Random Access

Here's today's weather forecast — straight from the field to you:

Snow squalls today starting around the ears and moving north towards the toque.
Ice pellets gathering in the moustache, changing to slushy periods around the lips.
Intermittent visibility problems. Increasing cloudiness as the day, and the life, wears on.
Ninety-nine per cent chance of melting snow in the vestibule.
Do point, if you must, but it is rude.
No risk of blog today.

Believe it or not, tickets aren't moving that well for Feelings From The Heart: The Mayor's Valentine Tribute to Oscar Peterson.
About 600 tickets have been sold for the Feb. 14 concert in Hammerson Hall, which holds 1,300 patrons, for the jazzed-up tribute to OP being staged on the 87th birthday of his very favourite mayor.
The problem certainly isn't the lineup, which melds a collection of national and international stars nicely with a Mississauga-flavoured house band (Pat Collins on bass, Jake Langley on guitar, and Sly Juhas on drums) and several of our finest home-grown stars: Nancy Walker (just nominated for a National Jazz Award for her latest CD,) her Port Credit neighbour and owner of her own sensational solo record (finally) this year, Carol McCartney and Shannon Butcher whose first record will be out this fall.
Throw in Juno-award winner Molly Johnson, who will open the show before rushing off to another engagement and hotshot Linus Entertainment (yes, a Mississauga company and label) singer Sophie Millman and you have a fine assembly of female vocalists.
That's BEFORE you get to the pianists: OP contemporary and fellow Montreal native Oliver Jones, the brilliant David Braid who seems to be putting out a record a month, Walker and Bill King, the Toronto jazz Everyman who produces the JazzFM91 concert series and produced the sterling 2003 tribute to Oscar at the same venue.
King is going to play Tenderly, the standard that became Oscar's first hit from the famous Carnegie Hall concert and, perhaps, "21 Park Road a piece I wrote and recorded on our tribute to Oscar - From The Heart commemorating The Advanced School of Contemporary Music the site where I studied with him in 1963," says King.
The show will finish with the Oscar Peterson Public School choir.
Like the highly successful tribute concert to Peterson at Roy Thomson Hall this one will include personal reminiscences from some of those who knew him well, including the mayor, his good friend, pianist and former Ontario Premier Bob Rae, clarinetist and close friend Phil Nimmons, McCallion, Ron Duquette of Ad Venture Sight and Sound who will provide some film highlights of the 2003 concert, Peterson Public School Principal Caroline Mochrie who will recall what a boost he provided to her school and David Toycen, president of World Vision in Mississauga.
World Vision was one of Oscar's favourite charities and will be the beneficiary of the sale of tickets, which are $40 and $30 apiece.
Duquette is rather mystified by the slow response to date. "This is a chance to hear some really nice music with the love of your life for $30 and have a really good time," he says.
One of the first to get his tickets was Jim Tovey, a lifetime Oscar fan who sits on the City's heritage committee and specializes in fixing up heritage houses in his private life. He's currently in the midst of supervising a group of Habitat For Humanity volunteers in Brampton who are fixing up an 1861 heritage house that was moved half-a-mile to a new site to make a home for two lucky families.
Tovey says Peterson's death hit him hard. So hard that he sat down and tried to sort out some of his feelings by writing about him.
Here is his personal tribute to Dr. Peterson called The Night Train after what is probably Oscar's most famous album:

Ch_ch ch ch, Ch ch ch, Ch ch ch. The sound was like brushes on a snare and the gentle sideways motion woke the well-dressed young man from his slumber. He was alone in the coach sitting on a worn blue leather seat, his arm resting comfortably on the burnished brass armrest
It was almost dawn and the train was rounding a long slow curve as it headed toward the station, its metal wheels shuffling back and forth in their tracks. He was not quite sure where he was or where he was going, yet he felt a calm resolve that this is where he should be.
The strength of youth coursing through his body seemed to vibrate to the tips of his fingers, and as he sat staring at his hands the door at the end of the coach slid open. A porter walked through it with his pillbox hat, dark blue blazer, and pocket watch attached to his grey vest.
"You feeling alright son," he said with a familiar smile.
"Yes, actually, I feel good. My hands feel really strong. Where am I?" The young man asked.
"Why you’re on the night train," the porter said, pulling his watch from the vest pocket “We will be arriving at the station in exactly two minutes and eighteen seconds.”
The young man stared out the window into the ever-growing light, content that he was finally arriving at his destination. “How’s the fishing here?” he enquired. “They say the fly fishing in the river is heaven. I’ve been itching to go there for a long time.”
As the porter spoke the train began to slow down, a sweet, majestic sound could be heard in the distance. "Is that a band? Do they have a good band here?" The young man was instantly excited.
"Oh, they have the best band you will ever hear anywhere. They don’t greet the train too often though. Matter of fact, I haven't seen them on the platform in some time now. Do you play?" the porter asked as he leaned towards the window and tried to peer up the tracks.
"I play piano."
The music was getting clearer now and it truly was the most glorious swinging jazz band the young man had ever heard. "Do they have a piano player?"
A knowing smile passed the porter's face as he saw how eager the young man now was to pull into the station. "They have a few piano players. There’s one fella with a big hat that plays like the wind. Are you any good?" the Porter teased.
"I try to be the best I can be, sir" the young man shyly responded.
"Well son, if you're going to play with this band, you got to be the best."
The train slowed to a walk as it entered the rail yard the music seemed to dance in the air of the coach.
"I don’t hear a piano," the young man said as he ran to the open door of the car. "Why isn’t someone playing piano?" He could not believe such incredible music was missing a great instrument. His great instrument.
"Well, I'm not sure. There's always someone playing. You're right though, I don't hear a piano."
As the porter replied the platform came into view. The sun had now risen. The entire platform was filled with hundreds of jumping, swinging, smiling musicians, all speaking the same beautiful language, jazz. Above it all soared the voice of an angel.
As the train came to a halt, the music stopped and the young man found himself face to face with the source of that magical voice.
"Fitz?" he asked quietly. The air was now still and silent. The young woman motioned with her hand and the assembled musicians parted to reveal an upright piano, the bench turned invitingly towards the coach. A large man with a broad smile and a bowler hat leaned on the piano and pointed to the bench.
"Well, I never," said the porter, breaking the silence enveloping the morning air. "The best you can be must be something real special, son."
The young man stepped out onto the platform. "I'm going to stay here for a while, will you coming back?" he asked as the porter pulled up the bottom step and reached for his whistle.
"I've got one more run to do, then I thought I might go up river and do a little fishing, if you're interested?"
"I'd like that, sir" the young man replied.
The porter held his whistle up. "In the meantime, I think you have some new charts to learn."
The whistle blew, the coach door closed and the train slowly pulled out of the station. Ch_ch ch ch, Ch ch ch, Ch ch ch.

