When the new residential hospice opened at Seasons retirement community, I knew that in time I would be visiting there. People whom I was visiting at home or in hospital would be transferred there for the best palliative care possible.

               I was right. I am visiting people in the residential hospice now.

Over the summer, two incidents in Ontario hit the headlines, tore across social media and drew my attention to the harsh reality that living in a community can sometimes be a difficult thing.

The first happened in Kingston.

Two married women came home from a weekend away to receive an anonymous letter telling them that there were people out to get them and that the writer did not agree with their living in Kingston as a married couple.

There were threats of intimidation, violence and bodily harm, including being shot with a pellet gun.

So what did I do on my summer vacation?

Many years ago, our United Church forebearers decreed that a minister should have one month of vacation. They were wise. One month of vacation begins in your first year as a minister and continues all through your career, unlike other places where you add a week after working so many years.

As the child of a minister, I grew up with my father always taking one month of vacation. And as I child, I spent it at a cottage in the Gatineau, north of Ottawa.

There was a massive fire in Bella Bella BC this week. You probably didn’t hear about it. Bella Bella is on the BC coast. It’s a first Nations community. Located in the territory of the Heiltsuk Nation, Bella Bella is an important town and service centre. I know of Bella Bella because it is the home of a United Church of Canada hospital (yes, the United Church runs several small, remote hospitals). Bella Bella was part of a historic ministry of the United Church.

               There is a novel written by American author Thomas Wolfe titled “You Can’t Go Home Again.”  I confess I’ve never read it, but the phrase of the title has entered our language. It means that once you have left a small town and moved to the big city, your mind set changes to the point that you can never recover the way of life you had and any attempt to revisit old memories of those times will fail.

Anyone know the words to "Allouette"? "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean?" "The Happy Wanderer"?

If you do, there is a very good chance you learned them, not from your parents and not in school, but at a children’s or youth camp.

It might have been a day camp. It might have been an overnight camp. It could have been through the Scouting or Guiding Movement. But it was a camp. And what you learned, you didn’t learn from your parents.

I met a most remarkable man a couple of weeks ago. His name is Bob Hastings and he lives in Southampton. Bob crossed my path because of our church sign. It was the week the sermon title out there was “Grand Miracles”. Bob saw the sign and stopped in.

               He was carrying a curious device, which he told me he had invented, called a Bincaddy. He said it wasn’t a “grand miracle”, but more a little miracle. I beg to differ.

I was pleased to see that a stone marker has been erected at Big Bay cemetery at the tomb of a Home boy who had died of mistreatment more than a century ago.

Home children deserve to be remembered and they deserve our respect. Many suffered against incredible odds. Many survived and prospered and did well in this country.

A friend of mine who is a teacher was talking about their qualifications one day. They reflected on how times and qualifications have changed. Their original teaching license, issued perhaps thirty five years ago, said they were qualified to "teach elementary school, kindergarten and the retarded".

My friend reflected on how years of work with children with learning challenges had completely disabused any idea of using the word "retarded" ever again.

One of the first books I read in University was John Porter’s "The Vertical Mosaic". I might even have the book somewhere in my library. Porter’s work, if you ever read it, was one of the first studies of the elites in Canada and the effect of immigration on our society and who has power.

Porter concluded that there are elites in Canada who hold power, who continue to hold power and who generally don’t give up power. And those elites don’t change, no matter what, even today.