G8 comes to good 'ol Huntsville

This is hard to believe. World leaders cruising down Highway 60 in a train of black suburbans ... past my uncle's Macintosh shop, past grandpa's retirement home, past where that restaurant burned down a few years ago.

Good 'ol Claude Doughty -- he's doing a hell of a job!

But still, until the mid-80's, Huntsville was pretty much a backwoods. A pretty plastics factory and two marinas with a fine selection of outboard motor oils. Blackburns landing -- which is now the gentrified centre of the downtown waterfront -- used to be the third marina! Locals still drink at a place called The Moose, because that's what you call a place that serves beer in Canada.

Sure, Huntsville is evolving. There's a great new theatre, a thriving art scene, great golf, and the plastics plant is even prettier. But it's just astounding that the leaders of the seven largest economies on Earth, plus a guy who speaks Russian, are com'n to "Touch the past ... embrace the future."

I wonder if Obama waterskiis?