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EPISODE 298 THE OLD ICE HOUSE…PORT CREDIT FISHERY….AND A QUOTE BY ALVERT EINSEIN

EPISODE 299    THE GREAT LAKES FISHERY…and a  quote by ALBERT EINSTEIN

alan skeoch
March 2021


Where did tis fish come from?  


Andrew, Jackson and Olivia are holding large Coho salmon caught in the spring
of 2021 or the fall of 2020 about two kilometres from Port Credit.

Look at the mouth of this salmon.  Mean mouth.  This  is a top predator
feeding on something in Lake Ontario waters.  


Change is the  only sure  thing in life. Everything else cannot be  depended upon.
While these comments seem overblown when applied to the Great Lakes Fishery
just a casual  look seems to confirm that these huge bodies  of water…the largest
containers of fresh  water in the world…have undergone radical change in the short
time we human beings have had a chance to tinker with the water.  We, you and I, have tinkered
too much  with
the fish populations.  Early settlers believed Great Lakes  fish were inexhaustible.

I am not a fisherman.  One of our two sons, however, is an avid 
fisherman.  He even bought a large power  launch to get him out
to the prime fishing ground just a  mile or so off the Port Credit coast of Lake
Ontario.   He drops his spinners down a hundred feet or so and often hauls in
huge 30 pound Coho salmon.   Fish  so big even Andrew has trouble holding
some of them up for photographic  proof that these creatures who race up
the rest coast rivers  of  North America have become established in the Great Lakes.

Snaps  a picture then carefully slide the ugly monster back into the lake.
“Catch  snd  Release “ fishermen.  Sport fishermen like  Andrew motor their way out
of Port credit harbour in great numbers.  A Trawler fleet is neatly tied up along
the west bank of the Credit River renting space on board for those who will never
have money to buy a boat themselves.  Some tiny outboard motor fishermen 
work their way to the rising grounds as well. 

 “Some of these small boats
break down or run out of gas and have to towed back  to the harbour.  I’ve done
that too many times.  Lose patience especially if a fishing boat has run out of gas.
Takes ages to town a boat back to safety.  Means  I cannot fish as much I\as  I would
like.”
“Andrew, are there any commercial fishermen around?”
“Never met one.”
“Port Credit once  harboured a whole fleet of fish boats.  Are
you sure you have never seen one?”
“What do  their boats look like?
“Like a huge jelly bean with a flap like gate on the side.”
“Jelly bean?”
“Yes…the commercial fishing fleet looked like a bag of white jelly beans
as they motored out to the fishing grounds in Lake Ontario.  It was a
good business that supported many of the people living in Port Credit
through the 10th and 20th centuries.  But it is gone today.”
“What happened>”
“Answering that question is very difficult…super complicated.  Yet simple
to understand.  Too many people in the 19th and early 20th century were commercial
fishermen and there were precious few regulations.”
“Can you tell me why in short form.  I do not have time to listen to a long
lecture.”



LAKE STURGEON…A SAD STORY

“One illustration.  A fish that nobody seemed to want.  The lake sturgeon.  An ancient fish that lived
a long life under normal  circumstances.  The most ancient of the fish in the Great lakes, And also one
of the largest. Some sturgeon were ten feet long and weighed up to 190 kilograms.  And there were lots
of them.   Five million pounds of sturgeon were caught in Lake Erie in a single ear.   That is one great 
load of fish.   The sturgeon was considered a pest fish and there was no market for their meat.  But they
were caught in large numbers just to try and clear them out of Lake  Erie.  What happened to them once caught?\
GOOd question with a terrible answer.  Some were dried and  stacked  as firewood for the steamships.
Others were fed to pigs….and  others were simply used as fertilizer.  Millions of Sturgeon
were taken in the 19th century.  By 1900 they were extinct except for tiny populations in the Upper Great Lakes.
Killing big Lake Sturgeon for no good reason endangered the survival the species.   It took 14 to 33 years
for a female Lake Sturgeon to reach sexual maturity,  Males took from 12 to 17 years.  They were not 
wildly sexual.  Females only spawn once  every three to seven years.  Males are only interested in sex every
from one to four years.   Once fertilized   a female Lake Sturgeon can lay from 4,000 to 7,000 eggs for every
point of the weight  of females.  These old ladies of the lakes made up for lost time big time.  But not after
we humans got here.

