Recent Columns

It’s hard to know exactly how many orphans Uganda may have. Some estimates are as high as two million. What we do know is that there is one less. Her name is Hannah. She has been in our home for almost four years now. The interesting thing about Hannah is that long before we met […]

(The Hamilton Spectator - Friday May 31, 2013) JINJA, UGANDA ✦ It’s Monday and we’re on the road early, dressed up, driving the 90 minutes down a dangerous road, the road that we won’t drive at night anymore because we fear it may kill us. We arrive at the court in Jinja, a relaxed beach-town on Lake Victoria, to finally be told ‘Yes. Yes, everything is in order and the court is satisfied, and Hannah will never have any family outside of yours, the family she clearly belongs in.’ Hannah is the Ugandan girl who’s been in our home for almost four years now. We just need the final stamp of court approval to make her adoption official.

The thing about dragons is that you have to believe they exist before you can go and slay them. And even after you believe, you have to somehow care. It’s much easier to let any old dragon open its mouth and breathe its fire and destroy what it may while you leave the poor villagers […]

To be a hero can be a strange thing, something we were reminded of in recent days with the death of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, the man – the hero to some – credited more than anyone for liberalizing abortion in Canada. It’s a death that has led to the spilling of much ink in the […]

She was in Seat 24A and she looked like she had lived, but still too young to be a grandmother, yet this was it, she was returning to her home in Calgary from a visit with her daughter and grandson. There was both an empty seat and pleasant conversation between us. It was the book […]

Ambition, like contentment, is one of those strange words to talk about with the children because it means everything and nothing at the same time. In a sense we are all ambitious because we are all looking. Through our actions more than our words, this is the lasting message that we leave our kids: we are looking for […]

As the allegations against Ourtown Mayor Freddy Ford continue to dominate headlines, The Daily Dad caught up with the mayor between meetings for this exclusive interview. Following is the transcript of Daily Dad’s conversation with the embattled mayor. Daily Dad: Mr. Mayor. How are you? Can I get a minute? Mayor: It’s fine. All fine. […]

He was a name – an astronaut – a man of numbers more than anything, but he still knew the value of words and he was talking about the wonder of it, our universe, and his unique opportunity to see just a glimmer of its sparkling palette, and wasn’t it something for him to be […]

It was just my daughter Liz and me in the living room, a quiet moment in the evening when I said to her, ‘I went to Tim Bosma’s funeral.’ Of course, one never knows if there is a right way to talk about this sort of thing with children, about death, about murder, about the […]

The children had dental appointments and I was running late and so found myself in the back without a program in hand, a thousand people in front of me, a thousand faces, a thousand hearts, some in black clothing, some not, all coming together for one purpose, to say goodbye to Tim Bosma. We listened […]

We were in a park yesterday and the children were playing with their new kites and the sunshine, and with them were several adults including a 75-year-old man with thin wisps of gray hair and a new girlfriend. I said hello and shook hands and we talked briefly about memories from 30-some years earlier, a time […]

We’ve barely been back to our Hamilton home three weeks and My Bride, the lovely one who has made it her life work to give a voice to the voiceless, has already made her presence felt. Last weekend she led the Steps to Deliver Change Walk at the Dundas Driving Park, where about 200 local […]

‘Don’t let your hearts be troubled,’ is what he said. ‘Trust in God. Trust also in me. My Father’s house has plenty of room.’ This is what Jesus told his friends. That he was going to get things ready. That he’d come back to get his friends when things were all set. He’d have to […]

It was Mother’s Day, Day 7 of it all, Day 7 since Timothy Bosma left his Hamilton home for a quick test drive of his truck with a couple of strangers and then vanished. And it was my girls who prayed for him. ‘Dear Jesus,’ Liz said. We were on the 401, in the van, in the busyness of the […]

The truth of the matter is that we choose very little in life. We are born in a certain place to certain parents. We are sent to a certain school. And if we were just one neighbourhood over, if we were just one year older, if that something else had been said to start that […]