Recent Columns

By the time I came home that day there were already six vehicles in front of the tiny condo that is our neighbour’s – an ambulance, a fire truck, two Emergency 911 vehicles and two paramedic trucks – but they could have brought every life-saving unit this side of the moon and it wouldn’t have mattered […]

I had given my large German flag to my father some time ago, a gift for him to, with a Canadian flag, run up the flagpole that for many years stood by a tree I would climb as a boy at our home in Niagara. But it never made from Dad’s home-office to that pole, and, […]

It was the Ungame and this time the question was for Jon: “Describe your father in three words.” “Big nose,” he started out. The other two words, I somehow blocked out. Then I had to answer the same question about my own father. “Old. Tough. German.” Which is what Jon will be facing, someday. So, careful son. […]

It’s Hannah’s turn now for a few days of Daddy Time and we’re up on a lake near Owen Sound, just my daughter and myself, swimming and gaming and doing plenty of things and then there is this moment. It’s last night and it’s something to remember because Hannah, who is just 8, wants to read from her new […]

We’re in the van on a long drive and we’re talking about being loved and just what on earth this means. Liz is only 11, but she’s there, she can talk about it and engage and we get on the topic of Mom, who we both love and who is also, if you didn’t know, […]

They don’t say it in schools in Ontario anymore, of course, but in the day, they did, we all did, day after day, year after year, right alongside the playing of God Save the Queen, the prayer that is The Prayer, the one that is called the Lord’s Prayer. By the time I finished my […]

Some weeks ago I introduced this book, Forgiving our Fathers and Mothers, in this space, a book by Leslie Leyland Fields that is recently released. Leslie is a writing colleague I met during while studying in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Seattle Pacific University. Leslie knows first-hand the great importance […]

It was Father’s Day Sunday morning and I was speaking to a local gathering about fatherhood and forgiveness. This was a surprise to even me because my own father was perfect. He doesn’t need forgiveness. As was his father, perfect. Never went wrong. Never had a selfish thought. No, not once. And his father too. Always […]

So Jon wants to watch “The Funny Guy” before bed last night, that is Funny Guy Rick Mercer, and we find a clip online of Rick getting some fashion advice from Don Cherry and before it’s all over, RM has a new Cherry-like zebra suit. Jon laughs and I put him to bed and stroke […]

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, June 14, 2014) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ The sad truth is that the world is full of Charlie Gray sort of people who have listened to all the wrong voices and spent entire swaths of the only life they have doing things that haven’t mattered to them in the least, and, in the grand scheme of things, have mattered little to others also. They’re people like in John Marquand’s novel “Point of No Return,” where Charlie Gray, after years of apple-polishing, is finally named vice-president of that fancy little New York bank, the promotion that finally gives him and his family the security they need.

She was a neighbour crossing the street and we like to have a conversation with each other here and there and I rolled down the window of the van. “Hey. How ya doin?” I said. “Did you vote?” “No,” she said, with a rather exasperated expression. “No. I can’t be bothered. I can’t be bothered […]

It was the nightly news and she wore a large summer hat and a smile on her face while she sat in a golf cart and talked to the cameras, but there was pain too, we all know that, because her husband was murdered last summer. And while the wheels of justice turn slowly to […]

It’s a nutty world, nutty when it comes to fear, which is why I just had to look at eight pages of permission forms so my son, Jon, could go on a class trip to a local pool. His Grade 3 class goes once or twice a year. So, eight pages. Five (5!) of my […]

Something from the other side of this blog, from thomasfroese.com, this commentary here, or below, originally published in Christian Week, some thoughts from Paris, from the Père Lachaise Cemetery. It’s one of the world’s most remarkable graveyards, a solemn place that we as a family recently took some time for on our way home from Africa. + Known by our […]

Today our family’s hat is tipped to the rouge blanc et bleu, the Montreal Canadiens for a marvelous playoff run, one that brought plenty of people in this country together in excitement and nostalgic memory also. Our annual spring transition from Africa – and it is a transition – was made all the more enjoyable […]