On Wednesday of last week, I gathered with my Newell cousins as they buried their mother. Sheila was a strong woman who raised five children in the Jane and Finch area of Toronto – four of them boys who did not need to look for trouble – it found them! We buried their mom alongside their dad who died when the oldest, Van, was only 10 years old. So much change and growth over the course of sixty years! On Thursday evening Jennifer flew into Toronto, to join me in return to my past where I got...

Like many of you, over the weekend I enjoyed preparing and sharing a meal with extended family – hours of work peeling vegetables, cleaning the house, and cooking a turkey! And then, in a short hour or so, the meal is complete and the dishes are stacked (if you are lucky) waiting to be put in the dishwasher! But most everyone will agree, the work is worth it – and it’s not necessarily the food that makes it worth it – but the time together, the stories told, the memories recalled and the new...

In seeking to make sense of all that transpired on Sunday I went looking for poetry and, in my searching, came across this poem: Vote, by...