When my cousin Stuart was a kid he visited our Aunt in Toronto’s west end, circa 1960. She was a single, working, professional woman in…
Last weekend my family, including cousins, in-laws, offspring, plus ones, and other loose bits gathered for a large Thanksgiving celebration; the first of this kind…
Families are like a mobile — the kind that are hung from the ceiling with matching parts delicately balanced, moving together on whatever on air…
Ahhh, Mother’s Day. The one day of the year intended to make us turn the tables on our Mothers and do for them what they…
What is the first song you can remember hearing? What were the circumstances? Was someone singing to you, or was it a recording? What song…
As I write this, someone I know and care about is going through that particular rite of passage — that institutionalized hell we call Grade…
The first book I ever read cover to cover by myself was The Secret World of Og by Pierre Berton. I was about seven years…
One of the projects I’m currently working on is to publish my Mother’s diaries. Throughout her high school years in the 1930’s, my Mother recorded…
Years ago, my long gone Mother-in-law was angry with her brother. Her husband had had his leg amputated due to diabetes complications. Throughout the ordeal…
It is a challenge for most people to picture who their parents were when they were young. In those years of being — ‘BC’ —…