Wow! Every Tuesday night, 64 women from all over Simcoe County drive to Barrie to sing their hearts out. They’re every age… the oldest is XX, and while some are self employed, others work for companies, others are young moms raising little tykes. They’re busy, busy people and for 15 years they’ve been blending their…
It was early in 1983 and the then-desperate board of directors for Gryphon Theatre was meeting at Gryphon’s business office in a converted house on Collier St. Barrie’s 15 year old professional theatre company was in financial trouble and board members were each pledging bailout amounts of money. The bank was pressing in. Member by…
This June, if you’re driving along Highway 26 somewhere between Barrie and Owen Sound you may drive past Alex Hopkins. He’ll be the really tall, very physically fit fellow with dark hair and a huge smile on his face. And he’ll be celebrating his birthday. Alex, alias Sandy, Hopkins celebrates his birthday every year by…
What happens inside a person that causes action? What happens when that action becomes so strong it makes a national difference? Jacklin Rostron-Wilde can’t put her finger on where her internal power comes from, but she sure knows why. She was watching a CBS television documentary on a little girl in an affluent part of…
It’s out there. Somewhere. And Heather Joyes has spent a good chunk of the past five years hunting. She’s looking for an antique quilt, white background, maroon border. It’s a family quilt, each square depicting an activity in a woman’s life. One square shows a woman wearing a bonnet hoeing a garden. Another shows a…
If you regularly work online, live and breathe search engines and internet research, and regularly order merchandise through the world wide web, please skip to the sports section or prepare to get your laughs for the week… Life is pretty great. Really. There’s not much I don’t like to do. But those who know me…
Some of you might know that my journalism roots go quite deep. For each of us in “the business” the core of a publication is a personal thing. For some it’s the sports section; for others it’s readers’ feedback. For still others it’s the back page. Whatever, every publication has its core, its raison d’être….
The birthday girls. For much of their lives Garry MacLaren, Dorothy Treadwell, Jean Nolan, Kay French, Helen Cox and Mildred McKenzie have celebrated their birthdays together. A lunch party. Gifts. Laughter. Tears. Support. Anticipation. Reminisence. These women have woven a closeness in their relationship that spans marriage, children, careers, hopes. And now death. Last week…
This is a story (true) about two women, two gifts, and a connecting thread of generosity. I think it’s worth sharing, if only because of coincidence. Jean Jones and Loeta Horner had alot in common. They had tremendous grace and style. They were the type of women who could take an item off a clothing…
What Lucretia Rowe most remembers about Maisie Murphy is her incredible sense of style. It was 1942 when Lucretia was working in the law firm of Carl Stewart and a new receptionist joined the firm, fresh from school. Like a Dresden doll, Maisie Barkey was 90 pounds of style. “We were earning about $9 a…