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Robin's Weir Blog
(Long Read) It was the late spring of 1957. I was six, just about to turn seven. One afternoon, I was walking home from school when I suddenly began to feel pain in my legs and shoulder. Our house in the temporary Smeltersite settlement in the new town of Kitimat, British Columbia was uphill […]
(long read) There was at time, not long ago, at least in the six thousand years of human settlement on the Greek island of Santorini, that I and my roommate were the only two people sitting on a stone bench in the town of Fira watching the sun set over the Aegean Sea. I can’t […]
While researching the work of my fourth great grandfather , William Pennell, while British consul in Bahia, and his vice consul, his nephew, William Follett, the question is what is the Brazilian side of the story? I did find an academic reference that showed the correspondence between the British Consul and the then government of […]
I have been enthralled by the age of fighting sail since I was a boy when I read the Hornblower series and later Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey–Maturin Maturin_series of novels. I am now working on a nonfiction historical investigation, set during the Georgian era Royal Navy. In a recent online discussion people were complaining how one […]
Canadian author, Nobel Prize winner and master of the short story, Alice Munro, has passed away at 92. This photo was taken on September 21, 2005 at Massey Hall,during the CBC Lockout, when the leaders of Canadian arts came together rally in support of CBC workes on the picket lines. Munro’s superb short stories gained […]
Rex Murphy, one of Canada’s best known, loved and hated TV commentators and columnists has died at 77. I have mixed feelings about his passing. I was Rex Murphy’s online editor from 1998 to 2003 when I was web producer for CBC’s The National. In those days his writing was superb and he had incitive […]
There is an interesting connection between Kitimat and Lahaina the site of the Maui fire disaster last week. After I saw the item on CBS Morning Sunday News last Sunday about the Happy Whale tracking site, I uploaded all the photos I captured of humpback whales in Douglas Channel over the past few years. Of […]
“There’s something familiar about this place.” I was on a bus tour of Kitimat’s giant $40 billion LNG Canada facility on Saturday, July 8. I’ve never been on site, but had this strange feeling I had seen it before. The LNG Canada Liguified Natural Gas project, is the largest industrial construction project in Canadian historythe […]
UPDATE THREE 1531 Pacific Time May 15, 2023 The UK ADHD Foundation has issued a statement Response to BBC Panorama “Private ADHD Clinics Exposed” As I suspected, Panorama failed to reach out the ADHD community groups in the UK. This is a major failure of journalistic ethics: Whilst we welcome responsible and informed television […]
A dark and stormy night 1813 edition (I don’t usually full post excerpts from my work in progress, I often put far too much into first drafts and then have to drastically cut. This episode of “a dark and stormy night” I discovered is too good to pass up. I am working on stories about […]