Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

Did not see my name on Facebook so I must not be dead (hopefully) Stephen Weir I grew up in a small Ontario town surrounded by forests and a lake. The town had one Main Street with the only street light (I think they have four now) in front of the post office. Right next to the PO's clock tower was the town's weekly newspaper. the Renfrew Mercury. Since it only published on Thursdays, a lot of news didn't make it into Thursday's edition, most notably death notices. Because someone might die on a Friday and be buried on Tuesday, no obituary would be printed, and people in town might miss the funeral (and that was always a big deal). So what the paper did was to stick up obituary notices in the front window so that on your way to the post office, you could check who had died and when the funeral and burial would take place. The lads (what male seniors were called) would gather in front of the window at 10 am to watch Norm, the editor, stick a written notice out towards t

  Remembering Eric Kauffeldt (Stephen Weir Facebook article, 1/03/2022) Back in the day when I lived in Renfrew, the town's first newspaper, the Mercury, was still printing with lead type. It was a weekly labour of love paper, and was read by everyone in town. In 1967 Obituaries couldn't wait a week in the Mercury. Editor Norm Wilson scotch taped, as soon as he wrote them, death notices on the front window of the paper on Raglan Street. The Young Lads (male senior citizens) would hang out in front of the Mercury to check out who had passed. When you asked a "Young Lad" how he was doing, he'd say " not in the Merc's front window, so I must be okay". Now, some 55 years later, the Mercury has been taken over by the Toronto Star, and the obits are posted on the web and not the window. I left town in 1969, but I still remember the people who treated me with friendship and fun. And now, as a senior I have entered that stage in life when your friends

The article printed below is a work of fiction, and it is not new ( I have updated it twice. The latest was submitted to the CBC two years ago - this is that version).   I think I wrote Version One in the Eighties. It was used in a long-gone magazine called Valley . It was published by General Store Publishing House in Burnstown, Ontario.  The faded clipping has been pinned to my corked lined office wall for over 20 years. I wanted to post it on my website before the clipping (my only copy) fell apart and the story returned to being just a fading memory.  I figured out the Optical Character Reader on my printer this weekend and so Presto Chango ... another story in my ongoing mostly fiction series about Renfrew in the Sixties and is now on stephenweir.com. Title : TIME IS A BOUNCING BALL by Stephen Weir  It's too long ago now to remember how we got onto the roof of the Howard Haramis restaurant. I can't imagine climbing up the fire escape, but 50 years ago there was o