. . . is Morse code for the letter S, the content of the transatlantic transmission received at Signal Hill in 1901.
“A bore is a fellow who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.”
— Henry Ford
Henry Ford’s well-known observation has a decent pun in it, as well as a sharp insight into human nature: people get very tired, very quickly, when someone drones on about their accomplishments, or can’t help but boast on every occasion.
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My mobile phone rang, and my mom’s name was on the screen. It was almost a couple of hours after she went to bed, so I quickly prepared myself for whatever prompted her to call.
“Kevin? This is Sheila,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I forgot to come to the airport to pick you up.”
I had a split second to react.
In that moment, I became Kevin — that is, her beloved older brother, who died in the winter of 2025, and who lived most of his years in Massachusetts.
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One of the peculiarities of journalism is hewing to a phrase that is the right usage, yet does not appear to be grammatically correct.
An example is the Tim Hortons coffee chain, and another is the Sobeys supermarket chain. What’s missing in each case is some punctuation. The former is named after Tim Horton (and there was only one of him), while the latter is from a family name that is Sobey, not Sobeys.
All this to say … there probably ought to be an apostrophe before or even after the S, but there isn’t. Once in a while, we would get well-meaning audience requests to make a correction.
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I love libraries. I wish the libraries in St. John’s were like cathedrals, that there were more of them, that they were better located and that they had better resources for public use and service.
A boy can dream.
I love going to the library too, especially when I’m not in a hurry and have some time to let both my feet and my mind wander. That’s when discovery happens … finding something you didn’t know you wanted to read, and perhaps something that you need to read.
As much I enjoy the physical space of a library, most of the books I borrow now are virtual, or rather taken out electronically.
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“I began to understand that self-esteem isn’t everything; it’s just that there’s nothing without it.”
— Gloria Steinem
Self-esteem has been on my mind a bit lately, for a variety of reasons. One thing that has become clear is that the sense we have of ourselves is quite malleable — and it can be hurt, often dramatically, by what others say and do. Another thing: self-esteem can be remade, and the accent there should be on the self.
Gloria Steinem wrote the above words in her 1992 book Revolution from Within, whose subtitle — A Book of Self-Esteem — sets the table for what she would explore.
While focusing on self-esteem may feel like centering the individual experience (and moving into self-help areas), Steinem was also interested in political change. It makes sense: for women or other groups on the margins to gain power, it starts with recognizing and celebrating self-esteem.
Last Saturday, I went to see Mumford and Sons in Toronto. It was a great show (some notes follow below), and I also learned that there is a big difference between Rogers Centre and Rogers Stadium.
If you’re like me, you may not have known that Toronto, yep, has such a thing as Rogers Stadium. It is very much not (despite what a quick Google Maps search told me) Rogers Centre, a.k.a. the old SkyDome.
I bought the tickets weeks ago, and evidently did not notice the difference. So, when I walked down to the stadium early Saturday evening, I was struck by how … quiet everything was. Like, the place was nearly empty. And, as I found out, Mumford and Sons were not playing there at all.
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Wendi Smallwood died earlier this week after a long and (let’s be frank) brutal battle with cancer. She fought it with vigour, stamping on it, and often with humour. Her Facebook posts found the joy of life, even when it was under siege.
In the days since, my social media feed has been filled with anecdotes and tributes to a powerful, talented actor, and a creative soul who made an impact off the stage, too. We knew it was coming. Earlier this month, Wendi was too sick to attend her 64th birthday party at the Ship in downtown St. John’s, so the crowd called her on the phone and wished her a happy birthday. It was also a goodbye.
I have a lot of memories of Wendi through the years, and they often involve joy. Here’s one of them.
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On my most recent appearance on a trivia episode of CBC Radio’s The Signal with Adam Walsh, I called back to a show that had a particularly cheesy quality.
The actor Lionel Sander, playing Max, laid it on thick for the intro of Hart to Hart, which featured a catchphrase that has lasted well into the 21st century: “Because when they met, it was murder!”