Giant sturgeon caught in Fraser River, B.C.  Caught and released by Michael Snell.

Once  the biggest and oldest Lake Sturgeon were stacked as cordwood
or ground  up as fertilizer the survival of Lake Sturgeon was doomed.

NOTE:  THERE ARE 27 SPECIES OF STURGEON (ACIPENSERIDAE) which  can be traced back in fossils to the Late Cretaceous – and even more ancient in the Triassic period  some
245 million years ago.  Found in Eurasia and North  America.  The largest ever found was in the Volga estuary in 1827 which was 24 feet long, and wished 2,571 kilograms (3,463 pounds).
Overharvestng  for caviar today has put sturgeon on the edge of extinction.

Sturgeon

Temporal range: Upper Cretaceous–Holocene[1] 70.6–Present Ma 
Sturgeon.jpg
Scientific classificatione
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Acipenseriformes
Family: Acipenseridae
Bonaparte, 1831
Subfamilies
See text for genera and species.
So most Canadians  will never see a Lake Sturgeon.  

The sad tale of the Lake Sturgeon is only one of the tragic events in the aquatic history of the Great Lakes.  More are coming.


A PUZZLE THAT YOU CAN SOLVE…OR WAIT FOR ME TO SOLVE FOR YOU

Here is  a puzzle.   Perhaps you can answer.  Take a look at those salmon that Andrew and Jackson
are holding.  They were caught tis year…1021.   And they were not far off the coast of Port Credit.
But they are Coho salmon…a Pacific Ocean  fish that breeds in the rivers  of  the North American west
coast.   What are they doing in the Great Lakes?  They should not be here?   How did they get here?
In the next few Episodes I can answer that question and in the process raise a lot of other questions
whose answers  may startle you.

But first let me take you back to an historic event on Feb. 29, 2020 at the Stonehooker Brewery
in Port Credit.  The day before Covid 19 changed our world.

HOW  DID SKEOCH GET INTERESTED IN THE WATERS OF THE GREAT LAKES?



On February 29, 2020, I was asked to give a lecture on the Great Lakes Water to 100 dinner guests
at the Stonehooker Brewery in Port Credit.   I prepared the lecture for two months and figured the audience
would only be able to listen to 45 minutes  at the most.  Part of  our time at the Stonehooker Brewery
would be spent tasting beer and socializing.  Given a choice which would you prefer listening or drinking?

Marjorie Skeoch approached the lectern.  She was nervous but well prepared to introduce the speaker (her
husband).  She opened her speech with a quotation from Albert Einstein.   The quotation was found
on a wine bottle table from the Niagara district.

“Good evening, before I introduce Alan let me give you something to think about…

“THE MIND THAT OPENS TO A NEW IDEA NEVER RETURNS TO ITS  ORIGINAL  SIZE”
   (ALBERT EINSTEIN, as quoted  on the wine called OPEN, a Niagara Merlot)


When  MARJORIE gave her 20.5 minute introduction to her husband as speaker…she closed her eyes  and pushed
that wine bottle off the lectern to smash on the cement floor below.  She knew how to get attention.


Unfortunately or fortunately I never gave the lecture I had planned.  Marjorie, my wife, stole the
show because she was charged with the job of introducing the guest speaker…i.e. her husband.
Normal introductions might take 3 to 4 minutes  at the outset.  Marjorie took 20.5 minutes, “And  even then
I only got as far as 1995”.   She was great.  Made us laugh and cry. She had practiced her speech  for
two months as well.   She  got some information from the label on a wine bottle.  She took the bottle
to the lecture…read the label not attributed to Albert Einstein…and then dropped the bottle to the
cement floor of the brewery.   Shattered.   One member, Shaymus Stokes, jumped up to gather
the glass shards at Marjorie’s feet.  Was she upset?  Not in the least.  She continued to speak
about her husband in spite of the fact that her son Andrew kept tapping his watch along with other
gestures.  

So by the time I got to the lectern, I was an anticlimax.   So the speech wa never given.

Then one day later, March 1, 2020, we all became aware that millions of creatures so small
that they were invisible were sickening and killing people around the world.  Covid 19 took
centre stage.   My lecture that was never given was the last lecture in Port Credit.
We have been in lockdown  ever since.

alan skeoch
April 1, 2021


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EPISODE 299 DAMAGE RAVENS DO TO ME

EPISODE 299   DAMAGE RAVENS DO TO ME


alan skeoch
March 30 2021

It is enough to make me cry.   The ravens.   A pair of them have built
their huge nest of corse sticks high above my  fanning mills.  Sort of hidden but
I knew they were there.   Having a pair of nesting ravens  return
year after year to set, hatch and rear their young seemed  quite an
honour.     