Every once in a while, you talk to someone who is a perfect stranger, but it feels like they have been a lifelong friend.
That's probably why I remember my first conversation with Rick Malkiewicz so vividly.
When you call up a fiddle and trumpet player with a Grammy-nominated polka band for an interview, you don't expect to find yourself embarking on a wonderfully nostalgic tour of the back-history of your own personal interest in music.
But that's what happened when Rick came on the line to talk one evening four years ago. We were supposed to be chatting about how the band he played for, John Gora and Gorale was heading to Los Angeles for the Grammy awards after they participated in a "Polka Cruise" that saw them heading around the Caribbean.
After we covered the traditional biographical stuff (Rick grew up in a Polish family where he picked up the fiddle at four and played in his first polka band at age eight), the conversation shifted to other kinds of music.
And that's where we found fertile common ground.
Rick had eclectic tastes. He enjoyed jazz (Weather Report and Chick Corea were favourites) traditional C & W (Hank Williams), new country (he and wife Lori had a particular weakness for Keith Urban) bluegrass (we discussed the career of superb mandolin picker Ricky Skaggs back to his Emmylou Harris days) and found a common interest in such diverse artists as Steely Dan, Frank Zappa, Gram Parsons and Todd Rundgren.
Rundgren, the boy genius of the pop world for a couple of seconds in the 1970s (Runt and Something/Anything) was a mutual obsession. He produced the album on the Bearsville label titled Great Speckled Bird with Ian and Sylvia, Amos Garrett and Buddy Cage on steel guitar. That album just happens to be an all-time favourite.
"Sounds like we love a lot of the same music," Rick said, as we finished our alleged interview. "We'll have to get together and check out our music collections."
When it was announced recently that Gora and Gorale were nominated for another Grammy try (their fourth, no wins so far,) against their (friendly) St. Catharines-based arch-rival Walter Ostanek, I went to their website to check it out. This was a chance to touch base again with Rick and all our mutual musical friends.
There, on the bottom of the about-the-band section, was a tribute to Rick Malkiewicz, who died Nov. 23 of brain cancer, aged 51.
His widow Lori, now raising their sons Paul 15 and Andrew, 12 (both trumpeters by the way) in their Streetsville-area home, chuckles when she hears about good intentions gone astray. "Everybody's busy," she says, as we concur how that sentiment is a poor alibi for escaping so many things we know we really ought to do.
Rick went fast at the end, which was a blessing because he was only in bed for two weeks at home before he died.
Before he went, there was a big party last June on the small court where the family lives to mark Rick and Lori's 25th anniversary.
"We rented a tent and had 20 musicians in three bands on a stage in our backyard," says Lori, her broad grin visible right through the telephone wire. "We had it catered. It was the best party we ever had. We warned all the neighbours (most of whom were there) that there would be live music."
John Gora is hoping for better luck at the Grammy awards Sunday for his nominated album Bulletproof Polkas. It's dedicated to Rick.
Last Sunday, Lori and the kids were there along with 400 other people when the group held a fundraising dance for the Canadian Cancer Society in Rick's name.
Gorale hoped that Rick could play some fiddle on the album. They were going to do it in a studio here instead of in Ohio where they usually record to accommodate him.
But he was too weak to play when the time came to record.
"Everybody's always asking, 'Where's the fiddler?' now," says Gora. They tried somebody else but it didn't work out so there's a hole in the sound where Malkiewicz used to be.
"He was a character, always acting on stage," says Gora. "But the feeling he had for music was just incredible."
Lori will remember Rick's slightly off-kilter sense of humour most. "He was always kind of off-the-cuff and goofy on stage," she says of her husband, who she met at a party when she was 18 and married five years later. "He was quirky. He'd give you all these whacky one-liners and break everybody up. He was a funny guy."
Next time you run across one of those special people — strangers who seem like lifelong friends — find the time to pore over their record collections or discover your favourite authors or explore the other common ground you may share.
You may not get another chance.

Get ready for a lot more military puns (like the one in the above headline) on the political campaign trail in the federal riding of Mississauga South now that Major Ted Opitz has enlisted in the campaign. (It starts already.)
You'll remember that four candidates have been chomping at the bit at the starting gate (we can't forget our racing analogies completely) for what seems like eons to become the Conservative Party candidate in the South. They jumped in after the party's unfathomable decision not to allow two-time candidate Phil Green to run again.
The current field consists of lawyer Tom Simpson, international financial consultant Hugh Arrison, Ward 2 Peel District School Board Trustee Don Stephens and credit union manager Raya Shadursky.
Now you can add the name of Canadian Forces Major Ted Opitz, a 46-year-old resident of Etobicoke Centre whose riding was already occupied by a candidate he respected, Alex Kuhn.
A son of Polish immigrants, Opitz grew up in the Roncesvalles Ave. area of Toronto, majored in English and political science at York University and was a product developer at Bell Canada before he became a reservist in 1978 and found his true calling.
He has travelled widely through his military experience, served in Bosnia in 1998-99 and has been involved in several community initiatives such as Junior Achievement and the annual George Brown Peace of Cake event depicted in the above photo.
One of his most rewarding experiences was acting as a mentor to young people from around the world when he served as operations officer during the Papal visit as part of World Youth Days 2002.
So why Mississauga South and why now?
"It has a lot of challenging issues and frankly, my own riding was not available," explains the Humberside Collegiate grad. "Having spent a lot of time there lately, (he attended the Dufferin-Peel school-closing meeting at St. Paul's last night) I can see it's a close-knit community. The people are tight. You don't see that small-town approach in a big city that often."
Since he understands that much about the riding, he must also understand the riding's distaste for perceived "parachute" candidates, right?
Yes the other candidates have been out selling memberships for up to 18 months and yes, he understands why such an old-fashioned riding believes in native sons and daughters as candidates. "Being a good soldier, I don't let that stop me. I do my intelligence work. They are all good people... but I think I can do better. I think I bring some different skill sets and, at the end of the day, people will vote for the person they think is the best candidate.
"And, if I lose, I'll be back."
What does he think of Paul Szabo, entrenched in the riding for 15 years. Why is he the man to beat him?
"I'm not overly impressed with how he has been handling the ethics committee," says the new candidate. "I was disappointed to see him kow-towing to Karlheinz Schreiber."
The major says Szabo has benefited from "pattern voting" he witnessed in his own family. His parents voted automatically for the Liberals because they came from a country where they lived under an oppressive regime and wanted to thank Canada for their admittance. "There is a psychological factor."
But that is finally changing, argues Opitz.
"Mr. Harper is a very good leader and the Conservatives are not just the party on the right any longer," he says. "They have captured some of the middle ground. There's a lot of disappointment in Mr. (Liberal leader Stéphane) Dion. He doesn't quite have the concepts down yet."
On the other hand, Major Opitz sounds like he has the concepts down quite well.

