Latest story
FIRE! at Total Loss Farm — the case of the missing mailbox
A CURIOUS PHOTO of this lost object suddenly appeared in my email recently, under the subject line “Total Loss artifact.” I gasped when I opened the attachment.
Selected stories
Some of my favourite pieces from over the years.
Running
It’s more fun to be the predator than the prey
AT THE END of last Sunday’s Around The Bay 30 kilometre road race, I felt elated. I threw my hands in the air and cracked a big finish line smile. That doesn’t always happen.
People
Bernie LePage: fourth generation Métis fisherman works southern Georgian Bay
THE DAY STARTS very early for Bernie LePage from late April to early December. He leaves his home in Nobel, Ontario at 3:45 am, then drives 90 minutes south to Thunder Beach, on the tip of the Penetanguishene peninsula.
Family & Memoir
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.
More recent writing
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May 4, 2021
The story of a tiny Covid obsession
ONCE UPON A TIME there was a girl named Rose. She loved books and read voraciously. Her dad was a trained pressman who eventually became the head of printing at University of Toronto Press, overseeing the production of hundreds of monographs.
July 21, 2019
My cardiologist never smiles, but I still love him
I’VE COME TO ADORE my cardiologist, even though he sometimes delivers disturbing news and forces me to contemplate my mortality every time I’m in his office. I didn’t always feel this way about him.
June 3, 2018
Ragnar Relay Niagara: five thoughts
I RAN THE Ragnar Relay Niagara race on the weekend, my third time doing this particular event and my sixth crack at this type of two-day, team relay race.
April 27, 2017
Zen and the art of bike tripping
When my buddy and I biked across the country in 1976, the only book we carried with us was “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig. I’m not sure why.The dense monster of a novel was about philosophy, reason and mental illness – although it was also a sort of travelogue. Maybe that’s what possessed us to bring it along for our own adventure.
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.”
October 25, 2016
Guelph arts couple are a formidable pas de deux
Meeting Judith Yan and Amanda Paterson in their new home on Talbot Street in Guelph, you see immediately that each admires the other. They don’t exactly finish each other’s sentences, but each enlarges on their partner’s responses to questions, especially if they think the other person is underselling themselves.
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.