I have vague memories of watching Mom and Dad using rifles to shoot tin cans in the forests of Leaf Rapids. This would have been before Sean...

 

 

Someone made this by burying a styrofoam ball in sand, digging a hole, and then pouring molten lead into the hole, dissolving the styrofoam ...

Sometimes customers from the Ruttan Mine would bring Mom and Dad interesting little keepsakes, like this serpentine core. It's smooth an...

In 2019, Mom accompanied Aunt Jean and Uncle John on what would ultimately be her last trip to Manitoba. I can't ask her now, so I don...

Man and horse A symbiosis  Animal husbandry's Ultimate gnosis Strong back, fleet hooves Domestication Foundations of the horse-drawn nat...

Mom would have been 84 today. Here she is with Dad, on the road to Leaf Rapids in 1974.   

Mom, Dad, and Sean, summer of 1976 or possibly 1977 at the Suwanee River campground near Leaf Rapids I only lived in Leaf Rapids for seven y...

Among other Woods/Etsell losses in 2026, our Uncle Gordon Newton passed away earlier this year, and I just realized I haven't written an...

 

I found this just now while going through the folder of Mom's photos that I copied over from her iPad. I don't remember seeing this ...

 

  This is my official grade one class photo, taken at the Leaf Rapids Education Centre. Mom made the vest and the pants that went with it. N...

Young Earl was a much less casual dresser than Old Earl. Does that outfit scream 1970s? I think it does.   

Sometime in the mid-1970s, we travelled from Leaf Rapids to Thompson to buy an electronic organ. Mom or Dad shot a Polaroid of us playing wi...

Here are some of Granddad's old tools. Mom and Dad mounted these on a board from one of the Etsell sheds some years ago. These tools cou...

Sean and I each brought home one of these Beacon oil lanterns, originally used on the Etsell farm in Virden, Manitoba, and residing at Mom a...

As Sean and I continue to manage Mom's estate, we inevitably come upon connections to our family's past. I took this framed certific...

  I came upon this post on r/1980s on Reddit just now, and I thought "Wow, this looks just like Grandma's place did in the 1980s. H...