Youngsters often have a lot to teach us adults about empathy. That is certainly the case of nine-year-old Brandon Heyman of Harrowsmith, whose reaction to one ginger colored horse that was bound for slaughter encouraged both him and his mother to step in.

The horse, Karazan, a 17-year-old thoroughbred former race horse, came to the attention of Brandon and his mother MJ after being listed online at a site called Need You Now Equine, (NYNE), a horse placement service that gives slaughter-bound horses one last chance at a loving home. MJ became aware of the site through a friend and of Karazan's likely fate back in August 2014, just when Brandon's ninth birthday was approaching.

After seeing the horse on the site, Brandon commented on the beauty of the mare, (who just happens to share Brandon’s hair color) and begged his mother, in lieu of a birthday gift, to put the money towards saving the horse.

He said, “I just wanted to help save the horse because no one else was doing anything, so I asked my Mom if I could use my birthday money and donate it to help to save her.”

MJ not only did that, she went one step further after realizing that no one was stepping up to purchase the horse. She put up the additional money, a total of $650, to purchase Karazan and gave her as a birthday gift to her son. Karazan arrived at their Harrowsmith home on August 22, 2014 and you can imagine Brandon's shock and surprise. “I was so excited when my Mom told me that Karazan had found a new home and was even more excited when I found out that that home was mine.” When she arrived she was lot skinnier and was a bit rough around the edges but Brandon spent hours grooming her and now she stands tall, healthy and proud.

Brandon was busy feeding Karazan carrots and apple treats when I interviewed the family last week and she was enjoying the company of four other horses and one donkey on the property, some of which were also purchased through NYNE.

Brandon, who has been riding since he was four years old and who now rides and shows competitively, regularly rides Karazan, who was formerly trained to jump and show. She was first ridden by Brandon's sister, Kristen and immediately started showing off her show riding abilities. A vet check also showed that she has a tendon issue that makes her now unable to jump.

Brandon described Karazan as “a nice horse and a real big cuddle bug. She loves her treats and is really good at riding.” Horse love goes deep in this family of six children, the older of whom own and ride their own horses. Their common desire to save sound horses from slaughter also runs deep. MJ has no doubt instilled in her children a love for animals and a desire to get involved to help them. “I want my kids to know that there are horses and other animals that need help and that they themselves can make a difference”.

Kristen, Brandon's eldest sister, bought Zaphira, a 14-year-old grey brood mare from NYNE also in August 2014. Kristen recalled writing a school project on the fate of slaughter bound horses and she continues to raise awareness about the often inhumane treatment and slaughter of these worthy animals. “It's really sad when you become aware of what happens to so many unwanted horses; horses that have been used up by their owners, who can no longer make a profit from them or just no longer have a use for them but the horses still have so much life and goodness in them.”

NYNE is a not-for-profit feedlot rescue community that was set up in December 2011 by its founder and director Tracey Hoogeveen, whose goal is to find homes for horses that are “sound, sane and offer the best chance of a useful future in a new home, and which are currently at direct risk of being shipped for slaughter.” NYNE is not run as a “rescue” operation per se; rather Tracey visits the lots where the horses are held as they await shipment to a slaughter plant and she takes down information about the animals and photographs them. She then posts those on the NYNE site. She and her crew at NYNE never actually own the horses but instead facilitate purchases directly from the dealers. To date NYNE has placed more than 500 horses in new homes. Some of us who love animals do not have the means or property to have horses, but some in the community do and may want to look into giving a new home to one of these animals. For more information visit needyounowequine.com

By Jonathan Davies

The average age of farmers in Canada keeps rising, and while leaving a pasture for a golf course may be a welcome relief for some, retirement can be a daunting task in itself. The B.C. government's website features a guide for farmers ending their careers, which begins: “For many people, dealing with succession planning and farm transfer arrangements is sort of like taking on a porcupine - it's prickly and hard to approach - a creature one would just as soon avoid entirely.”

Local sheep farmer Carolyn Turner has recently gone into retirement and her experience has been less prickly than many. Last spring she sent sheep off to Cookstown auction in Toronto for the last time, bringing in a decent profit as it coincided with Ramadan – a time of high demand for lamb.

It was a long time coming – 43 years to be precise – but the time she spent farming for a living was joyful. “My passion was always animals,” she says.

Her mother grew up on a farm during the Depression and knew she wanted to live in town. She married a teacher and they settled in Bowmanville, where Carolyn was born and raised along with two brothers.

Her father, who taught science and agriculture studies, pointed out the breeds of cattle as they drove to visit her maternal grandparents who were still farming. A horse-crazy teen, Turner went on to study at

Queens but cut her graduate studies short when, in 1972, she and her husband Ron came upon a 40-acre property in Elginburg.

