I was all set to write about something else for this column, but suddenly my plans changed. It’s like that great scene in the movie Casablanca where the oh-so-pious Victor Laszlo talks about his destiny of saving the world to Rick.
Fine cigars and excellent rum
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‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall’
I was walking n the woods near Stanley recently and came upon a rock wall that looked like it had been there for a thousand years. Wondering who built it and when, I followed it down over a small hill into my imagination.
Have a fun night and support a great cause – what’s not to like?
Silent auctions are a great way to score some cool stuff. You know that, but add to that the music of Fredericton’s legendary Downtown Blues Band and the mix is there for a great evening.
Out on the Masai Mara
Lying in their beds late at night, the women and girls of Kenya’s Masai Mara can hear the lions roaring. But they are not afraid. Since time immemorial, the Masai have lived with the lions and shared the same resources.
So long, Kevin Ryan
How strange a Chequer Work of Providence is the Life of Man!” Daniel Defoe writes in Robinson Crusoe. On Sunday afternoon, March 12, I was sitting at my kitchen table having a glass of scotch with my friend Armand Paul
Angus Hamilton: What stood in his way became the way
“Here’s your assignment,” UNB president emeritus Dr. John McLaughlin says with a smile as we wrap up our recent visit with 100-year-old Angus Hamilton, UNB professor emeritus.
Sound by Glen Glenn
Glen Percy Raymond Glenn was born November 25, 1907, in a farmhouse outside Chipman. Sometime around 1925, the young electronics prodigy stood at the Chipman train station saying goodbye to his family
What is Boxing Day?
Boxing Day is celebrated in many countries around the world, but its origin and history are not as widely known.
On the Overnight Train from London
For many of us, Christmas is time of reflection, when we take time to relive fond memories of Christmas’s past. For me, one of those memories is from 50 years ago.
Greener Village and its kind and open hearts
It’s not so much the significant events that determine the success of a person’s life. Often, it’s the small things, the seemingly insignificant day-to-day events, that, over a lifetime, carve out a destiny.
Flying saucers and Sasquatch wrestling too!
The first time I heard Stanton Friedman’s name was back in the 70s when I lived in Montreal, and my friend Howard told me about the famous Barney and Betty Hill alien abduction case. Barney and Betty Hill were an American couple who claimed extraterrestrials abducted them in rural New Hampshire in September 1961.
First Snowfall
The first snowfall of the season is always a magical time. The air is crisp and the ground is covered in a blanket of white.
The first time I met Bill Miller
It’s the fall of 1989, and I’m driving on Route 385, the road that winds along the Tobique River from Plaster Rock to Nictau and then on to Mount Carleton Provincial Park.
A story called home
“Every spirit builds itself a house,” Emerson wrote, “and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Build, therefore, your own world.”
Fields of Dreams
Drifting in and out of a sleepy, dreamlike state, I’m relaxing in a big, soft chair on my front porch overlooking the Nashwaak River in Marysville, a suburb of Fredericton on the city’s north side.
Sifting through the layers of our lives
It’s around 5 in the morning, and I’m thinking about the piles of stuff surrounding me and how much work I need to do before my friends arrive with their pick-up trucks later to help me move.
A basic income is the answer to poverty
Basic income is too complex to implement. So the thinking goes in the latest release by the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council. Yet data from Statistics Canada in 2020 demonstrated that changes to the Canada Child Benefit – a basic income program for families – was largely responsible for a near 4% decline in poverty from 2019 to 2020 alone.
Like puffs of smoke, the years go by
The other day, I was sitting with my old friend Martin Aitken in his backyard in Barkers Point on Fredericton’s north side. We were having a glass of Maker’s Mark and smoking Cuban cigars.
In the quiet of the moment
“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, / Healthy, free, the world before me, / The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.”
The moments that change us
When Walter Learning got up to say a few words about his old friend, Richard Hatfield, in Fredericton’s Christ Church Cathedral, everyone knew the well-respected actor and playwright would inspire the audience.
