I meant to ask, then forgot to do so. You certainly wouldn’t see something like this on the public buses in Ottawa! My assumption would be that the transit system buses in Valletta, the Maltese capital, are owned and operated by their drivers, and as such they are allowed to personalize them to some extent. […]

Last night I had a long bus ride, which is was looking forward to, not for the ride as much as to write some material to grace this space. It didn’t happen. When I worked in downtown Ottawa I would write a post a day during my commute. Some days I’d manage two or three. […]

I have a friend in Germany who wanted me to send him pictures of animals from my time in Canada. Unthinking, I said yes. My assumption was that he wanted to see Canadian wildlife: deer, bears, maybe a fox or two. And while all those can be found in Ottawa from time to time, sightings […]

Sometimes it is easy to forget, when you are in the concrete towers of the downtown districts, that Toronto is a city with a lot of natural beauty and vibrant parks. Sunday afternoon we took a quick stroll in “The Beaches,” a waterfront area along the shores of Lake Ontario. There  is a boardwalk that […]

History was made Monday night. Of course that would be true no matter the results of the Canadian federal election. Returns are still coming in as I write this, so I am not going to mention final numbers. I mentioned to friends early in the campaign, it felt to me a lot like 1972. Back then a […]

Canadians will hold their collective nose today and vote in the federal election for the candidate of their choice. Or maybe they will vote against a candidate not of their choice. The 2019 election has failed to inspire. The leaders have not looked impressive. The party platforms have not seemed realistic. Yet there are clear […]

…winter is coming. This pile of snow really isn’t snow. It is ice shavings from one of Ottawa’s arenas. I noticed it when I walked by last week. It was a reminder though that winter is indeed coming. October is almost over and the snow could start soon. And while October snow normally melts immediately, […]

He said his name was Brad, and he was calling from the “Windows Service Department” about my computer. I had serious problems, or so he assured me. My computer was riddled with error messages. Given his accent, his mother probably never called him Brad. He also said he had never heard of Mumbai and Kolkata, […]

I saw a news report about foreign interference in the Canadian federal election. Nobody was making a big fuss about it. Maybe that is because it was American interference. If the situation was reversed, there would have been howls south of the border. Apparently it is different though when it is Americans who are doing […]