Call them the Rambo amendment and the Krinkles amendment.
Ward 6 Councillor Carolyn Parrish is preparing two notices of motion for her fellow City councillors that will put the bite on a couple of controversial policies that have not made Mississauga animal control the most popular department with local animal lovers.
The Rambo amendment cites the fact that other Ontario jurisdictions have a broader interpretation of the Animals For Research Act for puppies under one year of age and asks staff to come back with a report that would allow suspected pit bulls held in Mississauga to be be transferred to the care of: a person living outside Ontario, a pound operated by another municipality or a designated body such as a humane society or bona fide rescue group.
You'll recall the the third suggestion is the "lost option" that never got offered to Gabriela Nowakowska, the owner of alleged pitbull Rambo. The dog was picked up Christmas Day and now faces the death sentence for wandering through an open fence gate and being nabbed by the animal police.
Gabriela, who still calls the pound a couple of times every day to plead to see her dog, has been told by animal control that it's best she not see Rambo, since it would probably only upset him, especially when they had to be separated again.
She has hired lawyer Anik Morrow to dispute Rambo's designation as a "prohibited" animal.
The Krinkles amendment calls for the period of incarceration for cats picked up by animal control, who have been spayed and neutered and micro-chipped, to be extended from three days to 10, exclusive of stat holidays and Sundays when the animal control centre is closed.
No one is happier about that proposal than Krinkles' owner, Jolanta Wojcik. "It's awesome," she said today when told of Parrish's plans. "Finally, somebody is going to do something about it."
You'll recall the unfortunate case of Krinkles (pictured lounging above in his native Turks and Caicos before he was brought to Mississauga.) He got out of the house while Wojcik, a former student at Mother Teresa, Holy Name and Applewood Heights Secondary, was visiting her native Poland in Oct. He was picked up and held by animal control.
When his owners got home a few days later, Wojcik found a registered letter telling her Krinkles had been picked up and would be destroyed if she did not respond by Saturday. It was already Sunday. Wojcik hurried over there to animl control, only to find it closed. She phoned the next morning to discover her beloved two-year-old pet had been put down on the Saturday.
Still bitter about her experience, Wojcik says the tag on the collar around Krinkles neck when his body returned included half-a-dozen contact telephone numbers. Only one was tried and there was no answer.
"Our main point is that this should not happen," says Wojcik, who strongly supports the longer grace period being granted to animals who obviously have responsible owners. "It was such an unnecessary thing. We live in Mississauga. This is a civilized country, and this is what happens. It's just unreal to me."
The City did forgive Krinkles' owners the $130-plus fee for destroying him. The family thought about suing but hasn't followed up. Rather than fighting the case in the courts, they're much more anxious that the rules be changed so there are no more Krinkles' cases.
They don't have another cat yet. "We don't want to," says Wojcik. "We feel too guilty. We loved him too much to get another cat."

Despite the outpouring of public support for Nowakowska, donations to the Rambo defence fund are still far short of requirements. The institution number for TD Bank on Dundas St. E. where the account is located is 004. The account number is 6273559 and the transit number, 13402.
Nowakowska, who does not have a computer, has set up an e-mail account through a friend, so interested people can contact her. The contact is saverambo@yahoo.ca.

Mea culpa.
Hugh Arrison is not a retired financial consultant — he is very much an active one who specializes in international work.
The R word was used by mistake in the entry in this space about Major Ted Optiz jumping into the race in Mississauga South.
Arrison worked for three decades at an international financial services company in Mississauga but has spent the last few years running his own company out of his home in the riding. He is financially independent but that's not quite the same as being retired, he points out with a laugh.
Turns out Arrison has actually been thinking about dropping out of the race because of his disappointment in the process. He was second into the fray, in Oct. 2006, after Clarkson lawyer Tom Simpson and before school trustee Don Stephens and financial institution manager Raya Shadursky.
Arrison says he's staying in the race after having plodded door-to-door and sold 1,000 memberships. An encouraging letter from Harold Shipp and a meeting with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty helped convince him to hang in.
The party, which has not released Mississauga South to hold its nomination, is holding its cards very close to its chest, says the candidate. "If some incredible star shows up, I think they like this riding because they think it's winnable," he says.
The downside, of course, is keeping community-based local candidates suspended in mid-air and blowing in the political winds for months and months. "If we do have a fast election, we're at a serious disadvantage," says Arrison.
His campaign manager, on the left above, is David Brown. No, not recent provincial candidate David Brown but the former tennis player (five consecutive Canadian doubles championships from 1972 to 1976 with four different partners) who is in the Mississauga Sports Hall of Fame. He and mom Louise are the only mother-son combo in the local hall.
• • •
Rambo is moving up in the world.
Seems he has a room of his own, glass walls and all and even a personal doggie door to an outdoor washroom at the Mississauga Animal Control Centre on Central Pkwy. W.
Ward 6 Councillor Carolyn Parrish, who plans to spring the most famous dog in Mississauga from the joint, visited the dog Friday when animal staff gave her a mini-tour.
"He's got loads of toys and a quilt and he wags his tail like crazy when he sees people," says Parrish. "They take him on dog walks. He looked happy as hell."
He apparently has to be kept in isolation from other dogs because of his unusual status (is that legal or celebrity?)
The jailhouse visit convinced Parrish that the dog is not guilty of being a pit bull as charged. "He looks like a small version of a boxer. He's too tall to be a pit bull."
Other, perhaps more expert, opinion on the dog's formation and likely lineage is expected to be heard in a courtroom at a later date when owner Gabriela Nowakowska goes to court to try to prove Rambo doesn't belong on death row.
Gabriela still calls the animal control centre incessantly to check on the condition of her dog but has apparently accepted the fact that having a personal visit with him would be just too upsetting for all parties involved.

