Surely we were destined to meet

A few months back, Frances Graff was cleaning out a closet in her home in Washington, D.C., when she stumbled upon a 2003 clipping from the Globe and Mail – a Lives Lived column I wrote after the death of my cousin, Charlotte Grover. The Globe story delivered a flood of memories. When Frances was …

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Back to the Future Redux

Action! The camera zooms in on a reasonably pleasant, reasonably capable, reasonably skilled adult – that would be me – leaning comfortably on a podium at the front of the Norwood Town Hall. Smiling even. Eager to launch her presentation. Cue black-and-white flashback, set in the high school just a couple of blocks away: Said …

Diaries capture life’s forgotten moments

I now have proof of what I’ve long suspected: my memory bank is as porous as a kitchen sponge. I can recount – in detail – youthful incidents where I behaved stupidly or where circumstances piled up against me. But moments of youthful glory? Not so much. One day while I was rummaging around in …

The traveller’s conundrum

It's easy to be virtuous when the thing you are railing about is out of reach. And so it is, in my pandemic soul-searching, I have decided we will not rent full houses or self-contained apartments when we (ever) get back to travelling.  Well, unless we have no choice. Or unless the temptation is just …

Severe cold indeed!

My book Life & Legacy may be a done deal, but the research rabbit holes still taunt me. Just the other day, Ancestry.ca delivered an interesting tidbit – a 1908 newspaper obit for Annetta Elmhirst, whose gravestone identifies her as Nettie Annetta Elmhirst. A couple of weeks later Ancestry.ca added an "In Memorial" for Annetta, …