I hardly know they are up there.  Just the odd bit of scratching.
No hoarse raven calls.  that will come later when the babies are
near full grown.  Right now all is quiet.  Our so I thought.

Today I discovered  why they are so  quiet.  They have spent the winter
and spring months dropping great slurry turds on my prize fanning mills.
which  were hidden behind some crates  I never really looked behind
the crates  lest I disturb the ravens.   I believed ravens were intelligent
creatures…most intelligent creatures.   Wonderful  stories are 
written about ravens.  First Nations people on our west coach
consider ravens very smart…but also very wily.



“They are tricksters,” so the legends say.
“How true!”
“They have spent the winter dropping their turds  straight down
on my best fanning mills.”

They  have been quiet.  Not because they are embarrassed at their toilet functions.
They have been quietly laughing at me.  “Every time Alan comes into the drive shed
he looks up at our nest.  He never looks behind the crates.  His prize fanning mills
are steadily being filled with our crap.  And  he doesn’t know…doesn’t even suspect.
He thinks he is such a nice guy.  Giving us a place to nest.   Patronizing us.  We will
make a fool of him.  Drop another load.   Our dung looks like whitewash.  those
red fanning mills are now festooned in streaks of white…piles of white.
We have tricked him …made a fool of him.



Woody  was  quite relaxed about the situation.  He had an “It told you so” look
as he watched me me use a scraper to get the big lumps of excrement removed.
And then the  water and brush to get the steaks of white excrement from everything else.
“Alan, the ravens do not want you as a friend.  
They are bullies…they want to make you look like a fool.
And that they have achieved.”   




It took all afternoon to clean just one fanning mill.   I have five or six sitting under the raven nest.
Now I know what the First Nations people mean when they say Ravens are tricksters.  

“Never trust a raven, Alan”
Why not?”
“Because they will treat you like dirt.”

alan
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EPISODE 297 LITTLE IRON BRIDGE ON FIFTH LINEAT STEELES AVENE….FORGOTTEN

EPISODE  297    FORGOTTEN LITTLE IRON BRIDGE ….FIFTH LINE AND STEELES  AVENUE, NEAR MILTON… MARCH  27, 2021


alan skeoch
March 27, 2021



THIS IS A STORY ABOUT A LITTLE IRON BRIDGE…DOOMED I SUPPOSE
(but on the other side there may be a yellow brick road anD the tin man)

Which  picture do you find more interesting.?  The new bridge under the 401 or the LITTLE IRON BRIDGE…Both of images  are within a few
hundred feet of  each other on the Fifth Line of Halton County and
Steeles  Avenue.  



CREATING A WORLD  CLASS DISTRIBUTING CENTRE 

Great Euclid gravel truck and  a squadron of D 9 Caterpillar bulldozers  have been levelling the land
for months.  Results  are apparent driving south
of Steeles  on the Fifth line of Halton.  

Immense warehouses have been erected.  Most of them are larger than our whole farm.  Imagine 25 acres
covered cement upon which are mounted structural steel be beams 30 feet high… sheathed… with
a few very austere windows and  doors.  This is a haven for hundreds of 18 wheelers unloading, sorting
an reloading the bits And pieces of things we really need and think we think we really need.
One warehouse is so large that I cannot even get a picture of it..at a distance it seems to cover 
100 acres … entrance only allows 18 wheelers.  But they cannot get there because of the
little iron bridge.

Let me tell you the site of these huge windowless warehouses is very disconcerting.  Especially for
those of us who remember the farms that once were here.  

One farm on this site I remember so 
clearly.  Auction sale of everything.  A cold spring day like today. And Marjorie trusted me with Andrew
who was just a little tike…maybe 6 years old.  “Look after yourself, Andrew, I am busy bidding.”
He disappeared into the threshing floor of the big bank barn.  Escaped my notice until an hour or so
later when my parental duty started to get to me.  

“Andrew, where are you?”
“UP here, Dad…look up.”

