Handmade Holidays
Like a lot of you, I really and truly thought the COVID- 19 pandemic would be over and done now. Seriously, I kinda snorted when we were told it would be around until May or June of 2020, then it would vanish. I couldn’t believe it would last “that long” all the way to May […]
Manners 101
I had confidently predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic would be over by January 31, 2022. That’s because my wife and I bought tickets this past summer to see Emmylou Harris at the refurbished Massey Hall in Toronto on that date. Surely the gods of disease would arrange it so that we were clear of any […]
Be the Santa You Know You Are
December. It’s Wednesday. It’s cold outside. The snow, comes and goes. The local parades are sorrily missed by our family (and yours too, I’m sure) but the lists are being made and people are shopping or crafting and baking or shopping a bit more. The Sally Ann bells are ringing, here and there, and the […]
The Countdown Has Begun
The countdown has begun. Only five more days until Tim Hortons unveils its new donuts—three special Timbits co-created with celebrity endorser Justin Bieber, to be known as “Timbiebs.” The new Timbits—sorry, Timbiebs—will come in three flavours: Chocolate White Fudge, Sour Cream Chocolate Chip, and Birthday Cake Waffle. The teaser ads will probably start this week. […]
Christmases past
As the festive season approaches, people will start reminiscing about past festive holidays with family and friends. Most of my recollections of Holidays Past are good ones. I say “most” because I don’t remember enjoying the Christmas in 1961 when we woke up to overcast skies, plus temperatures, fog and rain. The interesting thing is […]
Heavy on the fluff
Ontario’s next election will be held on Jun 2, 2022—and already Doug Ford’s Conservatives are pawing at the ground. There is a limit on the amount a political party can spend in the six-month period before a campaign begins, and the party is flush with cash—so they’ve been spending some of it recently on ads […]
Game on
It’s shaping up to be another holiday pizza-by-ourselves festive season for LOML and me. It’s hard to ignore the climbing COVID-19 case numbers. I’m afraid it looks as if we all sat back and took a breather, literally, when the numbers started to fall a couple of months ago. We just might be hard-oflearning. According […]
Funny at the time
It gives me no pleasure to report that the Supreme Court of Canada has recently let a ‘comedian’ off the hook and upheld his right to freedom of speech —because it comes at the expense of a severely disabled young man who has experienced ridicule for most of his life. The case was brought to […]
We won’t forget
A person I know, who lives way out on the Canadian Prairies, always puts one of her family’s Christmas Trees up on October 30th. Personally, I think it’s a long haul from the 30th of October to the twenty-fifth of December, but she’s a Christmas-loving kinda gal. And she’s the only person she has to […]
The Legacy of Monty Hall
I have to confess at the outset that I have never taken any instruction in the subject of mathematical probabilities, as the rest of this piece will no doubt demonstrate. So it was when I started reading Harvard celebrity intellectual Steven Pinker’s new book Rationality: What it is, Why it seems scarce, Why it matters […]