Recent Photos

A traditional canoe arriving in Duncan for the Tribal Journeys.

Uncle John (top) and I (bottom) at the helm of the Carlisle, entering Finlayson Arm.

Sunrise from outside my room in Esquimalt.

The cats on the truck infront of the house at the ranch.

Summer Pictures

Morning frost at the ranch.

Hawkeye, the new colt, with his mom Be.

Lots of barebows for the Queen Victoria shoot!

Flying over the Gulf Islands en route to Ottawa.

Canada Day celebrations on Parliament Hill.

SCA members in Ottawa performing a courtly dance.

New E-mail

Hello everyone,
It would apear that an unwelcome someone has found his/her way into my former e-mail, changed my password, and sent e-mails from it. I am very sorry for any annoyance that this may have caused you - it has certainly cost me some. At any rate, my new address is svsilentsound@gmail.com. I have added all of the addresses which I had physically recorded to my contacts, and have lost many that were in my former acount - just let me know if you wish to be added to or removed from my mailing list, or if you have a new address, or know of someone who's address I should know.
Sorry for any confusion - please send future e-mails to svsilentsound@gmail.com, and ignore any messages from svsilentsound@yahoo.ca.

Bradley Clements

Broom Party!

If you are interested in maintaining balance between native and invasive plant life, then you are invited to a party to pull invasive broom plants! At Mary's Therepeutic Farm and Sanctuary - my Aunt's 30 acre property in Goldstream - the broom has made a sudden and massive expansion. The bad news is that broom increases the nitrogen content of soil, which native plants are not used to, so if the problem is left unchecked it may be difficult for native plants to regain a hold. The good news is that most of the broom is still premature at this point, so it is easy to remove. So, on September 6th (Saturday) we are having a broom cutting merathon! But don't think it'll be all just work - while there you can explore the beautiful forest paths, swim or kyak in Goldstream River, swing on tire swings, spend time with goats, ponies, horses, llamas, rabits, dogs and cats, and much else. Dinner will be provided for all. It will be fun, and, if you are a student, you can record it as volunteer time for graduation!
If you are at all interested please e-mail me ASAP at svsilentsound@yahoo.ca and I will give you the details, including spicific directions, a basic schedule, and a list of suggested items to bring. Please forward this to anyone who may be interested.
Hope to broom-cut with you soon!

August

Hello again,
August has been on and off busy and unexciting. On the first I caught a variety of ferries and buses to Pender Harbour to crew with Uncle John on the 'Carlisle' back to Victoria. Gran met me at the ferry and I spent the night at her place, helping her a bit around the house and the garden. The next day we drove up to visit Alice and Aunty Lisa and were rear-ended in the car outside the driveway. Everybody seemed alright, and there was only minimal damage to Gran's car. We went up to John's garden. He and I rowed across the harbour to the wooden boat show at Madira Park where my Great Aunt Shendra had her little sloop 'Balandra' on show. John and I set off early the next morning and had a glorious trip to Aunty Mary's up Finlayson Arm. The sun was shinning and the tide and wind were very cooperative, so we made record time! John and I camped with some friends to celebrate the eighth day of the eighth month of the two thousand and eighth year with a Peruvian Dispatcho ceremony. Over the rest of the month I played music, helped several friends with home renovations, shot archery tournaments, hiked, celebrated, wrote, read, gardened, built, pulled invasive plants, looked after animals, played Risk, etc., etc.... Bill and Maureen volunteered to host two participants of Canada World Youth, girls from Calgary and the Ukraine. I'm spending the last week of August and first of September at Aunty Mary's to help her out while she recovers from nose surgery, so I've been either bale-tossing, animal feeding, cooking, burdock lopping, or something else of that manner. Tomorrow Carter and I clear out the rabbit trailer, and I help Matt and his friends to help put up the walls of Dee's cabin. All the while, the coming year looms ominously on the horizon. Bring it on! I'm ready.

New Addresses and Phone Numbers

If you're mailing me use this address:

Bradley Clements
1225 Carlisle Ave.
Victoria, B.C.
V9A 5C7

E-mail:

svsilentsound[at]yahoo.ca

Phone:

(250) 896-0131

If you want to get ahold of Stella, Ray or Harry...
Mail:

20 Aldgate Cres.
Ottawa, On.
K2J 2G4

E-mail:

silentsound2000[at]hotmail.com

Phone:

(613) 843-0518

Trip to Ottawa

Hello everyone!

A great deal has been going on lately! I flew to Ottawa to visit the family on June 30th. Mom and Dad were happy to see me, but Harry wasn't and Clouseau was impassive. The house has a nice design with variating floor and ceiling elevation, but it requires some maintenance. Dad's collections of paintings hang on all of the walls.
We went down to Parliament Hill by bus on Canada Day and set up our chairs in the middle of the intersection of Wellington and Metcalfe amidst the throng of people. Many events were going on, including an RCMP musical ride, a brief airshow with the Snowbirds, musical concerts with Blue Rodeo, Murray McLachlan, Garnet Rogers, Haily Sails, and others, break dancing, displays, marching bands, and speeches by politicians including Stephen Harper and the Lieutenant Governor. There were firework displays in all of the communities.
I did some work delivering advertisement flyers for the painting company that Dad was working for, and doing painting and prep-work with Dad on a deck project (ten hours a day, two days in a row).
We visited a village recreated in the period of the 1860's with buildings which dated from the time. It was fully functional and productive, complete with a fully equipped blacksmith, tinsmith, shoemaker, stables, water powered lumber, spinning, weaving, and flour mills, a church, masonic lodge, dwellings, farms, photographer, and much else. The village was occupied by skilled craftspeople and produced most of what it needed and had plenty of surplus to sell to the outside. Transportation was by riverboat, foot, horse or carriage, and the surprising productivity of the village was accomplished without nearly the toll on the environment that such work would have cost using modern means.
Mom and I went to a concert with the National Arts Centre Orchestra with Pinchas Zuchremann conducting as well as playing the solo part in Beethoven's Romance for Violin and Orchestra. Also preformed was Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21.
Mom, Dad and I went to a casual outdoor production of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, a play which I had been studying in school. It was well played and very funny.
Mom and I went to a Medieval Festival which was put on by the Osgoode business group and several other groups including the local SCA. It was not a reenactment of even anachronism event, but it was fun and funny. We went by a raspberry farm on the way back and picked a couple of baskets.
Dad and I took a couple of visits to the National Art Gallery, including an evening exclusive to members and their guests. We saw Vincent Van Gough, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Salvador Dali, Emily Carr, the Group of Seven, Tom Thompson, Claude Monet, and many others from the Renaissance through to contemporary.
I flew back to Victoria on July 16th and have been staying in Esquimalt with Bill and Maureen. I attended my first Spanish class, went to the Moss Street Paint-In, had a potluck with guitar-playing buddies, shot an archery tournament, went to the Victoria Bowmen board meeting, spent time with my girlfriend, gone to a work party at a nature reserve to pull invasive plants, and gone to one of Chris Fry's trio's concerts with my friend Berry. I've got a job as an assistant archery coach at the Commonwealth Pool and am working on designs for the treehouse that will be built on my Aunt's property.

All in all, keeping busy!