December, 2017:

Delhi, Ontario – My Top 5 Picks

Norfolk County is a rural municipality on the north shore of Lake Erie in Southwestern Ontario.  The county seat and largest community is Simcoe.  Some of the most notable communities in Norfolk County are Delhi, Port Dover, Simcoe, and Waterford.

Surrounding its many small communities is some of the most fertile land in Ontario. With a mild climate and lengthy growing season, the region has long been the center of the Ontario tobacco belt. Many farmers have begun the process of diversifying their crop selections to include lavender, ginseng, hazelnuts, and wolfberries as tobacco consumption continues to decrease.

Delhi is located off the junction of Highways 53 and 3.  Founded by Frederick Sovereign as Sovereign’s Corners around 1826, the community was renamed Fredericksburg and eventually its present-day name of Delhi, the name usually attributed locally to a postmaster honoring a major city of the British Empire, Delhi, India.  Prior to 1880, this town was known for its lumber industry.

Raué Newsletter – “Christ among us, the hope of glory.”

Joyful best describes this year, especially when the grandchildren are around. The cameo expresses what I mean: Henry is our youngest. Women are jealous when they see his long eye-lashes.

Jaxson is seven, bright, lovable, and can think outside the box.

Andrew his eight year old brother is a handsome blue-eyed, avid reader and scored a bullseye.

Matthew is twelve and earned his junior black belt in Karate last month. He’s quiet, bright and thoughtful.

These are our four handsome grandsons who bring us amusement and lots of love.

And then there are another special lot, our three grand-daughters. They complete the happy Group of Seven.

Gabrielle and Julie are aged six and Katie is eight.

Katie has that precious gift of common sense, and is a gifted gymnast.

Julie has a great sense of humor, is a quick learner and an eager hiker.

Gabrielle is the youngest by three days. She’s spirited and excels in facial expressions.

Grandma and Henry enjoy a similar passion,   the merry-go-round.

Love to you all,

Harry and Barbara

Henry

Henry

Jaxson

Jaxson

Andrew

bullseye

Bullseye

Matthew – Junior Black Belt in Karate

Gabrielle

Gabrielle

Gabrielle

Julie

Julie

Katie and Gabrielle

Gabrielle, Julie, Katie

Henry with Grandma

Grandma with Henry on the carousel at Gage Park for the Mum Show

Harry with the chairs to view the Tall Ships coming into Hamilton Harbour

Raué Newsletter, 2017 – “Christ among us, the hope of glory.”

We received happy responses from our earlier Newsletter. One did comment that little was said about the grandparents. I’ll make up for that right now with this follow up letter.

We’re content to live in our Cottage style home located in the Valley Town of Dundas.

This Autumn Barbara applied for a temporary position with the city of Hamilton’s Emergency Medical Services and was hired on the spot. Only one person in the entire region qualified for the position; Barbara. It’s a position she had wished for six years earlier. She loves it, along with her other interests: publishing novels and photo books, which recapture history one photo at a time, and is an avid reader. For this reason, and since I have nothing better to do, I have the privilege of cleaning and cooking.

Cleaning also involved keeping up appearances, as nothing lasts forever. I renovated the bathroom, rebuilt the patio stones, rebuilt the garbage bin, re-coated the driveway, put a new roof on the smaller shed, painted both sheds, and moved the vegetable garden to the front yard (mmm grew the best organic carrots and beets in the entire valley). I did more, such as plant new black current bushes, and more. I’ll not refrain from boasting of such a resurgence of vitality and zest for life.

I felt alive and invigorated by all of this activity, lengthening the useful life of all of these possessions. I even had a chance to bring my tool box to Zane and Robyn’s house to drywall two bedrooms and a laundry room. Each day we worked close to mid-night. It was exhilarating, why? It was a creative, mental and physical and rewarding task which I was still able to do at the age of 76. How does it compare to dusting? No comment!

In May, of last year, Barbara and I flew to Vancouver. What a treat it was, to spend time with my brother John and his family in Vancouver and also with my sister, Mimi, and her family in Victoria. Barbara, with purpose, had her trusty camera and pen with her. We rented a car for a week and toured the Okanagan Valley. Barbara gets into a creative zone, camera strapped around her pretty neck and we walk the streets of: from Osoyoos, to Salmon Arms and all the places, such as Penticton, in between. Vancouver and Victoria were also captured on camera. Eventually she will compile, and publish, these excursions into photo books.

