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Issue #1150
Including:

Russ

Nova Scotia Sus

The Ontarion

Doug

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From Russ

PSW

Today is her last day. For months she has been helping me with my bathing/showering, and she never 'let me down' once! "Down" in this sense, means down in the tub, or down on the bathroom floor. In a word, she has been 'my life-saver'. Being of "a ripe-old age", this crock has balance issues, and is prone to falling. In addition to helping me with my cleanliness, she hangs my clothes in the closets, reaches things out-of-my-reach and even offers to make my lunch.

Now, I'm "spoiled-rotten"! How will I ever cope without her? Will I be lucky and get a replacement as dedicated as Gail?

The people at OHIP try to keep us elderly types in our homes as long as possible so as not to clutter-up our hospitals - good idea, but what if said 'elderly' are homeless? Many need hospital care, but are not getting it. Living on the street, or in 'camps' is, for them both unhealthy and dangerous. There are a lot of 'caring people' out there who try to help the helpless: Food banks; overnight shelters; soup-kitchens, etc., but sadly, none of these well intentioned alternatives are not changing the situation much.

Some homeless persons also have mental issues which cause them not to trust anyone - even municipalities which offer free mini-homes with clean, living shelters with beds, safe drinking water, sinks/showers, and toilets - these persons refuse such shelters as they remind them of prison cells!

What's the solution for our "unhoused population?" Do you have a suggestion? I know I don't. Governments think "affordable housing" is the answer. Affordable for whom? The homeless? Many are homeless because they can neither afford to own a home nor rent one! Rents across Canada have reached an average of over $2200 a month!! To many, 'affordable' means working two part-time jobs, and even then it's a 'toss-up' whether to pay the rent, or pay for the high cost of food! You can't blame them for augmenting their income by 'shoplifting'!

Look around you.....many are now experiencing another "Great Depression"! Let's look at how governments handled it back then:

1. Apply for Relief. My parents had to "go on Relief" following the depression. This was a make-work project where men on relief were put to work sweeping the streets of Kitchener and/or shoveling snow from downtown sidewalks. They were paid a pittance.(or were they given 'food stamps'?)

2. Apply for admission to The poor-house. There was a large house on Frederick Street in Berlin (later, Kitchener) that provided 'room and board' for equal labour on the attached farm. It was like a communal where every able bodied person worked for the benefit of all. Yes, men, women, and children had to work for their keep.

3. Beg for one free over-night stay in The House of Friendship, and a hot meal or two. Men only. This was the 'better alternative' to spending one night in the crowbar hotel (Police lock-up) Women and men.

PS During the middle of the last century, when I was a cop, it was an arrestable offense to be a vagrant. One could also be locked-up for 'begging'. The City was ashamed of its poor - so, lock them up - "out-of-sight, out-of mind".

Do we want to go back to those days? I was originally not in favour of giving the poor a "Living Wage"

Constable #20

Kitchener Police Force Circa 1955

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From Sus

Its been a rather cool June so far and we have had some much needed rain. The garden is looking good, the transplants are in and our seeds are popping. We had to haul a lot of water at first to keep plants alive so all that is left to do is weed. Weeds don't seem to need anything to grow, they just grow and grow.

We should have a good strawberry season, they are just loaded with blooms. Last year we picked strawberries every evening just to keep up with the growth.

Yesterday I gave up my snow blower to Zane. I haven't used it for a long time since we have a full size tractor that can do the job. I was finding it difficult to

clean the long lane to the road when the tractor can do it with little effort. It was almost hard to give it up but it made good sense. Sometimes you just have to make good choices and let others do the work.

I'm planning a trip to Alberta sometime this month to visit my sister Michelle. Also my brother Dennis and his wife will be traveling from Mexico to Michelle's place in Bashaw, Alberta. I haven't seen Dennis in years and this would be a good chance to see them. My brother Warren will be there too and his daughter Rebecca. Sounds like a family reunion way overdue.

I wish everyone a great summer and look forward to the Squamidian in September.

Sus

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The Ontarion

Hello everyone

Here we are again at the summer hiatus for another year!

We’ve taken the summer off before but this year seems different! I guess it’s because I’ve had to miss a few Weeks due to my dialysis! Who knew that getting old would suck so badly? Oh well, it’ll happen to all of us eventually won’t it? Where is Ponce de Leon and his fountain of youth when I need him? LOL! It’s 2am and it’s another sleepless night! What else is new?

I remember sleeping through the night with no problems for years! Heck, I even slept better than this at the fire hall even when anticipating the alarm would. Ring in the middle of the night, which it very often did! I finally just put it out of my mind and if it rang, it rang! We’d be out of bed and dressed in the time it takes to sit up now when my alarm clock rings! If I had to dress now like we did back then, I’d miss the truck every time! LOL! That is not to say that never happened back then but, not to me! We had one guy that had to be shook out of bed by someone or he’d sleep until we returned from the call unless the incoming extra responders thought to give him a shake!

