City hall skating rink was deserted as snow blew obscuring efforts to shovel. Snow covered yesterday’s ice, sometimes precariously. Everyone who had been praying for Christmas snow ought to feel a tad guilty… Woman wearing nude pantihose and three inch heels stepped daintly into this snowdrift outside while I gasped. Did her mother never tell [...]

No one on the streets. No dogwalkers, students and professors slipping by, shift workers coming home having stopped by the grocery store on the way. Nobody. Then I see two young women, balancing themselves as though they were walking a tightrope. And a heating fuel truck making an emergency delivery. It is 8AM and the [...]

If you have a message you wish you could send out to your entire city not just your small community, the local newspaper is just the ticket if you word things right. Most always it is pleased to help if your shtick is not simply self-serving. Your words will reach all over the place with [...]

Panhandlers (panners) aren’t invisible. Stop debating as to whether ot not to give them money. Don’t. Instead, look them in the eye whenever you neet, smile (acknowledging they have a right on this planet just as you do) and say, “Good Morning,” in a friendly fashion. Don’t hurry on. Realise that you have a right [...]

We can hear every word & note of the Blues Festival when it comes around in August. Then there’s the stage set up and blocking the street… But all of this negative talk is just so much blowing in the wind. Basically I’m deliriously happy living downtown. I look forward to the crowds, tourists (taking [...]

Everyone was out in the street taking pictures of this gigantic rainbow that stretched from the harbour clear up the hill where I live and talking to each other about how great it was. The rainbow hung for ten to fifteen minutes, dark navy at both edges with bright yellow light in the centre where [...]

Parades, the inebriated kicking your garbage can into the middle of the street where it is then struck multiple times by various vehicles, knife fights (well, in my neighbourhood anyway) and military tactics, training the soon to be sent overseas in handling city manuevers. Yes, this is rare except in a town that houses Westpoint [...]

Our city recycling program includes composting. Here’s a picture of our fliptop bins, (next to the frequently stolen lawn chair, #15). Normally the lid is closed, honest. Those who see themselves as too classy for littering, open the top and drop their coffee cups, beer cans, fast food wrappers and boxes, homework, styrofoam cups and [...]

Funeral home half a block away, active church across the street, entertainment venue at the end of the fence – everybody interested in parking across the driveway. Early on I scrounged an orange metal NO PARKING sign from some student trash which I put out now and then in a pinch. Knowing where it came [...]

Not apparent in this picture of my house is the big crack over the front door after a passing trucker lost control and plowed into the front (before I bought it). Hence the covering vine. Not just car traffic but foot traffic too, (usually inebriated). Some of it inclined to vandelism (hence a new windshield [...]