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Photo (2012): Grayson gazes out over the North Thompson River and the mountains beyond:
“Grandpa, we need to go see what’s beyond those mountains.”
(Cover Photo Arrangement by Alysha McNeill)

Link to KDP Book
(Please order from the January 4, 2025 edition)

Dear Reader,

The following chronicles were written during the magical summer of 2012 when five-year old Grayson Edward Walker, along with his Grandpa, Harold David McNeill, his brother, Jay Wesley McNeill and a close family friend, Bjorn Oscar Simonsen (Uncle Bjorn) completed an exploratory expedition through British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. While the trip through British Columbia was relatively peaceful, once they hit the Alberta border, they entered a new and perilous world. After visiting family and friends across the Province they hit out for Saskatchewan to visit the places where Grandpa was born and where Uncle Bjorn and his family first landed when they emmigrated to Canada from Norway in the early 1950s. In this Province they would again be faced with many hurdles as they visited the many farms and historic sites that were part of the family history.

The 200 page book is filled with dozes of full colour photographs of family, friends, events and special places in the lives of the intrepid explorers. Dozens of Chapters are written from the perspective of Grayson.

Cheers,

Harold, Grayson, Jay, and Bjorn

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Photo (2014): Winter Storm Watch in Tofino, British Columbia
An avid West Coast and Prairie Explorer, there are few parts of Western Canada that Harold has not touched by land, sea, or air. Many dozens of these adventures with family, friends, work, and volunteerism, are chronicled on this blog and in hundreds of Facebook posts.
Many of the stories are now being rewritten, proofed, and published in book form (see Appendix A)

Harold was born in 1941 and started life on his parent’s homestead in Northwest Saskatchewan where he was surrounded by a wider family circle who immigrated to Canada from the United States in the early 1900s. In his early teens, the family settled in Cold Lake, Alberta, where Harold became interested in flying bush planes as they were still in regular use throughout the area and next door was the largest airforce training base in Canada, RCAF Station Cold Lake. During his High School years, along with his best friend, Aaron Pinsky, the boys worked part-time filleting fish at a packing plant owned by Aaron’s dad. As Aaron’s dad also leased a number of aircraft to haul fish from northern lakes, the boys picked up a lot of ad hoc flying time while assisting the regular pilots in loading and unloading airplanes as well as prepping the float or ski equipped aircraft for flight.

After Harold landed his first major job as a Crash Rescue Fireman with the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command based at Cold Lake, he also began flying training at the RCAF Station Flying Club were he was surrounded by the latest fighter jets and bombers that arrived from around the world for all-weather training. It was a crazy time when the world teetered at the edge of a nuclear apocalypse during the Cold War. After gaining his private pilots licence and float endorsement, he began flying as pilot in command on many of the aircraft on which he worked during his high school years. He later earned his Commercial Pilots Licence and one of the bush planes he flew, CF-AXL, holds special memories as it is now housed in the National Air and Space Museum in Ottawa.

Photo: This photo of an Oil Painting of CF-AXL graced the cover of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society’s 2000 Edition. Built in the 1930s, the aircraft was taken out of production in the early 1940s so the Fairchild Aircraft Company could concentrate on building bombers for World War II.

Click “Continue Reading” for more.

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Kari’s Birthday Celebration

Kari’s Birthday Slideshow

Photos

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Lynn sketched this welcoming sign

October 31, 2022

Over the course of the afternoon and evening we received a hoard of kids and adults (estimated at 150-200), all in a variety of great costumes. To get to the treats, they had to travel through the yard to reach the front door where they were greeted by a “schoolmarm” who questioned them about “have you completed you homework?” to which she was given all manner of answers (mostly yes, as they knew that likely meant an immediate treat). For the younger ones, perhaps intimidated by the sights and sounds, mom or dad supplied a reassuring hand to the front door. It was fortunate we purchased all those extra treats as by 8:45 the well was dry.

This was “Year 1” of expanding the Halloween scene to the full front and side yard.  The whole family, including Jay and Jeff, Avery, Lynn, shared in creating many of the new caricatures and ghostly scenes.  For some supplies Jay and I made a couple of trips to the Salvation Army on Quadra where we collected costumes and masks as well as other miscellaneous articles used for the various scenes. At home we used straw to stuff the body costumes, with the pumpkin heads being attached to a small shoulder board before being attached to a support pole driven into the ground.

