Jim Cumming - From the Publisher's Pen

When I was growing up in Fort Frances, the police department only had two cars and the station was a small brick building attached to the old town hall.
The town hall, the fire department, and the police station all existed in the space in front of the current Civic Centre.

While many cross-border shoppers may cheer the increases in merchandise allowance that Canadians will be allowed to return with from the U.S., many towns and cities along the border are petitioning the Ministry of Finance to rescind his June 1 changes.
Currently, Canadian residents returning to Canada after 24 hours only are permitted $50 in merchandise. That will rise to $200 on June 1.

Don Cumming received a very special award from the Canadian Community Newspapers Association last Thursday evening at the Royal York Hotel.
He was the recipient of the “Gold Quill” Award, which is bestowed upon individuals who have worked within the newspaper years for 50 years and have been involved in their community.

Sunday was Earth Day.
I hadn’t paid much attention to the day until I watched the news on CBC that evening and saw the parades and people working to cleaning up waterways and parks across Canada.
People also planted trees along roadways and replaced fallen trees in parks.

Sometimes it is necessary to question the thinking of senior government.
As the federal government seeks to eliminate thousands of jobs from departments across Canada, you must question how decisions were arrived at. It is especially true of border services.

There is some thought today that computers, smartphones, iPods, and iPads have isolated people who seldom talk with each other any more.
There are now more cellphones in the world than there have ever been landlines. In some households, the landlines have disappeared and all that remains are the cellphones for each member of the home.

The announcement that the province was closing the tourism information centres in Fort Frances, Rainy River, and Kenora caught everyone by surprise.
In the past 12 months, the province had expanded its budget to promote fishing and hunting in the northwest. The money was targeted at major markets throughout the upper U.S. Midwest.

Our family’s first boat was a Admiral Peterborough cedar skiff and every year my father would begin working on it in our backyard.
The bottom was covered in fibreglass, as was the stern. It was green. The rest of the boat had a Spar varnish finish.
We couldn’t begin work on the boat until the outside temperature remained above freezing and the days were warm.

Forsberg and Lindberg, MacIntoshes, Taylor Electric, Andy’s Candy Land, Bernardi’s, Veteran Electric, the bowling alley, Shop Easy, Niznicks, Tiny Tot Shop, The Fridge, Gilmore, and Noden are names of businesses that all have disappeared from the 300 block of Scott Street in my lifetime.

I originally thought of Bill Fontana as being irascible.
The first time I learned of him was in the office of the Fort Frances Times that then was located on Church Street; he was in meeting with Carl Schubring, the newspaper’s editor at the time.