The end of the backyard ice rink?

This is not a story about hockey. Hockey is a game and this goes deeper than that. Strip hockey of its teams, its salaries, its sticks, its pucks, its rules and its regulations. Take all of that away and you are left with what makes hockey possible in the first place. This is a story about ice.

Ice is a part of our collective Canadian consciousness. When I think about the winters of my childhood, I think about the hours spent skating on the tiny ice rink my dad built in our backyard. It was a simple bit of engineering with magical results.

My dad would wait until mid-December for temperatures to drop. After enough snow had fallen, he would clear an area of the backyard and use the snow to make banks around the rink. He repeatedly sprinkled water on the sides of the banks and on the edge of the grass in order to seal the area around the edges so that the water wouldn't leak out. After it had been cold enough for the ground to freeze, he used a hose to build up a base of ice.

Once we had a couple of inches of ice, he would "Zamboni" it by filling a large pail with warm water and flooding the rink. The warm water melted the surface and filled in all of the cuts from earlier skating. It probably took a week or two, depending on the weather, to create a good surface. Of course, thaws and rain would melt the rink but my dad would rebuild it as soon as it got cold again.

I couldn't get enough of that backyard rink. I would skate every day after school and go back out again after dinner. The sound the edge of the blade makes when it scrapes across the ice is etched into my bones.

The backyard ice rink is part of our narrative. But for how much longer? Will future generations of Canadian children be able to skate on homemade outdoor rinks or will it be a story we tell them about the way things used to be?

Climate change is transforming the world as we know it. This is not an exaggeration; this is a fact. Research shows that Canada's average winter temperature has increased 2.5 degrees Celsius in the past 70 years. According to Environment Canada, last year was the third-warmest winter in Canadian history.

Scientists in Montreal were the first to connect the dots between climate change and a shorter outdoor skating season. They looked at data from weather stations across Canada during the last 50 years and extrapolated that "at current rates, within four decades there will be very little to no outdoor natural skating in Canada with the exception of Winnipeg."

This prompted a group of geographers at Wilfrid Laurier University to create RinkWatch, a website where users can enter information about their rink's skate-ability and where researchers can track climate change. Associate professor Robert McLeman is hoping this will help people better understand large-scale environmental issues by placing them in their own backyard.

As he told the Ottawa Citizen, "When you talk about climate change and global warming, it's one of those big-picture ideas that people have trouble relating to on a personal or individual basis, so we thought, let's get kids and families to collect data about outdoor skating and use that as a bridge to pull them into citizen-engaged science."

It's great to see scientists who understand the importance of getting the public involved in their work. They're not just working to address climate change, they're working to make it matter to all of us. It's about making us less complacent by making us care.

Home sweet home

I went home for the first time in more than three years. I had expected it to feel weird to be back on Canadian soil after so much time away. But everything was pretty much the same as it always was.

Still, I saw some of the same old things with fresh new eyes. Take the word "awesome," for example. A few days before I left for Toronto, a German friend asked me about the word "awesome." He wanted to know: a) what it means; b) why it's used so often in place of more descriptive and/or accurate adjectives; and c) why it's considered an appropriate response to the question, "How are you?" (I had similar conversations with a Russian friend who confessed she found the word unbearably annoying and an Albanian colleague who was shocked to receive "Awesome!" as a one-word reply to a work-related email. For the record, the email was not from me.)

I explained that awesome was just a generic word to describe varying shades of good without expressing any real degree of the goodness of the thing being described. And that the point of using the word "awesome" as a response to the question "How are you?" is to demonstrate enthusiasm and extroversion, which are prized personality traits in North America. But I also said that Americans were the true users and abusers of the word and that Canadians didn't really say it that often.

And then I went to Toronto and was proven wrong.

I don't know if my ears were attuned to the word because of all of the recent conversations about it or if people in Toronto had always used the word and I simply hadn't noticed. But as soon as I arrived at Pearson International Airport, I started to hear the word everywhere I went. I heard it on the subway. I heard it on TV. I heard it at the coffee shop. I heard it at the hair salon (the girl cutting my hair said awesome six times in one hour. I counted). I even heard it in a commercial for salad dressing ("eat awesome" was its ambiguous tagline).

The other hint that I had been away from home far too long came during an afternoon at the Canadian National Exhibition. I decided to gamble $5 at the "Guess your age" booth. The carnie sized me up. He asked me to smile, he looked deep into my eyes, he looked at my hands, he asked me what my favourite food was (Japanese) and to name my favourite movie (don't have one). He pretended to think about it for a bit and then he pronounced me 55.

