My American Friends
As I write America may be on the verge of the most impactful social, cultural and political change in a century. Vice President Kamala Harris may be elected as the 47th President. It is change long since past due. There will be pain and disruption of course, there is too much at stake for power to be handed over easily.
The Builder
“My mistress, the Countess Bubna-Litic does not dither around the question. She has had a dream for some time now to build a magnificent destination resort hotel on the shores of Lake Okanagan. She has picked out the land and now she wants to build her hotel and that is what she wants to talk to you about.”
Micro Glimmering
I told you he was eighty, his body the predictable vestibule for things that ache and break in any eighty year old. But he wasn’t eighty, nope in that moment he was twelve, if even for just few minutes he was the twelve year old boy who had always loved being Silly.
Oh, Forget It!
It is simply the strangest thing getting older.
“What the heck Tony?! Did you leave your keys on the roof of the car?”
That of course is a rhetorical question arriving with the answer and criticism all wrapped up into one. A rare example of grammatical efficiency.
I am Humbled
When I was a young man I wanted to be a great criminal defence lawyer. I wanted the visibility and the notoriety I imagined would come with that. It was narcissistic and vain and shallow but I was young and cocksure of myself. I would not entertain any challenge to my self image.
Grampa’s Blue Boat
We all loved going out in Grampa’s boat. It was a blue boat that matched the colour of the sea. My brothers Zack and Linden and I had been coming to Deep Bay all our lives, which isn’t all that long, when you think of it. I’m ten, Zack is seven and Linden is five.
‘Bubna’ The Guests
This is an excerpt from ‘Bubna’ a novel I am writing. It’s an historical fiction about the life of Countess Bubna-Litic, an English blue blood who came to Canada in 1914. She was one of the most eccentric women ever to have emigrated to Canada. The Countess eventually settled in Kelowna BC where she built the Hotel Eldorado on the shores of Lake Okanagan. It was an astonishing achievement, the first destination resort hotel built in the Okanagan, deep in BC’s hinterland some four hundred kilometres from the west coast. Divorced, eccentric, a feminist and vastly wealthy the Countess was not to be trifled with.
On a beautiful summer day the hotel opened. It was 1926.
Go Joe, Go!
Joe. Joe, listen to me. Stop. Now!
You are too old to be the president of the United States of America. It’s time to go. None of us should be left in positions of power and authority when we get older and because that statement needs a number, I’m thinking 70.
Now What?
I rewrote this blog after the US Supreme Court decision this week which gave Donald Trump sweeping immunity protection for criminal acts during his presidency. He is widely expected to win the US presidential election this November.
We Are Just Visitors
I wrote this at Deep Bay BC on Vancouver Island one early morning in the summer of 2024. I was alone and I shut my eyes and listened to the world around me as it woke up to greet another day.