Recent Columns

I have an Arab friend who looks very much like a stereotypical western mobster. A gentle spirit, he also reminds me of a boy named Michael, son of Mike Sr., a gangster in the recent Tom Hanks film, The Road to Perdition.

So the poor Tories, $5 billion in the red, say they might clobber Ontario's smokers with higher taxes to bankroll new spending. An ex- smoker, I can relate to the pain. Too bad there's not another easy target. Like qat.

There comes a time in the life of every person and nation to decide, in the struggle between truth and lies, if they will choose to stand on the side of good or evil -- this was the case put by English writer James Russell Lowell 150 years ago. You'd think he was writing about contemporary Yemen.

Thank you for your wishes for "peace and quiet" and "safety and peace." It seems one can't keep anything secret any more. The Internet shows newspapers from China to Switzerland to Australia have reported the recent racket in Yemen.

Isaiah must have been crazy. The ancient prophet, a Shakespeare of Hebrew literature, predicted that someday the wolf would lay down with the lamb, and men would beat their swords into ploughshares. He wrote that almost 3,000 years ago.

I'm sitting in a small, dirty room, on the floor, swigging a cola and chatting with a Yemeni I see for Arabic lessons. It's my first visit to his place, and he's given the pop -- in one of those old, glass bottles from the '70s -- to make me feel welcome.

So where were you on the Sunday when Canada took back a piece of its soul? I heard you danced on that bright afternoon when our boys struck hockey gold for the first time in 50 years. Coast to snowy coast, 10 million of you including Parliament itself, waltzed in the afterglow.

One has to admire Pontius Pilot, the Roman procurator who may share responsibility for history's biggest execution, but who also wouldn't budge when pressured by his editors wanting him to change his headline.

Today is Day 8 of my life as a foreigner in Yemen. I'm in a dilapidated cargo office at the international airport in Sanaa, a capital city that sits on a mountain plateau 2,000 metres above sea level. Almost one million souls live here in what is one of the oldest inhabited regions of the world. I think I'm the only one wearing a Team Canada cap.

Among the more comical responses to the tragic attacks of Sept. 11 was from an American who said she would pile up her credit card charges to beat the terrorists, "Just to show I have faith in the economy."

If you can read this, congratulations -- you're better educated than two billion people.

(The London Free Press – Oct. 28, 2000) ST. THOMAS, CANADA – Is the human soul just a vast bundle of nerve cells? Francis Crick, the Nobel laureate who set modern biotechnology in motion when he discovered DNA a generation ago, says yes. In The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search For The Soul, he suggests our joys and sorrows, memories and ambitions, personal identities and even our cherished notions of free will are nothing more than the biochemical reactions of a neural machine. Brilliant as Crick is, the idea is more hollow than astonishing. It was the poet William Blake who said scientists, in trying to decipher that which should remain indecipherable, would "turn that which is soul and life into a mill or machine."

"Jesus Christ. Superstar. Do you believe what they say you are?" The jingle from the popular rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, catchy as it is, is an incredibly sad reminder that there are people who don't have an inkling of this season's joy.

(LONDON FREE PRESS, June 2, 1998) ST. THOMAS, CANADA – Regarding, Male spirituality about partnerships (May 17), Free Press assistant city editor Larry Cornies shows it's easier to criticize the evangelical Christian men's movement Promise Keepers than it is to understand it.

Dear Editor: I am eight years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says "If you see it in The Sun, it's so." Please tell me the truth. Is there a Santa Claus?