Three years ago.

In 2013 Jan Miller published Dear George, a book about her experiences as a counsellor using Neuro-Linguistic Therapy. A the time she said the key to all the work she did was communication.

Three years later, now retired as a therapist more or less, Miller has published a new book, a mediation on her long-standing, recurring relationship that is called Wilfred and Me.

Miller met Wilfred at her first job as a Councillor. Wilfred was a deaf man in his early 20's who had recently been released from Rideau Regional Institution. He was few years younger than her, and he had no language. He did not know sign language and had not been taught any other way of communicating other than some basic gestures.

“Wilfred knew nothing about deaf culture, nor did I, and we both learned from some people from Gallaudet University, but we both remained outsiders to the deaf community.”

Years later, when she moved to Kingston she sw Wilfred again. He had also ended up in Kingston. She helped him get settled into a job at Shoppers Drug Mart, where he has worked for 16 years.

She was working with a program that helped people maintain their employment and worked with Wilfred. Over the years they have become friends and she eventually realised that she has learned a lot from Wilfred.

“The book started because he was having a difficult time. He has only bad stories in his life. So since he is an artist I said id he drew some pictures I would tell a better story about him than he had in his head, and it kind of took off.”

She said that the process of working on the book has been positive for Wilfred, and now that is complete it is time to celebrate.

Two events are planned for next week in Kingston, a book signing at Chapters at 2376 Princess Street on Thursday, November 24 from 1-4 pm, and a reading at Physiotherapy Kingston at 1469 Princess on Saturday, Novemer 26 from 1-4 pm. Readings will take place at 2pm and 3pm. Wilfred and Me will be available at Nicole's Gifts in Verona, Novel Idea and Woodpecker Lane Press in Kingston, and through Amazon and JanMiller.com.

The traditional Remembrance Day services are returning to the Cenotaph at McMullen Park in Verona on November 11.

After a break of a few years, local veterans will be able to mark the solemn occasion in Verona once again. The Verona Community Association (VCA) and the Verona Lions Club are helping out with arrangements for the ceremony, and Prince Charles Public School is going to participate as well, as students will be attending the service, which starts at 10:30 a.m.

Leann Benoit, a former Verona resident, has been working behind the scenes to bring the ceremony back to the park.

“It seems like it is all coming together,” she said early this week. “Linda Bates from the VCA has been engaged on this; the school is coming back after holding ceremonies in the gym for a few years, and veterans like Deb and Doug Lovegrove are involved as well. The RCMP, OPP, and the armed forces are all laying wreathes, so we are a go.”

After the ceremony, a reception will be held at Mom Restaurant. All are welcome to attend.

After working as waitresses at the Rose and Crown in Kingston for 12 years, Denise Redmond and Judy Peters are coming home. More accurately, they will start staying home. Instead of driving to Kingston for work each day, they will be running their own restaurant in their home town of Verona.

On November 1, Redmond and Peters will take ownership of Martha's Restaurant on Road 38, which they are renaming Muddy Waters as much as a nod to the swampy terrain behind the restaurant as to the late Blues great.

“It just sounds right,” said Judy Peters of the name. “It fits with the down home, relaxed atmosphere we want to create.”

They are bringing Brad Miller, who until last week was a cook at the Rose and Crown, with them as their first employee. Miller, who will be commuting from nearby Enterprise, is excited about breaking out of some of the limitations that went with cooking pub food.

Miller plans to prepare daily specials, including pastas, roast beef and roast pork dinners, among others, but one thing he won't be making at first is pizza.

“There is a pizza oven in the kitchen, but I need to learn the oven, fine tune a recipe for pizza dough, and experiment for a while before we can put pizza on the menu. It will likely be in the spring before that happens,” he said.

The two new owners have purchased the building as well as the business. They said the jump into business ownership is a big step, but it is something they have been thinking about for a long time.

“It's definitely been on my bucket list to own a business, and it is best to own the building as well. It puts everything in our hands, as scary as that may be,” said Denise Redmond.

A lot of people have come together to help make the purchase of Martha's a smooth transition for Redmond and Peters, including their families, and Martha, the soon-to-be previous owner.

“We are going to be opening just two days after taking possession of the building,” said Redmond, “which is a very quick turnaround, but Martha has been really, really helpful. She has let us into the building to look at the kitchen, and take measurements to see what we want to do. She really wants the restaurant to carry on.”

Redmond and Peters mentioned that they feel the township has been supportive, as well as the Frontenac Community Futures Development Corporation and the St. Lawrence College Employment Centre in Sharbot Lake, who have helped them recruit staff.

Returning to the building has been interesting for the two new owners, since they both worked there when it was known as Bravo, before they went to work at the Rose and Crown.

“Some memories came back for me when I first went into the kitchen,” said Peters.

