A year ago today Vladimir Putin launched his criminal invasion of Ukraine. No-one expected the war to last this long Given their relative military strengths, I expected Russia to win in four days, a week at most. I underestimated the Ukrainian peoples’ desire for freedom. They’ve lived under the Russian yoke before. They have no […]

Tempting, isn’t it? For me, maybe next month.

It was Family Day in Ontario earlier this week, and I was looking at some family photos. This one reminded me something I wrote here in 2016, but at that time I didn’t have this picture, taken in 1896, to go with it. I thought it might be nice to go with a repeat today […]

There are 15 million people living in Cairo. At times it seems as if they are outnumbered by the cats you see everywhere you go. The ancient Egyptians worshipped cats. I don’t think they do anymore, but cats do seem to have the run of the city – you see them everywhere in Cairo. My […]

There must be hundreds of restaurants in Cairo situated on the banks of the Nile River. Actually, I can’t be sure of the number given that I didn’t walk the whole route. I’m extrapolating form the few kilometres I did walk, in which there were dozens of places to eat, from high end establishments catering […]

Sunday being a day of rest, let’s take a trip back to this space in February 2015. On Sundays back then I tried to feature churches from my travels. I still have several churches I haven’t talked about – maybe I should return to that habit. Anything free when you are traveling is a good […]

The Rouleau Commission says that Canada’s federal government was right to impose the Emergencies Act to end the Freedom Convoy a year ago. To many this will come as a surprise, but I had expected it. I don’t feel the government was actually faced with a situation where the security of the nation was threatened […]

We’ll find out at noon EST. But a year later, does anyone care whether the government was justified in invoking the Emergencies Act in face of the Freedom Convoy? Justice Paul Rouleau held a series of hearings in the fall of 2022, as required by law, as to whether conditions warranted the mass suspension of […]

I’m not feeling my own mortality at the moment, but still, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about dying. Especially how we die. Canada’s Parliament at the moment is considering a Bill to delay the expansion of medical assistance in dying (MAID) to the mentally ill. That was supposed to happen in […]

I’ve been swamped lately, work and family things, and haven’t been able to find the time to finish the posts I wanted to share here next. So I thought I’d try and experiment. I asked one of those artificial intelligence engines to write me a post about cash register receipts – which for some reason […]