The water is cool. It always is. I hesitate on the second rung with my feet submerged. The air is cool, too, but the colour of the light convinced me to swim. Silver ripples on the water, golden light on the trees. This swim will last me all winter. My family’s church is connected to…
I don’t know when I got the blank postcard or who gave it to me, but for years I’ve used it as a bookmark. The sculpture on the front is striking. Two figures, one seated, one standing, are joined at the feet and lean towards each other. Together, they hold an overflowing basin of water,…
The crow sits on the girl’s arm. It’s an old photograph, not quite in focus; the girl isn’t looking at the camera and neither is the crow. The photo was taken in 1887, and the girl is Emily Carr, aged 16. I’ve been working on a project about Emily Carr recently. My office wall is…
I’m remembering church picnics. It’s summer nostalgia, of course. The wind in the trees outside my window and the sound of kids playing. I’m leaving church after the service and thinking about watermelon, remembering the tote bag my mom put the thermos in and the way she folded a travelling rug on top and the…
A new word caught my attention: thrutopia. Not utopia or dystopia but thrutopia. Not false hope or looming fear but a future of travelling through. That feels like a timely word and a necessary vision these days. The word itself has been around for nearly a decade. It was first suggested by the environmental philosopher…
Those wise, sad eyes. Virginia Woolf stared out of Facebook at me, and underneath her photograph, a poignant quotation: “There is a kind of sadness that comes from knowing too much, from seeing the world as it truly is.” From there, she described life as a series of small moments and asserted that love is…
After the city, the garden /
is quiet, the leaves green /
enough to absorb every cry.
I have an empty maple syrup can on my desk to keep spare pencils in, but in the local grocery store maple syrup comes in small glass bottles with weird little round handles near the top. My friend wanted to know what the handles were for, so of course I told her that in Ontario…
We had two hours to fill, my youngest son and I, before an appointment. He suggested the museum. It was nearby and something we’d both enjoy exploring, he argued. An easy win.He is eleven years old now and I’m not sure we’d been to the museum like this – just the two of us –…
January days are short, and evenings draw in quickly. After the bright sparkle of the Christmas season and the New Year’s fireworks, quiet winter settles around us with its early shadows and dark nights as we shift back to routine and daily life. This feels fitting. After the vibrant storytelling of the nativity, Love Incarnate,…
Sunday morning, up before dawn, and the smell of the oven preheating, a machine hum in the empty café. Outside the street was empty, and I could see the kitchen lights reflecting in the dark shop windows across the way. I was a university student then, working part-time in a downtown coffee shop around the…
November takes us on a strange journey from All Soul’s Day to Advent, with Remembrance Day in between. I’ve been thinking about the poem “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae. Like everyone else my age, I remember memorizing it in school and reeling it off with my class, all standing chock-a-block in assembly together with…
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