New memories will certainly be made starting on November 3 at 7 a.m., when breakfast will be served at Muddy Waters. The restaurant will be open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m., seven days a week as of November 3.

“This is food I grew up with,” said local farmer, Ernie Sands of Sands Produce from Battersea, in regards to all the organic, locally grown products for sale at the Frontenac Farmers’ Market (FFM).

The FFM has been a hot spot in the township ever since it first opened up in 2005.

The market and its vendors have been providing customers with local, organic produce and homemade goods for 11 years now and they show no signs of slowing down.

In 2014, the market moved from its old location at the Verona Lions Centre on Sand Road to the parking lot at Prince Charles Public School on the much busier Road 38, and business has increased significantly.

According to Sands, the vendors now see anywhere from 200 to 400 people pass through their little market on a good day.

Merchandise available at the market ranges from fresh fruits and vegetables to hand-made crafts. One can find almost anything on their grocery list at the market and for a comparable price as in regular grocery stores.

Father and son, Ernie and Eugene Sands of Sands Produce, are just a couple of the local farmers who keep markets like this in business. The two of them have been a part of the market ever since it was first introduced to the township.

Eugene Sands says that they keep a close eye on prices in the grocery store to ensure their prices are comparable for their customers. He sees great importance in local markets in communities like this.

“The biggest thing is getting people educated on what they’re buying in the stores compared to what you can get at the market,” Sands said. “Yes there are disadvantages; there might be some blemishes and stuff like that. But the positives are the taste and that it’s local. It hasn’t been sitting in a warehouse or been shipped from half way across the countryside.“

Sands encourages people to take the time to come to the market for groceries.

The work of farmers’ markets is twofold: to keep local farmers in business and to provide the community with healthy, organic products. “We want to be needed here,” said Eugene Sands. The only way this is possible is with the community’s support.

The market season is quickly coming to an end, with the last one to take place on October 29, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the usual Prince Charles Public School location.

Peter Mouncey has taken over the role as school principal at Prince Charles Public School in Verona for the 2016-2017 school year.

“I truly believe in education, particularly public education, as something that can be transformative,” he says. “It can change individual lives; it can change communities and when we do a good job with our schools then I think we’re doing a good job with our society.”

Mouncey has been with the Limestone District School Board since 2000. He got his first position as a vice-principal and has not slowed down since. He has worked at seven different schools since starting with the board. Before Prince Charles he was at First Avenue, Marysville, Holsgrove, Selby, Westdale Park, Southview and Winston Churchill.

Mouncey says that growing up he was always drawn to teaching. Whether it was as a leader at cub scouts, camp counselor, Sunday school teacher or tutor, he has always had a love for leadership.

“Anything that a teenager could do that was directed towards working with children I just gravitated to naturally,” he says. “I really can’t imagine doing anything else with my life.”

After graduating from the Queen’s University Concurrent Education program, Mouncey got his first teaching job working at an international school with his wife Sharon Isbell in Hong Kong. It was there that he and Isbell got married.

The two of them stayed in Hong Kong for two years before moving back to Canada to start teaching in Eastern Ontario.

The Cobourg native got his first taste of Verona in the summer of 1977 while playing in a baseball tournament. After getting a co-op with an outdoor and experiential education program in his final year of teachers’ college, Mouncey returned to Frontenac and really started to fall in love with the area.

He and his family made the move to the Kingston area in the summer of 2000 and have been here ever since. Now with three children, the couple spends their time racing from work to hockey arenas and dance studios.

Mouncey says that he was very pleased to get the position in the Verona area. He says that the students and parent community at the school have been incredibly welcoming of him. He has loved his time at Prince Charles so far and is looking forward to a great school year.

“I can’t emphasize enough how well this first month has gone,” says Mouncey. “I truly have felt very welcomed and supported. There are folks in Verona and the surrounding area who really do value and support their school and I’d like to thank everybody for how things have gone so far.”

Brittani Lawson, a 21-year-old woman from Verona, and her service dog Anchor met me at Tim Hortons recently. Brittani has a medically diagnosed, non-visible disability and her doctors say that she needs a service dog to allow her to live an independent and normal life. She was forced to take control of the supply and training of her service dog when the non-government independent organizations could not meet her needs.

Medical professionals recognize the value of trained service dogs for people with non-visible disabilities. The matching of a trained service dog to these individuals can save lives, and helps them lead a normal and independent life. The training, accreditation and supply of these animals is left in private hands, with little or no federal or Ontario Provincial Government guidelines.

A service dog team consists of the handler with a medically diagnosed need, and a trained dog. The province of Alberta has come to grips with this need and issues photo ID cards for all individual certified service dog teams. Guidelines for the certification, service dog training, public and business education is available from Assistance Dogs International (ADI), an international not-for-profit organization pooling the resources and experience of many international service dog groups. Ontario does not have to make up the rules.

