We are happy to report that these stories have now been collected into a book, published by Friesen Press. The book, which includes all 47 stories, is available in hard and softcover from the publisher, as well as Amazon and Chapters. Locally, you can pick up paperback copies from Audreys Books and The Prints and the Paper.
When I was a little boy my mother told me that I had a great grandmother named Unity McFadden, a magic name. Unity had a hard life and faced tragedy many, many times. I wrote this about her. Unity McFadden, I know your secret. Illiterate Donegal peasant girl, raised on seaweed and potatoes. You survived the great famine and the coffin ship, but couldn’t escape your fate. Living in a squalid 1850s coal town, digging Pennsylvania dirt. Did your heart…
It was early 1972 and I had just spent three grueling weeks crossing the western Sahara Desert on the back of local trucks on the way to Senegal’s Capital, Dakar. I enjoyed three wonderful weeks there with delicious food, lovely beaches and friendly locals. There were only a handful of fellow hitchhikers in Dakar, all of whom were very short of money, but none were quite like Cheap John as I quickly learned. One pleasant day John and I walked…
It was Feb. 15th 1972 and I had just arrived in Senegal after a crazy, wild ride across the western Sahara Desert on the back of a series of very cheap, very crowded, very hot, unreliable and unscheduled local trucks. You might get a ride the next day. Or maybe the next week. Or maybe never, or so it seemed. The only casualties on the journey were three goats that I helped eat after they were butchered and cooked on…
A young child’s transition from the freedom of home life to the stifling regimentation of early school years can be a very traumatic experience – at least that was the way it was for me in the 1950s growing up in a lower middle class neighborhood in West Orange, New Jersey. Many fellow students in my kindergarten and Grade 1 classes settled in well. Others struggled initially but coped. I simply could not conform to school life. I arrived in…
It was the hardest and most daunting work I ever did in my 30 years as a reporter for the Edmonton Journal. For the better part of two months in 1997 I spent countless hours calling specific Alberta Roman Catholic parishes to ask for the names of altar boys at specific times at their church. The time period ranged from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s in about seven parishes. The officials I talked to seemed puzzled but mostly did…
Sometimes on a very long, very challenging trip, it is a good idea to take a holiday within your holiday. Our family had been travelling rough for nearly five weeks through Africa in 1998 and were fresh off an exhilarating six-day camping safari in four of Tanzania’s most famous national parks. Rachel 10, Danny, 8, and Sam, 6, absolutely loved seeing Africa’s wild animals in their natural habitat, but it was time for something different. Something mellow. From the beginning…
Hitchhikers meet some of the most interesting people. Or at least they did when I was thumbing rides between 1968 and 1972, mostly in the US and Canada, but also in Europe and Africa. I even got picked up by some very nice moms whose own kids were hitchhiking. They felt an obligation to offer lifts to young people since other drivers were picking up their children. I told the moms that it was kind of them to stop for…
Many people claim that the grueling 24-day Snowman Trek (or Lunana Trek) in the small Himalayan country of Bhutan is the toughest long walk in the world and they might be right. It’s certainly a strong contender for world’s toughest trek. The Snowman can be bitterly cold and many of the daily walks are extraordinarily long and hard, especially in the rarely visited Lunana Valley. There are also eight mountain passes of over 16,000 feet (4,877 metres) to cross. To…
The dusty little town of Bir Moghrein, where I was dropped off in early February, 1972, was not the end of the world, but it was pretty damn close. It is located in northern Mauritania, a very large but little known former French colony, one of the last remaining countries where slavery is illegal, but still widely practiced. A long conflict with Polisario guerrillas (the Sahrawi national liberation movement) which began in early 1973 still continues. Happily, I missed the…