Allan Rankin writes about Lowell Croken in the Eastern Graphic:

From the outset there was strong resistance to this new Waste Watch program.

Enter Lowell Croken, a junior level public servant at the time working as a mapping technician. His unique communication skills and proactive approach, and qualities of reasonableness and charm, made him the ideal person to assist the implementation of Waste Watch.

Not that Lowell accomplished this all by himself of course, but change often requires a special agent, and when it came to convincing a reluctant general public that separating garbage was important, he was the right person for the job.

Lowell Croken went on to serve as Prince Edward Island’s Chief Electoral Officer from 2005 to 2013. Now retired, he can look back on an outstanding career as a public servant, having served Islanders with honour and integrity.

There are other Lowell Crokens within government ranks, employees who make a big difference in positive and constructive ways, and I believe we should celebrate their often-unheralded contributions.

Lowell would be the last person on Earth to seek singling out for special mention like this, which is all the more reason that he deserves it: I worked with Lowell at Elections PEI for 17 years, and everything that Allan writes is true.

I’m proud to call both Lowell and Allan friends, and, truth be told, much of what Allan writes about Lowell could equally be said of Allan.

My PiSound arrived today in the post from Lithuania: it’s a sound card for a Raspberry Pi, and will be the heart of my plot to create a box to stream the sounds of Prince Edward Island to the world 24/7.

The PiSound itself, and its accompanying snap-together case, as well as the website that describes, sells and documents them, are all things of beauty.

Clint Eastwood talks to Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show about how he was pegged to fill in for the absent Charlton Heston at the 1973 Academy Awards.

Here’s the broadcast itself, with Eastwood appearing at 11:25.

According to the Academy, “Charlton Heston got a flat tire on the way to the ceremony and arrived late.”

Oliver was distressed this morning that almost all of the usual Canada Day routines had been erased from the schedule, either due Catherine’s death or COVID-19. So there was to be no music in Victoria Park, no Goat Parade in Rustico, no seafood at the Blue Mussel Café, no fireworks. While I might have preferred that his distress had been expressed with less ferocity, I had sympathy for its roots, and resolved that we should carve some new July 1 traditions out of the darkness.

So here’s what we did:

1. Drove to Souris. It was a beautiful day: sunny with a touch of mist, not too cold, not too hot.
2. Had lunch at The Poké Shack on the beach. Excellent.
3. Charged our Kia Soul EV at the new fast charger Irving on Main Street.
4. Takeout cold brew coffee and a smoothie at Evergreen Café. Excellent.
5. A walk on Sally’s Beach on Spry Point.
6. Hot fudge sundaes at Gillis’ Drive-in in Montague.
7. A visit with our old friends Wennie and Kenny in downtown Montague.
8. Takeout fish & chips from Water-Prince Corner Shop.

We will finish up in a few minutes with something called “virtual fireworks” on the CBC, the nature of which I have no idea.

We missed Catherine–we talked about her many times over the day–and Rustico and the goats and the rest. But we managed to enjoy the day as best we could, and, at the very least, ended on a higher note than we started.

Packed into this sign, posted at the head of a trail at Sally’s Beach in eastern PEI, is a potent set of only-in-Canada assumptions: that anyone will read such a wordy sign, that anyone has the vaguest notion of what 1.83 meters apart represents, that we require the paternalistic advice of the state to guide what are ultimately common sense decisions. 

Gianfranco Chicco, editor of The Craftsman, speaks with Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino about ”craftsmanship, repairability and design for longevity” on the Catastrophic Candour video series (via Peter Bihr).

The restaurant in Thunder Bay where my grandparents met in the 1930s has declared bankruptcy and may (re)reorganize as a cooperative.

Next week the “Atlantic Bubble” will allow the influx of hordes from away, with their COVID-19 and their strange modern ideas; as such, this was the weekend for Islanders to get out and take one last breath of COVID-free summer air before locking ourselves back inside our houses until the snow flies.

For Oliver and I this meant our usual start-of-season trip west. We started with Factory Coffee and hot chocolate at Island Chocolates:

With the late great Landmark Café no longer with us, we went to the brand new Casa Mia By the Sea at the end of the wharf for bao buns, enjoyed under the shade of a tree in front of Englewood School. 

From Victoria we drove north to New Glasgow for the usual second stop on the loop, an iced tea at the PEI Preserve Company and a walk in the Gardens of Hope, with the added bonus this year of a top-up of the charge to our Kia Soul using the EV charger hosted there. 

In the Gardens of Hope we found a bench in a shady grove we hadn’t seen before, and enjoyed some time out of the sun, looking out over the lily pond and the ponies beyond:

Our souls fed and our EV charged, we headed back to town for some late-Sunday shopping for socks, shirts and pyjamas, Oliver’s haberdashery-replenishment now falling under my watch and left fallow too long.

As we drove in on Route 2 there was a sprinkle of rain, just enough to take the edge off the heat.

We’ll see you at Thanksgiving.

Riverview Country Market has a new line of Italian sodas, made fresh in store from real ingredients.

On our cycle ride today we stopped in for groceries and then enjoyed sodas on their porch: I had a Blood Orange Assam and Oliver had a Sencha Cherry Lime.

Riverview is on the multi-use trail that runs along Riverside Drive out to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and beyond, making a mid-cycle soda a nice new aspect to an afternoon ride.