Commemorating notable 1812 conflicts at Iroquois

Last Wednesday, January 30, co-workers, customers and friends helped Morrisburg Branch Manager Connie Kirkwood celebrate her 30 year career with the Bank of Montreal. Kirkwood, who lives in Morrisburg, began her career in Ottawa…in a location that is now a Dairy Queen, she says with a laugh. During her 30 years with the bank, she has been located throughout Ontario. From Ottawa, she went to Kingston and then farther west to Don Mills and then Burlington. She is originally from Pembroke and started her career right out of school, beginning as a teller and working her way up to loans clerk, and eventually to loans officer. Since 2002, she has been at various locations as Branch Manager. Most recently, she was in Finch for six years and Winchester for seven. She has been in Morrisburg for just over one year. “It’s been an amazing career. I’ve enjoyed all of it, especially the people I’ve met over the years. I still run into people I have worked with.” Kirkwood’s 30 years with BMO have involved a lot of changes. “Lots of changes, all for the better,” she says, recalling how “we used to calculate interest manually. There were no computers back then.”

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Lesley Johansen knows how important fresh fruit and vegetables can be in any one’s diet. And she also understands that good, fresh produce can often be beyond the financial reach of many families in this area.

“About a year ago, while I was working at the House of Lazarus,” Lesley explained, “I was living in a cabin in Mountain. At the time, I found myself in a very tight financial situation where I needed to turn to the Dundas Food Bank. I realized then that Food Banks often don’t have fresh fruit and vegetables on hand.”

Three months ago a plan to help remedy this situation came to her.

“I thought, what if people who gardened planted an extra row in their vegetable gardens, then took what they raised in that row and donated this overflow to the Food Bank? Most gardeners end up with more vegetables than their families can use anyway, and often give this extra produce away. Why not give it to the Dundas Food Bank, or the House of Lazarus?” She contacted both organizations, and organizers are excited about her plan for “Gardening for Groceries,” and very willing to take in all the fresh produce she and the community can supply them.

Lesley would be the first to admit that she is just a novice gardener herself, but she has already started a garden plot in the backyard of her home, and intends, like many more seasoned gardeners, to get her plants in on the upcoming long weekend. She did research for her Gardening for Groceries project, and discovered many sites that provide advice and information for gardeners who would like to help provide healthy, fresh food alternatives to Food Bank clients.

Some local businesses have already donated tools, started plants and seeds for starter kits for Food Bank clients who might like to plant a vegetable garden themselves.

If this project takes off, Johansen has some long term goals in mind. “In the long term, I would like to set up a year-round facility to grow produce locally. I found an amazing company called Freight Farms which actually uses re-cycled transport trailers, which they turn into a hydroponic system, basically an indoor garden in a trailer. This system allows the production of leafy greens, in particular, which can be grown in a 4-7 week cycle, year round. It is totally suited to even our Canadian climate. Such a system already exists in Cornwall called Smart Greens, and they can hardly keep up with the interest.”

Knowing that fresh produce is often not available, or very expensive and outside the budgets of the working poor, Johansen is seeking help to put healthy food on all dinner tables in this area. She knows that Food Bank clients would appreciate food grown locally, by neighbours, rather than products trucked in from thousands of kilometres away. She hopes to make it as easy as possible for gardeners getting on board with her Gardening for Groceries project, to get their overflow produce to those who would most appreciate it.

“People can take their garden produce directly to the Food Bank. If they mention Gardening for Groceries, that food will be weighed and a record kept to gauge how the idea is catching on. I will also be personally arranging for once-a-week pickups, going around the community and gathering fruits and vegetables.”

Her phone number for pick-ups is 613-282-0660. People can also go to gardeningforgroceries@yahoo.ca to find out more about the project, or to make a donation, money which will then be spent in local food markets. Interested visitors can also check out www.facebook.com/GardeningForGroceries.

“The idea of this project is to help the people in our community,” Lesley Johansen said. “We hope to accommodate what is seasonal in our pick ups. And no donation of fresh produce is too big or too small for us. I will be glad to pick up any produce that people want to donate.” 

