Newspaper columns

Finding joy in the hidden: a Christmas reflection on humility and love

Sitting on our home’s front window ledge these days is a simple sign that says, “Noel.” A
nativity scene is carved inside the letter O. I found it in a country store. The modest window in a window isn’t much. Except it is. This is how it goes with things hidden
in plain view.

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Of Kennedy and kings and power grabs

Thinking today about kings and politics, let’s turn to John F. Kennedy along with Mr. Ashley, who taught me high school history. It’s JFK today because November 22 is the day he was assassinated. That was 1963, but the American was one of those people who spoke deeper into time

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Just swing for the fences

If you ever find yourself on the other side of the American border without knowing exactly what to do about this, my advice is to get to Cooperstown, in Upstate New York, the birthplace of baseball and where you can hang around with baseball ghosts. Hockey, of course, has its ghosts skating around, like in Nova

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Reflecting on the resilience of Indigenous people

I recently sat in a coffee shop across from a man I’ll call Adam. Adam, as in the beginning when that voice, that song, said let there be something beautiful and grand like light and earth and then Adam, that name meaning “Of the earth.” Then let there be Smith and al-Masri and

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Finding meaning in the harshness of life

Thanksgiving is a good time to be reminded that some of our coolest connections can be with random people. I had one recently during an unplanned walk at Princess Point. That’s where I met Michael. I’d stopped to sit in one of those red Muskoka chairs placed by

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We’re all starving beggars in need of the same bread

Not to bum you out, but before in a minute we flip the calendar back to John F. Kennedy, let’s recognize September as a month of particular sadness. The deaths of public figures like Ken Dryden and Robert Redford and certainly Charlie Kirk remind us of our mortality, how in a

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You can’t be protected from life itself

Today’s offering is about jumping boy. He’s the skinny, red-blooded, fun-loving young man I saw while recently taking an otherwise aimless summer stroll along the pier in Port Dover. I happened to pass this boy, a stranger, at just the right moment to discreetly snap an unlikely

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