A long time ago, I lived in a tiny house in Nova Scotia. It was at the back of a dirt driveway in the shadow of a much bigger house. A neighbour told me that it used to be a garage, but was made into a little home for her grandfather. I had a small […]
Nope, that’s not the eloquence of legendary broadcaster, Danny Gallivan, describing countless Montreal Canadiens goals back in the day. It was my friend, ‘Mouthpiece Joey’ Mombourquette, doing play-by-play for our winter road hockey of yesteryear. Played on a flat slice of our dead-end street, sandwiched between a hill going up and a hill going down, […]
When the older lady started talking to me beside the meat fridge in Sobeys last Tuesday, it did not strike me as odd. This is Halifax, where people talk to strangers all the time. The grocery store is a prime location to get cornered by a friendly senior as you make your way through the […]
When did I know I needed to write it down? How is my story different than any other women who left extinguished marriages with a ton of kids? A friend tells me not everyone goes through these things with strength, humour, and perseverance, and that many just give up. Is that enough to spin a […]
We all started out full of hope. A bud, a berry, a seed, or a twig sprouting upwards, full of life. Not far from our mother’s reach, entwined in her eternal strength and protection. Always near, never far from the roots and branches that comfort and bind us. Growing together and flourishing en masse with […]
It is like looking through a glass darkly. It is like using tinted glasses on this February day. It is like a landscape seen through the unwashed window of a slow-moving train travelling by the water’s edge. It is like desolation in a minor key. I am sitting on a bench at a municipal picnic […]
I was in the grocery store, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t unethical – I mean, not very unethical – to buy strawberries. From Mexico. In Nova Scotia. In February. How far had they travelled? What was the cost to the planet of a lot of us buying those (no doubt heavily sprayed) berries […]
Recently, my son discovered the rink at Boutiliers Point. He’s played “pond” hockey there with friends a few times this winter. Not for the first time, and rather wistfully, I acknowledge his wider world and the diminishing role we as parents play in it. It wasn’t so long ago that our family rink served as a […]
In 1971, I attended a meeting at the high school in Shelburne. Two representatives from the Department of Tourism were there to help organizations plan and promote special events. I was hoping to get interest in forming a group to celebrate an important anniversary of the arrival of the Loyalists, as 1983 would mark 200 […]
Of all the gifts in my life, I think the greatest one has been the gift of reading. I didn’t acquire the gift early or easily. My mother and my first teachers tried to convince me that it was worth my time to try to decode those little black marks on the page. I remained […]
