Category: Blog

Although still too cold and unpredictable to be sitting out on patios, people, so happy for even the crack of an opportunity, are still doing it. At the Joy Bistro on Queen East, a middle-aged man, still feeling like a lion, sits alone in a thin slash of sunlight. He’s leaning back against the wall,…

My family had very generously arranged to host a wedding dinner for Rachelle and I at Morton’s Steak House in Toronto in April. After my father gave them a deposit and several weeks had passed, a woman named Joan called to tell Rachelle that they were closed that day and were sorry but could not…

Last week Rachelle and I were invited by some friends to attend a cooking class and tasting menu at the LCBO flagship store in Toronto. A Chef from Italy, who insisted on being called “Padrone,” was teaching us how to make Risotto. The crowd was primarily comprised of middle-aged women, and they seemed smitten by…

Although I come from a Christian background and feel I have a very strong sense of the divine, it’s probably true that I grew-up in what many would call a Post-Christian society. I have no connection to organized religion and I guess I see myself essentially as a secular, if agnostic, liberal humanist. When Rachelle…

As many of you know, Rachelle and I experienced almost immediate regret when we moved from our beautiful and perfect apartment in the Annex to our less beautiful and less perfect apartment on Queen East. As such, we wrote our old landlord and let him know that if it became available again, we would be…

On Saturday, Rachelle and I went up to some shopping complex at Eglinton and Laird to run some errands. Rachelle hit the Best Buy, while I visited Starbucks, where I had three ginger molasses cookies (I love these cookies—they are the size of my head and so soft and moist it’s as if they didn’t…

“ Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” –Plato Frequently, I get lunch at a place called Sushi Bar at the corner of Queen and Broadview. I typically phone-in my order and pick it up. Even though I’m a regular and ridiculously predictable customer, (Sushi lunch special #2 with a seaweed…

The news coming out of Japan has been grim, almost apocalyptic, and it was with tremendous relief that a story of hope, perseverance and inspiration has come along to push the devastation of the tsunami to the margins. 37 year-old Tyra Banks says that she has been attending Harvard Business School since last year. If…

The other day while taking the Queen streetcar through the east end no-man’s land, I listened as a man spoke, in a thick and slurry Newfoundland accent, into his cell phone. “What are ya doing, ya old hound?” He lurched when he said this, his black, Dupont Automotive toque tilting ridiculously to the side. “Nah,…