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I have a great friend who has been writing a science fiction novel for years, plotting and plodding, like writers do, especially those involved in such a big work. He was visiting recently with his family and I asked him, like fellow writers always ...

Last night I mustered all my courage and stood in a line of other people who had mustered all their courage, at a wine and cheese at HarperCollins in downtown Toronto. We were lining up to speak to one of several very ...

The other night I witnessed a lovely collaboration play out at a church in downtown Ottawa. Steve Bell, Canadian Christian music icon, sat on stage with his good friend Malcolm Guite, a poet, priest and singer-songwriter from Cambridge. It was Steve who ...

Because sometimes one does things backward and higgledy piggledy, I wrote chapter one of my Master of Fine Arts writing project sixth in line. This made sense to me because I wasn't sure how to launch this baby properly, and I may ...

I just finished -- for now -- a  chapter for my MFA, this one on forgiveness. I usually begin a chapter throwing a whole bunch of stuff into a fresh, clean word document. All my stories that I think will fit, my ...

I was in New York City in January, for my week long residency of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction that I'm completing through the University of King's College in Halifax. So was an editor from The Walrus. There were five ...

I flew home from Winnipeg recently, and sat beside an older gentleman who was making careful notes in a red spiral notebook. It's the same kind of notebook I had in my knapsack at that very moment, where I keep notes for ...

I have friends who are older, but I don’t have a friend I have held so close to my heart for so long.  Crackly home movie footage shows me, six months older, trying to give Janet a good swat from my carriage, parked next ...

If you're going to ask me about all we've got going on this week and next, speak to me like you are Barry White. This week, I've had to ask loved ones to stop talking to me like this: "OH NO!! ARE ...

My Mom and my Dad, who turns 80 today, met a couple of young(ish) RCMP officers on Parliament Hill a few years ago, who were astounded to learn that Dad's regimental number was 19229. That means, roughly, that he was the 19,229th ...

This weekend I sat at my dining room table and consumed a pie recipe. It was almost a poem. Especially when I reached this line: Tumble in the cranberries. That is what cranberries do, as anyone who made sauce this weekend knows. They ...

It was around the second half of the first verse of "One Day at a Time...Sweet Jesus," a solo sung with gusto by a woman at my parent's small rural church, when I heard the first chirps of a renegade songbird joining in. I ...