Posts from the “Remembrances” Category

Treasures and Memories

Posted on September 8, 2015

I finally got around to cleaning out the scarred green trunk of memorabilia we moved from my Mom’s house in Calgary after she died. Although she passed away on July 4th, 1998, the grief is still raw. Until recently, touching things that were hers was actually painful – my head would get fuzzy and my eyes would fill with tears – so I just didn’t. It was time, though, so I loaded a historical romance onto my iPod, turned on my Bluetooth speakers and drowned out the sorrow with stories of lords and ladies from another time (my, but they were a horny bunch) where there is always a happy ending (in both senses of the phrase). In a wrinkled brown envelope, I found…

+Read more

Categories: Modern life, Remembrances

Farewells

Posted on November 10, 2014

November makes me melancholy. It’s a combination of having to acknowledge that summer is well and truly over. That we face months of short gloomy days when we hunker inside to keep warm. But most of all because of Remembrance Day. November 11th. When we were kids, my mother would always make us pause (back then it was a school holiday) and bow our heads. At the time I didn’t understand why it should be so solemn. When I grew older, I realized that our little ceremony honoured my father and what we as a family had lost because of the long-lasting impact of the Second World War on my father. I remember, when my Mother died ten years ago, some woman – no,…

+Read more

Categories: Family, Modern life, Remembrances

Tagged: Saying goodbye

Recollections of being groped…continued

Posted on October 31, 2014

Hub and I had another interesting conversation tonight about why the majority of the women in the Jian Ghomeshi debacle remain anonymous. He argued that it wasn’t fair for men to be targetted by allegations of impropriety and to have their reputations shredded by the court of public opinion without them having an opportunity to defend themselves. Now, Hub does like to be provocative but as much as I adore him, I have my limits to what he can say without a full and sharp response. This is one of those times. That kind of stupid comment, no matter what the intention, causes me to uncoil and bare my fangs. He was shocked by the intensity of my response but he listened and was…

+Read more

Categories: Modern life, Remembrances

Recollections of Everyday sexism: Laura Bates’ and Mine

Posted on October 30, 2014

It’s odd how a scent or the first few bars of a song heard on the radio can bring back a flood of memories of good times or bad. A random Facebook post did that for me today. It was about a much-hyped experiment carried out in New York in which a young woman strolled for ten hours down streets in New York City. A collaboration between an anti-street harassment organization (who knew there was such as thing?) and a marketing agency, the video makers claim she was verbally harassed more than 100 times. She was also followed and catcalled. Part of the controversy is that although the filmmakers admit that there were white men who said egregious things to her, those particular audio…

+Read more

Categories: Argument, love yourself, Remembrances

Thirteen years after

Posted on September 11, 2014

Another sombre anniversary of three aircraft crashes that drastically changed the trajectory of the world. Like many of you, I stood for hours staring at the TV screen with horrid fascination. I’ll never be the same, either. It was a warm, sunny fall day and I’d just come in from a long bike ride from my house in Innisfil to the shores of Lake Simcoe and back. I’d come downstairs to open the sliding door to the garden to catch the warm breeze in my office. The phone rang. It was my best friend Jessie. “Turn on the television. Right now!” I tried to joke. “What, has something happened on Oprah?” “Turn the damn thing on. I’m not kidding. You’re not going to believe…

+Read more

Categories: Modern life, Remembrances

Tagged: history