It’s an awfully long time since Upstreet closed, and stopped making their Libra non-alcoholic beer. I spotted this cache in a cooler in Annapolis Royal today.

Jack LeClair died on Saturday.

Jack was a neighbour, around the corner on King Street, for all the years I’ve lived in downtown Charlottetown, a fellow “downtown liver,” as our mutual late friend and neighbour Catherine Hennessey used to call us.

The heart of where I remember Jack sits 25 years ago, down the street at Eddie’s Lunch, where we were both regulars. I wrote this in 2001:

Eddie’s has always been a relatively successful local lunch counter; a renovation this spring (and into summer, alas!), has given them about triple the capacity. And they have, I think, been able to preserve a lot of the “Eddie’s ambience” in the updated space.

Now it used to be that the only people you ever heard of going to Eddie’s were people from the neighbourhood like photographer Jack LeClair (just up King St.) and poet Catherine Matthews (just across Prince St.).

Eddie’s later became Viva’s, and Jack and I continued to see each other there.

I can’t really tell you much factual about Jack, indeed most of what I learned from his obituary was news to me, but I can tell you something about how being around Jack made me feel. 

Here’s something I read yesterday, from a post how to stay awake to your own life:

One way that seems to help is meeting people who themselves are particularly lucid and clear-eyed, who have so clearly organised their life around what matters to them. You can see how their life has been animated by a fundamental quality of intent, a deep reconciliation and careful evaluation of what was expected from them, integrated with their own essence. Being in their orbit can feel instantly clarifying, like I become more awake by osmosis, just from witnessing how they exist in the world.

That’s an fair approximation of what being around Jack felt like. I shared with a mutual friend this morning that Jack exuded an air of “calm, confident, creative”; Jack wasn’t frantic (like the rest of us), and so being around him involved a kind of pleasant coregulation, something that allowed that “fundamental quality of intent” to shine through. 

Being around Jack felt good.

And although I hadn’t gotten to experience that in person for some time, it’s a feeling I will forever carry with me when I think of him.

Goodbye, Jack. I’ll raise a cup of tea to you this morning.

Travis Saunders, who’s one of the smartest and most engaged Islanders on matters of how we move, quoted on the CBC this morning:

Saunders said the fund has provided about $5 million annually in recent years, which is less than two per cent of the province’s roughly $280-million transportation budget this year.

“We haven’t stopped funding transportation,” he said. “We just stopped the part that helps people walk and bike and be healthy in their communities.”

In an era when we must be radically reshaping the way we move—to work, to school, to shop—two per cent of the budget seems remarkably little to be spending on the effort.

As we turned onto the Hollow Mountain Road this afternoon on our way to the Delaps Cove Trail, we saw a car ahead with its 4-way flashers on. We rolled up to see if they needed help, and discovered a large family of tourists from Ontario. They asked us if we knew the way to the Delaps Cove Trail (they had no cell service and couldn’t find their way). 

We were in a slightly better position than they were, with offline maps, and so we suggested they follow us, and off we went in convoy. Twenty minutes, and some challenging hills later, Lisa pulled the car up to the trailhead, with our Ontario charges following behind.

The government describes the trail like this:

The Trail meanders through 130 acres of canopied forests. Nature enthusiasts will enjoy the natural splendour of the area and breathe in the briny, salt air that surrounds the windswept coastline of the Bay of Fundy. As well as being a great place to hike, the trail provides opportunities for bird watching and photography.

That’s a pretty accurate description: the walk along the trail to the Bay of Fundy was cool, briny, and through a fascinating landscape.

I’m a sucker for seeing a movie in an interesting cinema, and will do so regardless of what’s playing. This is how I came to see All I Want for Christmas in Campbellford, Ontario, Anacoda in Haenam, Korea, and Marley & Me in Košice, Slovakia: forgettable movies in lovely (or at least quirky) theatres.

Tonight it was The Mandalorian and Grogu at King’s Theatre in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia with young L. Unrelenting creature-vs.-spaceman action, with adorable space-Beanie Baby sidekicks.

The 100+ year old theatre was outfitted with excellent picture and sound, comfortable seats, and a canteen where two small popcorns, two bars, and two drinks came to $20.

A great night.

Over the next few weeks you’ll see this poster up around Charlottetown:

The poster—for the July 14, 2026 edition of Jack Pine Folk Club—is a reproduction of an original lino reduction print by Lisa, the result of weeks of research, planning, carving, and printing. It’s a visual tour de force, and it captures the craggy essence of the jack pine so well.

Jack Pine Folk Club is a Shane Pendergast project, one that “channels the spirit of a 1960s folk coffeehouse.” Hosted at the Trailside, it’s an evening we’ve become quite fond of, and so when the opportunity came up to collaborate with Brandon Hood, who manages the visual language of the project, we jumped at it. Brandon took Lisa’s image and wrapped it in a lovely rich orange, with Futura typography, for the poster.

The rendering of the jack pine, which Lisa titled straight spine ~ jack pine, started in April with a recon trip to East Bideford, reputed to host the Island’s largest concentration of the trees. And jack pines we found.

We found the trees concentrated in and around a sand pit off the Burleigh Road, which, because sand has been mined from it, is a sort of otherworldly landscape, both natural and unnatural.

Starting from a reference photo of a jack pine that she took that afternoon, Lisa drew on tracing paper, and then transferred that to lino block:

Layer by layer, using on our Golding Jobber No. 8 letterpress for efficiency, we printed colour upon colour, Lisa carving away more of the block between each:

The final two layers were hues of red/magenta; here’s the second-last layer ready to print:

Our biggest technical challenge proved to be getting ink to dry, a result of mixing ink chemistries (Akua soy-based ink overprinted with Cranfield Safewash oil-based ink). The prints are drying, but very slowly. To aid them along, we rigged up a drying line down the middle of the print shop:

A limited number of signed original prints of straight spine ~ jack pine will be available at Jack Pine Folk Club on July 14.

This new bus shelter ad from The 5th Wave and Red Island Cider reminded me of coffee bags of yore.

Using a name that isn’t your everyday name when your Starbucks barista asks you for it is a small powerful act. It won’t do much to defeat surveillance capitalism, but it’s very good for personal bravery-building. “I am, today, who I say I am, today.”

Today at the Starbucks in Stratford I was Flambeaux. Except that, despite spelling it several times, I came out as Falmeeaus.

All hail Falmeeaus.