Altho it has always been my intention to make this an annual letter, the fact that here I'm starting it actually within the year would seem to indicate that it should not be such a long winded affair this time. Last time was the first to both my Family relations and my overseas and other friends, and therefore somewhat longer. SO all of this means that it'll be a wonder if my news lasts out the page.

It is still my habit to tape-record the Church services I attend, from my "hide-out" in the choir loft, though we've had a change of ministers last Summer. During the new man's vacation (Rev Wm Wilkenson) last August, our S School superintendant sparked a move that saw laymen preach and lead in a service of worship each of the Sundays. On other years the Church just closed up. Anyway it was the occasion for my first publicly preached sermon ever, as such, in a service of worship. The title, "GOD Giveth the Increase", led on to the exposition as I see it that the Church is earning the contempt of the unchurched most deservedly by its failure to risk crucifixion; to risk loss of its elevated social position by condemning not just the usual social evils which everyone expects the church to do,----but by condemning society's failure to seek first the Kingdom of God. It is the Church's Divine call to study, learn and preach, respectively, the causes, cure, and proclamation of the whole, of the manner in which the Spirit of Evil has twisted Politics, Economics and Finances, to its own ends, for the perversion of the whole of Society. Even as a medical doctor cannot cure a diseased patient, until he knows the whole story, sordid and debilitating as it may be: neither can we in the Church hope to combat the Spirit of Evil until by knowing his methods, and the channels by which he has gained entry to the minds of men. Until men's minds are filled with that fairer Vision, complete with every material and economic and political reflection both scientific AND spiritual of the Spirit of Christ.

Our original three little bedrooms have become one little one, and a 2nd one twice as big. Now that we do have overnight guests, my office has been moved from the big sunny south bedroom window, to the S.E. corner of the basement. Here we've begun making a curtained off photo dark room, in hopes of the time when I can print all those 100's of negatives filed away. Irene has become used to the string of endearing epithets I use to her, but she still invites them. The old carpenters work bench of my Father's is set up next my basement "office", and recently we've begun a set of shelves to make it more useful as a means of finishing the rest of the house. So last night after dinner, my announced plan was to shelve shop work for the evening and work on these shelves. But I just dropped the armload of lumber when I went downstairs, and slipped back to envelope Irene with all the endearments I could think of, and we laughed ourselves weak. Here she had been working on the shelves all day, and they were over half done, and the place all swept up the way I like it, but nary a word had she breathed in response to my voiced plans earlier!!!

Irene just brought down afternoon tea on a tray for us as I type down-stairs here, and wryly commented that I could tell you all that we still have endless discussions and planning sessions, when I re-read last years F & F letter, about the Kitchen ctr "island" we were planning;---and we still haven't the kitchen centre done. But we have floor to ceiling bedroom closets built in now, and living room and kitchen walls are done, in graduated pastel shades from yellow-green with scarlet trim, to cream, deeper and paler blue, while the little bedroom is coral with trillium ceiling. The outside trim is dark "garden green" against the natural aluminum siding, with white window frame interior and exterior. And the famous cistern project after an even 500 hours recorded time, since June '63, has now its concrete top finished, poured over wire mesh and polyfilm "forms" in layers with arch formation below from the six posts and walls. We began using the water when the eaves had poured it six inches full of the five foot total depth. (Full height is six feet and capacity about 10200 gallons).

So while nothing has been done to complete the Work Shop itself, either building or equipment, I have been busy there all year. Too busy in fact to do more than maintain equipment and get customer work done. But my Sister Alice's Anglia was finally finished, body and paint job, some 140 hours, and put up for sale. About the time I thought I wouldn't be losing it at all (I'd quite fallen in love with the nifty little car) my brother-in-law Eric bought it on an impulse when he visited here last Fall (i.e. "this" Fall). Since then most noticeably, the floors of the kitchen area, and the little bedroom have been sanded and gleam with three coats of clear "varnish-oil" and a coat of wax.

