“It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how things are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”

― C.G. Jung Continue reading →

I practiced law from 1974 to 2014, 40 years. If I were to examine my career it wouldn’t occur to me to divide it into four segments of ten years each, 1974 – 1984, 1984 to 1994, 1994 – 2004 and 2004 – 2014.  Those divisions are for the most part utterly meaningless to me. Once I started Articles in 1974 the business of practicing law was just more of the same, one day after the other. When at last in 2014 I stood in the empty rooms where my offices once were, small bits of rubbish piled about on the worn carpet, the grimy baseboards exposed by the shattering fluorescent lights, it was an abrupt and undignified end to what had the appearance of having been a performance.  All the props were gone.  No more Oriental rugs.  No grandfather clock. No original works of art.  No hardwood furniture.  No Tiffany-style lamps.  No notarial seals or maps or diplomas. Just thousands of dusty old case books and statutes that nobody wanted, quietly left standing on a bookcase built into an entire wall of my inner office. There were books older than Canada going back to 1849. Halsbury’s Laws of England (1930), a complete 40-volume encyclopedia of brilliant jurisprudence by great legal minds. A huge single-lamp chandelier inherited from the office of the late Raymond A. Jamieson, QC at 74 Mill Street, Almonte hung from the ceiling in the inner office.

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I don’t always agree with other people. Not that they could care less, much less so if what they’re planning on doing affects themselves alone. In any event sometimes the least offensive way to contradict someone (or, if you’re not feeling particularly confrontational, to side-step them) is to say you’re on a different page. The observation isn’t necessarily one of restrained politeness; it may actually be true. Even people in seemingly similar circumstances – people you’d expect to behave similarly – can be on a very different page.  We all have our own inertia; some are winding down, others are winding up and others are merely coasting or in-between. Contemplation of change (including the grave matter of retirement) can of course stimulate alternate responses; some see it as a race to the finish; others set up a beach chair and watch the tide roll out.  Recently the difference was brought home to me. Continue reading →

Little Ingrid and her younger brother, Sven, live with their mother and father in Lapland. It is very far north where there is a great deal of snow, powdered mountains of snow on the roofs of the houses, on the boughs of the trees and rising high from the valleys of the walkways and drives. Once there was so much snow they had to go to church through the steeple! Lapland is in the geographical region of Fennoscandia within Northern Europe, comprising Norway, Sweden, Finland and parts of Russia.  In Lapland the dark winter evenings come quickly as the sun drops below the horizon at 2:00 o’clock in the afternoon and does not reappear through the crystallized frozen sky until ten o’clock the following morning. Until then the welkin is a cobalt blue dome ornamented with millions of glinting stars. Sometimes the sky is so clear and the moon so bright that the snow on the ground below sparkles like a flawless carpet of  diamonds. You may know Lapland best as the place reindeer inhabit. Of course there’s no proof that Rudolph, Santa’s famous Christmas Eve red-nosed guide, is from Lapland but it is virtually assured. Continue reading →

“What day is it?”
It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
My favorite day,” said Pooh.”
― A.A. Milne Continue reading →

The velvet fog which obscured the early morning view of the Sound signalled we were in for some warm air. By ten o’clock the soft grey mist had burned off, revealing a cerulean sky and a yellow orb. The waters glittered. Continue reading →