Clearly, he was just giving the stuffed animals away but I was annoyed that he didn't even try to guess. What's the fun in that? So I asked him how old he really thought I was and he replied, "Um . . . 43?" I was no longer annoyed, now I was angry. (I didn't know it at the time but I would be vindicated a few days later when I stumbled across an article about the guy in the Toronto Star. He seems to consistently guess too high and is thrown off his game by tall people.)

He said it was tough to guess my age because I was tall (it's unclear why a professional age guesser would make a correlation between height and age for anyone older than 18) and because he mistook my sister for my daughter.

I used to baby-sit my two youngest sisters when I was in high school. My favourite baby-sitting game was called, "Let's pretend I'm a teenage mother and you're my children." I'd take my sisters to the mall and make them call me "mom." It used to amuse me when people thought my sisters were my daughters. Now it depresses me. So I guess that's a pretty major change.

What else did I see with fresh eyes? Well, public transit in Toronto seemed embarrassingly bad after living in Japan for three-and-a-half years. It's not convenient, it's not reliable and it never really gets you where you need to go quickly enough. Toronto is decades behind other big cities when it comes to public transit. Also, Toronto's subway system seems to attract more "interesting" passengers than other cities, such as the woman who sat beside me who smelled like she hadn't bathed in three months or the guy who sat directly behind me, clipping his fingernails the entire time.

It goes without saying that the best part of returning home was reconnecting with family and friends (although in the age of Skype and email it's difficult to lose touch).

But it was just as nice to be in an English-speaking environment. I could read menus and chat with the checkout girl and read the community listings and eavesdrop on conversations and catch up on Canadian news and read the ingredients on the cereal box and order a pizza and ask for directions. In Canada, I'm no longer an outsider living on the fringes of a world I am part of but don't really belong to. In Japan and Germany, there were days I felt completely isolated and alone. I don't feel that way in Toronto. I feel like I belong.

Growing up, there were things about Toronto I hated. I thought it was too big, too urban, too flat, too ugly. It still is all of those things but I've come to appreciate it in a way I never did before. The city hasn't changed but my perception of it has.

It's an awesome place to call home.

A very Canadian summer

When I was back home for a visit a few weeks ago, a friend asked me what I missed most about Canada when I was in Japan. We were driving through the streets of Toronto at the time and it hit me that what I missed most about Canada was right there in front of me.

"I miss this," I said, as we drove through city blocks lined with tiny restaurants serving cheap food from around the world. Indian, Thai, Greek, Jamaican, Korean, Ethiopian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Lebanese. Ten different countries in two city blocks.

I miss being able to have a burrito for breakfast, a falafel for lunch and souvlaki for dinner. I miss Red River cereal. I miss blending in with the crowd. I miss being able to speak English with everyone I meet. I miss being able to read the cereal box while I eat breakfast. I miss Grape Nuts. I miss the wide-open spaces, the small big cities and the unspoiled wilderness. I miss George Stroumboulopoulos. I miss Tim Hortons.


Don't get me wrong. I love Japan. But I often feel like an outsider living on the fringes of a world I am part of but don't really belong to. I am not Japanese and I will never be Japanese. I am treated with respect and kindness by most of the people I encounter. But the polite smiles and deep bows only serve to highlight the distance between us.

So it was nice to get out of Japan and go home for a few weeks. I spent a little bit of time in Vancouver and a lot of time in Toronto. It's funny how you notice things that you never really paid attention to until after you've been out of the country for a while. Take the liquor store in Ontario, for example. The stores are nicely laid out with helpful signs for each section: Ontario wine, B.C. wine, Australian wine, South African wine, Chilean wine, fine scotches, Japanese sake. And then, the one section I had never noticed before: The Party Zone. Classy!


Of course, no summertime visit to Toronto would be complete without a trip to the CNE. I like the CNE for the atmosphere, the free samples and the mini donuts. I hate the rides. I do not look at the rides and see fun, thrills and excitement. I look at the rides and see nausea, terror and the possibility of serious injury or death. (I like the ferris wheel, though. Ferris wheels are nice and slow and you get great views from the top.)






My sister was getting frustrated that I wouldn't go on any of the rides (not including the ferris wheel. We rode it twice). So I made a deal with her. I agreed to go on one ride as long as I got to choose it. I looked around the midway and immediately ruled out anything that went upside down. I also nixed anything that was more than five feet above the ground and moved at a high speed. Roller coasters were out of the question. We were too tall for the kiddie rides. The haunted house was too lame. The only option was the tilt-a-whirl.

The tilt-a-whirl didn't look so bad from a distance. But appearances can be deceiving. I knew I had made a mistake when, just before the ride was about to begin, a greasy carny walked over to our car, gave my sister and I a pair of high fives and yelled, "ARE YOU READY TO GO FAST?!?!"

