Froese Biography

In honour of my father and his well-lived life

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, August 27, 2016) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ It was a different time and place on the day I watched another human being die in my father’s arms. I was just a boy. Bert had epileptic seizures, medically uncontrollable then. Tall and lanky, he’d crumple and fall hard on the floor in the house, or outside under the apple tree, or in places between, shaking, convulsing, rigid as a board. I’d watch. All the time. Bert lived with us.
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An anniversary wish to the music of my life

(The Hamilton Spectator - Friday, July 29, 2016) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ It's a warm and ordinary day, warm and ordinary enough to run around in shorts and bare feet. The children's mother, your babe, that is your bride, is playing your song. The cats are in front and the dog's in back and the kids are doing homework and nothing much is happening, except this song from the piano in the other room, the piece that makes your blood jump every time.
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Home is a place of God’s differences

(The UCU Standard - Monday, May 23, 2016) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It was in Canada and we were at a campy lakeside retreat, and it was a beautiful summer day and a gaggle of children were playing outside the large window near where we ate. My daughter, that is my adopted Ugandan daughter, Hannah, looked at me with a tear rolling down her cheek. I asked her what was the matter, and, looking down in shame, she said, “I’m the only black person here.”
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Froese, the prodigal

The thing about working with words is that they can get tired and worn and they can lose their meaning. The wordsmiths who handle (and mishandle) them can easily forget this. Yours Truly is no less guilty than any. I was reminded of this this morning when Faithful Spec Reader took the time to tell […]
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Celebrating Family Day (and all the things that means)

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, February 13, 2016) MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It was over lunch in Dundas with my sister, somewhere between the spring rolls and the coconut shrimp, when the question came without any hint to suggest this would be one of those ‘aha’ moments that can be unpacked and looked at and handled for a lifetime. “So of all the places you’ve been,” she asked, “what’s your favourite?” I might have said Paris or Berlin or Seoul, or maybe Amsterdam or London or Istanbul, or maybe somewhere in the Mid-East or Africa ...
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(More) Turkish Delight (with a magic genie lamp this time)

I’m back in Africa. But let’s go back just a few days. Hey, there’s a guy balancing four wine glasses, full, on top of each other, on his head. Everyone laughs. And cheers. That is one enormous and flat head. This, on an old cobblestone road in front of the Hotel Sultana, an otherwise non-descript […]
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O Canada, Hannah stands on guard for thee

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, June 27, 2015) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ My youngest daughter, Hannah, is a cool girl who loves water, makes friends easily and puts lots of maple syrup on her pancakes. She laughs more than I do, often from a deep and hearty place. She likes the fact that her name – which in the original Hebrew means “gracious” or “God’s gift to the world” – is spelled the same forwards and back. Canada is cool too. It makes fine maple syrup and, as far as countries go, laughs more than many.
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One day, my story could be yours

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, February 21, 2015) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ He was Swiss and we were talking over coffee and he said he’d just read my story about Canada’s new look at assisted suicide. He spoke as if I’d written on this, which I had not, or maybe he called it my story simply because I’m Canadian. He said he didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Europe, after all, liberated itself from any shameful baggage on assisted suicide long ago. If you want to die, he explained, you can easily go to places and doctors for help.
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The Nature of Peace – Complete address

  In November 2014 I returned from my African home to speak at the Hamilton Convention Centre on the theme of The Nature of Peace. This was on the invitation of the YMCA of Hamilton-Burlington-Brantford, which holds an annual Peace Medal Breakfast to honour the people of Hamilton region who work towards peace. Following is […]
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Cradle-to-grave without free choice

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, January 24, 2015) KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ He goes by a false name so he’s not found and killed. I just met him. I’ll call him Ahmed in this, his story. He recently shared it around our dinner table.
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25 years after The Wall fell

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, November 15, 2014) KAMPALA, UGANDA -- It was still morning in Berlin on this Sunday when candles at the Church of Reconciliation were lit to honour yesteryear’s dead, the brave souls who ran from the uniforms and helmets and strong-armed authorities, who ran for freedom that was torn away, even as their flesh would be torn by barbed-wire and vicious dogs and bullets at that wall.
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Learning to be a kid again

KAMPALA, UGANDA✦It’s the children who in the end will be given the keys to the Kingdom. This is what Jesus said on the matter. Be a kid again. The way up is down. If you want even half a shot at eternal life, as if it were somehow possible, go and grow young.
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Being open to life’s surprises

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, July 19, 2014) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ It was in the whirlpool at the Les Chater Y when I was congratulated for My Bride’s recent naming into the Order of Canada. The woman, another early-morning swimmer, had read the news in this publication. “Let’s face it,” she said. “You’ve had a role to play in this all. Any woman who wins something like this has to be married to a certain sort of man. If Madame Curie hadn’t been married to Pierre, she’d have been forced to be home barefoot, baking bread.”
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It’s a privilege to be a father

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, June 14, 2014) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ The sad truth is that the world is full of Charlie Gray sort of people who have listened to all the wrong voices and spent entire swaths of the only life they have doing things that haven’t mattered to them in the least, and, in the grand scheme of things, have mattered little to others also. They’re people like in John Marquand’s novel “Point of No Return,” where Charlie Gray, after years of apple-polishing, is finally named vice-president of that fancy little New York bank, the promotion that finally gives him and his family the security they need.
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Boogeyman paranoia where shadows lurk at every corner

(The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday, May 17, 2014) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ There was a time when a neighbourhood school was a place that nourished your soul. It wasn’t that long ago. I’m not that old. You’d go to play, say, baseball on Saturday morning or, in winter, hockey on the rink that your Grade 6 teacher lovingly flooded outside the row of windows where even the good students looked out to daydream. It was a time when you’d walk to school every morning. By yourself. Even when the school bully – her last name was, fittingly, Greenall – went the same way. It somehow even brought out courage that you never knew you had.
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