Pauline Gedge is a Canadian fiction writer of ancient history. Most of her books are about ancient Egypt. But, the book I most remember is the very first of her books I ever read: The Eagle and the Raven. It was a book about the British Queen Boudicca. At that time I just had to know more about this ancient Queen who commanded an army and sacked a city. Her husband was killed, her daughters molested and yet Boudicca fought on. Rome had to step up it's game to defeat the Celtic Queen.

The book is about other important people in history at that time and place. Caradoc, the leader of another British tribe and the soldiers and leaders sent from Rome too. I do remember the character of Caradoc (I even got a little fictional crush on him while reading the book). None of the others can hold a candle to Boudicca. She stayed with me and has never stopped being an interest of mine every since I first read her story in Pauline Gedge's book.

But, that is all ancient history. Boudicca, Caradoc and the others are all long dead. I wish the book had become a series of books as Pauline has done with her books about people and times in ancient Egypt, but it didn't turn out that way (so far).

If you like reading historical fiction I highly suggest you pick up The Eagle and the Raven. It was an epic story. I read it when I was still a school girl and then read it again 30 years later and just found more to love about it.

Chocolate in a colourful candy shell - not to be confused with M&Ms, Smarties are a Canadian candy, often available in the chocolate bar section. I could not find Smarties in the US when I lived there. They were sadly missed. Not just Smarties of course, but Smarties were on my top ten list of missed things at the time.

This picture is Smartie wallpaper. No matter how far technology has come you still can not email Smarties to family and friends. I would have done it if there was a chance it would have worked.

I grew up as the oldest in a family of four children. My Mother was very popular the day she came up with the idea of a Smartie Party. She brought home a huge (we were kids, it likely seemed a lot bigger then) bag of Smarties from the bulk food store. (It was the first bulk food store we had in our area so it was already a place of great wonders and wonderful things). My Mom thought up games where we guessed how many red Smarties she had under a cup. Or, which colour of Smartie there were four of when she poured a bunch of them out of the bag. Of course, the prize for all the games were.... Smarties! So everyone won and we shared with my littlest sister who wasn't so great at math yet.

Unlike the US M&Ms, Smarties will leave colour on your hands. But, that was not a problem for a pack of kids. We liked to see how many colours we could wear and who could have the best stain before the Smarties melted. Another great Smartie thing was to keep them in your mouth until the candy softened and the chocolate centre was mushy, it was like liquid, gooey chocolate goodness.

Now, when I think of Smarties, I mostly remember them in a big puddle of colours from the days of those Smarties Parties.

When you eat your Smarties do you eat the red ones last?

Currently Metropolitan Toronto includes a lot of other small cities and towns. Metropolitan Toronto now reaches out to areas beyond the original borders and far beyond it's own city limits. This large mass of area has become known as The Greater Toronto Area - the GTA for short.

I grew up in a small town which was on the edge of the big city of Toronto. When I was still a kid the town was called Port Union. By the time I was in high school our town of Port Union had become part of Scarborough, absorbed into the suburbs of the city of Toronto. Scarborough is the eastern suburbs of Toronto. People sometimes refer to it as Scarberia because it is over an hour's drive from downtown Toronto to the edges of Scarborough.

I never quite liked the loss of identity from our smaller town, forgotten in history. Port Union lost it's place on the map and become a non-town. If you drive out there you can still find one long street named Port Union Road, but that's all you will find remaining from the early days of the area being independent from the suburbs of Toronto.

However, that's how big cities grow. Toronto has grown a lot from the days of being known as York (Muddy York) over 100 years ago.

The GTA combines the regions of the City of Toronto, York, Durham, Peel and Halton.

I don't live in the GTA now. I moved farther north and I live in Simcoe region, just outside the reaches of the northern part of the GTA. Someday this may become absorbed too, but I'm pretty sure that will be far into the future. Not everyone is eager to move farther north after all. Most of the population density seems to be heading east and west of the Toronto area.

The History of the GTA - The MegaCity of Toronto

In 1998 the sprawling suburbs of Toronto: York, North York, East York, Scarborough and Etobicoke became part of the municipality of the city of Toronto. The megacity, The Greater Toronto Area came into being. Toronto became the largest city in Canada and the fifth largest in North America.

The addition of Halton, Peel, York and Durham is unofficial, as far as I can tell. Sometime after the forming of the megacity people began referring to locations by how far they were from Toronto. For instance, if you were thinking to drive out to Richmond Hill from Toronto you decide it's not too far because it's still in the GTA. But, if someone is thinking to drive out to Barrie, they might rethink it. Barrie is outside the GTA, at least another half hour drive.

The whole GTA thing is usually a way of measuring the distance of any place from Toronto. "How far is it, is it still in the GTA?" When you meet people online and think about getting together there is an imaginary line around the GTA and few people want to cross it. If you are in the GTA you think anything outside of the area is too far. If you are outside of the GTA you think about driving through the GTA traffic and usually look elsewhere to meet people.

