When I arrived in Almonte I was immediately taken by the collaboration of all levels of society,  young and old, men and women, professionals and trades, student and teacher, minister and disciple, retailer and producer, farmer and townsfolk, clerk and customer, rich and poor, private and municipal.  It was a bountiful environment, fresh, teeming with vitality and variety, and predominantly egalitarian; that is, “believing in or based on the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities”. In that regard it resembled the purity and goals of what I understand to have been the Spartan way of life. Specifically Sparta exemplified the democratic model of government.

Sparta: a city in the southern Peloponnese in Greece, capital of the department of Laconia; population 14,400 (est. 2009). It was a powerful city state in the 5th century BC, defeating its rival Athens in the Peloponnesian War to become the leading city of Greece. Wikipedia

Not everything about the limitations of the Spartan way of life is – at first blush – enviable or laudable. For instance,

Xenophobia: Spartans were famously xenophobic, often discouraging outside contact to avoid the introduction of foreign ideas that could undermine their military focus.

“For this reason he (Lykurgus) would not allow citizens to leave the country at pleasure, and to wander in foreign lands, where they would contract outlandish habits, and learn to imitate the untrained lives and ill-regulated institutions to be found abroad.”

Excerpt translated (1894) from the Greek
Plutarch, “Plutarch’s Lives, Volume I (of 4).”

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For the past several days people everywhere have been chatting energetically about it. The Snowfall Warning continues until daybreak tomorrow. About a week ago there was an early morning frost that resembled a skiff of snow; but today’s forecast is far less ambivalent. Already the harvested field is more defined as the white snow covers the earthly remains of the mutely coloured stalks. Meanwhile the faded stumps protrude from the snow like an army of perfectly aligned constituents. Today’s blast is the first snowfall of the season.

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Today we lunched with Bruce and Graham – and their handsome dog Tanner – at their warm and welcoming residence in the Town of Smiths Falls, Lanark County along the Rideau Canal. The exceedingly flavourful meal – prepared as always with recognizable skill – was the perfect crescendo to our already vibrant confab. Our social history, serendipitous acquaintance and ancestral commonality contributed no doubt unwittingly to the fluency of the conversation. It was only our abhorrence of driving in the dark which accelerated our otherwise sparing departure from the drawing room and after-luncheon coffee.

It is named after Thomas Smyth, a United Empire Loyalist who in 1786 was granted 1.6 square kilometres (400 acres) in what is present-day Smiths Falls. The Heritage House Museum (c. 1862), also known as the Ward House, was designated under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1977.

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Waiting has forever been a challenge for me. The immediate corollary is impatience.  In business I excused the irritability arising from having to wait for information from another lawyer by arguing the urgency to clarify matters for my client. Very often my restlessness was well founded. The matter had been overlooked by the other firm or “fallen through the cracks”. As a result I smugly dismissed the prior recommendations to give the matter time or hold your horses. Probably things would have eventually worked out just fine; but the unhesitant pursuit of the affair unquestionably kept things moving.

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The precipitous change from summer to autumn is already but a sketchy memory. The temperature has fallen. The burnished leaves have blown away. The cornfields are harvested. The squawking geese circle endlessly in flight. Daylight Savings Time has begun with its brilliant mornings and monstrously dark afternoons.

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Not long ago I received (by email) a “selfie” of my elder niece (and goddaughter) and her handsome partner. I knew in an instant that it was a good shot. This seemingly idle observation of mine was all the more significant because of the casual, unwitting nature of the photograph. It was after all a “selfie”, an artistic flirtation not uncommon among the XYZ generations (basically, anything after The Beatles) and normally undertaken with a minimum of scrutiny or artistic devotion. It wasn’t a calculated composition; it was a whimsical snap. There was no posing. Yet it spoke to me.  It was a keeper. But how to do so? Storing things had proven to be a disengaging exercise. It complicated the matter when I added the ingredient that my niece is a professional photographer, primarily equestrian; but anything else she touches regularly proves to be equally memorable. Her skill is not discretionary or exclusionary. Here, I reasoned, was an opportunity.

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Forgive me – my apology for endless repetition – but I am compelled as a matter of duty to relate today’s encore brilliance. A simple matter, yes, perhaps; but one which nonetheless warrants unqualified attention for its splendour. It has been another glorious late autumn day in our tiny town – beaming yellow sunshine through the towering cumulonimbi, a fresh breeze, dry roads and cooperative traffic.

