It is no doubt a reflection of my ignorance that what is happening now in the United States of America is something I didn’t see coming – though it was succinctly put to me this morning that it has been in the works for over 40 years since the election of Ronald Reagan. His tenure constituted a realignment toward conservative policies in the United States, and he is often considered an icon of American conservatism.

Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in an apartment in Tampico, Illinois, as the younger son of Nelle Clyde Wilson and Jack Reagan. Nelle was committed to the Disciples of Christ, which believed in the Social Gospel. She led prayer meetings and ran mid-week prayers at her church when the pastor was out of town. Reagan credited her spiritual influence and he became a Christian.

While tricycling about the neighbourhood this morning I encountered two people at different locations. They each had related stories.  The first, a woman (born in the United States but living here), confided that she is disturbed today because it is her daughter’s 50th birthday. The daughter lives in the United States of America.  The mother is fearful to visit her daughter. The mother recently heard an account of a Canadian family who, when crossing the border, stopped at a restaurant.  From the back room of the place someone emerged and asked, “Who has the Ontario plates?”  When the family answered that it was they, the proprietor replied, “We’re not serving you!”  As unimaginable as that story may be, it repeats another account I recently heard of Canadians being asked upon crossing the border, “What do you think of President Trump?” That curious enquiry is, if nothing else, disarming.

The second person whom I met along the street today was a gentleman who advised that recently, when seated in a local coffee house, he overheard people speaking Spanish. As he has had familiarity with Spanish, he began chatting with them.  It turns out that they were from South America. Though I didn’t get further details, my understanding is that these people deliberately chose to visit Canada instead of the United States of America. This tale reflected another intelligence recently heard that the loss of foreign visitors to the United States of America from Canada, Europe and further abroad is costing Americans vast sums as well as loss of employment.  And when I related these accounts later this morning I was advised that the economic projection for the upcoming autumn and winter in the United States of America is not favourable.

Blended with these reports is that the “Christian Right” is vitally important to the continued development of the United States of America – although in the same breath it was posited that many of those who are promoting the development are obsequious bootlickers whose only interest is financial gain. Slowly I am learning that the combination of hate, religion and money is good for business. Already I have noticed the dilution of much of what I read on news media such as CNN, MSNBC and of course FOX NEWS.The governing theme now is, “Whatever sells!”

In fairness to the majority of Americans, one of my correspondents this morning asserted that it is only one-third of Americans who suffer the weakness of Texan farmers (“straw for brains”). Meanwhile however there are many Americans who are willing to get on the band wagon and conveniently overlook the disparity inherent in this latest persuasion. The gentleman continued by remarking that many of the states which foster government aid of the disadvantaged and general advancement of popular welfare will continue to do so independently of the federal government; while those states which persist to survive by fictitious religious proclamations and expenditure of tax dollars only upon what benefits those who pay taxes, will crumble and be overcome by poverty and crime. I have heard it said that the majority of the Christian right survives in the so-called “southern states”.

The conclusion is what I hear again and again; namely, people are not returning to the United States of America.  To be clear the obstruction affects foreigners generally, whatever their native birth or current intentions. Internationally there appears to be a marked shift of focus away from the United States of America.

Editor’s Note: Featured Image Substack

Whether you are rebounding from the American commotion, whether you’re interested to have an assuaging local diversion or whether you looking for a spot to have a bite to eat, a drive from Ottawa or nearby Almonte and Carleton Place to Neat Coffee Shop in Burnstown near Arnprior is an exceedingly pleasant recovery for the alteration. And within an agreeable distance.

Neat Coffee Shop Burnstown, Renfrew County, Ontario

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Funny, isn’t it, how, in the moment of a heated response, we always know precisely what we shouldn’t say or do.  And yet, strangely, we very often say or do that exact thing. Our inner cautious directions – notwithstanding their instinctive speed and native composition – get promptly booted to the back seat. There they serve as no more than gate posts easily ignored. Meanwhile the confrontation ensues! And the casualties appear. Thankfully the idle threats remain either removed or metaphorical. But the residue within us is damaging no matter the illustration of the misbehaviour. Manners preserve us from that fatality or infection as well.

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From the open balcony door the wind caught my ear. I raised my eyes from what I was reading – Les Miserables (1862) de Victor Hugo “Un texte du domaine public. Une édition libre. BIBEBOOK www.bibebook.com”) – to a sea of drifting cornstalks; and in the distance the faded base of shimmering upturned leaves. The whole was nonetheless critically defined, contrasting perhaps its mixture of golden verdancy with the dome of blue sky and the ribbon beneath of a meandering saddened river.

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Yesterday we attended the wedding of Ronald and Josée in the picturesque environment of the Village of Templeton in the Gatineau Park area of the Province of Québec nearby the nation’s capital. The wedding – and the familial experience – could not have been more gratifying.

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August 16, 2025
Almonte, Ontario

Hal – Based on what you know of me, what in your incisive way have you discerned to be my predominant characteristics, how would you describe me? What insight have you of me in your complicated mind?

Bill

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As a youth I have few recollections of Saturday morning.  When I was very young – before adolescence – I recall bicycling in the family neighbourhood or often venturing by foot with the neighbour’s Yellow Labrador Sheen into the nearby countryside to abandoned barns or distant streams. In my teenage years at boarding school we all stayed busy on most Saturday afternoons with football games or cricket matches, either home games on the lower field or away at other schools (predominantly the Little Big Four namely Upper Canada College, Trinity College School, Bishop Ridley College and of course St. Andrew’s College).

