It was a gorgeous late-September afternoon, still summer but hinting of the first flirt of autumn. For whatever reason, the doors of the cathedral hadn’t yet opened, but that simply meant we continued to enjoy one another’s company on the sun-dappled grass under the majestic maples, several hundred Ottawa lawyers fully gowned as if for…
Over the last half century or so, Ontario has built dozens of big new regional courthouses, many of them quite spectacular, but none with the quiet majesty of the stately limestone county courthouses they replaced. But that’s the subject of another story. As each new county or region got its new courthouse, many of the…
The old pews had been hand-hewn, nearly a century earlier, from single planks sawn from the great white pine forests of the Ottawa Valley. Carefully mortised into elegantly carved end pieces, those planks had held generations of solemn Baptists Sunday after Sunday. The back pew furthest from the door was favoured by the more youthful…
September 3, 1967 was Högertrafikomläggningen in Sweden– the day they switched from driving on the left side of the road (as in the UK) to the right hand side of the road (as in Canada and all of Sweden’s neighbours). The switch occurred in the very early morning hours, as state and municipal employees raced…
In the Hebrew scriptures we are told that the prophet Elijah went to the mountains to seek God’s direction. He waited in a cave, and in time there came a mighty wind, powerful enough to sunder the rocks. But the prophet knew that was not the voice of God. Then came an earthquake, shaking the…
In the early days after the American Revolution, the boundaries between the new republic and the Loyalist British Colonies (which were to become Canada) were imprecise, at best. In particular, the boundaries between New Brunswick and Maine, and the border between Lower Canada (Quebec) and Maine were uncertain and disputed. The land in dispute was…
Joe Biden is no kid. Born November 20, 1942, he will be 78 as he assumes the presidency of the United States and becomes the unofficial leader of the Free World. Joseph Robinette Biden entered politics early– in fact, when he was first elected as a senator at 30, he was the sixth youngest in…
Just a few days ago I changed a couple of hydraulic lines on my old beast of a tractor. Working on old tractors is patience-testing and filthy on the best of days, and hydraulic leaks just make it more interesting. And dirty. Mid-way through the operation I suffered a tool failure. With a mighty crack,…
Here we are on the cusp of a new year, more ready than usual to assign the old one to the dustbin of history. At the risk of tempting fate, it’s hard to imagine how 2021 could be much worse than 2020. Whether we like it or not, we’ll soon be drinking full from the…
Something very sad happened to Rudy Giuliani just a few days ago and I shed a tear for a man who once had been a great lawyer and a fine mayor. Everyone knows that I have a deep, visceral, contempt for Donald Trump and every evil, conniving, self-centred, infantile, ungodly, sleazy thing about him. (Forgive…