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Those who have been following our site for a while know by now that this year I got our boys (5 and 7 at the time) into Beavers, which is the entry-level for Scouts Canada. It comes before Cubs, which comes before Scouts, which comes before Ventures. They did not have Beavers when I was that age, but I did go through Cubs and Scouts - and had a lot of fun while I was there. I'd been thinking that I wanted to start a lot of camping and outdoor activities with the boys, and figured I'd kill 2 (or even 3) birds with 1 stone and get them into Beavers, and volunteer to be a Leader. The year is winding down now, and we are already looking for Beaver, Cub and Scout leaders for next year. So if you are interested, please let me know. Our troop is in the Hintonburg/Westboro area of Ottawa near the Ottawa Bagel Shop if you know where that is. Beavers and Scouts meet on Wednesday evening, and Cubs on Thursday.

Next year I'll be returning as a Beaver leader, and since my oldest is moving up to Cubs I've also let our district coordinator know that I'd be game to be a leader there as well. I'm hoping I do get to do both because the Cubs should be a little less like herding cats, and I'll be able to do a lot more in-depth stuff with them. I have said many times this year that there was a good reason why Baden Powell started them at age 8 :-) Being in charge of the Beavers can certainly be challenging, but it is also an awful lot of fun! And by the time I get up into Scouts with my boys, we'll be doing stuff like what you see in this video. This was filmed last week at our troops' annual end-of-year picnic. It is a trebuchet that our Scout troop has been building for the last 18 months or so.

Yesterday evening I was sitting the backyard with my wife when it became apparent that the folks diagonally over the fence were having one of their huge parties. Actually, they don't have them often - I'd say only once a year which would make sense in hindsight after what I found out. This year I decided I was going to go over and introduce myself, so around 8pm I grabbed a 2 litre bottle of homebrew and away I went. I decided it was time to meet more of the neighbours and what better time than at their party?

So I hopped the fence directly behind me, and walked over to the next house where the party was - and what a party I found! There had to be 40 or 50 people inside and out. They had a bar set up in the shed, and a huge spread of professionally catered food which occupied a good 1/4 of their tiny yard. I quickly met the owners and said "Where I come from, if you can hear the music, you are invited. So I invited myself". As it turned out, he was pleased-as-punch to hear that, and over the course of the evening made sure I was well taken-care-of for both food and drinks. He told me he was celebrating his birthday - and wow he sure was celebrating in style with that huge spread.

During the Great Depression it was common for people to get together to can up large amounts of food - many hands make light work. While the driving factor was simply a matter of survival, it had a really great side-effect of bringing communities together and forming bonds that would far outlive the economic troubles.

Today we find ourselves once again in the midst of economic troubles, and it may or may not be a coincidence that canning is becoming more-and-more popular. Just last week the New York Times newspaper did a feature article on this new trend - which is not really so new for many of us - that seems to be getting a lot of coverage in the alternative blogosphere. I think it would be a stretch to suggest that it is a matter of survival for most folks this time around, but I do think that people in general are becoming more concerned with their food chain, and are wanting to become more directly connected with it.

This is a good thing.

Our kids are now 5 and 7 years old, and given that kids start school at age 4 in Ontario have been in the system now for a few years. Here in a Ontario we have a very different system from where I grew up - small town Nova Scotia. I am (very proudly) from a small town of 5000 to 6000 people, and we had 3 schools in town : Elementary, Middle, and High. There was no choice - you went to each one in turn when you were the appropriate age. Everyone knew all the other kids their age, and at the end of it all our grad class was about 70 students.

It is quite different here in Ontario, and honestly, I like it better when there was no choice. It bothers me when I see people here so (overly) concerned about which school is the "best", and trying to get their kids into it. In my former work place I used to see it quite often - it was almost a frenzy. People checking out school ratings and going through some truly heroic scheduling-acrobatics to get their kids into the "right" school. I see it as one of those circumstances where more choice is not necessarily a good thing.