It’s been a busy stretch and I’m tired. But I’m very grateful because it’s the best kind of tired. The kind of tired you choose.
The kind where your face still has a warm glow on a cool summer’s evening after spending most of the day in the fresh air and sunshine. The kind where your eyes burn in the back of their sockets from too many late nights catching up with family and friends and listening to music under the stars. The kind where you feel physically tired from leading an active life.
When I was working, I was tired all the time but it was the worst kind of tired.
The kind where your mind was frantic and stressed, thinking of a million things at once. The kind from running non-stop from the moment you woke up until the moment you flopped onto the couch at night in an exhausted heap.
The kind where your back and shoulders ached from sitting in a chair for eight hours a day, five days a week. The kind where you became cross-eyed and glassy-eyed from staring at a screen until your eyes start seeing double from the eye strain. The kind of tired no one chooses.
This week’s #HappyAct is to choose the best kind of tired. Or just screw it, and go for a nap.
Ed. note: the picture above is of me and my friend Cathy Christmas at the Mackinnon Brothers Back to the Farm musical festival. Cathy was at two of the same music events as I was this past week so I’m sure she’s the best kind of tired right now too.
This is a big week in Kingston. It’s the tenth anniversary of The Tragically Hip’s final concert and the limestone city has been buzzing with Forever Hip tributes and events all summer long.
I remember the first time I saw the Hip. It was at Ontario Place in 1991, the days when acts were free with admission to the grounds, and you’d spread out on the grass under the stars. There was an elderly Chinese women in front of us, and as soon as The Hip started playing, she started gyrating and dancing, her arms and legs flailing from her tiny body like she was possessed. That was the power of The Hip.
Fast forward to August 20, 2016. The Hip’s emotional final concert. Armed with will and determination and grace, too, frontman Gord Downie captivated a nation and gave the performance of his cancer-ending life, his poise, strength and spirit emanating from the stage. Courage, my word.
The Hip will forever be our hometown boys. VisitKingston has a list of all the Forever Hip events happening this week. Must sees are Choir, Choir, Choir featuring the songs of the Hip in market square this Thursday at 7 with special guests Miss Emily, The Abrams and Abby Stewart. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the lads shows up to join the singalong. And you won’t want to miss the showing of their final concert on Saturday night. It will be a night to remember and to honour our hometown boys.
If you’re from out of town and planning to come to Kingston this week for Hip celebrations, here are some Hip spots to check out:
The Hip sign at Slush Puppy Place
The new mural of the band opposite Hotel Dieu hospital on Brock Street
Music from miles around, a free exhibit in City Hall sponsored by Empire Life chronicling the musical roots of the limestone city, with Hip artifacts including Gord’s hat from their final performance
Gord Edgar Downie pier
The commemorative stone in market square with the lyrics, “Everybody was in it for miles around”
If patience is a virtue, then we are at risk of transforming into a generation of sinners.
If you live with teenagers or twentysomethings, you’ll know what I mean. Put the lid back on the toothpaste tube? They ain’t got no time for that. Zip up a bag of Pretzel chips? That’s takes a nanosecond too long, time that could be spent watching endless reels or snap chatting their friends. So what if the $8 bag of chips go stale. The bank of Mom and Dad will pay for it.
And don’t get me started on tech. Since I’m pretty good with software every now and then, one of my kids will ask for my help with something on their computer. I take my time working the problem, navigating through menus, and usually figure it out, but after thirty seconds, they complain that I’m taking too long and rip the computer out of my hands. They’ve learned it’s better to leave the room and do something else while I figure it out.
I can’t blame them really. They are the “instant generation”. They’ve grown up being able to download music or movies on demand, order an item and have it show up on their doorstep the next day, and talk to someone 24-7 when they need help.
And as much as I like to blame my kids for everything, I have to admit it’s not just them. Everyone seems less patient these days. On the roads. Waiting in line at fast food outlets. Even in conversations.
This is a problem. When an entire society or culture becomes less patient, it tends to be less kind. Less empathetic. Less caring. In our rush to move on to the next best thing, we forget to see and appreciate what’s in front of us.
Impatience can also lead to errors in judgement. We don’t take the time to get all the facts, understand the implications of decisions and consider alternatives.
This week’s #HappyAct is to take a deep breath, and find a little patience.
And for you Ted Lasso fans out there, here’s Jason Sudeikis playing the water bottle and singing Guns N’ Roses’ Patience at Thundergong 2020. Season 4 of Ted Lasso is now streaming on AppleTV.
