So you’re retired. So what?

Originally published in Boomers & Beyond, March 2022 By Terry Carroll If we don’t look at our hands, or our faces in mirrors, or if we don’t attempt certain things physically, it’s easy for people around my age (early to mid-70s) to feel much younger than they are. There’s an old expression which covers this […]

The boy who never grew up

Originally published in the January 22, 2022 issue of Boomers & Beyond By Terry Carroll In late November, Frank McClarty, as slim and pale as his childhood siblings, arrived in a dream to solve some problem that didn’t exist in daylight. In sleep-land, he appeared as a young adult. In real life, he never had […]

Book your next adventure at the local mall

By Terry Carroll Late on a grey Saturday in early November of the second year of COVID, my lovely wife Nancy and I decided on a weekend adventure before we settled in for another streaming movie. Masked, we undertook the five-minute drive to Elgin Centre where we trudged the mall from food court to drugstore […]

Mowing down the climate change problem

Published in October, 2021 Boomers & Beyond By Terry Carroll“Why rich Canadians are all-in for the Liberals this time” blared a headline in the National Post nine days before the federal election in September. In part, the story said, “Among Canadians earning more than $200,000 a year, the single issue most likely to drive them […]

Everything happens for a reason? Maybe

By Terry Carroll On August 8 at 4:30 p.m., while helping my daughter and son-in-law move furniture into to a new house, I fell off a trailer onto a concrete curb and fractured a couple of ribs in my lower back.Anyone who’s ever had this knows what it’s like.Those tiny seconds changed the plans my […]

Rallying cry for Boomers

Published in September, 2021 Boomers & Beyond By Terry Carroll Please lock me awayAnd don’t allow the dayHere inside where I hideWith my lonelinessSo begins a song that became a Top Ten hit for Peter and Gordon in 1964. On YouTube, you can catch a video of the P&G duo with mop-top hair, matching garb […]

JT – stuck in the middle with you

In Crinan, the western Elgin County farming community where I was raised in the 1950s and 1960s, people made a point of being classless. Some farmers had more money, there were distinctions between men and women, a few people were more popular than others, but we regarded ourselves as common people, ordinary folk. When I […]

At census time, count my family out

In May, I received a letter of sorts from Anil Arora, Chief Statistician of Canada, addressed to “Dear Resident.” Directly under the large, bold words “2021 Census.’ Anil, or someone at StatsCan, had authorized the following in smaller bold type: “Complete your questionnaire by May 11, 2021.” The main definition of “questionnaire” offered by Merriam-Webster […]

Thwarted columnist sets up minor revenge

Late in 2010, I encouraged Duncan Watterworth to become the “last-word” contributor to Elgin This Month, a magazine I was publishing at the time. His first column was headlined “Satan made me do it … A song for those who knock at my door.” It concerns (a) two experiences with Jehovah’s Witnesses, (b) what Duncan […]