Another artistic event on Sunday Dec 18 saw Deedee singing and playing original tunes with Tom Martell accompanying on drums. The audience was in festive spirits and Judy, Erica, Keetch, Colleen,Mike and Liz, Joyce and Dan, Terry and Patrice enjoyed the music and the Christms snacks. We also all met Helen and Kirk Mandy who are the new owners of the Wilno General Store...now renamed Pickles and Quilts and slated to open this spring....all beautifully renovated and with a bright red roof just like ours!!

The artist and designer, Linda Sorensen (left) poses with friend and fellow "bag lady" Elsa Steenberg. It was a jolly afternoon of shopping and chatting and socializing...all the more cheerful despite the gloomy mild day outside which is rapidly melting the accumulated snowfall....oh, the weather outside is frightful...but the fire is so delightful....guests in attendance were Peter and Leslie from Combermere, Robin and Leonard, Patricia, Linda, Sue and various others, all in full Christmas shopping mode.

Sunday Dec 10 we hosted a festive Christmas social and sale for artist Linda Sorensen who brought in over a hundred sparkling new handbags from her new collection....each one handcrafted and unique....and as we thought, they were a big hit with the group who gathered for mulled cranberry cider, cookies and just a bit of wine....shown here..."bag ladies" Erica and Patrice pose with the merchandise.

The show was a good incentive to decorate the cafe with various Santas and Nutcrackers and Victorian carollers and candles. It was a great evening and plans are afoot to perhaps have Robert back for a gala New Years show.

The boys enjoy a beer in the back kitchen. That's often where all the local lads congregate when we have events....

Cindy has been part of so many of our special events and celebrations over the past years...always smiling and often wearing silly headgear....and always the efficient server and hostess...tonight is special because Robert is her uncle and so she's really in high spirits.

Supportive sisters Diane and Viola enjoy the show.

Robert Yeretch winds up a rousing rendition of "New York, New York" to an appreciative audience in the Red Canoe Cafe. The paintings in the background are wilderness images by Linda Sorenson.

festive snowflake supper & show

Sunday Dec 3 we hosted our "Festive Snowflake Supper and Show" starring Robert Yeretch who is a wonderful singer and dancer and also has a strong connection to Wilno (his mother was Stella Yeretch and his sister is Diane Whitehead who ran our village general store for years...and of course he is the uncle of Cindy....who has worked with us many times over the past seven years....the cafe was lit with candles and a full house enjoyed lamb or chicken or a roast pork dinner and the entertainment.

While various cultural hooptedoodles take place inside, Pete roto-tills the garden in an early October snowstorm.

The cafe is in darkness for the Third Annual Wilno Film & Video Festival. We premiered new videos by Edwin Echavarry,Adam Thompson and Andrew Brose as well as old favorites.

Gwen Woermke and a group of ladies gather for lunch and a few songs from the olden days.

Dee Dee Sanderson and the launch of her first book "If Heaven Can Wait: Finding Grace through Alzheimers....a memoir of life with her granny.

In the kitchen at Red Canoe Cafe

Tom and Jay behind the scenes at one of our events this year

Some of the creative people in our community.

Philosopher Stan and the Wilno thinkers.

The topic "Creative Space" was obviously of great interest to this community, as most of us live here because we are committed to some sort of creative endeavors. The group contemplated the signifigance of environment on the creative impulse...many interesting and different opinions..no final consensus but general agreement on the beneficial influence of nature, diversity, community support, tradition and discipline.

Philosopher's Cafe

On Sunday, Nov 12, we hosted another Philosopher's Cafe. Titled "Creative Space" the afternoon's discussion ranged far and wide, punctuated by musical interludes from Honest Frankie, Rev Ken and Natsuko. The black and white photos on the wall behind are from Barney McCaffrey's exhibition Film...Noir et Blanc.

a lively weekend

The snow is falling and the members of the Wilno Heritage Society are having a lively debate about all things Kashubian. Stan from Gdansk (Lesno) actually is telling us about his guesthouse in Kashuby...we will go there someday to visit. A great weekend here...we had the British Invasion...a band from southern Ontario staying here for two nights...they are playing at the tavern tonight...and tomorrow we have philosopher's cafe and so philosopher Stan and his wife are also here, as is Beatrix and her son so we are packed to the brim in this dull month.

First day of hunting season

Gray branches rattle

on a cold wintery morning.

Icy rains falling on dry dying grass.

Men dressed in orange

in mud-spattered pickups.

They're carrying shotguns.

They're carrying flasks.

They've come to drink whisky.

They've come to shoot deer.

Dealing cards by the fire

where wet socks hang steaming.

