Is there a doctor in the house? Dr. Macintosh, Georgetown, Ontario, 1955-1964, and beyond “Nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.” – Milan Kundera “Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.” – Doug Larson When our family moved to Georgetown from Toronto in 1955,..
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..
La version française de ce texte suit la version anglaise. Excremental vision By her own admission, my mom began toilet training my sister and me when we reached about six months of age. Her fervent desire to get us out of diapers was a rather extreme reflection of the prevailing zeitgeist of the 1950s where..
She’s dreaming of a Weetabix Christmas My wife Anne cannot live without Weetabix. This is a serious addiction. On Christmas morning, she will devour a delicious bowl of Weetabix as always. She has wolfed down Weetabix in many countries and on several continents and can provide a detailed, granular analysis of Weetabix variants world wide…
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.”..
Random Thoughts on “Black Friday” My wife Anne is a latecomer to North American culture. Growing up in Communist Czechoslovakia, she learned at a very early age to tune out the constant drumbeat of mendacious propaganda. This impermeable filter has served her well in the Ameri-Canadian commercial sphere where orgies of greed punctuate a perpetual..
Noisy neighbours “Good fences make good neighbours” – Robert Frost “Hell is other people” – Jean-Paul Sartre We had been living in Paradise…until the new neighbours moved in. Before coming to France in the fall of 2021, we had never resided in a dwelling without at least one adjoining wall. And we paid the price..
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,..
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..