Looking at life through a funhouse mirror
There must be someone at Google with the job title of ‘Doodle Topic Researcher’ and if they ever move on from that job to something more lucrative I would like to apply. That’s because the job does not seem to entail much more than finding out what person, place or thing is having an anniversary …
May was a bad month for disco, with the deaths of Jimmy Ellis, Donna Summer and Robin Gibb. It also puts me too close for comfort to my own mortality, because it is not a good thing when the fixtures of your youth start to go. However, I was firmly in the ‘disco definitely does …
Although it is certainly not the easiest time to enter the workforce, work will probably be the biggest single influence on your life. My first piece of advice is to take the job. You know the job I am talking about. The one that is far from perfect. The one that doesn’t come close to …
It appears that the ‘tea’ is making a bit of comeback, if you can judge a trend from lifestyle magazines. This is a good thing for me because I absolutely love tea sandwiches – aka party sandwiches. In the 1960s, when they weren’t hanging out the laundry or Hoovering, our mothers were setting up a …
You may not know this, but St. Patrick’s Day is an official holiday in Newfoundland. No, honestly it is. I only know this because of the time well wasted I spent with a motley assortment of Newfoundlanders when I attended Dalhousie University in Halifax. I guess in Newfoundland culture, going to Nova Scotia to get …
When you grow up in a small town best described as on the outskirts of nowhere, you don’t need much more than two wheels or your own two feet to get around. That is, unless you wanted to go somewhere exotic, like a place that had more than one clothing store. Back in those days …
For some strange reason I saved my meal tickets from my resident days at Waterloo. Maybe that’s because I can always say I have a ‘meal ticket’, but who knows what I was thinking. Clearly not me. Anyhow, the meal ticket was kind of like a transit pass, except the photo was put inside a …
Matchbooks are definitely on the endangered list. It used to be that every restaurant had a bowl of matches on their front counter. Now, paper matchbook marketing has all but disappeared, although you can sometimes score wooden matchboxes at expensive steakhouses (I guess so you will have something to light your cigar with). Otherwise you …
Apparently, a short 200 years ago Charles Dickens was born. This has prompted all manner of hoopla, including Prince Charles cutting a birthday cake at the Dickens Museum (although the recipient was hardly in shape to partake) and Ralph Fiennes reading from Bleak House at Westminster Abbey. I must confess that Bleak House is the …
Whatever season you decide to visit the area, you will find citizens of the Ottawa Valley enjoying a variety of activities. Here are some examples: Huntin’ Once the leaves are off the trees, hunting season cannot be far behind. It is first heralded by the festive orange quilted vests and the matching flash of orange …