Last night I covered the front of a huge 747 with an image of the top of Jean Charest’s head. All you could see were his curly locks, forehead and eyes, cut off just at the bridge of his nose. It was part of a dream where the client was a new Canadian airline. We had decided to generate media by asking questions on the plane. Charest’s image was accompanied by “Still Canadian?”

My MP called me at home last week. I won’t mention his name, but he is the premier’s brother. “Stuart, you don’t understand how long it takes to set up an MP’s office. It took three months to get it painted … I haven’t had a single day off in nine months.” The call was a response to an e-mail I’d sent him in February. It was a blistering letter of complaint about not being able to reach the high-profile backbench MP. A meeting had been set at his office for December 4 (yes, last year) but it was cancelled at the last minute and I’d been unable to reach…

A litany of woe kept me from writing today. Litany is a great word. But I shouldn’t really complain. As bad as my day was, I’m not dead. Poor Pope. I regret what I said about the Vatican not being open with info about the his death. Do we really need to see close-ups of his ashen corpse on the cover of the morning papers?? One day in the early ’80s, back when John Paul was comprehensible, I found a book of B.C. comics on the floor of my stepfather’s apartment. I remember wondering what was so funny about the page that showed two cavemen talking. One of them asked,…

It’s difficult to avoid making a comment about the dying Pope. His death is such a spectacle, it’s even harder to avoid hearing about it. This morning, the Vatican claims Pope John Paul II is “lucid and aware…receiving visitors” even though the statement also notes that he has suffered cardio-pulmonary collapse and is having trouble breathing. Is it possible that the Vatican spin bishops don’t want the world to watch the pope die unaware, much like Terry Shiavo did just yesterday? And why must we be led to believe that John Paul is serene. Would they really tell us if he were writhing and gasping in his last hours —…

I found out yesterday that a storm surge on the north shore of PEI moved the bunkhouse at my cottage by four inches. Here’s a pic of the shore, taken last week from the front porch. The bunk house is on blocks just over the bank on the shore in front of my cottage (Plover Dunes). Another few inches and the building would have been swept away. Storm surge. Not quite tsunami, but fascinating all the same. PEI is moving north; the south shore is being eaten away at up to 5′ per year, while north shore dunes creep toward the Magdalene Islands. In a thousand years, Canada will face…

Spring’s fabulous. I complain a lot about winter — the dark, the cold, the slush — but on a morning like this one, with a glorious and confident sun, I am glad for the perspective of evil January. Thank God the Earth tilts on its axis. I bask and stretch toward the heavens from my ninth-floor urban perch.

Don’t forget that next weekend the clocks spring forward. It’s a great time to change the porch light to a compact fluorescent bulb — and cut air pollution! See our project site for more information: www.onechange.org “I thought the other day, How we enjoy a warm and pleasant day at this season! We dance like gnats in the sun.” – Henry David Thoreau. March 25, 1859 “Man, there’s nothing like sipping a creamy latté in the sun on the front step.” – Stuart Hickox. March 25, 2005 Happy Easter!

Like it or not, the same sex marriage bill is going to pass in the House of Commons. This week my neighbours from the farm across the road from Walden came to visit. The MacPhees are wonderful people. Allan is a beef farmer and a lay minister at the Hartsville Presbyterian Church, a mile as the crow flies from the cabin. I’m going to be buried in the little cemetery there. Myrtle is a psychiatric nurse in Charlottetown, and their four kids (Shawn (15), Lindsay (14), Christie (9) and Megan (6) are super — well-balanced and fun-loving kids. Yesterday I took them to Parliament Hill to meet their MP, former…

A client apologized today. This is almost unheard of. She said she was sorry for being “prickly.” She should have said thorny. Her name is Rose. A fellow writer told me yesterday that my idea for a story about aggressive wild turkeys just revealed me as a “city slicker.” “Stuart, folks in the country are used to wild turkeys.” Really? I’d say my ignorance is more a result of my origins than my slickness. In PEI, we only had to worry about aggressive skunks. Once when I was about 10 my mother accidentally let one into the house and then screamed when she saw it. The skunk was not amused,…

Just a quick morning note today — I’m running late. My triceps are sore from snowboarding. Not from falling down, although that was a factor, but from holding Jasper up. We were at the very top of Fortune yesterday, 90 minutes into his first time, and my second, of snowboarding, when he started squirming and yelling, “Just let me go, Dad! Let me GO!” I was about at my wits end, trying to stand up and hold him up and slide down the hill at the same time. I just kept thinking: “I have nothing to offer you here” So finally I just let him go. He turned and looked…

“Head to toe camo is a must when hunting sharp-eyed gobblers.” There’s an aggressive wild turkey loose in the suburbs just outside of Ottawa. I was just about to lose my cool on a writing consultant who was late for a meeting, but when he called to say he was trapped in his house by aggressive foul, I forgave him. I asked if he had a shotgun in his house, to which he replied, “I don’t think we even have sharp knives.” O Canada! Meanwhile, see how the Americans deal with wild turkey.

“I catch myself philosophizing most abstractly when first returning to consciousness in the night or morning. I make the truest observations and distinctions then, when the will is yet wholly asleep and the mind works like a machine without friction.” – Henry David Thoreau, March 17, 1852. “Where are my rubber boots when I need them!” – Stuart Hickox, March 17, 2005

Web logs. Original? Just the medium. Read daily updates from Henry David Thoreau, the guy who got it all started and inspired a little cabin in the woods of PEI. From March 15, 1852: “This afternoon I throw off my outside coat. A mild spring day. I must hie to the Great Meadows. The air is full of bluebirds. The ground almost entirely bare. The villagers are out in the sun, and every man is happy whose work takes him outdoors.”

Someone stole Frosty yesterday, and I have to admit I had it coming. The front garden looked different when I got home from work, and it wasn’t just the receding snow line. A few steps from the sidewalk, flanked by brown stalks of dead coneflower, all that was left of Jasper’s plastic snowman was a round indent in the snow and a frayed electrical cord. I guess you take your chances with passing teens if you leave Christmas decorations out until March. But I had no choice! Frosty’s cord was frozen in ice. And this fact makes his sudden disappearance more shocking. To abduct our three-foot friend, he had to…

Jasper’s on spring break. He’s four, in full-time French school. Yesterday he spent all day playing and romping with his cousins Calum and Rowan — lots of skateboarding in the basement, video games, lego everywhere. He was going to sleep over at Aunt JD’s house, but he called us at 10 pm, crying, wanting to come home. Which was fine, because I really missed him. We’re both big suckers for hugs. When I arrived to pick him up, he was watching Ferris Bueler’s Day Off (1986). Oh Yeah. The movie is now listed under Nostalgia at Amazon.com. This morning is sunny and warm. The Globe has a picture of Mt.…