Recent Columns

It’s bedtime. Liz needs to get to the kitchen to make her snack for the next day. “Dad!” she says. “I’m afraid to go out there. Something’s there. I can feel it in my bones!” “That’s arthritis.” + But, really, it’s the kids who often come up with the most though-provoking comments. Sometimes they’re funny. […]

(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.

When it’s all over (this two-lives-for-the-price-of-one business, this travel and observing and returning home, then leaving again and looking more and writing at least some of it down), it’s the traffic that I will miss the least. Of all the dangers and perceived dangers of the developing world that were ruminated on to the point […]

It was this morning and we had just left the kids at school. And we (my cousin and her husband, along with my wife’s cousin — the three of them visiting from Canada) were at the club, in the entranceway going in, and he (a Swiss gentleman living in Uganda) was, by chance, coming down […]

(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?

I woke up this morning and, as I often do, told my wife what I dreamed. Just a dream. Then I read the morning news. That was the nightmare. Trump continues to … you know. Then another story, another nightmare. Burlington’s Neil Bantleman is going back to jail, for 11 years apparently, this because Indonesia’s […]

The thing about working with words is that they can get tired and worn and they can lose their meaning. The wordsmiths who handle (and mishandle) them can easily forget this. Yours Truly is no less guilty than any. I was reminded of this this morning when Faithful Spec Reader took the time to tell […]

(The UCU Standard – Monday, February 15, 2016) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ Yoweri Museveni. Donald Trump. Jesus Christ. Who would you vote for? (Okay, if you find it too hard to imagine voting for Jesus per se, how about someone with Christ-like qualities?) I mean, you can’t help but wonder what would happen if someone running for the presidency were to get up in front of microphones and cameras and scribblers and say something like this: “If anyone running for this office doesn’t do so with the greatest fear and trepidation, shaking and trembling from the moment he leaves bed in the morning, then he’s a hopeless fool.

(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 ...

It’s morning, just past sunrise, and the youngest, Child #3, gives me a big hug at the door. “Wish me luck, Daddy!” she says. Today is Track and Field Day at her school. She will run and jump and all that. It will be good for her body and her soul too, and I am […]

You never know what might happen when you pick up a book, even a book that has sat on your bookshelf for years like an old bottle of wine aged good and long for just the right moment. Such a book might even wake somebody up. That is the beauty of books, of course, their […]

(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.

It’s Monday morning coffee at the kids’ school, a privileged school if for no other reason than it sits in the middle of Africa’s sunshine and offers parents morning coffee. I wonder aloud about sending the kids to Washington. Snow, you know, is healthy for kids, and so is the bitter cold, and the snowier […]

The last note in this space was that life is a gift and life is a mystery, both clichés and both true. The other truth, as true as the sun rising every morning, is that we’re not made to live forever. The children’s Papa, their grandfather on their mother’s side, said this to me right around […]

There are New Year resolutions and most are a waste of breath because if you or me or anyone is going to make a change, if you’re that committed to it down to the atoms in the cells that make up the fiber of your being, then the chances that such a lasting change starting […]