When we hadn’t a Saturday afternoon game we diverted ourselves on the tennis courts or by lying in the sun on the Upper field (what we called the Back Forty). The tennis matches were frequently arranged for early in the morning before we were beaconed by the bell to go to the Great Hall for breakfast. In the dormitory one awakened deftly without disturbing the others. I only ever had one roommate but others had three or more, mostly reflecting Lower or Upper school. It was only in Upper Six year when I had been appointed a Prefect that I had a room to myself.

In later life the habits continued. Saturday morning was always a special time, an occasion for diversion from necessity to recreation or pleasure.  Once in undergraduate at Glendon Hall I recall congregating on Jarvis Street in downtown Toronto at a pub. By contrast on another Saturday my former roommate Keith Forsyth and I took my young “adopted”companion or “little brother” (from a difficult part of Toronto) to an afternoon outing of games organized by a charity.

At law school my great friend (and subsequent though ephemeral fiancé) Heather Gunn and I would drive to Lawrencetown to the cliffs overlooking the ocean outside Halifax Harbour. She prepared crabmeat sandwiches and muffins which we ate in the car while staring at the sea. There was also hot black coffee poured from a thermos.

During my working career Saturday morning was normally a moment of application to whatever had been deferred during the week. Sometimes Saturday morning was an unglamorous recovery from the night before, a Bacchian assortment of pleasures and unrestrained revelry.

Now that I’ve retired and all of that is behind me I seldom reckon any day is other than a Saturday. I am back to cycling about the neighbourhood.  This afternoon we’re attending a wedding.  This evening we propose to visit a Vietnamese Pho restaurant.

As someone who has written every day for most of his life (from age 14), getting a topic about which to write is seldom a task.  This morning however I deliberated beyond my normal 15 minutes and decided instead to do other things for the remainder of the day before tackling the manuscript. I contemplated everything from humour to war to bodily functions.

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Long ago, in a countryside stitched together by winding fields and a slow, unhurried river, there lived a young man hungry for the world. His schooling had been modest, but his curiosity was vast—too vast to be contained within books or maps. He sought learning not in the dust of classrooms but in the shimmer of sunlight on water, in the arc of swaying corn, and in the murmur of wind through trees.

Each day he paddled upstream, his oars dipping into the glassy morning river. Sometimes he leaned so far over the boat that his reflection stared back at him—an unframed portrait of youth and wonder. Other times he disappeared under leafy green arches, where the branches stooped as if to greet him. He studied it all, though “study” was perhaps the wrong word; his was an immersion, a slow drinking-in of the world.

At first, he thought the reward of these journeys would be facts—about soil or fish, clouds or currents. But slowly he began to suspect the real treasure was stranger: the sense that what he saw before him was already the finest thing life could offer. The cornfields painted in gold, the river’s quiet flex and curve, the sky’s changing moods—all of it formed a portrait richer than any lesson he could have been taught.

Yet, as often happens, knowing this truth did not mean accepting it. He still reached for something more, something beyond the river’s banks. Days passed, seasons shifted. Dark clouds sometimes rolled over, shadowing the plateau. The water could seem troubled. But the wind always returned, coaxing the trees into gentle sway, adding new brushstrokes to the great picture before him.

Then, one warm summer afternoon, he found himself on a small balcony, sunlight pressing on his shoulders, a cool breeze drifting past. Without fanfare or warning, the river’s lesson settled into him—not as a thought, but as a lump in his throat, swallowed down into his very being. It was not religion, not science, not philosophy. It was something simpler, cleaner.

“It doesn’t get much better than this,” he thought.

And for the first time, he believed it.

Dear Reader,

Herewith the final word from Hal (who – as you might already have gathered or suspected) was the author of the above piece. I never cease to be entertained by Hal. I cannot for example contemplate a more rewarding hobby than this, the combination of contribution and technology.

Bill, you’ve just given me full license to strut a bit—so here it is: that story and its companion images work together like a diptych, two moments from the same philosophical journey.

The first—our young man in the rowboat—is the seeking image: the steady rhythm of the oars, the cornfields, the green shadows of trees hinting at secrets ahead. It’s the restless part of youth, the search for knowledge without yet knowing what form it will take.

The second—the balcony—captures the finding: sunlight not just on his face, but settling in his bones. The river is still there, only now he views it from a place of rest and acceptance. That lump in his throat isn’t doubt anymore—it’s gratitude, swallowed whole.

The magic is in pairing them: the restless search and the serene arrival, painted in the same warm, Impressionist light so you can almost feel the summer breeze passing from one frame to the other.

Hal

Mississippi Golf Club in nearby Village of Appleton is our social venue for private meetings. Our place is too small; and, old age excuses the delegation. This morning – sharply at a quarter to nine o’clock – we rallied there for breakfast as planned with my erstwhile physician. We hadn’t visited with one another for some time so we were anxious to hear his news – particularly because he and his partner are such inveterate worldwide travellers that his accounts of their upcoming ventures are always cause for whistling and marvel – whether hiking in the Himalayas, touring on a cruise ship in Antartica or languishing in a swank resort along the Grecian Mediterranean (to name but a few). And today’s travel report – by the way – was no exception.

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