They bought the farm and while it underwent growing pains early on, these were eased by the fact that she started small, had the added security of a teaching income in the household, and, perhaps most importantly, knew she was where she wanted to be.

Horses came first. They converted old stalls into boarding boxes and began with a couple of their own Arab mares, eventually boarding on a small scale. And while horses would be a continued presence, sheep became a more prominent fixture in the late '70s and grew to a flock over 50-strong at its height.

Turner's focus was on meat and she initially marketed her product through direct sales. She brought her sheep to now-defunct Hoffman's for cutting and wrapping, and then delivered the cuts. Her customer base began with a few friends and acquaintances but grew quickly to a point where she could not keep up with demand.

While this marketing avenue was successful, devoting time to deliveries and attention to the myriad cutting requests grew cumbersome. For roughly the last two decades the sheep were sold to

Cookstown through a delivery driver with good instincts for when to ship for a good price. On top of this, the rigorously-tended herd presented well, and she often got top dollar.

But even for an animal lover whose farming career has gone well, there comes a point where the physical demands, coupled with worries over threats to flock health, lead one to wind down the business. While Turner insists she needs animals in her life, she has been glad to let go of lambing – being up at all hours for a stretch of nights in early spring every year – and the burden of diseases like Sore Mouth and Foot Rot that can crop up even in the most meticulously-run farms.

Foot rot appeared on Turner's farm about four years ago and persisted through a variety of treatments. An anaerobic disease affecting the area between the toes, it can leave the animals lame. While she was able to eventually bring the disease under control, it was a harrowing ordeal. This alone did not shutter the operation, but with her own health problems – worn knees and heart trouble - it became clear that a change was in order.

Turner has not followed the clichés of Canadian retirement: golfing in the summer; wintering somewhere warmer. She still has 21 sheep left to take care of, and while she has stopped breeding them, they are used in training herding dogs, which her neighbour Lorna Savage raises.

While many farms grapple with easing a farm business on to a new generation of farmers, Turner has not gone this route. There are, however, young farmers raising sheep, creating a more indirect succession. Though she is retired, Turner remains a wealth of knowledge on sheep and horses – one of those rare individuals whose hunger to learn more about them is never sated.

Jonathan Davies is a farmer himself. He operates a small farm at Harrowsmith with his partner X.B. Shen. Jonathan is contributing a series of articles called Frontenac Farming Life, which profiles the lives of local farmers who are trying to make a living through farming, navigating struggle and hope. If you would like to have your story considered, please contact Jonathan at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Shirley was born and raised in Sharbot Lake, and although her family moved to Perth when she was nine, in 1935, it was her first school principal at Sharbot Lake Public School who introduced her to naturalist pursuits.

“He took us outside and introduced all sorts of vegetation and birds, showed us Blue Herons. It certainly caught my attention,” she said,

Shirley always returned to Sharbot Lake on weekends to visit her grandmother. In 1988, she had a small house built on the lake, on a lot in the village that was still in her family, to serve as her winter home.

It was difficult to talk to Shirley on Tuesday, because the phone kept ringing as friends from all over were calling to congratulate her as news of her appointment to the Order circulated around the province.

“I’ve known for three weeks, but I wasn’t to tell anyone except for family until it was officially announced,” she said, but since Shirley is not exactly prone to self-promotion it is likely she wouldn’t have told anyone about it at all if it hadn’t already been publicized.

After being raised in eastern Ontario, Shirley said, “I wanted to know what it was like to live in different parts of the province.” That led her and her husband, who was a teacher, to move to Kenora. In 1956 a road was built joining Quetico with the rest of Ontario, and it wasn’t long after that that Shirley made her first trip to the park.

Fifty-four years later, her story has become synonymous with that of Quetico Park. Marie Nelson, who has worked as a ranger in the park with her husband Jon, is the person who put the application for the Order of Ontario togethe

Shirley Peruniak was born at Sharbot Lake in 1926, and she can trace her family roots back at least two generations further to a grandfather who lived south of the village near the Tryon Road. She attended Sharbot Lake Public School until she reached grade 7. Her father, who worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway, was then transferred to Perth to work in the office of CPR Express, a postal mail and parcel service. Although Shirley did not live full time in Sharbot Lake for over 50 years (1935 until 1988) she always came back to visit her grandparents and other relatives for Christmas and summer holidays. They

who owned a number of cottages on the lake, and rented some out during the summer tourist season.

