Recent Columns

(The UCU Standard - Monday, May 23, 2016) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It was in Canada and we were at a campy lakeside retreat, and it was a beautiful summer day and a gaggle of children were playing outside the large window near where we ate. My daughter, that is my adopted Ugandan daughter, Hannah, looked at me with a tear rolling down her cheek. I asked her what was the matter, and, looking down in shame, she said, “I’m the only black person here.”

Three years ago yesterday the public was invited to a funeral to mourn the death of Tim Bosma. To honor Tim and his memory and to acknowledge the impact his murder has had on the broader community, this is a repeat of a Daily Dad post from that funeral, and another repost, below it, on […]

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, May 20, 2016) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ So it's the middle of the night and my wife walks into the bedroom and says: "There's a mouse in the dishwasher." This is strange even for our household, the sort of announcement that suggests my wife is hallucinating from working way too late, again, or that I'm having one of those dreams.

Past, Present, and Future walk into a bar. It was tense. + There’s no such thing as a self-made man (or woman), no, not even those of us who have a net worth of $10 billion (Mr. Trump) have made it without some help on the way. It’s easy to think otherwise but travel is […]

The one thing that always helps us as a family re-acclimatize to life back in Canada is Save the Mothers’ annual Steps for Change walk. It unfolded in 15 municipalities across North America on Saturday. The kids’ roller blades and bikes and whatever else is needed, after being in Canadian storage for eight months, have […]

ATHENS ✦ I'll never forget the unknown boy and his horrible end, not any more than I'll forget Arash and his eyes on the day we met when the waters of the Mediterranean were cold.

So, it’s Day 5 of our official return to our own home, Day 4 of the kids’ return to school, that is their Canadian school, this, their annual routine here in Hamilton for the next couple of months. Of course, this is long enough to get new clothes (thank God for mothers willing to do […]

It was the other day, since my family’s recent return to Canada, and I was on the massage table (I’ve had a bad back for 30 years), and we were talking about her husband. He has MS and it isn’t getting any better and soon, with the help of some friends, she and he and […]

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, April 22, 2016) BRUSSELS-ZAVENTUM AIRPORT ✦ Once upon a time (otherwise known as "the old days,") people would watch news on their old televisions, or listen on their old radios, or pick up old newspapers that even landed on their front porches (remember front porches?) with a thud.

So, we, the five of us, have been out of Africa for a bit, and taking the long way home to Hamilton, and are now in the United Kingdom, specifically in Stratford Upon Avon. Diana, (yes, like the mother of Prince William), is our B&B host and it’s breakfast and she tells us with a […]

Okay, (still catching up here from last time), speaking of watching movies in Uganda, which we were recently with this latest Joseph Fiennes movie, I can report two other things. One relates to the new, (sort of new in Uganda, anyway), Star Wars movie. One is that, similarly to our movie experience in Yemen, around here […]

We’re taking the long way home. Through the UK. More to follow. Before this, through Athens. More to follow from here also. And before this, transiting through Brussels airport. Yes, that Brussels airport. And sure, more to follow from this (now) well-known spot as well. But first, it’s the pool, our final good-bye to Uganda […]

It’s dinner. The vote goes in the kids’ favour for what DVD we will watch this evening. (Dad’s latest find, a biography on Rich Mullins, will wait another night for, uh, Laura Ingills and company.) “Thank God for whoever invented democracy,” says Jon. “The Greeks did,” I noted. (More on this soon: some news from […]

It’s not yet breakfast and I catch Child #1.  I bend over to her ear. “I have a secret,” I say. “What is it?” she says. I whisper in her ear. “They’re everywhere.” She smiles. Shortly later, I do the same with Child #2, the boy. The same whisper in the ear. “They’re everywhere.” Smile. […]

(The New Vision – Tuesday, March 22, 2016) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ It’s the foolish things of this world that can shame the wise and the weak that can upend the strong. This is how it was put a couple of millennia ago by the apostle Paul when he foreshadowed this great reversal, this deep sorting out that will be known only fully in the hereafter. But it’s the story-tellers in the here-and-now who often say the very same thing, and you’d have to be blind or deaf or both not to see it in the new Star Wars movie, “Episode VII: The Force Awakens,” which recently made it here to Uganda.