Category Society

Black Friday Deals

The stores are closed here, but the shopping orgy continues online. I figured, if you can’t beat them, why not join them? Black Friday, the day after American Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year in the U.S. In the last 20 years or so it has spread into Canada, becoming such a […]

Known By His Initials

Does the name Clive Staples Lewis ring a bell? I asked three people earlier today, and they all said “no.” However, when I asked about C.S. Lewis the response was a resounding “yes.” The author if the Narnia series, and theological treatises like Mere Christianity was always better known by his initials than his full […]

I Surrender

Remembrance Day is past (though I have one more post to go). Thanksgiving is over too, at least in Canada. Which is why it seems in every store I enter I am hearing Christmas music. I’d complain, but I appear to be a Grinch-like minority. I guess I can live with it for the next […]

The New Thing

Made an early morning trip to Walmart on Tuesday and discovered all the U-scan cash registers were closed. This was surprising The store recently expanded the U-scan and cut back on traditional cash registers, the ones where a person processes your purchases. At the same time, it put in gates so that you have to […]

Definitely Not Disney

Today’s intended post seemed a little heavy for a Sunday, so I thought I’d repost this from 2017 instead I’m not a big fan of theme parks. Never have been. I’ve never traveled to the various Disney or Universal Studios offerings in Florida. I’m told they are a great experience, but they aren’t the experience […]

Remembering in 2023

I don’t remember when Remembrance Day (Veterans day in the US) first seeped into my consciousness. Probably around the time I started school, which makes it more than 60 years ago. My grandfather, I knew, had been a soldier, as had some of the other men from the church my family attended. They were veterans […]

So Young!

With Remembrance Day on Saturday, I am reposting some of my thoughts from a visit to Europe in 2014. When we visited the Commonwealth Military Cemetery at Essex Farm, near Ypres, Belgium, our guide pointed out the grave of V.J. Strudwick, who was killed in action January 14, 1916 at age 15. The official age […]

The Famous Poem

“In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row,That mark our place,” – John McCrae In the days leading up to Remembrance Day, I am reposting some past thoughts on war that were stirred up by visits to European battlefields. The names of the battlefields are different, but nothing else seems to have […]

It Isn’t Over Yet

This Saturday we will pause to remember Canada’s war dead. As we lead up to this time I am reposting some of my earlier reflections on war and the battlefields. This one is from September 2014. A century later, it haunts them still. The last Canadian veteran of the First World War died in 2010, […]

The Other Side

In this week leading up to Remembrance Day I am reposting some of my pieces on past wars. Today a visit to a wartime cemetery, on I had never heard of before. We know our own history. We don’t always think of others’. This was one of the very first posts here, from September 2014. […]