Hamilton Spectator

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday March 19, 2016) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It was getting late and she, my 12-year-old, sat on the couch and looked into the nothingness and pulled from the air a comment as plain and profound as any. "You know," she said, "People don't know how good they have it." This is what happens when you live in Africa. You see things. Life. People. Suffering. Death sometimes. You get perspective. "They don't know," Liz said. "People don't know." Canadians don't know. This is what she said.

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, March 3, 2016) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Is this you? Democracy? It's me, Africa, calling. Can we talk? About us? About our relationship? I mean, are you still interested?

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, February 13, 2016) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It was over lunch in Dundas with my sister, somewhere between the spring rolls and the coconut shrimp, when the question came without any hint to suggest this would be one of those ‘aha’ moments that can be unpacked and looked at and handled for a lifetime. “So of all the places you’ve been,” she asked, “what’s your favourite?” I might have said Paris or Berlin or Seoul, or maybe Amsterdam or London or Istanbul, or maybe somewhere in the Mid-East or Africa ...

(The Hamilton Spectator - Monday, February 1, 2016) It's 2049 and I'm an old man. I've made my decision. (At least I thought I made it.) It's for release. I've been given a choice in a pleasant manner for an injection or capsules. Soon this will all be over, another release into elsewhere, into eternity. They're out there, opinion polls on this procedure, on "release," what in your day was called "doctor-assisted suicide." Apparently most people are in favour. You have to wonder, though, about the questions.

(The Hamilton Spectator - Monday, January 4, 2016) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It was evening and dark and dozens of voices, mostly African, by candlelight and under bright stars, were singing carols in front of our long-time East African home. It was a moment to reflect on the days ending 2015, and a moment, also, when I was asked to say a word. “So where does everyone go at Christmas?” I asked the kids more than anyone. “Home!” they yelled into the night air.

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, December 5, 2015) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ I am not Catholic. And, like you, I have my images of fatherhood. The better ones have more to do with the holiness of, say, my boy with a ball and a catching glove on our sun-filled front lawn than with the Holy Father coming to visit.

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, November 7, 2015) ISTANBUL, Turkey ✦ This starts in Hamilton where I was driving to my local polling station amidst dead leaves blowing everywhere, as hard as the winds of political change. It was the first time in 14 years I was around in the fall to see the trees lose their lifeblood, a moment in time, even as we all, after our simple X on a paper put in a cardboard box, watched change blow into Ottawa.

(The Hamilton Spectator, Saturday, September 26, 2015) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ Our dog, Zak, is a fine-looking German shepherd with a deep bark and a good name. (I mean, if your name is all you can ever fully own, surely that's true for dogs too.) He's wary of strangers and, I suspect, would give his life if called to. He has a funny relationship with his food, never uses his doghouse, (preferring our back door), and loves rolling in the morning dew.

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, August 29, 2015) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ If you were a lion you’d have little in common with any little girl, unless it’s the summer of 2015 when you could both die horrible deaths on the other side of the ocean and people on this side would know.

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, July 25, 2015) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ The last time I peed in a bottle, my doctor looked it over, then looked me over, took my blood pressure and finally said, “Good God, man! How in the world do you manage to do it?” He told me that he thought I’d live to be 100, and then, if I remember correctly, (which I don’t always, anymore), he said something about putting a large poster of me in his clinic (or was it on the front of the building?) to encourage others of my, uh, vintage. I think that’s what he said, anyway.

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, June 27, 2015) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ My youngest daughter, Hannah, is a cool girl who loves water, makes friends easily and puts lots of maple syrup on her pancakes. She laughs more than I do, often from a deep and hearty place. She likes the fact that her name – which in the original Hebrew means “gracious” or “God’s gift to the world” – is spelled the same forwards and back. Canada is cool too. It makes fine maple syrup and, as far as countries go, laughs more than many.

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, June 6, 2015) CHARLESTON, S.C. ✦ We're in the ocean, waves crashing at our knees, salt on our lips, my daughter and me and all these poets in my head. My daughter (today she turns 12) laughs and dances and spins in circles and says, "No, Daddy, don't take any more pictures. Just come and run with me. Enjoy the moment."

(Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, May 2, 2015) DACHAU, GERMANY ✦ I may be a ghost you don’t even believe exists, but before I get there let me tell you about this scene in the Arthur Miller play “Incident at Vichy,” where there’s a well-to-do professional, (like I was when I lived), standing before the Nazi authority now in town. The man, dignified with degrees and references and these sorts of things, presents what he has to the Nazi who then asks, “Is this all you have?” The man nods. “Good,” says the Nazi, throwing it all into the garbage. “Now you have nothing.”

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, April 4, 2015) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ This is about two friends, two neighbours, some hard math (if not hard truth) and a dead musician.

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, February 21, 2015) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ He was Swiss and we were talking over coffee and he said he’d just read my story about Canada’s new look at assisted suicide. He spoke as if I’d written on this, which I had not, or maybe he called it my story simply because I’m Canadian. He said he didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Europe, after all, liberated itself from any shameful baggage on assisted suicide long ago. If you want to die, he explained, you can easily go to places and doctors for help.