"No!" I said in a panicky voice. "We want to go slow!"

But it was too late. The platform started moving. We were going around and around in circles, slowly at first and then faster and faster. Parts of the platform were raised and lowered, which caused the cars to spin in different directions and at different speeds. The cars would swing and snap unexpectedly. Not only was the platform rotating in one giant circle, but our car was spinning wildly at the same time. I started to feel violently ill. I couldn't focus my eyes. We were being spun around and around and around and there was nothing we could do to stop it.

"Let me off!" I screamed. "I'm going to be sick!"

But no one listened. The ride seemed to last an eternity, with me struggling not to vomit all over my sister's lap. I can't believe people actually pay money to put themselves through this type of torture and they actually enjoy it. I almost wept with relief when it was over.


After the madness of the CNE, my family escaped to Georgian Bay for two days. We went to the town of Lafontaine, which is where my grandfather's side of the family is from. The Marchildons were part of a group of families from Quebec who moved to the area in the 1800s. It's still very much a francophone community today (it's also the only place in Canada where every second mailbox has the name "Marchildon" written on it). The lake is one of the most beautiful places in the country.

We drove up to Georgian Bay with my dad's canoe tied to the roof of the car (does it get any more Canadian than that?). I should explain that the canoe is my dad's pride and joy. He built it himself, out of wood and entirely by hand. The canoe is a work of art (he told me to say that. He also told me to put a picture of it up on my blog. Here you go, Dad!).










One of my favourite things about Toronto is the TTC. I love the way the subway stations smell. They have a distinctive smell. If I had to describe it, I would say it's a mixture of old newspapers, stale air, dirt and metal. You're hit with this smell as soon as you walk through the doors. The smell hasn't changed in 30 years. There's something comforting about it. It smells like home.

Merry Dysfunctional Christmas

There are only two shopping days left until Christmas and I haven’t bought a single present yet.

I haven’t left my shopping until the last minute because I’m lazy. No, the reason I haven’t bought anything is because I was under the mistaken impression that my family had agreed to a gift-free Christmas this year.

Turns out my family abandoned its goal to de-commercialize Christmas and forgot to mention it to me. So now we’re having a typical Christmas with presents under the tree and I have two days left to fall in line.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. My sister Hilary sent out an email back in October suggesting that we take the money we would have spent on each other at Christmas and donate it to charity instead.

I thought it was a great idea and so did everyone else (I have four sisters, one brother and two parents and getting us to agree on anything is a pretty major accomplishment).

A gift-free Christmas was a no-brainer for me. I’d rather spend my time in Toronto bonding with friends and family than rushing through crowded stores buying crap that no one really wants or needs. Forgoing mindless consumerism in favour of giving to the less-fortunate seemed richer in meaning and closer to the true spirit of the season.

I should have known Buy Nothing Christmas was too good to be true. Things started to unravel in November. The first dissenter was my brother.

“I’m expecting gifts from you guys,” he wrote. “Forget this secular far-left nonsense.”

My sister Jane was the next one to crack.

“I like to give gifts at Christmas,” she wrote. “I am planning to give everyone gifts. There will be presents from me under the tree. Do as you like . . .”

I tried to get everyone back on board, sending out emails saying that this isolationist behaviour undermined the spirit of a gift-free Christmas. My mom and three of my sisters were with me. But my dad, my brother and my sister Jane were sticking to their guns and buying presents whether we wanted them or not.

The family was split. But at least four of us were still willing to forgo a traditional Christmas. Or so I thought.

I arrived in Toronto this weekend only to discover that everyone had caved and bought presents. My sister Hilary and I were the only ones who stuck to the original plan. Neither of us bought anything and now we don’t know what to do.

We don’t want to look like Scrooges but we don’t want to buy a lot of useless junk either. We’ve only got two days left to figure out how to make everyone happy on Christmas morning without resorting to store-bought gifts.

You should listen to this

My mom did a long interview on CBC radio this morning, speaking about how police should respond to "emotionally disturbed" people without using Tasers.

My mom is a mental health nurse and the head of the crisis intervention team at St. Mike's Hospital. She goes out on 911 calls with the police when they respond to situations where someone has gone berserk. Her role is to de-escalate these volatile situations -- something that didn't happen with Robert Dziekanski (the man who died at Vancouver International Airport after being Tasered by police).

Her interview with Andy Barrie runs almost seven minutes. I think she did a fantastic job.

You can listen to the interview here or on the CBC's website (the interview aired Nov. 19).

The Marchildons do Japan

My family flew back home to Canada this afternoon. I was sad to see them go but happy to have the apartment to myself again.