And there he was walking along a barn beam 30 or 40 feet above me.  I forget that all barns had
access ladders built into the structures.  Andrew found the ladder.  And he came down  without
trouble.  The trouble occurred when I came home and told Marjorie about Andrew’s climbing skills.




At this moment there is a bend in the fifth line where the little iron bridge
sits clothed in trees and shrubs but no foliage.  With leaves the bridge disappears.  I bet the
plans include the demolition of this last vestige of a bygone era.   Road is narrow
so very hard to stop … best to park a little distant.   Marjorie would not let me cross the
iron bridge…fear I would fall through.  If I was alone I would have taken my chances.
Why?  Because on the other side in the deep bruh there may well be ‘a yellow brick road’…and
maybe  the tin man, straw man and Judy Garland.!!   

You think not?  Take a second look…there is a big yellow sign.


alan skeoch
Mach  2021



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EPISODE 295 “HONK! HONK! WE ARE BACK!” our two wild geese came in for a landing March 25, 2021

EPISODE 295   “HONK! HONK! WE ARE BACK!”… our two wild Canada geese landed on the pond March 25, 2021

alan skeoch
March 27, 2021

Today….March 27, 2021, the ponds are dark and grey and all around the ponds is black and brown.  The ice still is present but
melting fast.  In a  month the whole landscape will change.  The Caanads Geese love this time of year.  They feel safe
and get ready for family time.


They arrived while I was rolling barrels  into the barn.  They knew I was  concentrating on the barrels and not the sky so
they flew lower and  honked. HONK! HONK!  Then flew lower still with flaps down, like  huge747’s they did a smooth pond  landing in tandem.
Our Canada geese have arrived as they do every year.  The same pair for they mate for life.

NESTING IS A SEMI SECRET TIME OF YEAR

We see them more in the sky than in the pond.  Somehow they manage to flatten themselves and meld into the 
pond scrub bushes and patches of old plants that are now black and grey just like them.  On some occasions
we have found their nesting sites … more  by accident than  design.   Procreation among Canada Geese is much
like human procreation.  It is a private event….hidden from sight.

Actually they get quite angry when we circle the big pond.  One will take off and circle overhead like
some kind of fighter aircraft looking for an enemy to strafe.  And, once found, the enemy is strafed with Canada Goose
words…Honking frenetically.   Telling us to “Get the hell back to the house or to the barn or to the road”  From the closing
days of March to mid April this is no longer our pond.  It is theirs.  We know that.  The dog Woody knows that and
even when he detects the nest he stays clear.  He never bothers the lovers.

When the eggs hatch and are mobile,  mom and pop…goose and  gander…change their behaviour.  They show off
their progeny.  Strut around the ponds…waddle around the daffodils with those little balls of fluff tucked close behind
them.  They show us what has happened.  

The showing off phase is short.  Once they do the proud thing for a couple of days they just disappear.  I have
no idea where they go with those little balls of fluff.  They must have another pond somewhere close by because they
disappear long before the goslings are ready to fly.

One reason for their departure makes himself or herself known to us in late April or May might
be the reason our geese do not stay around.  We have always had a  big snapping turtle in the pond….with
a moss covered casing as big as a Thanksgiving dinner plate.  The big snapper is a rather omnivorous
fellow.  Eats just about everything from pond weeds, to carrion to little baby geese.  Mom and pop must
know that.   So our ponds…we have four of them covering out 20% of our farm…our ponds are  wetlands
supporting all kinds of wild life.   And  each creature has a special  time.

Right now, however, the ponds belong to our  Canada geese.  

I have stopped rolling my barrels today.
I looked up from my labour as the geese lowered their landing gear and settled on the pond surface so gently that 
there was hardly a ripple.  Why so quiet on landing?  In such contrast to their behaviour above my head?
You guessed it.   They do not want the big snapper to wake up too early.

alan skeoch
March 26, 2021





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EPISODE 294 “JUST GETTNG BY WITH WHAT WE HAVE” THE JOHN CALDER STORY (the stone house)

EPISODE 294   ‘JUST GETTNG BY WITH WHAT WE HAVE”…THE JOHN CALDER STORY (the stone house)


alan skeoch
March 2021





Just before Christmas 1983, their farm house caught fire.  Burned  to the ground and all therein
was gone.  Including the plans.   Including what plans?  The plans for the new house.  Hand drawn
plans from the intricacies of John Calder’s brain.  Converted to paper.  But preserved in John’s 
head fortunately.   

