When was the last time my 'day planner' was so free of engagements as it is this week? This, not late December, must be 'the holidays'. As Louis XVI recorded in his 1789 diary at Versailles on the day the Bastille was stormed in Paris, "Rien".

Nonetheless, this first week of August is a crowded one in history. On 1 August, 1914 Germany declared war on Russia with fateful consequences for both countries. On 2 August, Hannibal of Carthage defeated the Romans at in a decisive battle at Cannae in 216 B.C and on that day in 1704 (old style calendar which was 11 days behind the European calendar) ) John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, won the Battle of Blenheim against the forces of Louis XIV.

On 4 August 95 years ago Great Britain and its Empire declared war on Germany which had violated the neutrality of Belgium On 5 August, 1963 the U.S.A., Britain and the U.S.S.R. signed a nuclear test ban treaty but the world remembers which is the only country ever to drop an atomic bomb on another. Did that defeat Japan or was it the previous day's Russian entrance into the war in the Pacific?

And so history goes, written always by those who 'win'. "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow", says Colm Feore as Macbeth at Stratford this year, "creeps in this petty pace from day to day . . . and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death". Each generation casts the same shadow over "the peace that should always be", as the song says.

What Barbara Tuchman's 1962 book called "The Guns of August" are still in position throughout the world. Pete Seeger asked, "When will they ever learn"? Those who plan wars but do not expect to die in them aver, paradoxically, that we must fight endless wars to ensure endless peace.

This onetime history teacher has in the course of a lifetime moved from Toronto to New York to Britain, to Montréal to Dufferin County. Too many books, records (both kinds) and other things now fondly remembered have been jettisoned along the way. Much else has been retained among one's souvenirs. . Some may remember that maudlin old song:

There's nothing left for me of

days that used to be; There's just a memory among

my souvenirs.

Some letters tied in blue, a

photograph or two.

I see a rose from you among

my souvenirs.

It gets worse until it ends. 'I find as broken heart among my souvenirs"

Young in spirit as I see myself but not as those see who think senescence sets in by age 65, those lyrics do make a point because, you see, I do have that box of old letters most of which I am not yet ready to have my children, let alone grandchildren, read, viz. those evidences that "I've had a love of my own". There are 40 or so diaries, the snapshots, the kodachrome slides and the scrapbook.

The latter is an unwieldy volume. I learned 'scrapbooking' from both parents and grandparents.

The oldest volumes contained newspaper cuttings about the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Others reported the death of George V, the abdication of Edward VIII and both the coronation and the death of George VI. Newspaper accounts of weddings, my own included, from the days when such events were reported in detail (The bride wore .. . . and was attended by . . . ) , some of my teen-age columns from the West Toronto Weekly.

There is a sheaf of my schoolboy poetry. One is a sonnet from many years before men saw this planet from space. It is entitled "Written on the Humber Bridge". Wordsworth's influence is evident.

Day's ending nigh! Now all

about the span The westward flow of thousands

from the heart Of the great city passes by.

They part To firesides with homely joys

their goal. Home, peace. - the bulwarks

of a nation's soul.

In seas of silent darkness so

profound, The mirrored lights of Earth in

stars abound,

Each star a jewel set there

since time untold.. But how do they our restless

orb behold Who in those far-off worlds

beyond the sun May dwell where ever- drifting

planets run?

See they by unlit hours our

troubled plight? Are we a wondrous brightness

in their sky Or darkness midst the hea'nly

chain of light?

Lois and I kept files of our children's report cards, art work and notes to us.

There were also the newspapers of the days on which each of them was born.

They were among our souvenirs for many years and then were presented to them when they were older.

Not all of my souvenirs are in books or filing envelopes. Some are framed. Others rest in drawers.

There is a small stone taken from "our river", painted in water colour by a child and inscribed "For you, Grandpa". Or a longago Father's Day card with three juvenile signatures on it. Such things are preserved as is a baptismal certificate or as that fragment of Pentelic marble that fell from the frieze of the Parthenon.

I see in a scrapbook a four penny London Transport ticket stub that took me from Knightsbridge to the Piccadilly tube station where, it is said, if one could wait long enough everyone in the world would pass by. A 6d pass once admitted me to the tower of the University Church of St Mary in Oxford. A dance programme from a school 'Formal' lists the girls who were my partners that evening. We were all about 17.

None of us would recognise another now. Nor are there such things as dance programmes anymore.

In a free week I have the time to look again at all that 'stuff.. Regrets? I have a few.