Rose's Cantina

#165073922 / gettyimages.com Happy Canada weekend! I was born on Canada Day, back in 1956. It was actually July 2nd, but because I decided to exit my mother on a Monday, the nation threw a party for me. My mother Vera was less than pleased. She had just popped a roast into the oven when the bun she already had in there decided to rise leaving her in a puddle in the middle of the kitchen. It was the first, but not the last time, my mother was pissed at me. My father was nowhere to be found, I'm sure, so it was up to Gramps to take her to the hospital where I was proclaimed Rosalie, after a Scottish aunt, and Donna, after my Uncle Donnie paid my dad to put his name on the birth certificate. Since then I've always celebrated my birthday on Canada Day. It has been pretty much out of necessity because everybody takes off to their cottages or on holidays after waving flags around here, so I've had to become strategic. I will spend the day out in the backyard ...

#108313942 / gettyimages.com Every once and a while, I get out of my comfort zone and navigate the shark-infested waters of the bar scene in downtown Ottawa. This happens roughly every two years when I meet up with one of my former drinking teams. Usually, I default to the team that frequents the Air Force Mess and do some day drinking, after which Scott comes and collects me to ensure I don't pee myself on the bus. Last week, I got together with the second less dangerous team, the one from my former workplace. I like these women because, unlike the geriatric team at the Mess, they are young, hip and lively. Instead of walking on canes, they still manage the high heels. Instead of cardigans, they rock sun dresses. There is one downside to participating in no good antics with the Hell Cats, as I like to call them. Going out with them makes me feel like I'm 90 years old. That's because they choose bars frequented by hipsters and posers, the kind of places that by thre...

#165073663 / gettyimages.com Justice Minister Peter MacKay recently un-earthed a storm a la merde for apparently suggesting that women are too busy lactating to want a top spot on the bench, preferring kitchen drudgery to judgery. He denied he said it; and referred to the lawyers. who outed him, by their given names: liars. Then he sent out Mother's Day and Father's Day messages to his staff that were misogynistic in nature. Then he denied having written them and blamed them on a female staffer. Apparently, in the Justice Department, the Chief Liar doesn't lawyer his own correspondence. Then the Globe and Mail's Leah MacLaren took a swipe at Pete's wife, who sent back a missive to the Globe's self-described, but not actually appointed, London correspondent telling her to stop being mean to the Chief Liar who was raised by a single mom and does, in fact, do diaper doodie. It was all very laughable, breaking up a monotonous week for the rest ...

#165735852 / gettyimages.com After a year-long hiatus from work, the result of my sacking from a Paris publishing house, it's good to be back in the saddle again. I need the money, but I also love my work which involves talking to smart people. It's far better than the alternative, sitting in the Ekornes lounger babysitting a geriatric pug and playing Candy Crush Saga all day. But working, for me at least, does have its challenges. With three dogs in the house, I never know what calamity will occur. Maybe Finnigan will lose his Kong. Perhaps Sophie will snatch the calamine lotion from the side table and dump it all over herself. Maybe Gordie will shit himself. One thing is clear: if something goes awry it will happen when I'm interviewing an important person on the telephone. Take last week. I had lined up four interviews with very busy people. Usually, I try to do these interviews in the morning when Scott's here, before he toddles off to the dealers...

As I sat in the radio sound booth in downtown Ottawa, it was just me, alone with my thoughts. I was about tell a national CBC audience on DNTO about the time my husband took me on a flight to London as a farewell present before he left me standing in the Toronto airport while he boarded a flight to Bermuda to be with another women, who later became his wife and step-mother to my children. The episode runs today. Anna, the producer from Winnipeg, got on the line and we went over my story. She asked me a couple of questions. I felt slightly uncomfortable. "What?" I asked. "You don't believe me?" "It's not that we don't believe you. We just can't believe this could happen." I smiled to myself and thought, "you don't know the half of it sister." And then I began to tell the tale of the flight from Toronto to London that ruined my life more than 22 years ago, the flight that took all my hopes and dreams with it and lef...

#165759214 / gettyimages.com In 2009, I wrote a piece for the Globe and Mail at a particularly low juncture in my marriage which described our economic free fall from the middle class and how we were handling it. To my great astonishment, my editor told me that my essay was the most read piece online for the entire year. I knew when I wrote it that I'd hit a nerve; there were more than 150 comments which ranged from supportive and wonderful to horrific. I think I'm like most writers. I am grateful for the critics who "get me" but I cannot help but obsess over the bad reviews, particularly when people call you names: loser, idiot, waste of air, whiner. Being the great newspaper it is, the Globe stops short on allowing profanity. Thank goodness because I'm sure some of those Trolls would have happily called me the Seven Words You Used to Not Be Able to Say on Television. My favorite word, well, I still will not write here because it is misogyni...

It is said that membership has its privileges. And I would say it was a privilege indeed to be a member of the National Press Club. It was more than a drinking hole, though as drinking holes go, it had few rivals. It was more than a place where journalists gathered to pick the brains of federal politicians. The Press Club was like a home and we were a family where stars shone, achievers were appreciated, braggards were put in their place and weirdos were tolerated. For the most part, press club members checked their egos at the door lest they be jeered at, mocked or punched out. What I loved about the club was that the employees -- the bartenders, servers, maintenance staff -- were not just slaves to the minimum wage; they were family, too. Many a Saturdays would see club members competing with staff in shuffleboard or snooker. And it wasn't unusual to see Pete Leblanc standing against his vacuum cleaner talking politics with media sta...

#183580963 / gettyimages.com For the first time in my life, I've actually thought about NOT VOTING in an Ontario election. In my four decades of voting, it's always been pretty easy to separate the squirrels from the actual eggs. There were clear choices. In my youth, I veered to the left-ish, liking the NDP but voting Liberal because I believed there were too many wackjobs in the NDP. I could never stomach the Tories. Even the youngins reminded me of my crazy Uncle Ivan who would rail against the gov-ment while he was chain-smoking roll-your-owns. Like most women, the Liberal party seemed reasonable and progressive. So like a reasonably well-educated fembot, I've put the Liberal tramp stamp on my ballot each and every election. Hell, I voted for Dalton McGuinty three times, even though he looked like a psycho killer. Maybe it's because I'm tumbling into the geezerhood vortex, that awesome time in a person'slife when television tells us...

#137675083 / gettyimages.com I grew up under the care and tutilege of a single mother. We lived on mother's allowance, a more gentle term for welfare, until I was 16 when my mom went to back to work in a sweltering factory making sweaters for rich people. This is not a sob story. I never felt poor, not really, because I lived in a country that took care of its own. I knew Canada could give me a better future, a better life than my mom had. I just knew it. I didn't need any government advertising to tell me it was so. Because I lived in Canada, and I was poor, I qualified for student loans and grants, lots of them. I also got a bursary from the Royal Canadian Legion in the name of my father Russell who served his country with distinction before PTSD took his life in 1957. My brothers Bob and Gary got those loans and bursaries, too. Bob went on to a successful career as a financial manager and motivational speaker. Gary became a public school principal and, ...