OTTAWA — For many Canadians, swimming is a common and leisurely activity learned from early childhood. However, for women and girls in Afghanistan, access to education and recreational activities, including swimming, has historically been limited. Zahra Jafari, who fled Afghanistan in 2017, knows this reality all too well. After tirelessly fighting for women’s rights, she was forced to leave her home country to protect her family. Since arriving in Canada, Zahra and her daughters have found hope and healing through swimming lessons at Sawmill Creek Community Centre and Pool in Gloucester.

Zahra’s activism came at a great personal cost. Pregnant with her youngest daughter, Elisa, she had to leave her eldest daughter, Mahsa, behind temporarily for three years to escape the Taliban’s oppressive rule. She recalls this as one of the most difficult periods of her life.

Masha’s journey to overcome her uncertainties and build confidence with staff and other children was gradual but transformative. “When I started swimming, I was really nervous because they were strangers to me," recounted Mahsa. “But we played games and stuff, so I got more comfortable with them.” Zahra emphasizes the positive impact swimming had on Mahsa’s self-confidence and social skills, crediting the supportive environment created by the staff and other children. “She was nervous, it was very hard for her. But when she started, the help of the staff, coaches, and the good management, she just changed – even her behaviour.”

While swimming might seem like just another activity, it means much more to Mahsa. It represents a choice to do what you love without barriers. “I thought for me, it would be impossible to swim,” says Mahsa. “When I came to Canada, my wish came true and I’m happy for that. Every time I go in the water, I feel better. It makes me happy.”

For Zahra, swimming is more than just a life skill; it’s about breaking down barriers. “It seems like a small hope,” Zahra says. “But for the girls from Afghanistan, with a situation like Mahsa, it is not a small hope. It is a big dream."

OTTAWA — The steady whine of a table saw fills Luc Renaud’s workshop as fine sawdust settles across the floor. In the well-lit space, surrounded by clamps, blueprints, and half-finished pieces, Luc adjusts his saw and begins work on yet another project. It’s a familiar routine, one he’s repeated for decades, though he never imagined that something built here would one day belong in a museum in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

Luc’s fascination with building began early. At eight years old, his parents gave him a toy Avro Arrow, the advanced Canadian-built supersonic aircraft designed during the height of the Cold War. The gift left a lasting impression, and many years later Luc would go on to build detailed models of the aircraft out of wood, carefully recreating a machine that had captured his imagination as a child. Yet it wasn’t one of those planes that earned a place behind museum glass. In fact, it wasn’t an aircraft at all. Instead, the piece that ultimately drew attention was a passenger train Luc built for the Sharbot Lake Country Inn & The Crossing Pub.

As a self-taught wood craftsman and devoted history buff, Luc has spent much of his life immersed in the past, drawing inspiration from industrial history. His workshop has produced models of all kinds, from aircraft to tanks, submarines, and ships, each one requiring patience and precision. Luc spends hours refining a single model, rebuilding sections repeatedly to achieve historical accuracy. “When I build these models, it can take years or it can take months,” Luc admitted.

While wood remains his primary medium, many of his projects also incorporate plastics, resins, metals, and other materials. Whenever possible, he works from original blueprints. When those aren’t available, careful research, reference photos, and educated guesswork guide the process. For Luc, difficulty is part of the appeal. “It took me years to get to where I am now, and I still have a lot to learn,” he confessed. “The harder the project, the better I get with my skills.”

That mindset led to what would become the pinnacle of his hobbyist career: a scaled-down model of the Caribou, colloquially known as the “Newfie Bullet.” The passenger train operated in Newfoundland from the late 19th century until 1969. “This train was something I always wanted to do, but I never had a reason,” Luc said. That reason, it turned out, was family.

In 2009, Luc’s daughter-in-law Jessie White and her parents, Frank and Sandra White, purchased a motel and restaurant in Sharbot Lake, Ontario, naming the newly renovated pub “The Crossing." The name was a tribute to Stephenville and Stephenville Crossing, Newfoundland, where Frank and Sandra met and grew up together. The two communities were separated by the railway where the Newfie Bullet once ran. Wanting to honour that shared history and the story behind the pub’s name, Luc decided to build a model of the very train that once passed between their two towns.

Luc’s model was proudly displayed at the restaurant for years, admired by locals for its craftsmanship. The connection felt especially fitting, since the village of Sharbot Lake itself was once home to the Kick and Push Railway. In 2023, as Frank and Sandra prepared for retirement and the Sharbot Lake Country Inn & The Crossing Pub were sold to a new owner, they faced a difficult decision. Unsure of what the future held for the business, they didn’t want to leave such a meaningful piece of history behind.

