Photo: Terry Tufts  courtesy of Terry Tufts Well known roots/blues guitar player and singer/songwriter Rick Fines will be in South Frontenac offering a guitar workshop at Wintergreen Studios on Canoe Lake Road just east of Godfrey this weekend.

Fines, a veteran Canadian folk/roots and blues player, has won numerous awards and has produced five solo albums to date. His work with Jackson Delta has earned him multiple Juno nominations and he has played with many musical legends including Penny Lang, Colleen Petersen and Pinetop Perkins.

His latest 2006 release titled “Solar Powered” reflects his desire to live and work off the grid, and it seems very appropriate that he is beginning the new year with a workshop and performance at Wintergreen Studios, a unique off-grid eco lodge and arts centre that opened in 2008.

Fines’ upcoming three-day workshop runs from January 15-17 and includes live musical performances, informal music-making sessions and various guitar-related workshops on different styles of acoustic blues guitar playing. There are still spots left for any interested guitar players.

Non-players just interested in the music will also have a chance to join in on the fun. As part of the workshop, but also open to the general public, a very intimate concert will take place at 7:30pm on Saturday, January 16 in Wintergreen’s “great room”, a 50-seat venue. This is the first-ever public concert at Wintergreen Studios since it opened. Fines will be joined on stage by North Frontenac resident Terry Tufts, a finger-style guitarist and singer songwriter currently signed with Borealis Records who has seven solo albums to his credit. Tufts has worked as a session player for numerous Canadian talents including David Francey, Lynn Miles, Susan Aglukark and George Fox, to name just a few.

For fans of both players, the concert offers a very rare, up close and personal evening of acoustic music and song with two very accomplished, award-winning Canadian musicians, a chance that will likely not come around too often. No doubt it will be a one-of-a-kind musical experience that fans will not want to miss.

Dinner is also an option and local chefs Andrew Tietzen and Dawson Hamilton will be preparing a chili dinner with exotic salads and dessert.

Tickets for dinner and the concert are $25; concert only $15, email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Wintergreen Studios, 9780 Canoe Lake Road, off the Westport Road; www.wintergreenstudios.com

Photo: Dennis Burr

On October 29, about 15 people undertook a hike to the Arden Canyon, a unique geologic feature that extends for several kilometres southeast of Arden. The hike was organized by the Friends of Arden and was led by Don Scott, a born and bred Ardenite who knows the area like the back of his hand. Don has visited the gorge many times since he was young, for hunting or just to have some quiet times.

Retired Queen’s geology professor, Dugald Carmichael, came on the hike and was able to explain some of the gorge’s unique features to the group. He explained that the high ground surrounding the canyon is granite, while the bedrock underneath the marshy valley of the canyon is marble, and so the canyon was formed by the erosion of the marble.

The idea for the hike originally came from Glen Matson, one of the Friends of Arden, who told the group about a beautiful canyon that a lot of people haven’t seen. In preparation for the trek, Friends members David Daski and Guenter Nitsche went ahead and did some trimming and clearing to make the path easier to follow.

The hike was about a 4 kilometre round trip, so while it was not especially long or steep, there were a number of challenging points where the group had to negotiate their way across beaver dams. No one fell in.

From the route’s wooded departure point off Pitt Road, the terrain changed quickly to beaver ponds and rocks, followed by a wide expanse of open rock over which there were few landmarks. No one strayed too far from the leader.

Wintergreen with its bright red berries, among many other plants, and numerous species of mosses and lichens captured the hikers’ interests, with the latter providing a soft place to rest for lunch on the edge of the canyon. Well – a few discreet feet from the edge, anyway.

The gorge is partly on Crown land and partly on township land, and the eventual goal of the Friends is to do some signing and grooming of the trail so that others can enjoy this beautiful feature of the area.

In the meantime, they will be planning more hikes for next year.

