Hamilton Spectator

It’s a night in 1876 and Vincent van Gogh looks outward from his room’s window. In a letter to his brother, Theo, he writes what he sees. “Over those roofs, one single star, but a beautiful large friendly one.”

We thirst. I was reminded of it in a recent email from a Hamilton friend in Nigeria. He shared how during dry season it’s hard to find clean water, whether in towns and cities or for the masses living in bush areas. He said it as plainly as anyone can. “Water is life.” It is. We need water

It was on the streets of Uganda with shoppers scurrying to beat the rain when the masked woman with the colourful umbrella passed me, or I passed her, a moment, like 10 million others, that would already be forgotten if not for my handy phone camera. Later, in Kampala, reading a recent

Today, with Valentine’s rounding the corner, let’s talk about love and insanity. First, under the heading, “Everything I’ve Learned In Life, I’ve Learned From My Teenagers,” let me say that there are never a lack of new and exciting lessons. “You know, Dad,” my eldest said recently. “Don’t

You’re riding on the back of a boda boda, not the safest place on the planet. Paul manoeuvres the motorcycle through some wild traffic while you talk about the school lockdown that’s finally over in this East African nation. “Are you happy?” you ask. “So much,” says Paul, and laughs. It’s a

So here we are in a shiny new year – Happy New Year, by the way – and what comes to mind but the darn cemetery. It’s a fine cemetery, really, historic and beautifully-terraced and a refreshing morning walk. Most mornings I’m there with the dog. There we go through the park, past the rink

I was driving downtown and it was courage as much as joy that came to mind. I’d just driven past a rather unpretentious display with the letters J-O-Y. The O had a nativity scene formed inside. The small, three-letter word was lit in front of a church. It wasn’t much, really.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.