the write stuff

stories about family, outdoors, travel and running

Family & Memoir

December 6, 2020

He was a Toronto industrialist … until they sent him to the sanatorium

THIS IS MY great-grandfather, Robert Kilgour — a handsome dude! It’s a haunting, melancholic portrait, a black-and-white photograph colourized by hand I believe. His beard and countenance resemble Sigmund Freud, who lived during roughly the same era in a different part of the world.

February 21, 2017

Bob White was progressive, charismatic and fearless

I only spoke with Bob White one time, at a labour convention in the early 1990s, but I observed him closely during the decade I worked in the labour movement. He was a street-smart leader, an excellent orator and a risk-taker who was always confident of his vision. Jerry Dias, the current head of Unifor (formerly the Canadian Auto Workers, the union where White made his biggest contribution) said on Sunday, “You sure felt a lot stronger when you had Bob White sitting beside you.”

August 10, 2016

A tale of two Lees, Harper and Fanny (mostly the latter)

When I would visit my friend Neal Evans’s house as a teenager, it was always full of his mother Lee’s presence. This included artistic vigour, lots of projects, and a strong dose of social activism in the air. Lee and her husband Sam led the youth group at the United Church where my father was the minister. Although it was very uncool to be attending a youth group at a church that was, unfortunately, across the street from my high school, Lee and Sam actually made it fun and relevant.

May 12, 2016

Every breath you take

At this time of the year Vancouver is verdant, warm and blooming. And well it should be: spring has already been on the go for two months, or sometimes even four.

February 26, 2016

Miss you Sarah, now and forever

Ten years ago my wife and I spotted deer in the woods below our house in Elora, for the first time ever. There was also a lot of noisy activity from the crows in the cedars, which seemed odd because it was still late winter.

February 9, 2016

The little wave that lives forever

Once upon a time there was a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a good old time. She was enjoying the wind and the fresh air. She had her friends around her.

May 24, 2015

Nice shot, Randy – eulogy for a friend

My friend Randy called me last February, shortly after he received the news that his cancer had metastasized and his condition had gone from “hopeful” to “terminal”. He was worried, and although his spirits were sagging he was also on a mission.

May 18, 2015

Great shift, Randy

Randy, my friend, is dying. He has cancer and he’s not going to make it.

May 11, 2015

Randy’s state of grace

There is a sombre, monotone painting resting on the window sill of Randy’s room at Toronto Grace Hospital.

April 11, 2015

The man who lost his ability to comprehend language

I met a woman earlier this year (a chance conversation with a friendly stranger in a coffee shop) whose husband had a stroke 20 months ago. When you hear “stroke” you may think facial paralysis, a limp, or perhaps worse – coma, complete disability, utter dependance.

March 27, 2015

My top 10 cooking tips, with recipes!

One afternoon, at an early age, I was watching my mother bake cookies in her Vancouver kitchen and I suddenly declared, “When I grow up, I want to be a pastry chef!”

December 24, 2014

Christmas traditions can be a double-edged sword

My earliest Christmas memory dates from when I was five, or perhaps six. I had graduated from the upstairs room I shared with my three sisters, downstairs to a daybed in the small den. So when I awoke to the dim light of a Vancouver dawn, I was alone.

December 19, 2014

The case of Adnan Syed resembles that of Steven Truscott

The podcasting smash-hit Serial released the final episode of its first season yesterday, and the result was … a little underwhelming. (Spoiler alert here, if you intend to listen to the show.) No grand announcement of some new piece of evidence that would acquit Adnan Syed of the murder of Hae Min Lee, which he was convicted of in 1999. And no clear resolution to the mystery of whodunit.

November 12, 2013

Not the men they might have been

Just before Tarek Lubani and John Greyson returned to Canada from their 50 days of captivity in Egypt last October, the coverage of the incident reached a sensational peak in the Toronto media. Ezra Levant of the Toronto Sun red-baited the two Canadians as they lay captive in Cairo, calling them left-wing attention seekers, professional agitators – that is, blaming them for their own predicament. In the Globe and Mail, Margaret Wente went a step further, outing Greyson as a gay activist in her column.

September 29, 2013

My French holiday top 10 list

I just returned from a four-week vacation in southern France. I know, I know – poor me, having to switch from cheap-as-dirt baguettes, pastries and wine (plus clear blue skies, dry air, and a 20 degree ocean), to falling leaves, near freezing nights, 7 pm darkness and public adoration of … the pumpkin? … in one short weekend. Oh well.

February 4, 2013

Down to my last 19 cents

I DIG INTO my wallet this morning and pull out my last 19 pennies. I’ll spend them the next chance I get, and I won’t be sad to see the coin get retired. Or will I?

October 9, 2012

There was a girl

THERE WAS a girl. Twenty-four years old. By all accounts, a luminous human being from the very beginning – the sort of girl whose sparks of brilliance and warmth of personality ignited everyone she met.

March 21, 2012

When fathers come out of the closet

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER recently won an Oscar for his nuanced portrayal of Hal, an elderly gay father, in the movie Beginners. Hal’s son Oliver spends most of the film coming to grips with his dad’s late-age emergence from the closet after his mother’s death, including its reverberations on his own romantic life.

February 15, 2012

How I learned to love the Volvo (and my Dad)

I CHANCED UPON an amusing story online this week, about a Swiss guy who installed a wood stove in his Volvo, to counteract Europe’s recent freezing temperatures. It brought back a flood of memories about growing up with Volvo wagons.

February 26, 2011

We lost Sarah

WE LOST SARAH last Sunday. It was crushing. At one point, there were 13 of us in the Hamilton ICU waiting room, visiting Sarah briefly in pairs as she struggled for her life. We could stretch past the monitors, ventilator and over the IV lines to whisper in her ear, hold her hand, tell her we loved her – but nothing we could do, nor the best efforts of the doctors and nursing staff, could halt the downward spiral that began sometime after her first operation on Friday morning. By Sunday afternoon, she was gone.

January 20, 2011

Do fraternal twins share a special connection?

ITS CROWDED DOWN HERE in the birth canal! I reach the start line first, before my sister Beth, but then things get screwed up. I’m sure it’s not my fault I’ve turned breach. But it jams things up for both of us when I get stuck the wrong way around. My mother is exhausted from two days of labour. Her small town Alberta doctor panics. The result? A Caesarian. And so I’m suddenly at the end of the line instead of the head. My sister is lifted out first, leaving me in second place. A rivalry is born.

December 14, 2010

I have called your name – you are mine

ALTHOUGH SHE grew up in Ontario, and camped as a teenager in Algonquin Park, my mother came to love the Canadian west. Her favourite spot was the beach, dykes and mud flats ringing Tsawwassen, B.C., her home for the last two decades of her life. Even in her 70s, she led family crabbing expeditions across the mud flats. She followed the ebb tide on foot, hoping to grab a straggler or two with her barbecue tongs as they scuttled for deeper water. The outdoors put her in touch with her family heritage and her faith. Although she loved music, theatre and visual art, she found the most solace in nature.

December 6, 2010

What happens when our parents die?

A SMALL BROWN ENVELOPE arrived in the mail this week, containing a form letter from Canada Revenue Agency – the tax people – a single printed page, small type, in both official languages, declaring that the federal government no longer had any official claim on the estate of Marling Kilgour, my mother. This is known as a Clearance Certificate, the green light that says, “you’re done” for the estate executors.