Eleanor and John Calder in 1985.   Look behind them and above them.  what do you see?



“Eleanor, we will just have to build our house of stone.  The bush is mostly cedar.  No black  cherry, oak
or maple.   Dead and dying elms are the only hardwoods.  So we  best begin gathering boulders.”

The old farm house was as dead and dying as the elms.   I visited  there several times.  Whoever built it
had very little money.   Log foundation had settled on the ground.  Perhaps at one time these logs
were set on boulders but all had now touched  the moist earth and rot ensued.  The house was 
crooked.  Jerry built.  But it would make do until John could gather enough boulders from the fence
rows and fields to get his stone house started.  

“Hardly any of the granites have a flat face.  They will have to be split with flat face on the outside if
the house is to look good.”




So, while gathering boulders, John had begun splitting them with a 14 pound sledge.   In his mind
he knew what he wanted.  Easier to build a frame house…2 x  4 balloon framed, bats of insulation
between the spaces , ship lap siding.   Easy.  Such a house could be built in a couple of months.
The house that John built took five years to complete.  And then all the plans went up in smoke
in the house fire.  No one killed.  John got badly burned trying to save what he could  through a
broken window as the fire became an inferno.   Christmas 1983.  All gone.

People lose their houses to fire often.   Many fires are much more  serious than the Calder fire because
death is in the ashes.  John and Eleanor got out in time.  As did Anne, James  and little
Douglas.   The fire could  have been so much worse had someone died.  

But there were losses.  Family treasures.   When disaster strikes, like the Calder inferno, there is
precious little time to waste.  What can be grabbed as you leap for an escape route.  Today, I suppose 
you might grab the computer memory…perhaps a  pile of computer chips.  

When the clouds of Chlorine gas were tumbling down on Mississauga during a train disaster
years ago, Marjorie grabbed the kids, then the animals, then a pile of photo albums as we abandoned
our home.  We had a bit of time.  John and Eleanor did not have that luxury.   We drove up to
the Townsend  home farm in January to see what we could do to help.  Cousin Eleanor carried on
as normal as  she could.  No time for lamenting.  She had 35 Holstein cows that had to be milked
every day.   

“Where is John?”
“In the cellar trying to recover some dishes.”

I am not an outwardly emotional man.  No blubbering. Somewhat Stoic.  But the image
of John trying to clean deeply scoured soot from a few dinner plates rescued after the
fire hit me hard.  John may have made light of the  tragedy.   May have  sincerely felt lucky
since no one had  died.  But he was hurt all the same.  And this pile of dishes, hopeless
looking dishes, was getting his full attention.   He was in shock. Never saw him that way
before or after.  But that moment in the Towsnend cellar I knew the stiff upper lip posture
that John and Eleanor maintained  was partly bravado.

Others knew that as well.  Help came from all around and  from distant places.  Help for what?
Help for the new house.  Help that was more psychological than physical.  Physically John
built the house himself.  He never said that but everyone knew it.  Only John knew what to do.
 John had begun construction and he now entered the full speed
ahead  phase.  John was not a quitter.  He may have revealed that they had been hurt
by the fire as he scrubbed the black from the porcelain dinner plates.  But that revelation
was soon gone.

For the next few years John was really busy.  We dropped by now and then as John
piled stone on stone and the stone house grew out of the ashes of the log house.
He  could not do it all alone.  James, his oldest son, and  Anne, his daughter and,
of course Eleanor  must have been part of the project .  But every time we drove
in the farm lane, John was alone pushing boulders into place, mixing cement, erecting
a catwalk around the pile of stone.

When  the job was done,  or nearly done, in 1985, Harrowsmith Magazine sent a reporter and
a photographer who marvelled at John’s great achievement.   And the writer captured
John’s dismissive comments about what he had achieved.  The article is titled
STICKS AND STONES, HARROWSMITH MAGAZINE.  (copy below).

I do not have the skills of John Calder.  Nor the patience.  But I am able to appreciate
greatness in the human spirit.   

I just would like  to make one  comment about John.  Every time we pulled in his
laneway, he put down his cement trowel or his rock splitter and took time to 
welcome us.  We were received as if we were visiting royalty.  He asked  about our
lives.  He offered to convert our logs and Massey Harris rescued timbers into planks.
It was as if he had nothing better  to do. Which was not the case.  He had  a house
to build.  He did not need  us around.  But he was glad we were there.  
John kept his light under a bushel.   What do I mean by that? Just that It was not in his
nature to glorify his achievements.  


