There was no Sunday Mass to attend this month. There hasn’t been Mass for many months now. It is a sign of the troubled times. I miss that. Church in all its forms and with its many faults still provides structure and an opportunity for reflection. It is good

The words are those of William Shakespeare from the play Julius Caesar and they reference a critical moment when action to change things in our world is possible and will be rewarded.

So it was that a couple of weeks ago here in Newfoundland government decided

It was the purchase of a used pickup truck that took me into the shadows of the new reality that grips us in the 21st century. The truck was a beater, as the expression goes. That expression covers a vehicle which is far from new but is something that

The Atlantic may be quiet in Lark Harbour today. The sun may be shining and the waters calm, but people will never look at the ocean in the same way again. A terrible accident killed two men when they were thrown into the water when their open boat overturned.

The total eclipse of the sun disappointed nobody. I watched it all mostly on television as it swept across North America. It was wonderful. People stood in awe across the continent. It was a moment that in many ways was surprising in that it was something that produced a

They are the ghosts of another generation. I hear the sounds of their play sometimes. It is the sound of skates on new ice and the sound of pucks rattling off wooden boards in old rinks. These are the sounds hockey players now gone to dust who were hired

For the third time in the last six weeks, I put pen to paper to mark the passing of someone. I asked of wife Judy, who is my editor-in-chief, why this was happening, and I was writing so often of death. She said there was a simple explanation. I

Religion when I was growing up in Newfoundland is certainly not part of the much talked about ‘good old days’. So much of our history was a divide along religious lines. Many won’t want to remember this because it isn’t comfortable, but I can tell you some horror stories.

Every year, in late March, the debate starts again about Confederation and whether or not Newfoundland was pushed into it.

The calendar also signals the beginning of the parallel discussion on whether Terra Nova, as we used to call ourselves, did the right thing in joining

Joe Smallwood believed in the democratic process. Well, sort of. Once following a by-election that the Liberals lost, Smallwood said to the assembled press the next day that the voters in the district had exercised their God-given right to be wrong.

That is a good introduction