(Dugald Carmichael was one of the contributors to the book, “Lennox and Addington”, and for those who have the book, there is an aerial photo that includes the canyon on page 17, though it is a bit hard to pick it out in the photo)

Photo:  Rena Upitis of Wintergreen Studios with poet Lorna Crozier

Canadian poet Lorna Crozier was recently elected as an Officer of the Order of Canada, and last weekend, August 19-21, she led a three-day writing workshop titled “A Passion for Words” at Wintergreen Studios on Canoe Lake Road.

After dinner on Saturday evening, Lorna read excerpts from her latest book of poetry titled “Small Mechanics”, which she will be launching at the Kingston Writers’ Festival this fall. The small book includes poems that showcase her prowess as a wordsmith and include ruminations on both serious and not so serious subjects.

Crozier, who grew up in Swift Current, Saskatchewan but who now resides in Victoria, BC, is at home considering the small details in the world and lives around her. She began by reading “The New Day”, a poem that balances the hugeness of the setting sun with the relative smallness of a mother fly who has taught her children to “wash and wash their faces until they shine”. She included heart-rending poems about regret like “The Unborn”, which harkens back to unknown and unlived lives - “hauntings” she writes about that usually take place in the garden where, “a wind that is not a wind fingers the bamboo, a blurred face, perhaps a child’s appears below the surface of the water, a fish rising where a mouth would be.”

Recalling some of the ground covered in the Wintergreen workshop, which is her second to date, Crozier spoke of the importance a writer must place on facts, metaphor and precision. “If a reader is going to accept the strange, unbelievable metaphors that you offer them in a poem, you also have to be secure with the facts.”

Her poem “Facts” begins with true facts: “Did you know an ant has four olfactory organs on its antenna: the female mouse a clitoris.... that grass has legs and feet? That's why it's never still but runs on the spot like a child in an old gymnasium.”

Another poem titled “Lichen” brought her back to her grandparents’ farm in Saskatchewan as she remembered a huge buffalo stone rubbed smooth by countless buffalo, which use it regularly to scratch their itchy backs. In “Lichen” she also writes of the more common lichen-covered stones there, those “covered in those beautiful orange and yellow spatters... the kind of scab, round and desiccated a child would pick bit by bit feeding himself on a rock’s small wound...Patch of eczema, an itch the rock can't scratch though the wind’s scouring pad of grit and sleet brings some relief. Something that comes close to holy, you must fall on your knees to see it clearly....”

Crozier also tackles the onslaught of aging with humour and wit as demonstrated in “My Last Erotic Poem”, which was inspired by the erotic poetry she and other author friends have written and read at regular fundraisers over the years. In it she describes the act of lovemaking in a most humorous way.

“Who wants to hear about two old farts getting it on in the back seat of a Buick....our once not unattractive flesh now loose as unbaked pizza dough hanging between two hands before it’s tossed. Who wants to hear about two old lovers slapping together like water hitting mud … my bunion foots sliding up your bony calf?”

Equally amusing was her poem based on errors she has seen written in resumés, titled “Grief Resumé”, which ends on a hilarious final note that I will not give away here.

Crozier refers to the form that part of her new book takes as “a series of stretch/guzzles” – that is, a series of couplets that have to stand on their own, lacking the structural logic that most lyric poems have. “You have to think of the couplets as pearls on a necklace, each its own thing and having its own luminescence that can be moved around.” She read sections of one poem written in this particular form titled “Our Good and Common Bones”.

Crozier feels very much at home at Wintergreen and spoke of the inspiration the place gives her. “I so believe in the idea of this place to build and encourage community and to connect artists from across the country. It's a very special place here and a great place where adults can discover the flame and spark inside of them.”

Crozier summed up her new book this way. “I think probably there are more poems in this book about getting older, and about loss, so there is a shadow of grief in this book that might not be in my others. I've always had a sense of humour in my work and now I am laughing at the older body. Perhaps in my earlier poems I had more of a feminist and ecological message, which I still have, but it’s just mellower, softer and more integrated.”

