The author and photographer Doris Brocke is an extraordinary talent. https://dorisbrocke.wixsite.com/rhubarbtoroses/services Doris has kindly given my wife Anne the gift of her book, which offers solace and support, as Anne struggles with the incurable brain cancer that has befallen her: The tragically hip and the tragical blip: Anne faces glioblastoma, a fatal cancer of..
Chipmunks from a Georgetown childhood and my wife as a chipmunk today As I’ve written elsewhere, when I was a small child growing up in Georgetown, Ontario, I had the gooiest of soft spots for all animal creatures, fictional or otherwise. Every night before bed, my dad would read me a story featuring the..
Childhood Meatloaf and Anne/ Le pain de viande de l’enfance et Anne La version française de cette vignette suit la version anglaise. When I was a child, growing up in Georgetown, Ontario (1955-1964), my parents were struggling financially. One way that my mother devised to economize was to bake meatloaf cut with breadcrumbs. A lot..
The Public Speaking Blues: Childhood and Adolescence in a Performance Anxiety Funk When I was attending Chapel Street elementary school in Georgetown, Ontario, back in the 1960s, public speaking was an integral part of the curriculum in the senior grades. And terror was the order of the day. My public speaking anguish typically..
A life of elections starting with Dief & Mike in Georgetown, Ontario, 1958: reflections in the wake of the general election of April 28, 2025 Some of my earliest memories are of a family life infused with periodic political bile. My father loved to agitate the fecal matter and took no end of delight in..
For the love of sparrows: A feathered nest of memories from childhood and adolescence Sparrows generally don’t get good press. Bird enthusiasts often find them drab and banal, and others label them invasive species and disparage them as scavenger gourmets. But there are so many reasons to adore sparrows. My wife loves..
My mom, door-to-door salespeople, and the clarinet: tooting in the 1950s and 1960s My 1950s and 1960s Georgetown childhood was characterized by cacophony, including rumpus and din on our little subdivision street where a knife sharpener man would ring his bell; where the breadman would dart from home to home distributing succulent baked goods with..
A Georgetown Childhood Easter 1955-1964 My Georgetown Easter memories are succulent and sweet. On Easter morning, sausages and scrambled eggs, which my father called “rambled screggs,” were the order of the day. My sister and I were never hungry for this sort of sustenance, and my father’s scrambled eggs were always runny. We were itching..
The Georgetown International Bantam Hockey Tournament: the Highlight of Easter Season, 1960-1964 For more images, please click here: The Georgetown International Bantam Hockey Tournament: the Highlight of Easter Season, 1960-1964 – Robert McBryde And here: Bantam Tournament – THE GEORGETOWN VAULT In 1960, when I was eight years old, my Easter season was magically transformed,..
The Toronto Maple Leafs and Me: Childhood, Adolescence, and Old Age When my Slovak father-in-law reached his dotage – at about the age I am now – he took to repeating “V krátkom čase budem mŕtvy” (In a short time I be dead) and “Čoskoro ma k sebe zavolá pán Boh” (Soon Mr. God will..