Opinion

This week I was invited to a wine tasting and dinner at a trendy restaurant, one that has received rave reviews in those self-important “lifestyle” journals with pictures of gold-lined swimming pools and advertisements for vulgar German cars. It was disappointingly plain. In fact the décor reminded me of a school cafeteria. It also had...

Where did you spend Canada Day? If you spent the holiday somewhere in British Columbia, chances are you spent it amidst a remarkable confluence of Mother Earth and Human Industry, in a place where our forebears forged a pact with the dizzying wealth of Nature and plotted out a tract to settle into. It’s about...

Over the past two weeks I’ve been experimenting in the kitchen. Not because it was requested of me, but because I currently have nothing else on the go. Also, I’ve been watching a lot of Chopped and, like, how hard can it be? If you can make a dessert out of squid, artichoke and licorice,...

I can already feel the transformation, the metamorphosis nearly complete. I’ve been in larval stage for years, making my way in this big, crazy world, unaware of my own potential with nothing but a sense something better awaited me if only I could shed this tight, tiny cocoon and spread my wings and drive. That’s...

One of the worst things about getting on in life is that bits of you start falling apart. Recently I lost the use of a rather important part, one that I quite enjoy employing on a regular basis. I am referring, of course, to my arm. In particular the essential right arm. This is the...

“You won’t recognize Canada when I get through with it.” Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 2006 election boast continues to echo in my head, more than eight long years after he uttered it. I can’t shake it, folks. His promise has become the political earworm that returns on the path of an ill-wind blowing in daily...

My boyfriend turned to me and asked why I was crying. “I always cry before I play sports,” I sniffed at him. This is actually quite standard behaviour for me. It’s not like the temper tantrums I throw when I’m too poor to buy that doggy in the window, it’s more like a quiet, blubbering...

I’m trying with this World Cup soccer, er, football thing, really I’m trying. I only care because I have a few English friends and this seems somehow important to them. Or, well, it was important to them. And because, well, the same way the world ignores soccer when Canadians play it on ice with sticks...

I hate it when cars nag. They bleep at you to turn off your lights or put your seat belt on or take your keys with you. Nowadays they even nag you when they need a service, as mine did this week. So of course I obediently drove to the dealer like a lamb to...

Is your Facebook “wall” covered in Positivity Porn and TED Talks? Mine is. And it’s pissing me off. Surely you know what I’m talking about — after all, there’s roughly a billion of you Facebook users out there. You’re posting nifty pics of cats and dogs (which, blush, I usually adore). You’re updating us on...

Nine years ago, I teetered across a stage filled with my hooting and hollering peers in a pair of strappy silver stilettos and my mother assured me I would fall.  The voice of my principal boomed over everyone in the crowd and said I was going on to pursue a bachelor’s degree, that I had...

Lock and load, baby: Dad’s got a new weapon. And I needed one. I’ve been shooting blanks for months, firing away at the kids, aiming for wisdom and evidently missing the mark. I needed some new ammunition, something to make them pay attention. Because I have the answer to that age-old question: If a man...