The fire needs feeding

The stew still needs stirring.

The socks still need drying.

The branches still rattle

And the bottle's still good.

That fire they're feeding

In their sock feet they're dealing

and pouring out whisky

while the fire still roars

By that great roaring fire

They're drinking and swearing

bare branches still rattle

on a cold wintery morning.

with snow pellets falling

they'll wake and shoot deer.

Neighbour Pete in hunting gear

hockey and the Geminis

This morning Mike came over to our house for coffee and we sat around for a while gossiping about Wilno life in general and various village renovations projects in particular. Rumour has it that the Craft Gallery may be going up for sale shortly...even in a small place like this, change inevitably occurs. We've just gotten used to Lillian being gone! A quiet day in the village. A couple of lads in for take out and a few desultory shoppers. Finished cleaning the pantry shelves, rearranged the gift shop to allow for Father Christmas and the Nutcrackers and set up some better spotlighting. It's a grey day outside. One can see the beginning of hunting season with the appearance of old truck campers heading into the hills. Mother said that Benji shot a deer with his bow but they can't find it. A good night to go home early and watch the Sens take on Carolina. First time Martin Gerber will play against his old team. Living here in the valley means that one begins to look for activities to amuse one during the long dull winter days. Hockey was our passion when we were children...so why not regain an interest in that most Canadian of pastimes. And to think...the Geminis are on tv tonight also. Will it be Corner Gas, Red Green or the Air Farce which walks off with all the accolades? Such a bucolic nation! Perhaps Gordon Lightfoot will hand out a statuette...or even Ann Murray. Too bad Lorne Greene is no longer with us. Oh yes, and the great rivallry for newscaster of the year.....Count Floyd, or Peter Mansbridge or Kevin Newman or Guy Caballero.

Two of our lovely, cheerful, enthusiastic and very competent servers with heaping plates for our "Vittles and Fiddles" summer dinners.

Our inn in mid-summer. I like to think of it as being this bright and green and blue all year round but of course, that's fantasy!

log-house moving day in Wilno

This morning's weather is typically November...some sun, some cloud, some cold snow flurries, a bit of rain, a lot of wind and in the midst of it all, the old Burchat homestead securely mounted on the old grey Valley Cottage Moving truck sailed majestically down the very steep hill into the village. A stationary log truck winch at the top of the hill was attached to the rear of the house, to hold it back in case of brake failure or some other sort of fiasco...which would have resulted in a heap of very old splinters in the valley. By the time the house...log walls and tin roof and all...reached Hwy 60, pretty much everyone in the village was out with cameras and video equipment and all work on the general store porch roof came to a dead halt. I rushed out with my video camera and got some good footage of them coming around the Stoppa Lake Parkway and on to the new house site. Some interesting maneuvering to get the building backed into a fairly narrow laneway and the added complications of overhead hydro wires and all that sort of thing. But the able men of Wilno did their usual best and when we drove home tonight, the house was sitting high and dry on its temporary foundation.

We had barely arrived at the cafe (via our own back road) when a contingent of local press and heritage society movers and shakers arrived hoping for hot coffee and muffins. Fed them a rich streusel coffee cake and also coffee for Pete, Henning and Ritsuko who had also been out watching the truck. That was it for the day's excitement. Spent the rest of the day cleaning out shelves in the kitchen, looking for paperwork for our liquour licence renewal and made a lovely apple crisp for dessert.

We were home early in our little Wilno hideaway, had a lovely supper of tarragon chicken stew and mashed potatoes and plan to do little or nothing on this chilly night. I see the temperature in Malaga is 27 today. Four years ago this day, we were in Spain for the first time...driving from Toledo to the Costa Blanca and our fabulous hilltop villa Alta Punta.

film festival's a wrap and so is bull moose!

Tuesday....a sunny Tuesday and our second day off in a row!!! The Wilno Film Festival has come and gone and successfully so. I am always amazed at the variety of cinematic portrayals of this area and its people...and more every year. This year we had a great little doc by a student filmmaker...Andrew Brose from Lake Dore who brought us a hilariously funny piece called "Six Packs, Sleds and Pigeons". Watch for the flat dead cat shot! And we had six short pieces from a former student Adam Thompson who is now travelling the world doing all sorts of really professional and interesting films...a Cuban music doc and a piece in Africa on local peace activist Ben Hoffman...And we had a second screening of the Marija Gimbutas doc as well as a piece on Madonna House in Combermere. The goddess in all her forms shows up on our screen!