Right in Our Backyard, Please!
That's the reverse Nimbyism that the long-suffering residents of Lakeview are employing to try to prevent another huge power plant from descending in their midst.
Having just been removed from the four-plus-decade long shadow of the coal-fired Lakeview Generating Station, ratepayers have no intention of sitting on the sidelines while Ontario Power Generation and Mississauga's Enersource Corporation put together a deal for a new 850-odd megawatt power plant on the same site where Lakeview lay.
Using the philosophy that the best defence is a good offence, the Lakeview Ratepayers' Association has put together a plan — called the Lakeview Legacy Project — which is audacious and appealing.
Jim Tovey, the pony-tailed carpenter/dynamo who helped relaunch the defunct ratepayers' group, says the idea for Lakeview Legacy first came to him one day in August 1994 while he was walking his dog along the decrepit and largely unoccupied industrial area north of the power plant.
The days of Lakeview were numbered even then. The enormous potential for redevelopment was obvious and Tovey wanted the community to be ready when crunch time came, so that it could rebuff the inevitable attempts that would be made to put another power plant in the "logical" place for it: the community which was blackened with its stain (on its cars, on its clothes and everywhere else) for lo these many years.
Tovey realized that the newly-gentrified Lakeview (he's in the business of rehabilitating older homes) must be full of lawyers and planners and other professionals who could be recruited to the cause.
Enter John Danahy and a few more of his ilk. Danahy moved to the neighbourhood in 1984, attracted by the lovely landscape and the ditches ("one of the most sustainable forms" of urban runoff control.)
Danahy also just happens to be the director of the Centre for Landscape Research in the faculty of architecture at the University of Toronto, where he is a professor.
He and his graduate students took on Lakeview as a case study on brownfields redevelopment. Danahy was stunned at the potential of the community, starting with the magnificent opportunity afforded by the nearly 200-ft. setbacks of all those old factories on the south side of Lakeshore Rd. E.
"One of the things that always bothered me about most communities is the fact that, along the main streets, there was never enough room to plant trees that would survive and thrive."
In the new Lakeview, there is room for three rows of large, mature trees to create what is really "a mainstreet park," which just happens to be a distinguishing characteristic of many a great city's promenade.
There's room for a light rapid transit line and cycling pathways you can ride without fear of death.
"Lakeview is the only major residential community in the city without a commercial core," says Danahy.
The neighbourhood also has unlimited potential to become the showcase live/work community, with improvement of public transit being a major determinant. An LRT line is to feed Hurontario St. and a new route will also serve Long Branch.
Extending those services along Lakeshore Rd. would allow people to live without their cars and walk to public transit, the key element in creating truly liveable communities.
The multi-faceted legacy plan embraces the intensification and provincially-mandated Places To Grow density upgrades that are coming to Lakeview and the rest of the City and melds them into a neighbourhood that makes sense – with restored access to the Lake. ("Putting the lake back in Lakeview," as Tovey says.)
Instead of a wall of condos along the north side of Lakeshore, Danahy and his students, using innovative Google map and digital software they have developed, have distributed that density on the Lakeview lands. It's like putting a couple of Port Credits on the lands, mostly medium density housing with the odd high-rise reaching 20 storeys.
The existing north-south transmission line rights-of-way could become greenways, with cycling and pedestrian paths. There could be unrestricted waterfront access across nearly the entire frontage.
The old cooling ponds for Lakeview could be rehabilitated, to create a lovely skating oval in the winter, recalling the days when everyone skated on the credit River and out onto the Lake.
The beauty of the format is its flexibility. The modelling allows a glimpse into a bold future. The students have dropped various developments onto the landscape to show the tremendous potential that a 500-acre blank planning pallet can present.
The distillery district, the stadium where the Chicago Bears play, the Pittsburgh Pirates ballpark, the UTM campus, the Winnipeg "forks" park development, the whole of Exhibition Place and Ontario Place, the Sheridan Park Research Centre (there has been a suggestion to create a similar think-tank campus of leading environmental research firms), a major aquarium — they have all been fitted onto the landscape as examples of its vast potential.
There's even a financial model that has been developed to accompany the plans, calculating the $30-$35 million tax return the City could expect on the development.
"This could be the poster child for the province's smart growth strategy," says Danahy. He points out that this the last site of its size on the GTA waterfront with this kind of outstanding potential to incorporate all the principles of sustainable, compact, liveable development.
"There aren't really many ideas that we can't fit on the site," adds Tovey. "The only thing that doesn't make any sense is a gas plant."
The Lakeview Legacy proposal will be presented to City council Feb. 27.

Pat Collins, who will be anchoring the bottom end of the house band tonight at "Feelings From the Heart: The Mayor's Valentine Tribute to Oscar Peterson" at the Living Arts Centre well remembers attending his very first jazz concert.
"It would have been about 1980 and I was just starting to play electric bass," says the Levi Creek resident who is one of the leading lights in Canada's large staple of talented players on acoustic bass. "I was in high school and I was in a trio with Phil Dwyer (yes, that Juno-award winning saxophonist Phil Dwyer) and a drummer.
"We drove from Vancouver Island over to Vancouver with Phil and Phil's parents and we saw Oscar Peterson with Joe Pass, the Count Basie Orchestra and Ella Fitzgerald." Sort of a mini-Jazz at the Philharmonic. "It was fantastic."
Thus was kindled Collins' passion for jazz and his subsequent interest in OP, the godfather of Canadian jazz.
"He just had such a presence when he played," says Collins of the good doctor of the 88s. "When he walked into the room to play, he just filled it with song."
Collins ended up switching from electric to acoustic bass and checking out all of the Peterson Trio records. "I particularly remember all those records on Pablo," says Collins who lives with his wife Sherri, a music teacher in Cawthra Park's distinguished arts program, and sons Matthew and Daniel in their home Levi Creek.
"Those Pablo records with Dizzy, Louis Bellson, Johnny Griffin... They were great."
Collins eventually moved to Toronto, then to Mississauga about 17 years ago and, as fate would have it, eventually got to play with Oscar.
In 1997, Oscar had a date scheduled at Symphony Hall in Chicago when his regular bassist was unavailable. An extremely nervous Collins filled in with the the Peterson quartet, which also featured guitarist Ulf Wakenhuis who was still in the group at the time of Oscar's death Dec. 23 and drummer Martin Drew.
Collins also played a mini-gig at the LAC with Peterson, when his daughter Celine's Froebel school held their music concert there. Drummer Barry Elmes, who is in Collins' quartet, Pat and Oscar backed the school choir. Not a bad little group with which to make your elementary school musical debut, eh?
"This is going to be a fun night," says Collins of the concert, which features a number of other Mississaugans including Sly Juhas on drums in the house band, singer Shannon Butcher (whom Collins' wife taught at Cawthra), singer Carol McCartney (like Pat a jazz instructor at Mohawk College), and pianist Nancy Walker of Port Credit, who like Oscar, was born in Montreal and eventually found a home here.
Collins is particularly looking forward to playing with Phil Nimmons, Oscar's old friend and business partner in his Advanced School of Contemporary Music, which began in Oscar's Scarborough basement (don't tell Hazel) in the early 1960s.
"Oscar and Phil are two of the absolute heroes of the music," says Collins, who played at many of Phil's summer jazz camps through the years. "Phil's 84 and he's still so full of life. He's one of the most inspiring people and players around."
Anyone who attended the Sept. 10 2003 Oscar tribute concert at LAC will remember that Nimmons provided one of its most poignant moments, speaking of the friendship he and his late wife Noreen shared with Oscar and remembering the many practical jokes they played on each other.
Nimmons dedicated his performance to Noreen and Oscar's late bassist Ray Brown, then played a brooding, edgy Can't Get You Out of My Heart on clarinet that caused goosebumps to rise.
Expect lots of "chicken skin" music tonight at what should be a very special concert. Tickets are available at the door.

