CANTON – Long-time Canton resident Peter Van de Water has just published “This Is What I Thought At The Time,” a collection of his essays originally published in the St. Lawrence Plaindealer from 2000 to 2006.

The book also includes illustrations by his grandson, Jay Van de Water Kepes, a junior at Canton Central School.

The essays cover a variety of topics, from “Life on the Farm” and “Politics” to “Environment” and “Modern Society.” They originally appeared as part of the Plaindealer column “Rural Living II,” named after the “Rural Living” column his father, John, had written in previous years for the Watertown Daily Times.

Peter Van de Water, a retired St. Lawrence University administrator, says he stopped writing the column in 2006 because “I found myself increasingly upset by our nation’s course and feared that continued columns, some necessarily acerbic, would cause me to be shunned by a good half of my lifetime Canton friends.”

The book is available at The Brewer Bookstore at SLU, TAUNY, St. Lawrence County Historical Association, Coakley Ace Hardware and The Pear Tree.

It was printed by Commercial Press of Canton.