From the Niagara Falls Review:
New Brunswick’s Bernie Houle was cold, tired and a little bit wet. He should have been miserable.
Instead, eyes to the sky, he couldn’t stop grinning.
“Seventeen hours of driving to come fly a kite,” he said, yanking the string to his gnarly, nylon creation called Shady. Standing next to him, friend Don Brownridge of Toronto tried getting Petunia off the ground. Once airborne, the two circular kites - “we call them the Spiky Balls,” said Houle - look like weather balloons with attitude.
“It becomes a canvas. It’s just another way of expressing your heart.”
Kites of all shapes and colours will dot the skyline this weekend for the second annual Niagara International Kite Festival. Fliers from as far away as Japan descended on Table Rock Friday to get things started, battling the mist and swirling winds.
From the Niagara Falls Review:
George Stathakis was one strange individual. Born in Greece, he arrived in the United States in 1910 at the age of 26. Working as a short-order cook, he lived in St. Louis for a time before moving to Niagara Falls, N.Y., then Buffalo.
Stathakis was much more than a cook - he was also a self-styled mystic and philosopher, whose writings stated he had actually been born “1,000 years ago on the banks of a river in central Africa called Abraham.” He also maintained he was the first person to stand at the North Pole. While there, he proclaimed himself as “king and master of the Earth and from this summit I am going to rule and direct it.”
Stathakis’s version of his life and his philosophy were detailed in a book he authored entitled “The Mysterious Veil of Humanity Through the Ages.” Much of the book, which was available in both Greek and English, has Stathakis interviewing ancient Greek philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle.
Another of his writings described how, in a previous life, he visited the future site of Niagara Falls: “Walking to the southeast, I arrived where the falls now (stand). They were not formed at that time.”
By the spring of 1930, George Stathakis decided on a bold move - he would go over the Horseshoe Falls in a barrel. He explained his decision by stating such an experience would help him in his search for truth. As he bounced through the rapids and over the falls, he could analyze his emotions and detach his mind philosophically for future meditation. What all this meant was a mystery to most people. Following his plunge, Stathakis was sure plenty of money would flow his way from lectures and newsreels. These funds would finance a new book he was writing. It was to be titled “From the Bosom of Niagara.”
The Buffalo News had a nice write-up about Wayne Newton’s performance at the Fallsview Casino:
You can thank Wayne Newton for Cirque du Soleil. You can thank him for the Celine Dion extravaganza and the Elton John blockbuster. For the Blue Man Group, the theme park explosion and the nightclub and restaurant boom in the City of Sin. You can thank Wayne Newton for all that Las Vegas and its star-studded strip has become.
But I don’t see why you’d want to.
With due respect to the pizzazz of Mr. John’s and Ms. Dion’s shows, there’s a brand of Las Vegas that’s today far removed from the utter showmanship entertainers like Mr. Newton bestowed upon the Nevada oasis in the days of lounge acts and comedy-filled variety shows. It hasn’t been the same since.
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