Cal's Journal

I sit here waiting… and waiting and waiting… Waiting for my meeting with a passport officer to make sure my daughter gets her passport in enough time before we go to Mexico. Waiting. Patience is my lesson of the day. Especially considering this is my second stint today waiting at the passport office. I was here all morning only to find out that even though the first screener looked at my application, he missed that I needed my daughter’s mom Read more

“Oh, fingers and toes, fingers and toes Forty things we share Oh, forty-one if you include The fact that we don’t care See when it starts to fall apart Man, it really falls apart Like boots or hearts, oh, when they start They really fall apart, well, fall apart” *  The energy of the song lifted the crowd. Two hundred people connected in a musical moment on a Sunday evening in the Kelowna Curling Club.  The band The Hip Replacements Read more

What a crazy month November has been. The world seems to have gone upside down. The crush of people at the concert in Houston at Astroworld where people were so excited to gather together they pushed and pushed. and didn’t stop until ten people died.  Travis Scott was performing and never stopped it until it was too late. How clueless can you be to stand on a stage and watch the crowd crushing forward? Drake the Canadian Rapper was also Read more

The BIg Boarder, Nurse R, Natalya, Kaydee, and Barrman stood in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn Express and discussed the journey ahead. All roads were closed out of the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. The only way home was to drive eight hours through the United States in order to get back home. The journey from Vancouver to West Kelowna was a daunting one. “What are the odds we would all be here on the same weekend?” The Read more

Raging storms struck the BC coast this past weekend. An epic rainstorm dropped over 200 mm of water on an already drenched landscape. That’s almost eight inches of liquid in three days of continual downpour.  Epic rains, followed by epic disaster. The experts predicted a heavy rainfall warning for the coast of BC. I don’t think anyone could have predicted the damage that the storm would inflict on the roads and lives of the lower mainland and much of BC Read more

Cat had it all. It was a future bright with potential. She had her new condo at Big White, a season pass, and she looked forward to a winter full of adventure and fun on the snow. She had a life full of joy, winter on the mountain and summer at the cottage. Then in an instant, it was gone. She stumbled with the simplest tasks. Her left hand was now “the claw.” Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why, why, why?  In less Read more

Marijke and I went to our first significant event since the Before Times – before covid hijacked the world. My daughter was pretty stoked to attend the game in BC Place in Vancouver to watch the BC Lions host the Calgary Stampeders. It felt surreal getting on the Skytrain and riding with all the masked people in an enclosed tube. It was strange being out of our bubble and away from home.  The fear of the early days of the Read more

John stood in the bow of the landing craft. His last two years of training had led him to this day. His nerves were raw and he could almost hear the beat of his own heart above the roar of the engines.  “Ready gents! We will be hitting the shore in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5…” His sargent’s voice was drowned out by the sudden barrage of gunfire that laced the air.  It felt so unreal.  But the reality Read more

Time. For all of human history, people have been trying to determine the exact nature of time. No matter what, we can’t stop the passage of it. For the past hundred or so years we have tried by setting out clocks back one hour. Why? Some people blame the farmers for wanting a later sunrise. But farmers don’t like Daylight Savings Time. So why do we continue to change our clocks twice a year?  It all started in World War Read more