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My older brothers had a favourite Christmas tradition. They used to save up the cardboard tubes from those rolls of wrapping paper and whap me with them until my mother made them stop. Through the years, our Christmas traditions became less violent. They involved sleeping under the Christmas tree, watching Star Wars, making Norwegian Lefsa,…

The moment you step off the train in Obendorf, Austria, you’ll think you’re in a fairy tale. Ambling through the postcard hamlet is the Salzach River; the snow-capped Alps watch from a distance. A 10-minute stroll and you’re climbing steps to a small chapel. Once inside, stained glass windows honouring Father Joseph Mohr, the parish…

A friend said that with all that’s gone on here last year, he’d like to leave the planet. Vacate. Relocate. Escape. Maybe live on Mars. I told him that you can now buy land on Mars. That’s right. A celestial real estate company is having an astronomical blowout. Once 35 bucks an acre, prices are…

Years ago, my wife and I became a SITCOM family. Single Income Three Children Oppressive Mortgage. We liked to tell people it was our house, but we knew: it belonged to the bank. We had bought this year’s house with the next twenty-five year’s money. To make things worse, our kids were teenagers. They consumed…

Here are some things kids have written about the Bible: Moses went to the top of Mount Cyanide to get the 10 Amendments. The seventh commandment is thou shalt not admit adultery. Samson slayed the Philistines with the axe of the apostles. Joshua led the Hebrews in the battle of Geritol. But kids aren’t the…

My dog Mojo and I are similar. We both love snacks. And naps. We both have wet noses and hair growing out of our ears. And we both have a healthy aversion to the vacuum cleaner. You learn a thousand things watching a dog. Disgusting things. Worthwhile things too. When I see my dog pursue…

I’m a born and raised small town, picket fence, barefoot in the summer kind of guy. My hometown was so small that the last one to go to bed turned out the streetlight. We had no locks on our doors. After all, what if a neighbour needed something while we were gone? If my mom…

Each morning three-year-old Ray asked his mom to pin a bath towel to the shoulders of his size two T-shirt. In Ray’s mind, the towel was a brilliant blue and red magic cape. Outfitted in that cape, Superman Ray’s days were packed with adventure and daring escapades. When his mom enrolled him in kindergarten the…

It is time to discover your RQ, your Rumour Quotient. Let’s look at some popular rumours and see if you can separate fact from fiction. True or false: More people are killed annually by donkeys than plane crashes? Mule it over for a moment. The answer? False. Although National Geographic made a commercial claiming that…