Read our latest Essays
The Christmas fudge arrived with a resounding thud
It landed on our doorstep with a resounding thud. It measured about the size of a thick hardcover novel. It weighed more than 100 copies of “War and Peace” bound together. But all there was to read was a simple card, which said, predictably, “To my brother. Love, your...
It’s Canada Day, 10 reasons to celebrate
Ah, Canada Day. God save the Queen ... and after Brexit, maybe the whole damn United Kingdom. There’ll be parades today, hot dogs, kids on bikes, a shrill seven notes from an overabundance of bagpipers marching slowly, steadily toward you, like the Scottish Walking...
Note to computer giants: Please don’t interrupt me
It was probably among the first things your parents taught you: Don’t interrupt. But the online world has become so full of interruptions it’s time to give it a good spanking, or at the very least make it go sit in a corner and think about what it’s done until it’s...
Summer: it’s a time for purposeful idleness
One of most annoying burdens of growing up Protestant is the nagging belief that idleness is a sin. Summer is definitely the time to throw off this sadly mistaken belief. The truth is, doing nothing is arguably quite virtuous. When we are truly idle we burn no fossil...
Must we go to Mars to appreciate Earth?
When Earthlings first saw photos of our planet taken in space, it sparked a flowering of awareness that all humanity shares a common home – our inexpressibly beautiful and fragile blue dot. Our annual celebration of Earth Day arose from this new consciousness, and...
How the notion of proximity affects how we see the world
The noon-hour talk radio show host on CFAX 1070, Pamela McColl, invited me on her show last week to talk about a recent article of mine, “NIMBY is not a 4-letter word,” that appeared on the editorial pages of the Times-Colonist newspaper. (I also published the article...
The case against gardening, complicit in consumption
Years ago, when I lived on Bainbridge Island, an elderly neighbor sold his five acres of forest on an idyllic inlet to a couple from California. They clear cut it. Although Bainbridge had been logged within decades of the first white settlers’ arrival, that initial...
Playing God isn’t as easy as it seems, there’s a lot of guilt
I’ve been playing God lately. You know, deciding who lives, who dies. When to end a life, and whether by violent or somewhat more humane means. And I have to say that, while it’s kind of empowering to play God, there’s a lot of guilt involved. I can’t say for sure if...