July 2026
 WOOSTOCK DETACHMENT THEN AND NOW  One day in June, while travelling down highway 2 on his way for a coffee, Norm Chaplin went by the old Woodstock detachment and figured something should be written about and photographed before it all disapeared for good. Upon returning home, Norm phoned Roly Haley to see if he had a spare few hours so that both could travel back to the detachment and get some photographs, which they did. Norm parked his truck strategically to protect Roly, who was wandering around in front of the truck taking pictures before heading onto the property. Poor old Alex would be crying in his beer if he were still around to see the mess, and the photo on the right which shows the walkway and the garage now just rubble, with broken glass all over the place and warning signs too. The offices no longer have any dividing walls, and the picture on the left shows the two windows of the stenos office in the top left. The center picture is facing east with the opening leading to the lobby and sgts office and the picture on the right has the lobby and the elevator, the wall between them is gone. The cell block once under roughly four feet of water is now fairly dry, with a lot of mould everywhere. On the bright side, we did not find any human remains in the cells.Over the past 112 years, older detachments and headquarters buildings have been replaced by new ones, along with additional detachments when the OPP take over areas previously policed by disbanded municipal services. Like all former government buildings, some are sold and repurposed for other uses; others are simply left to deteriorate. THE MODERN, GLOBALIZED ECONOMY BEGAN TO SHUDDER TO A HALT DUE TO COVID.  Shops shut their doors. Factory production lines grew silent. The world's vast armada of airliners stayed stationary in quiet airports – at least for the most part. And the cruise ship industry started to close down operations to avoid spreading the disease. But Covid-19 spread remorselessly. Within weeks the cruise industry faced the spectre of much more serious challenges.By March, anxiety over cancelled cruises was replaced with the very real possibility of entire cruise lines going under unless they could cut costs. One of the simplest ways to do this was to prune their fleets – by sending the oldest ships to the scrapyard. Breaking down large ships is a complex and dangerous job that mostly takes place in the developing world, in places like the vast shipbreaking yard in Chittagong in Bangladesh. But one of the busiest places it's done is in Turkey, on the tourist-baked azure coast near Izmir. Aliağa Ship Breaking Yard is the fourth-largest facility in the world, and as the effect of cancelled cruises began to bite, it's where many of the cruise companies sent their huge ships to die. At the start of the Covid crisis, the plight of cruise ship passengers was of particular interest to the world's media. In early 2020, the discovery of Covid cases on the British-registered ship Diamond Princess led to it being quarantined off the coast of Japan for two weeks. Before the ship could be evacuated, more than 700 passengers and crew were thought to have contracted the disease – nearly one in five of those on board – with as many as 14 of them dying. In all, more than 40 cruise ships had reported cases during the first six months of 2020, and the world's cruise ship fleet gradually stopped operations, leaving as many as 40,000 crew stranded, sometimes in isolation. Keeping a cruise ship in port with no paying passengers still incurs great costs for the operators, says Bektas, so they 'decided to dismantle the ships somehow, especially the ones that are not too neat, that are not new enough'. WHEN IT COMES TO THE ICONIC MCDONALD'S CHEESEBURGER, DIETICIANS ARE LOVIN' IT.  In terms of food, items on the McDonald's menu may not be the healthiest of options. But in moderation, the cheeseburger — made up of ketchup, mustard, onions, pickles, a slice of processed cheese, and a beef patty sandwiched between two buns — can be a part of a balanced diet.Online food publication Eating Well surveyed a trio of dietitians on the healthiest option on the McDonald's menu. They all chose the cheeseburger and broke down why it’s the best option for those who have fast-food cravings. The calories and sodium levels of the classic cheeseburger are relatively low when compared to other favourites such as the Big Mac or the Quarter Pounder with Cheese. The cheeseburger is 300 calories and has 720 milligrams of sodium, which is half the amount compared to other menu offerings.  |