For years I have wished that Barrie had its own Ten Thousand Villages store. Run completely by volunteers, it showcases the creative work of people in developing countries and sells their products at fair market value with most of the money going back to them. Barrie’s downtown has always seemed ripe for such a store,…

As we coast into our universal celebrations of peace and dignity and care of our humanity–no matter what our faith–I think most of us are troubled by the violence in our world. Some days it strikes close to home; others it’s oceans away in countries we don’t really know. But terror(ism) creates fear. And fear…

Today is Tuesday. Tomorrow I will stand, with hundreds of others, at the Cenotaph in downtown Barrie. I’ll be thinking about the young men especially who, without warning and with little choice, went off to foreign countries and died on foreign soil and in foreign waters and skies, to maintain a democracy that they’d always…

It doesn’t seem that long ago, really. I was in grade eight when we stopped picking up the receiver and hearing Central say “Operator” and then we’d give the number and she’d put us through in some magic way. It doesn’t seem that long ago, really, when my country friends had party lines, up to…