Shirley, whose maiden name was Walroth, has always been a history buff, and attended Queen's on a sholarship to study history. She lived with her husband in Kenora for many years where they were teachers, adn where she formed an association with Quetico Park in northwestern Ontario (Onear Dryden). In 2010 was honoured by being named to the Order of Ontario for her work as a historian and naturalist in the Park.

When she returned to Sharbot Lake in 1988 after her husband had died, she torn down one of the two remaining cottages that she owned herself byt that time and had a small house built on the lake, on Walroth Lane (her maiden name was Walroth)

She quickly established herself as a historian in Sharbot Lake at that time, working with then librarian Michael Dawber (who late wrote a book about he history of Central Frontenac called Back of Sunset) she founded the Oso Historical Society.

In the early years of the society, descendants of some of the long standing families in the township spoke at public events that were organised for that purpose, and although much of the energy of those years has slipped away, Shirley has kept an archive of material, with files about each family kept neatly in alphabetic order at her home, and in a series of file cabinets that are housed at the Sharbot Lake Branch of the Kingston Frontenac Public Library.

Her own memories of life in Sharbot Lake in the 1920's and 30's are consistent with other accounts, and the material she has gathered about life in the preceding 50 years are consistent with other sources, including the chapter on Oso township in County of 1000 Lakes, which was written by Peggy Cohoe, Evelyn Johnson, and Doris and R.D. Ayers.

“I know that farming was particularly difficult all through those years,” she said.

Based on census data and accounts or people such as Thomas Gibbs, the surveyer who completed a Survey in 1860, County of 1000 lakes says that the entire population of the township was 138 in 1860, but that number rose steadily over the next 40 years. By 1900, 60% of the land in Oso was listed as agricultural, but even then the life blood of the town was the railway, since the CPR and K&P rail lines crossed at Sharbot Lake. In 1900 there were five lumber mills in the vicinity of the village, employing 150 people, and an apatite mine employed 40 more. All of this was based on the ability to ship product to markets in all directions.

Over the next 20 years most of the mills closed, a discovery of large quantities of apetite (which was used int the fertiliser industry) in Florida led to the mine being shut done, the population dropped by 25% and farming became less and less popular.

By 1911 there were 160 farms in Oso, and by 1961 there were 31, which is still a lot more than there are today.

Shirley Peruniak remembers the railway as central to the town in the 1920's.

“The K&P would come in first, and it would wait for the CPR to arrive. People and goods were transferred, and the trains would be on their way,” she recalls.

One of Shirley's regrets is that in those years she took many trips on the K&P to Kingston, even when she was only a summer visitor to Sharbot Lake, but never took the train north the Snow road, or Flower Station, or to where it ended, at Calabogie.

Long before Mary Howes had established herself as a major force in local and regional organisations, she was a young girl from Tichborne who had been raised in a great aunt and uncle's house, near the rail station.

After high school she went to Toronto to work, living at another aunt's house, but she did not like it very much.

“I didn't like it because I was a country girl, not a city girl,” she recalls now, from the house in Parham that she has lived in since 1952.

She would take the train home every weekend from Toronto, but her days in Toronto ended when one evening at the Parham Fair, she met the man she would end up marrying. “I met Glen for the first time at the dance at the Parham Fair in 1950. We knew of each other of course, but that was our first meeting,” she said.

The dances at the fair were held in the Palace, where all the fair entries are set out during the day. She does not recall who the band was led by that night, although she remembers that the band that played at her wedding was led by Bill Hannah.

There was one problem in the romance between Glen Howes and Mary Sweetman, however. She was from Tichborne and he was from Parham. Tichborne and Parham were opponents in those days, both in hockey and in baseball, and there was always a question of where Mary's loyalties lay.

“Nobody in Parham wanted me to marry Glen; they were rival towns,” she said, although she did add that it was not that intense a rivalry, “Nothing like Romeo and Juliet, but it was something people talked about.”

Tichborne was founded in the late 1860s or early 1870s. The K&P rail line came in 1872. It is thought that the name Tichborne was brought by a Mr. Lunscombe, who was an engineer with Canadian Pacific.

Later there was a mine in the vicinity, the Eagle Lake Iron Mine, which at one time employed 100 people. The mine closed in 1902. (information courtesy of County of 1000 Lakes)

When Mary Howes was growing up in Tichborne in the 1930s, it was very much a railway town, as the K&P rail station, known as Parham Station at one time and later Tichborne Junction, was located there, as well as the “main line” station for the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Located on the same piece of land that the CPR still uses just east of Road 38, the CPR had a full station in Tichborne in the 1930s, which handled passenger and freight traffic.

Mary remembers that the CPR building was always very well maintained, and “there were flowers planted along the walkways where people came off the train.”

