So Canada won’t meet the international target for foreign aid spending (0.07% of GDP). The PM says we can’t afford it, even though many poorer countries do. Bono’s gonna be pissed, Paul. What’s rarely reported are the individual contributions Canadians make every day overseas. One example is Russell Storring from Renfrew. I wrote about him last year for CIDA. Here’s an excerpt from the text, and a link to the full story: “As a human being and a Canadian, I am not happy with simply doing my job,” he says. “I don’t want to leave Afghanistan with the empty feeling I felt when I left Rwanda.” From Afghanistan, MCpl Storring…

No, not Ratzinger. Bigfoot. Buried in coverage of an old man in an old church is a snip about an old story. The Ottawa Citizen reported today that new footage exists of the elusive Sasquatch. The video was shot by a young man who was walking along the Winnipeg River in Manitoba. Yikes! Bigfoot’s getting closer! I thought it (he or she?) was somewhere in B.C. or Utah. Sasquatch is a first-nations word that means something like “hairy man of the woods.” Which makes me wonder if the video confirms the existence of a new species or just an early spring. There’s a lot of back hair out there raking…

This week I learned that there’s another Stuart Hickox out there, registered by INTERPOL, who is a convicted felon. And I’m glad it’s not me. Prison is pretty grim. I’m going to write more about my day in jail; today’s hectic at work. Suffice to say I now know what it’s like to look a cold blooded murderer in the eye. And shake his hand. I interviewed two first degree lifers yesterday. One will be in jail for life; during his first parole he killed and then dismembered a young woman, and left her body in a bog. Another guy bludgeoned someone to death in a bar fight. He was…

I am singing to you Soft as a man with a dead child speaks; Hard as a man in handcuffs Held where he cannot move. From Killers by Carl Sandburg This passage was marked with a bookmark in the poety collection left on the bedside table in the Sandburg Suite at the Frontenac Club Inn, the night before I spent a day in jail. Accidents and Convictions Ellen turned to me and leaned in over her Mediterranean salad. “There, but for the grace of God go I.” We’d just settled into a booth for lunch at Aunt Lucy’s roadhouse, a quick hitchhike from the gates of Joyceville penitentiary near Kingston.…

The Sandburg Suite is the size of the ground floor of my house. I just flicked on the gas fireplace and sank into a plush wingback, my toes freed of shoes, curled and stretched on the thick berber. We had a close call with the Four Points. Staying there would have been a crime. “You can’t go wrong with taupe.” When Maureen the hostess welcomed us to The Frontenac Club Inn today, she said, “Men like it here too.” It’s a heritage inn with no puff curtains – Queen kitch banished just blocks from the Royal Military College. This Inn is all about simple elegance and abundant comfort. A former…

I’m off to jail tomorrow — to interview lifers who are making furniture as part of a government rehabilitation programme called CORCAN. What to wear? What to wear? The client just called to ask for more background information on me because something strange popped up on my security clearance scan. Apparently, as a visitor you can’t go to prison if you’ve ever broken the law. My guide tomorrow is a charismatic and confident woman named Ellen. I like her a lot; she’s not easily intimidated. At a team meeting yesterday (with the photographer and project manager who are also going), she warned us not to make eye contact, and to…

A client’s comment today on the sponsorship scandal said it all: “So what can we do? It’s not like we have a choice.” Maybe Stephen Harper looks so sour because he’s smart enough to know that his recent surge in popularity has nothing to do with what he says, what he believes, or how hard he works. But he also knows that nothing could unite Canadians better than an election that kicks out a government. Joe Clark first said this. He of all people should know. The depressing thing is that The Rt. Hon. Mr. Clark was referring to something that happened almost 30 years ago. I first met Joe…

I need a web designer to help me fix up this site. Know of anyone? As I write, I’m waiting for a test DVD to burn on this new iBook G4. I like the Mac (have been a PC guy since Window’s debuted in ’91), but I won’t believe all the hype about simple video capture and DVD burning until I see it. This weekend was brilliant. Sunny. Simon and I slept in a park; he had a stroller, me a park bench. I have a sun tan on one side of my face. Kind of like Terry Fox. His was sunburned on the left side because he was always…

It’s Buddha Day. Millions are celebrating the birth and enlightenment of the chubby guy with the half smile. Why is he so smug? What does he know that we don’t? A basic pillar of Buddhism is an awareness of impermanence. Wha? Nothing lasts. You are going to die, and everything you care about is going to disappear. How can this lead to happiness? How can I enjoy my iPod if I know it will be obsolete in a year!? Enjoy the moment. Dig the tunes while you can. “Enlightenment” means freedom from the two things that cause human misery: craving and fear. As the story goes, the Buddha sat under…

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.