Socially, there has been a steady succession interesting visitors here, or else we've been the guests. Three times we've been to Niagara Falls, where Irene's brothers Peter and John live (Peter having moved to teach High School there from Barrie). In July we met my first pen pal Dorothy from England, finally when she came to Canada during her North American tour. Early in September we returned a visit by Brother-in-law Fred, taking home to them nephew and niece Robert and Janet, who had revelled in the Bushlot's stock of frogs and other denizens of the Bush Pond, for the week they were our guests. That visit involved a four day round trip to Ballston Spa, N.Y. (USA) and return through the Adirondacks, to 1000 Islands Bridge near Kingston. Two of Irene's former fellow school teacher friends came for overnight visits too, Carol in April, and Helen in July, and other wise also Irene has kept in touch with school teaching too. Following a big Family Thanksgiving Sunday get together at Sister-in-law Muriel's in Burlington, Irene was "discovered" by the grape-vine new medium, by the principal of Glendale High School in Tillsonburg, "Would she come and substitute for a Maths teacher incapacitated with back trouble at the beginning of the school year. So for some 19 teaching days we learned what it's like to adhere to a strict time table, beginning at 6.30 am (dead of night during daylight saving time) each day, and involving a 45 mile round trip for Irene each day. We were left quite exhausted both from the unaccustomed early hours, and my business which lasts late at night quite frequently.

Brother-in-law Fred's Parents in law from near Southend on Sea in England were over this side of the Atlantic for a few weeks visit and sister in law Margaret brought them here for an all too brief visit in September. Mr Tutt is a notable authority on ornithology, and fortunately we had barely enough information and knowledge of local birds to make his stay interesting in this his special field as well.

Although most visiting was by or to this new clan of relations I've acquired still, in July, I was truly caught by surprise and didn't recognize my own Nephew Douglas, my sister Catherine's son. Of course he'd changed to a grown man since I'd seen him last in Minneapolis in 1950, for now he has a charming wife and family of lively youngsters. They all had driven up from Colorada [sic] State, on an extended cabin trailer trip, that included this turn so near Douglas' own birthplace.

In April we were pleased to be visited by members of my Mother's Weekes family. Cousins Maurice and Ollie, and Mrs Mary Baird, the latter who had come a trip east at that time all the way from Vancouver. She is now the eldest of the Weekes clan, my Mother's sister Alice's daughter. We had last see each each other when I lived in Vancouver in 50-51. There are quite a few cousins, Uncles and Aunts, whom I've never seen, or never will see now, or haven't since childhood. Irene who is so well acquainted with all her relatives, had the impression that I had very few, but now is intrigued their numbers and far flung distribution. Of course there are my Father's brother and sister's families, the Leonards and Watts. My Aunt Lucy writes of Bill and Kathleen, and Cousin Frank phoned at the time of Father's 90th Birthday celebration in '61,----it all makes one wish to go travelling on and on.

Instead of that we are pushing our roots down deeper and deeper right where we are. Irene teaches the largest SS class just now the Intermediates, and although she has declined to take leadership in our United Church Women's group here, she's right on hand when ever they want some help. Except for Choir Work I am not actively engaged in Church activity, except of course for regular attendance. We did attend a Christian Education Committee meeting last week however, where the pressing question was the lot of the 7 to 12 year old boys of the Town, who have neither boy scout nor any of the relative church boy's group troups to guide them in their growing years. I happened to be at the Optimists meeting (as guest for a slide show evening on New Zealand) when they voted down a Boy Scout offer because of lack of leadership. The corresponding groups for girls of the same age are well cared for, but between parents TOO BUSY with all the proliferation of "groups" in the town, bowling, Lodges, Optimists, Kinsmen, Legion, Firemen, Rebeccas and Deborahs and so on and so forth----Leadership is just not available for boys. These are not "farm" boys with all the duties of farm work and living, but are boys in need of adult guidance in handicrafts, camping, constructive recreation, pursuance of the humanities and the arts (to give these formal titles). I could hear but little of the committee's deliberation but still my suggestion that the parents of the congregation and the town, be made aware of the situation in no uncertain terms, by sermons, panel discussions, and literature, was taken seriously. Next our problem is to get the parents out to church and S School and mid week meetings, where these facts can be effectively given to them.

----and so it boils down to the original problem. What the Parents consider important will still be the guiding light of their children!!!!!

So concluding on that sombre note, I do wish you all the Best for this coming Christmas Season, and may the next year be for you as I hope it will be for us, a year of happiness and fulfilment.

Yours truly;     Wesley W  Leonard