The Tayles of Emileeeeee Mcpheeeeee

The Lanark Era Lanark, Ontario, Canada • Wed, Nov 11, 1914Page 5 The social pages this week I chose remind us that rural life in Lanark County was never dull. If you weren’t visiting relatives, you were hunting something, attending a party, skating, or accidentally setting yourself on fire. Before Facebook posts, Instagram stories, and neighborhood gossip pages, there were the social columns.…

The Legend of Thousand Island Dressing: When Lunch Changed History Some inventions change the world forever. The light bulb. The telephone. Indoor plumbing. And then there is Thousand Island Dressing, proof that occasionally civilization advances because someone forgot to pack the right ingredients. The story begins in the spectacular Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence River, where…

CLICK ARROW To LISTEN to podcast Remembering Mr. Norm’s French Fries ( Blog is Remembering Mr Norm’s French Fries –French Fry Truck Series) There are some foods that satisfy your hunger, and then there are foods that feed your memory. Mr. Norm’s French fries belonged firmly in the second category. If you ever travelled Highway 7 through Innisville, you probably remember the little roadside stop…

“Then came July like three o’clock in the afternoon, hot and listless and miserable.” There are hot summer days, and then there are the kind of days that even the mosquitoes are way too exhausted to bite you. Last week’s heatwave was exactly one of those. By breakfast, on Canada Day; the weather app on Alexa had already given up and simply displayed a picture of the sun laughing. I never did…

Summer – Linda Knight Seccaspina Summer in the 1950s didn’t arrive with a notification on your phone. It arrived when somebody’s mother hollered, “Go outside!” and nobody expected to see you again until supper. It was a glorious era when children were raised on sunshine, scraped knees, and the vague instruction to “be home before dark.” Across Lanark County, summer wasn’t scheduled. It simply…

Dear Local History Team, I am researching a major historical event that took place in Carleton Place in the summer of 1898 and am looking to see if your archives contain any localized scrapbooks, vertical files, or family folders on the matter. My research concerns my great great grandfather Peter Blair (aged 74), who died under highly publicized, suspicious circumstances in Carleton Place on…

Owning an urban forest sounds terribly sophisticated until you discover you’re the unpaid park ranger, emergency arborist, and chief financier of a bunch of leafy freeloaders. People hear the words urban forest and imagine a carefully planned oasis of majestic trees. What I actually have is a collection of trees that seem to hold annual meetings to discuss which one will cause me the most grief…

The Ottawa Journal Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • Sat, Apr 18, 1959Page 52 Long before overnight shipping, barcode scanners, and the phrase “out for delivery,” there was Carleton Wholesale, quietly keeping the shelves of Lanark County stocked one cardboard box at a time. Like many great Carleton Place stories, the exact beginning depends on who you ask. Some remember the original warehouse tucked…

Radio Social Notes- Almonte 1899-1902 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Gather ’round your crystal set… well, never mind that—it hasn’t been invented yet. Imagine instead you’ve squeezed around the parlour stove while we bring you another edition of The Mississippi Valley Gazette of the Air, where the news travels almost as fast as a horse willing to cooperate.” First tonight, we remove our…

There are history buffs, and then there are people who send emails that begin with, “Can you help me find the exact fence where my uncle had a gunfight?” Those are my favourite kind of people. The inquiry landed in my inbox in 2015 with a simple request. “Dear Linda, I am trying to find the location of a police shootout on Nov. 17, 1945 involving my uncle, Detective John (Ab) Cavan. It occurred…

A blue whale statue that used to be found in Jardin Des Merveilles, a former children’s zoological garden has been located in Parc La Fontaine in Montreal, Canada. Apparently, the whale housed an aquarium inside it, and it remained so until the Jardin Des Merveilles was closed in the late 1980s. Long before children skipped through the mouth of Jonah’s Whale, before Babar the Elephant greeted…

There are moments in life when you realize adulthood is just making increasingly expensive decisions with increasing confidence. For me, that moment arrived looking at a McDonald’s commercial advertising the new Creamy Parmesan & Bacon Quarter Pounder. The price? Roughly $15.99 for the combo meal. Curiosity is a powerful thing and so my friends is melted cheese. The burger itself is a handsome…

linda seccaspina has a story about Paul McCartney, a song, and what sounds like a very specific kind of audacity. READ- The Day I Tried to Long Tall Sally Paul McCartney That’s exactly where we’re headed — a personal encounter with a Beatle, the nerve it takes to sing at someone famous, and what happens in the moment you actually do it. Let’s start with the story itself. The Day I Tried to…

Please note that this is not a fictional story that it really happened to me and Steve in Oakland California 15 years ago. However, I have told his tale my way LOL On a Saturday afternoon of suspiciously agreeable weather, when the hills of Oakland were draped in their usual cloak of shadows and secrets, a very tall man appeared behind our car as though summoned by the landscape itself. He had…

The “Glorious 12th” refers to historical and traditional events that take place on July 12th or August 12th, depending on the context. If you are looking for local history, the “Glorious Twelfth” is Orangemen’s Day , which has a long-standing Carleton Place parade tradition. The “Glorious Twelfth” celebrated the victory of William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne. When James the Second…

Did you know July is National Baked Bean Month? Before slow cookers, pressure cookers, and electric ovens beeped for attention, there was a much simpler kitchen timer: the sunrise. If you wanted a pot of perfectly cooked beans, you buried them in hot sand, covered them with earth, went to bed, and trusted that Mother Nature wouldn’t let the raccoons RSVP to dinner first. Sand-baked beans—better…

Here’s one for the record books: the Great Disappearing Act of Watson’s Corners—starring eleven-year-old Wesley Barrie. It was 1900, and Wesley had been sent out on what seemed like an ordinary country assignment: repair a fence near Patterson’s Lake. Being an industrious lad, he didn’t stop there. He even hoed the family melon patch before deciding, apparently, that he’d put in enough hours for…