Oakville is a town of 214 000 people and is a part of the Greater Toronto Area. The famous Glen Abbey Golf Course is located here. It was designed by Jack Nicklaus and has hosted 30 Canadian Open since it opened in 1977. You can also find Golf Canada and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame here. In 2018 the owner of Glen Abbey planned to demolish the course and build residential and commercial properties. The owners withdrew their plan following objections from citizens and the municipal government. 

The sender is actually from Brazil but now makes her home in Swansboro. Cabo Frio is a beach town she visited often when she lived in Brazil. Swansboro is a town of 3800 people. In 2018, Swansboro was among the hardest hit cities by Hurricane Florence. About 77 cm of rain fell on the city during the hurricane.  Otway Burns was born in Swansboro around 1775. He went on to become a privateer during the War of 1812. He captained the Snap Dragon . Their first prize was a British merchant ship that was armed with 14 cannons. Burns had many encounters of sailing away from British warships and also took several ships as prizes.  After the war, Burns went into business, using much of the wealth he earned as a privateer to get started. He started a shipbuilding business in Swansboro. His company built Prometheus , the first steamboat in North Carolina, which operated on the Cape Fear River. He built two more steamboats, the Warrior and the Henry .  1821 he was elected to represen...

Great card from Lucie in the Czech Republic. This art was created by Petr Vaclavek. Čečelice is located in north central Czech Republic and has about 700 people. 

I love these type of cards! The sender is from McMinnville, which is located in the Willamette Valley and along the Yamhill River. It is home to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, which houses the Spruce Goose (Hughes H-4 Hercules ), Howard Hughes' flying boat. He built a prototype and wanted to utilize it as a Trans-Atlantic transport plane during World War II. It was completed in time. However, on 2 November 1947, the plane made one brief flight The plane was made from birch wood using the Duramold process. Wartime restrictions on aluminum, and concerns about the weight of the craft were cited for using wood. Critics gave it the name Spruce Goose , but mechanics allegedly gave it the nickname Birch Bitch . The plane was designed to carry 68 000 kg, or 750 fully equiped soldiers, or two 30 ton M4 Sherman tanks.  The Hughes H-4 Hercules would be manned by a crew of 3, be almost 67 m long, and have a wingspan of 98 m. It's empty weight was almost 114 000 kg. Twenty-eight ...

The sender is a self admitted cat lady. She has five and works at a cat only vet.  She lives in Pullman, which is located in south-east Washington. The original name was Three Forks, but was renamed in 1884 after American industrialist George Pullman.  Pullman is also home to Washington State University, which also happens to be Pullman's biggest employer. Almost 21 000 students attend the campus in Pullman. There are 200 fields of study, including 98 majors, 86 minors, and 140 graduate and professional degrees. In a typical year, Washington State University issues 5900 bachelor's, master's, professional, and doctoral degrees. It has satellite campuses in Spokane, Tri-Cities, Everett, and Vancouver, and also has about 3300 students in their Global Campus/WSU Online.  From 1890 - 1905, it was called Agricultural College, Experiment Station, and School of Science of the State of Washington. From 1905-1959, it was known as State College of Washington.  The Washington St...

Beautiful sunset card on the beach. I don't know if this is of a lake or ocean in or around Finland, or a card the sender picked up while on vacation. I've written about Espoo before. Espoo is home to Kiekko-Espoo, a Finnish professional hockey club. The men's team plays in the Mestis, the second tier of men's professional hockey in Finland, while the women play in the Naisten Liiga, the highest league for women's professional hockey.  The men won the Mestis championship in 2022-23, finished third the year after. They have two retired numbers: Jere Lehtinen (#10) and Timo Hirvonen (#33).  Lehtinen went on the the National Hockey League and played with the Dallas Stars for 15 seasons. Hirvonen played a majority of his career with Kiekko-Espoo, including with the junior team.  The women's side has won 16 Naisten Liiga titles (Aurora Borealis Cup) since 1982.          

A nice piece of street art from Hamilton, Ontario. The sender is a student and sometimes actor. This card was sent in July of 2023 and he says it is hot, but luckily they have access to a Great Lake to cool down! Hamilton is located about 45 km south of Toronto and is a part of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (7.3 million people). Hamilton itself has 570 000 of those people.  Steel and heavy manufacturing were a bit part of the economy up to the 2010s, when the city began to shift towards a service sector (health and sciences). Hamilton was known as "Steeltown" or "the Pittsburgh of the North" for a long time.  McMaster University is found here and is ranked the 4th best university in Canada, and 69th best in the world by Times Higher Education Rankings (2021).  Some famous Hamiltonians include Karen Kain (ballerina), Jean Adair (actor), Graham Greene (actor), Jason Jones (comedian and correspondent for The Daily Show ), Eugene Levy (comedian - SCTV, Schitt...

This card is a part of a series called Famous Dutch Sayings . In this one the card translates to talking about cows and calves , which means "talking about all kinds of unimportant things." Venray is a town and a part of the municipality of Venray, which consists of 14 towns. I think a municipality in the NEtherlands is similar to a county in Canada. Most of the people in this municipality, 30 000 of the 44 000 of them, live in Venray (town). Venray is home to the St. Peter ad Vincula Church. It hosts one of the largest medieval collections of wooden sculptures that survived the iconoclasm (destruction of icons) of the protestant reformation in the Netherlands. The church was built in the 1400s in the gothic style. It was heavily damaged in World War II and has since been rebuilt. Venray was the site of many battles in late World War II. The Battle of Overloon was the largest and was the biggest tank battle between the Germans and Allies in October of 1944. The Germans lost 6...

The sender also works in middle school/junior high, like me. He is a councillor, which, in my opinion, is one of the harder jobs in a junior high. The problems that middle schoolers either have, or perceive to have, is outstanding, and in some cases, heartbreaking. Kudos to the sender for being a councillor!  Crystal Lake is a small city of about 40 000 people located about 72 km north west of Chicago. It is considered to be a part of the Chicago Metropolitan Area, nicknamed Chicagoland . Chicagoland has almost 10 million people living in an area of 28 000 square km. Crystal Lake is home to the American Terra Cotta Tile and Ceremic Company, which would be of interest to my pottery making mum. It was founded in 1881. It was located just north of Crystal Lake and all the employees came from Crystal Lake. Drain tiles, brick, and architectural items were produced here. It reminds me of Medicine Hat's early history with ceramics. Much of the underground infrastructure in the older parts...

The sender lives in Madrid, but is from Sevilla. The week before she sent this card, she was in Asturias, an autonomous community in northwest Spain. An interesting fact about the area is it has a rich Celtic history. During the Middle Ages, the Asturias today was a part of a larger Kingdom of Asturias. This was founded in 711 by the Visigoth, Pelagius. At the time the Iberian Peninsula was Muslim control. Pelagius defeated the Ummayyad army at the Battle of Covadonga. Many historians considered this battle the beginning of the Reconquista.  The Kingdom of Asturias lasted until 924 when it was incorporated into the Kingdom of León.  As a part of Spain, it became an autonomous community in 1981. This gives Asturias more power over its own healthcare, education, and protection of the environment.  Gijón is the largest city in Asturias with about 270 000 people, with it's second largest city, Oviedo, at 220 000 people as the capital city.  Asturias is one of the be...