Time for another winter break. Back to posting around January 21, including time off for MLK Day.
Till then, the Eggman.
Its actual title is “Egghead,” a work by Kimber Fiebiger, an artist from Minneapolis. The sculpture, at least as of September, is in Sheridan, Wyoming.
Near the courthouse square in Kokomo, standing next to a fairly busy intersection and the parking lot of a small office building, is Kokomantis, all of 17 feet tall and – in late December anyway – decked out for the holidays. That’s a big bug. The kind of thing begs you to look at it.
“Its torso and wings are crafted from World War II fuel pontoons, while the legs are made from stoplight arms, giving her an industrial yet graceful appearance,” Heidi Pruitt writes in The Kokomo Post. Local artist Scott Little and developer Scott Pitcher collaborated on the work, with its creation taking Little a reported total of 220 hours.
I wasn’t sure what a “fuel pontoon” was, so I looked into it and came up with a reasonable definition from a British web site: “a self-contained floating facility for the storage and dispensing of petrol and diesel fuel for coastal sheltered marina environments.” Yep, that would have been useful in WWII.
Kokomatis isn’t the only animal of size in Kokomo. In Highland Park, one of the city’s parks, tucked away behind glass in what amounts to its own exhibition room, is the stuffed steer Old Ben (d. 1910). Impressive taxidermy, considering the age.
“Old Ben’s story began in 1902 on the farm of Mike and John Murphy between Bunker Hill and Miami near what is known as Haggerty’s crossing,” the city of Kokomo tells us. “He was the offspring of a pure bred registered Hereford bull and an ordinary shorthorn cow. Ben was a prodigy from the very beginning, as he weighed 125 pounds at birth…
“He weighed one ton at 20 months and two tons at the age of 4 in 1906. By that time, he had become quite a celebrity, and his owners exhibited him at many fairs and festivals. The Nickel Plate Railroad even ran a spur line to the Murphy farm just to help Ben in his travels.”
The article is worth reading all the way through, including for the pictures of a woman named Phyllis Hartzell-Talbert posing with stuffed Ben in 1944 at age 22 and again in 2022 at 100.
Not far from Ben, but in a different display room in the same building, is another former living thing famed (at least in Kokomo) for its size: The Sycamore Stump. Complete with explanatory notes on a sign.
A plaque you don’t see often. At least not as much as the WPA or the CCC. In this case, it’s attached to the structure housing Old Ben and the Sycamore Stump.
A New Deal jobs program for youth, including not only men, but women, and not only white youth, but blacks. It was part of the WPA for most of its existence.
Yet another item on exhibit in the park is a former Confederate cannon, one of those prizes of war that lingers long after the war. This one is a little unusual in that it isn’t out in the elements, like many.
Made by Leeds Iron Foundry in New Orleans some time before the Union occupation of the city beginning in mid-62. The cannon’s plaque explains: “Leeds made a total of 49 cannons for the South. Nine of these were 12-pound howitzers. Of these nine, only three are known to exist. Two are in the National Park Service and ours!”
One more item in the park, and it’s even bigger than Old Ben or the Sycamore Stump. A relocated covered bridge.
The Vermont Bridge, which doesn’t refer to the New England state, but instead to Vermont, Indiana, near Kokomo, where it crossed Wildcat Creek. When threatened with demolition, the city of Kokomo paid to have the bridge moved to the park in 1957 and the park district has done some renovation over the years. By 2039, it will have been in this location as long as it was in its original location.
When you see a bridge, cross it if you can, especially if traffic is light. Inside included plenty of graffiti.
Lewis Cass? Like the 1848 presidential candidate who lost to Zachary Taylor?
Yes. I remembered seeing Lewis Cass High School as we drove through Walton, Indiana, which is up the road a piece from Kokomo.
At the corner of Sycamore and Apperson streets in central Kokomo is Story Book Express.
Outside, a design on the whimsical side, using a lot of repurposed building materials from demolished structures, according to Fortune Cos. Inc., which mostly specializes in historic building restoration — and which is headed by Scott Pitcher, also of Kokomantis fame (at least in Kokomo). Inside, it’s a fairly ordinary convenience store. As the last place we visited in Kokomo, we went in for a look, and I knew I had to support this oddball convenience store in some way, so I bought a pack of gum for the drive back.
