Budleigh Past and Present

Adam Bunch is a man on a mission. If you happen to be in Budleigh, or Exeter, or Oundle, or any one of more than a dozen places in Britain that he’s been touring this summer you might be lucky enough to find one of these little postcards that he’s left in strategic positions. Modern To ronto's skyline from the harbour  Image credit: Wikipedia and Jeangagnon  They’re all part of a grand project that he’s dreamt up to let as many people as possible know about the origins of his home city of Toronto. The project, appropriately enough is called Toronto Dreams, and the postcards have been specially created to let the reader imagine what life might have been like a few centuries ago for one of the pioneering figures of Canada’s history. Regular readers of my blog will know that I’m talking about John Graves Simcoe (1752-1806), the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, who was responsible for building T oronto though it was called Y ork in those da...

Ponderosa Pines in the Rocky Mountains Photo credit: Margaret Wilson "What's the most beautiful thing in the world?" my uncle asked me. As we waited for lunch in a hotel dining-room overlooking a London park ablaze with autumn colour, I wondered as a raw and immature 15-year-old what kind of reply he was expecting. "A naked woman?" I thought, tentatively, but of course didn't dare to suggest. "A tree," he stated, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. I don't suppose that I displayed any reaction to his stunningly simple answer. But I've always remembered the scene, and I have to admit that trees have grown on me over the half century that has elapsed since that moment. Michael Wilson has been, as he told us, "inspired by the beauty of trees" since the time he spent working at the University of Washington in Seattle 40 years ago. However it was also their grandeur, and the vastness of the forests that he and his wife Ma...