LIVE AND LEARN To share your thoughts goto: barney@thetimetraveller.ca. 1999 Like many we have a collection of Reader’s Digests accumulated over years. What to do with them for they have an abundance of interesting stories and reflect another time and often rekindle memories. In the November 1999 edition (Remember everyone was worried about the impending […]
HUNTER ORANGE Now that it is officially Spring we can look forward to Wild Turkey Season. Except Mother Nature has either missed that memo or chosen to ignore it for there is still a lot of snow cover and even once Turkey season commences don’t be surprised that you will need to dress warmly; often […]
A Bare Tail Shannon Stevens won’t soon forget her recent snowmobile trip to the family yurt at Chilkat Lake in Alaska. They had finished cooking sausages over an open fire and retired to the yurt when Mother Nature beckoned necessitating a trip to the necessarium, aka the outhouse. No sooner had she sat upon the […]
COLD ALLERGY Cold Urticaria is an allergy to the cold. Not good if you are Canadian. According to Karen Binkley, a Toronto allergist and clinical immunologist at St. Michael’s and Sunnybrook hospitals cold Urticaria is a condition where people will get hives when exposed to the cold. However, she adds, “It’s not really that common. […]
WILD PIGS Authorities are advising against hunting wild pigs, should you see any, as their removal is only effective if an entire group is eliminated. Any pigs that escape quickly learn to evade humans and become more difficult to eradicate. Ontario is asking you to report any wild pig sightings to wildpigs@ontario.ca or goto the […]
CANADA’S NATIONAL BIRD We may have a number of national animals but as yet no national bird. Researchers such as Dan Strickland, former Algonquin Park naturalist, biologist….have long promoted the Whiskey Jack. Also known as the Grey Jay (Canadian spelling) Strickland was part of a successful campaign that convinced the American Ornithological Society to officially […]
WHAT BIG TEETH YOU HAVE So said Little Red Riding Hood to the big, bad wolf. Wolves are smart. Ask any trapper. If you want to trap a wolf you have to be smarter. Well a five-year summertime of research has taught some American researchers what trappers already know. But it’s nice to have the […]
THE PREYING MANTIS Learned some interesting information recently about the Preying Mantis while listening to Bob McDonald on the C.B.C.’s popular Quirks and Quarks radio show. Apparently, and someone has studied this, 35% of the time the females eat the male before breeding and 13% after. The males tend to be smaller in size and […]
SYRUP TIME On February 15, 2020, the Ides of February, almost to this day of publication, I attended opening day celebrating the beginning of maple syrup season at Bata Maples which was symbolic of course, but not by much, as the sap began running by the end of that month. I don’t know if there […]
SIGNS OF SPRING Two out of three isn’t bad. Perhaps it’s a Canadian versus American phenomenon. On February 2, 2021, at 8 a.m., Nova Scotia’s Shubenacadie Sam called for an early Spring. Sam, by the way, is short for Samantha. She made her prediction an hour before Wiarton Willie, an albino, and Pennsylvania’s Punxsutawney Phil. […]
