In an era of neanderthal bullies, social media news experts and anything that does not support my opinion is fake news, the reinforcement of ethics is paramount. One particular sentence in a Smiths Falls Record News editorial, referring to expunging the record once a sentence was served, resonated with me: “It would be irresponsible to …
Politics before People If I may paraphrase Casius in his coercion of Brutus in the time of Caesar, “ the fault, dear citizens, lies not with the government, but with ourselves for we elect them”. Oh the cheers and jubilation, the wailing and handwringing, and the apathy that is being displayed at …
A Confucius quote begins, “If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant…”. This could never be more true than the language contained in Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott’s press conference introducing the new Ontario health-care system. There are many examples of government-speak in the announcement and I will not …
September 28, 2018 10:03 AM EDT Nathan Denette / THE CANADIAN PRESS TORONTO — Ryan Halladay was 39 when he began noticing blood in his stool. Doctors he visited over the next few months weren’t too concerned, dismissing the bleeding as likely being caused by hemorrhoids. A trip to the ER for pain caused by …
March 7, 2018 Wouldn’t it be nice if “our story” was just one about our marriage, our children, our life together and our family .. but “our story” also involves cancer. Colorectal cancer that my husband has been fighting for 3 years. Ryan was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer in March 2015. He was …
How often have you quickly formed an opinion of someone you just met? You probably were totally blown away by them, you really didn’t like them, or you were simply ambivalent and quite frankly couldn’t care less. All reasonable and understandable reactions and feelings I am confident in saying that we have all experienced. Have …
A few years ago, in an executive boardroom consultation, I innocently began by asking the Director, “Who’s the problem?” The person in question came alive as never before. It was as though I had hit a real nerve. I could almost see the veils of his protective self just melt away, and instead of that …
They buried Jason Thompson up on the hill behind Barrow Creek, where they had started the new cemetery. Cemeteries should be on hills, and this was the only hill short of a mountain in the immediate area. A few days after the funeral, Rose Thompson was receiving callers. A month after burying Jason, she married …
I don’t hate Bill Gates. I really have no reason to do so because I’ve never met the man and I use his products daily – as do most of us. I hear people complaining that Microsoft products are ‘crap’, yet they seem to work and no other company has successfully marketed a better product …
A parent brings a bouquet of roses to a child playing the part of a bush in the winter pageant. A father buys his son a drum set as a reward for eating carrots. And the classic, in my view, the parent who demanded a retake of the school photo because her child was in …