A coinage for our moment in history: Chief execucide. I won’t claim it’s my invention, however, since I found an example from 1988, though for comic effect. Whatever else is going on with the most recent incident, it isn’t comedy.
We haven’t been downtown since the Open House event, and so haven’t seen this year’s State Street windows at the store formerly known as Marshall Field’s. It probably would be another disappointment. They were once known for their imaginative displays. No more. In recent years the company has been phoning it in.
That wasn’t the case in 2015. Actual designers were carrying on the tradition back then, and I should have taken more pictures. This was a favorite: a snowball fight between Uranus and Neptune.
The conceit was, as I wrote, a “space-flight-enthusiast young boy hitching a ride with Santa to various fantastic versions of the planets (except Pluto), including a return to Earth that seemed to feature a bizarro hybrid of New York and Chicago.”
I did take a few other pics. The first was, I believe, the boy’s room.
C’mon, Macy’s. You can do better windows if you try. If you hire the talent. I expect my nephew Robert, whose profession encompasses such work, would be glad to help for a healthy fee.
Sure enough, a dusting of snow stuck overnight. It won’t last, but what does?
Regards for Thanksgiving. Back to posting around December 1, which can claim to be the start of winter, in as much as a single day can.
The figgy pudding Yuriko made on Sunday. Much of it is gone now, but Ann will be able to sample it when she’s back for the holiday. Bet she’ll be glad for the opportunity.
A stone at Graceland Cemetery last Sunday.
No name on it, except “Asano,” which I take to mean this is a work of Hiroyuki Asano, not a stone memorializing him, since he still seems to be alive. Maybe he’s planning ahead for his presence in Graceland, which I believe in the undertaker biz would count as “preneed.” (Pre-need?)
Or it could be a memorial for someone who didn’t want their name on it. That’s unusual, but not unknown: Erma Bombeck’s boulder in Dayton comes to mind. Or, the person who commissioned Asano’s piece at Graceland is also still alive, details to be added later.
John Welborn Root, Chicago architect (d. 1891). Forgot to post him.
In my efforts to see stones for well-known people, I also almost forgot to take a look at more ordinary folk. Almost, but not quite.
FamilySearch tells me (footnote numbers removed; but there were eight of them for a single paragraph) about the 161 Depot Brigade. It also features the unit patch, which is to the right.
Secretary of War Newton Baker authorized Major General Samuel Sturgis to organize the 161 Depot Brigade, an element of the 87th Division (National Army). It was later detached and placed directly under Camp Pike, Arkansas, as an independent unit.
The brigade filled two purposes: one was to train replacements for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF); the other was to act as a receiving unit for men sent to camps by local draft boards. During most of 1918, the brigade was commanded by Brigadier General Frederick B. Shaw.
A different sort of memorial, in a different place – a nearby park that we visit often. We’d noticed Jake “The Snake” Popp’s bench before. Looks like people who remember The Snake fondly decorated his bench for the fall.
In the same park, a lamppost, ready to do its job.
On the post, a sign says it is a product of Traditional Concrete Inc., of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Guess that name stresses the long-lasting — and traditional — material that goes into the company’s product, which is fine. But if I started a lamppost company, it would be Fiat Lux Inc.
No point in burying the lead (haw, haw): among all the memorials at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, Dexter Graves’ stone surely gets the most attention. For one thing, it stands out at a distance.
Safe to say that the memorial, especially a haunting bronze figure called “Eternal Silence,” is better known than Dexter Graves himself. Graves was a Chicago pioneer, settling in the area in 1833, when the place was little more than a marshy spot near the Chicago River. He died in 1845, with reinternment and the memorial coming much later at the behest of an elderly son of his, who is buried there too – in 1909, by which time Chicago was a vast metropolis that probably would have astonished Graves.
Lorado Taft created the sculpture, and while I made images of it standing alone, soon a small group of French tourists came by for a look, including posing with it for pictures. Since the work is near the cemetery’s only entrance, I came back again before I left for another look, and that time an American couple, about my age, were there. The woman asked me whether I’d also seen “Fountain of Time” down in the Hyde Park neighborhood. Happily, I was able to tell her I had, including the quote that goes with it, “Time stays, we go.”
