5th ‘News & Views’ show finds its stride

It’s the second anniversary of the COVID pandemic and Ontario’s celebrating by taking its mask mandates down and we’re gonna go for it …

um word to the wise I think you might want to be polite to the people that are still wearing masks because there’s a lot of people who are vulnerable and they don’t want to get COVID, they don’t want to be long haulers they don’t even want to be “naturally immune” because natural immunity means you’ve been sick and it’s a systemic viral infection.

We don’t know what’s going to go on…

It’s daylight savings time again on Saturday, it’s time to spring ahead … or if you’re like me don’t do anything because you didn’t change your clock in the first place … I’m now going to be on time

As mentioned last week, I’m part Ukrainian, unfortunately it’s the eyebrow part and you’ll see what that means with this picture …

spring is in the air

that means pretty soon

local north bay media are going to do

the ice off story

i wonder when the ice is going to be off

we’ve been counting the ice for 100

years it’s off sometime in april once in a while in may

I did quite a few interviews this week i have artist Arlie Hoffman, who’s the best interview his outlook and perspective on art and life is refreshing

as an 83 year old he’s still going

strong he’s got an upcoming show in at

the calendar bay museum in may here’s a

clip of him saying something very

philosophical

The thing about my life is my family first, my job was second and painting was third, however, painting is, as I mentioned in a show I gave a talk about, it was a tonic for my soul it was a great relief after working to be able to have my art as a diversion.

I also had a chance to interview Richard Fortin he was just back from Germany he’s heading down to Texas he’s going to the south by something or other film festival apparently it’s a big deal

and that’s what i’m doing now so i’m just packing up and you snagged me in

the hallway here as i was walking by so

i’m really happy to share with everybody that’s happening

i also traveled out to sturgeon and had

a little sit down with chief scott

mcleod he gave me the background on why

they’re even involved with the castle

home

reconstruction project he was in the

news this week there was a little bit of

a fubar about

the board representation

so uh

i haven’t seen the update yet but i

think he was having a little discussion

with uh vic fideli the mpp for nipissing

uh they’ll sort it out i also asked

chief scott mccloud about the fishery

and uh

he gave a little bit of an insight

right here

are we gonna have an early uh spawn or

what

well uh i i you know judging you know i

i’m really only going by by by what i

feel in my bones that

that spring breakup will happen uh quite

fast uh anecdotally uh you know we’re

seeing um we’ve seen some

good winter fishing over

the course of the last few months which

is a obviously a good indication of

some of the work and measures that we’ve

been

putting in place to

allow

the fishery to to grow to a healthier

population our community

knows

the stakes involved in

um

you know

managing proper uh

proper fishery

related

issues and you know

they they also see the benefits and uh

you know we’ve been building a strong

fishery for the last uh seven years

since um 2015 when things look pretty

bleak

we’ve turned it around it’s

it’s not at a

full um

you know full-blown position where it

could be

there’s always room for for a little

more improvement

um but having said that um you know i

think uh we’re we’re looking at another

uh good year of

of um

walleye stocks in the lake and that just

benefits everybody in the long run and

uh you know what what’s what’s good

for nipissing first nation is is good

for everybody else around in the region

one of my interviews this week was with

a gentleman named aleister thompson he’s

uh lives in north bay for the last

little while he’s got some connections

but he wrote a song about the racism in

thunder bay and he hopes to bring some

more attention to it and raise some

money for the thunder bay indigenous

friendship center so

it’s not always easy when a

non-indigenous person wants to help out

in these areas it’s a step of

reconciliation though it’s an effort

in sports this weekend uh we have the

nipissing lakers women’s hockey team not

the ladies hockey team not the lady

lakers not the girls

the women’s hockey team

they’re taking on ryerson as part of the

second round play off seven o’clock

saturday memorial garden also this

weekend uh the west ferris ringed

association is hosting the regionals

they haven’t been able to have

tournaments for a couple years they’re

gonna have a good time they’re at the

west ferris and pete palangio arenas

with championships on sunday go on out

and support the ring at players my

cousin kenny and i were ice fishing last

weekend we rented uh

ice hut out near the south shore from

snowfarey and we had a good time

the rain that came in saturday kind of

shut down all the biting it seems but uh

we got enough fish for a couple uh a

couple little leads fishing’s over march

15th

on lake nipissing

got to get your hut off by the end of

the month and you better move soon

because it’s going to be a

puddle out there