This web site has been pretty quiet lately, mostly because life has been the opposite. I just spent an hour throwing out old clothes and “rationalizing” my closet after realizing this week that I just spent 6 weeks living out of this house (for renovations) and did not once open the closet. So why is all that stuff there? The quest for “stuff” is a soul-sucking abyss, and I’ve fallen right in. It helps to have the perspective of memory. Some of my most happy days were spent wandering aimlessly and alone with just one change of clothes and a notebook. That was 9 years and a lifetime ago now.…

There’s a little town called Fenelon Falls about 3.5 hours drive south-west from Ottawa. No, I hadn’t heard of it either. And it actually takes longer to get there when you have a 3-year-old in the car, no map, and drifting snow. But what a cute little town! It’s basically one street lined with two-storey brick colonial facade buildings. Lots of handmade signs for tailors and restaurants and pool halls. The Tim’s is rightly banished to the other side of the falls. We went to Fenelon Falls to support our friend Mike Perry at his nomination meeting for the federal NDP. He was nervous, but got the speech off the…

You can now buy shrink-wrapped, pre-cooked boneless roasts of beef. Just pop them in the microwave and serve. The Maple Leaf Meats advertisement says “No longer do you need an occasion for a roast.” Shame. This is an all-time low in Canadian cuisine, eclipsing pre-cooked unrefrigerated bacon or mini translucent jellied salads with suspended apricot chunks. Loblaws has announced that it is building a new Superstore not far from my house, in a stretch of field that to now has been used as a neighbourhood vegetable garden. These huge stores are designed for more than groceries. You have to cross ailes of bulk goods and housewares to go from the…

Don’t you wish you could vote in the US election? http://www.bushflash.com/thanks.html

It’s that time of year again. Only in spring do I find myself drinking coffee at 4 in the afternoon in the desperate hope of winning an obscenely large TV or SUV. But most of the country will just see Réessayer SVP when with shaking hands they roll em up. Tim Horton’s Belinda Stronach, millionaire-PM-wanna-be, is hanging out at Tim’s to win votes. Bonne chance, B. Check out her super lame Blog.

The first thing I thought as I stepped off the plane in PEI was: Who would live here? But I’d arrived on one of the worst days of winter – the snow was going sideways in 100km winds, and by the time Jasper and I got to the car, the side of his head looked as if he’d been sprayed with canned Christmas snow. It was a bad start to a weekend funeral visit (see below). Anyone thinking of renting a car from Charlottetown airport should heed this advice: Book early or settle for the Ford Tank with the unbalanced tires and the summer windshield wipers. There’s a letter in…