But there are no guarantees. — "I am Canadian. The concept of my neighbours owning guns scares the shit out of me. Intellectually, I know that not every American with a gun is out to kill people (although I can't see any other use for an AR-15). However, living in a place where a gun crime…

Grieving parents want a different approach. — In 2020, in the United States, 93,000 people died from drug harms. In 2016, Canada declared opioid use a public health emergency. Since then, more than 22,000 people have died from tainted drugs. Most of these people were young adults who used drugs for a variety of reasons. Some suffered…

Bittersweet, but still the best day of the year. — Most Christmas songs don’t do a lot for me. They’re too religious, or too sad, or too happy. They just don’t speak to me. That might be a holdover from working in a mall selling shoes for a few years and listening to the same 25 songs over and over…

A graphic novel is definitely not a comic book — My parents were readers, especially my mother. Heaven forbid we should interrupt her while she was reading a book. There were never enough bookshelves, and any door-to-door salesman with a carry-case of encyclopedias must have felt he’d hit the mother lode when my mother answered the door. We had them…

I lied about the loaves, and the fishes are canned. Why do we still have food banks, anyway? — In 1986, I wrote an article about food banks that was published in the newsletter of an anti-poverty group. The views were mine alone, although I was a board member of the organization. When I wrote it, I was a single parent with three children and a job that paid…

My thoughts on the proliferation of fundraisers — Recently, a work-related accident in a city near me killed several people. Within 24 hours, four of the affected families had set up fundraising campaigns to help with expenses. Am I the only one who is uncomfortable with this? I am suspicious when a fundraiser is set up before the…

Warning — this describes the death of an animal. — Our family lived on a quiet street in 1958. It was all single family houses on that block, and most of the houses had been built in pieces. Sometimes, the basement was poured and finished, and the family lived in the basement while completing the rest of the house. As…

Does anyone really forget a first love? — I started smoking at sixteen to look cool to my friends. I quit more than fifty years later. This song by Gretchen Peters tells the story not only of my addiction to cigarettes, but the story of my first love. The song combines thinking about a long-ago love while enjoying…