CRAZY LIKE A ... SAUSAGE

This is really Collette's post. This is her story. These are certainly her pictures (has anyone noticed that the number of photos on this blog has increased dramatically since Collette got her D-80?) and I tried to encourage her to write this but ... well, my name pops up somewhere on this blog so here we go . . .

Last weekend Collette went to visit her father, Nick, in the Parry Sound area. Nick's room mate, Fred, told her about a family of young foxes who had a den near a construction site he was working on. He graciously offered to take Collette out there so she packed up the Nikon and away they went.

The house Fred is building is near the Shawanga reserve. He has been working on site for a couple of months when he had noticed three young foxes in a den. No mother seemed to be around. The foxes here are perhaps six months old.

Over the time he has been working there, Fred had developed a kind of relationship with the foxes, mostly revolving around Italian sausage. With that as a lure, he began coaxing the foxes out of their den.

Here is the first fox being coaxed out of his den. He probably recognizes Fred, they were almost feeding from his hand at one point but now there is a stranger, and she has something in her hand but .. wait .. I smell sausage!

On second thought, this may require some careful consideration ...

. . . but gosh .. it's sausage!

Out for a quick snack then ...

.. back to the den with his prize.

Then out came this guy, definitely a male fox Collette dubbed "Blackfeet" for obvious reasons. He made a beeline for the prize.

This fellow was definitely more bold and seemed to treat Fred as his own personal house chef or something

"mmmm sausage"

He had a big appetite, Mr Blackfeet and was not shy about coming back for more ... are these Italian Canadian foxes?

Collette said this was a male because it was: Wham, grab, thank you ma'am ...

And there goes our black footed sausage connoisseur, fading into the sunset . . .

A-WEDDING WE SHALL GO

This is the second version of this post. The first one was a two parter. The first part was a political rant aimed at David Miller, the mayor of my city, and his apparent lack of knowledge around something as trivial as the national gun laws in this country and his insistence that closing legal gun ranges would stop the gun violence here ... But I find political rants boring and mine was no exception.

So I am going to the second part of the original post. This weekend Collette, Miss Hayley and myself are heading up north for a wedding. When we say "up north" we mean the Parry Sound area where Collette's family lives. The wedding is for her nephew Tim and his fiancee Kate. Besides being the aunt and uncle Collette and I will be serving as the A/V tag team; I'm taking the pro video cam and she is bringing her new boyfriend, often referred to as the Nikon D-80. So, there will be a fabulous wedding DVD and some exquisite wedding still pictures ... and we will get to celebrate the marriage of these two and get to hang out with Collette's family.

The wedding is on Sunday but we are sneaking up tomorrow (Friday). Collette is finished teaching for the year and since she is now not teaching summer school (don't ask, it entails a different kind of political rant) we decided to go up early. The wedding is in Parry Sound itself, the town where Collette's dad lives, the place we normally stay. But tomorrow we are heading straight up past Parry Sound to Pointe au Baril and Springhaven Lodge, the business owned and operated by Collette's family. We plan on staying overnight then going to Parry Sound on Saturday.

It has been a while since we've been to lodge, pretty much since Collette's parents moved "into town" (Parry Sound). We love the lodge. Miss Hayley loves the lodge. Springhaven is located on Nares Inlet which, in turn, opens up onto the Georgian Bay, a body of water attached to Lake Huron but in itself, almost as big as Lake Ontario. We are talking around 15,000 square kilometers here. Deep deep, water, wind shaped pine trees, ancient moss coated rocks .... this is a party in Vic and Collette's world.

The lodge features a gentle sand beach leading into some of the cleanest water you will find anywhere; I don't suspect that Miss Hayley will be dry for any long period of time. And I strongly suspect that the next blog I post will have some gorgeous photos compliments of Collette and her new auto focusing boyfriend. And sure, probably some video as well.

So it's a win win kind of weekend; a wedding for people for whom we have a great deal of affection, a gathering of the family, and a day or two at one of our favorite places on the planet. There will be still pics, there will be video and ..oh yeah .. there's gonna be beer. And everything goes better with beer.

THE NAUTICAL FESTIVAL & COLLETTE SCORES BIG TIME

Another weekend in Toronto, and another outdoor event. A free outdoor event. Free .. say it with me. Mmmmm ... free. Totally had a Homer Jay Simpson moment there.

This weekend the event was the Toronto Nautical Festival. A rather grandiose title for what was a few tall ships anchored around the inner harbuor and some Maritime music, but I can't complain. The Blue Nose came. The only time I've gotten close to seeing this schooner was in its home port of Lunenburg Nova Scotia and it was fall, offseason and I may have seen it but there was tequila involved and I really don't remember. Not remembering is pretty much the point of tequilla.

So Collette and I decided to take advantage of the event and we went down Saturday. I took my little Samsung palmcorder (there is a video below) but Collette had left her little Nikon Coolpix at school. Bummer. More on that later.

The day began cool and cloudy with a little bit of rain. For a semi-Maratime event I found the weather .. authentic. Not a bad thing because it kept the crowds at bay. The only problem with outdoor free festivals in Toronto is that everyone else likes them as well .. and I mean everyone. I've stopped going to certain annual events because the crowds have developed into some Moloch-like all consuming beast .. and I have a bit of claustiphobia .. and really, I just don't like people. Well, not so many people .. all at once.

So we wandered around Harbourfront in the clouds and the rain and got to board three of the larger ships. There was free music but we decided not to hang out that long. Which means we've missed an opportunity to see the Bara McNeals for free a couple of weeks in a row. Damn.

Still, we enjoyed ourselves, I love wandering around these old ships; I'd seen the Niagra before but not the Pride of Baltimore and had never been on the deck of the Blue Nose. So it was good.

Here is a little video compilation of the day, music by Nova Scotia's Natalie McMaster.






The Nautical Festival from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

Now to the second part of the story. After we were done with the tall ships, the sun came out (sun ... big firey hot thing in the sky .. rare in these parts .. heard about it .. seems pretty nice... want more) and we decided to wander up Younge Street and do a little browsing. We ended up in Henry's Outlet store. Henry's is an Ontario photo/video store and over the years Collette and I have invested so much money in it that we should be on the board of directors.

Collette is the still photograhper in our little family unit. And she is good. You can see some of her work in this post. These photos were taken with her venerable Richoh 35 mm camera that used something called film .. young people Google awaits your inquiries.

Collette made the move to digital many years back with the purchase of the Nikon Coolpix. She loves the digital realm, the ease of it and the ability to bring it into Photoshop and play around but this cam is a consumer point and shoot and she has always felt its limitations.

So here we are at Henry's and when I turn around Collette has locked in the gaze of her one true love: The Nikon D-80. This a full sized digital SLR, 10 megapixels, interchangleble lenses, the whole nine yards. I saw that look in Collette's eyes and wondered why she needed me, here was her love .. oh yeh, the Nikon can't cook.

Collette has agreed to teach summer school this July, eating up a good chunk of her summer and it has been a long hard school year for her. Why not make that into something pleasant? So there is the D-80, a 4 Gig flash drive and a 18 to 200 mm zoom lens. Ah, the look on that woman's face .. I would have been jealous had I not been so happy.

So Collette scores and in the future, so will this blog, because you won't just have to suffer through my little videos, you will have something truly beautiful to look at.