Editorialog

Sad…Another friend has passed away. This time after a battle with cancer. While he was older than I, he never seemed older – wiser, definitely but not older. Even his picture alongside his obituary looks the same as when I first met him fifty [50] years ago. Maurice McCaig was a titan in the trucking […]

And now to the concluding moments of this road trip, the tour of Ontario. This was facilitated somewhat by members of the clan deciding to hold a Shand Re-union in August this year. This is the family connection on my Grandmother Sinclair’s UEL side of the family. More reflection on this event may come at […]

During the early/mid 1980’s I did a good deal of work in the province of Saskatchewan, primarily among Aboriginal peoples and their educational issues, but often on the weekends I would help out various congregations who were without regular ministers by providing interim supply. Even though I had long since left the career path to […]

I lost a sister-in-law recently. Actually we have been losing her for quite a while as she was suffering from a very debilitating dementia: corticobasal degeneration! Paulette was an artistic person – an artist of many dimensions. She was an inventive painter (I have a couple of her amazing works, as do my children). She […]

My third [3rd] student mission field appointment (Summer, 1964) was to Calgary AB, to help in church extension while looking after a small semi-rural congregation on the edge of the city. The church building (Valleyview Presbyterian) was old, but the congregation was a mix of farmers, acreage owners and a few newly housed commuters. It […]

So what exactly is an old pulpit revisiting trip road tour?! Over the years I have dropped by former pulpits either because I was in the area, I had heard the church had died or I was just curious. This year was different – perhaps because of my age, maybe because of my sense that […]

There may be more parts to this Chapter as it is all about the old pulpit revisiting road tour! It’s hard to fully quantify just how many pulpits I’ve preached in over my lifetime, especially since I’m just an ordained ruling elder but inactive (and have been for over forty years). In terms of my […]

{A time of reflection and perhaps contemplation} The Sagittarian leader is fair & fun, yet you are not the traditional candidate for the job. Sagittarius is more a teacher and motivational figurehead than a hands-on manager. You shoot off your mouth constantly, and you tend to preach to your people. But your dissertations are so […]

I learned earlier this week that one of my dear cousins suddenly passed away. Although her elder brother and I have kept in touch in a variety of ways and through a wide diversity of settings since our childhood, Jennifer was not as well known to me in large part because she was much younger, […]

The times need to be a changin’ {to paraphrase Bob Dylan} Perhaps it’s now time: So there aren’t all those piles of buried Aboriginal kids after all. In fact, most of the dead children are properly buried, but often in unkempt graveyards. And the media frenzy was more: a work of woke, inadequately trained pseudo-journalists […]