Hamilton Spectator

Today’s fun fact is that 39-year-old Alexander Ovechkin can still fire a puck about 100 mph.No wonder he’s about to amass more goals than anyone in NHL history, even Wayne Gretzky, the Brantford son who played hockey with uncommon skill and grace. Today’s other fun fact is that exactly 26 years ago

Apologies, but today’s offering is on Adolf Hitler. Eighty-six years ago, on March 15, 1939, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. The Second World War started soon after when he couldn’t resist bombing Poland. Nobody knew what to do with the forest fire that was the German Führer.

The fun fact for today, March 1, is that it’s Ron Howard’s birthday. You may know Howard for directing some fine movies. “Apollo 13,” “A Beautiful Mind,” “Frost / Nixon,” are a few that come to mind. Way back, he was Opie from “The Andy Griffith Show.” But for anyone still loving the ‘70s, he's clean-cut Richie

My phone recently showed me one of those photo montages called Memories. Exactly five years earlier, on a January day, someone took a photo of me standing with a gaggle of Ugandan kids holding hockey sticks, gear that I’d previously brought overseas. It was just before COVID. The kids are very happy.

Before I get to New Year’s resolutions, here’s Child #3, Hannah. The other day she was the conversation topic around the table. At my turn I shared what I appreciate about my girl, our girl, the birthday girl. I shared that, like a fun-loving otter, she gets me out of myself.

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. Now silence is something that you may not know

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 American politics.

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.