Know what shocked me the most about my trip home last Christmas? It wasn’t the snow or the miserable cold, or the strange local accent I thought I’d forgotten. It was the fact that my friends kids sit inside all day and play video games or watch TV. All of their activities are organized for them. And they frequently complain of being bored. I don’t think it’s any fault of theirs, necessarily...
Everyone knows the pyramids of Egypt. But few seem aware that there are even more pyramids farther up the Nile in Sudan. Unlike the more familiar Egyptian style pyramids, those found in Sudan are tall, narrow structures with steeper sides and a smaller base. Most have a rectangular room attached to one side which acts as an offering temple for the deceased whose body is entombed beneath the giant...
It’s been a few weeks since I posted a new blog. And while there’s no excuse for leaving you hanging, I can honestly say there wasn’t an internet connection for at least 800km… I’ve been in the Sahara for most of the past month, on an expedition to one of the least inhabited regions of the desert. Our target was Jebel Uweinat, an isolated mountain range that sits right on the border of...
I visited the public library in my hometown over the Christmas holidays. I hadn’t been back in about 15 years. The children’s section was just as I remembered it. But the rest had changed dramatically. The building finally got a much needed renovation and expansion, and the adult section I browsed in for so many years has been transformed into offices and a comfortable, quiet reading area. The...
My proudest high school moment wasn’t an academic or sporting achievement. I failed several classes and I was never part of a team. No, my proudest achievement was a food fight. The biggest food fight in the history of my school. I wonder how many of my friends knew that me and Jim started the whole thing? There were a lot of small skirmishes leading up to it, of course. Low level food fights...
I was in Belgium recently for a bit of an escape. That’s the thing about living on a small island. You’ve gotta get away on a regular basis or the walls start to feel like they’re closing in. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy living here. The weather’s perfect, and things are easy. But an island is always a self-contained world. An extreme micro-universe. It’s necessary to get out of that setting every...
It still feels like summer on my island—30C and sunny every day, with no sign of letting up. But it’s autumn back in North America. My favourite time of year. Fall is nostalgia distilled into the tangible caress of cool air tinted with the smell of decaying leaves. The comforting pressure of jeans against your skin. A light jacket with many pockets. And a slice of delicately spiced pumpkin pie...
If you’re on my email list, you know I was planning to spend part of October trekking a remote plateau in Algeria. Well, Algeria’s one of those countries most people need a visa to enter. I’ve heard getting one in person requires a healthy dose of table pounding and beady eyed stares. Getting one from a distance is an even more impressive comedy of errors. It goes a little something like...
The tiny island of Lampedusa is an Italian territory lost in the middle of the Mediterranean, just 113 short kilometers from Tunisia. It’s the main island in the Pelagic group and is governmentally attached to Sicily—though the island’s 4,500 residents will tell you they see themselves as Lampedusan first and feel little to no affinity for the rest. I have a longstanding fascination with the...
Andorra is a very strange place. It’s the 6th smallest country in Europe, hidden away in the Pyrenees between France and Spain. It’s a Principality formed in 1278—but the role of monarch falls to two joint “princes”: the Catalan Bishop of Urgell and the President of France. Its people have the 4th highest life expectancy in the world, kicking off on average at the ripe old age of 82. It’s the...