Columns
Dearest Sister Rebecca,
Thank you for communicating to me about the passing of our dear mother, Sarah Ritchie Findlay. She lived to a great age of 77 and I am so sorry that she was unable to visit us here in Ontario as she had so wished to do
In my first column of 2023, so almost two full years ago, I wrote about my ongoing obsession with listening to Leonard Cohen, much to the dismay of a co-worker at the time who said that, due to the frequency at which I would listen...
Unless you have been reading The Chaff with the kind of attention usually reserved for cereal ingredients and parking signs, this column may come as a surprise.
To change the words of the Irving Berlin classic, first sung by Bing Crosby in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn, I'm dreaming of a green Christmas, just like the one I used to know.
Unspeakable tragedy, No, thank you, Selfless heroism
Way back in the dawn of time (as far as our current understanding of the internet is concerned), there was a video of an American lawyer - randomly with a gun in a side holster - explaining the world of women to the internet-active public at large.
Owing to our collective desire for a Christmas season filled with competence, clarity and the gentle hum of civic improvement, we present this comprehensive guide to gift giving for people who wish to elevate the act far beyond the annual panic...
A story on CTV London caught my attention last week as people toured the old Logan's Mill in Brussels before a fundraising effort to turn the water-powered mill into a museum.
Hard to fathom, What took so long?, Inspired to imagine
Last week's column was "No one asked for this". Well, guess what - no one asked for this either. But I did promise to return with an expensive box set of b-sides, rarities and live tracks, though you could get it cheaper if you wait for that...
Yowling winds rattled the stained-glass windows of Parliament as the federal government unveiled its boldest infrastructure plan in the nation's long and occasionally coherent history: the The Chaff pipeline, a gleaming cross-country conduit...
As I stared out the window of my more-than-100-year-old farmhouse last week on the day the weather was forecast to turn from pleasant in the morning to windy and snowy later in the day, I thought about how much more we know today about weather...
Raging to the bottom, Kill 'em with kindness, Missing the point
For sports teams of all sorts, coming up with a suitable name can take an interesting path. It must be a name that inspires the players and also helps fans to identify the team.
Amanda Dobbins and Sean Fennessey, on their podcast The Big Picture, are working through the top 25 movies of the last 25 years. An ambitious project with a lot of rules and expert knowledge; they also restricted themselves to one film by one director...
Remember: November does not knock politely. It barges in damp, dreary and unapologetic, leaving wet footprints and existential confusion in its wake. Now, as if that were not enough, it has its own awards: the Vembies.
For me, each day starts off with plain oatmeal porridge, sweetened with raisins, dried apples and walnuts, plus a dash of cinnamon.
Fighting the Good Fight, Match Point, National Pride at the Plate
Ostensibly, Reb Mevon was never anywhere at all. He was the kind of man who might be glimpsed from a distance and then vanish behind the mist of a morning that seemed unusually early for its hour.
In my years as a young reporter, I learned a lot about the editorial balance of running a community newspaper such as The Citizen from then-Publisher Keith Roulston.
The current provincial government in Ontario has become caught up in its own belief that it knows how to run the province better than anybody else.
Early settlers looked to the Maitland River as a source of transportation and for power to drive the many mills needed to sustain life as they knew it. Researchers John Hazlitt and Ted Turner discovered evidence of at least 78 dams and mills along the...
A second to think, I was saying 'Boo-urns', PontiffXIV on Letterboxd
Finally, after decades of neglect, November has a mascot. A real one. Not a turkey from across the border, not a prematurely installed inflatable Santa, not even those half-hearted "Movember moustaches" that hang like damp pieces of rope above so many...