I also recommended “The Eternal Indian,” out in Ogle County, which she said she hadn’t seen. I forgot to mention – it would have been showing off anyway – seeing his “Alma Mater” in Champaign, the memorial he worked on in Mount Carroll, Illinois, his sculptures in the Fern Room of the Garfield Park Conservatory or the Fountain of the Great Lakes at the Art Institute. That’s just a scattering. To see more of Taft’s work, you have to pay attention elsewhere in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky (in Paducah, I wasn’t paying attention), Washington, DC, Colorado, Michigan, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Kansas and probably other places.
Also, you can see “The Crusader,” which is Graceland, marking the grave of Victor Lawson (d. 1925), one-time publisher of the Chicago Daily News. Lorado Taft did that too, though later in his career, 1931.
When was the last time a newspaper crusaded about anything? Not recently, private equity owners don’t like it.
Assorted business tycoons, moguls and robber barons repose in Graceland, without a cent to their names these days. But in their day, they or their immediate heirs had big bucks to spend on big memorials. None is bigger than retailer and hotelier Potter Palmer (d. 1902).
That kind of dough will also buy you a picturesque waterfront location.
I have to say the Palmer tomb is quite a presence, standing out even among many other large tombs, of which there are many. Such as that for George Pullman.
The pyramid of 19th-century beermaker Peter Schoenhofen.
Others.
The cemetery’s stone- and metalwork curls and is otherwise shaped in ways remarkable to see. How can these hard materials be persuaded to take those shapes? By the rare skill of the artisans, as long gone as the captains of industry inside the tombs.
A small building stands near the entrance of Graceland, including a patio with iron tables and chairs, a few of which were occupied when I visited, since the day was just warm enough for that. Inside the building, heated this time of year, visitors can rest on a bench, go to the bathroom, watch a video about the cemetery and, just as important, pick up a free paper map that guides you to the graves of some (but hardly all) of the well-known permanent residents.
Not every grand cemetery has that amenity, but when you find one, that ups the visit into a kind of treasure hunt, if you want. A look for the famed stones, like at Hollywood Forever in Los Angeles with its movie stars or Forest Home in Milwaukee with its brewers. My idea of a good time, but I’m eccentric that way. Besides some of the stones mentioned above, the map takes you to lumber baron and Goodman Theatre patron William Goodman.
And Mr. Whipple.
He’s not actually on the map, probably because the memorial isn’t for the person obsessed with toilet paper, since he was fictional. Even so, I understand he received treatment for his OCD, retired from the grocery business and lived with his daughter in Florida until his death in 2007.
MLB star Ernie Banks, “Mr. Cub,” and the first black player for the Cubs. Nearby is dancer Ruth Page.
Minnie Miñoso, a fairly recent stone. In fact, I read that it was erected only this summer. Graceland is still an active cemetery, with more open land than I would have thought.
I had to look him up; among other things, he was the first black player for the White Sox. The Cuban Comet, he was called, which sounds like something invented by a sports reporter pounding print on his old typewriter.
Heavyweight prizefighter Jack Johnson, the Galveston Giant, famed for upsetting racists in the early 20th century.
The small pyramid of architectural photographer and preservationist Richard Nickel, a favorite of mine in Chicago history.
Gov. John Peter Altgeld, another favorite but from Illinois history, who knew that pardoning the surviving men convicted in the Haymarket bombing would probably cost him the governorship, as indeed it likely did. It was that or preside over a miscarriage of justice, he believed.
Chicago is a city of architects; Graceland is a necropolis of architects. I didn’t see them all – missed Burnham on his island, for example – but I got a good sample.
Including Mies van der Rohe. For him, a flat black spare Miesian sort of memorial.
But he has a splendid view.
William LeBaron Jenny.
Bruce Goff.
Louis Sullivan.
Talk about teasing a rarefied shape out of base metal. In this case, the work’s designer at least is known: Thomas Tallmadge (d. 1940), who is also at Graceland.
During a cloudy but not rainy period early this afternoon — heavy rain came later — I wandered over to the polling place at the school where Lilly and Ann both spent their elementary school years and voted there. I’d considered voting early at a different location, but when I stopped by about a week ago, the line was long. So Election Day voting it is, once again. My 12th presidential election.
