Random notes

• The latest from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography features one of those people who weren't even well known in their own time but still deserve to be in the DCB, in this case Vénérande Robichaud, an Acadian woman who died in 1936 at the age of one hundred, in the home she had lived in all her life, leaving behind among her possessions letters from her grandmother of the same name, a survivor of the deportation of 1755. (The DCB includes her too.)

• I notice that some time recently the little counter in the right-hand column ticked over 1.6 million views since 2010. I have never taken these counts too seriously but I do appreciate all of you who really do view and read.

• April 27th was the two hundred and eighth anniversary of the American attack on what is now Toronto.  No, I had not noticed either, but Andrew Stewart had. He sent this photo of "The Approach," a new painting [only partly shown here] by marine artist Peter Rindlisbacher, depicting the approach of the American forces aboard the fleet of Commodore Isaac Chauncey.