Sister Monica Clare’s childhood in the American South was difficult. Her father was a violent addict. The family never lived in one place long enough to hang pictures on walls. On one occasion, out of hunger, Clare distracted a store clerk while her sister nabbed a can of spaghetti. Her father once landed a good…
Getting old is often not pretty: incontinence, managing medications and doctors’ visits (if one has the luxury of a family physician), navigating the medical system, making and getting to appointments – all of it can be overwhelming. Care management often falls to relatives. Yet some live too far away, some may be in similar circumstances…
“Everyone is unshakably good (no exceptions),” writes Father Gregory Boyle in his new book Cherished Belonging. He also says, “We belong to each other (no exceptions).” The statements by this Jesuit priest, founder of Homeboy Industries, a gang intervention program in Los Angeles, could be a bit shocking to those who grew up in a…
Very loud squawking noises outside our living room drew me to the window. I pulled out my binoculars to get a better view and met a disturbing sight. Eight magpies had ganged up on a young robin struggling to escape its captors. Feathers were flying, and after a lot of painful, desperate twitching the robin…
A manager I worked for at a not-for-profit agency once explained to me why she chose to work there. “I want to make a difference,” she said. She had no children, and here was one way she could leave her stamp on the world. I suspect that everyone longs to make a positive difference in…
I am a post-war baby boomer, the first child born after my parents arrived in Canada in 1947 from The Netherlands with five children in tow. In eighth grade at Calvin Christian School in Hamilton, Ontario, my teacher and school principal, Mr. John VanderVelde, showed us shocking photos of huge piles of bodies of Jews…
It was an impulse buy. I was looking through the 70 percent off Christmas clearance rack at London Drugs when I spotted a book cover with the name “Peter Mansbridge” (of CBC’s The National). For almost thirty years, this trusted icon with the fatherly face on the evening news informed and comforted our nation through…
“Forget about Eddie Van Halen, forget about what the idiots on YouTube say. Learn your chords. Learn C, G and F – it all starts from there, the rest comes later.” Most amateur guitar players will chuckle at this comment made by Ray Mitchell (played by Alberta country singer-songwriter Corb Lund) to his 15-year-old guitar…
The parents of 16-year-old Miriam have no income. She enters a relationship with an older man so she will be provided for. She becomes pregnant, but her relationship has given her more than daily provision. It has also given her HIV/AIDs. In order to not pass the virus onto her child, she does not nurse…
No one else spoke to me about my mother. Not my kindergarten teacher, not the kids in my class, not the neighbors, not people from our church. So begins this memoir, describing the confusion of Jane Griffioen as a four-year old, totally puzzled as to why her mother was taken away on a stretcher from…
Louisa:I found a treasure at the Thrift Store. It was an Anne De Vries Kleuterbijbel Vertelboek (Kindergarten Story Book Bible). Though the stitching is broken and some pages missing, Bob and I are taking turns reading it out loud after supper for devotions. Initially, we stumbled on lots of the Dutch words, but we are…
I met her at the swimming pool. We would chat together in the shower (and later joked that we probably wouldn’t recognize each other “with clothes on”). A few times we arranged to walk together in downtown Edmonton’s river valley during lunch breaks. I eventually left my job, and we lost touch. Then, one day,…
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