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 […]
Time flies when
Well, we can put paid to Hallowe’en 2021! How the H E double hockey sticks did we get so close to November so quickly? I am purely blown away by how fast time seems to pass these days. Is it just me? Sometimes I’m very aware of which day of the week it currently happens […]
Big John and Stan
Big John has been sold. For $9.5 million. That’s a lot of money to pay, especially considering he’s a skeleton. But not just any skeleton. Big John is the largest Triceratops ever documented—and officially recognized as such by the Guinness World Records organization. Triceratops were ferocious three-horned dinosaurs that roamed the earth some 66 million […]
Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet
Hallowe’en!! Yep, one week from today (Sunday) it’ll be Fright Night. Did you Trick ’r Treat when you were a kid? We sure did. In the 1950s, in a semi-rural community, going “shelling out” was a big deal. It wasn’t much past the first week of school in September when my older sister and I […]
Embracing the Opportunity
The experts predicted the pandemic would produce a baby boom, with all those young parents-to-be sitting at home having nothing else to do. But the experts were wrong: they obviously hadn’t taken into account the adverse effects on fecundity that Netflix-binging would have. Instead, according to a report in last week’s Globe and Mail, Canada’s […]
She/her/hers
I think I might be old. Yep, I could be. The thing is, if I don’t look in the mirror I’m just sort of thirty-five-ish. The mirror, however, doesn’t lie. Like any “old” person, I don’t mind the seniors’ discounts or the government pensions. Sometimes I get a bit upset when I’m called “Ma’am” or […]
The earth is good to me
It’s Sunday. I’m writing this column. The last of our Thanksgiving guests have just departed. The house is quiet, once again. I am thankful for the chaos. I am thankful for the quiet. It’s been much more than a decade since I wrote my first column for The Times. I am grateful to Rick who […]
Three Takeaways
At the end of last week, the Supreme Court of Canada issued its decision in the appeal against Doug Ford’s 2018 downsizing of Toronto city council. The move was made by Mr. Ford after the candidates for 47 seats on the council had already begun their campaigns. Fortyseven wards became 25 wards; and people had […]
I know better
When I was a kid my mother often said, “You should know better.” In most cases, I should have known better. But I do remember asking how I could know better if I didn’t know what I was supposed to know better. My mom told me to use my head, then gave me “the look”. […]