In the same way that we accept the use of dogs to detect explosives, the concealment of narcotics, or buried avalanche survivors, we must learn to accept that service dogs are needed by many people with different non-visible disabilities. The dogs’ heightened sense of smell detects changes in the scent emitted by people with, for example, insulin deficiency from diabetes, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and can alert them to the onset of a seizure and the need for help.

A certified service dog is a well trained, non-aggressive and medically alert animal. Its job is to ensure the safety of its team partner. A service dog is trained with a combination of kindness and rewards for actions. Do not speak to, pat, or feed treats to the dog without the handler’s permission. You will confuse and distract it, and this may have deadly results for the human member of that “service dog team”. When meeting a service dog team, always speak to the handler, not the dog.

A few years ago, when it was suggested that a service dog would help Brittani to live a normal independent life, there were no trained dogs available. Brittani and her family purchased a Labrador puppy named Anchor from a good breeder and started an intensive ADI based owner-training program. Brittani performed the many hours of weekly training, with her family providing the taxi service and long waiting times. Not everyone can have this support, and not every medical need lends itself to owner training. Government support is required.

Having now passed the test as a service dog team, Anchor wears his official service dog vest. Most businesses accept this, but not all. In Ontario, public and business education is required. A service dog team may be challenged for being where dogs are not allowed. Currently the handler must produce a doctor’s letter to confirm that they need the service dog for personal health reasons. They may also have to argue their rights, and that is wrong.

An Ontario photo ID card similar to a driver’s license, as they have in Alberta is required.

The Verona Lions do many wonderful good deeds for the community, and with 69 vendors and a pay-what-you-can entry fee, their Garlic Festival on Sept. 3 was an excellent fundraiser for the many programs they support. What an extremely well organized event; the Lions even offered free dog sitting. Many people could be found in the open pavilion where Wayne Huff played and sang his highly amusing songs. The highlight was the presentation of the Eastern Ontario Garlic Awards. The Champion is Denis Craigen; Reserve Champion is Anne Janssen and Honorable Mention went to Bill Kirby. The winner of the longest garlic braid was Catherine Cheff, with at 24 foot-long braid containing 336 bulbs.

Course manager Jim Lansdell and the staff at the Rivendell Golf Club in Verona don't pay a lot attention to the Internet during the golf season. There's too much to do every day, keeping the course in the best possible shape and making sure that everyone who comes to play, members and casual golfers alike, enjoys themselves.

And during the off-season they don't pay that much attention either, it turns out. That might change a little bit as the result of something that a visitor to the course told Lansdell last week.

“A golfer told me that we had been rated highly on a golf website, and then said that we should look into it because we were in the top 25 in national ranking, which is something we never would have expected because those kinds of rankings usually go to golf courses that have millions of dollars invested in their design and maintenance,” he said.

On the weekend Lansdell had time to do a search and that's when he found that GolfAdvisor.com had Rivendell as number 13 in their list of the top 25 courses in Canada for 2015, as ranked by Golf Advisor reviews.

The reviews that are listed on the site reveal why Rivendell was so highly ranked. Here is a sample from one of them: “Rivendell is ALWAYS in geat shape - hats off to the grounds crew. This course offers a great mix of challenging and tough holes. A hidden gem to be sure. The staff are second to none in accommodating your every need.”

Golf Now course rankings are compiled by sampling reviews posted on the Golf Advisor website. Courses are ranked based on how they are graded in several categories, including: off-course amenities, value, pace of play, staff friendliness, course layout and course conditions.

While Rivendell scored highly in all of the categories, it received the highest ranking, 5 stars, for staff friendliness and value.

Ken Harper, one of the owners of the course, was also unaware of the ranking, but he was not surprised that the staff who work at the course were singled out.

“It is quite a surprise and I feel very proud. It is a reflection of everyone who works here, not just the course,” he said.

John Steele is the president of the Member's Association, and was one of the five founders of the course, along with Harper, Bill Davy, Roger Bauder, and Mike Bourassa.

In response to the ranking, he said that he is “very proud of the course and those who are dedicated to it.”

The ranking reflects comments by Golf Advisor members in 2015, and most of the comments are consistent with what reviewers said previously.

And if anything the course is playing better in 2016 than it did in 2015. Since 2015 was a wet summer, Rivendell had some problems with too much water in low spots, but that has not been not been a problem this summer.

As golfers and even envious drivers on Road 38 driving by the course this summer have seen, it has remained green and lush even with the dry weather.

“The course reacts well to dry weather,” said Jim Lansdell, “it always has. We did start to pull way back on watering in early August to protect the water supply for our neighbors and ourselves, but the rains came before the course showed any water stress.”

