#almonte

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…

“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…

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…

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…

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…

2006 There was a time when the best book reviews in town weren’t written by literary critics or bestselling authors. They were written in careful pencil by eight-year-olds whose biggest concern was whether a snowman looked friendly enough and whether a story had enough funny parts.mYears ago, the Grade 3 class at Caldwell Street Public School in Carleton Place shared their thoughts on a…

Photo Burt Elsner There was a time when a summer in the Ottawa Valley wasn’t complete until someone in the car announced, “Let’s drive to Almonte for Peterson’s.” That simple sentence could empty a living room in seconds. Children scrambled for their shoes, grandparents smiled knowingly, and parents pretended they were making the trip for the kids, even though they were just as eager for a cone…