The Early Bird was the next to go this week. All the fun guys are gone, not much to watch now. Likely I will give a few votes to Mitch but it sure won't be the same show without Mookie and Earl to keep it moving. Seems kind of dead in the water now. Too bad when Bryan Adams is finally! coming to Canadian Idol (next week).

Good luck to Earl. Listen to his songs on MySpace if you want to hear him. One thing for sure, none of the other guys make everyone smile and laugh the way Early does. Though he looks like a goof there really is something great about Earl. If you smile at him you know he would always smile back.

Mookie Morris was eliminated from Canadian Idol this week. I did not expect him to be gone. He was my choice to be the Canadian Idol this year. So I'm surprised and disappointed. Some of the articles about the voting have said Toronto does not vote for the contestants from Toronto. I'm from Toronto originally and maybe it is true. I don't think much about where they are from when I vote. I just vote for those I like. I voted for Mookie, over and over. I really wish he was going to be on next week and the week after, right up to the end.

Toronto Star - Toronto's own Mookie Morris rocks Idol judges - Andrea Gordon (Original link is gone).

Mookie Morris, the easy-going baby in a brood of four, has always been called "the coolest Morris," says his sister Deirdre.

Three weeks ago, Canadian Idol judge Zack Werner called the 18-year-old singer "the coolest guy in the history of the show."

Quite a leap for a kid who started teaching himself to sing and play guitar four years ago, when a broken ankle put his elite AAA hockey season on hold.

Quite an inspiration for zillions of kids banging drums and plucking bass strings in basements all over the GTA.

Morris is one of the remaining nine Idol finalists, including fellow Torontonian Sebastian Pigott, who compete tonight to become one of the top eight.

"Yeah, it's kind of a lot to take in," Morris chuckled over the phone last week between rehearsals.

Nicknamed for former Blue Jay Mookie Wilson's game-winning hit the evening he was born, the teenager (whose real name is Peter) honed his performing skills in garage bands and battle-of the-bands gigs around Toronto. "I must have been in about 10, I can't even remember them all."

After his ankle injury, he gradually eased out of hockey but diverted that same intensity to his music.

His first band was Gong Show, back in Grade 8. They got their start at a concert fundraiser set up by his brother in university. Deirdre Morris, 23, remembers Mookie rocking the house with his version of "Twist and Shout." The college kids went crazy. A woman's undergarment was flung on the stage.

Four years later, when he performed that classic at an Idol audition, judge Jake Gold said: "I really do believe you are a star."

At Northern Secondary School, he was lead singer for Blind Sight, which attracted a loyal following to all-ages events at teen haunts like The Kathedral and Reilly's. He finished his last school credits at City Academy in January and has been devoted to writing music, playing and "just trying to grow up" since then.

He's registered for Concordia University in the fall, but says he'd rather end up following his musical dreams.

His mom, Julie Wang Morris, is still in shock. "These were kids who played in the garage!" she hollers over the phone. His dad plays piano and harmonica, she likes to sing and figures musical genes also came from her parents, who lived in a fishing village in Taiwan. Mookie, who she describes as "remarkably secure in himself," is her only musical child.

She was one of those moms with a minivan who ferried guitars and amplifiers and wannabe rock stars all over the city on Friday and Saturday nights. She was also one of those parents who wasn't too keen on the venues packed with pumped-up adolescents, questionable supervision, and lots of noise and body-slamming.

"I always worried," she says. "But it was their only choice if they wanted to play."

Guitarist Sean Fischer, 19, says Mookie is "a regular dude," kind of shy. "And then once he starts to sing, he completely transforms."

Over six-feet tall, dark-haired, brown-eyed and clad in punky blazers and Ts, his look inspired Idol judge Sass Jordan to once describe him as "Louis Armstrong meets Elvis Costello."

"He has phenomenal presence and soul – you can hear it in his voice," adds his bandmate, drummer Daniel Singer, 19. But audiences love him mostly because "he's true to himself."

That showed up in some of his unusual song choices for Canadian Idol.

Deirdre warned him against "Valerie" by British band The Zutons. Too obscure, she said.

He did it anyway. The judges loved it – it was what prompted Werner's "coolest guy" compliment. And judge Farley Flex praised his understanding of "who you are, why you're here and what you want to do."

"Now I just keep quiet," Dierdre says.

Last week was "a bit of a low point" though, as Mookie describes it. The response to his rendition of David Bowie's little-known "The Man Who Sold the World" didn't overwhelm. He and Pigott were both in the bottom three. The judges noted Toronto isn't voting.

His mom and sister took matters into their own hands. They produced 300 "Vote Mookie" lawn signs, hung a giant banner over a Yonge St. overpass in their neighbourhood. They've organized another "Mookie Night in Canada" tonight at a pub to watch and vote.

Mookie meantime, is revelling in it all, but in his typical laid-back style.

Sure, he wants to win. But his ultimate goal: "just to be happy in life . . . I want to just be able to do music as a job, you know, go on tour, travel the world and record."