In June of last year we drove to Winnipeg to visit Barbara’s oldest brother, James and his lovely wife, Mary Ann. James guided us throughout spacious Winnipeg, the Chicago of the North, for six days of exploring the city with her captivating camera. Nine books in total captured the historic architecture of Winnipeg.

The smile on my face doesn’t mean that my life is perfect.  It means, I appreciate what I have and what God has blessed me with.

Thanks to our families: Zane and Robyn and children, Michael and Grace and their children, and Samson and Annette and their children, for loving us and giving us a lot of joy amidst the hardships of their busy adventurous lives. And thanks to family, friends, and neighbors like you to make life more interesting and lovable.

The person who has had the most influence on events this year, voted by Time magazine, is Donald Trump, the President of the ‘Divided States’. What do you think?

It may interest you to know who has had the most influence on events in my life this year. One is my first parent. His name is Adam. He lived to a ripe old age. Adam lived 930 years and then he died. Because of Adam I am dying through no choice of my own. The other is Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus lived only 33 years and then died. In him I have the awesome hope of life from the dead.

In Adam all are dying through no choice of their own. In Jesus, God’s son, this same all will be made alive. At this time of year we remember his birth. For this purpose was he born.

The real man smiles in trouble.

Collect moments not things.

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Harry and Barbara

Conestogo, Bloomingdale and West Montrose, Ontario – My Top 12 Picks

The Township of Woolwich is located to the north and east of the City of Waterloo. Woolwich Township began to be settled in the late 1700s, with William Wallace being one of the first settlers arriving in 1798. The township was named in honor of a government surveyor. Woolwich consists of an extensive rural area along with residential communities and industrial/commercial areas. The residential communities include: Elmira, St. Jacobs, Breslau, Conestogo, Heidelberg, Maryhill, Bloomingdale, West Montrose, Foradale, Winterbourne, Crowsfoot Corners, Mundil, Weber, Shanz Station, Martin Grove Village and Eldale.

Connestogo is located at the junction of the Grand and Conestogo Rivers in the township of Woolwich in Waterloo Region. The area was first settled in the 1820s by predominantly Mennonite settlers who had emigrated from Pennsylvania. They were followed by people of German and British background.

The first mill in Woolwich Township was built in Conestogo in 1844 by David Musselman. Known earlier as Musselman’s Mills, the settlement was renamed Conestogo in 1852. The name originated from the town and river of Conestoga in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

By the middle of the 19th century, Conestogo was a thriving community of about 300 people. It boasted a number of businesses, including a foundry, flour mill, sawmill, furniture factory, paint factory, flax mill, distillery, four hotels, three blacksmiths, two wagon makers and a cooperage, among others. Two local brickyards produced the bricks of which many Conestogo buildings were constructed. The slow pace of Conestogo’s development after the 1870s resulted in much of the architectural heritage being well preserved.

The feed mill closed its feed production operation in 2008. New retail stores such as the Conestogo Mercantile and Baby Charlotte do business alongside the antique store and the well-known restaurant and dinner theater, the Blackforest Inn.

Bloomingdale was named in 1861, likely by a settler from Pennsylvania after Bloomingdale in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

West Montrose straddles the Grand River, one of Canada’s historic rivers. West Montrose was settled in 1806 by Scots from Montrose, Scotland. The village was an industrious community with a woolen mill, saw mill, lime kiln, feed mill, two blacksmith shops, shoemaker and several stores. In 1902 the railway built tracks and a station north of the village to transport goods and livestock. Today the peaceful village is surrounded by Mennonite farms and most of the people living in the community commute to larger centers to work. The more recent outlying town is home to many large residences.

The West Montrose covered bridge was constructed in 1881 by John and Benjamin Bear and is best known for being the last remaining historical covered bridge in Ontario. These bridges were known colloquially as ‘kissing bridges’ since couples would be out of sight as they passed through the bridge. While the original bridge was constructed entirely of wood, in a series of repairs and restorations the bridge uses a combination of materials but retains its original form.

