A slow, off-topic morning — mostly off-topic, anyway.

First, legal news from the Federal Court of Appeals in Canada.  Down home in Cape Breton, Glenora Distillery has been making a single-malt whisky, Glen Breton Rare.  It’s a Canadian single malt.

The Scotch Whisky Association has for years tried to prevent Glenora from using the word “glen” in the whisky’s name, apparently believing that people will not understand the words “Canada’s Only,” “Canadian,” and “Canadien” on the bottle.  And miss the maple leaf.

Last week’s decision (reported in my home town paper) rejected the SWA’s contentions, finding the name neither deceptive nor misleading.

Cape Breton Island is sometimes a hardscrabble place.  As Ronnie MacEachern wrote in his song, Go Off on Your Way:

With each sunset, they’ll be leaving
When it rises, some return again
Just one penny for each broken heart
I’d surely be a millionaire

So there was a resonance when I happened across Anna Frater’s poem Dà Rathad (“Two Roads“) with its embrace of where she finds herself:

Ged a tha an rathad air a bheil mi cam
agus tha na clachan a’ gearradh ma chasan,
agus tha dìreadh an leothaid
gam fhàgail gun anail,
chan e an aon rud
a tha misc coimhead romham
latha an dèidh latha.

Although the road I take is crooked
and the stones cut my feet
and climbing the hill
leaves me breathless,
I am not confronted
by the same prospect
day after day.

And, to raise the mood a bit, I listened to Julie Fowlis and Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh in this Gaidhlig (Scottish Gaelic) / Gaelige (Irish Gaelic) blend from the album Dual (the word means “to braid, to twine” in both languages):