Be the squeaky wheel

This week in the Ottawa Citizen I make a very simple case. One, I’ve had it up to here with the unreliability of transit in this town and two, knowing I’m far from alone, I’m saying it’s time to be the squeaky wheel and let OC

Freezing to death

You’d think it would go without saying that we shouldn’t leave humans to freeze to death on a street corner in a society as rich as ours. My column this week shouldn’t have to be written. Solving chronic homelessness is a difficult challenge but making sure no

Try talking to people

Are you recovered from the shock? Congratulations! You’ve unlocked the black-belt level in #canpoli cynicism. I mean, gah. Even the wind was being theatrical Monday morning. The opposition parties just lost their best argument. No wonder they all want an election right away. They will totally continue to try

My plan for 2025

My fav trainer at my kickboxing gym offered to let me write some of my 2025 resolutions for the wall of same we’re apparently building out and I said, dripping sweat on the floor as I stretched, “Nah, I don’t make resolutions. I make plans.” He liked it.

Time for some beautiful stubbornness

It’s the time of year when we (royal) enjoy looking back on all that effort and the stuff that survived the editing process — mourning in passing the brilliant jokes that didn’t, perhaps because they weren’t so brilliant — and come up with lessons learned that, ideally, inform the

Death of an uncle

There was nothing to be done, the Air Canada person insisted with a face that lied about how sorry she was pretending to be. They had missed their connection to Nashville during the time it took them to go from D34 to F63 via yet another security check and a

Cows on a beach: The art of getting lost in a post-stamp country

It was a simple plan. Fly to Ireland, compete in a karate tournament, stay an extra day to visit the graves of various ancestors in an around Belfast, fly back home. There was no need to get lost anywhere.  We arrived earlier than expected, because our flight was one time

You look beautiful

It is rare that I am ahead of the style curve like this but I have been finding ways to compliment at least one person a day for years. Some days it’s easier than others. Like it helps if I go outside at all. On writing days, it’s

Fixing the health care system

Typically, when you need access to acute care in this country, you get it no problem. It’s the routine stuff that’s an issue. Millions of us don’t have a primary care physician and essentially no access to basic primary care except for routine vaccinations in schools or

Waiting for my proletarian chariot

I wrote my Ottawa Citizen column on the OC Transpo documentary I told you about last week. I interviewed the filmmaker. He’s as surprised as everyone else by the reaction. Last Monday, Dec. 2, was Rosa Parks Day and my beloved Huntsville, Alabama, marked the occasion by offering free

December 6, again

Every year, for 35 years now, we remember their names. Women who were killed by a violent misogynist just because they were women. He separated the women from the men and killed them. He blamed women for everything, including his celibacy. I remember the massacre. I watched on television as

Aznavour, ce géant

This one is mostly en français as you need to be fluent enough to be able to appreciate this gem of a film. Such a contrast with my movie experience of a week ago in Coquitlam, B.C., where I saw the epic turkey Conclave. If your French is good

Urbanism

I was wrong about everything

Every now and then it’s good to shake off the bugs and clear the rhetorical sinuses with a column that exorcises the crap out of your system. Call it a writer’s defrag. This week I decided to say something good about a police initiative and the success e-scooter

Politics

Food basics

In the Ottawa Citizen this week I talk about food insecurity and how extraordinarily incomprehensible it is for a society so rich and advanced that it can catch freaking rockets with giant chopsticks to have so many hungry people. It’s one in four households in Ottawa suffering from food

Urbanism

Skating forward

A shorter update this week as I juggle a few big projects and associated looming deadlines. I will be able to share a few of those projects soon. They’re fun, I promise. My Ottawa Citizen column this week is about skating — in Ottawa and in Huntsville, Alabama. Well, mostly

Politics

The gloves are off

I like to joke that there’s only one man I put a helmet on for, and that’s true enough. I don’t do any ring fighting anyone, except with one friend who’s earned the privilege through grit, discipline and good cheer. In 2015 I was a second-degree

Urbanism

Aggrieved columnist seeking downtown parking spot

When the colossally stupid three-days-in-the-office federal policy came into effect in September I occasionally saw in my various social media feeds complaints from people who couldn’t find parking downtown. I thought it was weird. Difficult to believe, even. Aren’t there six thousand gazillion places where one can temporarily

Urbanism

Counting to what?

In my Ottawa Citizen column this week I discuss the Point in Time Count — a national exercise to get a reasonably accurate picture of homelessness in Canada. I agree we need solid data. It’s important to know how people end up unhoused, or in precarious housing. It’s also

Urbanism

Launching the reuse revolution

Five years ago I wrote a series on “Healthy Ottawa” that included a column on reusable containers. It was before the pandemic and a few stores allowed customers to bring their own clean-and-empty containers like mason jars to buy certain items like bulk noodles or coffee beans or spices. The

Culture

A comic with serious views about what makes us special

Some weeks writing a column is fun and some weeks it’s even funner. This week I got to talk with Canadian comedian Ron James, live from his Toronto condo. He’s coming to Ottawa for a show at the Meridian next week (buy tickets!) and what better opportunity to

Urbanism

Making our city sponge-worthy

Not to show my age or my dirty mind or anything, but when I hear the word sponge I immediately think of Elaine in episode #119 of Seinfeld. But today I am interested in even better sponges than that — the ones that turn urban parks into extraordinarily useful green infrastructure

The separatists, they are coming! Or not!

Gerald Butts is a very smart man, a clear writer and a fine thinker. So when he writes something eloquent about a subject on which I know a lot, I pay attention. But I also want to offer a slightly less panicky take on all the things. By way of

Urbanism

Tunnels to nowhere

There are weeks when it seems there are no limits to the number of zany ideas people come up with, including (in no particular order), digging a tunnel under the 401 in Toronto to add lanes of traffic because there’s no way the existing 20 or so are enough,

Français

Une gâterie franco-ontarienne

This one is just in French, because the platform to which I am referring is 100% in that language. It is a new initiative by the Assotiation des auteur.e.s de l’Ontario français to promote the work of its members, francophone literature in Ontario as well as help