Lloyd Roger Mason 1945-2008
By Alex Shimo - Thursday, September 25, 2008 - 0 Comments
He loved nature, and taking his grandchildren on boat rides to see turtles and other animals
Lloyd Roger Mason was born in Altamont, Man., on Sept. 6, 1945, to his parents, Frank and Vina. He was the youngest of three children; his childhood was spent helping out on the family farm, milking the cows, helping with the harvest and collecting eggs. In his spare time, he would go hiking, and would often bring home souvenirs, such as feathers, stones, frogs and toads. Although he loved all animals, his favourite was a pet Jersey cow named Bossy. As a five-year-old, he would lie beside her, or hop up on her back and go for rides. “He really loved that cow,” explains his wife, Shirley, 59, who now works in a nursing home. “They had quite a relationship.”
A nature lover, Lloyd had a few scrapes in his youth. At age 10, he and a school friend went camping by a slough near the family home. While they were sleeping, a beaver gnawed through a nearby tree, which split in two. A large branch fell on the tent, which collapsed onto the boys. Terrified, they struggled out, and ran home in their pyjamas.
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I (heart) WASPs
By Martin Patriquin - Monday, May 12, 2008 at 2:16 PM - 0 Comments
WASPs, like lawyers and construction workers, work very hard at their respective stereotypes. You might say that the town of Knowlton, the pleasant little burg in the Eastern Townships, is a monument to this gross generalization. With its quaint wooden storefront signs and sidewalks crowded with meandering country gentry, Knowlton often seems like the setting for a Thornton Wilder play.
To be fair, the town comes by it honestly. It was country bumpkin WASP decades before the good people at IntraWest turned country bumpkin WASP into a cash cow in Whistler, Mont Tremblant and the like. Now, in an attempt to guard that good name against the forces of clutter and unseemliness, the town has declared war against yard sales by restricting the resale of mason jars and broken Nintendos from one’s lawn to just two weekends a year.
“We want Knowlton to be a nice place where people can walk around without poles being littered with crap,” said Knowlton mayor Richard Wisdom in a recent Gazette piece by Alex Roslin. The bylaw, which limits yard sales to two weekends in May and November, “highlights a rich-poor divide in this tony enclave that used to be the weekend retreat of Montreal’s blue-blooded anglo elite but now has a more diverse population”, Roslin writes.
Hopefully the bylaw will remain intact, so that everyone, rich or poor, may all stroll the streets of Knowlton without being visually molested. Pip pip, Knowlton. Keep up the good fight.
