Rose's Cantina

  Sometimes it takes a visit to the cottage to put everything into perspective. The cottage is always the place where I work things out, and talk things out with my husband. It's a place with no social media, and little contact with the real world except for the occasional visit with CBC Radio. Most years, I arrive at the cottage miserable. One year, I was working the whole time editing books. That was the same year we brought Gordie the pug, and Scott had to leave immediately to return to the city to have the poor little fellow put down. I remember walking in the lake, all by myself, and wailing because nobody but God and the lake could hear me.  Other years, I've been between jobs and worrying about the future, or fretting over waiting for a security clearance to come through, all the while battling disturbing heart palpitations. Yet another couple of years, I spent trying to bolster the spirits of my friend Jennette who was dying of mouth cancer. It was heartbreaking  ...

Excerpt from Distressed Pavement coming in July.  Katrina Lemieux twirled around in her ergonomic chair to look out at the spectacular view from her Gatineau office, which overlooked the Ottawa River. At thirty-eight, she was the youngest Deputy Minister that Climate Change Canada had ever had. She had all the credentials: a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Studies from Simon Fraser University, an MBA from McGill, and a certificate in digital marketing from Ottawa University.  She was regarded as a both an expert on environmental policy and a communications guru who had more than a million Instagram followers. But she was also a human lightning rod, adored by the left and abhorred by the right.  Her head was on the block now that the Tories had taken over the reins of power, and she knew it. Soon this office would be inhabited by some oil-loving, environment-gouging creep from Alberta. She had heard that her job was being shopped around at the Petroleum Club in...

Second excerpt from my book Distressed Pavement, To Ottawa With Love, due out this fall. The Saturday after the Earth swallowed Madawaska Joe whole, his fellow musicians and friends gathered at Irene’s for a celebration of his life and legend.    The Mayor was there to accept good wishes after the city quietly paid for his funeral and paid out a tidy sum that would take care of Joe’s ex-wife who had threatened to sue. Manon Giroux hadn’t laid eyes on her husband of thirty years in more than a decade, not since they buried Joe’s eldest son after he succumbed to a heroin habit. But here she was, not shy to come forward to claim the $100,000.   “I deserve that money for what he put me through,” she told Irene as she dug into a feed of hot wings at Joe’s wake. “He was a son-of-a-bitch, and I don’t care he’s gone.”   Many in the crowd were not aware that Joe was even married. He wasn’t of course,  married , except on paper. Joe had been a terrible husband who often l...

Excerpt from my new book Distressed Pavement: To Ottawa With Love, which will be published in Fall 2021.  Lester Swell started at the  Ottawa Journal  as a copyboy which was the vernacular of the day for gopher. It was the copy boy’s job to run stories typed on pieces of paper from reporters to editors. Often at deadline, reporters would still be writing their stories page by page, giving the copy boys a pretty good workout.   They also managed the various wires in the backroom pulling copy from reporters and wire services around the world.    Just as often, copyboys were sent off for beer, cigarettes, dry cleaning and food. It was a thankless job but a great way to get started in the highly competitive news business. Great reporters and photographers often credited their time as copyboys for getting a foot in the door. If a kid was bright enough, he was soon elevated to reporter status.    Lester was a coddled, spoiled brat and quickly grew bored...