As illness makes us live hour by hour, revising our day as we go. As winter plants a great snowy foot in our path. As glass baffles the fly. How …

Cry in the shower. Save yourself a rainstorm: listen to the basketballs falling tropically on the neighbour’s court. Drop-kick a potted cactus for its dram of ooze. Lick your wounds …

A polymer of longitudinal conspiracies The Apollo landings happened in someone’s basement. The director was Sheik Zubair, from Basra, who had earlier written works erroneously attributed to Bacon, Marlowe, and …

Brother and sister watch the estate lawyer take a cork-backed ruler to the ground plan: two wings behind a cast iron gate, a barn raised for the Shetlands. Into the …

The luckiest character in CanLit has to be David from Earle Birney’s “David,” because David would be safely dead before having to read Earle Birney’s “David.” The most beloved character …

Oddsmakers ask, what will happen sooner: will a Canadian team win the Stanley Cup, or will Canadians develop a new interest in the novels of Robertson Davies? The unmalled parts …

I am grateful for libraries (iPad) and poetry (iPad). Lorca’s line “La Clooney del bello Jorge sigue…” is where George Clooney got his stage name. Many tried to be the …

Far from the Fina gas station of your youth, not teaching in that New England College dreamt of in grad school, walking Jean Talon, looking for a reasonable soup, you’re …

The first great Canadian burger was made by Alberta poet Krane MacPherson, who always claimed his secret ingredient was the salty winter tears of a teacher. MacPherson died in a …