If RON JOYCE still ran it, rural NS Tim Hortons would have WIFI

Not for RURAL Cdns

It seems, as of this date, that the closest TIM HORTONS to my family home in Seaforth Nova Scotia (the outlet in nearby Porters Lake) isn't going to get WIFI.This is a rural location and I suppose the attitude was "it doesn't really face much fast food 'n' coffee competition, so why offer WIFI to gain and hold customers, if you don't have to ?"

Pity, because while I do think that desktop computers' contribution to national work-related productivity gains has been vastly over-stated, there is no doubt that mobile computing has been a great help  in a country this vast size, in raising the nation's overall productivity.

(Dad texting Mom to say he's gotten the ham and the milk and has he forgotten anything --- and she says "Crikey, I sent you out to a store ten miles away for  baby nappies - don't dare come home without them !")

A  case of a rising tide lifting all boats - in and out of the workplace.

Forget Jesus : what would RON JOYCE do ?

I can't help feeling if rural Nova Scotia-born ( and indeed rural Nova Scotia-retired) Ron Joyce was still running Tim's,  he wouldn't dare let rural Atlantic Canadians gather the impression that Tim's regards them as second-class citizens.

Mobile computing is an extra big help to rural people who must travel much further to get services and who can't afford to waste gas (and warm the planet), by making lots of unnecessary trips.

I might have to start up a petition to Tim's, asking them to treat rural Canadians right, when it comes to delivering WIFI....

Seaforth Nova Scotia : Surf, Hope for Wildlife, Skunk, and my pen

"our" beach in Seaforth NS

I wrote the first drafts of today's SVE posts out in Seaforth Nova Scotia, my family's home.


(We live in the old parish rectory, next to the church, right across from the community hall cum old school house , on land that was once the oldest farm in the settlement: basically in the centre of the tiny village.)

Growing up, the place was totally obscure, even to Nova Scotians.

But one day in the late 1906, some guys in a beat-up VW with Colorado plates came up to me and my brother Bruce and asked the way to the surf.

Surfing Seaforth

Surf ?

We tried to point the way - back  past Colorado - towards California and Hawaii.

But no, the boys pointed to the big waves in front of our house - how to get down to them.

Our omnipresent big waves - a perennial aspect of our Seaforth we could never stop hearing and seeing - turned out to be what others called "surf".

So for the last 40 years we are a place of pilgrimage for surfers from all over. And an nearby newspeg for lazy reporters seeking an easy sidebar on an upcoming hurricane threat : 'but won't the waves be totally, totally awesome ?!'

Then , more recently, Hope Swinimer came to our village and opened a volunteer-run place to save the lives of injured wildlife.

Cue even more reporters to report on cute (wild) animal alerts.

2000 people came out to Seaforth , to enjoy the Hope for Wildlife open house last week. (Star-of-the-show was a 3 legged skunk called Maxwell.)

We never had skunks in Seaforth till recently: credit global warming...

We got lots of surfers at "our" beach, right in front of the bench where I wrote this paragraph yesterday - thanks to a cover story in the day's local newspaper.

As for skunks -well a family of them lives in my field about 20 metres away from where I write.....