FAMILY VALUES: Don’t Follow Your Heart
When news of Al and Tipper Gore’s split hit a while back, many newspaper pundits chose to put a happy spin on it. Deirdre...
A Graduation Speech
We are not preparing children well for the real world. Want proof? Here’s Exhibit A, the children’s soccer league in Ottawa, which made headlines...
FAMILY VALUES: Too Young to Be Hot
Nothing makes a teenager seem younger than one trying to act like an adult. They may get the lingo right, but watch them for...
FAMILY VALUES: 25 Marriage Tips
With June, the wedding month, peeking around the corner at us, I thought it was time to present you with twenty-five tips for a...
Good Manners, Good People
I am not one of those people who rejoices in the intricacies of etiquette. I avoided certain distant relatives for a decade after my...
Grown Ups and Financial Facts
Last week, in New York, the Staten Island Ferry collided with the pier, sending passengers hurling towards the deck. That scene is about to...
Doing a Parent’s Job
I love the Ontario Catholic School Boards. We all owe them a debt of gratitude, whether we’re Catholic or not. They took one look...
On the Other Side of the World
Last month my family and I took a trek to Kenya. We were visiting the Mulli Children’s Family, a home for over 1000 orphaned...
FAMILY VALUES: Ending Marriage’s Bad Rap
If an alien were to peruse the magazines at the checkout counter, he or she would likely conclude that humans are all masochists: we’re...
FAMILY VALUES: Following the Plan
Did you follow The Plan? You know the one; our parents drilled it into us. Get an education, get a job, get married, have...
Family Values: Evil and Odd
Around or about 1665, Sir Isaac Newton, so the story goes, was resting outside under an apple tree, when a big red one landed...
Family Values: We Aren’t Islands
Many of us long to live in a world where we shouldn’t have to do anything for anyone else. We set the course for...
Family Values: Education is Not Always the Answer
Many in our society are living in a fantasy world that they desperately want to preserve, and that fantasy revolves around the premise that...
Family Values: Capitalizing on the In Between Years
Let me give you the stories of two men. One we’ll call Jim. He married straight out of high school—rather an anomaly today. He...
Family Values: Do I See What You See?
I have incredible vision. I can see things that nobody else in my family can. If clean, folded laundry is sitting on the stairs,...