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If there’s one thing I like, it’s a quiet life. I’m not one of those
fellows who get all restless and depressed if things aren’t happening
to them all the time. You can’t make it too placid for me. Give me
regular meals, a good show with decent music every now and then, and
one or two pals to totter round with, and I ask no more. Bertie Wooster by P. G. Wodehouse

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When I transitioned early in my law career from a downtown urban firm to a main street rural sole proprietorship, it wasn’t long before I confronted the grid maps of the townships in the County of Lanark. These and survey matters in general frequently initiated any title searching. The preliminary education was understanding the difference between the fifth line and the fifth concession (the latter being the grid definitions of the townships in the county).

From there one was introduced to the convenience of the side road between every fifth lot (subdivisions within the concessions grids). These side roads were often legitimized at the quarterly meetings of the township council; and, hence, the roads came to be known as a Quarter Session road.

Lots:
Townships were further subdivided into lots within each concession. Lot sizes and survey methods evolved over time. Early System (from 1780s): Lots were commonly 200 acres, measuring 20 chains by 100 chains (1 chain = 66 feet or 20.1 meters).

The average size of a county in the province of Ontario is approximately
3,190 square kilometers (1,230 square miles)

Ontario has 22 counties (including united counties), which are primarily located in Southern Ontario and vary significantly in size. The smallest county is Dufferin County, with an area of 1,486.77 km², while the largest is Renfrew County, which covers 7,357.94 km².

It is important to note that a significant portion of Ontario, particularly Northern Ontario, is organized into much larger districts or single-tier municipalities, not counties. These other divisions have very different geographic and demographic characteristics.

By way of acknowledgement of our western neighbours (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba), I confess I first heard of these matters when I was only 13 years old living in Alberta. I met Kenneth Stickland whose family owned a nearby farm. Never did I hear Stickland or his family refer to acres; rather to sections.

Sections:

A section is 640 acres because it is defined as a square mile under the Public Land Survey System. There are 640 acres in one square mile. This is a result of the historical measurement system, where a square mile is 5,280 feet by 5,280 feet, and an acre is defined as 43,560 square feet, which divides evenly into the area of a square mile (5,280×5,280÷43,560 = 640).

The square mile was a logical unit because it could be easily divided into quarter sections of acres (640/4 =160 acres so named a Quarter Section), and then further into acre parcels.

• • Invention and Standardization: In 1620, the English clergyman and mathematician Edmund Gunter developed a precise measuring device called the “Gunter’s chain”. This chain was exactly 66 feet (20.117 meters) long and divided into 100 links. This system was ingenious because it reconciled traditional English land measurements with decimal calculations:
    
    • 10 square chains equaled one acre.
    • 80 chains equaled one mile.
      This made calculating land areas much simpler for surveyors and was adopted as the official standard in England and its colonies.
      
      • Establishment in Upper Canada (Ontario): When a formal survey structure was established in Upper Canada (now Ontario) in 1781, it implemented a grid system for dividing land into townships, concessions, and lots. The Gunter’s chain was the mandated instrument for these surveys, a practice continued from earlier British colonial times.

• Land Division: The new grid system used the chain for all measurements. For example:
  • Basic farm lots were typically 20 chains wide and 100 chains deep, containing 200 acres.
  • Road allowances were typically one chain (66 feet) wide.
  • The acre became the standard unit of land area, defined in terms of the chain.
• Legacy: The Gunter’s chain remained the standard surveying device for nearly 280 years, until it was eventually replaced by more accurate steel tapes and modern electronic equipment in the mid-to-late 20th century. Canada officially began the process of metrication in the 1970s, but the original land surveys, legal descriptions, and road allowances in Ontario and other parts of Canada are still based on the historical chain measurements, which is why those figures continue to appear on property deeds and plans today. 

  Acknowledgement: Wikipedia

There is not in all England a town so blatantly picturesque as Tilling,
nor one, for the lover of level marsh land, of tall reedy dykes, of
enormous sunsets and rims of blue sea on the horizon, with so fortunate
an environment. The hill on which it is built rises steeply from the
level land, and, crowned by the great grave church so conveniently close
to Miss Mapp’s residence, positively consists of quaint corners,
rough-cast and timber cottages, and mellow Georgian fronts. Corners and
quaintnesses, gems, glimpses and bits are an obsession to the artist,
and in consequence, during the summer months, not only did the majority
of its inhabitants turn out into the cobbled ways with sketching-blocks,
canvases and paintboxes, but every morning brought into the town
charabancs from neighbouring places loaded with passengers, many of whom
joined the artistic residents. E. F. Benson

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