Potato Chip Alert

When I was a child, there was a potato chip factory in St. Catharines.  It was beside our community swimming pool.  We passed it on the way to downtown shopping all the time.  The smell was glorious to us children.  The Lever's Potato Chips factory was around for quite a few years.  A St. Catharines Standard article tells us exactly where to look on Grote Street for the original site - the ServiceMaster business is where the factory was.  One of the Levers daughters says that if you go downstairs there, you can still smell the oil.  Front and centre in the Globe and Mail today is the conflict between the Canadian Health Agencies and the Food producers over the warning labels on potato chips.  A potato chip bag will indicate the contents are high in trans fats, sodium and sugar. The various warning symbols under discussion include red circles, yield signs, exclamation marks and magnifying glass.  I knew that potato chips are a poor food choice.  We would guess the bad choices to be chicken nuggets, french fries, pop, and fast-food hamburgers. I didn't realize that white rice is in the group:  this was in a huffingtonpost.ca article Ten processed foods to remove from your diet now.  It made me realize that people probably need significant warning labels. Our first picture is in Queenston - the Soaring Brock's Monument. Our bottom 2 pictures today come from Niagara-on-the-Lake's "Paradise Grove and the Commons".  This is one of the old forest stands in Ontario with an Oak Savannah located here.  Oaks have been planted along with native wild flowers and the natural habitat is naturally regenerating. The oldest oaks date from before the War of 1812.  The Commons walk towards NOTL comes to Fort George and to Butler's Baracks, two historic sites of the War of 1812.

Fire and Brimstones

Grimsby is a divided town - the Queen Elizabeth Way Highway (QEW) goes right through the middle of the town.  The town is also contained by geography  - on one side is the Lake and on the other is the escarpment.  It is a narrow strip that is Grimsby. I experienced the constraints of Grimsby's geography last week.  Two transport trucks and a pick up truck crashed and then caught on fire on the Toronto-bound QEW just west of us.  The town was a sea of vehicles inching along the three roads available as alternatives.  I was part of the inchworm movement. Not realizing the calamity, I hopped into my car for the 5 minute drive to the Rotary meeting, and experienced a Toronto gridlock drive of 35 minutes.  My pictures today relate to activities in Canada's prettiest town - Niagara-on-the-Lake - looking at gardens.  I made a stop at the St. Mark's Church graveyard, as I hadn't checked it out before.  I met a young woman with an interesting summer job.  What is she doing?  She's cleaning the lichen and moss from historic gravestones, typically relating to the war of 1812.  Who would guess  such a summer job might exist. Yesterday's Roundhouse Park link didn't work.  Here's the correct link from Russ Milland.

Exam Question: Calculate Easter

Perhaps Spring is early this year because Easter is early - on March 27th in just over a week.  The garden centres in Niagara sell a lot of potted flowers for Easter.  Sunshine Nurseries on Carlton Street on the NOTL side of the canal is full of blooms.  Pot plants, perennials, and annuals are on show.  You see the 'sea' of flowers in the top picture and an interpretation of the pretty flower Ranunculus in the bottom picture. There was a question the other day on how do we calculate Easter.  I gather from a search that there are dozens of ways of calculating Easter. This link to  the U.K. Independent Newspaper article describes the Easter calculation.  Here are two of the key calculations. "For most of its history Christians have calculated Easter independently of the Jewish calendar. In principle, Easter falls on the Sunday following the full moon that follows the northern spring equinox (the paschal full moon). However, the vernal equinox and the full moon are not determined by astronomical observation." "In 325CE the Council of Nicaea established that Easter would be held on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox. From that point forward, the Easter date depended on the ecclesiastical approximation of March 21 for the vernal equinox."