Assuming he voted in all of them, how many for Jimmy Carter, our centenarian president? Assuming also that he voted absentee when necessary, especially during his time in the Navy. He turned 21 on October 1, 1945, but there’s a twist: Georgia lowered its voting age to 18 in 1943, thus enfranchising the young Carter for the 1944 election.
That would be 21 presidential elections, 1944 to 2024, inclusive. Not many people get to vote in many more than that.
After visiting the Gail Borden Library in Elgin a week ago Sunday, we walked over to the banks of the Fox River, which isn’t far.
Facing the river, specifically the Kimball Street and Dam, are pioneers in bronze.
There are enough of these kinds of statues that they represent a memorial genre, I think: Doughty Pioneers. Other recent examples (for me) include Nacogdoches and Bandera, Texas, and there are ones closer to home. The Elgin pioneers, under the name “Pioneer Family Memorial” (2001), were created by Elgin artist Trygve A. Rovelstad, though cast posthumously, since he died in 1990.
He also designed the Elgin Centennial half dollar, a numismatic curiosity from 1936. It was sold to help fund Rovelstad’s pioneer memorial in Elgin, but it clearly wasn’t enough, since the thing wasn’t finished for 65 years.
A lot of commemorates were minted in 1936, such as for the Texas Centennial, Daniel Boone Bicentennial, Arkansas Centennial, Wisconsin Territorial Centennial, Long Island Tercentenary (which sounds like the 300th anniversary of it becoming an island), and coins honoring such places as Elgin, but also Cleveland, Columbia, SC, Lynchburg, Va., and York County, Maine, among others.
The Oregon Trail Memorial, Cincinnati Musical Center and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge got halves that year, too. Whoever successfully lobbied an important Congressman for one, got one, sounds like.
The bronze pioneers are near Walton Island Park, a man-made feature in the Fox River accessible by footbridge from the east bank. Like the Elgin half dollar, it too dates from the 1930s, when the local chapter of the Izaak Walton League – an organization named for the Compleat Angler fellow that’s still around – led the effort to enlarge a mud bank in the river by dredging the bottom and using the fill.
A flag sculpture is at the north tip of the island.
Dedicated on Flag Day, 2002. With one of the busier dedication plaques I’ve seen (but not as busy as the Norwegians in America).
The rest of the park is mostly a short stroll.
With good views of either side of the Fox. Such as the west bank.
A windmill. We didn’t go over to look at it, but I looked into it later. I’ve driven the nearby road (Illinois 31) any number of times, and must have seen it, but I guess it didn’t register. When I saw it from Walton Island, I thought I was seeing it for the first time.
For some extra drama, a freight train rolled by.
“A recent multi-year project for the Elgin Area Historical Society involved relocating and restoring a long-forgotten urban windmill built in 1922 by the Elgin Wind, Power and Pump Co.,” explains the Elgin History Museum.
“On September 7, 2013 the windmill was fully restored and now stands proudly at the site of its creation in Foundry Park off Route 31 in Elgin. The park was once the site of the Elgin Windmill Company, where the windmill was originally built.”
A week ago Sunday we visited the main branch of the Gail Borden Public Library District, a mid-sized, newish building near the Fox River in far west suburban Elgin, Illinois. First time at that library. Quite impressive, looking like a place where people want to go, looking for some specific information, or just to see what they could see.
Inside the front entrance the space opens up into a round, which functions as a hub for the rooms that are the library’s spokes.
Prominent against a wall was the Community Ofrenda – Ofrenda Comunitaria.
A helpful nearby sign.
Calaveritas decorativas. That’s a good thing to know, the Spanish for the multitudes of decorative skulls in the worlds.
Details.
The faces of Día de los Muertos.
Things you can do in London: walk along the Thames; visit Covent Garden; and see St. Paul’s Cathedral. We did all of those things in the original London, once upon a time.
Earlier this month, we managed two out of three in London, Ontario. The cathedral was closed. Some other time, maybe, since you can drive from metro Chicago to the Canadian London in about six hours, provided traffic snarls on the highways just south of Lake Michigan aren’t any worse than usual and you don’t encounter a testy Canadian border guard, as I did on Canada Day all those years ago, for the most thorough border-crossing inspection I ever received, before or since.
The Thames as it passes through downtown London. The banks are mostly parkland.