Lansdell also said that the hot weather this summer does not seem to have diminished the enthusiasm of golfers in the region and those from further afield.

“I think over time people got used to the hot weather and did not let it stop them from enjoying golf.”

The course owners and staff are pleased with the recognition, even if they did not find out about the rankings until nine months they were announced .

The Verona Lions Club will be welcoming 40 vendors on Saturday, Sept. 3 to an event that has grown steadily in recent years.

“People seem to come from all over to get their garlic, and see what is new. They are what I call 'foodies' who just love meeting with growers and supporting them,” said Wayne Conway of the Verona Lions, a key organizer of the event.

Over 40 vendors were registered for the garlic festival as of Tuesday, all from within 125 kilometres of Verona. Over half of them are producers of garlic and other garden produce, and the rest are craft vendors.

“That number is a bit down from the number of vendors we ended up with last year but every year there are last-minute additions, so I expect we will have as many or more this year than in previous years,” he said.

Among the vendors this year is a very local micro-producer, Bear Roots Gardens from downtown Verona. Pat and Kate Joslin work a 1/3 of an acre patch where they produce garlic, peppers, tomatoes, ground cherries and other vegetables, as well as a line of organic, locally adapted seeds. Don't miss their booth.

There are also four community groups who will have booths at the festival this year, including the Bellrock Community Hall; the Portland and District Heritage Society, who will be churning butter as part of their display; Girl Guides of Canada; and the Township of South Frontenac.

The canteen at the hall will be open and serving garlic- themed cuisine, and the Lions will have their two kids' rides as well as the mini-putt on hand to entertain the younger set.

At 1 pm, the Eastern Ontario Garlic Awards, one of the unique features of the Verona festival, will be presented, and the winners of the Verona Community Association's Flower Barrel contest will be announced as well. Paul Pospisil will preside over the garlic awards and John McDougall, a Lions Club member and township councilor, will be the emcee.

Before the award presentations, the festival will take some time to honor the memory of Ron Whan, a local garlic grower who played an important role in the development of the festival. Ron displayed, sold, and donated garlic each of the first nine years of the event. Last year he had a booth at the festival and at the 150th anniversary celebration for Frontenac County, but passed away a few weeks later.

Entry to the Verona Garlic Festival is by donation, and it runs from 9am until 1pm at the grounds of the Verona Lions Hall on Verona Sand Road. Don't forget to check out the Frontenac Farmers Market as well, which is held at Prince Charles School in Verona on Road 38.

When asked how he started creating chainmail jewellery, Bill Anderson said, “It wasn't my choice - my wife bought me a lesson package to try. After I started, I took to it like ducks to the water and wanted to learn more. So I started watching videos and taking advanced classes."

When blood clots in the lungs left Bill Anderson with chronic pain that traditional medicine could not erase, his wife Nancy encouraged him to use alternative medicine through art therapy. She was concerned about the effects of persistent, chronic pain and the resulting inactivity.

Bill found that he prefers to work with the 16 to 18 gauge of wire when weaving, as the finer 10 gauge was harder on his eyes and more difficult for a man with large hands. He says that working with the wire has, "increased my dexterity and reduced my arthritic pain."

Most surprisingly though, Bill Anderson found that while weaving these creations, “The hours flew by and I never noticed the chronic pain”.

The process of personal growth through creativity also involved Bill in lessons and mentoring with other chainmail artisans. It gave him a creative will and dream to pursue and as Bill says, he was able to keep his three lovely daughters and wife in jewellery.

The impact of pain on a chronic level can be considerable, affecting self-image, decreasing physical and mental ability, creating feelings of lifestyle loss and leading to memory deficiency, depression and anxiety.

There are many theories about pain and chronic pain. One, put forward by the research team of Butler and Moseby in 2008, speculates that as far as the brain is concerned pain is initiated by fight or flight, and fear and avoidance. Perhaps while Bill is concentrating on the calm, focused fabrication of these beautiful, intricate designs, his mind does not detect danger or radiate pain.

Whatever the reason is, Bill says, "I never notice the pain while working."

The chain of events following Bill's pursuit of his art has had some other very positive side effects. He says, "It caused me to vastly expand my list of friends. "

Once Bill's entire family had all the jewellery they could use, he began his business - Chainmail Jewellery by Bill. He started a website in the same name and has now sold and shipped his chainmail jewellery worldwide.

He exhibits at art shows such as Art in the Sawmill on August 6 & 7 in Verona. He also keeps a facebook page and can be reached by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

His work is also available at Passionate Artisans on 28 Bath Road in Kingston, Ontario.

From the initial suggestion by his loving wife Nancy that he try a course in chainmail, Bill Anderson has fought back chronic pain link by link and moved on to an exciting new chapter in his life.