I spent yesterday morning getting a tour of the Atlantic Wind Test Site and the new North Cape Wind Power Plant at North Cape.

You cannot possibly imagine the size of the beautiful new wind turbines being installed at the site. By the end of the year there will be 8 of the turbines pictured here. To get some idea of the scale of the photo, the rectangular bit at the top of the tower is about the size of a Range Rover and the blades would not fit comfortably in your house (unless you have a very big house).

The entire assembly at the top comes overseas from Denmark in a standard shipping container (the blades come in a slightly longer container). Apparently there is about 2 inches of clearance on either side of the gear once the container is loaded.

No news yet on the ability to purchase green power from Maritime Electric, but apparently things are in the works.

So far the NYC horrors have claimed two large corporate victims: Swissair has stopped flying and Mademoiselle has stopped publishing.

The CBC spent millions, using an American company, to create a new visual identity for CBC Television, unveiled this week. Unfortunately they forgot to update their website to match, so their new “unified identity” leaves them more visually fractured than when they started.

While I was growing up, just north of Hamilton, Ontario, my local hardware store — the place my Dad would take us on Saturday mornings to buy WD-40 or window putty or large carriage bolts — was Weeks Home Hardware. Back in those days their store was housed in a rambling collection of hundred-year-old stone buildings on the banks of Grindstone Creek.

Sometimes, if you needed to buy something extra special, like window screens or copper pipe or glass, you had to go down into their basement workshop; this was at once facsinating and terrifying. From my wee eyes, it appeared that you could buy anything at Weeks. And I’m sure that was almost true.

When I was in grade 9, I won the “Weeks Shield” — for “proficiency,” whatever that meant — and the prize itself was an illustrated dictionary signed by one of the Weeks brothers. For me, this was like a sporty kid getting a prize autographed by Cal Ripken Jr. I still have the dictionary sitting on the shelf beside me.

A couple of years after I left home, Weeks opened a brand new store, the size of a Canadian Tire, up and around the corner from their original location. Their atmosphere plumetted when the did this — hard to recreate that “old time hardware store” feel in a big box — but all reports are that they still have the selection, and the expert staff, and are doing quite well.

Still from Moses Media-produced commerical.

Which brings me to mention Southport Home Hardware, just across the river from us in Stratford. Owned by the APM Group, a sort of Island-style conglomerate that certainly has its detractors, this hardware store — and it’s really more of an appliance, building supply, housewares, lumber and hardware store — comes about as close to Weeks as I’ve ever seen. They have great, helpful staff, excellent selection of just about anything you would ever want, and, as of last year, a bright new large location that somehow manages to feel small and neighbourhood like.

If you live in or around Charlottetown, and you need nails or motor oil or a new oven, I’d suggest you drop in for a visit.

The important thing to know about Irene is that she likes to kiss pretty well just about anything. Well, not anything. But lots of things. Or at least this is the story from her parents.

Irene is 14 months old. We met Irene and her parents, who are vacationing on Prince Edward Island from the Netherlands, while walking on the floating boardwalk at Greenwich yesterday. They had left home just 9 days after the world went all to hell. They’re brave travellers (both for daring to travel now, and for travelling with Irene, who has just learned to walk).

Anyway, yesterday, there on the boardwalk, wee Oliver, who turns one year old on Monday, received his first kiss from a girl his own age. Somehow this made the world seem a little less crazy-mixed-up.