Category Family

Another Sunday Stroll

I have occasionally rhapsodized here about the joy of living in Ottawa with its hundreds of kilometres of walking trails and who knows how many hectares of urban forest. Okay, somebody knows the exact numbers for both but I’m not going to look it up. I was raised with acres, I have no idea how […]

September Again

It has been the same ritual every September. I ask my daughter how her first day of school went. It may It have been good, it may have been indifferent, but she always manages to tell me “I hate school.” For eighteen straight Septembers that was our ritual. Until last year. Suddenly she was excited […]

The Extra Mile

We were having a good time. I vaguely realized that dinner was slow in coming, but it didn’t really matter. It mattered to our server. She apologized for the delay, made sure that drinks were full and no-one had any unfulfilled needs. For half of our group (11 people from four families) the delay was […]

Lighting Up The Night

It is a Thursday night ritual throughout the summer. Tonight, as I have done the past two Thursdays, I will continue a vacation tradition and join the small crowd gathered near The Pier in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, for the weekly fireworks display. Most people, at least from my non-scientific observations, enjoy fireworks. There’s something […]

The Surprise

My friend Mike loves his wife. That is not surprising. After all, he is a Christian and there is a biblical element there. But he likes to go the extra mile (another biblical reference if you missed it) and think big. So when he phoned me and said he wanted to do something special for […]

The Last Graduation

School graduation is an important rite of passage, for both the students and their families. It is also one of the dullest events you can devise. It is a wonder more people don’t die of boredom during the ceremony. All you are there for is the 15 seconds or so it takes for your family […]

Waiting For A Plane VI – Overbooked

I was traveling for a couple of weeks last month. I spent a lot of time in airports. In each one I had time on my hands. As a result I wrote at least one post in each of the airports, which am posting from time to time, interspersed with some other thoughts. They were […]

Sea of Tulips II

It was family time Sunday and we decided to brave the crowds and see the tulips. The plan was to park far away from the action and walk to Dow’s Lake, pretty much the epicentre of the annual Canadian Tulip Festival. It worked. I think Sunday was probably the busiest day of Tulipfest. The weather […]

March For Life III – The Protest

If I didn’t have experience in the matter I would have thought the media was just trying to be fair, to provide some balance. That I have found is highly unlikely when it comes to the emotionally charged issue of abortion. There were thousands of people on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill Thursday as the pro-life movement […]

March For Life II – The 2015 Event

I dropped by the lawn of Parliament Hill very briefly Thursday afternoon to check out part of the 2015 March For Life. I have some thoughts on the subject that i am going to share in a couple of subsequent posts, but for today I thought I would let the pictures do the talking.   […]