Patrick Brealey

Now that Sep­tem­ber has us in its warm (yet cool­ing) embrace, we accept once again that our planet pro­vides us with sea­sons that make us appre­ci­ate change, through vibrant colour shifts and howl­ing winds. In other words, sum­mer is gone, get over it.

I had a fab­u­lous sum­mer. Got to play the Eagle­wood Folk Fes­ti­val, sev­eral dates in Ontario as well as play­ing on a con­sis­tent basis with the blue­grass sen­sa­tions known as the Sud­den Val­ley Boys and had tons of fun goof­ing around with Leon Knight & the Neon Lights, a screw­ball coun­try band in which our fear­less leader Leon has yet to show up to a gig for. One of these days.…

I also got to see a few parts of Ontario I had never been to and I’d like to pro­claim some­thing Ontar­i­ans have known for a long time but the rest of the coun­try may not know: Ontario is beau­ti­ful. Sure it doesn’t have the ooh-​​aah inspir­ing rugged peaks of the Rocky Moun­tains. And maybe it doesn’t get as wind-​​whipped and won­der­fully ocean swept as the Mar­itimes. Granted, the sheer expanse of the Prairies as they roll to the hori­zon as cer­tainly taken more than a few breaths away. But Ontario is dif­fer­ent. It’s quiet. It’s sub­tle. It’s rocks and trees and lakes and blue­ber­ries and rivers and charm­ing towns and won­der­ful peo­ple and chip trucks and storms and apples and cot­tages and canoes and birds and swim­ming and so much more. It’s the Cana­dian Shield. You really have to expe­ri­ence it.