It was a fun trip. It was also an exhausting trip thanks to a jam-packed schedule that kept us busy every minute of every day. I wanted my family to experience all of the things that have made my time here so wonderful. So I tried to compress the highlights of the past seven months into two weeks.

I took my brother to volleyball practice (but he bowed out after five minutes due to insufferable forearm pain). I took my brother to tennis practice (but he beat the club president so badly that I spent a week apologizing to ease his shame and embarrassment). I took my family to visit my school (but one of the teachers invited us to his house for lunch where we drank so much sake we ended up staying five hours).

When people found out my mom, my aunt and my brother were coming to town, everyone wanted to meet them. They were treated like celebrities. My volleyball team hosted a welcome party. So did the Board of Education. My tea ceremony teacher invited us over to her house for (what else?) tea. My friends took us to the local cherry blossom festival. Another friend drove us to Kochi City to see the market, the castle and the beach.

We crammed as much as we could into two weeks. We ate several pounds of sushi and sashimi. We drank gallons of sake and beer. We sang karaoke. We went for long walks on narrow mountain roads. We slept side-by-side on futons on the floor. We took pictures of quirky English signs (my personal favourite was the massive billboard on the side of a bowling alley in Osaka that read, “Do you like bowling? Let’s play bowling. Breaking down the pins and get hot communication.”).

The highlight of the trip wasn’t the temples of Kyoto or the bright lights of Osaka but the kindness and generosity showered on us by the people of my town. Which probably explains why this photo of my Canadian family with my Japanese family is my favourite picture of the whole trip.

Nothing puts the "fun" in dysfunctional like a family trip to Japan

I’m going to Kyoto tomorrow to meet up with my mother, my aunt and my brother who are here for a whirlwind tour of Japan. So exciting!

Our jam-packed itinerary will take us from the quiet temples of Kyoto to the bright lights of Osaka to the rugged mountains of Shikoku. But the real fun will start when the four of us travel to my little town and spend eight days together in my apartment. I can’t wait!

My mom is on CBC Television tomorrow!

My mom is the star of a documentary about Toronto’s mental health crisis response team. It airs on CBC Newsworld tomorrow between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. I’ve already seen it and it’s really, really good. Not that I’m biased or anything.

Here is the official press release from the National Film Board of Canada:


If you have time, it’s worth checking out.

We heart George: Part II

My sisters went to CBC headquarters last night to watch George Stroumboulopoulos film The Hour in front of a live studio audience.

They didn’t bring a camera the last time they went to see the show so I had to draw a picture instead (circa June 2005).


This time they brought a camera so I can actually post a real photo of them rubbing shoulders with George. This picture was taken last night. I think it bears an uncanny resemblance to my drawing from two years ago.

Writer's block

My sister: You haven’t updated your blog since you’ve been in Toronto. How come?

Me: I don’t know. I don’t have anything to write about, I guess.

My sister: You could write about Amy’s wedding.

Me: About how Grandma was rocking out to AC/DC on the dance floor?


My sister: No, about how Grandma was busting a move the entire night! Or about how all the cousins were doing shots? Or about how crazy Uncle John is?

Me: Uncle John is crazy. I danced with him for, like, 30 seconds and he almost threw me off the dance floor. I was worried he’d re-break my arm. I ran away from him every time he came near me after that. The wedding was fun but I don’t know if it would be of interest to anyone who wasn’t there.

My sister: Yeah.

Me: I could write about the Tour de France.

My sister: No! You’ve already written too much about it. It’s boring.

Me: It’s not boring. It’s exciting. The crashes! The scandals! I could write about how the decision to kick Jan Ullrich out of this year’s Tour will go down as one of the biggest injustices in history if he’s innocent.

My sister: Don’t bother. No one cares. Write about the World Cup instead.

Me: The World Cup? I have no idea what’s going on. I tried watching one of the games but our idiot brother wouldn’t let me.

My sister: What? Why not?

Me: Well, the game was about to begin and the cameras were zooming in on the faces of the players and I started talking about how gorgeous some of those guys were. Daniel got mad and said I was only allowed to comment on the fouls or the goals and that if I was only going to talk about how hot the players were, I shouldn’t bother watching the game. So I left.

My sister: He’s no fun.

Me: I know. What’s the point of watching soccer if you can’t talk about how hot David Beckham is?

My sister: You could write about how you’re going to Japan next month. Or is that a secret?

Me: No, it’s not a secret. I’ve been meaning to write about it. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. I’ve been so preoccupied with my broken arm and the trip to Toronto and the Tour de France that I’ve hardly had time to think about Japan.

My sister: Well, if you have nothing to write about you could always just post some pictures.

