Columns
If any of The Citizen's readers are on LinkedIn, the professional social media website, they would have seen that this month marks 10 years for me at North Huron Publishing, and my what a decade it has been.
While most Canadians feel they can look south with a certain level of arrogance as the U.S. descends into madness with a reality T.V. personality leading them into the grinding gears of hell, all to a soundtrack of fake news, you may not realize...
Canadians had their inferiority complex reinforced recently when pop star Madonna posted a video urging Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to move into her luxury New York City apartment. "Don't run off to Canada," she said. "It's so boring there."
Despite my thrilling, much-anticipated announcement from a fortnight ago, I am determined not to make this space a weekly pontification on parenting and the anticipation of fatherhood. Having said that, I felt early parental instincts kicking in last week
Living in Canada, there are many things we take for granted, until something like the current panic over the spread of the novel coronavirus reminds us what we have going for us.
Something broke in me as I sat in my second-floor office last Thursday listening to another horn honking in support of the protesting educators on Blyth's main street.
Between friends and friends of friends, as well as the few jobs I've put under my belt since graduating post secondary school, I've garnered, in my opinion, a pretty great network of people involved in a variety of careers.
This really is an amazing time to be living in Huron County -- especially if you have the perspective of haved living here for a few decades.
It's been an absolute pleasure and an honour to write in this space for you dear readers, neighbours, friends and supporters 500 times now. I don't take the privilege lightly.
Last Thursday afternoon I sat in a doctor's office in London having my skin pricked with dozens of different materials testing me for allergies. It's something I've never had done because I figured I knew my allergies.
When I pulled the book off the shelf a couple of weeks ago, I had no idea it would prove so timely, given that last Monday was the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945.
Well, here we are. I pre-empted this discussion last February when I tallied up the number of columns I've written over the years and only got to 451, thinking I was on the doorstep of 500.
Last week, at its first regular council meeting of 2020, Morris-Turnberry Council turned down a new property standards bylaw that, among other changes, would have seen the storage of derelict vehicles not allowed on properties in the municipality.
The annual ranking of the best countries in the world was released last week and Canada sits at number two, just behind Switzerland, as the second-best place to live in the world.
There's much wringing of hands these days about how Canadians are going to meet our commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The answer is simple: let the people who are against every new energy proposal have their way.
When you live long enough, you become a walking history lesson. Such are the roots of my recent deep dive inside the Canadian medical system.
Recently I've started seeing the phrase "I'm no X, but..." pop up frequently. The X is a quality that may not be desirable or a profession that would typically denote a level of wisdom or education in a specific field not displayed by the person...
It was Eric Idle of the British comedy group Monty Python who first implored us to always look on the bright side of life. Sure, he was in the process of being crucified (like, actually crucified, not that thing Donald Trump says is happening to him)...
After The Citizen closed up shop for the Christmas season, I had the joy of taking my mother to the Blyth Festival's first-ever holiday show, A Huron County Christmas Carol.
As the media landscape continues to shift and evolve, reporters and media personalities the world over face a new crisis in the business of collecting, reporting and pontificating on news and unfortunately it is of their own creation.
As individuals, each of us wants to be prosperous. Every country on earth longs to be prosperous. But for the health of the planet, prosperity is killing us.
Looking for something to read recently, I pulled an old paperback novel I'd studied in university off the shelf. I was stunned at the price printed on the book's back, and it started me thinking of the uneven way inflation has affected different prices.
Christmas tree farmers are as prickly as their product these days over a Canadian Tire advertisement that makes it seem as if trees made in Third World factories are environmentally superior to trees grown in nature in Canada.
For years, my mother used to buy Us Weekly, so months-old issues were always laying around the house. Aside from standard celebrity gossip, issues always had a few pages under the banner, "Stars -- they're just like us!"