It came up suddenly while I was thinking of other things.

I had taken Lindsay for the full run along the top of the Bluffs from East Point Park to the water filtration plant about 3 kilometers away. We had begun in scattered sunshine but with a good breeze blowing off the lake.

A complicated project I'm managing at work was occupying my thoughts. There are many pieces that have to go right and many people who have to play their part for many small customers and creative new solutions have led to creative new road blocks that need work arounds and so I was tuned out to the natural world around me.

On her part Lindsay was deeply tuned into the natural world. Her entire attention intensely focused on each new smell and sound. Early on we had seen a deer. That brought me out of myself, momentarily. A young buck, it stood there majestically, calmly watching us watching him, before turning and bounding away, Lindsay hot on his trail.

Thinking back later, that was the last part of the walk I remembered before the thunder storm arrived with an earth reverberating crash.

The tallest object on the top of the bluffs in a thunderstorm is not what you want to be. And we were at least two kilometers away from the car.

The lightening was vicious and frequent, the wind ripped at my clothing, and the rain soaked us in a instant. Lindsay was dancing around my feet looking up at me as if to say, what do we do now?

There were really only two choices, find a place to hunker down or try for the car.

But really there was only one. A two kilometer run along the exposed rim of the bluffs would have been suicide. So we headed into some deep brush beside the trail seeking the densest and driest place we could find.

Ten thousand years of civilization were stripped away as we waited out the vicious storm. Nature had suddenly turned deadly and all we could do was sit and watch as millions of ancestors had before us. We were protected from the beating rain, but that rain would accumulated on the leaves above us and come cascading down as small waterfalls of warm water.

Time stood still; but in the civilized world around us, in the thousands of dry suburban homes where the storm was only a minor annoyance out there, clock mechanisms moved smoothly forward unanimously clicking away twenty minutes, before the storm moved on.

The rain settled down to a light misty drizzle, and the thunder reduced to a distant growl, as we crept out and began our sodden trek back to the car.

I was soaked to my skin and it was hard to get the keys out of my wet pocket. But finally I got them out and the car door open and we rejoined the safety of civilization. I cranked up the car heater.

It was when we were stopped at the train tracks for a passing GO train that I realized I knew the answer to the most difficult problem I faced at work. It was an elegant little solution, dazzling in its simplicity.

I arrived home in a joyful mood to find a worried Linda.

There's danger of this becoming a vlog.

Somehow I've managed to post videos just about everyday this week.

I was going to skip today but Lindsay created a fuss and threatened to leave home if I didn't post this video. After all, how often does a dog get named world most talented performer by Simon Cowell.

Exactly!

So here they are, straight from the Britain's Got Talent 2008 semi final, the world's greatest performance by man or beast Kate and Gin--



Okay Lindsay are you happy now?

I posted a message about Deekshill Park a couple of weeks ago. Deekshill is one of the more beautiful spots in West Hill, with one of the worst reputations. A woman was raped there three years ago and local residents were reluctant to walk through the quiet forest due to rowdy teens drinking on the bank of the small stream that ran through the woods.

Uncared for, the Park was strewn with refuse including discarded tires, supermarket buggies, lawn chairs, plastic bags and other garbage.

Concerned, the Coronation Community Association of West Hill confronted our City Councilor who had a team from Toronto Parks in to clean it up. It took a team three full days of work to remove the refuse from the Park. The CCA also approached our Police Superintendent who has increased patrols in the Park area. Police on bikes are now a regular sight in the park.

The result has been a transformation of this 6 acre jewel back to being one of the most lovely areas of natural woodland in the City.

I produced the following video to celebrate the change and to promote use of the park.

We need to start to use this area both more frequently and more responsibly or risk loosing it again.



If you don't use it you loose it.

No this is not a joke.

For the past 500 years Indian families have practiced dropping infants off a 15 meter tower into the crowd below.

Organizers claim there has never been an injury and that dropping the infants makes them stronger.

I'll let you be the judge of that. Here is the video--



You may now scream!

Little did Linda know that in the wake of agreeing to marry me an acausal chain of events would be unleashed that would obliterate every site of importance associated with our marriage.

Entire buildings would be reduced to rubble. People would die.

There was forewarning of the catastrophes to come, but it was ignored.

The day the wedding invitations were to be printed, I got a phone call from Linda, in tears, telling me to call the printer and stop the printing of the invitations. The church where we were to marry had just burned down.

This was Linda's church, where her parents were founding members of the congregation, where her father taught boy scouts, where her mother sang in the choir and where her father's funeral service had been held after his tragic heart attack at 43 years of age. The building was only 10 years old. Eventually the cause would be traced back to faulty electrical wiring in the kitchen. But the building was completely destroyed.

Instead of her beautiful church, set quietly back on a suburban street, we were married in a small Presbyterian chapel on busy Kingston Rd. Two years later that chapel was torn down and replaced with a seniors home.

I hope you're keeping score. The church where we were to marry and the church where we actually were married, have both been destroyed. And that was only the beginning.

Our wedding reception was held at the Broom & Stone golf and curling club. It burned down the next year.

Our honeymoon was at the beautiful Inn on the Park, where six people would soon loose their lives in a tragic and deadly fire. According to the New York Times article, "SIX DIE IN TORONTO HOTEL FIRE: Six people were known dead and about 60 were sent to local hospitals. The fire broke out at 2:35 A.M. and was brought under control about 90 minutes later. Guests had to wait for hours in temperatures of 4-below before being allowed back in the building." It has now been torn down.

Our first home was in the town of Parry Sound. A year after we moved in, it was expropriated by the town for the construction of a mall. Where our house once sat, where I carried Linda over the threshold, where our dog Jenny had her litter of puppies, where we had so many good parties with wonderful friends, is now a mall parking lot.

If it was a curse following us, destroying every place associated with our marriage, the curse ended there. Our next home, in Callander, still stands, as does the home we lived in for eight years in Powassan.

And of course, we still stand. But I think it was a close call.