Category Family
Small Town Medicine
Hospitals are not my favourite places, neither to be in nor to visit. I’m not a fan of being sick, nor spending much time with sick people. For the most part, with my family and friends being healthy, I manage to avoid hospitals. I’ve convinced myself that when someone does get sick they really don’t […]
The Waiting Room
I’ve been in this room at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute before; at least I think it was the same one. Seven years ago. Waiting for the heart surgeon conducting my mother’s operation to come and tell me how it went. That was a long day. Her surgery began at 8 a.m., and it […]
My Mother is Politically Incorrect.
It may have something to do with her age. My mother is 87 after all. As we get older we seem to lose some of our filters. We say things that we might have only thought but not said when we were younger and perhaps more concerned with other people’s opinions. Mind you, I don’t […]
Back To Mer Bleue
It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, the leaves haven’t changed colour yet, and we had an hour between engagements, so we headed back to Mer Bleue. Last Sunday we had walked one of the forest trails. Yesterday, with less available time, we chose the boardwalk that goes over a marsh and peat bog. It was […]
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 […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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