Recent Columns

Here’s a fun fact. “The Sound of Silence,” the hit song by Simon and Garfunkel, has turned 60. Its birthday slipped by somewhat silently (naturally) several weeks ago. It’s a reminder about the importance of silence, how we need it like we need food. Or air.

One day on a mountain pass in Yemen I took a wild photo from behind two beater pickup trucks, two shaky vehicles with too few safety features moving way too many people and household items. It was at a curve on this two-way road when one of the overloaded pickups, incredibly, passed

I woke up this morning and realized that it’s time to run for American president again. I get this urge, like a recurring rash, every four years or so. I’d been at a New York wedding, then kept driving and ended up in Massachusetts. The wedding joined a Canadian and American, like a

I’ll never eat Grace, my dog, for Thanksgiving. And while this seems too wild to even think about, sometimes you can’t state things too clearly in what is the crazy parade of life. In 2024 it was the cats and so-called single cat-ladies getting attention because of kooky

My own view is that misbehaving books are like misbehaving kids. You can banish them to some corner away from others, but that might create a larger distraction. It’s on the radar because today finishes Banned Books Week in the U.S., that neighbour with cultural sway over us. Two

Today let’s talk about motorcycles. And the children in the nearby schoolyard. The ones who run and jump and scream and laugh and do what children do. I hear them when I open the front door. School is back. I wish they all had motorcycles, or at least a long ride on the back

Lately I’ve been thinking about being a billionaire. Billionaires sometimes jump off tall buildings after cutting their kids from the will. Read John Grisham’s novel “The Testament” for more on this. No, the billionaire life isn’t for everyone. When it comes to money and work and these

One day early this summer my teenage son asked to host a party. Friends from camp lived far away, so they’d stay overnight, he explained. How many for the party? “Not many,” he told me. “About 30.” “Uhuh,” I said. “And the overnight? “Not many,” my dear boy repeated. “About 15.”

Today let’s talk about friendship. And hobbits. You know hobbits. Short. Stout. Big, hairy feet. Colourfully-dressed, fun-loving, pipe-smoking lovers of food and drink. Living in the shire in homes with round doors. And courageous, they are, beyond measure. Consider Frodo Baggins and his dangerous journey.

There are few things as enjoyable to me as a good photograph, especially in summer. My eldest recently brought back a fine photo from Paris. She was visiting a childhood friend, a British girl she knew while growing up in Uganda. So there he is, this photographed gentleman, an older

It was a national daily, a letter-to-the-editor, and it said this. Canadians, all of us coast-to-coast, need the Oilers to win the Cup to feel better about ourselves, so we don’t have to stick our sorry Canadian heads in the oven, or the toilet, or some other humiliating place because this is now the hopeless state of things.

In a way we’re all homeless vagabonds, it seems to me, running from one fear or another. In my case, when younger, I ran from home because of issues, and because any young man or woman, even from a fine home, needs to leave

It’s some years ago and my father-in-law, Gerry, is on a train somewhere between St. Thomas and Port Stanley, a Saturday touristy ride for nostalgia as much as anything. There’s a conductor and they laugh and I take a photo. It’s really something, in hindsight, considering that

I once read that if you’re a mother then you have no more claim on humanity than anyone else. I think there’s something to it. Otherwise we’d just idealize motherhood or idolize mothers. I’m also not one of those people who sees a miracle around every corner. But I believe

It was one of those inviting spring days and I said, “Welcome to another day in paradise,” to a carpenter friend who was working out front while the sun shone and while we both knew full-well that paradise will be something else entirely. But, you know, on Earth we take what we can get.