Posted on March 4, 2026 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with 5 comments

 

Port Renfrew Beach

(Pete MacDonald photo)

 

“I wish I was twenty and in love with life and full of beans.”

Self Portrait – Mary Oliver

Where has the time gone?

I reconnected a few weeks ago with someone I met eight years ago. Her father and my mother were both living in a care facility, stripped of dignity as their minds deserted them. We sang songs for our parents, triggering a part of the brain that still fires on all cylinders. Both of our parents have departed, which, in the end, was a blessing.

“Memory: a golden bowl, or a basement without light.” Mary Oliver

As so many of us do these days, we spoke of the passage of time. As she was signing off, she remarked, “Aging is a funny thing and creeps up. We all wonder where time goes and there it is, every day.”

Can you feel it?

I sure can.

There’s someone stalking me.

I feel his presence.

I can almost smell him.

He pursues me relentlessly.

He goes by the name of time.

I’m not one who suffers from the mid-winter blues. Walking every day is my primary antidote along with regular exercise, lots of reading and avoiding the consumption of news.

Having said that, I find lately that feelings of melancholy occur more than I would like. Watching time fly past is a contributor, but the constant barrage of illness and death seems to have me a bit off my game. It seems that just about every family has someone who is dealing with cancer, recovering from cancer, or dying of cancer. Rarely does a week go by when you don’t hear of someone you know who has this dreaded illness.

It is true that the number of deaths seems very high, but I believe that the most likely explanation is that the Baby Boomers have arrived en masse. That, in itself, would skew the numbers in a significant way.

My late brother, Tom, had an expression that always resonated with me as he was dealing with cancer. “I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of not living.”

So, what is one to do?

Kick ass.

Pedal to the metal.

If you’re lucky and all your body parts are functioning at an acceptable level, I would humbly suggest that you take every opportunity to make the most of the time that’s available to you. As they say, “Live every day as if it’s your last.”

Sing in the shower.

Dance when no one is looking.

Eat that outrageous dessert.

Travel to that place that you always wanted to visit.

Write a letter to your best friend. Better still, write a letter to yourself.

Take up a new hobby.

Go zip lining.

Jump out of an airplane. Please wear a parachute!

Go and see your favourite band perform.

Eat ice cream at every chance.

Read a great book.

Dig your toes in the sand while sipping a margarita.

Eat. Breath. Live with joy.

Be kind to people.

To hell with all this doom and gloom.

Heaven can wait.

“Though I’m not twenty,

And won’t be again but ah! Seventy. And still

In Love with life. And still

Full of beans.”

Self-Portrait – Mary Oliver

Have a great weekend.

Posted on February 25, 2026 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with no comments yet

A cup of Canada

 

Galvanize. Synonym. Animate, spur, fire, electrify, stir, rouse.

Nation building.

We hear the term often coming from the mouths of politicians, but the words often ring hollow. In a wildly diverse country, bringing people together as one, from all walks of life and from hundreds of different countries, renders the task very difficult if not impossible. These days, Canadians are united in their concerns about the leadership (or lack thereof) from our neighbours to the south. This is hardly the way that we want to be galvanized: by fear, uncertainty and tension.

There is one surefire way to bring together Canadians regardless of race, religion, or political affiliation.

Sports.

Sports has the power to unite.

We cheered loudly and proudly when the Toronto Blue Jays won back-to-back World Series in 1992 and were mesmerized by the Toronto Raptors when they won the NBA title in 2019. They were, momentarily “Canada’s Team” just long enough for the star player on that team to bail after just one season. There were precious few Canadians on these teams.

Sorry, baseball and basketball but we are a hockey nation. When our men and women don the red and white jersey, emblazoned with the maple leaf, they are truly representing us because they are one of us – Canadian to the core. Tim Horton swilling, maple syrup lovers.

Those of us old enough will remember vividly the Summit Series of 1972 when Canada faced off against the Russians and won in dramatic fashion leading Canadians to pour into the streets waving our flag and singing our national anthem.

Sidney Crosby’s “Golden Goal” in Vancouver at the 2010 Olympics will be forever remembered by generations of Canadians, young and old.

Another Olympiad concluded last weekend.

Canada came out on the short end of a 2-1 overtime loss to the United States.

There were several games leading up to the gold medal match for the men and the gold medal game for the women, that were heart attack inducing.

The day after our women lost the goal medal game in heart breaking fashion, a friend sent me a description of what had transpired in her office during that game.

 

“This afternoon, productivity at our office was heroically sacrificed in the name of national unity.

It started innocently enough—someone “just checking the score” of the game between the Canada women’s national ice hockey team and the United States women’s national ice hockey team.

Five minutes later, the boardroom had transformed into a makeshift arena.

Now, this is a workplace where Steve from Accounting hasn’t made eye contact with Priya from Marketing since The Great Budget Disagreement of 2024. Where the Sales Team refers to IT as “those people.” Where passive-aggressive emails are considered cardio.

But today? Today was different.

Today, Steve and Priya stood shoulder to shoulder, squinting at a laptop balanced on a stack of annual reports. The Sales Team and IT were united in a common cause: loudly explaining offside rules to each other (incorrectly). Even Margaret from HR, who normally frowns upon “excessive enthusiasm,” was whisper-shouting, “SHOOT!” like a seasoned coach.

