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At best, the legend revealed beneath this image is apocryphal; I prefer allegorical. Over the years, I have read and digested a lot of books on mythology and symbolism. Indeed, Joseph Campbell and I were on a first name basis, so familiar was I with his many books especially those on myth, mythology, and the hero with “a thousand faces.” At times, I have been drawn to works of art, toured museums, and have been privileged to have stared in awe at the magnificence of a Rembrandt or sculptures by Rodin’s The Thinker or his Iris, Messenger of the gods or Michelangelo’s The David, the latter’s majesty and beauty drawing…

Today, as I turn 71 years of age, I choose to look in my life’s rear-view mirror. In particular, I have been thinking about my boyhood in the black and white 1950s.Television shows were in black and white; photographs were black and white – perhaps dreams were too. The 50s were and remain for me enigmatic, mysterious, and compelling all at the same time. Immediately, I think of Edwin Brock’s marvellous poem, Five Ways to Kill a Man… There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.You can make him carry a plank of woodto the top of a hill and nail him to it.To do this properly you require…

On March 15th, I wrote a blog entitled, The Ides of Corona March. It was coincident with the beginning of Ontario’s Corona virus-induced shutdown with social-physical distancing regulations, the closing of most businesses (except those deemed “essential services”), and the start of what we term the “new normal” of living with the COVID-19 reality and threat. Currently, decisions are being made all over the world about re-opening; how to re-open – in stages, all at once; what to expect, how best to protect oneself as well as others. Questions loom about very realistic concerns such as, is it too soon? Have we flattened the curve enough? Will there be a…

Alexander – Sandy – Joseph Young, Jr 16 April 1938 – 6 August 2000 Restigouche River ~ runs from the Appalachian Mountains, northwestern New Brunswick to Chaleur Bay, Quebec Sandy Young was and remains my dear friend. Ripped from this world by GI cancer, had he lived he would be 82 the middle of this month, 16 April 2020. I miss him greatly and think of him very often; he taught me so much, and more than any other person I have ever met, in his company, I and we laughed so brazenly, so deeply every single time we met. We shared an indescribable bond with perspectives about life that…

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar play is a tragedy in genre. In the second scene of act i, a soothsayer (person who foresees the future) warns the Roman Emperor with these words, “Beware the Ides of March,” repeated once before the soothsayer leaves the stage. We the audience know in hindsight, that the “Ides” refer to the middle of March, the 15th, the date when Caesar will be stabbed to death in an assassination. Here I sit and compose this blog on the 15th of March 2020. Our world is in the midst of an horrific pandemic of the COVID-19 (Corona) virus. On my long run out in the country north of…