Life in Canada

One important new job for dogs is helping humans with our social interactions according to Jon Katz.  He points out that because we are out walking and exercising our dogs, we end up meeting, conversing and sometimes befriending other dog people who otherwise would remain strangers.  It’s been true for me.  I’ve met many of my neighbours and made some wonderful friends because of a mutual interest in our dogs. Recently a popular academic paper has been promoting the connection between the development of human civilisation and beer drinking.  Otherwise shy early humans found the courage to talk and exchange ideas after a few beers, the paper suggests.  Lately I've been thinking that maybe dogs have been facilitating human to human interactions for a long time as well. Our neighbourhood is full of dogs and we've met many of them.  Initially,  I only know the dog’s names; there is Faith, the cute beagle, Josie, a fun loving labrador and Noki, a skinny border collie who can'

At our ski trail system, there is a designated trail where dogs are allowed to run along with the skiers.  Along with lots of other "dog people," we ski that trail a lot.  Actually, our dog insists!  It's a lot easier to live with a dog who gets plenty of exercise. However, one of the less attractive aspects of living with dogs is the issue of cleaning up after them.  In town, we use plastic bags that end up in the land fill.  I've been reading recently about various options for disposing of the dog poop.  Ideally, we should use re-usable bags to transport the poop to our toilet, after which our municipal system would deal with it.  In the bush, far from human population, burying it seems like a good way to dispose of poop to minimise the chance of spreading any disease.  Of course, in winter it isn't so easy to bury anything. I'm not very squeamish, but finding dog poop all over the trail is pretty disgusting!  Now I bring a plastic gardening trowel tha

The old TV show Hee Haw's producer claims the show name was an onomatopoeia for the sound of a braying donkey.  I can't stop thinking how well the name honours our relationship with beasts of burden.  As most plow horses, cart donkeys and sled dogs know, "gee" means turn right and "haw" means turn left.  Both the "eeee" and "awww" sounds can be shouted out loud and clear.  Our old dog Cricket was an expert at turning left or right on command when he pulled skiers and bikers.  It makes sense that he would be an expert as pulling was his principle business and how we exercised him.  Sometimes I would make a mistake at the end of a long run and call for a right, when our house was obviously to the left.  Cricket would glance back with an surprised expression on his face.  As if to say, "Do you mean the OTHER gee?"  We passed under a raucous murder of crows, all of them crowing "HAW, HAW, HAW" in what sounded like a tau

Thomas Edison famously said, "to invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk!"  I always sing along with Muppet Oscar-the-grouch's theme song "I love trash."  Last summer one of our neighbors sold his house and made a big mound of everything that didn't move during his yard sale.  There was some great stuff in that pile!  I tried to exercise restraint, but ended up bringing home three loads using my wife's red, Radio Flyer wagon.  Most of my haul was nice sized pieces of high-grade plywood, but there was a vintage Sears electric lawn mower and a stack of heavy, interlocking plastic strips.  I recognized those plastic strips from a TV ad that promoted them as a way to firm up a sagging couch or mattress.  When I brought all this stuff home, I didn't have a project idea for any of it.  Here is a brief accounting of what became of some of this junk. Our small yard produces an amazing amount of small sticks.  The usual method to get rid of t

When we brought home a stunning dog with shiny black fur and tan highlights, we had no idea what were getting into.  His name was Cricket and he came from a house that contained 28 other dogs, all somehow concealed from the landlord.  Conditions in that house, according to dog shelter workers who were called in to relocate all the dogs, were the worst they had ever seen.  Dried feces covered the floor several inches thick.  Every feeding was an exercise in survival skills when an entire bag of dog food was ripped open and fought over.  Cricket was named by the person who horded all these dogs, perhaps because of his glossy black fur but more likely because his tail had a noticeable crick.  If you have 29 to name, using distinctive physical attributes seems practical.  The fights over food must have been awful and even years later, Cricket was never a good eater.  When that house was emptied of dogs, only 8 were considered for possible future adoption and the remaining 21 were eutha