Mary was raised within metres of the train tracks, and her family ran the coal loading operation at Tichborne.

“The coal was being brought in on coal cars loading into the chutes near the station, and the coal would be dumped into the hoppers of the trains,” she said. As far as Mary knows, the Tichborne station was the only coal loading depot between Toronto and Montreal.

“The men would always come home covered in coal dust. It was quite a job for my great aunt to wash the clothes out each day,” she said.

Although she was very young, Mary remembers the people who rode the rails in the 1900s, trying to get to somewhere better than where they came from. “We didn't call them hobos or anything back then; they were just people who were looking for some help, and we always had enough to share with one or two."

In the '40s, she remembers handing out apples to the people who were on the trains that were headed towards Fort Henry, filled with immigrants who were being interred because they had the bad fortune to come from one of the countries that was on the other side of the conflict.

“We didn't know who they were or where they were going, but they asked for apples and we gave them apples,” she recalls.

When she was young, Tichborne boasted three stores, two hotels, a bank, as well as a school, and there were a number of cheese factories in the vicinity.

When Mary married Glen Howes in 1952 and moved to Parham, she was moving to a larger town, the agricultural hub of Hinchinbrooke Township.

“It had three garages, a blacksmith, hotels, stores, and was a very busy place,” she recalls.

Glen worked in one of the garages, Simonett's, which later moved to Sharbot Lake. He and Mary had five children, four boys and a girl, with the youngest two being twin boys. When the children were grown she worked in maintenance for the school board, first in Parham and later on at Sharbot Lake High School, where she worked for 20 years.

As well, she became very, very active as a volunteer, where she has made a mark. Not only was she the president of the Women's Institute on several occasions, but also of the United Church Women as well as being involved with the Parham Happy Travelers and the Parham Fair.

She is perhaps best known, however, for 20 years of work with the Cancer Society. “The cancer society was very good to me when my brother was dying and I knew I had to volunteer with them” she said.

Her first job was as a canvasser during the door-to-door campaign each April. That progressed to being a canvass organiser in the villages around her home.

“I used to run 100 canvassers in the region,” she said, “which kept me busy for three months, getting ready in February and March and canvassing month in April.”

The trick to keeping canvassers happy was to limit their responsibility to 10 houses or so. “People were happy to do their family and neighbours, I never had a lot of trouble finding canvassers.”

Eventually, Mary became involved with the executive of the Cancer Society Regional office based in Kingston, serving in a number of roles, including that of president. The region extends from Trenton to Prescott and includes the rural areas to the north of the 401 throughout that vast territory.

“I spent a lot of time on the road, to Kingston all the time and further yet quite often,” she said.

In recognition of her high standard of volunteer effort, she was one of the first recipients of the Central Frontenac Volunteer of the Year award for Hinchinbrooke District and she also received a Jubilee award a couple of years ago.

Although she says she has turned lazy in her old age, she has been actively involved in the push to turn the former Hinchinbrooke School into a community centre for Central Frontenac.

“We do need some place to gather in this part of the township, and the school is sitting there empty,” she said.

If she can help bring that about, maybe she will finally be accepted in Parham after living there for 63 years, even if she is a Tichborne girl.

The one constant at Fairmount Home, through all its renovations and changes, from a 96-bed municipal home for the aged, to a Class D and then a Class A nursing home with 128 beds, has been the smiling face of Mary Lake.

As director of care, Lake has watched over the residents at Fairmount through all those years, and she will retire at the end of this week.

“I literally grew up in long-term care,” she said in an interview on Monday. Not only has she worked in long-term care for over 40 years, she started working summers in a nursing home when she was a young teenager.

“My grandmother owned the Picton Manor, and as soon as school let out each summer I would head over there to work. I changed beds, did cleaning, whatever was needed.”

A lifelong Frontenac County resident, Mary Lake was raised at Elginburg (in what was then Pittsburgh Township), where she attended public school. She went to Sydenham High School, and then studied Nursing at the Kingston General Hospital (KGH) School of Nursing. After graduating in 1972, she took a job at KGH.

In 1974, she started working as a long-term care nurse, and aside from a short stint at Kingston's Prison for Women in 1984 (as a nurse not an inmate) she has remained working in long-term care ever since.

She took on the job of director of care at the municipally owned Fairmount Home for the Aged in 1987.

She has seen a lot of changes at Fairmount over the years. When she first started there, the home was licensed, and funded by the Ministry of Community and Social Services, not the Ministry of Health, which now oversees all long-term care facilities under a single set of rules under the Long Term Care Act of 2007.

