It’s already 10:20 pm.  The day has vanished. And my head is spinning. I can hardly recollect what I have done and where I have been.  Our “drop by for a quick visit” guest – who has recently moved into the apartment building and who said she’d pop around before 6:00 o’clock for a hurried chat – left approaching nine o’clock.  And I can assure you it was a non-stop confab!  We touched upon endless details surrounding our mutual experiences in the local legal community over the past fifty years. Her arrival here with Bruun & Bennett, Barrs. &c. in Carleton Place predates by several years my own with Galligan & Sheffield, Barrs. &c. in 1976. We are both of an age, separated by less than a month.

Thankfully my partner and I had the foresight to have a late luncheon at the Vietnamese noodle shop in Carleton Place.  It was especially welcome because I hadn’t had my customary 2 fried eggs (grâce à our Building Superintendent Jeff, fresh from his farm) for breakfast this morning so my appetite was raging.  In addition I had capitalized upon the brilliant morning sunshine and unusually summery heat wave this morning for a remarkably cheerful cycle about the neighbourhood.

While cycling I crossed paths with Mr. Douglas McIntosh of Neilcorp Homes fame, the esteemed builders behind many of the latest homes in the area. He and his wife were strolling about the neighbourhood for some exercise.  Though they reside on Clayton Lake, they reported with unquestionable animation that the black flies at this time of year are prohibitive, even when – as today – there is a smart wind to push them along.  As a result, when they were grocery shopping in town earlier this morning they decided to profit by the occasion to keep themselves fit.

Doug and I go back a long way.  I recall when he and his brother Keith began their mutual enterprise; and later when Robert Dick joined the fray. I also knew Alan McIntosh, the father of the boys; and, I had met Neil McIntosh, their grandfather after whom the corporation is named. Curiously it always irked me that many people, including those on the inside, called the corporation Neilcorp – pronounced “Neilcorps” (that is, as though the “corp” were an abbreviation of the French word “corps” meaning “body” and pronounced without emphasizing the letters “ps“. Though the abbreviation “corp” may derive from the French word “corps” the former is pronounced “KORP” nor “CORE”.