Rose's Cantina

My childhood friend, Sandie Bergen, died two days ago, the victim of a drive-by set of brain tumors that she only learned she had three weeks ago. The neurologist had concluded that she'd only recently developed three massive and horrible tumors in the days around Christmas. Those tumors plumped up her brain and caused her to forget things and to fall down, and that is the reason for her visit to the hospital, her Green Mile visit which involved MRIs and, ultimately, a biopsy which resulted in a brain hemorrhage from which she never recovered. Sandie, for her part, had been optimistic going in. "We're going to fight this," she told her husband, Charlie, the love of her life, the former Vancouver volunteer Fire Chief. The kids put up a friendly wall hanging in her room. They knew it wasn't good. They prayed for the best. But shit happens, as Sandie might have said. Shit happened, indeed with a tumor that burst taking away her from her life, her family, he...

My old high school was built around a swimming pool in the middle of a public park in St. Catharines, Ontario. This year, it will go back to seed as its doors close after 40 years. Takes me back. I was part of the second year of West Park, a tough little school with a bad reputation. The school was located on Western Hill, a pretty rough part of town. On the other side of the tracks were high schools like Denis Morris and Sir Winston Churchill which graduated famous folks like supermodel Linda Evangelista and CTV's Roger Smith. On our side of the tracks, kids got shipped off to the military. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) The rumors were rife in town that girls had to carry switchblades in their purses to fend off hoods. I, myself, carried lip gloss, a comb and a wallet. To my knowledge, no one was ever gutted and found floating in the canal where our crews famously rowed on the Henley Regatta course. All I ever saw in those waters were Port Dalh...