Happy Canada Day 150!

It is Canada’s 150^th birthday today! As with most Canadians we are spending the day with family.

Sharon and I are in Regina. Our son, Jonathan, and daughter-in-law, Lauren, have joined us. The sun is shining and the temperature is in the mid-20’s C.

We spent part of the morning walking through a market featuring local artisans, farmers and food stalls.

We left with a baby sweater, a bag of locally grown herb market and sea salt and lime flavoured dried crunchy peas, a small bag of carrots, a bottle of mead, small bottles of mango salsa and regular salsa and a small bag of new potatoes. It is a good thing we were not there longer or we would not have been able to carry everything. I am a willing consumer at local markets.

This afternoon I am writing this post while some shopping is under way.

After a mid-afternoon meal we are headed to Mosaic Stadium for the first regular season home game in the new stadium for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. I will be in the pressbox as I start my 40^th season as a sports reporter.

If we have enough energy we may go to the Legislative Buildings to watch the fireworks tonight. With our long summer days the fireworks are scheduled for 10:30.

It is a good Canada Day for us. I know everything is far from perfect in our land. Indigenous Canadians see little to celebrate. At the same time I love Canada and am proud to be Canadian.

I want to close by marking a transition in the book blogging world today for Canada. After 10 years John Mutford of the Book Mine Set blog steps down from running the annual Canadian Book Challenge. It has been a great effort on his part to host the Challenge for Canadian books.

In a wonderfully quirky Canadian approach the annual Challenge runs from Canada Day to Canada Day.

I participated in the blog again this year and am glad to say I met the Challenge of reading 13 Canadian books during the year. My final total was 16 books and I will be posting about the Challenge shortly.

John posted some interesting stats on the Challenge:

- We've read and reviewed a total of 584 books!

- The grand total for all 10 years combined is 7,616

- Of the 25 people who signed o, 18 people finished

- Irene for the 3rd year in a row, read the most with a whopping 242 (again beating her old record)

- Margaret Atwood, no surprises here, had the most books read (14)

- There was a tie for the most read boo: Alan Bradley's Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'D  and Shari Lapena's The Couple Next Door each had 5 

I appreciate and admire John for his dedication to a project devoted to books, bloggers and readers.

I am glad to report the Challenge will be continued by Melwyk at her blog. I will be signing up shortly. 

Happy Canada Day everyone!