Author: Terry Carroll

In early October, we took a call at the office from a man who had googled “St. Thomas foundations”. We had to explain that Elgin – St. Thomas Community Foundation couldn’t help him with his basement wall. While it’s easy to explain what we don’t do, it’s not nearly as simple to give a thirty-second […]

What might the October election mean to us seniors? We could get all riled up (a term no longer applied to teenagers or twenty-somethings; only seniors become riled up) over a perceived threat to our Canada Pension or Old Age Security. Or, I don’t know, just about anything that’s not like it used to be […]

My father belonged to the Greatest Generation, and one of the things that made him great was his firm grasp of child psychology. He knew how easy it was for young’uns to start down wrong paths and end up in strange, fearful woods without the tools or resourcefulness to get out. His solution, as brilliant […]

I’m one of those Boomers who’s taking up space in the employment roster. I have a desk and a chair that could be reserved for a Gen Xer, Yer or Zer if only people like me would stop working. Like much younger people, we working Boomers occasionally fantasize about what it would be like to […]

In early May, the Financial Post exhaled the following front page headline: “Data shows shift in cannabis culture”. According to StatsCan, the number of people buying cannabis illegally has declined by 13 percent in the past year. Now almost half of Canadian users purchase weed legally, up from 23 percent in 2018.  About 18 percent […]

When I was eleven, my little brother whupped me in a foot race at a Sunday School Picnic at Port Glasgow. I was flummoxed, flabbergasted, crestfallen. To this day, I remember the strength of these adjective-ridden emotions. I have an even stronger memory of my uncle coming up to me at the defeat, I mean, […]

If all goes according to Hoyle, there’s a new head-and-shoulders shot with this month’s column. I say “head-and-shoulders”, but in the newspaper business, we called it a “head shot”, an abbreviation that sounds as if reporter-photographers were snipers, when in reality most newshounds wrote far, far tougher than they ever lived. Of course the 2019 […]

During the first January blast, our daughters invited my lovely wife Nancy and I to join them and their children, at River Valley Tube Slide just off Highway 7 / Elginfield Road, close to St. Mary’s. My first reaction was negative. Saying no can come almost as naturally to a senior as it does to […]

You’re retired, and your friends have been telling you for years that you should write a book about the uproariously funny situations only a klutz like you could fall into, or the tales that have haunted your family for generations. Or you want to write the great Canadian novel, and isn’t it about time somebody […]

Now that OI’ Man Winter is technically just around the corner, here are some tips for us ol’ humans who are drivin’ in the sleet, snow and slush. Drive the lane you’re in. In St. Thomas, it’s astonishing to see how many seniors decide to pull an awkward move to the right to get out […]