Butting in and butting out: Childhood, adulthood, and cigarette smoke (Georgetown, Ontario and beyond) (38) smoke smoke smoke that cigarette Tex Williams with Lyrics – YouTube From earliest childhood, I was constantly engulfed in a toxic cloud of cigarette smoke, and growing up in Georgetown, Ontario in the 1950s, I was mad keen to butt..
ET C’EST L’HIVER F. Hamelin – Marie-Claire Séguin Une belle chanson poétique pour l’hiver *English translation below the French Nous marchons si près de la terre Sous le vent de minuit Sous la blancheur du givre Et comme au temps du très vieux temps Le long d’un grand pays de neige Les arbres se..
Indians: A controversial play in 1980 As my exit from the theatre of life is imminent, I remember so fondly the many student actors with whom I had the privilege to work over a 35-year teaching career at Champlain St. Lawrence College in Quebec City. The first play that I directed at St. Lawrence took..
August 30,2024 Today is our 44th wedding anniversary/ Nous fêtons aujourd’hui notre 44e anniversaire de marriage. Ce qui suit est une histoire vraie. Les noms n’ont pas été changés pour protéger les coupables. What follows is a true story. The names have not been changed to protect the guilty. Scènes de notre marriage / Scenes..
Nous sommes désolés Oncle Albert Voici la dernière nouvelle de mon livre, écrite il y a exactement un an. Le livre s’appelle Le temps passé avec vous fut bref mais tordant. L’oncle Albert est décédé peu après la rédaction de ce texte. The English version follows. The English book is called My Time with You..
The Bear Essentials June 1972 I have never been a happy camper. When I was a small child, my parents forced me to go to a portentously named “cub camp” in Drumbo, Ontario, located on the Nith River. Even today, some sixty-five years later, repeating these diabolical names makes me quake with wretched..
Sweetening the pot I’ve been an incurable insomniac since the age of five, when I became convinced by the minister of our local parish that I would burn in hell for eternity because “I took the name of the Lord God in vain.” For the next few years, I spent entire nights praying to the..
Leonard Cohen: They’ve got you covered First off…a confession …until very recently, I had no idea what a “cover tune” meant. Second confession: Now that I know that “covers” refer to artists interpreting other artists’ work, I have to say that there are a great many cover versions of tunes that I prefer to..
David Sedaris and little old me Most of us have been told at one time or another that we look just like “X” (i.e. my favorite cousin’s best friend’s elder brother/sister/wife/uncle). Well, what happens when someone tells us that we write a whole lot like “X”? Since my book My Time with You Has Been..
Skinned alive… surviving by the skin of my teeth For a great many years, I contemplated suicide on a near daily basis. That I didn’t actually follow through on these ideations had much less to do with principles or consideration for others than with an abiding terror of disappearing forever into the yawning abyss of..