Some days I feel like Snow White, sweeping and swirling the dust and dander away in my tiny rustic cottage tucked in the woods as the chipmunks, squirrels and birds flit and fly around me, waiting for my three dwarves, Dopey, Grumpy, and Sleepy to come home (guess who is which).
I usually listen to music when I clean the house–Great Big Sea is my go-to playlist, but the other day my sleeping beauty Grace was still asleep, so I had to work quietly.
I found myself whistling while I worked.
It’s almost impossible to feel sad when you whistle. As the song Whistle While You Work from Snow White goes, “When hearts are high, the time will fly, so whistle while you work”.
Grumpy Dave is a master whistler. He could whistle The Flight of the Bumblebee or Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony while drinking water and dancing a jig.
I, on the other hand, am a terrible whistler. I can never decide whether I should suck or blow (tsk, tsk, people, keep it clean) and when sound does manage to escape my mouth, it is breathy, pitchy and comes in spurts like water spewing from a fountain.
Whistling is a great way to pass the time, especially when you’re working. Of course, if you work in an open office environment, you may want to refrain and save your rhapsodic warbling for home, unless you want to invite heavy office supplies being hurled at you.
This week’s #HappyAct is to whistle while you work, or whistle any old tune.
Editor’s note: The song “Whistle While You Work” was written by Frank Churchill and Larry Morey for the 1937 Disney animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It became emblematic as a song of hope for people during the Great Depression. Watch the full clip above to experience the Disney magic and bring a smile to your face. And if you were keeping track, Grace is Sleepy, Dave is Grumpy, which by the process of elimination makes Clare Dopey.
At my last writer’s class, my friend Dallis shared a wonderful story recalling the imaginary worlds she lived in as a child.
She wrote, “With my thoughts and dreams alone, I can obtain anything I want.” The final line in the piece she shared as she looked back on her childhood years was, “My internal flight to freedom continues to enrich my life and within its comforting landscape, the child I was lives on.”
Her piece engendered a very interesting discussion about the imaginary worlds we create and live in as children and adults.
Some of the greatest thinkers, inventors and artists in the history of time lived in imaginary worlds.
Picasso said, “Everything you can imagine is real”. Albert Einstein believed, “Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”
Any fiction writer will tell you their brains spend a good chunk of their waking and yes, sometimes even sleeping existence, living in an imaginary world.
Imagination is an important tool for adults. It can help you come up with creative ideas and solutions to problems, see things in a new perspective, motivate you and it keeps life interesting. It can also build resilience and help you be happy.
And yet, we are taught to suppress our imaginary worlds as we age. As my friend Mo said in the discussion afterwards, living a life in reality is super imposed on us. We all have an inner life and these imaginary worlds enrich our lives.
Someone said they read somewhere that if you imagine yourself lying on a beach, it is just as good as lying on a beach.
I’m not 100% sold on this theory. It’s nice to picture yourself lying on a beach, but it will never replace the feeling of the warm sun on your body, the sound of the crashing waves and the sights of dolphins breaching the water in the distance. Still, it is a welcome escape from reality.
Reality is highly overrated. This week’s #HappyAct is to embrace your inner world and let your imagination roam free.
I have now lived more than half of my life in this beautiful corner of eastern Ontario, calling the area north of Kingston home. Dave and I often say it was the smartest decision we ever made (including having kids!)
And yet, I’m often astonished how many people I meet from southern Ontario or Quebec who have never been to downtown Kingston. They’ve stopped here travelling between Toronto and Montreal. But their only impression of our fair city is a plethora of gas stations and fast food restaurants off the 401.
Kingston is, in a word, simply…wonderful. From its vibrant patios and waterfront, to its historic buildings and world-class tourist attractions, thriving arts and music scene, and festivals all summer long, it delights all ages. So in the spirit of Destination Canada and travelling local this year*, I invite you to explore Kingston this summer. Here is my top ten list for things to do in the limestone city.
Watch the Queen’s Golden Gaels football team, hot off their amazing 2025 season take on their rivals at Richardson Stadium in August or September. Our newly rebuilt stadium (in 2016) is a true gem. Catch some rays, have a beer and cheer on the Gaels to victory.
Do a haunted walk. Kingston has many haunted buildings (I worked in one—the Empire Life historic building). Hear the grisly and ghostly tales and admire the architecture as you ramble through some of our wonderful old neighbourhoods.
