Canada

  • The shops were holiday decorated in October. Then the ads flourished like Wild Parsnip. By mid-November, as if exposed to the weed’s sap, I had a severe skin reaction (photodermatitis) that worsened as the month waned. Black Friday. Cyber-Monday. Buy, buy, buy. The business news reports continuously remind us that, according to Forbes, holiday sales

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  • The arrival of autumn brings out the bookish aspect of my nature. The responsibilities for coursework found in freshly printed syllabi, the necessity of meeting a professor’s deadlines, revising lectures, and meeting new students have long passed for me. I do, on occasion, miss wandering a campus, the anticipation of entering a lecture hall for

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  • Thirty-seven years ago, on 15 October, Kirk Gibson stepped up to home plate in Dodger Stadium in Game 1 of the World Series between the Dodgers and the Oakland Athletics. He was suffering from a swollen, shredded ligament in his right knee and a strained left hamstring. Tommy Lasorda wasn’t going to play him, but

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  • by Carl ten Hoopen Chocolate and beer slip uneasily into essays. They are topics that glide easily to our attention when pushing a cart down the grocery aisle, attending a hockey game, or dining at the Queen & Beaver Public House in Toronto. My thoughts have unraveled on beer. Chocolate, as beloved as it is,

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  • This morning, I received a letter from a friend in Canada. He was polite, as he typically is, but I could hear the anger when he asked, “These are Congressmen?” His question was raised in response to a letter six members of the U.S. House of Representatives addressed to Canada’s ambassador to the United States,

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  • I hesitated in the grip of withdrawals. “Go! Get out!” Lynn Tanaka firmly told me on my final day on Mayne Island. Taking a few reluctant steps towards the door, my eyes locked on the neatly arranged shelves in her Miners Bay Books. “No more books for you,” she said. There was no sense in

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  • THE RULE DIALOGUES

    THE RULE DIALOGUES She was a stranger I encountered in the Miners Bay Book shop on Mayne Island, British Columbia, Canada. Over the next three months, she was my Saturday morning breakfast companion at the Sunny Mayne Bakery Café. Each Saturday, she joined me at the same table. Her words came to me in black

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  • “As President John F. Kennedy said many years ago, “geography has made us neighbours, history has made us friends, economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies.” That rang true for many decades prior to President Kennedy’s time in office and in the decades since. From the beaches of Normandy, to the

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