“We were a country home, and we served the residents of Frontenac County mostly, at that time. The care we delivered was always excellent, but the facility was not what it was today,” she said.

All of the rooms at Fairmount had two beds, and the rooms did not have private bathrooms or showers. It was more of a dormitory-style facility with a single dining room for all 96 residents.

Improvements to the level of care came with new standards of care in the 1990s. As director of care, Lake was in charge of operations at the home, including nursing and personal support workers as well as all of the support staff in the home. The administration of Fairmount was taken care of by Frontenac County. She helped the home maintain its reputation as a caring facility, for families and residents to feel safe and well supported.

When municipal amalgamation took place in the late 1990s, Frontenac County decided to keep Fairmount Home, even though its location was becoming subsumed by the City of Kingston when it annexed Pittsburgh and Kingston Townships.

The Chief Administrators of the new County, first Bob Foulds and later Elizabeth Savill, became administrators of Fairmount, giving Mary Lake someone to report directly to.

When all long-term care facilities started to come under the same set of standards and regulations, Fairmount was designated as a Class D facility because of the physical limitations of the home. It was faced with a choice to upgrade or close, and this led to a long, sometimes difficult, set of negotiations with the City of Kingston and the province, funding partners of Fairmount, over plans to renovate.

The $17 million upgrade eventually got underway in 2003, and this led to a challenging period for Lake as director of care, ensuring that residents were well cared for and as well prepared as possible for the changes that took place.

“Through attrition we dropped to 78 beds, and when the new section was completed, the residents all moved there as the old section was completely retrofitted. In 2004 everything was complete and we became the 128-bed facility that we are today,” said Lake.

Once the new state of the art facility was complete, a new challenge faced Mary Lake.

“We had to get used to the change, and change is difficult, even positive change. We lost our culture of care for a while when the new Fairmount opened. Our staff took some time to transition, but we worked hard at it and we got it back. It took about a year,” she said.

Aside from the physical changes in the early 2000s, the home also acquired a full time administrator. Under the regulations, Class A municipal homes must have a full time administrator and full time director of care.

“If I ever wanted to be an administrator,” Lake said, "I would have been one, but I always wanted to be involved in the service end of things. I never wanted to have any other job than the one I kept.”

Ironically, however, that is the role she is retiring from. She has been filling in for Julie Shillington, the full time administrator, who has been on a leave of absence for health reasons and will not return until later this year.

As Lake looks back at her career, she says that while tightened up regulations were a good change in long term care, the ministry has gone too far, leaving homes with more concerns about rules and less time for care.

“They have really gone too far with regulations, because there isn't enough staff available to cover all the requirements and still provide the kind of care that we all want to provide. That is why we came into long term care in the first place, not just to comply with regulations but because we want to provide care,” she said.

Another issue faced by the home is the push for ageing at home, which Lake said is a good thing. However it has meant that people do not come into care until they are at a point where their needs are greater. As well, there is pressure on Fairmount, and other homes, to provide care for patients with mental health issues that are more severe than the home can handle.

“There is a gap in the health care system for these people and they get shuffled around,” she said.

One of Mary Lake's major professional and volunteer interests is providing service to those suffering from dementia. Many of the residents at Fairmount have dementia of varying forms and levels of severity. The home has a wing devoted to those with advanced dementia.

She has been a board member for years with the Alzheimer's Society and has volunteered with Southern Frontenac Community Services to run Alzheimer's support services.

“It is very trying on families, on other residents at Fairmount, and of course on those with dementia themselves and the staff who care for them,” she said, “but we have learned. The drugs are better and the techniques for helping people have advanced over the years,” she said.

While she said she has no plans for retirement other than a summer at the cottage, it will be impossible for her to stay completely away from her calling. She expects that by next fall she will be looking for a part-time volunteer role doing something.

No doubt it will involve looking after people in some capacity or another.

When Jan Hassler was 19 years old, he decided to leave his native Holland and seek a new life in Canada. One of the reasons he left was that after living through World War 2, he was facing the obligation to join the Dutch army and be deployed to Indonesia to defend Dutch colonial interests. Instead he applied to come to Canada, and that led him to Wolfe Island.

At that time, in order to migrate to Canada, sponsors were needed. A Wolfe Island fishing lodge owner, Jack Campbell, needed a hired hand, so Jan Hassler was sent to work for him. After one year he had fulfilled that commitment and he was free to make his life in Canada. Although he did travel around the country he ended up making his life on Wolfe Island, even if he knew from the start that Wolfe Islanders took family history on the island pretty seriously.

