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My Canadian Experience
Working through Hurricane Katrina

I've been working through the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina and while publishing to the web site this week have had CNN on watching all that is happening.  Of course life must go on for the rest of us and so it is with myself.

I've approached the local Economic Development Department of Chatham-Kent to see if they would like to help me tell a story of the area. Haven't heard back from them yet but will be interesting to see what they say.

On 1st September 2005 I went out to have dinner with Nola Crewe and Harold Nelson at their home in Port Crewe along with their neighbours and a fine dinner it was too...


You can see that Nola is enjoying her holiday :-)


Here is Pat giving instructions on how to make the water boil a bit faster :-)


Our Pork ROast and one of Pat and Al's sons makes an appearance


And here is the other son and some of the many cats around the house :-)


Nola's house has had a paint job and another cat makes an appearance


Al is carving up the pork joint as we moved next door to have our dinner :-)

A lot of the vegetables for the dinner were from Pardo Villa Acres Farm Market and I did a photo shoot of their store as it has been in operation since 1838. I'd like to do more of these types of projects as it lets people from all over the world learn a bit about what life is like here in this part of Canada.  When I was traveling last year I also tried to show areas that I stayed in both in the USA and Canada as well as when I went back to Scotland.

I had an interesting email in during the week from someone that was buying a house in Chatham asking me if I could recommend a House Inspector and Lawyer. I think they found my journal on the web and as I'd just gone through all this was able to help :-)

Today, Monday 5th September, is Labour Day in Canada so everyone gets the day off.

Noted a news item on CTV today about residents trying to save the Melville railway station...

Figured I'd take a few pictures in case they don't succeed and it's torn down.

On Monday/Tuesday I came to a grinding halt for some reason.  I felt shattered and had little energy or enthusiasm for doing any work. I then got a call on Tuesday to say my grandfather clock was fixed and wanted to come home :-)  Given the way I was feeling I said I'll head out right now and I also took the opportunity of doing a photo shoot on them, Stekelbos.  By the end of the Tuesday evening I was feeling a lot better and my energy had returned.

When I think about it I do mostly work 7 days a week although try to take it easier on the Sunday and have been doing this for a few years now.  I guess I should start to think about taking a day off each week to keep the batteries charged up.

Funny think about Chatham is that if I don't re-visit a place at least a couple of times I keep forgetting how to get back to it.  This time I needed to go to the LCBO liquor store and couldn't for the life of me remember where it was.  I did know it was my side of town and not too far away.  Anyway... Harold needed to go there and he remembered where it was so I now think I have it fixed in my mind.  I need to re-stock on wine and get a bottle of  malt whisky :-)

Also made contact with a person in Wallaceburg as there is meant to be an unveiling of a Wallace Mural on Wallace Street in Wallaceburg on the 25th of September. I'm going up to get a sneak preview on Friday but hope also to get up to take pictures of the actual event.

Today, Thursday, I got by book shelves fitted and they will be back on Saturday to do the final sanding and varnishing and so by Sunday I should be able to get my books up.  The good things about this is that this will finally let me put away my china and ornaments and so get my dining room finished as well.


You can see my clock is up and working and the dining room filled with china which will soon be all put away


And all of these books will also be put away leaving the display cabinet cleared where most of the china will then go


And here are my book cases which will take all the books as well as my cassettes and LP's. They have  built in six drawers in the center which will take my cassettes.

I also received quite a few new books so am trying to get organised on which ones to put up first. At this moment I feel it might be worthwhile to do the Scots in Russia as that provides some new information for us. Mind you I'll need to check on that book survey I did earlier to see what the vote count was on the others I've got.

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