Actually, that point is the meeting of the North Thames and the Thames, locally known as the Folks. The river is called as La Tranche in French and Deshkaan-ziibi in Ojibwe, Antler River.
The King Street pedestrian bridge connecting the banks.
Near the Folks is the HMCS-NCSM Prevost, flying these colors – the Canadian Naval Ensign, if I understand correctly.
All that is a fair amount to unpack: the ensign is flying on land because the Prevost is a stone frigate, a naval facility on land. HMCS is His Majesty’s Canadian Ship, of course, but this being Canada, it is also NCSM, Navire canadien de Sa Majesté. The site is a training and recruiting center for the Canadian Navy, and also home to the Battle of the Atlantic Memorial. Another sign is in French, but I only made a picture of the English.
The memorial is still under construction, according to the London Free Press, and it looked like it, with memorial stones being put into place on a small slope. Dedication will be next May, on the 80th anniversary of the end of that battle, which lasted until the Germans surrendered.
I decided to look up one of the ships memorialized: the HMCS Valleyfield.
Commissioned in December 1943. Torpedoed and sunk May 7, 1944, with the loss of 125 Canadian sailors in the gelid North Atlantic.
After the riverside, we took a short walk through downtown, especially Dundas St.
An unexpected mural on that street.
“Johnny and June” by Kevin Ledo, a Montreal artist, and completed only in 2023. (If you want to see a large Ledo mural depicting a young Alex Trebec, go to Sudbury, Ontario.)
The mural, on the side of London’s Budweiser Gardens sports-event venue, is impressively large, at 45 feet tall and 20 feet wide. Larger than life, certainly. A nearby sign says it commemorates the moment on February 22, 1968, when Johnny Cash proposed to June Carter on stage during a concert in London.
As for Covent Garden, that’s where we had lunch. Site of a public market since 1845, though I expect things have been cleaned up some since then.
Not quite as grand as the one in the larger London, but well worth the stroll to look at the shops, and find an eatery. We ate at a Brazilian place. Don’t see too many of those in food halls. Most satisfying.
Lots of goods. Is there a Canadian content requirement?
A few more London details, near Covent Garden. We didn’t see on foot the part of town I found more intriguing, which we drove through: the area around Western University (a.k.a., University of Western Ontario, enrollment more than 40,000). Might be a good place to look around if we ever take that trip to the Stratford Festival, which is practically down the road from London.
I have to like a place with a name like that.
Look at that point-of-interest spot on the map, I said to no one in particular. I think Yuriko was in the bathroom right then. Wiarton Willie, I said. And that is?
I didn’t look it up. But I knew we were going that way, south from the tip of the Bruce Peninsula at Tobermory on the two-lane Ontario 6, so we could find out. The town of Wiarton, Ontario was our first stop, late on the crisp and clear morning of October 10.
Wiarton’s on the Georgian Bay side. Willie has a lake view in a municipal park, but he is positioned looking away.
The plaque says that Willie was carved from Adair Dolomtic Limestone by Dave Robinson, and erected in 1996 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Groundhog Weekend celebrations in Wiarton, Ontario, pop. about 2,000. He honors the live groundhogs used in the annual ceremonies. “Willie Rising” is the formal name of the work.
Punxsutawney might have the best-known Groundhog Day celebrations — and certainly be depicted (by Woodstock, Illinois) in the best movie ever likely to be made about the holiday — but it isn’t the only place that touts the predictive talents of a series of marmots during a wintertime festival. Wiarton does, too. At one time an albino groundhog served as the living centerpiece of the fest, though more standard groundhogs seem to be tasked with forecasting these days.
One year, the Willie of the time died just before the festival, so the organizers held a public funeral instead, putting a lookalike stuffed rodent in a tiny casket, since the recently passed Willie reportedly smelled too bad for the role. Apparently some of the festivalgoers were miffed, but if you asked me that shows some imagination on the part of somebody — an urge to do something just a little out of the ordinary. In the hands of a competent scriptwriter, there’s probably a pretty good Groundhog Day comedy in that story.
Here’s a rabbit hole: or rather, a groundhog burrow: The Adair in Adair Dolomtic Limestone is a trademark held by Arriscraft, which is a unit of the stone products group of General Shale, the North American subsidiary of the expansion-minded Wienerberger AG, a leading multinational manufacturer of brick, headquartered in Vienna. The stone itself was quarried locally, since there are quarries near Wiarton. But the ultimate bosses are shadowy German-speaking billionaires.