The journalist from Harrowsmith  praised  John so nicely that I think
quotations from his featured article will help you understand  John Calder and his Stone House Falderol.
Folderol?   Yes, John built two stone houses  one inside the other.  

A FEW POINTS WORTH HIGHLIGHTING ABOUT THE HOUSE THAT JOHN BUILT

1) “It’s what we could do with what we had,” John Calder mutters through the flare of a match in his pipe.  What he means is that
he and his wife Eleanor built this imposing 2,000 square foot house near Belwood, Ontario, without an architect, a
contractor or a mortgage…The wood  and stone came, literally, from the land; the labour , all from family hands.
      Charles Long, Harrowsmith Magazine.

2) When they came here in 1979 “the old house was sitting on the ground….the bottom logs all rotten.  John took
one look at that and decided to build a new house from logs he could get from the farm forest.  All he found was cedar
so he  decided ‘the new house would have to be made of atone’

3 “I learned  from John that if you want to build a house the first thing you do is build sawmill,” said Eleanor to Charles Long.
So John scoured the Countryside for bits and pieces until he had a sawmill and planer.  Then he began to saw  the lumber
that would be the floors, beams and walls of the stone house  The joists are 6×6  cedar  and spoliated elm planks clothe the
 walls. The  massive spruce  
beams were too big  for the planer so had to be planed by hand.  “The respect for material shines through most clearly
in this revealing of native wood.” , wrote journalist Charles Long.  

4) John planned a double stone wall.  A stone wall within a stone wall.  A ‘stone sandwich’ if you will.  The air space
in between would act as an insulation barrier.  All built using farm boulders.  The building inspector was flabbergasted.
“You better get a consulting engineer to look at it.  If he says it’s  OK , I’ll approve it.” Approval came in 1978 and John
poured his twin stone wall foundation  using his s small cement mixer driven by an antique gas engine.

5) Dead centre was a  massive stone pier.  The foundation of the twin flue chimney. One flue for the main floor wood stove
which would be the primary heat source backed up by an oil heater in the cellar.

6) The journalist, Charles Long, estimated that John used 200 tons of concrete along with the tons and tons
of field  stones.  John did all this ‘with the help of the kids’  (James and  Anne) and, of course Eleanor.  “The result is a stone sandwich
26” thick. …cross section consists of  8” of stone and reinforce  concrete”  then an air space “and another 8” of masonry.”  This is
a simplification of the process.  Suffice it to say that John had a system that held the dead  air space vertical while the stone
walls were built around that dead air space.

7) And so the house began rise.  The granite boulders split by hand were set in concrete with their flat faces outward.   At every opening
for windows and doors John tied the two houses together with mesh and concrete.   Stable.  But just in case of weakness John 
“Wrapped the entire house at each floor with a double loop of galvanized steel cable tried in the concrete behind he boulders.”

8) Building the stone hose was not easy.  It took five years.”Perhaps time, like the stone, is not an expense to be counted..”
wrote Charles Long who was clearly moved by John’s experience.  In 1983 the old log farm house burned down.
The plans  for the new house burned with the house.  But the plans were still in John’s head…survived.  And the work
continued…roofing, insulation, floors, partitions, doors, windows, plumbing, electricity, heat.

9) Then in 1985 the task was over.  The kids became adults in between. 

I FEEL GIULTY…TO THINK I WAS THE EARTH AND  SKY

While John was doing all this and not saying much about the scale of his project.  I had the colossal nerve
to come up to his sawmill with my beams.  To take his time.  To think I was the ‘earth and sky’.  Let me
adapt the words stolen from My Fair Lady.

What a fool I was, what a dominated fool
To think that I was the Earth and sky
What a fool I was, what an elevated fool
What a mutton-headed dote was I 
No, my reverberating friend
I am not the beginning and the end.

All I ever did was watch…observe the impossible becoming the possible snd finally
the masterpiece.  The Stone House.  
JOHN  AND ELEANOR just had a way about them that minimized their achievements.  

alan skeoch
March 2021





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Posted on

EPISODE 290 IMAGINATION REQUIRED…MY NEXT WOODEN QUILTS…DO NOT KNOW WHEN

EPISODE 290   IMAGINATION REQUIRED…MY NEXT WOODEN QUILTS…DO NOT KNOW WHEN


alan skeoch
March 2021


INTERESTED ?  MAYBE ?

