A special gift
I was nine pounds when I was born and from what I’ve heard, that’s no small child. Pictures show me with what appears to be a full head of hair and possibly glasses. But after a 17-hour labour, some impending nerve damage – and hopefully 22 years of awesomeness – my mom has forgiven me. [...]
We thought it was just a rumour. Really? Alcohol banned in Harrington Hall, the party house of St. Thomas University? Someone heard it from someone else who told us Larry Batt said the ban would start at midnight that night. We had to find out if this was true because, after all, you don’t report [...]
Continue reading …I was probably 10 when I witnessed my first sex scene. I was home alone and had turned on HBO – Sex and the City was on repeat that day. I was never allowed to watch the show, but I didn’t understand why. Okay, so the title has “sex” in it – big deal. What’s [...]
Continue reading …She told me it wasn’t safe for people to know she was depressed. A friend of hers had called people with mental illnesses “those people,” so she had proof that young adults still held on to a century-old stigma. I knew her name, but she wasn’t sure she wanted everyone else to know it simply [...]
Continue reading …“So, how can we piss people off this week, editors?” “Another Harrington story?” “No, that’s too easy a target. Besides, our reporters don’t like going in there. They’ve complained about slipping on all the blood in the halls.” I look across the story meeting table at an editor who’s sweating like a pig in a [...]
Continue reading …When I was a resident in Harrington Hall, every Friday night I’d pour myself a rum and coke, a bowl of chips and wail away on my electric guitar. Believe it or not, my wing rep deemed me “most likely to form a garage band in her dorm room,” cranking the lead riffs to songs [...]
Continue reading …Let me take you back, way back, to a simpler time, a time of MSN Messenger. For most of us, MSN was a place to talk to friends after school without tying up the phone line. It was one of the first popular ways to have a conversation with someone without the pressure of responding [...]
Continue reading …My closet at my home in Nova Scotia is still full of my old Barbies, Polly Pockets and Beanie Babies. About six years ago, I crammed myself into that closet, closed the door and tried to close out the world. My dad had just told me he was moving in with his girlfriend. There was something [...]
Continue reading …When I came back home after living in Pasumalai, Tamil Nadu, India for a month, I experienced what some would call reverse culture shock: Canada was more unfamiliar than India had ever been. And for the longest time I had no idea how to show people what I meant. I had planned the trip a year [...]
Continue reading …We all saw it. The low swoop of the plane and then it was gone. We saw the explosive flame engulf the cloud of smoke, the ash raining down on people even five blocks away. We saw the close-ups of those on the ground running for cover, the tears pouring down the corners of their eyes, [...]
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One of the brilliant features of this job is the learning opportunities it creates. Because it creates situations I’ve never faced , I don’t always have the answers – but the exercise isn’t about getting it right the first time, every time, anyway. It’s about learning from imperfection. This is how I’ve always thought of [...]
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It’s too early to be thinking about Christmas, let alone writing about it. This coming from the girl who gets excited when Christmas lights start appearing in windows, who spends hours baking peppermint flavoured goodies in December and who honestly doesn’t mind having to bundle up to go outside in the snow. There’s something nice [...]
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