Oscar Peterson belonged to the world, we were reminded again last night at a tribute concert in his honour, but he also belonged very much to Mississauga.
So on the one hand we had his friend of more than 70 years, pianist Oliver Jones, explain to us how he has learned, in his wide travels since Oscar died, the profound way in which so very many people have been touched by his passing and his legacy.
On the other we had Oscar Peterson Public School student Anjali Bhogal recall in a poem how the school's namesake brought laughter and candy canes into the Churchill Meadows building at Christmas time: "You wore a Santa hat/ And we all remember that."
The Mayor's Valentine Tribute to Oscar began with Bhogal walking to centre stage where a spotlight highlighted a Bosendorfer piano, with a conspicuously empty stool. She placed a bouquet there for the absent master.
We had Sophie Milman, a young jazz singing sensation just coming into her own at age 25 remembering the Oscar Peterson records, with labels in Russian, that she used to hear in her native country before she moved to Israel and then, reluctantly, to Canada at age 16. She wasn't sure about her new country until her father took her to see a Peterson concert. Then she concluded, "it was worth moving to this country just to hear that."
Then, before you could say Jazz Razzmatazz, we had the Oscar Peterson students, under the direction of teachers Kirsten Fielding and Marion Roy, snapping their fingers and shuffling their feet in rhythmic waves reminding us that, in order for a school to be named for OP, it has to have natural swing.
By decree of the mayor of, "this great state of Mississauga" as emcee Ted Woloshyn dubbed it, members of the City's talented jazz fraternity were ordered to the forefront for this evening, and boy did they — and everyone else involved — respond.
There were innumerable highlights of the Ron Duquette-produced evening but here are a few select samples:
• a positively giddy Molly Johnson off-handedly running down the Gershwin classic But Not For Me (from the 1930s Girl Crazy) while delightedly telling us about how she was checking off one of the most important boxes on her life list — to be accompanied by Oliver Jones.
• Phil Nimmons recalling his absolute shock of hearing the piano played "in totality, in its full dynamic range from top-to-bottom" on first seeing Oscar play live at the Colonial Inn in Toronto many decades ago. Then watching the 84-year-old Nimmons and pianist David Braid (see photo) do a contemporaneous, unrehearsed high-wire act in which they made the audience the complicit third member of the trio.
• Bill King sharing a yellowed, oft-folded 1963 telegram he excitedly received in Jeffersonville, Ind. telling him he had received a scholarship to the Oscar Peterson-Phil Nimmons jazz school. It was clearly a much-treasured keepsake. Then King absolutely ripped through a bluesy, boogie-woogie tribute to you-know-who called 21 Park Rd., the address of said school.
• Port Credit near-neighbours Nancy Walker and Carol McCartney delivering a sumptuous version of the ballad, More Than You Know. McCartney learned the song from an OP-Ella Fitzgerald album. The Problem: how to do justice to a duet played by the greatest pianist in the world and sung by the greatest singer? The answer: "to bask in the glory, not be fading in the shadows of those giants."
• Sheridan Homelands' native Shannon Butcher and the Mississauga Children's Choir doing complete justice to the ultimate OP anthem, Hymn To Freedom. Butcher wasn't intimidated by the different, powerhouse version Measha Brueggergosman, her old classmate at University of Toronto, delivered at Massey Hall recently and delivered her own signature lush version of the difficult song with the choir. As a child Butcher sang with the same group until she was about 10-years-old.
• Ron Duquette's documentary vignettes of Oscar's life, narrated by Quincy Jones and prepared for the 2003 tribute, provided contextual underpinning to the whole evening.
• Celine Peterson, who seems like the most mature 16-year-old imaginable, wound up at the heart of matters. "Even though my dad is gone I know he still loves me," she said. "No matter where the people you love are, remember they still love you too. Happy Valentine's Day."
• a Nancy Walker song dedicated to Oscar, called Sweet Longing, had an extrordinary yearning quality. Despite being just the second time they'd played it together, sparks flew among the keyboardist, bassist Pat Collins and drummer Sly Juhas. It was transporting trio jazz in the finest tradition of the man for whom the night was dedicated.
Maybe it was all said best at the beginning of the night by that young OP Public School student, Anjali Bhopal. "Thank You, Mr. Oscar Peterson," she concluded, "for giving us the greatest gift of all, the gift of music."

