Gratitude makes the journey better and so does kindness

Month: November 2018

Weekly Column: Let’s Never Get Tired Of Making People’s Lives Better

Originally published as a column on CFJC Today Kamloops and Armchair Mayor News on November 26, 2018. 

It’s 4am on Saturday. I wake up thirsty and amble my way into the kitchen, fill a glass with water and drink it to the last drop. I return to bed and snuggle back under the covers. Warm and comfortable, I fall back asleep.

The first thought that surfaces on that bright and sunny morning goes straight to the boy at the heart of one of the saddest community tragedies that took place in Kamloops, as someone recently called it on the fundraiser page. Jessie Simpson, whom I mentioned in a recent column, questioning whether the justice system betrayed his cause (I think it did.)

Weekly Column: What’s The Best Way To Deal With Lack Of Empathy?

Originally published as a column on CFJC Today Kamloops and Armchair Mayor News on Monday, November 19, 2018. 

Every now and then certain news makes me go silent. ‘How is that possible?’ is all I can think. Such was the case of the recent break-ins (yes plural, since it happened in two consecutive nights) at the Merritt compound of the Nicola Valley Search and Rescue. In one word: heinous. The organization, like the rest of them across B.C., is run by volunteers. An admirable group of people to say the least. You’d think even a thief (or however many) would just believe enough in bad karma and skip the ‘job’.

Weekly Column: Remembrance Day Files – It Feels Like Family

‘In Flanders fields, the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place, and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below…’

It is impossible to describe the deep reverence the reading of Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae’s famous poem conferred to the sea of people gathered around the cenotaph on Remembrance Day. It is one of those situations that can be summed up by an overused but adequate phrase: ‘you had to be there.’ The words of the poem are haunting, and the images they conjure stay alive in the hearts and minds of us all. Every single time.

Weekly Column: Let’s Always Remember

Originally published as a column on CFJC Today Kamloops and Armchair Mayor News on November 5, 2018. 

My grandfather was a WWII veteran. He died when I was nine, and so did the stories that he might have been inclined to share. I have old photos of him in uniform, and I know a few of the jolly stories – including how he courted my grandmother – family folklore that made us kids giggle. But I do not know the anguish, the pain, the horror he experienced as a WWII soldier.

Hence the silence that was draped all over my thoughts when, as a kid, I was passing by the cemetery. There were many rows of graves of WWI and WWII soldiers; the tombstones that said ‘unknown soldier’ were far more numerous than the ones with a name. Back then, as a child, I shuddered thinking what it must be like to lose my mom or dad that way.

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