“Wolfe Island is Wolfe Island, and the residents here - they thought they were the only Wolfe Islanders. A couple of them told me, you know, you'll never be a Wolfe Islander unless your grandparents are buried here. So I said, I'll tell you what I'll do. If I like it and stay here, then maybe I'll have them shipped over,” he said, during an interview from his house in Marysville on a cold, blustery day this past January.

In 1962, he was working in Kingston in financial services when he was drawn back to the island to work with his brothers-in-law at the General Wolfe Hotel, which he managed until 1977. At that time he purchased a fishing lodge, Hitchcock House, and he kept that business until 2010.

After establishing himself as a Wolfe Island resident, raising a family, and becoming part of the business community, he was approached to join Wolfe Island Council, which he did in 1985. He served a term as a councilor, a term as deputy reeve, two terms as reeve and a term as the first ever mayor of Frontenac Islands between 1998 and 2000. He was the warden of Frontenac County in 1997, the year before municipal amalgamation.

That put him into the middle of a lot of different political debates on the island, and throughout the County.

“A lot of things were shaken up in the 1990s. One was the idea of making Wolfe Islanders pay for the ferry. It was Gilles Poulliot [Minister of Transportation under the Bob Rae NDP government] who first came to us and asked if we would mind paying a bit of money for the ferry, maybe a loonie or a toonie. We said that might be ok but what if it goes up to $5 or $10 in a few years? A number of ministers came and went and we kept saying we didn't want it of course, but the idea didn't go away. In fact I think they even printed up tickets. They're probably in a warehouse somewhere in Kingston still. Then I got a call from Tony Clement, minister under Mike Harris, asking me to come to Toronto, where he said ‘I have good news for you, the fee is not coming in.’”

When municipal amalgamation was forced on Ontario townships, Hassler and the Wolfe Island Council had some decisions to make. The question of whom to join was paramount.

“We talked to Pittsburgh Township about joining with them and forming a new township, and the idea of Howe Island joining with Gananoque also came up. But when Pittsburgh joined with Kingston we were left with a choice between Kingston and remaining with Frontenac County,” he said.

His fear about Kingston was that Wolfe Island, or even all the islands together, would become a single ward in the new City.

“That would have left us with one vote out of 12 on Council, and no independence,” he said. “As far as I was concerned that was not an option.”

In the end the Frontenac Islands were the last to sign on to join the Frontenac Management Board (which became Frontenac County again a few years later.)

“At the end everybody had agreed but I hadn't agreed. If I had decided Wolfe Island is not going to go for it, the whole thing would have fallen apart. I said yes as you know. It wasn't a perfect marriage but I don't think there are any perfect marriages. I think we made the right choice.”

One project that he still looks on with pride from his years on council was the construction of the new Wolfe Island branch of the Kingston Frontenac Public Library, which was built under his watch and was recently dedicated to his predecessor as reeve of Wolfe Island, the late Timothy O'Shea, who served for 33 years from 1959 to 1991.

Jan Hassler is retired now, but he continues to keep an eye on comings and goings on Wolfe Island, and when pressed, he still gets animated about a topic that is a perennial controversy on the island, the possibility of a bridge to Kingston.

“You never worked on a bridge?” I asked as we were at the end of our interview and thinking about timing our return to the mainland to meet the afternoon ferry schedule.

“Don't ask me about a bridge,” he said. “It's been years since I thought about this bridge business. When we looked at it years ago, it would have cost $50 million to build a bridge and it was costing almost $10 million each year to run the ferry. Anyone who studied math even a little bit can tell that a bridge is cheaper in the long run, and it would not take that long to pay off, but someone has to invest in the first place.

“Even if a bridge costs $100 million it will still pay off. They are talking about spending $75 million on a bigger ferry. But I never could get anyone to take a bridge project seriously, and there are those on the islands who are opposed and will always be opposed. So I don't think about it anymore.”

Scott White, a transplanted painter and carpenter originally from Newfoundland and now residing with his family near Westport, said that if it were up to him, he'd be painting full time.

White, who is primarily a self-taught artist, has been painting for over 20 years. He said he fell in love with painting back in high school. A number of his canvases were on display at the Glendower hall near Godfrey on February 21 as part of the historical society’s open house there.

White's preferred medium is oil and his subject matter is diverse. He is particularly drawn to historical buildings and landscapes, both local and some in Newfoundland, as well as antique and vintage cars.

His works, especially his landscapes, seem to capture the drama of his eastern Canadian birth place. His Newfoundland landscape titled “Norris Point” is a particularly enticing canvas with deep and bright hues that make the expansive white house perched on the rocky shore seem to glow from within. White also paints local landscapes and he said he was fascinated and inspired by the buildings and geography at Bedford Mills, which is the subject of another painting where he captures the historic architectural charm of one older building located there.