For a guy who won a court case that threatened to force peace bond conditions on him that could have severely restricted his access to City Hall for another year, Donald Barber doesn't seem like a very happy man.
And it's not because his "victory" occurred on Valentine's Day, the 87th birthday of Her Official Nemesis, either.
No, Barber is not happy about the process that stole a couple of years out of his life and prevented him from fulfilling his self-appointed task as Official Watchdog of Hazel McCallion and the Great State of Mississauga.
"I guess I am happy with the outcome, but I'm incredibly disappointed in the process," says the four-time mayoralty candidate. "It leaves the door open for this to happen to other people."
Even though criminal charges of assault were dropped by the Crown last November, another three days of court time were spent trying to determine if Barber should be limited in his contact with the female security guard at City Hall he was accused of assaulting, and whether he should be restricted in his access to councillors and municipal staff.
Barber claims that the charges against him were "an act of terrorism" reflecting City Hall's distaste for anyone who dares to question the first draft of history being scripted every day at 300 City Centre Dr.
"They were trying to make me so fearful that I would never again go to City Hall," says the founder of the Friends of Cawthra Bush.
It would been very nice if the court hearing would have clarified what happened that June 7, 2006 at City Hall, but that did not happen.
You'll recall that Barber and Roy Willis both questioned an apparent change in long-standing council practice that day, which effectively did away with a citizen's right to stand up during public question period and make a query on any subject.
Barber's story is that he went to the clerk's office after being physically escorted from the council chambers. The security guards were following closely behind him. He went to get on the elevator, then remembered an earlier incident where he claims he was pushed into the elevator by the guards. He turned on a dime, stepping on the foot of the female guard.
Then Barber took the stairs from the third to the first floor but went too far and ended up in a dead-end. There is a distinct difference of opinion about how much contact there was when Barber turned around to go back up the stairs, past the guards, the way he had come.
The female guard testified that she received a two-handed shove from the resident activist who "walked through me like I was a ghost."
Interestingly enough, the male security guard who was part of the events of that day never got to tell his story. He wasn't put on the stand by the Crown. A strong disagreement between Barber and his lawyer, another former Mississauga mayoralty candidate, Jim Girvin, prompted Girvin to tell the court he could no longer follow his client's instructions.
Barber wanted the security guard forced to testify and his lawyer didn't necessarily agree.
Barber also asked to make comments directly to the court at the end of the hearing, which prompted another schism between client and lawyer. Barber says that when Girvin refused to fax in his remarks, he made his own submissions.
The justice sounded a might peeved about the process himself when he delivered his verdict.
Turns out no evidence about the substance of Barber's original presentation to council — which was obviously relevant to all the antics which followed — was ever provided to him.
The justice said he had no doubt that both the security guard and Barber probably truly believed their quite-remarkably different versions of events, given the charged atmosphere. But just because City council makes a decision that you really don't like, doesn't give one the right to "vent at those around them," he said.
On the other hand, the judge was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that the security guards never called police after the alleged assault. In fact, testimony indicated that Barber was escorted from the council chambers even though the chair of the meeting (the mayor) never ordered him removed, which is the proper procedure.
The justice noted that Barber had abided by the bail conditions that were imposed as a result of the initial assault charge and which would have been substantially similar to the peace bond strictures. He has no record of violence. City Solicitor Mary Ellen Bench has already warned him that additional trespassing bans against him may be issued, "should you engage in similar action causing disturbance on City premises in future."
All of those factors added up to erring on the side of caution in a case of one person's word against another, the justice ruled.
The message for Mr. Barber is quite clear: consider yourself scolded and keep your nose clean in future.
Mr. Barber is quite used to being scolded by the powers that be. He will be emboldened, not chastened, by his latest brush with officialdom.
If what does not crush you makes you stronger, council had better be prepared for an even feistier version of Donald Barber.
A non-peace bond may have just been issued.

In retrospect, says Charlie Conn, "they reeled me in like a lazy trout."
The "they" to whom he refers are the political operations branch (or is it political operatives division) of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Conn has been around politics for a long time, being a candidate himself in 1993 in Mississauga West for the then-Reform Party. Last fall, when it became evident that the reign of former MPP Carl DeFaria and his wife Riina (two-time federal candidate against incumbent Albina Guarnieri) was over in Mississauga East-Cooksville, he decided to get involved in reviving the new riding association in a big way.
The first organizational meeting was held at his apartment. Conn was ecstatic that things were moving quickly. He joined the candidate nominating committee that was to search for appropriate folks to represent the party and was looking forward to the invigorating exercise of sorting through the applicants and deciding who would have the best chance to beat Guarnieri.
It turned out that things were moving so very fast for a very good reason: HQ already had a candidate in mind.
Myron Kowalchuk, who also joined the executive about the same time, was thinking about running himself.
At the very first meeting, Karma MacGregor of the party's political operations section, mentioned that there was someone already interested in the nomination. Melissa Bhagat, a 32-year-old former Liberal, had become disenchanted with that Liberals after she was summarily bypassed by the Paul Martin forces in 2004 when she was seeking to be their candidate in the federal riding of Brampton-Springdale.
Instead, the federal Liberals appointed another young South Asian woman there, Mississauga resident Ruby Dhalla, who was subsequently elected.
Kowalsky quickly found out by asking around, that Bhagat had been touched by the hand of the leader or his minions who have the ability to pull a lot of strings in supposedly "open" nominations.
"When I finally saw Melissa she was hanging out with Karma as if she was the candidate already," says Kowalsky. "It does look like it was stacked against me."
While Mississauga South has five candidates and can't buy a release to hold a nomination meeting despite numerous requests to do so, Mississauga East-Cooksville mysteriously embarked on a sprint to its nomination.
When Conn began looking a little closer at amendments to party rules passed last year, he was alarmed to discover that not only did the riding not meet five of the six criteria required before they could even launch a search for a candidate but that there was a major escape clause for the party if it didn't like the ways things were going.
The "abridgement" clause states that the director of political operations, after consulting the president of the National Council may "alter, abridge or suspend any requirements in these rules... in such circumstances as he sees fit."
Maybe that should actually be, "as be HE sees fit."
Conn and other executive members who wanted to see a contest for the nomination tried to get the process deferred, but no no avail. As party leaders wished, say Conn and Kowalchuk, Bhagat was acclaimed Jan. 4.
The Conservatives are justifiably proud of the fact that, unlike the Liberals, they do not appoint candidates, as the Grits have just done again in Etobicoke North.
But the claim rings hollow when nominations are strategically held, or not held, to favour certain candidates.
Ten or so members of the Mississauga East-Cooksville executive have resigned in protest. In a riding which will be an uphill battle under the best-case scenario for the Tories, Conn says the party seems to have gone out of its way to find a candidate who has "zero Conservative credentials." On top of that they already seem to have alienated a good chunk of the core supporters who tried to relaunch the association in the first place.
I interviewed Bhagat this week to prepare a profile for her candidacy and found her a charming, intelligent young woman who has prepared herself well for public life. The Mississauga native speaks four languages, studied international relations and political science at York University, gained valuable experience in presenting herself at various beauty pageants (Miss Teen Toronto, Miss India Canada, Miss India Worldwide and Miss Millennium), ran her own company in India, worked during the high-tech boom in Silicon Valley and has done extensive charity work, including representing Mississauga's World Vision in India, from which her parents emigrated.
She says her family were typical immigrants who automatically voted Liberal. It was only after Stephen Harper was elected Prime Minister that she really started to look at Tory policies seriously, she says. She found many very attractive, especially on the economic side.
Bhagat knows she has a lot of fences to mend within the riding and insists she was not the "chosen one." In fact, she was lying in a hospital bed while most of the arrangements for the nomination were underway. On Dec. 9. her mother and best friend, died in a car which she was driving which was involved in a serious accident just outside the Brampton Civic Hospital.
The candidate simply says she was better prepared than any other participant and was rewarded for her acumen when party officials became nervous about a potential election and pulled the trigger on a prompt nomination.
Maybe so, but contrast her reaction now with her reaction in 2004 when the nomination rug was pulled out from under her.
In a story at that time in The Brampton Guardian, reporter Roger Belgrave wrote that, "Bhagat said she was shocked by the prime minister's decision. In conversations ... as recent as last week, Bhagat said she was given the impression a nomination was still a real possibility.
Rumours the Prime Minister might also choose to appoint a woman with South Asian ties from the area also led Bhagat to believe she might be the appointee.
When she discovered it was instead someone she knew well and went to for help with her own campaign, Bhagat was floored. "Words really can't express how you feel at that point," she said.
Several Conservatives in Mississauga East-Cooksville know the feeling well.
• • •
Gabriela Nowakowska makes her first appearance in court to defend charges that her dog Rambo is a pit bull next Friday at 1:30 p.m. at 950 Burnhamthorpe Rd. W.
You can expect protesters outside and, likely, a quick appearance to set a further court date inside.
All along, Nowakowska has hoped that she may be able to bail her dog out of the clink while the process unfolds over the next few months. It remains to be seen if an effort will be made to do that. Right now Rambo has a room of his own at the Mississauga Animal Control Centre where he is apparently being well cared for.
Ward 6 Councillor Carolyn Parrish, self-appointed assistant defence lawyer, says the biggest problem facing Nowakowska at the moment is a lack of cash to continue the battle.
Despite many public pledges of support, contributions have not exactly been rolling in. There was good news today when an obedience trainer named Rosalind Paton from Oshawa donated $650 she has raised through her clients.
A social event last week at the Pope John XXIII Cultural Centre on Cawthra Rd. also raised several hundred dollars.
In the meantime, Parrish's motion on a new option for accused pit bulls, which could see them shipped out of the province by the City rather than automatically euthanized, has been deferred for a staff report.
Ditto for her "Krinkles" amendment that would see cats automatically held for 10 days rather than three before being put down.