Lucknow, Ontario – My Top 6 Picks

Lucknow is a community located in Bruce County, Ontario, located at the junction of Bruce Roads 1 and 86. Lucknow has a strong Scottish heritage back to the late 1800s when the Lucknow Caledonian Games were held for twenty years. The village was named after Lucknow, India where, in 1857, a battle Indian Rebellion of 1857 took place between the native rebels and the British army. Eli Stauffer first settled here in 1856 where he constructed a dam and built a sawmill. In 1858, Ralph Miller built Balaclava House, a log tavern.

Why I Plan

A year ago in December 2016, I had my first introduction to planning a novel. Jennifer Blanchard reviewed Story Engineering by Larry Brooks over the course of four weeks. Then I read Story Fix by the same author, and Scene and Structure by Jack Bickham.

When I wrote my first book, Coins of Gold, I felt driven to write a story about my Mom and the life she lived. It was a celebration of her life, a woman who knew how to enjoy the simple things of life. I knew nothing about how a story should be structured or that there was even such a thing as story structure.

“Show don’t tell” were just words with no meaning. Character arc I may have heard of, but I certainly did not know how to apply it in my writing. I always admired Daniel Boone when I was growing up. I loved to watch the stories of his adventures as seen on television. For my second book, I decided to write a fictional story about Daniel Boone and I called it Arrows, Indians and Love. Each day I waited for inspiration, did research of course, and slowly the story came about.

One of my fans suggested I write about a Canadian hero. I chose Laura Secord as my next character and built a story around my family in central Ontario intertwined with the Secord family and the service Laura did for Canada during the War of 1812. I compiled a Cromwell family history tracing my ancestors back to the 1100s and wrote some books of interest to me (Olympics, Wonders of the World, Wars, Inventions, etc.).

My next inspiration was a novel about Joe and Kate starting with a dream of going to Montana. It became a series that I wrote as inspiration arrived. I didn’t understand about stakes in a story and why they are needed. I didn’t understand about inner demons and antagonists. I didn’t understand the need for a resolution to a problem. I just tried to have a good ending to the life story.

I realized I needed better covers so I approached Andrew Rudd www.detailfordesign.com and he produced five lovely covers for my Montana Series.

What was the plot of my books? Was my main character wanting something and going on a journey to achieve it? I didn’t have a clue about this aspect of a story either. What opposition was there in my stories? There were some inner struggles, but exterior struggles were really absent. The idea that people wanted to be transported into the lives of the characters was a nice thought, but I didn’t know about the need to overcome opposition, defeat it and be the victor. These ideas were completely foreign to me.

Then I had the opportunity to join a group of authors with Jennifer Blanchard www.jenniferblanchard.net  to take the Write Your Damn Novel (WYDN) course. Jennifer walked us through the stages of planning our stories from the premise and concept, through the journey that needs to occur to make a story work. I learned about a hook – a medallion is my hook for my next novel. I learned about First and Second Plot Points, First and Second Pinch Points and a Midpoint. They were all new terms for me to get my head around.

I started with a couple of thoughts for a novel. I didn’t have much of a premise or concept, but I pushed ahead to stay on track with the course, learning to apply some of the things as I went along. I managed to plan about three quarters of the book, knowing how it would turn out, before I started writing.

There are those who think that planning a novel takes away the creativity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just because I had the title for the scenes and knew sort of how the story was going to progress, inspiration had its part along the way and many twists and turns came in as the words mounted up. There were daily blog posts, videos, and additional courses and books along the way to help me get my novel finished.

Once I had the novel finished as much as I could do, then there was the scary part of actually sending my manuscript to a content editor. Jennifer Blanchard agreed to perform this service for me. A little over a month later, I had several pages of written notes, and an hour long conversation on where the novel was not working and lots of suggestions of how to fix it.

I had a well-developed main character, I had a journey he was on, and I had some interesting scenes. I managed to break many of the biggest story mistakes writers make but this was all a learning process. I had random things in the story which did not connect to the main story. Jennifer was very encouraging on what was working and gave me lots of suggestions of how to make it work better.

