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Honestly, you can thank Facebook for reminding me of this amazing trip that I took nearly eight years ago when I am first starting to see posts reminding me that this started to occur. It was 2012, several months after my first major Urban Exploration Meetup, since a rather off-putting event in Buffalo, New York. MAMU or the Mid-Atlantic Meetup had been resurrected by DJCraig, who I had met in December 2011 outside an abandoned hotel north of Dayton, Ohio, at a separate UE event VCXPEX. Early in April, I found myself on a twelve-hour drive south, the first time I had ever done suchRead More →

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It was May 2009; I was on a road trip with three friends to explore the wealth of abandoned buildings up in Northern Ontario. Our previous night’s plans of camping out at a mine further north skunked by cold weather and the inability to hide our car safely. But that didn’t matter; we found a small motel on Highway 11 north of our next location, the town of Cobalt. Despite the name, the city once thrived with silver mines and started the northern Ontario silver rush that eventually butted into the gold rush further north. Silver from Ontario caused riots in New York City inRead More →

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The year is 2009; it honestly feels like forever ago now. So why am I writing about 2009 now? In 2009, I had a chance to attend for a second time the Canada Youth event at Brock University. Canada Youth was the Presbyterian Church in Canada’s response to the Youth Triennium Event hosted by the Presbyterian Church’s various branches in the USA, primarily Presbyterian Church, USA (PCUSA). I did get to one Triennium event, but by the time the next event came along, PCUSA had curtailed the number of spots available for Canadians. The PCC had already started their own event Canada Youth back inRead More →

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One of the first History courses I took in High School was Canada in the 20th Century. Most Canadian history texts that are used in schools start at this point. And there’s no surprise. As a nation, Canada came into its own in the 20th Century. Many point the crucible of World War One as the focal point. Others state the post World War Two era leading up to the 100th Anniversary of Confederation. But everything that happened in the 20th Century built on what happened before and the sins of the past were going to come back to haunt. As Canada emerged from theRead More →

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Across the British Commonwealth and in Canada specifically, no other British monarch is as widely celebrated at Queen Victoria. Secondly only to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II for the length of her reign. The two queens share a lot in common beyond familial relations. Both never expected to take the throne, born Alexandria Victoria on the 24th of May 1819, daughter of Prince Edward Augustus and grand-daughter to King George III. At birth, Victoria sat fifth in the line of succession to the British throne. At only a year old, both her father and grandfather passed, leaving Victoria in the care of her over-protective mother.Read More →

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In a strangely ironic twist, the final of the significant three colonial railways to be completed would be the sole survivor of them all into the 20th century. And while Great Western and Northern Railway of Canada all survived past Confederation in 1867. It would be the Grand Trunk railroad that would absorb both of these before the turn of the century and then lose it all a couple of decades into the new century. Unlike Grand Trunk’s peers, the new railroad had not tried to build a line before the 1850s, chartered on the 10th of November 1852. British investors wholly-owned grand Trunk andRead More →

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PYPS, Presbyterian Young People’s Society, Pick Your Potential Spouse. However you want to call it, yesterday I learned of some news that I never expected to receive. And while I have, like many before me, aged out and ultimately drifted away from the organization a friend whom I met through PYPS posted the following on Facebook. THE FUTURE OF PYPS Hello PYPS family, Recently the Synod of Central Northeastern Ontario and Bermuda had their annual meeting and decided to pull funding from our ministry. We felt that, in the face of declining attendance, the money that has been allotted to PYPS in the past couldRead More →

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While I have of late focused more on British personalities in the War of 1812, I will be making an effort to balance it out. James Lawrence is a tragic tale of the war. He was born 1 October 1781 in Burlington, New Jersey. The young James was, for a majority of his youth raised in nearby Woodbury and grew up for the most part without his parents. His mother passed away while he was an infant and his father, a Loyalist to the British Crown, fled to Upper Canada, leaving James behind to be raised by his half-sister. James originally planned to become aRead More →

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I haven’t been able to write a wedding blog in a while so it’s actually really nice to be able to celebrate the marriage of these two awesome folks! But despite all the stress that surrounds weddings Mike & Vesna were really easy to work with and were all prepared well before I was! They had a location, permit, and even a timeline all laid out, all I had to do was turn up and push the shutter release. And they were open to shooting some stuff on film, so they’re now one of a few modern couples who actually have a darkroom print fromRead More →

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Publisher, Parliamentarian, and Traitor, the strange case of Joseph Willcocks started in 1773, born in the Republic of Ireland, at the age of 27 the young man found his way to the town of York in Upper Canada. He soon found employment as the private clerk of the receiver general, Peter Russell, but it would not last, as Russell was not pleased with Willcocks’ advances towards his half-sister. But that did not stop Willcocks, who found another patron quickly in the form of the colony’s chief justice, Henry Allcock and with his influence was appointed to Home District Sheriff. However his views on the landRead More →