The ice was swinging more than the Ray Brown-Ed Thigpen version of the Oscar Peterson Trio at this week's Scotties Tournament of Hearts, which made for some great shots, a lot of anxious moments and a ton of quizzical looks on the faces of Canada's best female curlers.
Curling leaves lots of people cold and confused but I must confess that I am a closet fan, who finds the game addictive and even compelling lots of times.
In the depths of winter, a week listening to Vic and Linda and Ray do the round-robin on TSN and then turn it over to the CBC crew for the weekend semis and finals is just what the doctor ordered.
Thank goodness this ritual has now been reinstated after the debacle CBC made of broadcasting the round robin on Country Canada, which used to be the name of a good TV show on the national network and is now apparently the name of a digital channel to which only cows subscribe.
In any event, the curling this week from Regina, a curling town if there ever was one, was uniformly fun to watch. It was a very strong field with lots of different personalities.
Kelly Scott and Team Canada, who had been incredibly steady for two years, never got going and were out of it before it began.
Quebec's young guns skipped by Marie-France Larouche look like high schools kids who can't believe the adults would invite them to such a big party. They enjoy every minute, even the bad misses, which they chuckle at. And by the way, the double-raise takeout sounds a lot sexier en francais.
Shannon Kleibrink, our Olympic bronze medalist and Sherry Middaugh were the top two finishers, playing the exciting rocks-in-play-all-over-the-place brand of game all week. Then when they got to the playoffs, they inexplicably started their games by playing the wide-open style that almost ruined the game before the four-rock rule came into effect.
Both Middaugh and Kleibrink had the hammer in the semis and finals but, instead of going after Jennifer Jones and her Manitoba team, they bored us for two ends. Both of them ended up with nose-hits to take a single point and lose the advantage of the hammer they'd worked all week to gain.
Go figure.
There's probably no other team game where the pressure weighs so heavily on the team leader as curling, where all of the team's effort so often come down to the last throw by the skip.
It's probably no accident that the losers of both the semi and final were the women who had to throw the last shots. They were similar raise-takeouts that Middaugh and Kleibrink had generally made all week. But they didn't couldn't quite make them when everything was on the line.
Curling is so much fun to watch because you see the strategies developed, amended and dropped right before your eyes shot after shot. It is the ultimate Monday morning quarterbacking and the commentators and viewers can join in with glee.
There are often a lot of helpful fingerprints on our TV screen after a particularly good game — where we have helpfully pointed out exactly where the teams should be hitting and rolling.
One thing noticed this week was that the longer teams stand around and chat about which shot they should try, the less likely they are to actually make it.
It may still be the roaring game when the stone is sliding down the ice, but it is the respectful game when it stops.
The players are invariably polite to their opponents and the celebrations and tears usually come after the handshakes, not before. So Canadian, eh?
One thing we have to hope is that curling doesn't get fashionable, as happened to skating a few years ago when it nearly died of overexposure.
There is a big storm cloud on the curling horizon for sure.
You've undoubtedly heard that a new reality TV show is in the works with closet curlers Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi ready to climb into the hack and skip celebrity teams.
Yes, get ready for The Boss' Tenth Avenue Freeze shot. We can only hope they have a set of rocks in Asbury Park that were born to run.
Could put a whole new twist on the TV term "May Sweeps."