Me: Of what?

My sister: Of us at the wedding!

Me: Okay.

Recommended reading

One of my favourite Christmas traditions is reading trashy magazines with my sisters. Every December, all five of us cuddle up on the couch and go on a Cosmo binge. Nothing says family bonding like reading magazines about skanky bitches.

Actually, the only time I ever read Cosmo is when I'm in Toronto. My 18-year-old sister Hilary keeps a stash of back issues under her bed. I usually prefer more weighty reading material but those glossy pages filled with sex tips and secret confessions are impossible to resist. Cosmo is my kryptonite.

I might be less tempted to crack open the magazine if it didn't have such compelling cover stories, such as:

- That bitch ruined my wedding
- Very sexy things to do after sex
- Skank alert! The beauty trend that makes stars look sooo trashy
- Read his dirty mind
- Shocker! The kinky sex trend that even nice girls are trying

The thing is, I now associate Cosmo with Christmas. So when I'm standing in line at Shoppers Drug Mart and there's an issue of Cosmo on the stand, I feel all warm and fuzzy. Visions of my sisters start dancing in my head.

Drunk dialing

I arrived in Toronto late Friday night and the first thing I did was apologize to my parents for an embarrassing incident involving booze and cell phones the night before.

I blame the waiters at the Montreal restaurant for topping up our wine glasses after every sip. Our judgment was further impaired by two weeks of sleep-deprivation and stress. I may have failed Grade 9 math but I know that one plus the other adds up to two tonnes of trouble.

A few co-workers and I were out celebrating our last night at the United Nations climate change conference with a guy from New Orleans we had met the night before. Halfway through dinner, our American friend announced he wanted to move to Canada. Someone said he could marry me to get citizenship.

The joke should have ended there. But it quickly spiraled out of control. The next thing I knew, a co-worker pulled out a cell phone so I could call my parents to tell them about the engagement. Yes, I agreed, that would be hilarious.

I don’t really want to remember how our conversation went (something along the lines of “Are you guys awake? Guess what? I’m engaged! To a guy I just met!” but with more slurring and less coherence). Bridging the communications gap between the sober and the intoxicated is never very pretty.

I had a moment of lucidity when my pseudo-finance grabbed the phone from me and started talking to my parents. Oh my god. Did he just call my dad “dad”? Did he just tell my mom he loved her? Did he just ask to move in? He didn’t just tell them I was pregnant, did he?

Oh, it was ugly. Luckily my parents have a good sense of humour and played along with him before I tore the phone from his ear and flung it across the room.

I had almost forgotten about the drunk dialing incident until my mom picked me up at the Toronto airport and asked where her new son-in-law was. Yeah, sorry about that, mom. We were loaded. There is no engagement, no grandchild on the way. Hope we didn’t wake you up.

The Jerry Springer-style moral of the story is that a cell phone can be a loaded weapon. Use it carefully this holiday season.

My mom in the news

It started with a front-page story in the Toronto Star. Then, like a row of falling dominoes, came an appearance on CBC, a profile in Time Magazine and an interview with the National Post. Now, my mom is in the weekend Globe and Mail talking about bathroom walls smeared with excrement.

You can read the whole Globe story here. It’s an excellent article. Partly because it’s written by Peter Cheney, who is one of the best feature writers in the country. But mostly because it’s all about my mom, who is one very cool lady.

Today is Sarah Day

My 18-year-old sister has decided today is Sarah Day. I read it in her day planner, which she had left out on the kitchen table. In the space beside May 26, she had written "Sarah Day." She even put a couple of stars and an exclamation mark beside it like this: *Sarah Day!*

We've been planning to spend a day together for a few weeks. It took me that long to wear her down and convince her to skip school for the day (she's in Grade 12). You would think it wouldn't take much arm-twisting to get a teenager to play hooky from school. But then you don't know Hilary. She is a straight-A student who spends most of her time doing homework.

Sarah Day begins with a couple of smoothies. Then we're going to grab a coffee. We're going to walk over to Bloor West Village and check out the funky clothing and jewelry stores. We might hop on the subway and head downtown for more shopping. But that's Hilary's idea and today is Sarah Day, not Hilary Day. Then we're having dinner at a Thai restaurant, followed by a movie. It's going to be a non-stop Sarah and Hilary hang-out marathon.

Anyway, I've got to get going on those smoothies. Sarah Day starts in less than 1/2 hour.

The Toronto Speedo convention

I've just signed up for the Canadian Masters Swimming Championship, which takes place over four days in Toronto this May.

