We live in an era where the secret to popularity is being unpopular. Need I trot out the President of the United States as proof? The man is president precisely because he is unpopular. It’s what made him popular. There is a sizable portion of the electorate whose sole motivation for voting a particular way […]
My Life Is A Song #108
So much of this series is grounded in my past. Makes sense, I guess. I mean, it would be pretty incredible for me to relate a musical yarn from the future, unpublished song included. I’m nostalgic, not magical. But there is a pronounced bias in my writing towards my distant past, and that concerns me. […]
My Life Is A Song #107
I didn’t truly understand that teachers are real people until I had school-aged children of my own. During my entire youth, teachers weren’t so much people as they were a spectrum of Sapiens-like humanoids crafted specifically for employ in the educational field. It rarely, if ever, dawned on me that they were regular people just […]
Calgary Needs a Shrink, Not the Olympics
One week ago, the debate over Calgary attempting to host the 2026 Winter Olympics kicked of in an online community forum with an interesting comment. Someone whom I don’t know personally shared a CBC article accompanied by the interesting observation that this person learns more from the comments posted to such articles. My immediate reaction […]
sarcoidNOsis
Here’s the thing about chronic illness, even one from which you’ve supposedly recovered. It makes you paranoid. Years of feeling like crap, of seemingly endless medical appointments, of ineffective treatments, and of adjusted lifestyle messes with your mind. Ailments once dismissed as being “all in your head” eventually do get there. You become overly cautious, […]
Crimson Lake Provincial Park – review
Hanging out in a trailer while it rains during the day is one of the most underappreciated joys in life. That may sound counterintuitive since most campers are hoping to be outside enjoying the sun and warmth and beauty of the natural world. That is, presumably, the entire purpose of camping. But the odd daytime […]
Jeremy’s Bay Campground – Kejimkujik National Park – review
I don’t imagine “national park nova scotia interior” is a common phrase entered into online search engines. The knowledge that you would receive an accurate hit is likely even less common, save for those actually living in Nova Scotia. Let’s face it, inland recreation is not the first thing, or tenth, that comes to mind […]
Kids Don’t Watch Enough TV
My kids don’t watch enough TV. I know that’s a strange complaint to make, not to mention one filled with irony. I am, after all, a child of the television-as-babysitter era and the subsequent, and still vocal, kids-watch-too-much-tv backlash. By all accounts, every misstep in my life is attributable to the hours I spent each […]
South Kouchibouguac Campground – Kouchibouguac National Park – review
As of this exact moment, we have camped in eight of Canada’s national parks. We’ve also stayed in two others (hotels) and driven through four others, since we’re keeping stats. With each new national park we visit, our affection for these Canadian treasures grows exponentially. So too does our expectation, I suppose, which is why […]
My Life Is A Song #106
If you’ve followed this series, you know country music is my guilty pleasure. And by country music I mean classic country, not the twangy pop rock that passes for country music nowadays. The good, old stuff, mostly from the seventies, with a bit of early eighties and late sixties tossed in for flavour. It’s the […]