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And you thought you had trouble getting ready for Christmas this year!

In Upper Canada Playhouse’s delightful Christmas production, Dear Santa, Santa is an Elf on the Edge with Christmas eve just around the corner.

His work shop elves are complaining, a pushy sleigh salesman is touting the virtues of rocket power over reindeer, his house keeper is in a tizzy, the chief of staff is in a pickle and the choir cannot sing! To say nothing of a stowaway on the North Pole Express, and a special Christmas wish that Santa desperately wants to fulfill. 

With only three days left until Christmas eve, why it’s enough to turn a man’s beard white! 

Dear Santa, by renowned Canadian playwright, Norm Foster, opens at Upper Canada Playhouse on November 24, with several school matinees and evening shows.  “It’s a show filled with tons of laughs, wonderful live music, a really good story, and lots of Christmas cheer for children and adults alike,” says director Donnie Bowes. 

Bowes has put together a stellar cast of performers for this final production of the 2011 season at the Playhouse. And joining the professional actors on the Playhouse stage will be 30 local elementary students from Morrisburg and Iroquois, who will perform as the choir and take on the roles of four of the elves. 

“We are right in the thick of things getting the show ready,” says Bowes. “It’s working out well having local kids in the cast. We have two separate choirs which means everything has to be rehearsed twice, but the kids are on top of it and enjoying the experience.”

Dear Santa welcomes back some familiar and favourite performers to the Playhouse. 

Doug Tangney is playing Santa Claus in the production and looking forward to the role. 

“Santa has the joy of life in him,” Tangney said at a recent press conference. “But in this play, we also get a chance to see him as vulnerable with all the wonderful chaos going on all around him. He’s a magical person, yet filled with humanity. Santa is forever and I am playing in the spirit of this special being.”

Tangney’s Santa will have a lot to cope with. 

Susan Greenfield, Santa’s housekeeper is suffering from “unrequited love” and it’s seriously disrupting her duties. The object of her affections is Algernon, North Pole Chief of Staff, who “never notices her of course,” says Jamie Williams who plays the harried Algernon. 

Timm Hughes, as Lou Flapdoodle, has landed at the North Pole determined to drag Santa into the 23rd century with a new rocket powered sleigh: Lou simply can’t take no for an answer. 

Richard Bauer, as Bozidar, is a mad cap Russian, whose confusion over English is not helping the elf production lines operate any more efficiently. And even less so now that glue supplies have “dried up.” 

Meredith Zwicker is both Piffle the Elf and musical consultant for this song and dance filled production. “There was music in the play orginally,” Swicker says, “but Liz (Gilroy) and I have added some extra songs, ones we think really highlight the outstanding skills of people in this cast. The music is such a lot of fun.”

Liz Gilroy, besides working on the music, also has the key role of Kitt, a young stowaway, who has come to the North Pole for reasons of her own with a very special letter to deliver to Santa. Her arrival just makes the chaos at Santa’s workshop even worse.

New to the cast and the Playhouse is Travis Seetoo, an accomplished singer, dancer and musician. “It’s great to be in this play as YeGads, a sort of elf wrangler. Foster has created such a wonderful realistic, imaginary world in this play,” says Seetoo, “and music is a big part of it. I am loving it here at Upper Canada Playhouse.”

Audiences will love the energy, the humour, the excitement of this Norm Foster Christmas classic. 

“There is much in this show that demonstrates Norm’s real understanding of kids, of what it is to want to be part of a group, yet also needing to be proud of being different. There is so much variety in Dear Santa,” says Donnie Bowes. 

A bright, imaginative and wondrous set helps bring Santa’s Workshop to life (even to files marked Elves Pensions and Naughty and Nice).  No matter what your age, Dear Santa is guaranteed to bring the joy of the season to your heart. 

Dear Santa runs until December 18 at Upper Canada Playhouse with evening shows and a number of matinees. For ticket information call 613-543-3713 or contact uppercanadaplayhouse.com

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