I watched a YouTube video the other day about a draft dodger I knew. It is a story worth telling and reading about. I’ll call him Claude. This young fellow was struggling to make a living. He had been conscripted into the military and sent to a foreign land to fight for the cause. His…

I was reading an article about cars, or rather automobiles, in the very early days in Canada. What a hoot. The rhetoric I hear today is still the same. Let’s take a walk or, rather, a ride down memory lane. Alberta had its first automobile in 1901. The province joined Confederation just four years later….

I don’t want to get my hopes up too much as I realize hope is not certain. But it is hope, and I can use some of that. After less than a year of the pandemic, I thought it would last a long time, measured in the year(s) looking through a global lens. I wanted…

I committed myself to be engaged in life, not just busy. That is one of my bumper stickers for my retirement. I try to find a balance that works for me. One way I can tell the difference is by what I share with others. Usually, when I’m engaged, I want to talk with others…

I was helping out a neighbour get to his medical appointment recently. While sitting in the car at the clinic, I caught some of the words of a song on the radio. It was about a love affair and a breakup. The phrase that caught my interest was the young gentleman wanting to delete his…

I have been procrastinating. I had time on my hands, so I dug out four framed prints of a Montreal artist that belonged to my parents, who have been gone but not forgotten for a few years now. They were sketches of well-known landmarks in my hometown of Montreal. I didn’t have much of an…

I was at the front desk of my local recreation centre chatting with the staff person encircling my wrist with the appropriate coloured band of the day. She asked me how my day was going. “Excellent,” I replied. I told her that I had no bombs falling on my head as was happening to many…

I came across a familiar quote but didn’t know to whom it was attributed. I searched further and learned that Milton Friedman said, “the only social responsibility of business is to maximize shareholder profit.” Mr. Friedman was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. I long accepted…

I tend to appreciate more when I know more. In Edmonton, there was a periodic homeless lady, Grace. She was harmless when approached or approached you, no matter how dishevelled she was. She would usually ask passers-by if she could have a quarter. For better or for worse, I often gave her what she was…

I learned last summer that many farms in my home province celebrate Alberta Open Farm Days on a weekend in August. Let the Adventure begin: It is a time to connect with rural life, learn about our food production and generally de-city-fy for a few hours. I thought it would be an excellent adventure for…