Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the house there was plenty of stirring, but not one goddamned louse. I had made extra sure we would all be nit-free, just in time for St. Nick to come down the chimney. We were over the pox, and the flu, and the cold, just holding our breath, worried […]

Wally Oppal’s long awaited report commissioned in the wake of the conviction of serial killer Robert Pickton holds a surprise. Something had gone tragically wrong with law enforcement. How else could one individual have murdered dozens of women in one location over more than a decade without being caught? That Oppal’s report...

John the Baptist--by all accounts a wild eyed, camel-haired, fire-breathing, proclaimer of the word--is most well known for the words he reserves to those who came to hear him preach. Coming to cleanse themselves in the waters once crossed by their ancestors, on the completion of the journey from Egypt through wilderness....

Canada is blessed. God has given us so many things that other countries want. And it’s all just there for the taking. Above the ground we have trees galore, waiting to be chopped down, water waiting to be piped to California. In the ground we’ve got gold and silver, copper and iron, uranium and asbestos. The list is almost ...

On the second Sunday in Advent we focus on Peace. The endless search for peace in a world still bound by war. A world sometimes mired in hatred and abuse. A world touting the ethics of the strong, justifying great abuses of power, deriding the 'self-inflicted' misery of the weak: the man on the corner; the woman at the food...

Following the city’s overzealous and incorrect use of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act (FIPPA) to withhold letters that are clearly in the public’s interest and do not “unfairly” harm anyone’s reputation, I am left wondering what, exactly, remains in the five redacted lines in Coun. Kathy Moore’s letter...

“What does not kill us makes us ___”   Nietzsche      Happiness is a warm gun.  Lennon Everybody knows how to complete the epigraph quoted at the top: “Stronger”. Poor Nietzsche, so many profound things to say, and remembered by masses of slightly-educated people for this one slogan alone. What makes us more contented, or...

As part of its annual general meeting, the Canadian Department of Peace Initiative held the last of its public consultations on the creation of a Department of Peace. The meeting which took place at St. Paul University in Ottawa featured a panel of five commissioners and interventions from the public.  (It was especially...

I’ve never been a member of a political party, although I did consider joining the NDP earlier this year, just so I could vote for Nathan Cullen in the leadership contest. Now I’m considering joining the Liberals, just so I can vote for Joyce Murray. In the rarified air of Parliament Hill, where so many Opposition MPs seem ...

I’d like to share with you my past few weeks – it is a time in my life that I would like to leave behind and never re-visit again. EVER.  It all started when my two sons came down with the chicken pox. Both were pretty nasty cases; they were itchy, sore, feverish, spotty, oozy, […]