Recent Columns

It’s the other day in Pittsburgh and a friend emails with the news … “Hey, you’re on TV!” A couple of nights later I got around to watching online. I wanted to see this brief interview, quite honestly, by myself. TV is not my thing. I felt somewhat embarrassed about it all. My Bride, some […]

We’re on a front porch in Sewickley, PA, an idyllic place of mature trees and century homes, a town as similar to Dundas, Ontario as you might imagine, here on the edge of Pittsburgh, a city you’d also be forgiven for confusing with Hamilton. Both have that rugged steel history around a fine waterfront and remarkable […]

(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."

The world is supposed to end today. Yawn. (Or at least the end will finally get started.) According to those who believe in the so-called Global Coastal Event, there will be a massive earthquake in California. It’s a planetary alignment thing. Today. Thursday May 28, 2015. After the earthquake, all the other horrible stuff will […]

There’s little left to say about the theft of My Bride’s and my computers while in Ottawa, except that, as we all know, things can always be worse. Yesterday we learned that friends who work in Thailand had not only their laptops, but their passports (with critical visas), ID, wallets and anything else of any […]

It’s the other morning and it’s cool and Child #3, the African girl, is wearing purple mittens as we, all three children and I, walk down the sidewalk to school. Child #2, the boy, is wearing shorts, ready for the beach. Child #1, the other girl, the oldest, laughs at them both. The next day […]

(Christian Week - May 2015) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ It was an unremarkable day, birds and the African sunshine, the sound of a distant lawnmower, the dog laying quiet in back, shoes nearby, tea, a half-eaten yogurt, when fear washed over me like a river. Nightmares, yes, can come anytime.

Barely in the country from our family holiday in Germany, and not really fully unpacked in our Hamilton condo, the kids continue to live in what is their never-ending Holiday Land. They’ve been back to school this week in Canada, sure, sure, but just for three days, before tomorrow morning, right around sunrise if Yours Truly is […]

(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.”

We’re  on the 6.46 am  train from Salzburg to Munich, somewhere near the German-Austrian border, with Bavarian countryside and snowy Alps and children curled up and asleep, The Children’s Mother nodding off too, a couple of days to go in this family holiday, this, what has turned into an annual European respite while returning to Canada from Africa. […]

The best time to talk to your nine-year-old boy about women’s plumbing and these sorts of sexually delicate territories is when he’s asleep. This is what every trying father discovers after said boy lays splayed on the living room floor pretending he’s having a baby. Yes, my son Jon was in obvious pain – it seems no epidural […]

He’s a father I’ve known for some years, a lawyer, a father of two boys and two girls. On his way out, leaving for good, he handed me a book I had once lent him – Listening to Your Life by Frederick Buechner. I said no, keep it as a gift, please, let me sign it for you. I […]

(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 horrible news of the attack at Garissa University College in neighbouring Kenya came shortly after we, as a family, attended Good Friday services this morning. The al-Shabab attack that killed at least 147, not far from the Somalian border, was in an area known for its instability, at a relatively small and certainly vulnerable […]

She was Swiss and she stood at the front door this morning and told me how envious she was of my family’s set-up at the university compound we call home. I nodded. She had just driven the hour from her house in Kampala to drop off her daughter to play with Hannah when we talked […]