Michael Atkins

I was in Ottawa a while back to celebrate Christmas with our employees at Conceptshare Inc. and found myself face to face with the new and rapidly expanding “sharing economy.

My friend died a few weeks ago battling for life the way he lived it: full throttle. I met Ron in the fall of 1973. I was the editor of the Manitoulin Expositor. I didn’t know anyone in Sudbury and needed an accountant. Someone recommended Ron.

My love affair with Northern Ontario started in a small dingy office in the Port Arthur Post Office next door to Michael Gravelle, our current minister of Northern Development and Mines. It was 1971.

I bought my first denim grocery bag the other day in Sault Ste. Marie. Not only does it match my jeans and carry vegetables and my favourite Häagen-Dazs peanut butter ice cream, it has a pocket on the outside for car keys.

I still think about apple fritters. Actually, whenever I drive by a Timmy’s I think of them and find my mouth watering at the thought. They are wonderful.

When I was in my teens in the 1960s, I used to steal away from Don Mills, Canada’s first completely planned and boring community, and go downtown to Yorkville in Toronto where something really seemed to be happening.

It’s been a long time since I took a little time out waiting for the old swing bridge at Little Current, Manitoulin Island to grant me access to this fantastic “largest freshwater lake island in the world.

It was a modest start, but my fabulous career at the CBC began at the old Parliament Street radio studio in Toronto where each Friday night the Nimmons “N” Nine Jazz Trio played a fantastic live jazz concert.

A couple of weeks ago the Laurentian School of Architecture held an auction; for fish huts. I can’t tell you much about it because as of this writing it hasn’t actually happened.

As I watch the January spring rain pelt the window pane it is hard to imagine just two weeks ago there was a good-sized tree sitting on the back of my car, electrical wires down at both ends of the street and Santa’s milk and cookies only half eaten.