She’s a friend, a literary academic who’s learned and gracious, a woman of faith who – while the pandemic continues to spin and dance out there – often foregoes going out. This, in order to protect her vulnerable husband. We talked about the vaccine – she’s fully vaccinated – and about
Anger is the story of 2021 Read More »
Today is a good day to consider the light. Because it’s easy to walk around the light, or through the light, or even in the light while still being oblivious to it. A student of mine recently reminded me. We
I’ve been alive for about 20,000 sunrises, and how many have I really seen? Read More »
Today let’s talk about Holden Caulfield and kids and newspapers, along with reading in general. After all, it’s Reading Week, or at least it’s Reading Week season. Ontario’s universities scatter these weeks at different times through the fall. It’s important. Because, as long as you’re not reading
Read like your life depends on it Read More »
I would be a Leafs fan, I suppose, but when I was seven years old someone put a woolly Montreal Canadiens sweater on me, with the rest of my hockey gear, skates and all, before snapping a Polaroid of me standing in the living room. My allegiance was somehow set. Paul, my best friend, was a Leafs fan. His mother made sandwiches and cookies
Hockey and the tapestry of our lives Read More »
Once again parents are celebrating September and their kids’ return to school, and I, for one, am enjoying the new freedom to reflect more on how to be the world’s worst dad. First, this. The exasperated school principal. I recently watched the poor guy – it’s a thankless job – with his tie and blazer and jowls and arms all flailing and
“Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.” Read More »
It was a recent summer evening and she sat me at the bar because there was space. Before ordering a salad and drink, I lifted my rucksack and a couple of books spilled out. “What are you reading?” I then told her, the waitress, about Philip Roth’s novella “Goodbye Columbus,” about a summer romance that ended in
It’s Sept. 11. And what have we learned? Read More »
My relationship with the bicycle began as a love affair in my backyard on a small, grassy incline that might as well have been the Rockies. I was a boy, the bike was my blue bomber, and you can imagine the rest. Now, starting in Alberta and the Rockies, I’ve been showing Western Canada to my daughter, my eldest. The two of us are covering several provinces, including biking in
The bicycle is the great leveller Read More »
I’ve always seen the face of my Tante Eva as a face of summer. There she is in this photo from some years ago, standing behind my bride and our three Chumbuckets, along with Eva’s friend, Ingrid, who’s holding photos from Eva’s birth in July, 1931. Eva, the newborn, would eventually know war and other sorrow before she’d grow fully into that woman with a kind face.
Tante Eva honours the generations Read More »