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There are many songs that came out of the British invasion, but there’s one — a veritable anthem to this day for football fans in the United Kingdom — that often comes to mind when I think about Alzheimer’s disease.
Gerry and the Pacemakers released a cover of the Broadway tune You’ll Never Walk Alone in the fall of 1963, just as Merseybeat was cresting in England, and shortly before Beatlemania swept the U.S.
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“I was a voracious reader, but you would be mistaken if you took that as evidence of my quality.”
— Mordecai Richler
The phrase “voracious reader” can be a loaded one, often without meaning to be. It’s a phrase I’ve read many times in obituaries (a quality to describe how the deceased loved their books), and it’s probably a way I’ve described myself. “Avid reader” is more suitable, but I’ll cop to the V-word, too.
The quote above comes from Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler’s final novel, Barney’s Version, which focuses on an aging, cantankerous Montreal man (sound familiar?) who is turning his attention to his memoirs — even though his memory is failing him.
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“I guess I don’t subscribe to the twee school. I remember trying to lose our copy of Thomas the Tank Engine before I had to read it again. Life is a more dimensional and interesting affair than vestigially Victorian notions of childhood. I was trying to make something substantial, something to be read and reread.”
— Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman’s diss of the Thomas the Tank Engine books appeared in a fairly short New York magazine piece published in 2008.
I get it, although I should note that both Thomas volumes and Spiegelman’s work, especially Maus and its siblings, were books that our kid Nick read, obviously at different points of their childhood. I can’t actually see a straight line there, all these years later, but Nick’s curiosity took them around a lot of shelves in libraries and bookstores.
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What kind of person was David Feder? I learned a story this morning, when I was watching the recording of his funeral, which was held Tuesday in St. John’s.
When he was recovering from one of his hip surgeries, he used to walk from his home on Forest Road to the Dominion store by Quidi Vidi Lake — not to shop, but to push a cart around as part of his recovery, like a kind of walker.
The priest said he would do this up to three times a day, and he came to know the staff — who surely had noticed a man pacing the aisles with a cart. Not surprisingly, Dave became friends with them.
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“Where we have strong emotions, we’re liable to fool ourselves.”
— Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan uttered these words in the groundbreaking TV series Cosmos, which aired on PBS in the fall of 1980. Sagan’s documentaries, and the accompanying bestselling book, had the unusual effect of turning a scientist into a celebrity.
It’s important to note the popular impact of Sagan’s work. While the series was airing, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, itself a marker of the zeitgeist, a pinnacle no doubt for a person’s career or of something commanding public attention.
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Here’s a story about a gift that left me speechless. Well, for a good few moments.
Years ago, I had a wonderful scarf — until I no longer did.
It was long, warm, striped and rich in chromatic colours, and I wore it everywhere. It was warm and great in cold, windy weather … ideal, then for eastern Newfoundland and its skin-stripping winds. I also liked that there was at least one colour in the scarf that went with pretty much anything I could wear.
Somewhere along the line, though, I lost it. I think it slipped out of the arm of a coat after I hung it up. Who knows.
Martha had found the original in England; I spent some time searching retail websites for another. Eventually, I parked the notion and moved on.
Fast-forward to last Christmas.
Nick, our child, and their partner Mary presented me with a handmade scarf, which emulates the lost treasure. It’s the one on the right.
Mary crocheted it, one colour at a time. Nick had combed through their family photos, looking for glimpses of me wearing it, trying to figure out not just the precise shades but the sequence.
I was both impressed and grateful. It’s tucked away now at the top of our front closet, and goodness knows, it won’t be long before I pluck it out again.
Thanks, Nicole and Mary: you are the very, very best.
It might seem unusual, but I’ve been leaning into the main rule of improvisational comedy as a way of helping my mom, especially in moments when her Alzheimer’s disease is posing a challenge.
A few things to explain. Even though I haven’t done much improv myself, I love the field and have read a lot about it. (In fact, I’m in the midst of another book, Sam Wasson’s Improv Nation, which is about the roots of a comedy form that has influenced entertainment around the world.)
The principle of improv comes down to two words: Yes, and…
They’re both important.
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