I am not one of Santa's elves, but at this time of year I do a reasonable impression.



This year, I am making a couple of hope chests for my daughters.

The challenge in these pieces lies in…

Continue

A little over a year ago I posted about one of my ongoing woodworking projects-a homemade pipe organ.  I thought I would drop in an update:  I have finally completed the pipes, all four hundred and change of them,  for the keyboard.  I am now left with a decision:  Should I build fifty pipes for the pedal argan, or should I leave it keyboard only?  The pedal organ pipes would be the largest, and at… Continue

My third child, a boy, was born this morning at 9:20 after twenty six and one half hours of labour. Mother and child are doing well.

Today is the 446th anniversary of the date traditionally assigned to Shakespeare’s birth. It is also the 396th anniversary of his death, but people being what they are, we tend to look upon the birthday rather than the deathday aspect of the matter, thus, perhaps, play some lip service to the long acclaimed notion of the ever-living, immortal bard.



But why do I speak of Shakespeare, the man from Stratford, and his life and death, when many believe that he did not, could not, in any… Continue

My father. Born in Hamilton in 1922, died in Mississauga in 1996. In the almost three quarters of a century that he lived, he saw the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Post War Boom, the Cold War, the end of the Cold War. At the beginning of his life, cars were a luxury, and carts pulled by horses still rumbled regularly through the streets of Hamilton. The sound of an aeroplane flying overhead was enough to make people run out of their houses and look up. He…

Continue