“Canada does not and will not pay ransom to terrorist, directly or indirectly.”  Those were the words of Prime Minister Trudeau after Canadian John Ridsdel was murdered in the Philippines this week.  Ridsdel was kidnapped in September and the Islamic terrorist group Abu Sayyaf demanded a ransom for his safe release, a ransom the Canadian…

This month we’ve been talking about Legacy, what we leave behind, in memories and money.  Vladimir Lenin has left behind a legacy that he probably wasn’t intending to; an ongoing bill. Ever since his death in 1924, Lenin’s body has been on display in Moscow.  It was recently revealed that the annual cost to keep…

Last month we laid to rest one of Canada’s best loved and most respected politicians, or at least that is how it would appear.  It was a little confusing.  If you had been asleep for the past 18 months, or perhaps a visitor from Mars, then the outpouring of praise at Rob Ford’s funeral might not…

--> Litter bugs me!  I just can’t get my head around it.  What possesses people to just throw their trash on the ground?  This time of year seems to be the worst and Tim’s cups seem to be the greatest offenders. But that might just be my perception, after all, their spring cups are red…

I have often thought the concept of Easter Monday was kind of strange.  You just know it had to be a blatant quest for a four-day weekend. That someone, somewhere, had a eureka moment and decided that the Monday following Easter Sunday was obviously Easter Monday and as such deserved to be a holiday.  And…

As difficult as it might seem to believe, I was having a coffee at Tim Horton’s the other day and I heard a staff member comment on how pleased the staff was that the roll up the rim contest was finished for yet another year. Curious, I asked why that was?  She replied, explaining that…

It was good to see old friends again, if only for a couple of hours.  This week Angela and I finally got around to seeing Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  And we enjoyed the familiar faces, although through the years the characters kept getting mixed up. Sometimes I thought I saw Indiana Jones instead of…

We are home from our vacation. We had a great time and everything went smoothly right up to our flight home.  Plane left on time, flight crew was great, we arrived on time and then we attempted to land in Halifax.  We experienced some of the worst turbulence that I have ever been in and…

One night our phone rang at 4:45, in the morning! You know that if you get a telephone call at that hour it can't be good news. Nobody calls you at quarter to five in the morning just to say hello or to tell you that you’ve won the lottery, in which case it would…

You can find pictures of it everywhere, I have two in my office, but that’s to be expected, my Grandfather was born there over a hundred years ago.  And I while I have seen it from a distance I never actually got over for a visit, and now it’s too late.  It was a little…