Think you have parking problems? This ” Mr. Cool” had it all figured out. Just pulled into the  Canadian Tire parking lot in Parry Sound and found a two-vehicle slot! Sorted! The charming pilot/driver told us his plane only weight 200 pounds. Was he joshing us? Certainly his car had no problem pulling it. Just one of the things one is liable to see in Parry Sound.

It is a strange town.  There is one supermarket, a Sobey’s. Since it holds a monopoly it is pretty expensive and before the new manger took over I took a perverse pleasure in finding mistakes in the prices of things. The policy of the chain is that if you find a mistake you get the item for free. Joe and I had quite a run of getting free stuff every single time we shopped. A spirited exchange with the new boss was my swan song. I had so many mistakes on my bill that she wanted to impose a sort of statute of limitations…. let us say that we were both satisfied at the end —I got a generous voucher and she got an “issue” to work on with her staff.  Boy, did she whip them into shape. No more gloating over the cash slip. Those who know me in my regular shopping life will know how atypical this is of my habits. Oh, it was just fun!

Besides the Supermarket there is a small hospital. In summer the population of the district soars. All the Torontonians flee (the heat? the shootouts?) and head up to cottage country. They fall into the bar=b=que. They get stung by wasps. They cut themselves with knives or saws – they shoot themselves with sport arrows. They faint in the heat. They narrowly escape drowning or forget their meds in all the excitement. The beleaguered staff of the hospital deal with this and then the doctors quit so that it is quite a task to get on the rolls of a family doctor in winter time.

In the summer there is  money in Parry Sound – our friend who parked in Canadian Tire lot is not the only person who flits around in a little plane or who zooms over Georgian Bay in a fancy boat. A water-side restaurant offers “fly and dine” for a couple of hundred dollars. A plane slightly larger than this will fly you and your date to a distant restaurant where you can dine and then (if you can keep your dinner down) they fly you back to Parry Sound.

Of course, there’s a Wallmart and a McDonald’s in Parry Sound and it seems to me there are a lot of people riding around in mechanized wheel chairs.  When the cottagers go home a lot of the money goes with them and the winter mood is, to me, sadder but less frenetic.

I prefer the little village close to our house and land – Orrville. There are two churches, about forty houses and a blessed library in this village. In a pinch I can walk to the library. I like the little yellow plane but the library is good enough for me.