On a rainy night in October 1970, I crossed paths with Canada's most elusive poet.

New bylaws for civic spaces.

When Geist first approached me with the idea of speaking here, I made it known that of all the things I ever wanted to be when I grew up, being an after-dinner speaker was very low on the list.

It's human nature to jump to the wrong conclusion–and stick with it.

A series of lucky events seemed to conspire to bring me to Stettler, Alberta, one day in June 1998. Jennifer, the woman who was in between being my roommate and my girlfriend, was at the Banff Centre and I was on my way there from Saskatoon, where we lived. She had left me fifty dollars for gas so I could pick her up after her workshop, and I had accepted, hoping that when the time came I wouldn’t need it and I could give it back. I did need it, of course. I had been waiting for a cheque to come from the Globe and Mail for one of a series of drawings I was doing for them, and when it was time to leave, the cheque still hadn’t arrived. So I set out from Saskatoon with just a tank of gas and the fifty dollars.

A seance to contact a dead miner at Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1923—conducted by Conan Doyle himself.

The chain-link fence along boulevard de l’Acadie— two metres high, with “appropriate hedge”—separates one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Montreal from one of the poorest.

Hal Niedzviecki com­mem­o­rates his Jewish grand­fa­ther—a heavy drinker, a bad driver and a Polish refugee.

The British called it the Great Game. The Russians called it Bolshoya Igra. The playing field was, and still is, Afghanistan.

When you live in Saskatoon, you find yourself caring more about the details of grain farming then you did when you lived in Toronto or Windsor.

And then I remembered an important event. It happened at a funeral in St. Paul’s chapel for a twenty-four-year-old prostitute who had overdosed in her Gastown hotel room. The small chapel was half full, and very quiet. There were a couple of fresh flower arrangements in front of the cheap, closed coffin. Most of the congregation were other prostitutes dressed in their working clothes, and a few pimps. One woman apologized to Brother Tim for having nothing black to wear, except for lingerie and a leather miniskirt.

World War I, Canada’s “war of independence,” marked a turning point for a young colony wanting to prove itself as a self-reliant nation, but at what cost.

It is racism, not race, that is a risk factor for dying of COVID-19.

The mother of the groom measures the distance between two weddings: twenty-six years, six thousand miles, and a donkey covered with flowers. It’s outtasight.

Did that really happen? J. Jill Robinson initiates a midnight stand-off between the police and two drunk brothers in an RV Park in White Rock, B.C.

A flower child looks back, to the time between Motown and acid rock.

A basement shrine in her 1920s home inspires Caroline Adderson to discover the past lives of her house and its inhabitants.

I wasn’t certain whether I was in Winnipeg because of the Weakerthans, or whether I cared about the Weakerthans because I care about Winnipeg.

Doing time is not a blank, suspended existence.

What is at the heart of this Edith Iglauer profile by Giller nominee Annabel Lyon? Hint: Ice Road Truckers.

Going unnoticed must be the root sorrow for the broken.

Dinner with James Reaney—poet, playwright, professor—who is mistaken by a pair of Irish ladies for “that decadent writer Mordecai Richler.”

I answered the ad: SWM likes to dance. Called him up (said his name was Jay), suggested we meet at the local cafe Tuesday night, something different, a performance poet performing. Free coffee and cookies, the place rocking with middle-aged angst.

Mastery of the self

When I lived in Ottawa in the 1970s, I used to enjoy passing lazy afternoons at the National Gallery looking at the pictures. I remember how surprised I was when I first encountered the Group of Seven collection. These paintings were completely familiar—I’d seen them in schoolbooks and on calendars, posters, t-shirts, everywhere—yet at the same time they were completely unexpected.

The Bolshevists are coming! The Bolshevists are coming! Daniel Francis recounts Canada's close call with a revolution.