I went back to the drawing board, so to speak. I was determined to make changes and create an even better story for my readers to enjoy. I worked on it daily over the next couple of months until I was satisfied that I had done everything I could to improve the story structure. It is now back to my content editor and by year’s end I will have more ideas of what to fix, or get the nod of approval that it now works.

Being a multi-passionate person, my photography hobby expanded into another whole line of work. I love the old architecture in towns and started taking pictures. The first town I photographed was London, Ontario. When I look back at the first book I created, I chuckle to myself. I had the basic concepts, but I have grown into the project as the years have gone by. I do research ahead of time so that I have a better idea of where to start a project. Most towns I can complete in a day, but usually that will be a long day. I never seem to have enough time to finish as I would like to. There are always more pictures I could take.

Then comes the time I get to play around with the pictures and put them into books. I say “play” because it doesn’t seem like work. I love to compile the histories in photos, Saving Our History One Photo at a Time.

When we travelled to Winnipeg, Manitoba last year to visit my brother James and his wife Mary Ann, I thought it would be “nice” to photograph some of the buildings in the city. James knows the city very well, and he took us on our first photograph session. Wow! What a city to photograph! Day after day, James took us to another area with lovely architecture. We came home in the late afternoon every day with three or four hundred pictures on the camera.

After returning home, I had a huge project to put together. There were many articles on the architecture of Winnipeg available for me to add to the knowledge included in my pictorial history of the city where I was born. It took nine books to include all of the choice pictures I had taken. There are always pictures which get discarded. That’s the plus of digital photography – I can take as many pictures as I like, from as many angles as I like, and then choose the best ones.

I have my next photo projects planned and research done of the cities and towns. We get to see a whole different picture of the places we visit. We often don’t get into the museums and places of interest, although sometimes we do. Depending on the town, I may get a lot of walking in; in other towns, buildings are more scattered and Harry drives me from place to place. What I love to do is to be left on my own for an hour or two and explore and see what I find. I never limit myself to what I am told are the heritage buildings – I want to record more than those. Some architecture is unique, some is rather plain. I have learned about different architectural styles as I have progressed through the years. I have also learned terms that are used.

It is nearly time for me to plan the first one hundred days of 2018. Yes, it is just around the corner. It has been great to be connected to the 100 Day Challenge since 2007 as I am encouraged to plan. I have accomplished much more in the last ten years that I would have if I had not planned what I was going to do and given myself deadlines for accomplishing the goals I set. Sometimes it takes me longer than I originally planned to complete items, but then I give myself a new time frame to work towards.

And my journey carries on. To see some of the things I have accomplished, check out my website at http://barbararaue.ca.

What are your plans for this week, month, and the year 2018? If you plan, set yourself deadlines, and put in the work, you will be amazed what you can accomplish.

Wingham, Ontario – My Top 9 Picks

In the early 1850s, settlers began moving into the townships in the Queen’s Bush north of the Huron Tract. One of these townships, Turnberry, was surveyed by 1853 and a plot for a market town was designated where two branches of the Maitland River met. Among the earliest settlers on the plot was John Cornyn who was operating a hotel here in 1861. A year later a post office named Wingham was established and by 1866 Wingham had become a prominent supply and distributing center for the agricultural and lumbering area. In the 1870s railway expansion stimulated growth and led to Wingham’s incorporation as a village in 1874 with a population of 700. Five years later with a population of 2000, Wingham was incorporated as a town.

Wingham, located in Huron County at the intersection of County Roads 4 & 86, became part of North Huron municipality in 2001 when the former township of East Wawanosh, the village of Blyth, and the town of Wingham were amalgamated. County Road 86 connects to Kitchener-Waterloo to the east. The main thoroughfare is County Road 4, called Josephine Street within Wingham, which connects to London, Ontario to the south.

Wingham has manufacturing businesses and a variety of retail and service businesses. Wescast Industries has three manufacturing facilities producing auto parts. BI-AX International produces plastic film for use in food packaging and industry. Royal Homes is a manufacturer of prefabricated homes. Britespan Building Systems Inc. is a manufacturer of fabric covered steel structure buildings.