In which the witch curses the boys.

Just then Bunel walked in holding two glowing lamps. He handed one to Gustave.

"You all right?" Bunel whispered. “You look green.” He cackled.

"We’ll take this one," Gustave pointed to the keyboard.  “Can you carry it? Let’s go… Read full post »

 In which the boys are brave against the witches' coven, walk through an auction of machinery, and enter a dark barn with a dark inhabitant.

Their faces were grey and sunken, their beards cut with scissors. Michaud, a former sailor, wore tattoos of snakes that coiled down his bare arms.… Read full post »

 I promised to do this months ago.  Here we go. 

Part One: In which we meet the priest, who needs money, and the boys, who set the story off.

November 18, 1850

Cideville, Normandy

Jean Lariat lifted his head from where he sat at… Read full post »

Last night I watched the Devil stalking a 17th-century community in a downtown Toronto park.  We (the audience) had to follow the actors around as they performed The Witch of Edmonton, written in 1624 by members of the generation after Shakespeare.

The premise of the play was simple: memb… Read full post »

The first sign directing you to Algonquin Park, Ontario is at Pearson International Airport more than 300 km away. We’re rightly proud of it: the park is one of Canada’s biggest and most beautiful, straddling the deciduous and evergreen belts of Ontario forest and shield.  Al… Read full post »

No doubt you’re hotter than I am. Certainly I’ve been told recently by everyone I meet that my wilting is less than their wilting, even when we are standing in the bone chill of a movie theatre in a shopping mall. But there’s nobody hotter than the children of immigrants —… Read full post »

The epiphany of James Joyce's masterful short story 'The Dead' is Gabriel's discovery during a dinner party that his wife Gretta was thinking of a boy, Michael Furey, who loved her and who died when she was young.  Yesterday I had a minor 'Dead' moment in Whole Foods at the checkout… Read full post »

Barack will be touching down in his helicopter any minute now.  I think I can hear them.  Or maybe that’s the police helicopters, circling the sky above us, around and around.

I wrote about the impending G20 summit in a fleeting, flippant manner back in the spring and… Read full post »

Perhaps the mama raccoon read my blog about the G20 summit and brought her babies to hunt for garbage in the deserted downtown Toronto core. I've told you many times we live in the heart of the city.  The heart of the city in Toronto includes, and always has, a certain… Read full post »

My garden in downtown Toronto's leafy Annex neighbourhood is at its best.  The crabapple recently bloomed the colour of raspberry sherbet, the trees that can produce blooms of their own are all competing for attention, and the wisteria has responded to a fertilizer I call Bloom Dammit with 80 or… Read full post »

I'm not addicted to Facebook, nor does it validate my existence, but I do check it daily for two reasons: 1) to see what fiendish word my sister has devised in Scrabble, and 2) to hunt amongst the postings of cat pictures and event promotions for "Are you the Barb Wade… Read full post »

The last blog about reading (for a while) is a confession: I can't anymore.  At least I can't read in the way I used to.  Do you remember that extraordinary novel by D.M. Thomas called The White Hotel? I remember reading that in my mid-twenties in the west-facing room of the… Read full post »

I pay a membership fee every year to keep going to my old university library.  I do much of my writing there.  The library was built in the 1920s and houses perhaps 4,000 volumes in a large stone room with a vaulted ceiling and two big bay windows with leaded glass… Read full post »

We interrupt this blog on the future of books to bring you a brief and awkward commemoration.  Of sorts.  A yahrzeit, in Judaism, although the subject of the yahrzeit was raised a Baptist and hated religion of all kinds.  He was an atheist, devout and observant.

He was Ed Wade,… Read full post »

A Kindle showed up on our doorstep this week, delivered by the FedEx stork, so like good foster parents, we took it in.  Of particular interest to me was the reaction our older daughter Jessica would have to it.  She’s doing an MA in English literature, as did I. She/… Read full post »

It’s on a stiff tablet, flat and stiff and ungainly. Nobody seems to have thought about its portability or the pleasure of reading on one’s side in bed at night. It seems ugly in a way a good book doesn’t.  The letters require the eyes' adjustment to be able to interp… Read full post »

Since October we've spent three months in London, England, a month at home in Toronto and a month in northern California.  It's been a privilege and a pleasure to roam a little and report on the customs and sights of both London and Berkeley.  I'm now in Palo Alto, where we've… Read full post »

Where's your most beautiful place on earth?

 I have many places that are dear to my heart.  Algonquin Park, Canada. The city of London.  The Rocky Mountains. But the place I find the most shockingly beautiful is 17 Mile Drive south of Monterey, California.  Samuel Morse, one of th… Read full post »

I’m fascinated with service customs in California vs. Toronto every time I go back and forth between the two.  Let’s take food service.  In Toronto your waiter is probably an out-of-work actor.  He does the job more or less competently but knows he’s too smart for it.… Read full post »

My sister and I are staying in Menlo Park, California, for a holiday, right next to Stanford University. Menlo Park is one of the satellite communities of Silicon Valley.  Jonathan and I began our family 22 years ago here, producing the first of  two girls who are now too busy with… Read full post »

I've been in Berkeley over two weeks and leave in a couple of days for Palo Alto, then Monterey.  Obviously I have a  shallow impression of the city, but here's what I've liked best:

 1. ) The way people age here.  I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: white-haired p… Read full post »

When we were first living in California, in the late 1980s, I had a little baby to take care of and stories to write for Maclean's magazine and the need to feed and clothe the family for as little money as possible.  I scouted the charity stores and the thrift stores… Read full post »