There was a certain irony in the air at the launch of Understanding The Early Years (UEY) Malton project yesterday.
Concentrating a wealth of resources to produce a state-of-the-neighbourhood report on the factors affecting the success of youngsters entering the school system in such a "high risk" community is an irrefutably reasonable thing to do.
But a lot of the community members at the launch looked slightly bewildered at the idea, as if they couldn't believe that such an effort — sponsored by the Peel District School Board and funded through a $375,000 grant over three years by the federal government's social development partnerships program — could really be happening to them.
For Malton is, in so many ways, the orphan child of Mississauga — separated geographically, culturally and in some ways, emotionally — from the rest of the city.
To grossly oversimplify, it's a community settled by newcomers who got off the plane and didn't have the resources to wander too far away. The countries of origin of the people who settle in Malton's neighbourhoods have changed over the years but the plot line hasn't: it's still a struggle for families to establish themselves here.
"We still have lots of people here working three or four or five jobs to make ends meet," says Rick Williams, the school trustee who acted as emcee at yesterday's launch and has seen a lot of faces change in his 35 years of residency. "The needs are much higher in this community. There's a lot of transience."
The good news is that the people who come and stay in Malton truly care about their community. The better news is that lots and lots of them are sitting on the "guiding community collaborative" that is setting the course for the project.
The Malton UEY is the second federally-funded study using the Early Development Instrument (EDI) to look at student outcomes which has taken place in Mississauga.
A similar project at the beginning of this decade in Dixie-Bloor did a similar intensive survey of kindergarten children and their family backgrounds. It found fully one-quarter of students, "displayed signs of problems, placing them at potential risk of future academic failure." The report's main recommendations called for more early identification and intervention with vulnerable children, more ESL supports for children and families, expansion of the kindergarten experience (this was before mandated JK) and the closure of the gender gap. Boys were found to be significantly less ready to learn when they entered school than girls.
To no one's surprise, children whose first language is not English, who are not exposed to pre-school programs and who come from poorer neighbourhoods in "high social risk" areas, face the most serious barriers to success. In Dixie-Bloor, almost one-third of students were not ready to move on from kindergarten to Grade 1.
But there's a big difference in the way the project will be undertaken between Dixie-Bloor and Malton projects, says Peel Board research director Paul Favaro. "We're taking all the lessons we learned in Dixie-Bloor and we're making this a community-driven project. We are having the collaborative determine where we are going with this project."
One of the 40-odd members of that collaborative is 30-year Malton resident Valerie Thompson. She got involved when her oldest son John entered school and is still involved. She still sits on the Lincoln Alexander Secondary School council even though her three children have all graduated.
Thompson admitted with a laugh that she bought in Malton originally because the price was right. But she stayed because "Malton is a really great community."
It's the kind of place where, if you establish a homework club, as Thompson and others did, you also make it a wrestling club so that it will lure more kids out.
English is not the first language in many, if not most, Malton homes. People forget that, "it takes a lot of energy to come to a new country and establish yourself," says Thompson.
And it takes a lot of energy (and in some cases knowledge) that most parents don't have, to get their kids ready to enter school.
"This is about empowering parents and understanding the development of children," says Thompson, who has served on a half-dozen school councils over the years. "This is about letting the community know there are resources out there for them."
The first of those resources went home clutched in a lot of hands yesterday. It was a Program Inventory outlining all of the services available in Malton, all gathered together in one little booklet for the first time.
While there will be a report coming out of this exercise, the real legacy it will provide is the opportunity for all the players in the community to coalesce to develop long-term sustainable programs that will last far after the school portion is done.
Favaro was even talking yesterday about involving local corporations in the collaborative, as well as funders like the United Way, so that supports can be built for the community structures that are needed over the long term.
Maybe Malton, orphan child, has found a community full of responsible step-parents right in its own backyard.

Who knows how many people have walked by this huge maple tree on Glenburnie Rd. in the Credit Reserve without spotting its tiny resident screech owl, perfectly camouflaged in the middle of the knothole?
Alan Skeoch, the now retired long-time award-winning high school history teacher, CBC contributor (they loved his collection of historic agricultural implements) and author of the lively history of the city called Mississauga- Where the River Speaks, admits he probably missed it himself the first few times he walked by. It took his wife to point it out, of course.
Skeoch (pronounced Ski-oh) snapped this photo of the common owl, who often spends most of the day dozing out in plain sight.
"There's a lot more wildlife in the city than you think, once you start looking for it," says the former Parkdale Collegiate teacher, who has a new book coming out in April. It has the provocative title, Your Home on Native Land, and deals with the long, sad history of our treatment of native peoples which has culminated in such clashes as the current Caledonia stand-off.
Since his two grandchildren, four and five-years-old, have been reading stories about red foxes, Skeoch decided to take them on a neighbourhood forage. Down by the spot where the Ministry of Transportation is reconstructing the QEW interchange at Hurontario St., he and his grandkids made a search of the brush.
"I knew there were fox down there because I'd seen them before and, believe it or not, there was a fox with five kits living under a stump," he says. "They've since moved on."
Lots of times we miss the urban wildscape that remains all around us simply because we don't take the time to look for it.
• • •
Here's an item from the "it's a small world" category.
Larry Steinman, the fiery Lorne Park ratepayer who has lead the fight... er positive exchange of differing views... between residents living along the corridor where Hydro One butchered so many trees last year happens to be out in Canmore, Alberta these days.
He is flying back, however, for the next open house of the joint landscaping committee. Hydro One agreed to set that up last fall after residents balked at the utility's plans to kill numerous mature oaks in the Lorne Park, after they'd already slaughtered a number in Applewood Acres and Park Royal. (The open house, by the way, takes place next Wed. Mar. 5 in the Lorne Park Secondary School cafeteria.)
Turns out there's a connection between the communities at either end of Steinman's flight. After a friend mentioned the connection, Steinman did some Internet digging and found out that Sir John George Edward Henry Douglas Sutherland Campbell was the British Marquis of Lorne, born August 6, 1845. He married Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the sixth child of Queen Victoria. Marquis of Lorne was Governor General of Canada from 1879 to 1883. Lorne Park is named after him, and Lake Louise, which is not that far from Canmore, is named after her.
And adding to the small world connection, one of those who "watched me do a pretzel while cross-country skiing at the Nordic Centre" says Steinman, was Mississauga's own Olympic heroine, Silken Laumann. Next week Laumann, who now lives in Victoria, will help launch the newly-expanded Canadian Olympic School Program in Richmond, B.C.
• • •
After years of hearing about the deer herd at UTM, actually had an encounter of the close kind with them a few months ago. Since then, have spotted several white tails strolling around campus.
Yesterday, five were foraging in the snow along principal's road for green goodies hidden under the snow. This time, we were better prepared. Our cameras were at the ready as the deer posed patiently for photos, as seen below.