Columns

This coming weekend will see a few folks all across Ontario trek from home to a polling station to cast a ballot in the Ontario Liberal Party’s leadership contest. The party is using ranked ballots for the first time, allowing participants to rank their candidates one through four and has moved away

The police tape strung up around the Sault Ste. Marie home the week before Halloween did not look out of place.

If you have been reading my columns regularly in the Wingham Advance Times or my blog, you must be impressed by the attention that I get.

As the old saying goes, ‘You’ve gotta love the sound of metal in the morning.’ Never heard that one? Well, it’s probably because I made it up just this instant.

Her demeanor sank when she told me she had started anxiety meds. She looked at the floor and her shoulders slouched down as if she had somehow failed; like success would have been to avoid them, or not need them, and failure was to have to take them.

There are more small businesses in Canada closing up shop than there are people starting a new business.

When I was a youngster in elementary school, there was no worse feeling than opening your lunch pail and finding something you didn’t want to eat.

The cowbell. Traditionally, this bell is worn around the neck of free-roaming livestock so herders can keep track of any animal via the sound of the bell.

Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood was a program I looked forward to every day in my childhood.  It was a short moment of time when I wasn’t nervous or worried about anything.  I felt as though Mister Rogers was talking to me, his friend.  My heart would fill with excitement to see neighbours drop by for

Earlier this year, one of the co-founders of Home Depot – the world’s largest home improvement retailer – publicly stated that if he were to start his company all over again in today’s stifling business environment, he doubts whether it could have ever grown any bigger than around 15 stores versus t

A couple years ago I read a profile of a Palestinian farmer published by Reuters. The farmer had just lost his harvest after members of the Israel Defense Force refused him access to his cropland. I have found myself thinking about that farmer a lot over the past couple weeks… were he or his childre

A post-Halloween bomb threat was sent to a number of Ontario schools, most of them in northern parts of the province around Timmins but some in Toronto, Cornwall and Ottawa, and one in Burlington.

In 2015, I moved from the suburbs into the peace and quiet of the rurals in a primarily senior community (called The Bridges of Seaforth). The community features 73 (so far) homes besides the town of Seaforth in southwestern Ontario. Seaforth is a typical small Ontario town of 3,000-plus people.

I have a favourite story that I often use as a sermon illustration.