Despite his talent, Luc never believed his work belonged in a museum. He spent years comparing his models to professionally built replicas he had seen on display, convinced his own skills didn’t measure up. His sons always saw it differently. Over time, Luc’s work had grown far beyond a casual hobby, even crafting a detailed replica of HMCS Lanark to honour his boys’ time in the Royal Canadian Sea Cadet Corps, which is displayed at his unit in Carleton Place.

Still, Luc was unprepared for what came next—Frank and Sandra had another idea. They contacted the Railway Society of Newfoundland Museum in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where the original Newfie Bullet sits. “They ended up contacting the museum, and they said they wanted this train,” Luc said. “But Frank and Sandra didn’t know how, or thought it would be too hard to ship it out there.”

Like Luc, Frank and Sandra never saw a problem without a solution. When Luc learned what they had done, he was stunned. “They put the train on a mattress in their camper, secured it, and travelled 3,200 kilometres,” he commented. “The train ended up in Corner Brook with the original Newfie Bullet.”

What once felt like a distant possibility had become reality. A personal project, built quietly in a home workshop, now stands alongside the real train that inspired it. “I’m happy that other people will be able to enjoy seeing this model,” Luc said. “I never thought that one of my projects would end up in a museum.”

Luc Renaud’s model is now on permanent display at the Railway Society of Newfoundland Museum in Corner Brook.

LANARK — Paul’s Maple Products prides itself on being one of the longest-running maple producers in Ontario, with over 130 years of production history. As settlers of Dalhousie (Lanark) in the late 1820s, maple syrup production began as a necessity for the Pauls, creating hard maple sugar bricks as natural year-round sweeteners for cooking and baking before expanding into the public market in 1890.

In the 1970s, Brien and Marion Paul took maple syrup production to a whole new level, being among the first in Ontario to install a reverse osmosis system and some of the first producers to use the pipeline system you see in sugar bushes all over Ontario today. The sugar bush expanded from 800 taps on buckets to a couple of thousand taps with lines. Brien and Marion were true innovators of their time and pillars of the maple community, which earned them a spot in the International Maple Syrup Hall of Fame in Vermont.

Their sons, Darrell and Wayne, became invaluable assets in keeping such an operation running and made some innovative changes of their own to improve sap production. The tradition continued when Darrell’s son, Nathan Paul, and his daughter-in-law, Gabrielle White, took over the business in 2017. After learning the many hard lessons of the four previous generations, it has become Nathan and Gabrielle’s honour to continue the family legacy. With a little luck and countless hours of help from his friends and family, the business has been able to expand beyond the borders of Lanark County.

Nathan and Gabrielle are doing their best to fill the shoes of their predecessors and are grateful to share the same passion for maple syrup production that has been passed down through his family for generations. Moving into the modern age, they are adding their own creative ideas while keeping true to the traditions they’ve been taught.

Nathan’s grandmother, Marion, always believed that there was something special in the soil and limestone that their trees grow on that gives their syrup an exceptional maple flavour. Many years of awards from syrup competitions may add some truth to that statement, but all their customers would agree that after tasting their syrup, it has become the benchmark against which they compare all others.

Nathan and Gabrielle are very proud of their products and only send out the very best to their customers, both new and ongoing. Without their dedicated clientele, they could not do what they love most: making beautiful, sticky, and sweet maple syrup. Nathan and Gabrielle hope that they can carry on the Paul family's lifelong work and keep the production going for years to come.

SHARBOT LAKE — With a history spanning over 100 years, The Sharbot Lake Country Inn & The Crossing Pub stands as a landmark in Sharbot Lake, Ontario. Often referred to as the “Doctor’s House” by locals, the building was originally constructed in 1906 as a medical center by Noel Coutlee, a recent graduate from Queen's University as a Doctor of Medicine and Master surgeon. With the recent population boom from the Kingston and Pembroke railroad in the late 1800s, Doctor Coutlee envisioned Sharbot Lake as the perfect location to establish his first medical center, capable of accommodating a few beds for short stays.

Unfortunately, after the building's completion in 1906, Dr. Coutlee suffered an untimely death, and his plans never materialized. He left the building to Danny and Diana Buchanan, his manager and housekeeper, who converted it into a bed and breakfast and ran it under the name “The Hillcrest Inn.”

Following Mr. Buchanan’s death in 1952, Mrs. Buchanan sold the Inn to a gentleman from Perth, Ontario, who continued to operate the business as is. Over the years, the building underwent several name changes and new ownerships. However, even today, despite all the alterations, renovations, and additions, the original structure remains largely unchanged from its initial construction.

Now known as the Sharbot Lake Country Inn & The Crossing Pub, current owners Frank and Sandra White are dedicated to preserving its history. The restaurant's name, The Crossing, pays homage to Sharbot Lake’s history as a railroad town and acknowledges the towns of Stephenville and Stephenville Crossing in Newfoundland, where Frank and Sandra White were born and raised. As they look toward retirement, their aspiration is to pass on the business to someone who will carry forward the torch of preserving the building's historical roots.