Category: Memoir
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20. Celebrating Mixed Marriage
Within a week of marrying in late December 1984, my Zimbabwean wife, T., and I arrived at Heathrow Airport enroute to Canada. The female immigration officer who checked our passports had reddish grey hair and a severe expression. She resembled Maggie Thatcher. “And what is your relationship?” She glanced stonily between faces and photos. “Husband…
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11. Acknowledging a Shared Humanity
A recent CNN interview did not pry any answers from the architect of Trump’s draconian deportation plan–– but it did reveal his character. Throughout the interview, Stephen Miller dodged questions, talked over the host and smirked. In response to Jake Tapper’s repeated queries about the impact of mass deportation on US agriculture––Miller claimed that the…
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4. Of the Ghost of Franklin de Soiree
Ghosts sometimes perch at my shoulder as I take notes for my journals. However disquieting their whispers–– they are never to be ignored. Notable among such ghosts are those of a few characters briefly encountered nearly half a century ago: In 1975, I worked on a social service project in the Vancouver Fairview neighbourhood. Our…
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2. Celestial Wonders Missed
‘Did you see the northern lights last night?’ My elder daughter asked in her text message from Toronto on the morning of May 11th. ‘I’ve seen tons of photos from my friends who just literally stepped into their backyards or onto their balconies and saw them clearly.’ It wasn’t that I hadn’t heard the prediction.…
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X. A Few Tributes (con’d)
In subsequent letters, I tried not to be judgmental about the misadventures Satsuki reported. I offered sympathy and advice without specific promises of help. Usually, I wrote her on the same nights I penned a batch of other letters to friends and acquaintances. On some of those nights, I was admittedly maudlin from a few…
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X. A Few Tributes (intro.)
Introduction: It would be a better world in which final farewells could be bitter-sweetly ceremonial as in the Scots-Irish ballad, ‘The Parting Glass’: But since it fell into my lotThat I should rise and you should notI’ll gently rise and softly callGood night and joy be to you all But they very seldom are. As one…
Coprolites in Amber (etc.) 