Unlike my other least favourite question – “What’s your novel about?” – this one, “Why write?”, is a question that writers ask themselves, usually plaintively.…
Why is Canada getting such a bashing in the literary press these days? At this year’s Kingston WritersFest, Adam Gopnik, a Canadian who lives…
We landed in Panama on February 10, twelve of us, for a birding trip that would take us into the Darién Gap, the only stretch…
Walking up from the Banff townsite to the Banff Centre for Art and Creativity one evening, I saw movement on the path ahead of me.…
A white mist hangs over the Campbell River in the mornings. The river flows swiftly and is so shallow it kicks a lot of moisture…
In February 1835, Phineas T. Barnum launched his career as a showman by purchasing a female slave, Joice Heth, from R.W. Lindsay, a Kentucky side-show…
I was raised almost mutely by a father who, I am sure, loved me, but with a kind of muscle love that could not be…
It’s dark outside, possibly raining. Bette Davis is alone in a big house, sitting in a large, wing-back chair so she can’t see or hear…
For the past month I have been away from home. First in Vancouver, teaching a creative nonfiction summer course at the University of British Columbia,…
There are few cats in San Miguel de Allende. In the three years we’ve been going to Mexico for the winter, we’ve seen maybe half…