Pique'n Yer Interest

I f you don't know where you came from you won't know where you're going." I believe the great philosopher Bill Cosby said that in one of his comedy albums from the mid-70s, in a sketch about Fat Albert; there was probably a 'Hey, hey, hey...

I consider myself a smart person but there are times that I wonder. For instance, I have been on the periphery of some very serious black-market behaviour. I've seen Asian gangsters wield machetes for uses not related to horticulture.

From federal MLA pensions to provincial teaching wages to the growing cost of our municipal workers, a battle has been long-brewing between public servants and taxpayers over compensation. Things are about to get ugly, and in a way it's about time.

When last we met intrepid carbon merchant, Harpo Polo, he'd returned from The Orient, the promise of Pandas on his breath, pockets lined with "billions in trade agreements.

Let's see if I have this right. Vaunted Canadian carbon merchant Harpo Polo sets off on a trade mission to China and returns with billions of dollars in agreements and a pair of Giant Pandas in hand.

After 25 years of working to daily deadlines for newspapers, magazines and anyone else who'd pay me to tell stories, I knew that writer's block was simply something that never happened to me. Never. Well, I got it and I didn't like it.

I was standing at the urinal when a gentleman sidles up two stalls over.It was that time of night where people start swaying from the booze and he seemed to be wading through some very difficult waters.

There's a reason it's called backcountry. And though that's mostly to differentiate it from frontcountry — the otherwise nameless, road-bound zone where most of us congregate — the term also connotes at least some promise of wilderness.

Canada's justice minister swooped in last week to contradict his own lawyers with the news that the government believed all same-sex marriages conducted since 2003 were legal, whether the spouses were Canadian or not.

It can cause bad smells and look disgusting but it is a habit ingrained in me from childhood. I have been collecting food waste for a long time, almost all my life.