2025 has been a good year for me as a writer. I was thrilled to be asked to write a regular column in the magazine of the Bereavement Authority of Ontario and also delighted to have the Toronto Star publish my article last January. Both were huge boosts to my feeling of sense of worth as a writer. They were also paid publications, moving me a millimetre closer to having writing break even financially. Links to two of the published pieces are at the bottom of this post.

Beyond publishing, 2025 moved me forward in a few other ways.

Regular readers will know of my June asparagus pilgrimage to a Niagara Region farm owned by friends. I pack my car full of green gold and prepare it daily for a couple of weeks. To eat it at this time of year would seem as wrong to me as stuffing with gravy in the summer.  But it’s never too early to start thinking about next season. Here’s an asparagus vichyssoise recipe I love.

This year, I was honoured to interview 25 lane changers. Last Sunday, I brunched with a handful of them. You can thank or blame them for today’s post because they encouraged me to write about my own lane changes. Truth is, I’ve written weekly about my lane changes for nearly five years. They’re summarized at the bottom of this post, with links to prior blogs, in case you missed them.

When interviewing my lane changer subjects, I ended each interview with a few more reflective questions. This week I posed those same questions to myself.

Beyond publishing, 2025 moved me forward in a few other ways.

When interviewing my lane changer subjects, I ended each interview with a few more reflective questions. This week I posed those same questions to myself.

I remember when I bought it for him. CBC sold branded merch in their HQ on Front Street and by then, Radio 1 was on not just in our house, but also kept Jack company as drove to fix fridges and assess stoves around the GTA.

When I introduced Jack to CBC Radio and it turned out he liked it, it was lucky because let’s face it, I was going to play it in the house anyway. I’ve shared before that Radio 1 was built into my DNA. I knew those kids in Narnia had the back of the closet to climb through into another world, but for me, that CBC logo was the visual representing the aural portal out of the southwestern Ontario community where I grew up. Jack didn’t recognize the ‘exploding pizza’ logo of course, having arrived in Canada the year it was mothballed. The 70s vibe appealed to him though being the decade he started his adult life.

Imagine my disappointment - I thought I’d pulled a piece of salmon from the freezer. Yes, I’ll grant you, I looked a little thicker and darker than normal, but the colour was sort of right and I couldn’t think what else it might be. I thought it would make a good dinner.

When I next looked at it, it was thawed on the counter and clearly NOT salmon. No, this was leftover cooked squash. WTAF am I supposed to do with this for dinner? I don’t feel like making squash soup. I did what every home cook would do now — I Googled left-over squash.

“Omigod, you’re a Lane Changer!” I exclaimed while catching up with writer Louise Ells at the 2025 Eden Mills Writers’ Festival. “Would you … do you think you could let me write your profile?” Her intensely personal story made me hesitate to ask.  

She nodded her response that day. You will be grateful like I was. 

Louise and I met through Canada Writes, a Facebook group where we’re both members. I was flattered when she spotted me at the 2024 Eden Mills Writers’ Festival. She’d just released her her novel, Lies I Told My Sister and I was happy to receive her bookmark. While Louise had always written on the side, it’s a few lanes in for her professionally. And while Ontario is where her life started in 1967, she’s traversed a few other continents too before getting back here two decades ago.  

Rosemary Sadlier’s lane crossed mine because she volunteers her time interviewing candidates for the Diversity Scholarship program offered at the Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto where I work. While I knew her name but not much else, I was immediately drawn to the strength of her convictions. The Internet told me Ms. Sadlier’s Black history advocacy made her a shoo-in to receive the Order of Ontario in 2009 and equally deserving to be named one of The 52: Stories of Women Who Transformed Toronto, an exhibition at the Museum of Toronto. (Check out the profile of another of The 52, Lane changer, Cathy Crowe).

I was honoured when Rosemary took two hours out of her day for a sit-down with me where I thought I would hear about the lane change her shift from wife/mother to social advocate in the early ‘90s. Rosemary began our conversation by referencing Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, an obvious choice for a chat with a lane-changer. But I leaned in for a story I hadn’t expected when she mused that while Frost’s idea that we choose one path over the other is appealing, it’s not true for every lane change.

This is a soup I’ve made many many times, usually to start a dinner party. It’s a sure hit. No-one can believe how easy it is to make and often share the recipe.

This starts, as everything good does, with diced cooking onion in oil, this time with a couple of cloves of garlic in the mix. As that softens, I start compiling the next ingredients: two cups of water and a cup of peanut butter. Getting refrigerated peanut butter out of the jar and into a cup measure is no easy feat. Here’s a trick — I use a big measuring cup, measure out the water, and then put clumps of peanut butter into the cup to displace the water until it shows three cups. This may be obvious to many of you, but it took me a while to sort it out.

Knowing someone since teenage-hood gives you a shoulder-side view of their lane on life’s highway. Liz is one of those who emerged from the womb 60 years ago this month with no need for a GPS. With a teacher-mother, Liz was both nurtured and DNA-destined to educate. When we met in high school, she was already eagerly taking on coaching skating, teaching swimming, and tutoring jobs, demonstrating the nascent skills that would serve her throughout her career.