Kincardine, Ontario: Sun setting into the rough waters of Lake Huron

[Begin vacation]

Run each morning along the shoreline trails. Walk to the beach each night to watch the sun set. Drink gin and tonics while gliding lazily on the porch swing in the afternoons. Pop out the back door to snip fresh thyme, oregano, parsley, and chives from the herb garden while ...
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Frozen blue

GO train, Rouge Hill | Saturday, January 17, 2009, 11:48 a.m. Not just still life. Frozen life. Hues of white, slate, cornflower, olive, and saffron thrown onto the unfinished canvas wait for the thaw so they can be spread around, brushstroked into corners and to the edges, daubed into rolling waves and drifting clouds. But right now nothing moves. Nothing ...
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Rouge Hill GO train platform sign swathed in morning haze

Dear Journal,

I have a confession to make: I’m having a hard time adjusting to a writing life without Lake Watch. You know better than anyone how Lake Watch miraculously focused years — so many years — of scattered effort. For those who aspire to write, regular practice is essential. Novels, ...
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Amber waves

Best of Lake Watch from the week of May 21–25 — the final installment:

GO train, Rouge Hill | Friday, May 25, 2007, 7:10 a.m. The water sparkles golden for me on this last day of Lake Watch. Everything else — horizon, sun, clouds, Pickering’s skyline in the distance — fades into a milky haze, is blurred by the heat that ...
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Rays after the rain

Best of Lake Watch from the week of May 14–18:

GO train, Rouge Hill | Tuesday, May 15, 2007, 8:02 a.m. They are faint but I can see them: crepuscular rays filtering through the scattered cloud cover and illuminating the lake’s surface as well as the still-damp blacktop of the shoreline trail. This is one of those times when ...
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Blue velvet

Best of Lake Watch from the week of May 7–11:

GO train, Rouge Hill | Wednesday, May 9, 2007, 8:03 a.m. I slip inside the tranquility of this morning’s Lake Ontario vista. The lake and horizon couple softly. There are no harsh tones — blue has been muted into easy shades of sliver and grey, and even white appears soft and ...
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Signs of life

Best of Lake Watch from the week of April 30–May 4:

GO train, Rouge Hill | Monday, April 30, 2007, 8:48 a.m. Life has returned to the lake. Not that it was gone altogether; there have been loyal, hardy families of birds that patrolled the shores all winter, and small groups of bashful white-tailed deer that would occasionally emerge from ...
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Lake meets horizon

Best of Lake Watch from the week of April 23–27:

GO train, Rouge Hill | Wednesday, April 25, 2007, 8:46 a.m. Sometimes the lines blur — responsibility into entrapment; optimism into delusion; loyalty into blindness. But being lost in this this shifting space forces the creation of definition, the redrawing of the lines.

Somber sky over Pickering; windmill still

Best of Lake Watch from the week of April 16–20:

GO train, Rouge Hill | Tuesday, April 17, 2007, 8:05 a.m.

“There’s nothing next. That’s alright — what you get is a life. … That’s what you get and you don’t need anything else.”

—June Callwood (1924–2007), in an interview with George Stroumboulopoulos on CBC’s The Hour. ...
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Endangered sun

Best of Lake Watch from the week of April 9–13:

GO train, Rouge Hill | Wednesday, April 11, 2007, 8:00 a.m. Cock your head to the right. Is it me or is the sun being swallowed into the jaws of a giant, prehistoric fish?