Talk about a whacky week in the news cycle.
It wasn’t as the late, great national columnist Allan Fotheringham often complained – in the dog days of summer there is more newsprint than news.
A small sampling: Unusual weather that is rapidly becoming not so unusual. Report of big ice melt in Greenland. Sky-high inflation. Rising interest rates. Fear of a recession. A health-care system on the brink of collapse. Emergency room doors being locked. Another COVID-19 wave – No. 7 – that is expected to get worse in the fall. A dire doomsday threat by the Ruskies as the war in Ukraine drags on.
And, then there was this news nugget that got far too much attention: The Prime Minister’s new hair-do. Some pundits claimed that he now resembles Jim Carey in Dumb and Dumber. A cynic, no doubt of the Conservative persuasion, argued the comparison is not fair … to Jim Carey.
Some where out there is a hairdresser/barber living in fear of being hunted down by the media mob.
As a guy who visits the barber twice a year, need to or not, I’m not about to make fun of any hair-do, and that includes The Donald’s mop.
Sometimes, justice is found in strange places. Like inside a jail.
The mutt who beat up an 81-year-old grandmother and robbed her of the $480 she had just withdrawn from an Aurora bank ATM on July 31 was introduced to some jail house style justice after being arrested and placed in the slammer to await a bail hearing.
The woman, who fought back, was treated at hospital for rib injuries and bruising. Talk about spunk. She told a Toronto newspaper that she tried to knee him where it would hurt the most (OUCH!) but was thrown to the floor before she could administer the coup de grace.
Jail officials said the 35-year-old Sudbury man and a couple of inmates were involved in a “confrontation” soon after his arrival. Jail officials believe it might have been connected to the assault on granny. Do you think!
THIS MONTH IN 1938 – Grasshoppers were eating their way through Ontario grain crops, destroying thousands of acres. The old standby mixture of molasses, bran and paris green was ineffective. The department of agriculture said an experimental concoction of arsenic, bran and sawdust was available to farmers. … The S-49 submarine, built in 1922 and decommissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1931 when it was purchased by a U.S. businessman for $75,000, was on display while docked in Cornwall Canal where public tours were offered for an admission fee. … With the hiring of Leonard Porteous, Cornwall Public School had its only male teacher. Also hired was Marion Weatherhead who had a long career in the local public school system. … Kiwanis Boys Camp (aka Fresh
Air Camp) at Lancaster was providing underprivileged kids a one-week stay in the outdoors. … Alex Lajoie’s 10-piece orchestra was playing at the Edgewater Inn in Summerstown. … Newest gas station in Cornwall was the White Rose Station at Pitt and Fourth streets, owned and operated by R. McNamara. … Maple Crest Dairy opened on Hwy. 2 just west of Hoople Avenue. It was owned by Roy C. Hartle. It offered bottled pasteurized milk delivered to city homes (in horse-drawn wagons) within 24 hours of the Maple Crest herd being milked at the Hartle farm. … A four-year-old Moulinette boy died after a back-yard make-shift tent caught fire. He was rushed to Cornwall General Hospital by neighbours Cecil Lama and Harold Foley but died a few hours after. It was believed the straw floor caught fire while the lad was playing with matches left in the tent.
POLICE BLOTTER CIRCA 1938: When Bainsville neighbour William Lagrue, awakened by his crying infant son, noticed a dim light inside the Sangster and Brothers General Store at 2:30 a.m. he called his neighbour, one of the Sangsters. Armed with rifles, they surprised the two crooks as they were exiting the rear of the store with bags of merchandize. A half-hour later two officers dispatched from the Cornwall OPP office arrived to take the pair into custody. A search found a revolver in the pocket of one man. Three days later they pleaded guilty and sentenced to two-year penitentiary terms for the break-in. The man with the revolver received an additional 12 months. … Patricia Monahan, the lone overnight operator at the Bell office on Pitt Street, spotted two youths inside the Walker Store next door. She alerted town police. Minutes later Const. Allan Clark (future police chief) and Special Const. Lloyd McKenzie took the pair into custody and walked them to the nearby police station. … Magistrate P. C. Bergeron said Cornwall and area had an illegal gambling problem that needed to be rectified. A city man was charged after a noon-hour police raid on the King George Hotel beverage room. It was the second such raid on a local illegal gambling operation in less than a month. Police said stacks of racing forms were found in the hotel and in the accused’s room at a nearby boarding house. Considering it was the accused’s first offence, Mag. Bergeron fined him $100 but warned a repeat of the offence would come with a jail sentence.
BITS AND BITES: It is hard to put a handle on the rise of COVID-19 cases because so many mild cases are not reported. One CTV medical expert estimated that at least 50% of Canadians have had COVID-19. … When the age of electric vehicles arrives and oil and gas taps are turned off, will an electricity tax replace the gas tax which has been a windfall for municipalities? And on that note, a Royal Bank of Canada study shows that corporate taxes and royalties paid by Canadian oil and gas companies to federal and provincial governments will hit $48 billion this year and is expected to climb to $64 billion next year. Not exactly chump change.
TRIVIA: Waste management company GFL owns and operates the Eastern Ontario Waste Handling Facility in Moose Creek. What does GFL stand for?
TRIVIA ANSWER: Marilyn Monroe’s birth name was Norma Jeane Mortenson but a few days later she was baptized as Norma Jeane Baker. Before making it big in Hollywood her married name was Norma Jeane Dougherty. One of her three marriages was to baseball great Joe DiMaggio.
QUOTED “Why waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your opponent will do it for you.” – Mark Twain
