There is a group of 30 or so people who call themselves the Happy Hikers. Daughter Susan is one of them.

Susan wanted to show me one of the areas they walk through, so we drove down to the beach in the vicinity of Hutch's diner.

By golly, we found a place to put up our folding chairs, and I am sure it was close to the place where my Vera and I got engaged all those years ago.

Now there is a very smooth, five-yards-wide bicycling, walking, running, in-line skating path that runs along the lakeshore all the way to the lift-bridge at the canal. Happy Hikers use the pathway for some hikes.

Folks on in-line skates go swiftly and silently. But when I was a boy in the North End, we used roller skates that had four steel wheels that made a racket you could hear a block away.

You tightened those old-time skates onto the soles of your shoes with a key and added an ankle strap to keep them on. Then you had to work hard to get any speed up.

While Susan and I were enjoying the scenery and the speeding skaters, Susan said: "Look at this lovely bird."

Here, coming close, was a young man holding a pure white cockatoo. When it spoke to us, in perfect English, it opened its brilliant yellow head-crest and, looking straight at me, said, "What's that?"

The owner told us that his bird's name was Barney, that he was 27 years old and could live to 75. He has willed Barney to his son.

When it was time to leave, Barney's owner told the bird, "Say goodbye, Barney!"

Barney answered, "Say goodbye Barney!"

Goodbye, Barney.

Ted Wilcox is a lifetime Hamiltonian with a passion for sports, community and, most of all, family.