Rose's Cantina

I was looking at this little face yesterday, the face that always makes me smile and laugh, and I felt that the world has let her down. Her great-grandfather and his brothers volunteered, more than 60 years ago, to go to war to protect the world from a hateful movement that sprang up an ocean away. I wonder today if my kids would follow their grandfather's lead if needed? Or would they say: why should we get involved? It's not our battle. As I watched CNN this morning, while she played quietly in the corner, and the horrifying images from Charlottesville kept repeating on a loop, I couldn't help but think that we haven't been paying attention.  President 45 -- I will not write his name -- said it best. "What you think our country is so innocent?" My dad went to war to keep hate from spreading. But that effort was just a bandaid on a tumor that has just grown larger and larger under our watch. The cancer of hate has spread. And...

It's been a devastating week for John Simpson's family. He's still coping with the loss of his beloved daughter Ashley who has been missing for 16 months, and is presumed dead. The family is trying to hold it together. John's wife, Cindy, is working on the boats in the Welland Canal. They continue to hold fundraisers to pay search efforts, and a few months back, John returned to Salmon Arm, where Ashley was last seen, to try to find her. Despite all efforts by John, the amazing community, and a handful of drones, the search came up empty. It's as if Ashley vanished into thin air. No one has been charged, and police say there are no suspects. In July, John returned to the Longhouse, in Huntsville, Ontario, where he works as a cook each summer. It's been a devastating time, financially, and John desperately needed "the scratch".  So John has counted on the Longhouse for a bit of stability. What happened last week was right out of a Stephen Kin...

This week, the world lost a magnificent human being, in the form of Dave Milliken, a man I used to know just as "Millie." He was my first city editor when I was a student reporter at the Ottawa Journal and he taught me a lot about the visual nature of journalism. Millie could always make a dog story about a fishing derby pop off the page. He had an eye for layout that was unbelievable; he was a photographer's dream editor, and a reporter's best friend. He was also incredibly hot back in the day with a head of curly hair, accented by ass-enhancing jeans, and torso hugging t-shirts. He could never really leave behind his previous life as an honest to God rock legend. We little kids had no idea about his rock star past. After the night shift, about 3 a.m., Millie refused to touch a guitar or keyboard even when tempted by the sultry tones of Meg Leonard doing a spot-on imitation of Joni Mitchell. You see, the thing about Millie was he closed doors. The To...