Tour the SS Kewatin, the beautiful steam passenger vessel older than the titanic at the Great Lakes Museum. Kingston was lucky enough to secure this grand old dame in 2023. I haven’t toured her yet—it’s on my list for this summer.
Movies in the Square: Still one of my favourite things to do on a Thursday night in the summer. Downtown Kingston will be announcing their line-up soon.
Stroll or bike along the waterfront. Most people stick to Confederation Basin near city hall. Venture further west to Battery Park, City Park, the walkways behind the Tett Centre (stop at the Juniper Café for a coffee or cold beer) towards Lake Ontario Park.
The downtown is a hub of free music, festivals and events in the summer months. My recommendations: HomeGrown Live featuring all local performers this Saturday, May 2 (get there early—all the venues get packed as the day goes on!), Art after Dark later this month and Buskers Rendezvous in July. Hot off the presses: Kingston has replaced its popular BluesFest with a new festival called The RoadTrip Music Festival on September 12, 2026.
Take the free ferry from Kingston to Wolfe Island and listen to some live music and have a drink at the Wolfe Island Hotel or spend the day at Big Sandy Bay Beach ($20 per person and a kilometre hike in)
Fort Henry is always fun to visit, but elevate your experience by taking in one of their special events or sunset ceremonies. Plan to have a beer at the battery bar overlooking Lake Ontario and Kingston—one of the best views around. Admission to the fort is free for kids 17 and under with the Canada Strong Pass.
Number ten is a toss up between hiking at Lemoine’s Point, and exploring the streets of Barriefield, a heritage village. If you choose Barriefield, be sure to stop into the Frontenac County Schools Museum, a quaint one-room school house.
BONUS Number eleven! Admission is free to Bellevue House, the home of Sir John A. Macdonald from June 19 to September 7 as part of the Canada Strong pass again this year.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t urge you to spend at least one day hiking, fishing, or biking on one of our beautiful trails or lakes in South Frontenac where I live.
This week’s #HappyAct is to come to Kingston and spend a few days this summer. For all my friends from out of town, consider this your invite to come visit us. I’d be happy to play tour guide for you!
Queen’s Golden Gaels playing at Richardson Stadium
Watching Wicked last summer in Market Square
When Dave’s cousins Alison and David visited last summer from BC, we had to take their picture in the Kingston sign!
Here’s a philosophical question for our omniprescient digital world: should you believe what you see online if it makes you happy?
The online world is now a dangerous minefield of falsehoods, fiction and fakes thanks to artificial intelligence, disreputable news sites, content creators and citizen journalism. AI has amplified this trend, creating a wild wild west frontier of fake news. What do you believe any more?
Maybe it’s not as important to know what to believe, as it is to know how the content you consume makes you feel. If it makes you happy, maybe we allow ourselves the grace and the joy to believe in it. If it makes you sad, angry or anxious, don’t believe it and stop reading it.
A simplistic theory fraught with perils, perhaps. But there are precedents. H.G. Wells 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, where listeners believed aliens were invading the earth. JibJab videos of your co-workers dressed as elves dancing to Jingle Bells. Cheap Rolex watches and Gucci purses you can buy for $15. A child’s belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. If it brings you joy, go ahead and believe.
Of course, it’s better if you know what you are watching is fake. One of my favourite fake AI video series on Instagram are the absurd_ai_videos of two toddlers, Kai and Bella who travel the world, rating the places they visit and their experiences out of 10. The videos are obviously fake (it helps when ai is in the handle name) and the posts obviously sponsored by brands, but I don’t care, I believe them. You can even ask the toddlers to craft a custom message for your Aunt Charlotte’s 80th birthday for a price. Witty. Creative. Brilliant marketing. I give them a 10 out of 10.
Who hasn’t seen and loved animali.tr’s hilarious chimpanzee playing the cheese grater and pots and pans in the kitchen? Or cats cooking spaghetti in the kitchen? Guaranteed to make you smile every time. I think the monkey’s real and they trained him to play percussion.
And I’m constantly amazed and amused by the plethora of videos starring the Toddler in Chief. Maybe fiction is more real than fact.
A massive caveat. You must apply the happiness measuring stick with caution. If a beautiful woman by the name of Cameron Diaz connects with you online and agrees to be your girlfriend making you feel happy, but needs money for her grandmother’s surgery, let your common sense override your desire for happiness.