Crozier loves giving workshops. “It’s really wonderful to watch the lights go on as I throw out various ropes for the participants to grab on to and to take off with on their own. The people I'm teaching here have gone through a lot in their lives and have stories to tell and really strive to put their whole heart and soul into being here and learning.”

Crozier currently is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Victoria and has been teaching there since 1991. Regarding her recent appointment to the Order of Canada she said, “It was a wonderful surprise - it came out of the blue and was something I was not expecting. The first thing I said was ‘Wow’. My only regret is that I wish my mom were here to see it.”

Photo: David Hahn, GETF Chair, introduces Steve Lapp (St. Lawrence College), Mike Brigham (TREC Renewable Energy Coop) and Paul McKay (True Grid Power)

The Wintergreen Initiative – A Community Energy Group was launched on June 25 mid-way through a weekend retreat dedicated to community renewable energy. Five community working groups were set in place to address various issues concerning renewable energy: to explore municipal energy efficiency & conservation; to explore projects potentially qualifying for the Community Energy Partnership/Feed-in-Tariff program and those qualified for other support; to take into account off-grid enterprises; and communications. There was also a Steering Committee established to provide coordination of ongoing community working group activities and liaise with Frontenac County’s Green Energy Task Force and other partners.

What struck this writer was that the people assembled were not dewy-eyed, dissenting ideologues but very practical folk, highly committed to renewable energy and conservation, and thoroughly involved in the political, economic and social life of Frontenac County and Eastern Ontario. The relationship between commerce, employment and renewable energy & conservation was plainly evident. Jobs and more jobs are directly tied to renewable energy and conservation. This was clearly demonstrated by Mike Brigham of TREC Renewable Energy of Toronto, Paul McKay of True Grid Power and Steve Lapp & Ian Kilborn of St. Lawrence College, both involved in the college’s Energy Systems & Engineering Technology program. Here is a unique program designed to prepare students for employment in the rapidly growing field of renewable energy.

The event was held at Wintergreen Studios on Canoe Lake Road, South Frontenac. Wintergreen Studios, an off-grid straw bale building, was most certainly an appropriate venue for the gathering. The retreat was organized by the Community Energy Network of Eastern Ontario in partnership with Frontenac County’s Green Energy Task Force (GETF). Financial support was provided by the Ontario Trillium Fund and Frontenac Community Futures Development Corporation.

Liz Savill, CAO for Frontenac County welcomed the delegates at the opening session. Representatives from business, community groups, educational institutions, and farm organizations attended.

The GETF emerged from and is guided by the Energy Mission Statement in the County’s “Directions for Our Future” document. The statement declares that “The County of Frontenac is a leader among rural communities in the development, conservation, generation and efficient use of clean, renewable energy that fulfills the community’s energy needs.” The Wintergreen Initiative was created to further these objectives. Workshop participants explored the local potential for the development of solar energy, wind power, micro-hydro, and biomass/biofuel sources of energy.

On the opening day, keynote speaker Mike Brigham reviewed his experience with TREC and SolarShare Toronto, two related renewable energy cooperatives, the former being the first in Ontario. This presentation was followed by case studies on developing projects in Ottawa (Ottawa Renewable Energy Co-op), Perth (EcoPerth), Tamworth (Tamworth Biomass Project), Kingston (SWITCH Kingston), and the Quinte Hydro Project. On Saturday John Kittle, GETF deputy-Chair reviewed the task force’s objectives and strategy, based on an extremely successful approach used by Whistler, British Columbia over the past few years to stimulate hands-on community and private sector involvement in municipal economic development. A recurring theme among the speakers was the importance of Ontario’s green Energy and Green Economy Act and the Feed-in-Tariff promoting and stimulating renewable energy generating facilities in rural areas.

