Two things have taken place recently that wouldn’t have been a general possibility — maybe not even a remote likelihood — a year ago. A year ago, when I was still coming down from the terrible, wonderful glee of finishing my thesis, the idea that I could take up a hobby and have a lick […]
Category: blog
Flights of Fancy
It’s been just over a year since I developed a fear of flying. It came on a snowy morning, when I was due at the airport, and there was news of a plane that had crash landed short of the runway the night before. There were no fatalities, no major injuries, but for the first […]
Country Sounds
I’m in a house at the top of long driveway that winds an ice-rutted dirt path up a hill to a place where the trees clear. A batting line-up’s worth of blue jays poke at feeders. The birds grab seeds and fly into the bare branches to crunch through their prize. There are deer prints […]
On the Run
One winter, I was on a short-term reporting contract in Victoria. After 18 winters in Nova Scotia and a couple more in Toronto, the season on southern Vancouver Island was a revelation that spoiled me, never a fan of the cold, for good. During those snowless months, I rented a room in a house near Oak […]
Moving Commas
“I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.” — Oscar Wilde I liked reporting well enough, I liked meeting people and chasing news. But when I became an editor, I connected to journalism and to the crafting of words in a deeper way. […]