Law is a tool. Lawyers and judges have a responsibility to talk and write clearly so that others can effectively use the tool.

In my effort to eat as much asparagus as possible while it’s fresh, here’s another take on it.

Tomorrow, and for the four days that follow, I will rise with the sun to raise money for Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).  If you’d like to contribute, please click here. 

Why am I doing this? Read on. 

Not going to lie - at 58, I find myself starting over again socially. Oh, there are exceptions - good friends who’ve hung in with me through it all - the relationship with Jack, his long illness, my COVID response, my changing life since. I’m grateful for them. But all my life events, coupled with everyone else’s life’s events, have me with open spots on my dance card.

If you know me at all, you’ll know I take action when action is needed, so I’m working hard to fill up my Favourites spot again on my car phone.

If you find yourself in the same position, here are a few tips.

If you know me at all, you know that May begins my annual asparagusathon. I don’t eat the stuff any other time of the year. But for a month, it’s about the only vegetable I want.

You can join me as I enjoy the bounty of my asparagus-growing friends’ farm soon but for now, I bought some of the green gold at the grocery store. I was also excited to see whole cooked PEI lobsters on the shelves of my little Metro and decided the perfect dinner would be lobster tacos with fresh Ontario asparagus.

Here’s how that all got to the plate.

Friday marked the best day of spring for me - I saw the first gaggle of goslings on the Humber River.

Both goose and gander are remarkably attentive to their charges. But it is short-lived. At three to four weeks, the goslings are mostly self sufficient, although they don’t reach reproductive maturity for a couple of years.   

How lucky, though - they parent for one month in every twelve and have the rest of the time to hang out as a couple and travel with their friends.

On this mother’s day, I think of my own mother and her prolonged parenting duties. Forty years ago this September, she burned rubber leaving me standing in the parking lot at McMaster University. She’d been a full-time mother for - wait for it - 34 years!

Hydro polls at Pape and Danforth began 2025 screaming“How to Fold a Fitted Sheet.” For your $10, in one hour, you could wow yourself and your friends with a new skill. I imagine an event in someone’s living room, all 10 attendees sipping wine from stemless glasses to avoid spillage while whipping bedlinens into submission. Other than the wine, which is my embellishment, I cannot think of anything more tedious. And less useful for me.

Saturday I eagerly anticipated following a recipe for dinner. Sure, I love the freestyle approach but how luxurious to let someone else do the thinking for me!

Tomorrow is an historic election in Canada. Over Easter weekend, the advance polls were flooded with people who wanted to make sure they made their mark early to avoid the rush. And tomorrow, I can only hope we’ll have a big turnout, surpassing the tepid figures of recent elections.

Voting tomorrow will be the ultimate ‘elbows-up’ demonstration.

But there’s something else you can do too to show your Canadianism. You can subscribe to CBC Gem.