Columns

In the 1960s, most folks in and around the community where much of my family's social lives revolved went to church. There were two choices in the nearby village, the echoing Presbyterian edifice and the more modest United Church building...

The expression "don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today" proved itself very wise when I locked myself in the chicken tractor (chicken coop on wheels) with an angry rooster behind me and a solid cage around me...

Unless we're setting out to study an issue by reading a book or article, most of us pick up casual information in bite-sized bits.
So when TV viewers see the A&W restaurant chain's saturation campaign about its hamburgers made with beef from ...

This year, it seemed as if we launched from a great winter straight into summer, with about one day of spring in between. Snow banks disappeared under a blast of warm air and sunshine, leaving behind drying fields, blooming spring flowers, and ...

Hunger is something all too familiar to the peoples of Northern Canada. Hunger of the belly or worse -- hunger of the spirit. I touched briefly on this last month, recalling my experiences in and around the Town of High Level in...

"You bring the coffee. I'll cook the breakfast," George Mackenzie had told the boys.
They had been getting takeout from Mabel's Grill since the beginning of the latest lockdown but...

I saw Jean Kellestine walking toward her neat, white house after getting the mail and had to break into a jog to catch up with her, even though she was one week shy of turning 90 years old. Living on her own, with frequent visits ...

As I write this in early May, we've been watching a bird build a nest in a tree outside our kitchen window -- a reminder that even in nature creatures alter their environment for survival...

I'm sure there are as many different ways to remember loved ones, events, and experiences as there are people. My long-time favourite is plants. My friend's mother gave me a piece of lamium from her flower garden during one spring visit.

A river passes through our little rural community. It's here where further upstream navigation ends for anything much larger than a canoe or shallow-draft skiff.
The river once served as a highway for lake-going vessels, the connection to...

The guys had barely settled down on Cliff Murray's front porch with their take-out breakfast from Mabel's Grill when George Mackenzie noticed the stack of white plastic bags piled nearby.
"Is that fertilizer for the lawn?" he asked Cliff..

Can you imagine a Parliament of all species? Even if there was just one representative per species, that would require a huge hall, with at least 8.7 million seats. Or, it would become the Mother of all Zoom calls.
I am being only partly...

Can you imagine a Parliament of all species? Even if there was just one representative per species, that would require a huge hall, with at least 8.7 million seats. Or, it would become the Mother of all Zoom calls.
I am being only partly...

"So how was your big celebration?" Dave Winston asked Cliff Murray the other day after his 25th wedding anniversary.
"Good," said Dave. "Quiet, of course, like everything else with the pandemic. The kids took us to a little Chinese restaurant...

Are farmers in Canada losing the trust and respect of their fellow Canadians?
The most recent numbers I could find concerning that question are from 2018. A poll, conducted by Insights West, puts farmers among the most respected professions...

Who knew when we rolled into 2020 that we would soon be facing shortages of things we seemingly have taken for granted for decades... toilet paper... bicycles...flour... dogs.... ? I'm sure that vanilla ice cream must be on the list somewhere too...

A couple of months back Lisa B. Pot caught my attention when she wrote her column about human geography, the sense of place we develop because of our surroundings and the experiences of living in those surroundings.
About the same time as her column ...

The pair of buff-coloured hens (we think they are Orpingtons) were purchased for their stunning good looks. The former owners assured me they were consistent layers but even after giving them a few weeks to adjust to the move, their egg-laying is ...

A common theme throughout my career as a farm journalist has been regret by farm leaders that farmers dilute their strength by not sticking together. Probably few people around today know that wasn't always true -- that 100 years ago Ontario's ...

Harvest is always a stressful time of year. As we rush to get the year's worth of work put in the bins safely, there is never a shortage of things that can go wrong. No matter how carefully I plan and try to anticipate and prepare.
We get tired.

There have been concerted efforts, courageous even, to provide a unified voice for Canada's farming community over the years.
They've never worked. The community, despite being a shadow of its former self in terms of numbers, may be more diverse today...

"That must be Cliff now," said George Mackenzie as he sat at one end of a fold-up picnic table in Dave Winston's machinery shed.
"Sounds awfully loud, even for that old beater of a truck of his," Dave observed.
"It's not," George said, sticking ...

Do you hate wearing a mask? Yeah, me too.
I've got a few cute ones, but every time I put one on, I feel terrible. It's not just because I feel suffocated and I can smell what I ate for lunch (not always a bad thing!), but to me it's a symbol of these...