7 in the cards?

16 May

Since we restarted euchre after the mid-winter break, we’ve been blessed with good turnouts at our monthly get-togethers. The question is whether this trend will continue at Friday’s euchre game. Will we hit the magic number of seven tables?

While we can’t predict how many players will cross our threshold, we do know that whomsoever does join us on May 18thwill have a great time. Admission is only $5.00 and this includes a buffet of homemade sandwiches, pickled beets, cucumbers and onions, potato chips and a dessert tray with at least three sweet options. After the meal, the decks of cards will be shuffled and dealt and the games will commence. The luncheon starts at 12:00 noon and the card play wraps up around 3:30 PM. If you’re a euchre fan, help us reach the “seven table” mark by coming out to the DRA Hall, 19053 County Road 24.

Hipalong Cassidy

Another euchre related question is whether René Trottier will be ready to join the fray. While others used the time since our last luncheon tournament for the minutiae of everyday life, René headed down to Cornwall for a hip replacement. While I have yet to speak with him firsthand, I’m told he‘s already making plans to test out his new spare part by hitting balls and spinning tall tales on a local golf course.

Fresh new exhibits

Here in Dunvegan, the Victoria Day weekend is synonymous with the official opening of the Glengarry Pioneer Museum. While there is no blockbuster event planned for the 2018 debut, curator Jennifer Black has put together a fascinating new exhibit entitled“Let’s Celebrate!” The display will highlight the communal occasions — such as weddings, Christmas, Hogmanay, agricultural fairs and work bees — that helped knit far-flung pioneer communities together and bring a little joy to the lives of these hard working people. The exhibition will blend artifacts, oral history, photos and poems to showcase how these rural traditions were celebrated in Glengarry a century or more ago.

Jennifer is also hard at work on an exhibit featuring the long association between the MacLeods and Glengarry. In 1793, after an 18-week sea voyage, Captain Alexander MacLeod arrived in the new world from Glenelg, Scotland leading forty families of mainly MacLeod, McGillivray, McCuaig, McIntosh, McLennan and McPhee clans. Ice and snow came early in 1793, so the settlers spent the winter on St. John’s Island (now PEI). In April, they resumed their journey and eventually settled in the wilderness of Kirk Hill, Glengarry where the MacLeod clan thrived.

For her exhibit — which she promises will be ready in time for the annual MacLeod picnic — Jennifer has drawn upon the countless artifacts in the Museum’s collection that have been donated by MacLeods or have original provenance connecting them to the clan. There will even be a MacLeod-themed scavenger hunt as a part of the display. If you are among the many who celebrate with the Clan MacLeod society every year at the museum, please note that the event will be held on June 2nd, one week sooner than previous years.

Sex sells

In reality, this item has nothing to do with sex. But if the headline had been about the museum’s plea for volunteers to join an “Assorted Maintenance Bee” on Saturday, May 26th from 9 AM to noon, would you have read it? The list of chores in the GPM’s job jar includes painting window frames and a couple doors; cleanup duty in the Drive Shed, Campbell Barn and attic of the Roxborough Hall; and repairs to the flashing on the Blacksmith Shop chimney. Depending on how many volunteers show up, there are also a number of other small jobs.

The museum is also looking for a new team to take over the museum’s gardens from Barbara and Stewart Robertson, Nicole St. Pierre and Monique Moulard, all of who are retiring this year. This hard working group has done a terrific job of keeping the flowerbeds in tiptop shape, and Jennifer wanted me to say a HUGE thank you to Barbara, Stewart, Nicole and Monique for their commitment to the gardens over the past six years. This task requires two or three people volunteering approximately once a week to deadhead, weed and patrol for bugs. If you have a green thumb and are willing to help, please call Jennifer at 613-527-5230.

False economy

This past Friday, Terry and I had the privilege of attending the Glengarry County Archives dinner and presentation held in honour of Allan J. MacDonald, Glengarry’s volunteer archivist. Mr. MacDonald, with his wealth of experience gained during his years at the provincial archives in Toronto, was instrumental — along with Robin Flockton and the Glengarry Historical Society — in establishing the largest repository of historical records in eastern Ontario. Only a few years old, our archives already contains the foremost collection of history about Glengarry County found anywhere.

Now, I’m not going to go into a great deal of detail about Friday’s affair. I imagine it has been well covered by the Glengarry News representative who attended. Nor am I going to comment on the event logistics, other than to say the organizers did an admirable job and the caterers prepared a delicious meal. Albeit with a bit of an egalitarian twist. It was the only affair of this type I’ve ever attended where the head table wasn’t served first, especially when top politicos were seated there.

Instead, I’d like to talk about the facility itself… in this case the Char-Lan Recreation Centre in Williamstown. But my remarks apply equally well to the banquet halls in the Alexandria and Maxville arenas, Alexandria’s Island Park facility and most other public venues of this kind. The one thread that unites all of these public facilities is their common design flaw: poor acoustics. In my opinion, they were designed, built and decorated by people who had no respect for the room’s function. Steve Warburton of the Glengarry News passed along a great quote that sums up the problem. “The great Italian magician Tony Binnarelli once pointed out that if an audience cannot see you, they will blame themselves for not getting a better seat. If they can’t hear you, they will blame you.”

Living monuments to hard, acoustically-reflective surfaces, these halls take the normal sounds of a typical social gathering and amplify them into a headache-inducing din through which normal conversation dies a painful death. Often, the only way to communicate with one’s fellow dinners is to almost shout. My point is that these facilities would be much more enjoyable if our elected officials had insisted the builders hire architects who had attended classes the day acoustics was being taught.

And while, we’re on the topic of sound, it also wouldn’t go amiss to invest in better sound equipment. Given the pathetic acoustics of these spaces, amplification is often the only way a presenter will be heard at the back of the room. And yet I suspect the equipment that was purchased excelled in one area only, it was the lowest bid. And that’s what I mean by false economy. Sure a few precious tax dollars were saved when the system was installed. However, what was traded off was sound quality and reliability. The net result could be seen on Friday night. The wireless microphone failed so miserably, it was embarrassing.

In closing, I point out that the first venue in this area that gets its acoustics and audio system in order and promotes the fact it is a sound-friendly facility, will “eat the other hall’s lunches,” and have a serious impact on their bookings.

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