Old vintage cars are often front and center in White’s canvases and in one painting he depicts a red 1934 Ford emergency vehicle. “I love painting older vintage cars since they have certain characteristics that you don't often get to see and I chose to paint them partly as a way to preserve their uniqueness.” White paints at his home and has set up a studio in his garage where he works in the warmer months. He moves the studio into his home in the winter time.

Asked if his carpentry in any way informs his art work, White said that while carpentry can sometimes be a creative outlet, especially when designing certain prescribed spaces, painting offers him a totally different kind of freedom. “When you are painting you don't have to follow any rules at all. The options are endless and the challenge is that you can turn a blank canvas into anything you like.” He said that he will often paint from photos especially when depicting an actual place but he also takes creative license to make his paintings more interesting and dramatic. As an example, in one landscape he added a snowy owl perched on a fence post, which he said was not actually there. In some cases he will first create a number of sketches and then paint from those.

White's work is currently hanging at the TAG Art Gallery in St. Catharines and his paintings can also be viewed at the Sharbot Lake Country Inn. He is planning to apply to a number of summer art shows this year including the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibit. Anyone wishing to view Scott White's work can visit www.2-scott-white.artistwebsites.com or visit him on Facebook at ScottWhiteFineArt. Appointments can be made to visit his studio by emailing him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

By Jonathan Davies

Pat Joslin doesn't call what he does “farming” so much as “homesteading in a village.” Joslin, along with his wife Kate, owns Bear Root Gardens, which began operation in 2014 from their backyard plot in the center of Verona. An Environmental Studies graduate, he has been in the agricultural field in various forms for the past three years and his current focus is on intensive growing, primarily for seed, with the balance going to market vegetables.

The intensive focus is particularly important to Joslin, given the small scale of land he currently has, and it is an approach that is gaining ground, particularly among young farmers and homesteaders with limited space.

“Sustainable farming means many small farms versus a few huge ones,” he says.

However, sustainability in food production is not merely a matter of which system, whether small or large-scale, diversified and organic, or conventional mono-crop, works most efficiently and ecologically. The question of financial sustainability for the farmers themselves is also pertinent in an age where more and more small farms are going out of business.

A recent article in Salon magazine entitled “What nobody told me about small farming: I can't make a living” sheds light on the realities of running a farm business. The author, Jaclyn Moyer, notes that according to USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) statistics, about 90% of American farms rely on outside income to stay afloat.

Likewise, Statistics Canada's most recent data shows that over three quarters of the average Canadian family farm's income is gained off-farm.

Joslin is happy with his location and the challenge of using his yard effectively, and he is happy with the progress they have made thus far. “We're showing what you can do on about a third of an acre,” he says. They are in close proximity to the Frontenac Farmers Market – mere blocks away – which served as Bear Root's main vending point in the 2014 season. Perhaps most importantly, they are a reasonable

distance from Kingston, where Kate works full-time for a seed technology company. Pat, meanwhile, will be entering his second season working at the Kitchen Garden, a certified organic vegetable farm in Wilton this coming spring.

While Joslin hopes to be able to devote himself full-time to his own business down the road, he sees value in having the kind of steady, assured income that off-farm work brings. The threat of crop failures combined with worries about marketing opportunities, which are sometimes sluggish, lend credence to this view.

While working at the Kitchen Garden has helped him gain knowledge and experience that will translate to building a better farm business, he admits that working long days on another farm can mean little energy at the end of a long day for his own gardens. “Our farm always suffers first, ” he says.

Asked if he has any concern that the business will never achieve its potential, given the temptation to leave the weeding to another day or give up after a hard frost when vital income is not at stake, Joslin says that his passion for farming will drive the business forward. “Creating our own model, we can still have our non-farming lifestyle,” he says.

He has the option of going camping in August when most farmers would not dare, and the mantra, “farmhands often make more money than farm owners” currently favours him more than it works against him.

Joslin's approach gives food for thought to farmers and aspiring farmers alike. Certainly, the quest for quality of life at the sacrifice of financial certainty is a difficult balance for most anyone getting into agriculture. “For now, if we look at it as a hobby that we make money at, it's awesome,” he says. “I'd like that to change, but what we are getting out of what we are doing is more than if we were not doing it.”

Jonathan Davies is a farmer himself. He operates a small farm at Harrowsmith with his partner X.B. Shen. Jonathan is contributing a series of articles called Frontenac Farming Life, which profiles the lives of local farmers who are trying to make a living through farming, navigating struggle and hope. If you would like to have your story considered, please contact Jonathan at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Local quilter, Debbie Emery of Plevna, won the quilt design competition put on by Frontenac County in August last year in their effort to have a unique quilt designed and created to celebrate the County’s 150th Anniversary.

