How much is a Canadian flag worth?

The first time I saw Andy, he was being pelted by stones by the neighbourhood kids in Belgium. He looked quite dishevelled and forlorn at the time, to say the least. We swooped down to prevent any further attack. Seeing that we had formed a buffer zone, the children lost all interest and drifted away.“Thanks,” […]

Wannabe

“So, you want to be a writer?”“Well, yes.”She marked down wannabe. “Actually, I already published a book through eBook Publishers,” I assured her.“eBook Publishers?”“Yes, they just publish eBooks. But this time I want my new book to be published by a more traditional publisher, both in hardcover and eBook.”“Traditional publisher. You will need a literary agent for […]

Frozen wonderland without borders

“Do you have any ice salt?” I asked the woman at the Canadian Tire store.“No, all out.”“When will you have more?”“Don’t know. Going to take some time. The truck is coming direct from Montreal, eh?” When travelling for my annual Canadian winter visit, I never expected ice salt to become the most sought after commodity […]

Rob Ford – Making Canada proud?

You’ve got to give the guy credit. Not since the marital and post-marital antics of Margaret Trudeau has a Canadian managed to star in leading news broadcasts, late night show monologues, and of course – have someone play a caricature of him on Saturday Night Live. But no caricature of him can do the man […]

Travelling the Italian Way

What is loyalty, really? I know you can be loyal to a husband, a wife, a country, or a friend… but what about being loyal to an airline?For five consecutive years I travelled from Tel Aviv to Toronto and back with Air Canada, faithfully collecting miles through their Aeroplan frequent flyer program.  After having flown […]

Ideally Speaking

Vivian Rakoff, in “Ideally Speaking” says: “Idealism in a way is a manifestation of a generalized human desire to have a sense-making model or paradigm of the world. There are those who just accept what is given to them implicitly without it being explicit and there are those who try to make it explicit and […]

If airplanes were meant to fly

When our first child was three, we took him with us on a trip to Canada.“We are going on an airplane!” we told him, much to his delight.At that time, a bus took us from the old terminal building at Ben Gurion airport and drove us to the foot of the plane, where we climbed […]