Cannel

•March 5, 2025•

By Janet Roney

What in the world is Cannel?  Along with gold, silver, and plumbago, Thomas Jefferson wanted Isaac Hill to look for it in central Illinois in 1809-1811.  

I impolitely told you to go look up cannel yourself in a previous visit while I was in a snit over the thought that Hill’s guide was a hermit living in a hollow sycamore tree rather than Simon Kenton, “the greatest guide, hunter, and frontiersman of all time”. Sorry. If you are not one of the sweet souls who actually looked up cannel, cannel is coal.

2015

After the first dream about owning his own wildlife park, James Aikman, an Arthur resident, woke up and told his wife Kelsey. “On the night of October 21, 2013, I had a dream of my wife and I basically owning and running this wildlife drive-through park, so that next morning I told my wife about it, and she looked at me like I was crazy,” recalled Aikman to a full room during an economic luncheon at TnT Pizzeria February 19. “Our first son was going to be born in less than a month. She said, ‘We’ve got that coming up; this is not the time to be talking about this at all.’”