There seems to be interest in the Wooden Quilts so here are a couple of our idea pictures.  Projects not even started.
For those bored
by the subject you know what to do.  Delete or Do not open.  Easy.

This old house, Northwest of Ospringe, Ontario, is a project I look forward to working on.  The house will be difficult due to the
artistic brick work which I may ignore.  Look closely at the house.  Perhaps you can explain why there is a doorway to nowhere
on the second floor.

Ray  Clough owned a nearby farm.   I hired him to re-roof our farm house.  He did such a good job
that he asked if he could live there.  He was not joking.  Now he is gone and we have lost another rural
eccentric.   How did he manage to hammer sheets of green aluminum roofing in place while winter winds
were blowing I will never understand.  He must have had help but the only person I ever saw on the job
was RAY.  I devoted an earlier Episode to him.  My Cousin Helen and her
husband Bill live nearby.  Knew Ray.  As dod my friend Rooter (Robert Root) .  Maybe they 
even know why there is  door on he second floor of the old farm house above … a door that leads nowhere. 

alan skeoch

 

Below the farm house is my truck loaded with Black Cherry logs en route to John and Eleanor Calder’s saw mill.  Eventually some of the milled
lumber became our dining room table.






BEFORE AND AFTER

HERE Marjorie is holding two images.   AFTER AND BEFORE.   As close a replication I could assemble using 1” (One Inch) as my
base number.  One inch…the clue.

Yellow moon was once part of a rope bed, Roof and  verandah cover were once a piece of horizontal barn siding.  Barn was lath from a
wrecked 19th century home.  Smoke was a piece of aromatic cedar as are the fields.  Backboard was ancient 18” slab of white pine
distressed by time.   The model is a former general store and post office in a small village north of Orangevile, Ontario…Hockley Valley.

And Below is another project.  In this case a farm on the road north to Collingwood.   It was suddenly abandoned
due to a family dispute I was told.  Everything left in the buildings although vandalized when we got permission
from a neighbour to walk through the farm.  When I do this picture I hope to capture the gap toothed barn siding
which really tells the story.  Perhaps the even the farm post box, aslant as in the photo.  Too sad for anyone
to want in their house so maybe I will make it cheery by putting full siding on the barn.  When?  We’ll see.

alan


Just too many projects.

alan skeoch
March 22, 2021
Posted on

EPISODE 292 MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDSLE C. I….1999 (BIGGER PICTRE, MORE KIDS)



Begin forwarded message:


From: ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>
Subject: Fwd: EPISODE 292 MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDSLE C. I….1999
Date: March 22, 2021 at 5:03:28 PM EDT
To: Alan Skeoch <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>




Begin forwarded message:


From: ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>
Subject: EPISODE 292 MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDSLE C. I….1999
Date: March 22, 2021 at 4:22:10 PM EDT
To: Marjorie Skeoch <marjorieskeoch@gmail.com>, “alan.skeoch@bell.net” <alan.skeoch@bell.net>, John Wardle <john.t.wardle@gmail.com>, Parkdale Collegiate Alumni Association <info@parkdalecialumni.com>, “marilyn.holmes” <marilyn.holmes@rogers.com>


EPISODE 292   MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDALE C. I….1999


alan skeoch
March 2021


Time has a habit of slipping by.  One year to the next.  No way to slow it down except
possibly by this current pandemic.   Isolation slows us all down which is not a bad
thing.  Gives us time to asses our lives and maybe discover what is  really important…the
single grain of wheat among the chaff as it were.

By chance I came across this picture of my last class.  Our union, OSSTF, send a
photographer to see if I was laying down on the job.  Retiring before really retiring.
I was caught…lying horizontal on my desk while my class did whatever they
wanted to do.  Guess what they decided?  They decided to lean on me!  I think there
is a song about that.



Now take a moment to look at each face.  By now these kids are 22 years older.  Most are likely married with kids of their own.
It is comforting to feel that our country is in such good hands.

alan skeoch
March 22, 2021



Posted on

EPISODE 292 MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDSLE C. I….1999

EPISODE 292   MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDALE C. I….1999


alan skeoch
March 2021

Time has a habit of slipping by.  One year to the next.  No way to slow it down except
possibly by this current pandemic.   Isolation slows us all down which is not a bad
thing.  Gives us time to asses our lives and maybe discover what is  really important…the
single grain of wheat among the chaff as it were.

