Declining number of perishers forces closure of Ontario church

Shelburne, Ontario is a small town -- only recently upgraded from a village -- in Dufferin County, on the "roof of Ontario", about 150 miles northwest of Toronto. [Agent 3 says "That's not far enough!"] For over seven decades it was home to the Canadian Old Time Fiddle Contest, which was worth a long drive to attend. Sadly, the event was "paused" during the Covid dempanic. It is unclear whether it will return this year.

That part of Ontario is Orange -- as in Loyal Orange Lodge -- country. There are mighty few Catholics on the ground there. And not as many Protestants either, according to an article by Paula Brown, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter for the Shelburne Free Press & Economist, picked up recently by Canadian Press.

Ms Brown reports that one of Shelburne’s founding churches is ending a more than 150-year-old chapter in history as they prepare to officially close their doors this month. 

St. Paul’s Anglican Church, will be closing its doors following a final service for the congregation on Sunday, 21 January. 

For non-Canucks, the Anglican Church is the Canadian counterpart of the Church of England. In the US of A, Anglicans would be called Episcopalians. In Canada they're known as "the ToryParty at prayer."

The decision to close the church came in October of 2023 with a vote from church members after months of discussions. “Many of our congregation has aged out, going into long-term [care] residences or subsequently passing away,” said Marg Finlayson, "People's Warden" -- sounds kind of Communist, doesn't it? -- of the congregation. “People have also moved away." 

Ms Brown writes: "The limited number of perishers also led to a decrease in funding, putting a financial strain on the church." 

Memo from Ed. to Paula Brown: It seems you are a product of Ontario's education "system", and, as such, have never been taught to spell or use a dictionary (as opposed to a spell-checker). Allow me to help you enlarge your vocabulary. 

A perisher can be: 

(a)  A chatacter in The Perishers, a long-running British comic strip about a group of neighbourhood children and a dog. (Source: Wikipedia)

(b) One of Ola Klüft (vocals, guitar), Martin Gustafson (keyboards, backing vocals), Pehr Åström (bass), and Thomas Hedlund (drums), the members of The Perishers, a Swedish indie rock band. (Source: Wikipedia)

(c) A child who is being annoying. (Source: Cambridge Dictionary). 

You're welcome.

Does your apartment have a "garbage shoot"?

Agent 3 saw this today on the landing page of Canada's National Post.

How did a Toronto man, now under an ISIL-related terrorism peace bond, get an AR-15 type assault rifle?

When police searched Abdul's apartment in an attempt to find the restricted weapon, his father had already broken it and thrown it down the garbage shoot

No fulsome apologies from Walt!

This morning I heard an educated woman -- the director of a charity which aids the poor and down-trodden of the Third World -- talking on public radio about war crimes allegedly committed in Somalia. (The alleged criminals were Americans of course, not the Islamic terrorist group al-Shabaab. Hey, it was public radio!)

The speaker called for a "fulsome investigation" of the "deliberate starvation" of Somalis by the wicked Americans, through restrictions on food aid which otherwise would have prevented the "famine".

A "fulsome investigation"... Really? I'm guessing the speaker really wants a full, complete, thorough investigation, but, in spite of her higher learning, misunderstands the meaning of the adjective "fulsome". Walt's Annadale's dictionary says "fulsome" means "cloying, surfeiting, offensive from excess of praise, gross (flattery, compliments), nauseous, disgusting".

The misuse of "fulsome" has become something of an epidemic amongst the lamestream media and chattering classes. I am sick, sore and tired of hearing news "reporters" promising "more fulsome coverage at 11", and politicians promising to give an issue their "fulsome attention".

This abuse of vocabulary stems, no doubt, from a wish to sound better-educated than the speakers really are. To "big themselves up", as speakers of Ebonics say, the professional talkers reach for the sesquipedelian word, when a plain, simple word would do. To those who are tempted so to do, Walt recommends two books: 30 Day to a More Powerful Vocabulary, by Wilfred Funk (yes, that Funk, as in "Funk & Wagnalls") and Norman Lewis, and the seminal work by Dr. Rudolf Fleisch, The Art of Plain Talk.

If you are a professional talker, and intend to go on misusing "fulsome" because it sounds good, I say, go right ahead and demonstrate your ignorance of proper English. And spare me your fulsome apologies.

So, there's a new bad English fad

So... since when has it become acceptable to start a sentence with "So..."?

Examples: "So... the stock market was up nearly 100 points today, in spite of large losses in the energy sector." That sentence was uttered by a supposedly educated business commentator on a TV newscast. But you hear it in everyday conversation too: "So... I'm walkin' down the street, eh, and this really big guy bumps into me..." Perhaps the speaker was not so well educated. [Certainly a Canuck! Ed.] Walt has even seen it in print (on the Net) in a post on a forum for... wait for it... English teachers! "So, I found a job in China, but now I changed my mind..."

My guess is that there has been so much criticism, on WWW and elsewhere, of the use of "like" as a "pause word" that people who wish to sound as if they've advanced beyond primary school have settled on "so" as a "higher-class" alternative. They must think "So..." sounds better than "Like...". It doesn't! So, let's stop using "So..." at the beginning of a sentence to signify, "Hey, I'm gonna talk now."

While I'm at it, may I plead, yet again, for the teaching of English vocabulary in journalism schools. Will those who write for the lamestream media please stop using words of whose meaning they are unsure! Examples:
"wrestle" for "wrest" - "The Iraqi army is trying to wrestle Tikrit back from ISIS"
"fulsome" for "full" - "A more fulsome report is expected tomorrow"

As Walt sees it, the problem is that "writers" no longer feel any need or to desire to be readers, first. They don't know less common words, like "fulsome" and "wrest", because they haven't read them, properly used, in the works of people possessed of vocabularies of more than 1000 words.

No, I'm not talking only about 19th-century writers, although Charles Dickens would certainly have known the proper meanings of "wrest" and "fulsome". There are plenty of modern writers, on both sides of the Atlantic, who have great (in the senses of "large" and "excellent") vocabularies. Looking at my bookshelf, I see: William F. Buckley, Bill Bryson, Graham Greene, Studs Terkel and of course Hunter S. Thompson. HST might not have used a word like "fulsome", but I'm sure he knew what it means.

Moral: Read first, then write.
Footnote: I except (not "accept") newsreaders from my criticism. They are only bingo-callers and meat puppets. They read only the autocue. The less-than-literate clods who write what's on the autocue are the real villains.