General interests

Photography - Bill has been known to take many pictures of almost anything and has quite a collection of albums, slides and digital pictures. He is still a believer in film, using several old Canon AE-1 Program cameras but security problems at airports have made it necessary to avoid film when traveling. With a new digital camera (Canon Powershot A700) he now takes twice as many pictures but fewer than 30% ever get printed. Over 3000 pictures were taken on the last two trips. You can check out some of these in our picture gallery.

Travel - Being retired means that we can travel just about anywhere. Our favourite area is Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies. Puerto Vallarta, Mexico is our favourite resort destination as we have a timeshare at the Villa del Palmar. Since retirement we have travelled to England, Cuba, the Caribbean on three cruises, Mexico, parts of the western United States (Arizona, Utah, etc.), British Columbia, Costa Rica, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, Alaska with Holland America and the Panama Canal with Celebrity Cruises. We also enjoy using our 5th wheel trailer but so far have only used it for short trips around the province.

Antique tractors - Bill and his brother Brian have taken on the task of restoring a number of antique tractors from the 1940's and 50's. They completed a 1948 Farmall Cub in 2005, a 1949 McCormick W-6 in 2006 and are now working on a 1944 Farmall H. Two International W-400s, a Farmall Super A, another 1948 Cub, a 1941 Farmall H, a 1946 McCormick Deering W6 and a 1937 McCormick Deering W30 round out the collection to complete in the next few years. There may be others added to the collection as the years go by.

Collecting Lilliput Lane Cottages. The list keeps getting longer and longer. We have run out of display space in our new house.

Computers We are avid Macintosh users. There is no other way. Bill owns a G4 tower (1.25GHz) with 17" cinema display, a 7 year old Power Mac 8600 (with G4 upgrade card) hooked up to a laser printer, a SCSI scanner, and a Firewire burner, and an older clamshell (toilet seat) iBook 300. Laura has an iBook 800 and has access to an older G3 powerbook (Wallstreet). In the house we also have an old Mac Plus (non-working) and an original Powerbook 100 (also non-working).

Genealogy Laura has taken family tree research to a new level. She has over 14 000 names entered into Reunion, the best genealogy program available for any computer system. You can check out some of the names she is researching by checking out her genealogy page.