-
Remembering my father’s hands
My Dad died recently. Not yesterday, but earlier this year, after a long battle with cancer. When we had the Celebration of Life last month, when the weather was warm enough to, my mother put out books of photos of some of the things Dad had created in his life. Dad had always been an avid gardener and general woodworker, but beyond that, so the story goes, he didn’t have much creativity. And he certainly couldn’t draw a straight line with a ruler. But around about the time I was an early teenager, he started taking duck carving classes. This… Read more…
-
Juice to the rescue?
Have you ever had cherry juice? No, not just the leftovers after a bowl of cherries for dessert, but a full glass of the brilliant red liquid that just hits the spot? Me neither, until I spent a year in Türkiye. Until then, I’d been brought up on apple and orange juice. Grapefruit juice or tomato juice were for fancy occasions. But that year, I learned about tiny bottles of peach juice and apricot juice and yes, sour cherry juice – or vişne suyu, as I learned to call it. After school, a gang of us would go to the… Read more…
-
Remembering lives lost too young
My Facebook feed this morning is still reminding me of the horrific shooting at École Poytechnique. It happened in my final year of university, just a couple of hours down the road from where I was at school in Ottawa, studying journalism. Thirty six years ago, 14 women the same age as me, were slain by a lone guman who believed women shouldn’t study at university. I won’t repeat his name. It affected me deeply and I remember so many conversations among my female classmates. I then went on to work in highly technical industries that employed hundreds of engineers… Read more…