The last time I swam at Nationals was three years ago in Saskatoon. My parents flew out to cheer me on. They thought it sounded important and exciting. They did not realize they would be stuck inside a pool the whole weekend watching a bunch of old people take 10 minutes to swim two lengths of the pool.

My dad was so inspired that he returned to Toronto and became a competitive swimmer himself. Since then, he has raced in a few swim meets in Ontario and even won a few medals. When I found out Nationals would be in Toronto this year, I thought it would be fun if my dad and I signed up together.

Over the next two months, my training will consist of swimming five times a week, and sculpting the guns twice a week at the gym. Plus lots of sleep, healthy food, and no more alcohol until after the race.

My dad’s training consists of going to public swim and chatting up young, fast swimmers. My dad even stopped one guy who was tearing up the pool to ask if he would be swimming at Nationals (he is). He also found out how old he was (30) and what he did for a living (engineer). Now my dad is setting up a time and place for us to meet while I’m in Toronto.

My parents are also inviting other swimmers from my swim club to stay at their house in Toronto during the meet. Which I’m not sure is such a good idea considering what happened in Saskatoon when they secretly invited my teammates into their hotel room after a few glasses of wine to dish some dirt about me.

Word to my brother

Those of you in Toronto who will actually be awake at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning should tune in to Breakfast Television on CityTv.

My brother is going to be on the show to help promote the Canadian Floorball Championships. He’s playing in a demonstration game and CityTv will be there to capture it all live on camera.

The tournament takes place at the University of Toronto this weekend and my brother is playing for some Swedish team. He’s not Swedish or anything. They were just desperate for extra players. And desperate for publicity, which is why I agreed to write about it in my blog. Which is pretty nice of me considering that my brother refuses to read my blog because, as he so eloquently puts it, “I don’t want to know what you think.”

I had never even heard of floorball until today when my brother emailed me to tell me about it. I had to write back to ask what floorball was (I had initially confused it with foozeball). Even though you’ll never read this, good luck Daniel!

Does this mean I have to start censoring myself?

When I first started up this blog, my friend Dom warned me to be careful what I wrote because it could come back to bite me in the ass. What he didn’t tell me was that it would happen so soon.

Only five months into this blogging thing, my words are already coming back to haunt me. Like when I was on the phone with my dad yesterday:

Dad: "What are you up to this weekend?"

Me: "Oh, not much. I just did four loads of laundry."

Dad: "So you didn’t go out and buy some new underwear instead?"

Me. "What? WHAT?"

Dad: "Well that’s what you wrote in your blog. That sometimes you’ll just go out and buy new underwear instead of doing your laundry."

Me: "You read my blog? But I wrote that a really long time ago."

Dad: "I went through your archives. Now I’m taking valium and anti-depressants to deal with it."

I’ve had a lot of these conversations lately. After my grandfather’s funeral last weekend, my aunt introduced me to a distant relative at the church. We shook hands and the first thing she said was, "I’m so glad I’m not 30 anymore."

I was a little confused, so she explained.

"Well, I read your blog and it just seems so full of angst. It just reminds me why I’m so glad to be in my 40s."

What? WHAT? Since when does having a blog give people permission to use my own words against me? No one warned me about this.

A couple of weeks ago at work, I noticed my lucky Tim Hortons mug was missing. Panicked, I ran around the office looking for it and found Jenny sitting at her desk, calmly sipping coffee out of my mug.

"I read your blog and you said that you like to have a cup of tea at 9:30 every morning so I knew I could get the Tim’s mug before then," she said.

When I first started this blog in October, I didn’t think anyone would really be that interested in what I had to say. I was mostly just looking for a way to pass the time since I was no longer going on seven-hour training rides and three-hour runs on the weekends. A blog seemed like a less taxing hobby than training for an Ironman.

Now I’m not so sure. I love the fact that people read what I write and I still get a little rush of excitement whenever someone posts a comment. But having people use my words against me is a little disconcerting.

I need to twist this to my advantage somehow. Maybe I should write about how I love dark chocolate and Tim Hortons gift certificates. Instead of having my mug disappear off my desk, maybe stacks of dark chocolate and gift certificates will start appearing.

Someone will tell me, "I read on your blog that you love dark chocolate and free money, so here you go."

My mom (also known as "rock star") is in Time Magazine this week

Around this time last year, the Toronto Star ran a 2,300 word article about how the police are changing the way they deal with the mentally ill. Or, to put it more bluntly, how the police are trying not to shoot and kill so many mentally ill people.

The Star quoted my mom throughout the article and slapped a picture of her on the front page. The reporter had spent a few days tagging along with my mom as she went about her job as the head of the mobile crisis-intervention team at St. Michael's Hospital.

