What has happened this spring over the crab fishery is enough to bring tears to this old set of eyes. However, they are expected tears.

We talk about the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery as though it were a single thing instead of many complicated things all

This thought makes everyone I know angry. It is as if we, in this province, are somehow linked economically to the impractical.

As long as I have been following news, and that is a long time, we have been attracted to a romantic view of how

I will never understand the 1999 Columbine school shootings. At the time I was just in raw shock. On April 20,1999 two teenagers, aged 17 and 18, who were armed to the teeth, began a systematic massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado. We all remember it because it was the first school shooting really in our time. It was “ground zero” in

The Luddites are helpful to me here today by way of explanation.

The Luddites were odd bands of English textile workers in the early 19th century. They thought it was a clever idea to destroy their own machinery in the wool and cotton mills of England.

It is the most unlikely of  places to awaken an emotion, in particular sadness. 

I was flipping through The Telegram the other evening, but it might as well have been any evening paper in North America. 

What caught my attention wasn’t the wars and conflicts 

I don’t know if you paid much attention to the public reaction recently after a couple of NHL players snubbed a pre-game skate because their team mates were wearing “pride jerseys” in support of the gay community. 

The players were Eric and Marc Staal of the Florida

It is the classic line of protest and here in Newfoundland and Labrador it rings loudly and often. 

What do we want? When do we want it? NOW. 

Perhaps it is our deprived past ringing through and impacting on us today. It has been tough here, out in the Atlantic, and we often seem

I broke my snow blower last week. There is a rope caught up and tangled in it and, well, it stretched a belt. Here it is approaching the end of March and I’m dealing with that.

You do not have to be told that the weather

I stopped into The House of God last week. That is what, in my more whimsical moments, I call the Basilica of St. John the Baptist. It is my parish now with the doors of St. Patrick’s up in the west end closed forever, at least as a Catholic Church. It may reappear someday as a supermarket like Memorial Stadium

I wasn’t a friend of Gordon Pinsent but I knew him. I had followed his career and, through the course of my life, had met him a few times. Our paths crossed. On one memorable occasion, we were at dinner together. We broke bread, as the expression goes. He was a wonderful, endearing dinner-mate who gave much to our table. The occasion was an