Hemorrhoids, Nicknames and Belonging
“Can I tell you about the biggest hemorrhoid I’ve ever seen?” It was Terry, a friendly welcoming member of what I came to call ‘The 10am Small Dog Dog Park Group’, a gathering of dog owners who met most mornings at a dog park in West Kelowna. I do remember thinking to say ‘No’ might seem unfriendly, even uninterested but then surely one can’t appear to be too interested in ‘the biggest hemorrhoid Terry had ever seen’. And I had no time to make my decision.
Death in the Yukon Chapter Two
The case against Joe Stokes was what the cops call ‘open and shut’. They had the victim, the murder weapon and the only possible suspect. On top of all that, Joe had confessed to the killing.
Death in the Yukon
September 12, 1977: He lay motionless on the floor of the only bar in Ross River, Yukon. Hank Woods had been dropped by a single bullet from a .357 magnum revolver. The shooter now seated on a bar stool over at the long mahogany bar, put the gun down, spun it along the bar and told the stunned bartender, “There. Now call the RCMP!”
When Everything Changed.
The 60’s exploded into view, something few would have been able to anticipate. Forces were unleashed that would change everything. Baby Boomers, now a majority and coming of age, found their voice and reached out for their power. It would unnerve our parents and rattle all the trusted conventions of the time. Even as I was living through it I could feel that everything I knew, all that I trusted was shifting beneath me. I just didn’t know how and I didn’t know my place in all of it.
The Vocabulary of Nice
‘Canadians are so nice!” I can remember my mother saying that when I was a young boy, new to Canada as I was. And it wasn’t a compliment. From an English woman finding her place in this new land it was sharp criticism. If her purpose was to pose a question, it worked. It has echoed through the ages, a question posed, a question unanswered.
First Impressions
Moving us to Canada was the greatest gift I have ever received, made all the more generous for the price my parents would pay over the decades ahead. All they knew lay behind them. All I would know lay ahead.
What’s Next Mummy? What’s Next?
August 1958: I was an eight year old English school boy and I had landed in Montreal with my family aboard the SS Homeric. The four day voyage had been the greatest adventure of my young life. How was I to know it was just the beginning.
Fumiko
It’s 1921: A young ten year old Japanese girl wanders the beach at Deep Bay, on BC’s Vancouver Island. She tries to imagine a ten year old girl just like her doing the same thing a hundred years from now.
Ainsley
It’s 2021: A young ten year old girl wanders the beach on Deep Bay, on BC’s Vancouver Island. She wonders if a ten year old girl just like her had walked these beaches a hundred years ago.