The girls at Orangeville Insurance have made more than a few cracks in the glass ceiling of a maledominated business. The gender factor still operates in their hesitation to adopt the aggressive tactics of some of their male competitors but they are navigating successfully the stormy waters of a changing industry and are the agency of choice for women who prefer to negotiate and argue with other women as well as for men who appreciate their more personal approach in what has become a cut-throat market.

"Les girls' at 11 Mill Street sponsored balloon rides at the county town's recent fair and raised $500 for Hospice Dufferin, the support community for those who battle life threatening diagnoses. Sooner or later such crises occur in most families. As Eleanor Bahr, a former Dufferiner now living in British Columbia, said in the title of a book published some years ago, We're All in This Together".

On a cloudless Saturday morning, 30 August, I stood with others in a grassy field to watch a five-passenger balloon huff and puff into action preparatory to flights over the hills of Hockley. Its master told me that 10,000 feet was its maximum altitude and one hour the longest its fuel tanks would keep it aloft. I reminded him that before the Wright brothers gave us wings in 1908 manned balloons had long been used, especially for military reconnaissance and for aerial photography. But why, I asked, was his craft labelled in large white letters AVIVA? We once had a cabinet minister by that name. Was it hot air that it had in common with politicians?

The answer was that Aviva is an umbrella name for a number of formerly unassociated insurance firms (Pilot, for instance) that now share a common identity. Aviva was chosen because it has a common inter-language pronunciation and because it is spelled the same way forwards and backwards. It is a palindrome.

I reminded him that, according to the well-known Hebrew legend, a palindromic statement, the letters of which read the same way forwards and backwards, may have been the first human greeting. When Adam found that he had a female companion, to help him with the care of a rather large estate, did he approach her and say "Madam, I'm Adam"? Not to be outdone, she probably extended her hand and said "Eve".

Just in passing, although the newspaper columnists have not commented on it, the Greek word 'palin', the name of a prominent conservative U.S. candidate, means 'backwards' or 'again'. 'More of the same', as Barry, Joe and Hilary might say? Is there a hidden warning there despite the high school yearbook look and the lipstick?

Just 100 years ago as the canal was being built through the Isthmus of Panama from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the chief engineer of the project was John F. Walton. Writing about him, a clever journalist coined the phrase "A man, a plan, a canal, Panama". Barring the commas, it reads the same way in both directions.

So far, the longest palindrome on record is the anonymous note of a weight watcher to his/her physician's recommended vegetable diet. It reads "Doc, note, I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod". Not immortal words, to be sure, but turn the 50 letter protest end for end and marvel.

The earliest recorded palindrome in our language is attributed to John Taylor, a 17th Century poet. What seems to be a minor flaw is easily explained. He wrote, "Lewd I did live, evil did I dwel". At the time, the word 'dwell' had only one 'l'. So, any objection is overruled. A similar current variation is that of a Florida jeweller of my acquaintance who persists in styling herself a one-l 'jeweler. I tell her that that reminds me of the Ogden Nash doggerel, "A one-l lama is a priest; a two-l llama is a beast; a 3-l lama is a fire".

There are those who advise against alcoholic 'nightcaps', drinks too soon before bedtime. Some genius with words, commenting on how Sir Robert Peel's imbibing of Caribbean rum with a beer chaser did not impair the slumbers of His Majesty's chief minister, said, "Peel's lager on red rum did murder no regal sleep". Prime ministers, however secretive and dictatorial, are not regal but the palindrome is, at least, a capital one.

Palindromes are also known as sotadics. Sotades, a Greek poet of the 3rd Century B.C., contrived many a clever, albeit smutty, one. His writing landed him in jail in a society that was not yet as permissive as is ours. To attempt to quote him in Greek would be both pedantic and pointless here. The record says that he escaped from prison but was recaptured, locked into a leaden chest and dropped into the sea before he could plead his right to freedom of speech. From one point of view, he lived in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Napoleon Bonaparte also escaped from his prison on the island of Elba. After further incarceration on St. Helena he ended up in a catafalque in Les Invalides in Paris where he is much visited. One rather doubts t hat he was the author of the memoir "Able was I ere saw I Elba". St. Helena, of course, defies 'palindromisation'. It would be like trying to find something to rhyme with 'orange'

No palindromes have yet been ascribed to Sir Winston Churchill but Germany's Prince Otto von Bismarck is said to have opined, "I, man, am regal. A German am I". Did that really come from the Iron Chancellor or was it worked out in the club rooms of the Athenaeum? Who knows where palindromes actually come from? But one of them should be posted in all animal hospital waiting rooms. "Step on no pets".

A Puritan moralist is said to have claimed that "Dennis and Edna sinned". Whether they did or not, their "being an item" inspired a good palindrome. And the fellow who charged them defended himself palindromically with "Live on evasions? No, I save no evil".