Song of the Bees and Sparky: Chapter Three

Photo credit: Kevan MacRow - Wolfe Island Bees

Bees featured prominently in the events of the past week. First, I received the above bee-filled photo from my sister. It was taken by her newlywed husband and chosen by the Kingston Weather Network as a wallpaper photo. It's now my wallpaper at work.

Second, on Thursday afternoon, I held another "branch day" for my staff. We did something useful last time, but this time we just had fun for a couple of hours running around on a phone-app-supported wild goose chase/scavenger hunt. 

One of the tasks to accomplish for points and record in a smart phone photo was "perform a music concert in a public square."

A member of my team is a gifted musician, so, while the rest of us goofed around making a dog leash and collar out of plastic bags, he wrote a song - in five minutes. The tune was kind of a cross between John Denver's "Country Roads" and "Yellow Rose of Texas." The lyrics were:

Oh it's branch day in the forest
All the buds are on the trees
The only thing that's missing is all the friendly bees
Where have they gone, I don't know where
O tell me tell me please
Please Mr. Monsanto,
Where's our friendly bees?

The song writer also happened to have his guitar with him, so, we stood on the north east corner of University and College and sang our guts out. In the photo, the crowds assembled to cross the street appeared to have assembled to listen to us. Good enough. We got our points.


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Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Chapter Three 

Sparky here. This is Chapter Three of my story about how Gerry Ringbold met his untimely end. The story starts here.

The incredible coincidence of the place where Gerry's blistered corpse was found was lost on no one. Headlines declared "poetic justice" or noted the irony "Gerry Ringbold: Career Birth and Mysterious Death in the Thompson Gardens."  

That last headline was for a kind of obituary/personal remembrance by a local reporter - a guy named Bob Harrison - who had made his career writing about Gerry. 

The obituary said Gerry was born, raised and educated in the same city where he died. An only child, Gerry was orphaned at the age of twenty when his parents perished in a car crash. He got his law degree when he was twenty three and got called to the bar two years after that. Gerry never married, didn't live with anyone and never had any kids that he admitted to. 

Gerry's epic five-year legal battle against the Peony MacDonald Chester Foundation was what made him a household name and gave him a ticket to win municipal elections, which he did. 

But when he died, in spite of his public profile, Gerry did not seem to have anyone who cared that he was dead except perhaps Bob Harrison, whose career as a reporter may also have been over. There were no notices for a funeral service. There were no fond memories of Gerry posted on a funeral home web site guest book that I could find anywhere. 

Peony MacDonald Chester on the other hand - the woman whose endowment to the Thompson Garden Gerry so ferociously contested - her passing was a major public event.  Literally thousands of people attended her funeral in 2001. City flags flew at half mast and the Mayor declared an official day of mourning. 

I found all these details researching on the Internet. But, to dig into the full story of Peony MacDonald Chester, who was born on July 1, 1900 and who died, in another incredible coincidence, on September 11, 2001, I had to go to the library and look at microfilm of old newspapers.

If you want to figure out the death of Gerry Ringbold, you need to know about the life of Peony Chester (nee MacDonald).    


You can read Chapter Four here.

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Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen