Hamilton Spectator

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.

There are always gentle and innocent ways to have your heart ripped open. One way is to talk to someone who may or may not be alive the next time you think of them. In this case you’re talking with Paul, hands-free, on the road. It’s a sunny June day and there’s no cost, talking all the way to Uganda. It’s 21st-century living.

It’s a happy-enough moment of me and the children in this photo from Father’s Day 10 years ago. But today’s thoughts are about grieving as much as anything. Because it was just another morning with the sun established in the sky when the children’s mother, leaving the house, said what she did. “All our fathers,” is all she said. Her eyes welled up while she hugged me. Her broken

The sunny news from around here is that I recently drove up a regional road with the three Chumbuckets, that is my three teens, to get their COVID jabs. We didn’t see any hitchhikers. Yeah, yeah, who hitchhikes anymore? Still, I like to keep an eye, you know? One summer day – Child No. 1 was with me – we did help one, a middle-aged woman who clamoured into our vehicle with her

Today let’s imagine you’re a Wall Street lawyer. Your towering New York office overlooks the Statue of Liberty. You’re high powered, enjoy your colleagues, and like asking those lawyer-like “what if” questions. You’re successful. What would ever make you leave? While you think about that, let’s travel to the Liverpool bar where thousands of Brits recently celebrated without