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 When I was 12, I decided that there were four levels of fame. You could be famous, really famous, really really famous, or Michael Jackson famous.  An example of a famous person might be Father Flannagan, who was the parish priest at St. Gerard's and was pretty much well known around Haysboro, which was the Calgary community where my family lived. Other people who might be famous were Calgary Mayor Ralph Klein or Calgary Flames captain Lanny McDonald, who were both well-known in their insular communities but might be treated as strangers should they venture outwards. Same thing for Spencer W Kimble, who used to be the prophet for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. An example of a really famous person might be a television star or a lesser known politician. Martin Short, Jean Chretien, David Copperfield, the two bearded guys from ZZ Top, Stephen King, Bozo the Clown, David Lee Roth, Fred Dryer (who was on Hunter) and Charles Schulz all qualify as really famous pe...

One Christmas morning when I was in my early 20s, I opened my bedroom door and found 12 cases of Dr. Pepper waiting for me. Santa Claus, evidently, did not believe in diabetes.  I don't know when I discovered a love for Dr. Pepper. It has become my soft drink of choice (though I admit that as I get older, I also enjoy the humdrum taste of flat ginger ale.) Dr. Pepper is best served cold and best served from the fountain. You want it to fizz. You want to smell that cherry flavour. Can you dig it? When I see someone else drinking a Dr. Pepper, I almost always comment on it. We have an impromptu conversation that usually goes something like this: Me: You're a Dr. Pepper drinker too!!! Them: You bet. Me: Me too. Coke and Pepsi are too boring. Them: Tell me about it. And then we go our separate ways. I am told that the Dr. Pepper brewed up here does not compare to the Dr. Pepper made in the southern United States. I agree, but I don't know why. I do know that Dr. Pepper is the o...

 My church. Martin Luther King once said that Sunday is the most segregated hour, meaning that we tend to go to church with people who look like us. The integration, by contrast, takes place the other six days of the week. This does not apply to my church. I go to a Dutch Christian Reform Church in Cornwall. That denomination, by the way, supported the South African apartheid movement and because of this, was expelled from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in 1982. Four years later, it changed its stance - thanks, Holy Spirit - and, following repentance, was allowed back into the alliance four years later. It is a dark blot on my denomination's history. We look to the future while learning from the past. - My church is not segregated. There's a whole lot of people from Myanmar there. One of them is a gifted musician who plays a mean guitar and has an amazing voice. There are three Myanmar girls who, from time to time, do interpretive dances to Christian hymns.  My church...

Paul Simon's Graceland might be one of the best albums of the 1980s. Somehow, he took a concept album - creating a pop/rock songbook that blended African music with American folk - and wound up tapping into the existential angst of the baby boomer generation. Graceland and George Harrison's Cloud Nine are the only two modern rock albums that my father actually went out and purchased. That's saying something since his music of choice has always been country music from the 1970s and earlier. For a while, Graceland was the soundtrack of our house when I was a teenager. It was so beloved by him that my brother and sister even did a lip sync act to the album's lead single, You Can Call Me Al. I didn't like Graceland but I didn't dislike it either. At the time, I found more relevance in the music of Alice Cooper. But now I am older - older than my dad was when he discovered Graceland, in fact - and I can tell you that Graceland comes on my car stereo a heck of a lot m...