A day of rest and lounging about with my new hi speed internet connection here at our winter hideaway. Life in Wilno is truly a mixture of old and new technology. Our wood stove is chugging away with nice dry firewood from the bush in Brudenell (my home village) and my internet connection is buried inside old garden hose running under the snowmobile track, through the trees and via the culvert to this house from the main building. Intrepid ingenuity wins the day every time.

Tomorrow we start to winterize the cafe and the inn and send out publicity for the next event which is our Philosopher's Cafe and Music afternoon on November 11. And of course, hunting season starts next week....doesn't have as much impact here as it does in some villages. At home, at Oma's farm...the gigantic bull moose who hung on the tractor forks last week has been cut and wrapped and stowed in various freezers. Farm work has resumed for a week before deer season opens. Marty and Daisy Mae were busily mixing and pouring cement to fill in the gutters in what was the dairy barn and will now house Marty's herd of blondes...(Acquitaines or Limousin or Charolais...never sure which province of France these pricey bovines hail from).

Wintery morning...already!!

Saturday, Oct 28: Woke up to four inches of wet sloppy snow and a thick gloomy fog hanging over the village....with the threat of freezing rain hanging over our heads. Hopefully it won't affect the turnout for today's screenings. Last night saw a goodly crowd here to see the artist's videos and a showing of "Signs Out of Time", a film about Marija Gimbutas, the archeologist who postulates the existence of a prehistoric goddess culture. An interesting and provocative film. The goddess returns to the Wilno Hills courtesy of a woman archeologist who was born in Wilnius (now Wilno) Lithuania. Serendipity is everywhere! Barney was most excited as his new photography exhibition features several goddess deities including Hathor the Cow Goddess and this film, of course reinforced his faith in these ancient cultural beliefs. We also saw a short film about Hilkka who is a very talented artist from Finland who lives here in the hills with her ursine familiars...bears visit her cabin regularly...and Adam Thompson, a Wilno boy, sent us a compilation of videos he has produced for such varied interests as Turkish tourism promotors, a Peace Guerilla project in Africa and some really lively Cuban musicians. The children of the village make us proud when they go out into the larger world. We also saw some made for television pieces on artists Linda Sorensen, Alex Sztasko, Joyce Burkholder, Ramona, Ed Roman, the Andermans of MorningGlory with Cool Hemp ice cream and the self-generated hydro created by Andreas and Petra at the old Killaloe Mill. Such a varied and talented group of settlers in these hills.

The lazy snowy morning saw a stream of local visitors in for coffee and chit-chat around the stove. Mike and Liz and Leslie and Henning,Pete and Barney and later Corinne from the Wilno Tavern. Village life is settling in for the long winter ahead. We have inn guests arriving later today. I hope they didn't choose Wilno today for the weather! The rain is steadily falling and we will hope for the best for tonight.

Welcome to the Wilno Station Inn

October 26, 06: It's a gloomy fall day in the village of Wilno, but the woodstove in the cafe is radiating heat and the tempting smells of chicken stew and beef bourguignon emanate from the kitchen. We're in the midst of the Third Annual Wilno Film and Video Festival which happens every year in the Red Canoe Cafe at our inn so we're preparing one dish comfort food meals which the audience can spoon up while staring raptly at the huge screen filling one wall of the cafe. Last night we screened an Ottawa Valley classic called Best Damn Fiddler from Calabogie to Kaladar....a film written by Joan Finnegan, well known for her books about this area and a fabulous poet and all around creative spirit. (She won a Gemini for the Fiddler screenplay). We also screened "Shakedown" a doc written and directed and produced by Kathryn Gilday in 1992...this piece profiles our local forest industry and a group called The Forest Industry Survival Association (FISA) which was able to change some long-time methods of allocating Crown Timber to the area sawmills and logging companies. Tom was a pivotal person in that organization and we are both in the film...along with many of our friends and neighbours and so it's always fun to see how we've all changed (or not) after these many years. And to round off the first night of the Festival we showed a half hour piece called Straight Arrow...a profile of aviation pioneer and test pilot of the Avro Arrow, Janusz Zurakowski. Janusz and his wife Anna were also innkeepers in this beautiful valley with their Kartuzy Lodge. Janusz died a couple of years ago but his memory lives on in Barry's Bay's Zurakowski Park with its dramatic flying model of the Arrow. This short film is an inspiring portrait of this unassuming humble and very kind man who made Canadian aviation history.

Later today, Friday, we'll screen a whole selection of short films about our local artisans and some videos made by local film-makers. All in all, a lovely way to spend a dismal October afternoon and evening.

Today's village update: The rest of the red roof has gone on the new front porch at the old general store which is being renovated by its new owners in preparation for a spring opening as a quilt shop and we hear....a Polish Deli. Great news, if that is indeed the case.