It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.

Walden (Life in the Woods), Henry David Thoreau (1854)

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Once one has alighted upon Hilton Head Island, South Carolina – howsoever briefly- it is impossible to ignore the pungency of privilege and entitlement. This is especially so if one roosts in one of the private gated communities such as Sea Pines or Palmetto Dunes whose history hearkens back to the original Sea Island Cotton trade or oyster plantations financed by Irish nationals and Wall Street tycoons and built upon the backs of the uneducated and the disadvantaged (primarily ex-slaves who flocked to Hilton Head Island once it fell to Union troops during the Civil War). Even today – a century and a half later – when the narrow-headed blond Patrician is being incrementally crowded by the stout, broad-faced descendant of the Incas, the Republican flavour of the Island is indisputable and unmistakeable. Everything contrives to sustain the preference for exclusivity – the mansions, the manicured lawns, the parade of high-end imported motor cars, the ubiquitous golf courses, tennis courts, country clubs, sailing yachts and swimming pools.

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How incongruous it is to suffer a torment of emotions and dispositions during this otherwise generous and bountiful Season! Yet a lifetime of inclinations are not swept away by the electricity of a moment. A Christmas card (or what is now more likely, an e-Card) can successfully reinvigorate months of animosity and disturbances in spite of its superficial magnanimity. The charity to dissolve the acrimony battles against the hardened reality of experience, at once thwarted and buoyed by liberal open-mindedness and cautious maturity. The safest default is ignorance, albeit a milquetoast response.

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It’s Christmas Day on Hilton Head Island. Christmas Day – like every other day – has passed remarkably quickly. Admittedly I slept until nine o’clock this morning so the day began somewhat later than usual and certainly far later than when I was a child and arose as early as three o’clock in the morning to see whether Santa Claus had come. Even though some of our neighbours celebrated late into the night on Christmas Eve, we retired at a reasonable hour last evening after having watched an old black and white Christmas movie. But my weary bones hadn’t any particular reason to bolt from the lair this morning. Continue reading →

It is Christmas Eve on Hilton Head Island. A tranquillity has descended upon the Island, a stillness which reflects the restful time of year as well as the dense early morning fog which has only now partially dissipated. I have quelled my daybreak effusiveness for Christmas greetings by systematic emails to almost every friend or acquaintance of stature on my Contact list. It is decidedly an occasion to share cheerfulness with others and in some instances to strengthen frayed ties. I  also telephoned my elderly mother and played for her some sorrowful Christmas carols on my electronic keyboard! Continue reading →

The Feast of Juul (where we get the term ‘Yule’ from at this time of year) was a pre-Christian festival observed in Scandinavia at the time of the December solstice.
People would light fires to symbolise the heat and light of the returning sun and a Juul (or Yule) log was brought in and dropped in the hearth as a tribute to the Norse god Thor.
The Yule Log often was an entire tree carefully chosen and brought into the house with great ceremony, and sometimes the largest end of the log would be placed into the fire hearth while the rest of the tree stuck out into the room. Continue reading →

Although I do not share the desolation, it is promoted by some that Christmas is perfectly wretched without two things: family and snow.  It perhaps illustrates how hardened I’ve become that my constancy for the Season survives in spite of being on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina sans famille and sans neige. I won’t discredit the desirability of these two elements and of the many other traditional icons of the festive season but neither will I diminish the allure of a Confederate Christmas. Continue reading →

“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 →