@ E-Mail from Everywhere @

Here are BRUCE WHITEFIELD, and his wife DONETTA. They live in the Noosa Heads area on another Sunshine Coast, this one in Australia. That's the northeast coast, a kind of sub-tropical paradise, with lots of resorts. What Bruce and Donetta are doing here is cutting the cake for Bruce's 66th birthday in January, 2000, an event, Bruce wrote, when "we just spent three days partying," at least some of it at the local yacht club. On the right, below, is Bruce in his backyard, up to his shorts in water. That's the result of heavy rains and flooding in his neighborhood at the end of January, 1999. In June, 2000, Bruce arranged flying visits to Jean and I, and six other people/families in Canada, all e-mail pals of his. He started out in Vancouver, then went to Vancouver Island, Toronto, Ottawa, and finished up with us, staying two or three days in each place. Then he flew back to Australia from Halifax via Japan, spending about 24 hours in the air. An amazing show of stamina, we thought. Later, he e-mailed:

My impressions of Canada?....Generally I was impressed with the overwhelming friendship of everybody I met, ranging from people I actually stayed with, to barmaids and waiters. Canada would be a great place to live if were closer to the equator (and you drove on the correct side of the road).

Here are some choice Whitefieldisms on other subjects from e-mails Bruce has sent me:

On Millennium 2000: This is bloody incredible! 1.30 pm here, I've been out and about and had a few drinks to clear the hangover, and one of our TV channels is running a 24 hour world wide coverage of celebrations. What prompted this note was they just showed - live - the stage show and fireworks from your place. It's still hard to get used to the fact that distance has evaporated.

On e-mail attachments: When I receive an e-mail with an attachment, I place my curser on said attachment, and click once or twice, whichever does the job.The machine gurgles, coughs, and goes blank, then pops up the thing attached. Or doesn't, as the case may be.

On the start of a new day: Sorry, dawn is late today, it's just passing India - must take up the matter with the appropriate authorities.

This is RICK RICE, who lives in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Victoria is on Vancouver Island and is as close to a semi-tropical paradise as one can get in Canada. Roses often still bloom at Christmas time, and daffodils and cherry blossoms are at their best in February. Rick is a pioneer of the Canadian television industry, retired now after many years as a national network director and producer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto. He was there in the early days when all television was live, including commercials, because videotape hadn't been invented yet. It was my good fortune to have him as a colleague during two separate stages of my journalistic ramblings.

Most startling e-mail from Rick: Detailed medical map of some of his innards.

This is my kid brother ALAN DOHERTY working on his homebuilt single-engine airplane. He began with an old airplane body he found in a garage in 1985, and spent the next 13 years making it into an airworthy craft. His family contributed by keeping the home fires burning while he did his thing in the garage, and not bugging him. In the spring of 1998 -- success! He flew the plane for the first time, and has since put in many more hours working on the plane. Then he put it up for sale. Alan has had his flying licence for about 18 years, starting before that with hang gliders in the 1970s. In real life, Alan is a high school computer teacher and co-ordinator. His wife, DOREEN, is an accomplished artist who sells her work widely, including from her own web site. Alan, Doreen, daughter ALAREEN and son DAVID live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Alan has helped me a lot via e-mail with my computer and the Internet.

This is MARIAN VAN OOSTENDE on the right and her husband, JOOP, who live in Schiedam, Holland, near Rotterdam. The picture was taken at an office Christmas party in December 2004. Marian is the e-mail enthusiast. Both of them love travelling, camping and hiking and in the summer of 2002, they visited the picturesque northern part of their own country. In the summer of 1999, they visited England and Wales. In the summer of 1997, they trailered and camped through British Columbia and the Yukon on their first visit to Canada. Marian enjoys classical music, and often goes to concerts of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. And she has her own web page, devoted to the former music director of the Rotterdam Orchestra, conductor James Conlon. We have exchanged tapes via snail-mail of some music from our personal collections. We have no language problem; Marian's English is excellent, which is fortunate for me, because I can't speak or write Dutch!

Learning from Marian's e-mails: About Dutch culture, sports, politics and broadcasting.

Here are KINGA and MARCO de MUINCK who live in London, Ontario, Canada. The picture was taken in Spain, one of several European countries the two visited in the summer of 2004. We met through Canadians Retired On Line (CROL), an informal, voluntary Internet group we helped start up in 1996. It grew at one time to over 100 members. Both Kinga and Marco have been very active in the group, among other things making major contributions to the CROL Chronicle, a weekly newsletter which was discontinued in 2001. Marco was born in Holland and came to Canada in 1949. Kinga is from Hungary, and emigrated to Canada in 1957. They met and married in Montreal in 1959. One of the purposes of CROL was to provide computer self-help for seniors, and Marco helped me, and lot of others when the Internet and home computers were fairly new.

ON THE ROAD: Marco and Kinga have been camping all over the place for 40 years, first in tents, now in a trailer, and they like to e-mail pictures and descriptions of their travels. Below, a picture of their trusty trailer, new in 2001, replacing one they used for 21 years:

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Last updated January 20, 2005