Glebe Report

A reminder that this annual mega neighbourhood recycling event is coming soon. This year’s sale date is Saturday, May 25, from roughly 8 a.m. till 3 p.m., though professionals and the savviest shoppers may be out much, much earlier. Bank Street merchants are also getting ready for their awesome sidewalk sale.

There are some issues that are very easy to understand and very easy to address. Bottled water is one of them. Water from the tap instead of in plastic bottles is just fine and has no extra charges. So why not use tap water instead of water bottled in plastic?

This article is dedicated to a zerowaste mentality, striving to create an environmental and community consciousness around the many and varied household items that we would like to clear out. Rather than treating them as waste and pitching them into your garbage can or trucking them to a landfill, here is a range of ways to reduce waste, redirect and repurpose your goods and help your community at the same time.

This month, the Glebe Report’s Poetry Quarter looked for poems of science fiction or speculation –fantasy, magic and witchcraft–space and time travel –undiscovered planets and unknown worlds, utopian or dystopian – nightmare or dream scenarios. In fact, anything outside the real-world experience, in poetic form. We seem to have hit a nerve – we received a record number of entries.

In some ways Wolf Illing’s is a classic immigration story. Now in his 80s, he came to Canada as a 20-year-old in 1952. A serendipitous meeting – hitchhiking, actually – with an Ontario Lands and Forests employee led to a job replanting a burnt-out area of forest.

On the book front, as you begin garden planning and green dreaming, the Sunnyside library offers book recommendations to help you get started. And David Chernushenko’s first novel – Burning Souls – is about to launch.

Food articles this month bring you the fascinating story of the pecan, by Carolyn Best, and a behind-the-scenes peek into Second Avenue Sweets and their ourtstanding French toast, by Marisa Romano.

Musical offerings are several and varied, ranging from the Brandenburg Concertos featuring Roland Graham and Luc van Gulik, to the Cantata Singers performing Bruckner’s Mass in E Minor, to Seventeen Voyces performing in a comic opera version of the silent horror film Nosferatu.

I first saw him in the fall of ’63, a blond Roman head and cocky smile descending a twisted street to the Café du Théatre in Neuchâtel. I remember how evenings in that quarter brimmed with the kinetic charm of students far from home.

Neither her parents nor her grandparents said her measles vaccination would feel like a pinch and be over with. She figured it out for herself. When she saw the needle in the nurse’s hand, she bolted for the door, but the office receptionist blocked her way until her grandfather caught up with her.

At a time when Lansdowne is getting yet another rethink, we thought we would take a look back at some scenes of Lansdowne history, thanks to Ian McKercher of the Glebe Historical Society.