Columns
Getting ahead of the game, History on a plate, Big growth, big responsibility
What started as a simple road trip and lunch out for six cousins (myself included) to celebrate the completion of a family history book became a hunt for the answer to a mystery.
Last Saturday, my neighbour Jeff Peters and I hosted The Blyth MS Ride, which is a ride we founded back in 2017. After expenses, it looks like the ride will have raised nearly $2,000
Chaff-ings and Chaff-lutations dearest Chaffies, Chafflers and Chaffarinos. For this week's The Chaff, there is no time to waste and no waste to time (don't get bogged down trying to figure out if "no waste to time" makes any sense...
Living, as we do in Canada, next door to the most powerful country in the world, a country that seems to take off in various outbreaks of obsession, can be interesting/frightening for Canadians.
Fit the fine to the bottom line, Arrested development, Taking Pride in community
Several decades ago, when the word "Amazon" only meant a long river or a group of tall people, local folks were already enjoying the benefits of shopping from home.
Cue the clip of George W. Bush with the "Mission Accomplished" banner on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln from 2003, because we did it my fellow Canadians: we have a sauce in this season of Hot Ones.
Each and every week, The Chaff mailroom is bombarded with sacks and sacks of letters from fans and foes alike demanding explanations for the confusing twists and disorienting turns too often taken in this column...
Here's a warning for all those readers who don't believe in climate change: This column is going to be all about our changing climate, so you may want to save the time and trouble it takes to read it.
Woke and a hard place, We can never forget, Tick, Tick... Boom!
June is cutlery month and that means The Chaff is conducting a complete and urgently necessary review of the utensils we use (or forgo while in the bathtub) to eat delicious, delectable and downright delectab-licious delicacies from all over the dusty...
Earlier this week, I interviewed playwright Marie Beath Badian for the third consecutive year about the same project. In 2021, we spoke about her work on The Waltz, a sequel to her wildly successful Prairie Nurse, which premiered at the Blyth Festival...
The huge urgency over the plans of the provincial government to reshape rural Ontario changed suddenly, Tuesday afternoon, forcing me to quickly rewrite this week's column before deadline.
The sound of silence, Meal fit for a king, An erasure of culture
Of all the enterprises that were necessary for the success of early, and later, settlers, chief would be the blacksmith.
As the great British spy guy, celebrated philanderer and definitely real person James Bond would say if he was the author of this column, "My name is Chaff...The Chaff. I will have a Chaff-ka Chaff-tini. Chaff-ken not Chaff-ed."
Last week, as Scott and I frantically laid out the Barn Dance Campout and Jamboree special section (alright, not frantically, but not exactly calmly either), I was reminded of the idea of best laid plans.
It was stunning so see by the special edition about the Barn Dance Jamboree/Campout in last week's Citizen that the event is the 25th anniversary of the event. How time flies!
For this week's plunge into paranoid paronomasia, The Chaff is conducting its first-ever in-depth interview. That's right, it's time for a Chaffterview! Who better as the first subject of our unflinching gaze than quixotic Quebec-born Qu'omedian...
Living in the country, as I do, brings constant reminders of the changing of the seasons. Lately there are regular indications that it's planting season, whether it's neighbours travelling down the road with equipment or the fields...
As part of a continuing, self-indulgent, self-centred (and all the other self-hyphenated terms) series, I am here again to write something self-serving on my 41st birthday - May 19, 2023.
We need to help each other, Don't it always seem to go, Entrenched partisanship