To hold the black pumpkin ghosts, we used the same method to attach the pumpkin head, then placed the head over an inverted wire garden trellis (we forced the three wires into the bottom of the pumpkin, then rolled down a heavy-duty black plastic garbage bag. The inverted trellis was pushed down over a large, inverted plastic plant pot (photo description in the album). For the white ghosts we attached a stiff wire circle to a shoulder board and secured the wire head with two screws. We then folded over white sheets (purchased from the Salvation Army).

We completed the night scene by placing red, white, and yellow bulbs of various sizes in and around the scenes.  This gave the entire yard an eerie feel when accompanied by Halloween music found on YouTube and played moderately loud on the external trailer speakers.

As you might guess from the scenes, over the summer and fall, the front yard was transformed into a summer camp spot for family and guests, complete with trailer, gas campfire and BBQ, swings, swing ropes, sandbox (the Pirate Ship), a well as a tree house and lookout tower attached to a 30-foot slack line.

We rather expect this will become an annual practice back by popular demand.

Link Here to Facebook Photo Album

Cheers,

The McNeill’s

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While two of these five leaders have lost their job since the last election, our democracy remains strong because leaders can only lead as long as they are supported first by their party and then by Canadians in an election.  In many countries around the world, leaders remain in power regardless of the wishes of their party or general population.  A danger can arise when domestic and foreign interests seek to undermine our democracy. Although we maintain a solid right to protest, we must all accept some limits on that right. Those limits kick in when they interfere with the rights of the majority

National Post, February 15, 2022

Two excellent articles in the Post today. The first, a joint comment by Peter McKay, a former senior Conservative during the Harper years, and a retired Ottawa Police Chief, Vern White, titled “This is Anarchy. Order must be restored.” The article provides an unequivocal statement that using every means necessary to dismantle this protest is not a strike against democracy; it was a way to preserve it.

Having a senior Conservative thinker and former senior member of the party, taking a solid stand like this, speaks well for the view of the majority of the Conservative Party membership as well as the entire Left side of the political spectrum.The challenge faced by the majority of Conservatives is that the extreme right of their party carries a much louder, in your face, voice. This is clearly demonstrated in the current protests. It’s also a side of the party that attracts extremist groups whose agenda is often far beyond the far-right led by Maxime Bernier and the Peoples Party of Canada.

As we’ve all observed, the moment a centrist Conservative leader emerges (e.g. McKay, Sheer, O’Toole), it’s not long before the loud voice of the extremists takes over. Those groups start a fight that soon leads to those centrist leaders being dumped as “not Conservative enough”. In all this in-fighting, the good news for Canada is that the majority of people in Canada, be they Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Green or Bloc, supports the rule of law and our freedoms in a way that makes Canada a democratic leader in the world along side Australia, New Zealand, and others that have taken a similar stand.  That fact that that Conservatives breath fire and brimstone when speaking about the party in power and its leader, is just the way politicians play the game.  Article in the National Post Article on Press Reader

The second article, Civil Servants, NASA workers among donors, provides background on the hacker who gained access to the US Christian GiveSendGo site that intended to funnel millions into the Ottawa protests. While I generally don’t support ‘hackers’ as they most often gain access for the purpose of enriching themselves, others do it for altruistic purposes, as was done in this case. We all remember the Panama Papers and how those documents provided by Edward Snowden, opened the doors for many countries to chase down money hidden by some of the most powerful “men” in the world.

In the present case all those millions of dollars are now locked away by the hackers and cannot be used by the GoSendGo group.  Further they have placed a scrolling message on the site outlining their aims.  Again, if you have a chance, read the background on the GiveSendGo page. I cannot find a link to the National Post article, so I’ve included a few screenshots. One of the most disgusting and lasting symbols of that extended protest was the way the protestors abused the Canadian Flag as they dragged it through the mud as they cried for “Freedom”.

A few screen shots provided below

Foreign funding of political activism

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