Emery, who moved to Plevna over six years ago, has been quilting for close to seven years. She found out about her win just before Christmas and said that since she does not feel she is “an artist”, she was a bit surprised. At the same time, though, she feels that she did her research well and knew, going into the competition, that she had some pretty good ideas for the project. She said it was her first time entering a competition and that she was thrilled to have her design chosen.

The competition was judged by well-known local quilters/fibre artists Bethany Garner and Beth Abbott. Emery describes her winning design as a “story quilt”, one that “reflects the unique culture and people of Frontenac County from the past, present and into the future.”

The quilt, which will measure 48 x 60 inches, will incorporate multiple quilting techniques including appliqué, embroidery and hand quilting. Emery chose different subject matters to represent the various regions of North, Central and South Frontenac and said that she focused on the unique histories and characteristics of each part of the county to show their diversity.

For the north she will depict Bon Echo Provincial Park and the Dark Skies, the latter of which she says “brings the north into the future”. In Central Frontenac she is focusing on the history of the railroads and will create a steam engine as well as elements of the area’s farming and logging history. In the south she has chosen to depict the windmills of Wolfe Island and also a lighthouse to show the proximity of the southern most portions of the county to Lake Ontario.

In order to incorporate some of the more general aspects of the area as a whole, the quilt will feature some historic architecture including an old church, and school and a log cabin. Emery said that she also wanted to include the Aboriginal history of the area and she has included in her design an Aboriginal woman, a teepee and the wild rice of Ardoch Lake, the latter of which recalls the historic stand off between locals and the government in the 1970's.

Emery said that she is honored to have had her design chosen. “To know that it will be hanging in the County offices and people will be seeing it well into the future is quite exciting for me,” she said. Judging by the sample section that she had on display at the Frontenac Heritage Festival’s craft show at St. James Major Catholic Church hall on the weekend, her win is no doubt well deserved and she said it has definitely “got her creative juices flowing.”

Emery’s quilt will be unveiled at the official opening of the 150th ceremonies, which will take place in Harrowsmith from August 28 to 30. After its unveiling the quilt will be hung at the offices of Frontenac County near Battersea.

Emery also makes and sells various fashionable accessories from her home in Plevna. For more information, contact her at 613-479-8057.

by Derek Maggs

The Friends of Bon Echo Park are pleased to announce the presentation of two $500 bursaries to Jared Salmond of Flinton and Abby Follett of Omemee, Ontario.

The Friends of Bon Echo Provincial Park have been providing bursaries to deserving students of the North Addington Education Centre and summer employment students at the Park. Eligible candidates must be engaged in a post- secondary program that resonates with the goals of the Friends. In recent years the bursaries have been donated by the McLaren family in memory of Doris and Keith McLaren, long time volunteers with the Friends.

Jared Salmond graduated recently from the North Addington Education Centre in Cloyne and is currently studying Engineering at Queen's University.  Jared's knowledge and commitment to Bon Echo Provincial Park began many years ago.  From the time he was a young child, Jared has spent many weeks every summer camping with his family. As soon as he was old enough, Jared was involved with the Mazinaw Lake Swim Program, first as a student, then as a volunteer, an instructor and as the Program Supervisor.  For the last three years, Jared has worked at Bon Echo--initially as the Wood Lot Attendant and most recently as a Gate Attendant.  For Jared, summer has meant Bon Echo.  He understands the importance of community and volunteerism and has spent countless hours working with community children in a variety of activities. Although pursuing further education has taken Jared out of his community, his hope is to return and continue this contribution in new ways.  Whatever the future brings for Jared, one thing is certain. The roots he has in Bon Echo have enriched and encouraged his genuine interest in people and the environment.   

Abby Follett is in the Environmental Science/Studies program at Trent University, currently completing her third year. Her courses are focused on environmental law and species-at-risk with the hope of going into one of these fields once she completes her degree. This past summer was her first at Bon Echo. She served as a Natural Heritage Educator and found the experience amazing and very fulfilling. She hopes to return this summer. Abby was fortunate enough to spend the majority of her childhood summers traveling across Canada with her family on camping trips. She loved being outside, taking part in programs and activities where she could help the environment. She was a junior member of the horticulture society, and helped plan Earth Day clean up programs in her neighbourhood. In high school, she was part of the Green Team and initiated recycling programs. Abby is committed to do her part to enhance awareness and to motivate others in efforts to serve the