When Canada scored, something miraculous happened.

High-fives were exchanged between sworn spreadsheet enemies. Someone draped a red scarf over the photocopier. A chant of “Canada! Canada!” erupted near the coffee machine, where moments earlier a territorial dispute over almond milk had been brewing.

For one glorious hour, deadlines were forgotten, inboxes were ignored, and workplace grudges were placed gently on ice.

It struck me then: sports have this magical power. They take people who won’t share a stapler and turn them into a synchronized cheering section. They remind us that beneath our job titles and petty grievances, we are all just humans who get wildly emotional about a puck sliding across frozen water.

Tomorrow, we’ll return to subtle tension and carefully worded emails.

But today?

Today, our hockey team may have lost but we were, nevertheless, Canada Strong.” IC.

(Names and locations are fictional).

 

Were you watching?

Of course you were.

I was fortunate enough to be in school for several days last week and education took on a whole

new meaning as many lesson plans were altered (or jettisoned) any time the men’s or

women’s teams were competing. All of the games were thrilling and when Canada emerged

victorious, you could feel the school shake.

After each game, I spoke to the students… once we all stopped hyperventilating! I told them that in all likelihood, they would probably forget most of what they learned in their school years. I suggested that what they wouldn’t forget was experiences like this when we come together as a class, a school, a community and a country.

We were galvanized.

Nation building at its finest.

Oh! Canada.

Have a great weekend.

P.S. The students at my school were understandably crushed with Canada’s lost. I took this as a teachable moment. Canada has been on the right side of many gold medal games. You can’t win all the time. Sidney Crosby might well go down as one of the greatest leaders in sport or any other endeavor. The lesson? Display humility in victory and graciousness in defeat. No chest pumping saying that he (or Canada) was the greatest when he won and giving credit to his opponents when his team lost. The definition of class.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on February 18, 2026 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with no comments yet

 

 

Winter Wonderland

 

It’s shaping up as an old-fashioned winter.

Perfection (per-fec-tion) Noun. The condition, state, or quality of being free or as free as possible from all flaws or defects.

In recent years, winter has been all over the weather map. Three years ago, we had some historic snowfalls. The last few winters have been quite benign with very minimal accumulations of snow. There are two metrics that indicate to me the type of winter we’re having: storm days at school and the number of times we need the parking lot plowed at our apartment complex.

In the past three months, we’ve had seven storm days at school and at least 10 days when we can hear the beep beep of the front-end loader coming to clean our parking lot.

A lot of snow has accumulated lately and barring a big mid-winter thaw, snowmobilers, cross country skiers and snowshoers will have one of their best winters in recent memory.

Last Saturday was one of those winter days that can only be described as perfection. The air was cold and crisp but not frigid. There was no wind to create bone-numbing windchill, the sun was shining and there was nothing but blue skies. Pristine winter conditions.

I went out for an early morning walk. The sidewalks were quite icy but otherwise everything else about the walk was wonderful. These are the kind of days one feels truly alive and grateful.

I went with a friend to have lunch with a family member at an assisted living facility. We were sharing childhood memories including bowling at “the alleys” and skating parties at the old Memorial Rink on the campus of St. Francis Xavier University. In our youth, we loved going to skating parties hoping to get to skate with a member of the fairer sex. I started to sing the first few bars of the Ferlin Husky classic “Wings of a Dove”, one of the songs played endlessly at these skates. The others at my table joined in.

At an adjacent table, an elderly lady who was sitting by herself. When we finished verse one, we could hear her chiming in with verse two. She had a lovely voice. I asked her if she skated in her youth. She spent her youth in a small seaside community on the Eastern Shore of Guysborough County.

“There was a river not far from the school which froze over during the winter. While the boys cleared the snow off the ice, the girls went down to the shore to gather driftwood for a fire that glowed brightly when darkness descended. We had to be home at 10:00 p.m. but none of us had watches. There was a house near the river and at 10:00 p.m. sharp, a woman placed a lamp at her window indicating that time was up. Reluctantly, we trudged home.”

Oh, those halcyon days.

Later that same day, a friend joined me for a drive in the country. Simply put, it was a winter wonderland. The snow glittered like diamonds. We drove up to Beaver Mountain Park, a popular place to go snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. A lone eagle soared effortlessly overhead. There were cars parked on the road leading up to the parking lot, so we knew that the park was hopping. We hoped to be able to find a spot to park but that was folly. It looked like the 401 at rush hour. Only because of the kindness of a man who was able to move his truck enough that we could turn around, we would have had to back out of the parking lot and part way down a steep hill.

I told my friend about the days decades ago when I went cross-country skiing with my mother-in- law. She was raised in Northern New Brunswick, and she grew up on skies. We had some legendary treks through the park, often lasting 4-5 hours. I could scarcely keep up with her. There was a shelter deep in the forest where we stopped for soup from a thermos and hot chocolate.

A leisurely drive home through Back Road Brierly Brook ended a near perfect day.

We are fortunate in our part of the world to have four seasons.

Not everyone loves the winter but occasionally, we are reminded that it can be special if we embrace it… like we did when we were young, innocent, unhurried, and untroubled.

Have a great weekend.