She goes out on emergency calls with the police whenever they have to deal with mentally ill people (the result of a coroner's inquest after Toronto police shot and killed a guy with schizophrenia who refused to drop a hammer he had raised when confronted by police in 1997). Basically, she’s there to difuse the situtation and avoid a violent confrontation.

It seems to be working. In the 1980s, the Toronto Police shot five to seven people a year. Over the past five years, that number has come down to about 2.8 shootings a year (as reported in the Toronto Star).

Since the Star article appeared, my mom has become something of a spokesperson on the issue. This week, she’s featured in Time Magazine, which did a huge cover story on St. Michael’s Hospital.

For those unfamiliar with St. Michael’s, the magazine describes it as an institution that “has served the gritty east side of Toronto’s downtown core, a place that today deals with some of the country’s richest and poorest residents and a high percentage of its newest immigrants. It is also a major trauma center, handling a catalog of catastrophe, including dozens of gunshot and stabbing victims each year.”

Here’s an excerpt from this week’s Time Magazine featuring my mom:

Nurse Ellen Marchildon and Constable Lisa Belanger gently guide a thirtysomething woman out of a police car and into the emergency room. The woman doesn’t seem to know them today, though normally they are all on a first-name basis. Marchildon and Belanger have helped her before, during earlier dramas when she would insist on being admitted to the hospital. Indeed, says Marchildon, a senior crisis worker on the mobile crisis-intervention team (MCIT), the troubled woman (whose name is withheld to protect her privacy) used to show up at the hospital regularly.

Lately, however, she has been isolating herself in her room at a group home, not showering or taking care of herself. But that doesn’t mean the hospital no longer serves her. When case manager Kam Bardouille from St. Michael’s dropped by and realized she was in bad shape, Bardouille asked the MCIT to take the woman to the hospital. The home’s staff reported she had lain down in the middle of a road. Marchildon decides she is a danger to herself—grounds for Belanger to use powers of arrest if necessary. At the hospital they shepherd her through the chaotic ER and into a quiet room for psychiatric patients, then entrust her to staff. . .

You can read the rest of the story here.

The end of an era

I’m in Toronto right now. I flew in on Thursday for my grandfather’s funeral, which was held in Alvinston, Ontario, yesterday.

My grandfather died suddenly and unexpectedly on Tuesday. He was at home, on the farm, fixing the washing machine when he collapsed. My grandmother was with him when it happened. She called 911 but my grandfather never regained consciousness and died before the paramedics arrived.

My grandfather may have been 84 but we all thought he had at least another 10 years in him. He was incredibly strong and healthy. He still worked the 400-acre farm that has been in his family for three generations.

My grandparents were farmers from a different era. They made a modest living planting and harvesting soybeans and corn, and raising cows, pigs and chickens in southwestern Ontario for almost 60 years. They never sought to accumulate wealth or acquire material goods. If my grandfather’s boot leaked, he would cover it with a plastic bag and tie it up around his leg. My grandparents lived simply and humbly with a deep connection to the land.

My grandfather was proud of his orchard, which was filled with an abundance of apples, pears, plums and cherries. He also took pride in his garden, where he grew beans, potatoes, cabbage, cucumbers, onions, grapes, rhubarb, raspberries and carrots, just to name a few. My grandmother raised four children (including my mom) and still found time to make every meal from scratch.

It was hard, grueling work that started at sunrise and lasted well past sunset. They still lived in the same house that my grandfather was born in and that was built by his grandfather in 1860. Somehow, it’s still standing. The porch is sagging, bricks are falling out, it’s not insulated and the windows aren’t glazed. Dishes are still washed by hand in a tub full of water heated on the wood stove.

Now that my grandfather has died, the farm will slowly die along with him. My grandmother is unable to run the place on her own and will move into a seniors’ apartment in town. The farm will eventually be sold, the house torn down.

It’s hard to capture the essence of my grandparents and the farm. In a way, I grew up there. I spent weekends and summers there. I may have lived in Toronto but my heart belonged on the farm. It was where I truly felt at home.

Now, the entire family has flown in from across Canada and the United States to be together to say goodbye to my grandfather and the farm.

After the funeral, all of the grandchildren spent one last night at the farm to drink beer, share memories and stoke the fire. The farmhouse is heated by a wood furnace so our night revolved around finding wood, chopping wood and burning wood. We had to stoke the furnace every two hours around the clock to keep the house warm.

It took 12 of us (ranging in age from 17 to 30) to stoke the fire, a job my grandfather did by himself every day, several times a day. And still we managed to screw it up. We filled the house with thick, black smoke and couldn’t quite get the temperature above cold and drafty.

Somehow my grandfather managed to get the temperature upstairs well into the 90s before we all went to bed. My mom would crack open the double hung windows even when it was minus 20 outside.

