MEANINGMAKER

MeaningMaker

  • silent witness

    The house we live in is over 90 years old. Sometime in the early 1930s, as a shaken city emerged from the Depression and the earliest electric streetcars were still rolling up and down King Street a block away, she… Continue reading

  • hope in these times

    I wasn’t expecting to be watching the internal disintegration of America play out before my eyes like the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale. Until these last few years – and really, these last few months – I hadn’t given… Continue reading

  • creative writing class

    If we taught the five love languages in school like we teach French or German. If we learned in Kindergarten that the true measure of a life well-lived isn’t in our grand accomplishments, but in the small courageous acts of… Continue reading

  • awake on the train

    I left the train this morning one stop before City Hall, where I would usually get off —something I do on the mornings when I want a short walk to clear my head before work. I’m usually a stander on… Continue reading

  • canadian son

    We were unloading the car after a weekend away on a cold Sunday afternoon in February 2023 when a young man came walking up our driveway. He said he’d noticed our neighbour’s year-round Pride flag and thought this neighbourhood might… Continue reading

  • the secret to a good life

    In the last week of my life, I hope that my front door sees a steady parade of people who love me and, knowing that I don’t have much time left, they show up bearing cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets and… Continue reading

  • mother’s day

    Back when I was a kid, I looked at the world like a still life painting. Pretty and static and sort of hopelessly boring.  Nothing much ever happened in our town. But when something did happen — a car accident,… Continue reading

  • planting flowers

    As I rode a packed LRT train to work yesterday, standing in my regular spot near the doors, I watched people get off and on for the three stops it takes to get there. I watched the morning world going… Continue reading

  • the gift

    Thirteen years ago, on March 28, I left my City Hall job for my first day at a large, international corporation, working in Communications. Every day that first week,  I worried that I wouldn’t find my way back to my… Continue reading

  • in another life

    She stared out at me from her antique frame on the shelf in the eclectic little store that we drive out of our way to far too often. We mostly go there to buy the handmade incense they stock. Today… Continue reading