Wednesday, April 4, 2012
The voice of the Pontiac since 1883
Page 5
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Judy’s Restaurant
Hwy. 148, Shawville 819-647-6647
Easter Week Specials WEDNESDAY: Hot Turkey sandwich, fries or mashed potatoes, tea or coffee, dessert. THURSDAY: SENIOR’S DAY - 10% off Today’s Special. Meatloaf with mashed potato, tea or coffee, dessert. FRIDAY: Fish & Chips. Remember our Wing night. SATURDAY - Quesadillas Night. SUNDAY - 4 pm to close: Garden salad, ham and scallop potatoes, tea or coffee, dessert. Submitted by Don McColgan
The Quyon Ferry, Summer 1955 near Fiztroy Harbour Angus McLean with a hat on.
HAMISH THE INTERN
Documentation for the immigrant children parties GENEALOGY GLEANINGS GLORIA F. TUBMAN news@theequity.ca The distribution houses for British Home Children had to provide documentation to the Canadian government before they received any payment for children settled in Canadian households. The early correspondence between the Knowlton Sheltering Home and the Department of the Interior just lists the date and the number of children in the party sponsored by the organization. Later correspondence provides the children’s names in each party. By 1912 when my grandmother came to Canada, the Sheltering Home provided a medical certificate and a form listing all the immigrant children on board the ship. A medical personnel signed the Official Form of Medical Certificate to be used in connection with the Immigration of Children to Canada under Regulations of the Department of the Interior that he/she had examined the 34 children listed below by name and found them to be in good health, free from disease, and bodily defects and were mentally and physically fit to come to Canada. The second document was List of Immigrant Children on Board. This form was signed by the agent Lilian Birt for the Liverpool Sheltering Home having a distribution home at Knowlton, QC. Miss Birt signed that there were 34 children on the SS Corsican leaving on April 5, 1912 from Liverpool. The children “having been inmates of workhouse, are brought out under the authority of the local
The pin number
Government Board for the purposes of settling in Canada and that they have passed a satisfactory medical inspection at the port of departure.” The form listed the name of each child, date of birth, and workhouse from which the child came. Annie Bond, born 1904, came from the Kensington Union. A Canadian immigration agent certified that the 34 children were of desirable class and placed on board the SS Corsican in charge of Miss Birt. The latter form verified the information on Annie Bond’s file, that I received from Dr. Barnardo’s Aftercare that Annie Bond had been under the Kensington Chelsea Union school system. My grandmother celebrated her birthday April 4, but on the immigration form she was one of two children with only the year of birth provided. Five children had only the month and year of birth listed while the remaining children had an actual date of birth given. The Library and Archives Canada database on the British Home Children who immigrated to Canada under the Board of Guardians indicated that the three Bond sisters had come via the Liverpool Sheltering Home with their destination being Mrs. Birt’s Home in Knowlton. From each girl’s file, one learns that these children spent at most two to three months at the Liverpool Sheltering Home before being sent to Canada. The records of the Kensington Chelsea Board of Guardians for the most part are housed in archives in London, England. Apparently, most of these records from 1900 had been destroyed during the Second World War. I will keep searching any and all Poor Law records that I can find for the Kensington Chelsea union hoping to find more information on the family of my grandmother.
SPIRITUAL GROWTH ESTHER COLPITTS
I bought a long distance card to save on phone bills. The rate was great. I was happy, but my happiness did not last. I might have left the card in my wallet too long. I’m not sure, but for whatever reason, when I tried to scratch the pin, it would not scratch. With much effort I was able to uncover nine of the 10 numbers. The tenth was completely obliterated which rendered the card useless. My great saving ended up as a loss. Losses of any kind are not fun. They do not feel good. Dwelled on, they can produce anger and eventually bitter-
ness, and every loss, big or small has the potential to turn or trouble us. If I turn my thoughts away from the pain and ask good questions such as what and how can I learn from this, I will see the situation a new way. Sometimes a solution is just a thought away. Sometimes it takes more but letting go of anger frees up lots of space to think. Thinking good thoughts is wise and wisdom is like a storehouse of gold. When I choose wisdom I gain riches I will never lose. Submitted by Esther Colpitts
Spring into action
getting your bike out of the garage, resume the walking routine that you abandoned and get back in touch with nature. However, being active during the spring doesn’t mean just walking and biking. Be creative. Yard work with all that raking and clean up can be strenuous. So can washing the outside of your windows. Spring is a fantastic season for bird watching as the resident birds become more active and the migratory birds are returning home. So pick up a book on the local bird population to reference and on your next walk or bike, be on the lookout — or you can set up a bird feeder in your own backyard and bring the birds to you. There is no excuse for not getting active this spring. Exercise outdoors is free, eco-friendly and the fresh air and vitamin D that you soak up will be invigorating.
HEALTH TIPS CHELSEA. KEARNS news@theequity.ca The elusive and long awaited spring has finally arrived. It’s time to get outdoors and breathe in the wonderful aromas of this new season. Because let’s be honest, is there anything better than the fresh smell of spring? We’re surrounded by new life and new beginnings and it’s hard not to feel energized. It’s light when we wake up and still light when we get home and we’re tired of hibernating. Take this newfound energy and make the most of it by
HAMISH MCKILLOP reporter@theequity.ca
Come on and think green! According to Jessica Kelly of Table jeunesse du Pontiac, not a single application has been received for funding of the Green Fund, the environmental initiative fund established by the organization two years ago. Very few questions followed her presentation to the Pontiac MRC Council at its annual general meeting March 28, although Kelly said she does make various recommendations to the mayors of Pontiac municipalities. It’s important to examine what municipalities can do to be even more sustainable, or how their locals can be more environmentally supportive in a community context. It’s hard to imagine that not a single person or group would be interested in collecting up to $200 in funding from the Green Fund, whether for a garbage cleanup or a local project for the purpose of saving the environment. A couple hundred dollars may not seem like a lot – certainly a step down from the $500 offered by the Table in the Local Youth Initiative Fund that helped Pontiac High School fund its greenhouse project not long ago – but it’s still enough to buy more than 1,000 industrial outdoor garbage bags that could be used to clean up a community. According to Kelly, the high school’s greenhouse had been abandoned for years but recently the school decided to reopen it. Some may argue that environmental sustainability is a myth and that there is no such thing as environmental degradation, that such terms are exercised simply for political gain when such figures see fit. Whoever may argue this should not be involved in politics, but instead brought to realize that there are larger issues at stake than our political motivations. These are the issues we deal with that decide the future of our brothers, sisters, children and grandchildren.
ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Continued from page four The Australian Museum website confirms this information. Here we learn, “Like the Platypus, the Short-beaked Echidna is an egg-laying mammal or monotreme and lays one egg at a time. The eggs hatch after about 10 days and the young emerge blind and hairless. Clinging to hairs inside the mother’s pouch, the young echidna suckles for two or three months. Once it develops spines and becomes too prickly, the mother removes it from her pouch and builds a burrow for it. It continues to suckle for the next six months.” Down Under Dreaming This is the last of my columns written and filed from Australia. As my Australian family and friends prepare for winter Down Under, all of us Pontiacers are looking forward to spring and summer. I hope you’ve enjoyed these stories… I look forward to returning to Oz in a couple of years. Katharine Fletcher is a freelance writer, columnist and author. Contact her at fletcher.katharine@gmail.com
HEZ CNickey 306 Main St., Shawville 819-647-5777
Sunday, April 8 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Includes Breakfast and Dinner Items Salad Bar, Dessert Bar, Coffee, Tea and Juice $14.95/person • Reservations Recommended
5032 Hwy. 148, Quyon
819-458-2209
TURKEY DINNER Sunday, April 8 from 1-9 pm with all the trimmings $12.95
Served from 4:00 p.m.
OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK - 6 AM - 10 PM
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EASTER BREAKFAST at Norway Bay Golf Course Sunday, April 8th Served from 8:30 a.m. on NO RESERVATIONS REQUIRED Draw for an Easter Basket full of goodies!
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POLITICALLY SPEAKING DAVID HARPER
Trio of significant political events occured in the final days of March On March 20, the Charest government presented a budget that still has university students protesting in huge numbers about new tuition increases and most citizens confused about government plans to spend megabillions on Northern development; on March 27, Ontario’s McGuinty government presented a budget without tax increases but with cuts in virtually every category other than education and health, as promised. The federal Government of Canada budget landed on March 29 with a barely discernable thud, despite its 500-odd pages of mixed messaging. This budget had been eagerly anticipated by True Blue conservative voters, the ones who just knew we’d finally get a real Stephen Harper budget once he’d obtained a parliamen-
tary majority, anticipated to be the defining document of the federal conservative polity, the light that would illuminate the future direction of Canada for Canadians through its well-considered policies and frugal Big C budgetary stewardship of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars. On that basis alone, the early opinion is that the budget barely earned a passing grade. It doesn’t seem all that long ago when the NDP was understood to be the Party of what was termed the political Left. That was taken to mean, generally, a Party that promoted values of human dignity, achievable through good-paying employment, generous health care and an education system open to all. The major NDP achievement to date is considered to be Canada’s universal health care legacy.
Liberals, for their part, espoused the values of equal opportunities for all in every area of life, improved environmental standards and strong support for immigrants’ and womens’ rights issues. Liberals, when in power, declared Canada’s independence from Britain, gave us the red Maple Leaf flag and the Bill of Rights declaration. The core values of any Conservative Party were most often defined as lower taxes, smaller government and freedom from restraints and restrictions on trade a n d c o m m e r c e . Conservatives are remembered for giving us the North American Free Trade Deal. Initial response to this first Stephen Harper Government majority budget has been mostly verbal head scratching, as in, where is there any “defining”
Conservative vision in this document? There is a considerable amount of vague generality language in the budget, but very little program or policy detail, and financial information that will be forthcoming over future months and years is decidedly anticonservative in its lack of particulars regarding timely detail for most current costs and future expenditures. Some things are notable by their absence (the F-35 Stealth bomber, the environment) and others by their inclusion (selling off foreign embassies, killing the penny); all in all, very bland overall with a few notable exceptions, and decidedly small-C conservative in tone. Some of the mass media personalities and pundits are suggesting that, at first blush, the recent Harper Government budget appears
to indicate that the extremeright of the Conservative voter base is being abandoned in favour of that “mushy middle ground” once so successfully inhabited by those hated Liberals. Such a move could indeed seriously alienate their core supporters, those devout conservative evangelicals who were once willing to follow them to the wall and beyond. It is also accepted that the Harper Government could not survive for very long without their full support. Of course, one should also keep in mind that by moving from the Liberals early in his political career to the bosom of the Conservative Party through first joining the Reform Party, then the Alliance Party through which he formed a coalition with Peter McKay’s Progressive Conservative Party and renamed it the
Conservative Party of Canada. At the very least, a history like that does suggest a pretty strong ambition to climb to the top post by whatever means available; at worst, it may suggest a personality predominantly interested in grabbing power, then hanging onto it by any tactic. We'll have to wait to see how these sorts of political predictions will play out over the course of the next few years. David Harper of Bryson taught politics at Cambrian College in Sudbury in the 1970s and worked on Jack Layton's campaign's during the 1980s. He has had a life long interest in politics from his days as a young Conservative and later as a young Liberal when he attended Carleton University in the 60s.
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