A voice. During the 1960s, Reverend George W. Goth always began his sermons at Metropolitan United Church in London, Ontario with this invocation, “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.” I didn’t know it at the time but his words were taken from Psalm 19, verse 14. Between 1963 and 1969, I heard those words enunciated carefully, truthfully, sincerely from this bald pate minister in ‘my’ church. Clad in black robe adorned over his shoulders trailing down his torso was his bright red stole or vestment symbolizing his priestly authority as an ordained…

Ken Dryden, 1947-2025 – classic goalie pose on the left & fitting retirement-cartoon caricaturized by Ting Ken Dryden died just a few days ago, on September 5th. Media and personal tributes abound and continue to do so for the affable gentleman who stood 6 feet, 4 inches in his prime. I admired his playing style and his skills as a goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens during the 1970s together with his role as goalie during the consummate 1972 Canada v Russia hockey series. As an academic, an historian of sport/s, two books stand out as the most inspirational to me. One was Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr.’s A Behavioral Approach to…

By coincidence, two days before the day of the month on which my father was born, on 8 January 2025, my cousin Dawn Morrow called to tell us my cousin, Richard “Rick” Morrow died suddenly that day. I was and am sad, taken aback by this completely unanticipated event. Four+ months later, I am called to ‘pen’ this tribute to Rick and my memories of him, our times together, most especially our boyhood days. My sense, in part is that my grief is two-fold: one in major part for Rick and his death at almost 75 years of age (we were born 9 months apart…Rick the younger); and two, for…

I start this particular blog having just yesterday (28 July 2024) turned another of my life’s corners….I am now 75 years of age – “old,” by most societal standards and for the most part, I feel no different inside than I did at any other age. For some weeks, I have left the draft of this blog with only its exact title that I wanted but I have been unready to write the text. Right now, I know how I want this blog to feel and it’s time to let it unfold, five or six months after posting my last blog. It has not been procrastination. Instead, I have been…

Reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic (the three ‘Rs’) have been my companions throughout most of my life. Arithmetic or math fascinated me as a subject for most of my elementary and high school years. Above the blackboards in my classrroms were both alphabet cards – with letters in print and writing – and number cards in dots, 1 dot for the number 1; two dots side-by-side for 2; 3 dots in triangle shape for 3 etc; I actually did addition picturing and finger-imitating those dots…still do, sometimes.The dot-number-representations looked like the top two rows in this workbook: Proudly, I mastered the arithmetic “times’ tables” from sheer memory work – what’s 8…