2020

It’s been a year of sadness. Not to bum you out. I’m just saying. And a year of vulnerability. Vulnerable. This was the man outside my house. His name is Victor. He’d walked across the city for some hours, pushing a cart of bottles collected along the way for money.

Today is a good day to talk about the vulnerable among us – the mentally ill and the disabled – and doctor-assisted death. Worldwide, only about five per cent of 195 nations allow what’s known in Canada as MAiD, or Medical Assistance in Dying. The World Medical Association also

You have to wonder what life would be like if women ruled the world. Or at least America. Consider the planet and all of its shades. Would it be a kinder, gentler place? One with more peace? A world with easier, more gracious, transitions of power? You have to wonder, too, how little Ruby Bridges felt on that November

Of course, the party would not be complete without Abraham Lincoln. And it’s a good day to ask America’s 16th president what he thinks of it all, Tuesday’s big vote. As I write, on a window sill behind my desk sits a bust of Lincoln, otherwise known as Honest Abe.

So, Mr. Edison, (can I call you Thomas?), it was at the Westdale Theatre, and I was washing my hands, and this gentleman in the men’s room declared, “That’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen.” I actually thought it was a good show. Character driven. A bit dark, yes, but don’t we all, from the very womb, know darkness?

My friend Sid is a runner. Not that kind of runner, although he’s that kind of runner too. He’s run a half dozen marathons. So it’s not surprising that we’re talking about running, even as we’re talking of other things. Healing. Faith. Death. The face of mental illness. We’re in a graveyard at an ordinary

Grace, the Sheepadoodle, is a small dog with big feet who’s happiest when she’s running full-throttle, wild and wide-eyed, tripping over herself down some hill. She’s a dog who knows that life, even in dog years, is so short that there’s no time to waste, even if there’s no place to go

It was a sign for summer break and summer thought, there at the front of a public school near the park where we had our wedding photos taken. The children’s mother and I passed it. This is what it said: “There are only 18 summers

It was the first stroke on the first hole of the day, a chintzy Par 3 just under 100 yards, with a 7-iron. This is how I recently got a hole-in-one. It’s why I ran round and round, arms raised – hat, sunglasses and club thrown high – celebrating with everybody and nobody in particular.

You can tell some kids just about anything, so if you’re bored this summer tell them that people couldn’t see colour until the 1960s. Before this, everything in the world looked black-and-white. I once told this to my own kids, which is probably one reason why their mother never asked me

Today’s news from the Daily Dad is that if you stick around this fatherhood business long enough, you’ll feel a bit inadequate, if not like some flying villain. But don’t let it get you down because it means that you’re in the game, so to speak, and maybe even its hero.

Today is a good day to think of war, especially the one we often simply call “the war,” the war of our forebearers, that is our parents and grandparents and great grandparents. One man in it was Sid James Stacey. Some decades later,

It’s your phone and you pull it out and it’s the other side of the world. This is what it says. Help. Help me. Help us. Precisely, “We are all home with the kids asking for what to eat, so help me get out of this situation, please.” It's Paul, from Uganda, in Africa. A photo of Paul and his

Today’s offering is about a dog. And children. And a couple of books and a movie. Seems like the right mix for Mother’s Day. The dog is Oscar, a friendly Shih Tzu Poodle wanting to be touched. There he is following me in the nearby cemetery where I often walk in the fresh morning light.

My relationship with Superman is not what it used to be. I now feel closer to strangers on the news. Like that nurse. More on her in a minute. But when I was a boy, Superman was like God. Faster than any bullet. More powerful than a train. That’s Clark Kent, a shy Daily Planet reporter, secretly wearing that big, bold Super-S