Selected Columns
Podcasting with At Home in Muskoka
I joined Sandy with the At Home in Muskoka Podcast to talk Places for People, social tipping points and more.
Rootedness
Land, language, lineage and loved ones: the four L's that underpin our health and gird the loins of hope. As the world warms, we need to (re)learn to love the land on which we live and treat it with the respect it requires.
The Handmaid’s Tale Revisited
Reproductive rights are once more in the crosshairs of some who don't have wombs, and some who do. Atwood reminds us she always claimed her novel was reflection realism rather than imagination and warns us to remain vigilant.
In conversation on the SPA-LTC podcast
I visited with the hosts of the Strengthening a Palliative Approach to Long-Term Care project podcast to discuss caring for a partner with dementia.
Grasping the wisps
The authenticity of first-person experience deserves its place on the page, but a failing mind describing how his mind is failing is a sorrowful story.
A winter strategy
Having a roof over one's head is a matter of survival; acquiring it may require a bit of working the system. O Henry spoofs how it works in an old story but not much is new.
Oh Canada?
The collective power of singing together can be used for good or ill. National anthems tend to blood, violence, and exclusionism of all sorts, and yet we sing them as if they somehow represent us. David Pate finds that only 10 countries in the world have anthems that would be suitable for an elementary school play, and suggests we should do better.
Addicted to Grievance
There is evidence that mankind as a whole is better off now than ever before, but simultaneously we seem to be embracing nastiness, incivility, hatred. Science explains this trend and literature shows us the way out.
Hope, Belonging, Meaning, Purpose
Dr. Jane Philpott says Canada has an insurance system, not a health system, and proposes a radically alternative approach parallel to the public education system. She poses spiritual health as fundamental to physical and mental health and shares some wisdom.
Toronto Star Op Ed: Residents help fight housing crisis
Our community has recently gained profile for successfully completing a community bond raise in jig time, to support affordable housing. The exposure, which included CBC TV National News, set the table for an invited op ed in the Saturday Star.
A Tower of Babel
To a hammer, everything looks like a nail, which makes a conversation between a hammer and a wrench -- or between generations -- difficult. But what if we tried to bridge the gap?
Naming and Claiming
Celine Dion told Adrienne Arsenault that she would sing again, and she did -- flawlessly, they say, although she looks liminal -- at the opening of the Paris Olympics. This column examines that process through a Freire lens.
Alice Munro Redux
Our literary icon has clay feet! Where to point the finge of blame when sexual assault within the family becomes a secret that must be kept?
Trespassers
Protest encampments on campus are becoming as common as daffodils in spring, but what do they signify? Does the student unrest of the 1960s have anything to teach us?
Women's Sexuality
Alice Munroe wrote about proper ladies who didn't behave properly: why might that be?
The Two-Edged Sword of Insecurity
Insecurity is an existential element of life; community is the cure.