Dad told me that once as a teen he was with his father on their fishing boat when the weather turned nasty.  Dad was whining and complaining about how rough it was and how he wished that they had of stayed home instead of going fishing.   And his father told him, “you wouldn’t want…

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that it seemed that whenever Dad and I were chatting that our conversations often drifted to storms that we had been in together when we were at sea.  And the reason, of course, is that the storms are more memorable than the nice days at sea, not necessarily…

It started out kind of petty and ended up being kind of funny. It was 1978 and I was fishing with my Dad out of the Gaspe Coast of Quebec. The boat hadn’t been converted to a seiner yet so we were still configured as a midwater trawler. Dad was chief mate; his twin was…

It seemed that whenever Dad and I swapped stories about the time we spent together at sea we always wound up talking about storms.   We’d talk about how rough it got, how long it lasted, how sick Denn was.   I began making trips with Dad on the tugs when I was fourteen, when…

He had it all, at least on the surface.  A good business, a fine family, status in the community.  He had everything it would appear, but not quite enough.  Some men craved after gold or silver or jewels, not this man.  Those things were all so cold and inanimate, forged and moulded deep inside an…

For seven of the eight parables that Jesus began with the line “The Kingdom of Heaven, or the Kingdom of God is like. . .”  he used everyday events that were happening around those he was teaching, outside, but in one instance he took them out of the fields and vineyards, away from the sea…

If I could grow flowers like I grow weeds we would have the most awesome gardens in Kingswood. I’ve kind of given up on weed control.   I’m through, I quit, I’ve thrown in the towel, they’ve won. Ever since the municipality and then the province banned chemical weed control it’s been a losing battle.  I’ve…

It was the end of August in 1979. I was a 19-year-old fisherman on the herring seiner Rali 2 out of Paspébiac, Quebec. Don’t ask why a crew from Saint John and Grand Manan were crewing a seiner from Quebec, it’s a long story. We had spent the summer in the Bay of Fundy and…

It is a serendipitous story, which is a story about serendipity. Serendipity, isn’t that a great word?  It is probably one of my favourite words. In 2004 it was included in a list of the ten hardest English words to translate. You know what serendipity means right?  Serendipity means an unplanned fortuitous discovery.  And if…

It was his custom to start his day with prayer and Scripture reading. And that morning was no exception; he felt that before he attended to the business of his country that first, he must attend to the business of his soul.  And as he read from God’s word his heart and eyes were drawn…