I wrote recently about the importance of making face-to-face connection a priority if you want to make the world a better place. This shifts the focus of social activism, innovation and entrepreneurship from something abstract or statistically verifiable to something … Read More
Yearly Archives: 2017
Systems Change Won’t Happen Without a Resurrection of the Ordinary
Systems change is code for dealing with root causes, not symptoms. For widespread, as opposed to, piecemeal reform. For transforming our structures of governance and commerce. For dealing with all aspects of a particular challenge – from its origins to … Read More
Don’t Leap so Far Ahead of The Parade You Can’t Hear the Band
Are you a leaper or a grinder? Are you inclined to leap over the day-to-day messes and frustrations of social and environmental challenges, to demonstrate your solution for a better future, and to pull the present towards you? Or do … Read More
History’s Omission – Caregivers
History isn’t only written by the victors. It’s also written by the unmindful. At least if you are a caregiver. Historians have consigned who they are and what they do to nothingness. Can you imagine discovering, inventing, negotiating, politicking, conquering, … Read More
Jean Vanier – Bearer of the Beams of Love
Jean Vanier is a Canadian philosopher, theologian and peacemaker who shines his light on the practical steps that anyone can take to make the world a better place. His wisdom is cultivated from soil that is a thousand joys and … Read More
Tend to your Garden of Values
The ideas and values that shaped Canada grew from rocky soil, long cold winters, clouds of mosquitoes, dense stands of timber and volumes of water. Ideas about getting along and helping each other out. About appreciating our modest place amidst … Read More
Working with the Status Quo not Against It
Sooner or later you will have to stop challenging the status quo and start working with it. Why? Because at best challenging the status quo only pries the door open. Then comes the much more difficult work. Which is walking … Read More
Artists Aren’t Ahead of Their Time
Alchemy is on full display in King Arthur’s Night a brand new theatre production conceived by actor Niall McNeil. And co-written by him and Marcus Youssef an award-winning playwright and actor. And what a swirl of desires, darkness, wit and whimsy … Read More
Caring is the Common Ground of Democracy
Barrack Obama, in a thoughtful reflective conversation with my favourite American writer Marilynne Robinson, said that his biggest frustration as a politician was not being able to close the gap between the basic decency and essential goodness of the American … Read More
Tender Loving Rage
If this was Calcutta you’d think Mother Teresa. If it was a place by the river in old Montreal, you’d think Suzanne who shows you how to act amidst the garbage and the flowers. In Vancouver, think Ann Livingston. Until … Read More