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Book Number Seven: About a pur laine French-Canadian family that moves to Kingston and becomes a pillar of the maritime community, founding the village of Portsmouth and building one of the oldest remaining taverns in the city -- The Portsmouth Tavern -- formerly known as "Beaup's" Available on Amazon.       https://a.co/d/1MBsH6X
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These are my books so far. Mostly rated 4 or 5 star on Amazon The Eastern Door https://www.amazon.com/Eastern-Door-Smithyman-Saga/dp/1611792797/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2KCL1UHBY1HMG&keywords=The+Eastern+Door&qid=1669580310&s=books&sprefix=the+eastern+door%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C99&sr=1-1 "I bought The Eastern Door , The Lily and the Rose and Liberty's Children and after reading them I have an entirely different view of the American Revolution. I had only read and heard the stories from the American view point. These books give a day to day view of life in the colonies from the loyalist view point. I was deeply impacted with the stories of the settlers and their dealings with the natives, another story that is not explained in American history. When you read these books it reveals a more complete explanation of the story and the human face of the struggles. It is often said history is written my the winners, well here is the story from the other side. It is a rea

Plague, squared

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 In contrast to my essay below, here is a photo of Concorde's last flight. One of the truly sublime creations of human endeavours A new post!  One reason I want to return to this blog is for therapeutic reasons, in that this space is probably far better suited to expressing my thoughts than the comments section of CBC. 'Nuff said, I am sure, for anyone who has dared to wade into that cesspool, particularly after the three week long occupation of our capital city, Ottawa, in February of this year by about a thousand folks who called themselves truckers and demanded that the government obey them and eliminate Covid vaccine mandates for the truckers who crossed the border into the States as part of earning their living. I am attempting to cleanse myself of the toxic environment there. I may go into my reflections on that event sometime later, but a six-week long judicial inquiry wrapped up yesterday with the day-long testimony of our Prime Minister. He was interrogated, under oath

So, here we all are, in the 21st Century. Welcome to the past.

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  Dr. Dave, Ph.D. History, Queen's University Convocation 2022 Well, it has been a long while since I last posted, and the world has truly changed. Covid has come and stayed. Trump has come and (maybe, hopefully) gone (to prison, soon, please!). Russia has betrayed its cruel true self and invaded Ukraine with the aim of exterminating its independent existence. But the dark clouds of white Christian bigotry against liberal concepts of female equality, LGBTQ2+ gender identification, racial equity and so many other progressive, humanitarian concepts have begun to dominate the west. Here in Canada, we seem to be holding them off for now, but the hateful, ignorant, so-called "Freedom Convoy" in the winter of 2022 is a harbinger of much, much worse to come. These folks, however laughable their present ignorant manifestation may be ("What First Amendment?" the judge asked), they are a growing force, organized and led by "dark" money which aims to destroy any

You can fight city hall

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Caption: note new (white) sidewalk under lower window  You Can Fight City Hall (long read) Until recently, I’ve never had a particular fight with City Hall, or government in general. Yes, of course it is true that they frequently get things very wrong, they waste dreadful sums of money that is not theirs, they are often deaf to individual cries for help from citizens and customers. But, you know, so do Enron, and Exxon and Nortel and … the list goes on and on and on. Enough mud for pot and kettle all around, IMCO. But a year ago, I ran up against complete and utter failure of, first, competence, and then ethical behaviour at the municipal level that woke me up because it slapped my wife and I personally right in the face. With your patient forgiveness, I’ll tell you about it. 30 years ago we bought an old house in Kingston – a two-story semi-detached built in 1856 out of limestone – a familiar building material in Kingston. In Charleston or Savannah the p

March 27, 2018: Time Machines

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March 27, 2018, and all is not well, but you know that already. Take care out there. It has been too long since my last post -- I have been fooling around with Facebook stuff, along with the PhD thing, and getting The King's Salt launched (a good time was had by all, at least until I began to sing Barrett's Privateers!). On my Facebook page I have posted a couple of interviews, one on CFRC that may yet have an interesting denouement, and one on CKWS-TV that brought in a couple of folks to buy me book! This month I am returning to boats I have known (Ratty was right). This is an old column that never saw the light of day, so worth showing it here for the first time, slightly updated. Time Machines Written on the occasion of a camping trip in Northern Ontario in 2005 © David More 2006 Holy liftin’ , the summer of 1963 was a great, hopeful time to be alive. I was thirteen, and I owned a neat, seven-transistor, red, plastic Sony AM radio. The gorg