the write stuff: Recent Episodes
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The day starts very early for Bernie LePage from late April to early December. He leaves his home in Nobel, Ontario at 3:45 am, then drives 90 minutes south to Thunder Beach, on the tip of the Penetanguishene peninsula. By 5:30 he’s on board his commercial fishing tug, the Laurie E, along with 2–3 deckhands, to spend […]
Once upon a time there was a girl named Rose. She loved books and read voraciously. Her dad was a trained pressman who eventually became the head of printing at University of Toronto Press, overseeing the production of hundreds of monographs. He would bring home bound mock-ups of books with blank pages and give them […]
This is my great-grandfather, Robert Kilgour — a handsome dude! It’s a haunting, melancholic portrait, a black-and-white photograph colourized by hand. His beard and countenance resemble Sigmund Freud, who lived during roughly the same era in a different part of the world. Robert was a second-generation Canadian, born in 1848 in Beauharnois, Quebec, on Montreal’s […]
I’ve come to adore my cardiologist, even though he sometimes delivers disturbing news and forces me to contemplate my mortality every time I’m in his office. I didn’t always feel this way about him. I first met Dr. B. Schwarz a year ago. I’d just had two mini-strokes and he came across as aloof, almost […]
I ran the Ragnar Relay Niagara on the weekend, my third time doing this particular event and my sixth crack at this type of two-day, team relay race. We packed 12 guys into two mini-vans and ran 304 kilometres non-stop. With a start line in Cobourg, Ontario, we traced a big-C around Lake Ontario, finishing […]
At the end of last Sunday’s Around The Bay 30 kilometre road race, I felt elated. I threw my hands in the air and cracked a big finish line smile. That doesn’t always happen. It was my tenth time racing ATB in the past 15 years. I knew I was nearly 20 minutes slower this […]
IT’S MARCH 1945, just two months before the end of WWII. Bill Barker, 27, is flying his Spitfire on a bombing and strafing mission over Germany. He gets hit by enemy fire, his plane is damaged, but Bill isn’t hurt. He radios his squadron to say he’s returning to base in England as quickly as […]
- The endodontist keeps his files in a holster Canal sharp shooter 2. My dentist is Sikh He speaks with disarming charm Antidote to fear 3. Four needles numb jaw A Coldplay soundtrack distracts I watch, wait, endure 4. How do you judge depth? “Electronic gauge,” he says Not plumber’s feel – […]
When my buddy and I biked across the country in 1976, the only book we carried with us was “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig. I’m not sure why.The dense monster of a novel was about philosophy, reason and mental illness – although it was also a sort of travelogue. Maybe […]
I only spoke with Bob White one time, at a labour convention in the early 1990s, but I observed him closely during the decade I worked in the labour movement. He was a street-smart leader, an excellent orator and a risk-taker who was always confident of his vision. Jerry Dias, the current head of Unifor […]