Needless to say he got hell from the brass when they heard about what happened! I’m surprised they never fired his butt! It seemed at the time, that he could have walked on water if he tried! Anybody else would have at least been given a few days off without pay for the same offense! This particular guy also had to ride his horse to work from his home in new Dundee when he lost his drivers license for “impaired” driving and he’d tie the horse up behind the station! He (the individual, not the horse) seemed to live a charmed life! Needless to say he was the brunt of many jokes around the hall but still made it to his retirement! I can’t count how many times we had to go to the captain to say “Dave’s smelling like booze again and we don’t want him to be part of the responding crew tonight!” Even then, he’d luck out to have the right captain on duty that shift that would send him to bed or even home in a taxi to save his job! If I’d been his captain then, I’d have had him in front of the chief for sure and then he’d have been gone for sure! But he just kept on screwing up and getting away with mess after mess!

There was even the time when he hit a woman’s car with his pickup truck in the parking lot next to head quarters station and drove away to report for work! The captain sent him to bed to sleep it off but before he found the bed, the cops showed up to arrest him for leaving the scene! Even then, the cops did him a favor because of his job and drove him home in a cruiser instead of taking him to jail where he belonged! Talk about professional courtesy! WOW! That was the one time the chief heard about his screw up and suspended him for three days! Big deal, he most certainly should have been fired that time but once again survived to work another day! Like I said earlier, he made it to retirement!

The only blessing was that he never got promoted beyond first class firefighter and thank goodness he never worked for me when I was a captain!

That’s about all for this week folks! Thanks for tuning in and maybe we’ll talk again next week if we do another week yet! If not, have a safe summer and we’ll see you all in the fall!

Thanks for reading every week!

Doug will let me know if and for how long we’ll continue this run until our summer break!

Bye for now………Greg.

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From Doug

How’s it going…..eh?

We are just coming out of about 4 week of cold endless rain. The sun came out on Wednesday and all of a sudden it is almost like summer. I think we were all starting to grow moss, now we are growing smiles. The endless wet weather gave me lots of time to use my flight simulator. I almost said ‘play with my fight simulator’ but that would not have been accurate. It is not a game, and it is very demanding, just like real flight is. I’ve been working hard on getting my pattern flying as precise as possible. That is where you fly the circuit doing your takeoff, climb out, climbing turns, straight and level flight, descending turns and landings as true as possible. It requires holding headings and altitudes accurately, and nailing the landings each time. Face it, in real life those landings are quite important. The airport I had been using is YPK in Pit Meadows and then I decided to mix it up a bit and ‘relocated’ my digital self and Cessna to good old YKF just outside of good old KW, the field I earned my wings at back in the 70’s. That has proven to be interesting and fun. It feels somehow very familiar. Needless to say I’m enjoying it very much. One of the cool things about using this simulator program is how smart it is, including how it handles time. You see, when its 6:30 in the evening here it is 9:30 in KW and the computer knows it. So, while it is still daylight here it is late evening there and getting dark. I used to love night flying in real life, now I can do it in a sim. Night flying is harder for many reasons but thats ok because the whole point to all of this is to learn, to challenge myself, and to feel the accomplishment of flying without the cost or risk.

As a student pilot back then, we learned in Cessna 152’s. They are smaller than the 172’s, cheaper to rent, but only hold 2 people. Normally that would be the student and the instructor. When practicing without the instructor, you’d be alone in the plane as students could not by law carry passengers. Once a student earned his/her PPL (private pilot license) he/she could get checked out in the bigger 172’s that could carry 4 people, the pilot plus 3 passengers. Those planes cost more to rent but were more practical for most flights. I remember the day I did my first solo. Thats a very big deal in the life of a student pilot. I had been up with my instructor and about half way through my hour of training, he asked how I felt, was I tired or nervous etc. I said no, feeling great. He then instructed me to drop him off at the flying club and head back out to do my first solo. Now I was a bit nervous but confident and ready. Cool. I did my flight checks and away I went. The runway in use that day was 08. After taxi clearance and then tower clearance, I lined up, throttled up and away I went. Up and around the circuit. It was a strange and great feeling to be up there, all alone, totally in control and responsible for the plane and my life. I went on to finishing my training, getting my PPL, getting a night rating and clocking up over 200 hours of flight time. I even flew some ultra lights at one point, just for the fun of it. Now I’m flying a simulator. Now that your eyes have glazed over I’ll move on to some other business.

As you know, we are breaking for the summer as of June 15. That means that next week’s addition will be the last until September or so (depending on interest and demand). If you have anything you’d like included in next week’s letter that would be great, just send it in to me and I’ll make you famous. Or at least I’ll be sure to include it in the letter. Its your chance to bid everyone farewell until then.

Whether you like it or not, I did promise last week to post my audio version of the old folksong that Sus taught us all those decades ago, The Fox. So, seeing as how I try very hard to be good to my word, here it is. As per usual, it is a bunch of ‘me’ doing harmonies and instrumentation and so on. I’d like to think it is what we would have sounded like way back then but that would be impossible as we were just kids then and now I’m an old man. Just click the link.

The Fox
the audio version

Doug

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Have a Good One
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