Plenty of Nothing

Evangeline Brandt "Poker"

Crow Stencil

September Hockey Roundup

I've decided to follow the Swedish club IF Troja-Ljungby this year, their 60th anniversary.  Most of the club's early history was spent moving up the lower divisions, until they played in the Allsvenskan through the '90s. They appeared in the kvalserien till Elit seven times that decade but never quite made it up to the Elitserien.  They then slipped disastrously back to Div.1 (the misnamed third tier) in 2000 and have only returned to the Allsvenskan this year.  So the question is, can they stick?  They have a classic red and white uniform, and employ an Ottawa native, Ron Pasco.

The Senators play Frölunda in Göteborg October 2.  Frölunda are Daniel Alfredsson's motherclub, and include defenseman Joe DiPenta, a former Halifax Moosehead.  [Senators 4, Indians 1.]

This is the centenary of the Montreal Canadiens, upon whom the hockey gods have smiled 24 times, but not since 1993.  If there is any justice in the universe they'll win the Stanley Cup this year.  And they could do it.  Douglas

Macpherson's Trudeau

Is there a political cartoonist in Canada today who can hold a candle to Duncan Macpherson?  Macpherson drew for the Toronto Star during the Sixties and Seventies and was in large part responsible for the popular images of Trudeau, Diefenbaker and Robert Stanfield.  He was an expert caricaturist, but he also gave his subjects full-scale bodies and used those to present Canadian politics as a form of dance, giving his cartoons a visual interest and theatricality missing from most present-day political cartoons.  Maybe we think of today's politicians as smalltime because their caricatures have bodies like Peanuts characters.  Douglas

Evangeline Brandt "Bazooka"

Arrrr, Me Pretties

'Tis International Talk Like A Pirate Day, so ye'd best be puttin' a lively seafarer's tongue betwixt those pearly teeth, if ye don't fancy a cutlass in yer gory tripes.  Here be a fine Pirate-English translator, and here a true history o' that fearsome scourge of the sea, Captain William Kidd.

Prenez la Ligne Orange

Chris Erb at Spacing Montreal offers an appreciation of an NDP campaign poster currently appearing in Metro stations.  The ad feels very urban and particular to Montreal, and should contribute to that increasingly urban party's advance into that heretofore Liberal downtown.  Here is the Metro map the ad references:

(picture from Hors des lieux communs)  (via Ottawa Citizen election blog)  Douglas

Great-Grandparents

Janet, only daughter of Robert McGill, to James Maxwell Tulley, at 17 Mount Pleasant Street, Greenock on 5th January 1892 (Greenock Telegraph 8.1.1892).

Evangeline Brandt "Mab"

Evangeline Brandt "Woo Thousand and One"