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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 ...

The other day I found exactly what I was looking for in a used book store. It was The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. The store owner, sitting behind his desk pecking away at an ancient computer, jumped to his feet when I ...

For a simple trip from Toronto to Halifax, it certainly involved a lot of cancelling, delaying, waiting, boarding, fretting and running. It was easier to fly home from Cambodia. But happily, last in is first out, or so I learned about luggage. ...

I have a favourite editor. Probably all writers do. But this guy is sunshine. Every time I do a piece for him and read over his comments in the margins, I smile. Here are some snippets from his latest edit: He starts ...

These past months, my gobbling greedy self learned anew, and deeper than ever, how disappointment can punch you in the stomach. The deep, miserable kind. The cry loudly on your bed when you are home alone. The nose-running kind. I felt like God had almost ...

On a recent day, during a visit from my Mom, we travelled through Toronto via go-train, subway, bus, streetcar, taxi and a big chunk by foot all within the space of a few hours. We reached our destination: Canada Blooms. There we snapped shots ...

I had a lovely embrace of a moment with an old friend recently. We encountered each other at a writers conference,  after 22 years of living our lives and growing up and out from what we had been when we knew each ...