Columns

All around the world, in December each year, there's a good-hearted example of fraud as we raise the fiction of Santa Claus again for the benefit of our own children and the children of our community.

"Heavens, it's only December and I'm sick of winter already -- and it's not even officially winter yet!" Molly Whiteside complained as she delivered menus to the fellows' table the half-light of one morning at Mabel's Grill.

We will soon enter year five of what climate scientists tell us will be humanity's decisive decade. Unless we navigate a global change of course before 2030, they warn, we risk doing such irreversible damage to ...

Brace yourself, this is not going to be a happy good news column.
It is time to talk about yet another scary creature on our doorstep ready to attack our fruit and forest trees. We need to watch for this one as it is looking at our grape vines..

Over the years, I have been involved in many cookie exchanges. There have been many new favourites added to my recipe collection along the way. I have saved many magazines and cookbooks dedicated to Christmas bars and cookies.

My farm is little and part of me felt like the tugboat amongst a sea of freighters with the group taking the Environmental Farm Plan workshop in Kirkton this summer.
Amongst

It's a bright early Fall day shortly before Thanksgiving and it's a beautiful day to be outside. I'm in our yard, doing a little work. It's warm. There's absolutely no breeze. Across the road the neighbour's two horses whinny occasionally...

Checking out what is going on at your neighbours' places seems to be a common thing for most farmers. Whether you messed up planting... or are putting up a new building... or tearing down an old one... you can be sure you will see the slow drive by ...

We had an opportunity to rent a cottage in Shrewsbury, the little hamlet on Rondeau Bay in Chatham-Kent, in early September. There is a canal at the back and a launch nearby, a convenient location for the small wooden sailboat I built ...

" Here we go to another long, cold winter," George Mackenzie sighed as he took up a menu at Mabel's Grill the other day. "The winters seem to get longer every year!"

Though only 32, chef Zach Keeshig is already making waves in the culinary world while re-discovering and re-inventing Indigenous food with his high-end pop-up restaurant in Owen Sound, Naagan.
Naagan is pronounced...

It sits, alone on the laneway, deteriorating a little every year. Tires are flat. Seat is missing the cushion. Grease has coagulated into a dirty mass and rust is creeping along every metal joint...

In one of the other farm publications I recently saw that the Ross Butler collection is being discontinued and disbursed. Oh how it made me feel my age.
I remember, decades ago, going down to interview the artist's son David for The Rural Voice...

Grab a tourist guide for Newfoundland and there will be many "must see" things that make headlines -- Gros Morne National Park, whales, puffins, Vikings, kitchen parties -- but we discovered many things not listed in the guides that made...

The words spoken before meals -- "grace" in the Christian tradition -- is a universal concept, cutting across all cultures and religions, a tradition that unites rather than divides.
The Muslim tradition calls ...

"Good grief!" Dave Winston grumbled the other morning as he looked at the menu at Mabel's Grill. "I can't believe the price she's charging for bacon and eggs!"
"I'm sure you're not complaining when you get your cheque from your last shipment of pigs...

A farmer friend challenged me about what he considered alarming statements related to climate change. He sighed and said "a temperature bump of 1.5 °C probably won't bother me."
There is a difference between ...

Way back when stories for The Citizen newspaper and Rural Voice were cut out with exacto knives, waxed, and laid out on the page, there was the team of Dianne Josling and Joan Caldwell typing out all the material on these giant typeset machines...

One of the stories you are most apt to see on television any day of the week is about the high cost of groceries. If people think it's bad now, wait a few years as our soaring population causes us to pave over thousands of acres of farmland...

It is good, every once in a while, to take a road trip if you are able. It gives a very real reminder of just how vast Canada is. You can easily drive for over 20 hours and never leave Ontario! Not only are the distances huge, but there ...

In the time of 100-acre farms in Ontario, families usually kept a dog or two. Ours was no different.
I remember four. A faint remembrance of Underpants, a blonde lab perhaps, named by my older sisters for the look of its posterior as it shambled.....

So, what's the latest news these days?" Dave Winston asked as he scanned the menu at Mabel's Grill the other morning.
"Who gets to watch the news?" grunted George Mackenzie. "The wife's off on holidays these days and she ties up the TV most days...

Early on in my career as a human rights researcher and activist, I worked with individuals and organizations committed to helping Black South Africans end their country's notorious system of Apartheid. It never ceased to disappoint me how ...