It was mid-May of 1991 and I was fresh off the plane from Vancouver, sitting in a Queen Street West restaurant eating Thai noodles with Globe and Mail editors John Cruickshank and Phil Jackman and explaining the cognitive indignities I had planned for their readers in the coming year. After nearly a year as the… Continue reading On Being Fired
Days and Nights on the Kid Shift
It’s seven o’clock on a frigid November morning, and Toronto Star feature writer Patricia Orwen is scurrying about her small Etobicoke home as though she were working against a deadline in the newsroom. She enters the kitchen with her two daughters in tow and begins to make coffee from a pan of water on the… Continue reading Days and Nights on the Kid Shift
Ethics R Us
As this decade began, the trend watchers in the media predicted that it would bring a return to traditional moral values: the unscrupulous eighties would give way to the ethical nineties. Though I hate to give them credit-why does every 10-year period have to be tied up in a fashionable package and labeled like a… Continue reading Ethics R Us
On Being Chilled
A few hundred years ago, during a night of drunken carousing, young gentlemen would argue, like men everywhere, about women and money. But instead of simply punching an opponent in the nose, a gentleman would thwack him across the face with his glove, crying: “You cad, sir! ” The cad would stagger to his feet… Continue reading On Being Chilled
Whipping Boy
Marty York sits alone at the front of the plane. There are 35 players, coaches and other writers on board, but they shy away from him. While York displays no anger, his helpless expression reflects hurt and frustration. He looks like a misfit kid being picked on at recess only the bullies in this case… Continue reading Whipping Boy