By chance I came across this picture of my last class.  Our union, OSSTF, send a
photographer to see if I was laying down on the job.  Retiring before really retiring.
I was caught…lying horizontal on my desk while my class did whatever they
wanted to do.  Guess what they decided?  They decided to lean on me!  I think there
is a song about that.



Now take a moment to look at each face.  By now these kids are 22 years older.  Most are likely married with kids of their own.
It is comforting to feel that our country is in such good hands.

alan skeoch
March 22, 2021
Posted on

EPISODE 292 MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDSLE C. I….1999

EPISODE 292   MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDALE C. I….1999


alan skeoch
March 2021

Time has a habit of slipping by.  One year to the next.  No way to slow it down except
possibly by this current pandemic.   Isolation slows us all down which is not a bad
thing.  Gives us time to asses our lives and maybe discover what is  really important…the
single grain of wheat among the chaff as it were.

By chance I came across this picture of my last class.  Our union, OSSTF, send a
photographer to see if I was laying down on the job.  Retiring before really retiring.
I was caught…lying horizontal on my desk while my class did whatever they
wanted to do.  Guess what they decided?  They decided to lean on me!  I think there
is a song about that.



Now take a moment to look at each face.  By now these kids are 22 years older.  Most are likely married with kids of their own.
It is comforting to feel that our country is in such good hands.

alan skeoch
March 22, 2021
Posted on

EPISODE 291 STUD FEE

EPISODE 291   STUD FEE

alan skeoch
March 2021



I do not remember his name.  But I do remember the purpose of his visit.  About a decade or
so ago a wealthy horse owner approached Marjorie at an art show we were doing.  Art shows are
not big deals.  Often there are no sales but lots of visitors.  Hardly worth doing sometimes when
we considered the time involved and lugging 15 or 20 wooden quilts to a gallery…then sitting around
waiting for whatever might happen.   Art is a very subjective thing.  Hated or loved.  But rarely purchased.
I am not even sure I want to sell often.  Like selling myself.

“Would Alan consider making a wood quilt that I can use in place of a stud fee?”
“Stud fee?”
“Yes, I have a mare who is about to be serviced.  Money for the stud fee is not
a big issue with the stallion owner.   He is comfortable.”
“Maybe, Alan will do it.  He likes oddball projects.  Does his own thing.”
“Only issue is size…not too large…will hang in the stable”

Flattering. Imagine being commissioned to create a stud fee.  My dad was no longer around but
were he alive I know how he would have reacted.  He was a gambler.  A horse race gambler.
He rubbed shoulders with the big shots, the horse owners, who paid extra admission to the snobbish
Club House seating at the track.  If dad had been around he would have got a lot more
for my Stud Fee that’s for sure.  He would wait until the transaction was concluded then he
would hit with a whisper.  “You couldn’t see your way clear to lending me a few dollars, could
you  I left my wallet at home.  Pay you tomorrow.”  Or maybe something different like “my car
broke down…transmission…need the car to move my sons Wooden Quilts from a gallery in
Haliburton.  Can you spare a bit of cash.  Do not have enough on me right now.”
I know dad would have made much of the Stud Fee.


I did not charge much.  The horse owner never mentioned a Kentucky stable or the fact the stallion owner
was “really comfortable”.  I thought the Wood Quilt was destined for some poor guy who kept a stallion
and was living hand to mouth.  Like Dad.  So the stud fee was minuscule.  

This was the only time
I ever made a picture for a sexual act.  That was something to brag about.

We met the horse owner at the track later on.  He said the stud fee was just great.  Now hanging in
the tack room at the Kentucky thoroughbred stable.   

alan skeoch





POST SCRIPT


POST SCRIPT

A lot of my visitors at the art shows were kids.  Probably because young minds are more flexible than the minds of more sophisticated
people.  I believe The young mind can find joy far easier than the older mind.  Acid criticism is just not yet fully developed in a young mind.
Juried art shows are avoided.   I make the pictures because I want to make them.  Not because I want a lot of criticism.   I am too old
for that.

Once I was asked to conduct a workshop at a museum down near Simcoe so  I cut out a bunch of cardboard shapes and had
my audience of 10 or 12 make their own wooden quilts out of paper.  Some of he audience were children.  
We had a lot of fun that evening.