Category: Blog

I’m presently taking a driver’s education course on the weekends in a small, windowless room with about two dozen teenagers. It’s presided over by a guy named Clark who always wears khaki pants and a pair of black shoes that express nothing other than a willingness, and perhaps even a need to conform. Repeatedly, he’s…

In the park two Russian men who look like they lived through the Soviet era, sit on a bench. Everyday at the same hour they meet there and talk about a wide range of intellectually flavoured topics. I imagine them exiled professors who settled into unexpected lives over the last 20 years, after departing positions…

On Monday I challenged Ralph to a game of Ping Pong. Something like this had been coming for a long time. The man had been asking for it. Ralph is 77 years old and is a handyman who has lived his entire life in the Queen East area. He’s thin as a rail, has a…

Serena Williams is a goddamn tank. When you see her standing out there on the court you see a woman with such an extraordinary physical advantage over everybody else, that you immediately take pity on her poor opponent– usually some pretty blonde girl dressed in pink. As Wilt Chamberlain famously groused, “Everybody pulls for David,…

Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. What follows is a letter I wrote to a friend on the day of the attacks one decade ago. ***************************************************** Oh my, The skies are empty and all the streets are quiet. sweet Jesus. Early in the morning my sister’s husband called her and told her…

Last Friday I went to the Drift Bar on Bloor West to meet a friend. I was a little bit early so I sat there at my table with a drink and my notebook, looking around the place in the most unobtrusive way I could fashion. To my left a young and beautiful couple sat…

On the weekend Rachelle and I went up to a friend’s cottage. At this time of year all of the mice are looking to find someplace warm to live and have thus been making plans to infiltrate the cottage. In response to this our friend set up a couple of mouse traps baited with chocolate…

Last Week Rachelle and I went up to the french restaurant Baltifole for dinner. It’s an unexpected place, sitting like a little colonial outpost on a crumbling and dodgy stretch of of Chinatown East. The food is sometimes very good, it’s always reasonably priced and the waiter reminds me of Eddie Izzard, so I’m always…

The building that Rachelle and I live in is over one hundred years old and used to be a hotel. There are five apartments in it and sadly, it’s the sort of downtown situation where you really don’t know your neighbours. Over the last couple of weeks, a woman who I presume just moved in,…