The Little Blackfly

My blogname is derived from that most infamous of pests: the blackfly. Growing up as we did in Northern Ontario alongside the Abitibi River, it behooved us - thanks to our teacher, Miss Glendenning's not-so-subtle encouragement - to learn Wade Hemsworth's song "the Blackfly". What is wonderful is that Christopher Hinton (National Film Board) used Hemsworth's song to create this marvelous little film. Do enjoy it.

At the same time this brings back memories of what we wore to save our scalps from the pernicious little buggers: fly hats. Now a fly hat was not a thing of beauty but we kids did look kind of cute. You take your standard men's handkerchief (now a rare thing to find) and you tied a knot in the top right and left hand corners. You placed the kerchief on your child's head with these little "rabbit ears" knotted corners at the child's temple then knotted the remaining two corners under his or her chin. It did save most of the scalp but many of us came home with bites running with blood (as blackflies don't seal their bites with anticoagulents the way skitters do) all along the backs of our necks. Ahhhh, the good old days!