Discovering a Town Square

It rained, and rained, and rained.

Early spring on the west coast can be like that.

Somehow we’d managed to be on the ball enough to all be in Squamish on the same weekend. That in itself was a major triumph for a group comprised of a dad, a gypsy pirate with no fixed address, a serious diver who lives on the island, and a Northerner with two massive (and massively high-maintenance) dogs that need a dedicated sitter if he’s away for more than 5 minutes.

The Sun builds Community

I don’t make this sort of a statement lightly. I know co-editor John Horn harbors some ill will towards the sun, and I believe he has reason to feel that way. But in recent summer weeks, I’ve been surprised by…

Leaving a Job & Building Connections – Part 1

Over the next few weeks I’m transitioning from one workplace, where I’ve been for the last five years, to a new job. This move means I will have left, on good terms, ten jobs. Not that it’s a major accomplishment…

Strength in Community

Sometime back in Classical Greece someone carved “know thyself” on my least favourite god, Apollo’s, temple at Delphi. No one really knows who wrote it, but a quick twitblog of the interscape will tell you that Socrates (or maybe Plato) took credit for the idea. And Alexander Pope wrote a poem about it a few years later. The point is, before you look outward and certainly before you strive out on a life path – career, family, adventures in foreign lands, kidlets, part-altering-operations – you need to look inside and, well, get a sense of yourself.

The Classroom Community – times be changin’

First thing’s first. It’s called “A Vision of Students Today.” Have fun with it! I’ll see you in 4 minutes and 44 seconds. Here’s the video. Did you have fun? Let’s move on… Education (elementary, secondary, post-secondary) is terribly hierarchical….

community and the classroom

This all (more or less) happened at Bishop’s University. A few days ago I let my two favourite undergraduate professors know about The Gumboot. Their responses were different and hilarious. One said there was “too much piratology” and struggled to…

The Engaging Workplace

Believe it or not, people, most Canadians spends more time at (or on the way to/from) work than at home with family. It’s not just the actual 35 or 37.5 or 40 or 70 hours at work with colleagues to…