Monthly Archives: February 2010

Finding time to read

By Bruce | Published: February 4, 2010
Reviewing the footnotes in the story about the HMS St. Lawrence that I just added to the Solid Gold Box took me back twenty years. I remember spending all day poring through the primary source documents (usually in maddeningly-pale photocopies), and then “relaxing” in the evening with the secondary sources that rounded out my understanding [...]
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A remarkable fine ship

By Bruce | Published: February 4, 2010
A remarkable fine ship is the story of the HMS St. Lawrence, and the fighting ships built to achieve superiority on Lake Ontario during the War of 1812. It was published in The Beaver in 1992. I came across this story in the vault, a double-spaced, fuzzy carbon copy that extended into pages of footnotes. We [...]
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The end of the ’80s

By Bruce | Published: February 4, 2010
Ah, look. There are some alarming things in this pile. This photo shows Rob Miller-Tait and I performing with the coz in June 1991 at a Multiple Sclerosis benefit concert organized by the coz and the MS Society. This is apparently living proof that the ‘80s didn’t die at the stroke of midnight on December [...]
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The eulachon

By Bruce | Published: February 2, 2010
The eulachon was first recorded from British Columbia waters in 1866 by A. Günther on the basis of 4 specimens 8 to 9 inches in length, collected near Vancouver Island by C.B. Wood, surgeon on H.M.S. Plumper, and presented to the British Museum. The eulachon is common along the whole coast of British Columbia, particularly [...]
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The coldest and bleakest

By Bruce | Published: February 1, 2010
If your readers only kept in their minds the very vague ideas they entertained of what this Province of Manitoba was like as short a distance of time back as ten years ago, I think most of them will remember that Manitoba was then classed with the Hudson Bay itself in being only fit for [...]
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Santa Maria

By Bruce | Published: February 1, 2010
The newspaper column I write these days is supposed to be about tourism. Sometimes I have a tough time holding myself to this broad theme, though I always try to at least give it a nod as I pass by… First published in THE NORTHERN VIEW, August 26, 2009. The CBC documentary “This Beat Goes On” premieres [...]
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Raise a little hell

By Bruce | Published: February 1, 2010
If you don’t like What you got Why don’t you change it If your world is all screwed up Rearrange it Raise a little hell… Brian Smith & Ra McGuire (Trooper), “Raise a Little Hell,” Thick as Thieves (MCA, 1978).
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Bruce Wishart
Whimsies. Sometimes about writing.
Sometimes about folklore. Sometimes
about the sea, or life on the coast.
And sometimes not.