The shore at Wiarton.
Not far away is the main street, Berford Street (Ontario 6), and its collection of handsome buildings of a certain age.
The taller buildings came in at no more than three stories.
Most had stores on their first floors, and people were out and about on the sidewalks, going about their business at such places as Beer Store, Peninsula Imprint, Bluewater Dental, Sullivan’s Butcher Shop, Coral’s Caribbean Cuisine, KW Real Estate Centre, Lost Art Espresso, Sunshine Drugs, Wiarton Emporium (thrift store), Cannabis Grey, Royal Bank of Canada, Ashanti Cafe, and more – a mix of ordinary retail and some that probably depend more on day-trippers from larger cities.
An active, walkable town, in other words, the kind planners dream about, but which are hard to conjure up from a set of plans.
Canadian Thanksgiving weekend was about to start.
From what I saw and heard, mostly on the radio, turkey feasts and family gatherings are common aspects of the holiday. That’s all very well, but I think we have a better deal: three holidays, plus a de facto holiday thrown in to make four days, on the leading edge of Christmas. Thanksgiving is a three-day weekend in Canada, and that’s that.
Over the door of the Royal Canadian Legion in Wiarton. Memoriam eorum retinebimus, we will remember them.
Nearby artwork in the town with the same message.
We should remember them, too. We, as in Americans. Not only have there been no hostilities along the border since the War of 1812 (not counting fishing spats), we and the Canadians have been comrades in arms ever since, when the times call for it.
Clambering around on rocks, even the kind that don’t require any technical skills, takes energy, so lunch was the next order of business after our hike along the shore of Georgian Bay last Wednesday. We spotted a food truck outside the park, on Ontario 6, called the Hungry Hiker. That seemed fitting.
It had a Bigfoot theme. That seemed odd.
During our travels in the U.S. West, especially Montana-Idaho-Washington state, we noticed many roadside Bigfoot depictions, including this one in metro Seattle, in front of a place in Edmonds where we had lunch one day.
The Hungry Hiker Bigfoot was the only one we saw in Canada. Whimsy on the part of the owner, maybe, which also included some of the menu items, such as the Sweaty Yeti, a chicken sandwich with a sweet glaze. We ordered one, but not The Big Foot, which was a foot-long hot dog. Sasquatch theme or not, the Hungry Hiker’s food was satisfying.
Next stop: Singing Sands Beach at Bruce Peninsula NP. The park includes more than one section, with the beach on the other side of the peninsula, facing Lake Huron proper.
Nice. A big, almost empty beach. In mid-summer, it’s probably overrun. In October, there were only a few people and a frolicking dog.
Behind the beach, a fen.
I don’t know a fen from a bog or a marsh, even though I’ve seen a fen, but that’s what the sign said. It also informed us that resident in the area is the Massasauga rattlesnake (Sistrurus catenatus), “Ontario’s only venomous snake.”
I didn’t know Ontario had any venomous snakes either, much less a rattler. We were further assured that they are small (not a good thing) and shy (better), so they are likely to avoid you. Also, they are endangered, so gardeners in, say, suburban Toronto aren’t at much risk. Canada ≠ Australia, despite some historic similarities. As we tromped along, none were to be heard.
A short trail wandered into the trees near the beach, past a couple of creeks meeting Lake Huron.
The trail was a loop, returning by way of grasslands and more beach, which was a little rocky at that point.
We still had some afternoon left – a warmish day in October isn’t to be wasted – so we went to the BPNP visitor center, back on the Georgian Bay side, to climb the observation tower.
Nice views, though not as much fall color as we’d expected. I could feel the tower shake just a little in the wind, which wasn’t a pleasant sensation. I’m still up for climbing towers for the vistas, but find myself a bit more unnerved by the experience than I used to be.
We still weren’t quite done. We drove the short way to Big Tub Harbour, which isn’t part of the national park, but rather part of the town of Tobermory.
The thing to see there is the lighthouse.
Still a working light, so no climbing, unlike others. Not as storied as the Lighthouse of Alexandria or even the Eddystone Light, but good enough on a windy afternoon in Ontario.