Occasionally, I write something that is a tad clever; or occasionally I have what I think at least is an original thought. Then I find regularly that someone else has beaten me to that notion.

Writing op-ed pieces in Newfoundland means that I have often been

It is easy to write in support of popular notions. Working the other side of the street is not nearly so easy. At issue today is the post- game handshake in minor hockey. I am against it. It is an area wrought with difficulties. It is not a simple

Another page has fluttered gently from the calendar. That page was December and is now remembered as 2023. It is an image of the rolling year. Another image would be something like sand through the hourglass. They both work in giving some understanding of the time-space continuum. They are

You find Christmas and its spirit and meaning in the strangest of places. I was in a shopping mall one day last week. At first blush it is about as far away from the manger in Bethlehem as you can get. But even in a mall, that ultimate shrine

We all have a favourite Christmas song. Mine has always been Silent Night. My second favourite, though, isn’t Adeste Fideles or Little Town of Bethlehem. It certainly isn’t The Little Drummer Boy or even Royal David’s City. It is instead the dark and mournful Fairytale of New York. It

A break from Christmas shopping now to tell you of a much-used little expression that has made its way deeply into our culture. I was watching Jamie Oliver doing a Christmas cooking thing last night on the television and I see he is the latest to pick up on

It will not be easy to accept for a lot of people but “virtual care” is the way of the future in Newfoundland and places that are like it.

What “like it” means is a place where there is a small population spread over a vast

It is the beginning of that long stretch to Christmas. For the box stores it starts the day after Halloween. There is some outrage over that, but, personally, I don’t mind it at all because I love Christmas so much. To tell you the truth the Christmas lights that

A lesson we learned in school is a line from a poem by Wilfred Owen. It was published in 1921. In Latin it reads “Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori”. It is actually a quote from the Roman poet Horace, and it translates: It is sweet and proper to

This week we watched the announcement that Scotiabank was reducing the number of branches in our province. Scotiabank has a very long history here and has given notice it is closing no less than eight branch banks in Newfoundland. It is part of an overall downsizing across Canada. Scotiabank