Author: Michael Murray

  What do you do when somebody you love becomes a moron? Sadly, Rachelle—my most beautiful Petal—has taken to wearing moccasins all the time. It started innocently enough. She had hurt her foot while kicking somebody at floor hockey practice, and found that shoes were a little constricting after the injury, and that she felt…

Leslie Fulton of Ottawa, who has a curious mind, wonders how single shoes come to litter the streets of the city. She’s observed that there are all different types of shoes, and that it’s highly improbable that they’re simply work shoes slipping out the knapsacks of sneaker-wearing civil servants marching to and from work. As…

  Darcy Allan Sheppard was killed on Monday night while riding his bicycle down Bloor Street in downtown Toronto. Michael Bryant, the former Ontario Attorney-General who was driving the expensive Saab that killed Sheppard, has been charged with criminal negligence causing death. The story is now well known and has served as a bit of…

Rachelle and I just returned from a weekend up at our friend Douglas Mason’s cottage. Every year he throws a huge party up on Chiefs Island to celebrate his birthday, and it’s no exaggeration to say it’s an event that people look forward to all year long. Rachelle and I were probably looking forward to…

After dinner, we sat around and told stories of the supernatural. Each person spoke slowly, their eyes a little bit distant, as they carefully remembered a moment that still, after all these years, they could not explain or entirely believe.   “…And then the balloon deflated and fell to the floor, and we knew that…

Last night, I went down to the Duke of York Pub to meet Rachelle and her teammates after their basketball game. I was a little bit early, so I had a seat at the bar and had a drink. It was pretty busy, and the manager was pitching in to help the unhappy looking waitresses…

  The older I get, the more I’m coming to believe that confidence is an over-rated quality. When I was younger I thought that it was a positively magical element. If you had it, some process of alchemy would take place, and through sheer force of will, anything you touched would be yours. Thousands upon…

Earlier in the day Heidi and I went for a stroll down Spadina. A squirrel, carrying a hotdog bun that was a long as the animal itself, passed before us. This made Heidi crazy with jealousy, and she lunged at the squirrel, yanking me along behind her by the leash. The squirrel zipped up a…

Dear Casting Director: First off, I want to say that I know I look like an aging turtle in the photograph I sent to you. I would have liked to have sent a different picture, but I’m afraid my lady put her foot down on the matter, claiming it was one of the few photographs…