Archive for September, 1997

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines cowboy as a “boy in charge of cows; a man in charge of grazing cattle on a ranch; one who is boisterous or undisciplined, or recklessly unscrupulous in business.”

You can take your pick, but if you want a different view of the working cowboy read what Kathy Leslie says about her father-in-law, a cowboy who ranched near Maple Creek, Sask., until his death in 1995. “Jim Leslie was not a man to waste words. He understood the language of the […]

by Tom MacGregor

The young guide who met the group of veterans and youths at the Vimy Memorial in France had a well-rehearsed speech, but when he reached the part describing the morning of April 9, 1917, an old man in a wheelchair piped up, “I was there!”

The statement startled the student guide, not because it was said louder than necessary because of the speaker’s difficulty in hearing, but because the last thing a guide expects on his tour in 1997 is someone who can tell the story first hand.

The speaker was 104-year-old Harry Boyce, a member of the Legion’s Regina […]

A solitary red-winged blackbird hops expectantly around a gravel parking lot next to the takeout lunch trailer. The small bird isn’t at all shy, or wary of humans milling nearby.

Pausing in front of a sign that warns “Please do not feed the fish,” our guide notices the bird and a quick frown crosses his face. “That’s not something we like to see,” he mutters, then shakes his head and moves on. Such scrounging is troubling, he explains, because this is Point Pelee National Park–a place that is meant to remain wild, and feeding of creatures in the wild is discouraged. […]

The University of Edinburgh in Scotland has recently established a centre for WW II studies that could serve as a model for Canadian universities. Its mandate is “to promote knowledge and understanding of all aspects” of WW II and to “stimulate research into major themes and problems relating to war.” To accomplish this, the centre–under director Paul Addison–has established a masters degree program that focuses on homefronts and battlefronts. He has also developed a partnership with Lamancha, the independent film production company that created the outstanding Battlefield series shown recently on the Public Broadcasting System.Addison also persuaded renowned spy novelist […]