It was a rather nice day, a bit too cool for walking with a biting wind out of the north, but in the car with the sun shining it was very pleasant. Southern Ontario residents suffer through winter, not due to terrible winter conditions – for the most part we are better off than most Canadians – but rather we get months of dull, grey, overcast sky. So when the sun comes out and we get a big blue sky, it is an occasion to be outside – at least for a drive on a day like this.

We had decided to take a drive east of the city where there are some lovely little hamlets with a quaint feeling of days gone by. In fact, sometimes you see evidence of practices of the past. Like this cemetery on the edge of Newtonville. I went up this road because there was a small city-like subdivision just off the main highway (if a two-lane road can be called a highway). Here’s the water supply for flowers being left at a grave marker – or getting a drink I suppose, though not in winter.

The image of the water well pump takes me back to my grandmother’s cottage on Green Bay – part of Lake Cecebe. And while I haven’t been to that cottage in decades, and the use of the water pump goes back to my childhood, I never see one of these that I don’t think about running out the sided door of the cottage to get a bucket of water for my Nanny. Hard to believe in a world of iPhones, satellites, 3-D imaging and the video chats that this technology was popular not so long ago.

As we drove by I spied this in the cemetery and backed up the car so I could grab a photo.