Alternatives to Ottawa Public Transit (Part Two): Bring back hitchhiking Given the abysmal service offered by OC Transpo, hereafter known as Octopus Transit, and the 19% hike in the cost of a monthly pass for seniors (albeit down from the 120% increase originally floated by the Octopi commission), it is high time to seek alternatives..
Rascal scooter to the rescue: an alternative to Ottawa public transit (part one) When I was a child my mom always called me “little rascal,” normally in Ukrainian, the language that her Polish family adopted when they came to Canada just before World War One. “Malenʹkyy dyyavol” she would yelp when I misbehaved…literally “little devil.”..
Seething Seniors: a letter to the editor of the Ottawa Citizen newspaper Dear editor, I’m writing in response to the article headlined Ottawa seniors seething about massive hike in OC Transpo pass price penned by Ken Warren and published on November 14. Ottawa seniors shocked by big hike in OC Transpo pass cost | Ottawa..
Terminal tartar When I was about five years old, growing up in Georgetown, Ontario, a first visit to the dentist yielded the most perplexing diagnosis: I was afflicted with terminal tartar. Now in our home, in honour of my mom’s vestigial Catholicism, combined with her ardent desire to be a contemporary 1950s housewife, we always..
Gender-bending for Halloween “Girls will be boys and boys will be girls It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world…” – Lola, The Kinks Born in 1952, I grew up in what was then a small southern Ontario municipality called Georgetown, an epicenter, I decided later, of what has been dubbed the Southern Ontario..
The Library saved my life: the chronicles of a brand-new denizen of the Ottawa public library scene Did you know that October is Canadian Library Month? Here’s a little story in honour of Library Month… “A room without books is like a body without a soul” -Marcus Tullius Cicero Growing up in Georgetown, Ontario in..
The Loon on Oak-Head Pond cries for three days, in the gray mist. cries for the north it hopes it can find. plunges, and comes up with a slapping pickerel. blinks its red eye. cries again. you come every afternoon, and wait to hear it. you sit a long time, quiet, under the thick pines,..
Reminding me of why I fear the tomb: Fall 2024 Lac Saint-Joseph Quebec Photo Lac Saint-Joseph Quebec Taken by Lorne Coughlin Nothing Gold Can Stay Robert Frost 1874 –1963 Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So..
Turning into a pumpkin: Canadian Thanksgiving 2024 Awakening from a turbulent dream within a dream, So dreaming still, I found myself for a brief shining moment In a glowing paradise of pumpkins. A disembodied voice whispered portentously, “ Weary pilgrim, you are about to turn into a pumpkin… Eternally.” Meaning and origin of..
Old enough I’m old enough to have looked like this; It pains me to say it, But not amiss: The sands of time Don’t lead to bliss. I’m old enough to have looked like this. I can hardly believe that I won a plaque; But there’s no denying, No turning back. No twisting,..