Facing the yawning abyss of solitude in the fall of my life It was a beautiful fall day in early October, 2023, when Anne and I were still living in Dijon, France. We were heading for Mâcon for a day trip, on a local train destined for Lyon. The train was an old..
Unsafe at any speed revisited I’m a horrible driver; I’ve always been a horrible driver. This deficiency is in my DNA: behind the proverbial wheel, my father was unsafe at any speed and my mother was beyond a shadow of a doubt the worst driver in history. (Various friends and relatives wanted to sue the..
Escaping the rough by choosing the right club In 1964, when I was 12 years old, our family moved from Georgetown to London Ontario. This permanent change of scene came as a devastating blow, complete with the typical leaving behind of school and friends, entailing the requisite adjustment to a new, bigger city culture. In..
Ephemeral Mist: We Exist Then Disappear Haiga is a Japanese concept describing a refined visual art of combining brush painting, Haiku (or sometimes Tanka, as here), and calligraphy. A traditional Haiga requires all three of these elements. Like the poetic form it accompanies, Haiga is based on simple, yet often what one hopes are profound,..
Winning the brownie For Lindsey Reed When I was a child growing up in Georgetown, Ontario, I loved playing little league baseball. The American side of my family was made up of baseball fanatics, including a second cousin who was a renowned semi-pro. I was a pudgy wanna-be star. My goal throughout my six-year..
Mourn on the 4th of July: An elegy for my American cousins and friends For my dear, recently departed wife, Anne, travelling to Vermont, which we did quite frequently whilst in Canada, was like returning to her native region in the Carpathian foothills of Slovakia: the same green uplands folding one behind another, the..
Riding the Insomnia Express I have suffered from insomnia since the age of about four years old, when the minister of our local United Church convinced me that all my cursing and swearing would lead me straight to hell, where unimaginable torment awaited. Going To Hell – Robert McBryde I am now a wretched,..
The Presence Of Absence In an interview, the great writer Christian Bobin said the following, which resonates during this time of coming to terms with absence, when love remains alive: “What remains of a loved one is a very subtle, immaterial substance that we used to call—for lack of a better term—their presence. A unique..
OC Transpo inaction has real life consequences: Letter to the editor of the Ottawa Citizen Dear Editor, I am writing in response to the June 24, 2026 article by Randall Denley: https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/i-worry-about-the-competence-of-people-running-oc-transpo-opinion As a carless senior, I have to rely on the OC Transpo public transit system. My wife and I have lived in a..
Take this waltz: It’s yours now. It’s all that there is. The vast majority of survivors of a dearly departed spouse are afflicted by certain regrets. One regret that gnaws at my soul as I lie sleepless at night is that I never took Anne dancing. Why? I was the world’s worst, most embarrassing..