Recent Columns

We’re told that her mother and father where there, and so probably were the neighbours and her school friends, no doubt, and pretty well anyone who cared for the little girl. She had been laying there dead for some time when this man came in and looked down at her and took her by the cold hand and said what […]

It’s somewhere around Day 54,386 of Single Daddin’ It, the highlight of my year when it’s just me and the kids. Is it November still? I think it snowed yesterday. Pretty sure about that. Somewhat sure. Okay maybe it rained. I think Jean called yesterday too. She’s my wife. My Bride. We started dating when you […]

It’s officially Day 1 of being the Poor Lonely Single Dad – Jean is back in Canada for, gulp, 18 days – and we’ve slept in by 45 minutes and The New Young Dog goes without his morning walk but we still manage to scramble and jump in the truck and get on the bumpy dirt road […]

So, speaking of pot (or was that pots we were speaking of last post?), in my family we don’t smoke a lot of pot (or crack cocaine, either). This, you say, is neither a bad thing nor a surprise. But in plenty of places around the world (although not in Africa so much), marijuana has […]

It’s early and the African sun is stretching and the monkeys are making a racket in the banana trees and Liz is feeding the cat and Thomas Merton and Old Man Jeremiah, today’s reading, dance in my head. Merton says that faith is all about discomfort and struggle and don’t let anyone sell you a […]

So My Bride and I were on a date at the movies in Kampala and we were the only ones there, two shadows in a sea of empty seats, and not thinking anything of it because this is not uncommon. Not that movies are that bad here – although this one was and we ended […]

The family news of the day is that it was Halloween and the kids – a gaggle of expatriates living on campus – came to the door of our Ugandan university home like kids do in so many parts of the world. The executioner, when I asked him what the “trick” was if I didn’t […]

(The UCU Standard - Friday, November 1, 2013) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ Suicide is a shabby and shameful business, something that nice people don’t get mixed up in, yet here they are, two suicides in our university family, two young people who in separate incidents have left us with nothing but a disturbing ‘good-bye.’

It’s morning in Africa and, as often, today started with reading and listening to Brahms while on the cross-trainer and enjoying the brightness of the day’s creation. And here the creation is now Zack, our new Young Dog, plus four new rabbits from Sam and his significant other, plus Bilbo, The Cat’s Girlfriend, so named […]

(The Hamilton Spectator - Thursday, October 24, 2013) PANMUNJEOM, SOUTH KOREA ✦ We’re at the border of North and South Korea, at the planet’s hottest line in the sand, and the guard – a youth in military garb and dark sunglasses – tells my wife to change her footwear. She has open sandals and the North Koreans, even from a distance, might see her feet. Which shows that while war may be hell, it's strange too, certainly this pseudo-war at Panmunjeom, the UN’s demilitarized zone, the so-called DMZ separating these two Koreas, countries that stopped formal shooting 60 years ago but still without any treaty.

It was a father-son weekend away of climbing and water and sports and night fires and running around a small island on the Nile River in the countryside of Uganda. And one of the boys stood by a swamp and held up some mud like it was a trophy, and then another boy said something […]

So, what do you do when a poor man comes knocking at your front door and the kids are in their pyjamas and it’s really not a good time to do much of anything, but the story behind it all is so dramatic that you can’t ignore any of it for a second? This is […]

(The Hamilton Spectator - Friday, September 20, 2013) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ It was late and dark and unusual because the visitor lives hours away and I didn’t expect him. But he came anyway and sat at my front door and cried and told me all about it, how thieves had come the night before. He had been at church, he explained, at one of those all-night prayer services common in this part of Africa, when the rats did it, when they broke in and cleaned out his house. Clothing, furniture, cash I had recently given for his kids’ schooling, everything gone by sunrise.

I’ve been looking through the Parenting Manuel they gave when my oldest was born but I don’t see anything on what to do when she gets five, yes FIVE, boys professing their love for her. Liz is 10. ‘Daddy, daddy!’ is how it all started one day after school. ‘You’ll never guess what happened!’ Liz […]

I’m way too sexy for my underwear. Which is why I wear a Speedo into the pool. I expect the same from our new dog. We picked him up yesterday. His name is Zack, which, if you’re a thief, is short for Zack Attack. His birthday, as we’ve discovered, is on My Bride’s and my […]