So all the cousins spent Friday night on the farm, huddled around the kitchen table in our winter jackets and toques. We talked and laughed well into the night. We listened to classic rock on the radio, which my grandfather used for the sole purpose of listening to the crop reports on AM radio. It was possibly the first time anyone listened to FM radio in the house. We also found a box of Kraft Dinner that was best before 1988 in the cupboard while looking for popcorn. We took turns peeing outside because the pipes were frozen and there was no water.

Stoking the fire became more fun, and more dangerous, the more beer we drank. We even started counting down the seconds to the next stoke as if we were counting down to New Year's Day. My cousin Bradley decided we should call ourselves the BTU club and said he'd make up t-shirts for Christmas.

Our grandfather always made us feel like we weren’t always the brightest grandchildren around. He was probably right.

One summer, my cousin Amy and I lassoed a runt. We babied that pig. We fed it and cuddled it and snuck it into the house. My grandfather humoured us for about three days and then killed the pig because in his world, pigs are not pets and the runt was going to die anyway. We were sad for about a minute and then went right back to playing in the barn and jumping in the hay.

My sisters and I liked to entertain the cows. Jane would lure the cows into the barn with hay and when there were enough of them standing around, I’d jump into the wooden feed trough and march up and down the length of the barn dancing and singing “There’s no business like cow business.”

They were a captive audience, staring at us with their big, bulbous eyes and mouths agape. One time I decided to reward them by giving them all 50 heads of cabbage my grandfather had stored in the barn for the winter. I was happy, the cows were happy. Then the cows weren’t so happy and neither was my grandfather. He wasn’t normally a man of many words, but he was that day. It took him a good year to forgive me. And all was well once again.

My dad always liked to take some of my grandfather’s firewood for the fireplace at our home in Toronto. We always ended up driving back home with our suitcases jammed under our feet because the trunk would be full of wood – beech, cherry, hard maple, oak, ash and even ironwood. I hope my dad lights a fire tonight. When the smoke wafts though the screen, a little piece of grandpa and the farm will be there with us.

Minutes from the real Fab Five's AGM

Way back when I was in high school, I founded the Pink Ladies Club. It was, and still is, a very exclusive club. There are only five members -- myself and my four younger sisters.

In the early years, official club activities consisted of going to 7-11 for slushies and pulling pranks on non-members (like the time we ran a pair of my brother's tighty whities up a flag pole). We set up a donation box in the front hallway of our house, and held secret meetings in the basement.

But the club kind of fizzled out after we got older and left home for university. So we started having an Annual General Meeting during the Christmas break instead. I'd send out the invitations and write up an agenda about a month in advance. I'd also arrange to have a keynote speaker address the club (usually my mom or dad). We talk about lots of things during the meeting (most of which is too R-rated for this G-rated blog).

We held this year's AGM at the Sheraton Hotel on Queen Street last night (much more civilized than the time we rented an unheated yurt in Algonquin Park and froze our asses off in minus 30 degree weather).

Being the oldest, and therefore the most responsible, I cleared everyone's calendars, booked a room, and planned the agenda. We checked in yesterday afternoon. Or I should say, I checked in while everyone else hid in the lobby (the rate was based on a two-person occupancy).

We then went skating across the street at City Hall. I spent most of my time colliding into little kids. I haven't quite mastered the stopping thing. At a rink, I just slam into the boards if I need to stop. But outdoors, there are no boards to slam into. Only little kids.

Citytv was there doing a story about the bitterly cold weather. We tried to get on camera but they didn't think the Annual General Meeting of the Pink Ladies Club was newsworthy. Or at least not as newsworthy as the fact it was cold outside on Dec. 26 in Toronto.

Skating was followed by a swim in the outdoor pool. We even had a long soak in the hot tub despite my horror stories about the vile stuff I pulled out of the hot tub filters when I worked at the Sheraton as a teenage lifeguard. (Thankfully, they had replaced the hot tub since I had left so I didn't have any nasty dead skin, hair, condom flashbacks.)

No one liked my suggestion of sneaking into the staff cafeteria for some curried goat. (The best part about working at the Sheraton was that we got one free meal a day in the staff cafeteria, usually curried goat. I was feeling nostalgic.)

So we ordered pizza instead. Since the phone in our room wasn't working, we missed the pizza guy the first time he came by. He came back with our cold pizza an hour later after I figured out that the phone wasn't working. The people at the front desk turned him away when they couldn't get through to our room. At least we got free room service dessert because of the screw up.

I'm worried I've raised the bar a little too high. Now I'm not sure how we can top our night at the Sheraton next year.