Skip the hip, Olympics, and stick with real sports

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are nearing the half-way point. A few of you will be bleary-eyed from watching synchronized three-man fencing at 4 a.m., or something like that. Most of you will be saying, “Wait, how is this the 2020 Olympics? This is 2021, right?” Very astute observation. Yes, this is officially the 2020 Olympics,…

Is it time to cleanse yourself of the ‘news’?

I am currently reading an epic book called Humankind (subtitled A Hopeful History) by a Dutch historian and thinker named Rutger Bregman. OK, I realize that sounds incredibly boring, but stay with me.  In Humankind, Bregman posits that the conventional wisdom that humans are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest is wrong. Bregman says…

Oh, Baby! Female names for 2020 are U’nique

When last we met – if you can call one person writing and another reading an actual meeting – I was discussing the more intriguing and downright weird names Albertans gave their baby boys in 2020. This week, let’s look at the distaff side.  There were fewer girls than boys born in 2020 (25,160 vs.…

Baby boy names in 2020: From Aabid to Zyron, with plenty of Jaxs

Back when I was a youngster – literally in another millennium! – most kids had names that were pretty solid and stolid. Everybody knew a John or a Jim or a Tim or a Phillip or a Michael. Or a Diane or a Debbie or a Mary or a Janice or a Jane or a…

Lessons from COVID … but will we learn?

Did you celebrate Canada Day on Thursday? If so, shame on you! If you read the daily newspapers (which nobody does anymore) or watch the TV news (which nobody should do anymore), you might think that Canada is a horribly racist country with nothing to celebrate. No less a personage than national NDP leader Jagmeet…

Battle of the butts: how we (almost) beat smoking

While driving around town recently, I saw something that actually made me come up short. The guy behind me was not pleased. What did I see? Get this: there was a guy standing around a road project (the ratio of guys standing around road projects to guys actually working is usually about five-to-one). He had…

This just in … Father’s Day is Sunday

I’ve got some potentially bad news for any of you who have a father: Sunday is Father’s Day. Your reaction to this news will vary from “Yes, I know it’s Father’s Day. I bought my gift weeks ago” (generally a female response), to “What? Father’s Day again! Why didn’t somebody tell me?” (generally a male…

Snips and Cuts of 1939 (2021 remix)

While rummaging through my junk recently (and by junk, I mean scraps of paper, etc., not, well, my junk) I came across something I didn’t know I had. A yearbook. From Central High School. In Charlotte, North Carolina. From 1939. I know why I have it … it was my mother’s yearbook. Mom was a…

Canada: home of the world’s most flexible constitution

Is Canada a country? Yes, I know Canada is a country in the land-mass sense of the word. You really can’t miss Canada on a map. It’s that massive slab of land, quite often coloured pink to show we’re part of the British Commonwealth (the same reason I added a ‘u’ to ‘colour’). We have…

The world’s super censor brings John Cena to his knees

Are you familiar with John Cena? If not, good for you; he’s not really worth knowing about. So for the uninitiated, John Cena is a former professional wrestler. According to the World Wrestling Entertainment website, he is a 16-time WWE champion, author and ‘actor’ (quotes are mine). To quote directly from their website: “After gaining…