The Wintergreen Initiative’s community working groups will submit reports related to their mandates by mid-July. Based on these reports, The Initiative will work in cooperation with the Frontenac GETF to explore and provide information to the citizens of Frontenac County on the various programs available to assist in the development of renewable energy and conservation. For more information on the conference and renewable energy visit www.community-energy.ca or contact the Community Energy Network of Eastern Ontario at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Other web-sites to explore: www.ecologyottawa.ca ; www.OttawaRenewableEnergyCoop.ca; and www.wintergreenstudios.com .

Photo: award winning Canadian poet Patrick Lane at Wintergreen Studios on August 24.

The written word appears to have become the focus for the summer season line up of special guests at Wintergreen Studios. The majority of presenters recently have been either writers or poets, which is perhaps not so surprising since the studio recently entered the realm of publishing with its Wintergreen Press. The press has put out four titles to date.

Rena Upitis, founding director and president of Wintergreen, which is located on Canoe Lake Road just east of Godfrey, said the predominance of writers for this season just naturally evolved. “We were really lucky this year to attract four great writers: Steven Heighton and Helen Humphries of Kingston, poet Patrick Lane and upcoming in September, Lawrence Hill. We love having writers come and it seems to be just a growing thing,” she said at the public dinner and reading given by lauded Canadian poet Patrick Lane on August 24.

Lane, who has no less than 899 poems to his credit, headed up a four-day poetry workshop at Wintergreen that was attended by 12 eager poets. Louise Carson from St. Lazare, Québec, explained what Patrick had stressed so far in the workshop. “We worked on punctuation, which can often be a huge bug-bear for poets. But what he seems to be focusing on is relating the concrete to the abstract and getting us to understand that how, if you go too far in one direction or the other, you can either overstate or over mystify the reader. The idea is to get that balance and to use the concrete as a way to underline the abstract,” Carson said.

Lane is a master poet who has been practicing his craft for over 50 years and who has achieved that magical balance. His most recent collection called “Witness-Selected Poems-1962-2010” won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry and is a testament to the fact that he knows of what he speaks. His poems brought forth gasps from the audience who seemed to hang on his every word.

Lane opened the evening with a poem called “The Mad Boy”, an account of a developmentally challenged young man who lived down the street from him and who Lane would often see escaping from his caregivers. “As he goes he keeps looking back at his pursuers who follow him into the light, in the boy’s face is both glee and terror, he knows they will catch him, they always do…and the boy will wait for them just short of where the road breaks, and now he is happy as they hold him in their hands. He laughs at the run he has made again, his face lifted up into the sun reflects the knowledge he knows is his, that for him, the only escape is surrender, that giving himself up is his whole life…”

Lane ended his reading with a poem he read by heart called Antelope in the Snow. It came from an event in which he said he had in his “classic Patrick Lane way", endangered his own life, the life of his wife, and the lives of a herd of antelope by making a car trip on a fiercely cold day in the prairies many years before. Temperatures had dipped to below -40 degrees Celsius, and Lane described how he got out of his car and disturbed a group of concentrically circled antelopes, who unbeknownst to him were in a protective formation to shield them from the cold. They scattered when he ventured too close. “I felt terrible about that incident for a long time but not so much anymore.”

The poem reads, “This too the antelope in snow. Is it enough to say we will imagine this and nothing more? Who understands that failing, falters at the song. And still we sing, that is beauty. But it is not an answer anymore than the antelope, most slender of beasts, most beautiful, will tell us why we go, going nowhere, and going there perfectly in the snow.”

Lane’s advice to poets: “Read. Good writing comes out of good reading. Good readers make good writers. Really good writers are writers who have read a great deal and who have come out of a great tradition.”

For those wanting more of that tradition,

Lawrence Hill, author of The Book Of Negroes, will be leading a workshop at Wintergreen from September 14-17. There will be a dinner and public reading on September 15 at 6pm. For information visit www.wintergreensdtudios.ca or call Wintergreen Studios at 613-273-8745