its 'feel' and how it fits your hands and body and music style. This interest in high end guitars actually came about last February when I was in Ontario and had rented that thirty-three hundred dollar Taylor 714ce. My Ovation Ultra is a pretty nice guitar and continues to get nicer as time goes by but its simply not in the same category as the really 'high end' instruments. Its close, but not quite there. I was able to test the Gibson and Taylor and a Martin D 35, and a few others. They only had the D 35 is stock, not an HD. A quick check of their computer system showed that none of their stores in Western Canada had an HD 35, they'd have to order one from Martin. But like I said, I'm not out to purchase a guitar thats worth more than I am at this particular point in time, so no big deal.

The thing that sets the HD apart from the 'basic' D in the Martin series is that the HD has a scalloped bracing system under the top giving a lighter, more responsive feel and a warmer sound. Both are a mix of East Indian Rosewood, mahogany and sitka spruce, and the HD also has some very fine intricate inlay around the edges. Who knows, I may go back in again at some point in time and spend an hour or so comparing various units but I'm not in any hurry and the whole notion is pretty silly when you think about it. At least for now. Heck, a 'high end' guitar certainly wouldn't make me a better player, but it would probably make me play more often assuming that I'd even allow myself to touch it. When it comes right down to it, all I really did was get a salesman excited, which is kind of fun.

And yes, I remembered to purchase the strings I went there for in the first place.

doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello everyone!

Wow! It seems like I’ve been writing this column every week for years now! Come to think of it, I guess I have and of course so has Doug. Even though it’s getting old, it never seems to get old. Tonight I asked Carole before ascending the golden staircase to the creative sanctuary we call our office if she had any ideas as to what I might write about this week. She’s sometimes quite helpful and occasionally I use her ideas in the Ontarion but this week she simply looked at me and said “Nope!” so I guess I’m on my own. That’s ok, most of the time I don’t need any assistance even when I am drawing a blank as I sit at the keyboard. Something usually comes to mind and the more I type the more the ideas flow. I guess that’s the way it is with most writers, not that I consider myself a writer but I guess I am a writer of sorts. All I can do is give it the old college try and see what winds up on paper! Now “winding up on paper” is an old adage that in most cases these days doesn’t apply unless what one is producing is eventually put into print for an actual literary product such as a news paper or printed magazine.

For our weekly blab, Doug and I produce what is for all intents and purposes an electronic article that can either be saved on a hard drive or simply deleted with the stroke of one tiny key! I like to think that our efforts are appreciated enough that someone somewhere has saved every one of our weekly columns and may someday take the time to print them all on paper and make a semi-interesting collection of our years of written orations! I have said to Doug that I’d someday like to put into print all of our writings and see just how large a binder it would take to hold them all. Maybe that’s an idea for a rainy day! I’ll have to file that one for now and maybe do just that sometime this summer for a “nothing better to do” afternoon! Who knows, that may just be exactly the way Bill Shakespeare started out!
                                                              
The only real writer I know is Russ Brubacher and he seems to appreciate what he reads in the Squamidian and Ontarion weeklies! Thanks for the regular comments and observations Russ!
The admiration is mutual!
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Most days when I am diddling around on the computer I wind up checking out the obituaries in The Record newspaper here in Kitchener. I guess it’s just a habit that one forms as he or she gets older. Not that I’m hoping to find a name of anyone that I recognize but I guess it’s just the curiosity one develops when one realizes that when you reach a certain age, people that you’ve known throughout your life start passing away around you and the only way of finding out about such people most times is by reading about it in the paper! Over the past ten to twenty years, I’ve had the misfortune of attending quite a few funerals of people that have in one way or another been involved in my life. Now, thankfully most of them have not been what I would call close everyday friends but close enough that they deserved my respect in that I would not let their passing be observed without my attending whatever form of memorial was being held in their honour. Granted, I’ve lost close and loved relatives as we all have and that’s very difficult to handle for any of us who have a heart! However, it’s only right that one should pay their respects to anyone who has touched their life in a positive way. Thankfully there still exists a medium such as the daily newspaper that contains a listing of such events as the passing away of friends and neighbours that we may not have kept in touch with on a regular basis. These people however still have meant something to us in our lifetime and thank goodness there’s still a means of hearing of the final event in theirs.

About a year ago I happened to read about the passing away of a childhood friend of mine. We hadn’t seen much of each other since reaching our 20’s and taking different paths in life. The last time I had any contact with David Peter “Bernie” Bernhardt was about a month after my first heart surgery. For some strange reason I felt compelled to find Bernie and just talk about life and the many years we’d been apart. I guess it had something to do with feeling lucky to have lived through the heart surgery I’d experienced in London that year. I called Bernie’s oldest brother Jim who had been a career Waterloo Regional Police Officer and a member of the RCMP before that. He had retired and was only too happy to give me directions to Bernie’s place in New Hamburg. I took an afternoon and drove out to see if I could find my old friend. I knocked on the door at the house address Jim had given me and sure enough the woman that answered the door assured me that I had found Bernie and she invited me in for a cup of tea. Bernie and I greeted each other like we’d been together just a day or two before and we had a good two hour chat about life and the good old days in the north ward of Kitchener. We vowed to get together again real soon but of course time has a way of slipping by and that road of life that’s paved with good intentions once again reared it’s ugly head. The next time I regretted not keeping that promise between me and my old friend Bernie was the day I read his obituary in The Record! It had been 15 years since our reunion chat and of course it was too late then to keep that date. His obituary stated that David Peter “Bernie” Bernhardt had requested he be cremated and that no visitation or service be held to commemorate his life. Since there would be no service I was fortunate to find that the funeral home his family dealt with offered an e-mail service whereby one could express their condolences to his family through the funeral home computer system. I wrote a heartfelt note to his family and was pleased to find that his brother Rob who now lived in Edmonton had received my note from the funeral home and in turn sent me an e-mail to let me know how much it meant to him to have heard from me after all these years. He told me that not a family visit went by where they didn’t talk about the relationship that Bernie and I had enjoyed throughout our childhood until our early 20’s when we went our separate ways. I wrote back to Rob and thanked him for his reply and we vowed that if either one of us ever managed to travel to the other’s hometown, we would be sure to look the other up for a visit. That was about a year ago now and I can only hope that that “road of life paved with good intentions” doesn’t rear it’s ugly head once again!

When Bernie and I were youngsters oh say aged 8 to 15 years, we had a favourite meeting spot in the Breithaupt Park soccer fields. It was a very large Maple tree that was in a line of other trees that divided two of the playing fields. We would meet up in that tree after supper and during holidays and of course nobody else knew about our secret “Tarzan Tree” as we called it. Rob however mentioned that very “Tarzan Tree” that Bernie and I held so special during our childhood years in his e-mail and told me how much those memories had meant to Bernie.
Ahhh ….. the good old days!

That’s it for this week folks!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!

Bye for now … Greg

PS: Something To Think About>
Where was your secret meeting place when you were a kid?

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Have a good one..
the doug
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The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.