Ski wax is awful stuff when you find it on the floor around the waxing bench.  It makes the floor dangerously slippery and can also make your shoes slippery if you step on it.  Because wax is strange stuff, it isn't easy to keep things neat and tidy.  Anyone who has scraped excess hot wax from a ski knows that fine wax shavings become electrostatically charged and will cling to your sweater or pants.  In my experience, putting newspaper on the floor under the waxing bench to collect the messy wax will collect maybe half of the wax waste. I had all this negative experience in mind when I recently made a dedicated fixture to hold Nordic skis while we wax them.  I thought I would try putting a wax collecting tarp as close to the ski as possible.  I sewed two sleeves in a narrow scrap of tarp material and then slid a couple of 1x2s slightly longer than our skis to hold the tarp in place.  This seems to work great and nearly all the scraped wax ends up in the tarp, where I can use th

When the rudder on our vintage 1971 Ericson 32 sailboat developed deep cracks and lots of rusty stains, I knew we needed to replace it.  The easiest way would have been to order a custom built replacement from one of several speciality firms I found on-line.  Unfortunately, the easiest way was also the most expensive.  While researching rudder construction, I decided that I wanted to improve on the original design with the goal of a stronger blade.  One thing was clear, I didn't want to be out in heavy seas with a failed rudder. A problem with a lot of cruising sailboats from the seventies is slowly rusting rudder frames.  To be fair, I doubt if many boat builders from that era expected these boats to still be going strong, as many are, after 4 or 5 decades.  Of course, my homemade replacement rudder is intended to be a "next generation" version, correcting weaknesses revealed over 40 years of service.  Why not just copy the original?  After all, it didn't actual

One quiet morning down at the boat harbour, I was installing some curtains I had sewn for my boat's cabin windows.  "Hello, anyone there?" a voice called from the dock.  I poked my head up and found a well dressed man with silver hair and a trim silver moustache standing there. "Mind if I have a look inside your boat?" he asked, "I've always admired Bruce King designs, but have never been aboard one." "Of course," I said, "Please come aboard.  I'm just seeing if these curtains fit." "Where did you get the curtains?" he wanted to know after he found his way down into the boat's saloon. "I sewed them myself, out of some scrap acrylic canvas..." "Oh," was all the man said, but he went part way up the stairs and looked up and down the docks.  Not another person was to been seen.  He returned back down the companion way and told me "I sew, too!!" I guess some guys are shy about

I am a man who sews and that troubles my friend Bob.  I sew lots of dog booties.  I've sewn hundreds and lost most of them.  I experiment with all kinds of different fabrics and closures trying to make a better boot that allows dogs to run in the snow and not get ice-bound feet.  Not all dogs suffer snow packed paws, but our dog Rocket does big time. So far, the best stuff with which to make snow booties is thin, uncoated nylon.  Most nylons are urethane coated to make them water-proof, but the coating makes them ice up faster as well as slower to dry out later on.  I always keep an eye out for good fabric and lately I've been recycling all our old jackets and wind-breakers into dog booties.  It's fun to see dogs wearing wildly coloured boots!  Last week I found an old Columbia anorak of mine that had a really nice, finely woven, uncoated nylon lining.  In hot pink. Initially, I sewed a set of hot pink booties for Ruby, an adorable giant dog of mixed hairy a

Herman "Jackrabbit" Johannsen is one of my heroes for having introduced skiing to North America.  During the great depression, Johannsen settled in the Laurentians region of Quebec and was a patron to the rugged Canadian Ski Marathon.  The Canadian Ski Marathon (CSM) is a two day endurance event, where skiers follow trails beginning outside of Montreal and ending up on the outskirts of Ottawa, some 160 kilometers later.  My wife has skied this annual event many times and has been eager for me to join her.  So at long last,  on a cold February morning in La Chute, Quebec, I entered my first ski marathon. We started training in the fall, with hikes and longer bike rides while waiting for the snow.  Once the ski trails opened, we skied at every opportunity.  My wife usually took care of our ski waxing before every ski outing.  Occasionally, I would prop our skis on a couple of chair-backs and iron on new base wax.  Not very sturdy.  I had already made the mistake of us