And as long as we live in a world where wars rage, there will always be content we see and consume that is very, very real that makes us angry, sad and anxious. We need to believe it to learn from our mistakes and our past.
This week’s #HappyAct is to apply a healthy dose of skepticism to what you read and see online, and believe it if it makes you happy. Just beware of the dangers.
Social prescribing is a relatively new philosophy and practice in health care. It involves health practitioners writing prescriptions for their patients to participate in social or physical activities, just like a prescription for traditional medicine.
Instead of asking, “what’s the matter with you?”, health care professionals ask, “what matters to you?” to prescribe activities that help patients build strong community connections improving their overall health.
The United Kingdom has been at the leading edge of social prescribing. In 2023, doctors in the UK wrote more than one million social prescriptions for patients to participate in social, cultural and nature activities. These patients saw their doctors 40% less than the regular population saving the health care system $2,400 per person.
Social prescribing is starting to take off in Canada too. A University of Toronto researcher started the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing (CISP) in 2022 in response to the after effects of COVID-19. A national organization anchored by the Canadian Red Cross, it connects people and practices, shares knowledge and gathers data to influence policies to strengthen health and community care. There’s even a Social Prescribing Day in Canada (March 19) and week, filled with lectures and events.
I have to confess when I first read about social prescribing, I was a bit put out. Have we really come to a point where we need to rely on health care professionals to tell us to get out of the house and get active or be social? There is enough strain on the health care system already. I’m pretty sure my doctor has better things to do than discuss whether signing up for a watercolours class, drum circle or swimming lessons would improve my mental or physical health.
Some of these programs however can be expensive, even cost prohibitive for individuals. One solution is for insurance companies to offer a certain amount of coverage each year ($200-$400) as part of their benefits program for employees to participate in these types of programs, similar to the amounts allocated for physio, massage and chiropractic services.
Another solution is for employers as part of their health and wellness offerings to subsidize these programs. It’s not as crazy as you think. Good employers now offer a wide array of perks or provide financial support for programs and services that contribute to their employees’ wellbeing, such as gym memberships, fitness equipment, and educational courses.
As someone who writes, I was interested to find out that one of the organizations CISP has partnered with is the Writers Collective of Canada, which runs between 20-30 free workshops a week in major cities across Canada.
I can attest to the great value, friendship and social connection I’ve discovered through the writer’s and badminton groups I belong to through the Kingston Seniors Association.
And it’s not just seniors who can benefit from social prescribing. According to CISP, social prescribing can result in 3,900 fewer cases of adolescent depression and 3,500 years of additional schooling completed by Canadian youth aged 15-17 experiencing signs of depression.
This week’s #HappyAct is to sign up for a new activity and write your own prescription for happiness–give your doctor the day off.
In March 2025, The Hudson’s Bay Company filed for creditor protection, marking the demise of this country’s oldest retailer and the end of the department store era in Canada.
As schoolchildren, we learned about the early history and legacy of The Hudson’s Bay Company. Founded in 1670, the company was granted a royal charter by the King of England to conduct sole trade and commerce in the area known as Hudson’s Bay, giving them a monopoly on the lucrative fur trade throughout much of English Canada.
For centuries, The Bay has been a part of our cultural fabric. Now, you too can own a piece of this storied company’s past.
Heffel Auction House is holding an online auction of Hudson’s Bay memorabilia and assets with bidding open until January 27, 2026. You can see all the items up for auction here.
I assumed most of the items would be rare and expensive works of art in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but was pleasantly surprised to find most of the items were affordable.
Interested in an HBC decorative canoe paddle with the SS Beaver emblazoned on it? It can be yours for $700 (all bids stated are at the time of writing). Or how about a model of the tallship Nonesuch for $1,500? These are just some of the treasures you can find in the HBC Ephermera section. Or maybe you would prefer a decorative pocket watch for $400, commemorative sword for $1,600, a beaver pelt cheque for $500, or the map pictured above for $1,600.
The lots include coins, soapstone carvings and an entire collection of iconic Hudson Bay blankets, ranging from $50 to $3,750.
There are also two art sections, one of Inuit art and one of fine art, featuring works by well-known Canadian artists like Kenojuak Ashevak, Robert Bateman, and Alex Colville. I’m tempted to bid on this piece below called “He Guards the Peace” by David M. General, current bid of $50.
One thing you won’t find on the online auction is the original Royal Charter. It was auctioned off in late 2025, bought by the Thomson and Weston families for a cool $18 million. The families plan to donate it to a Canadian museum so all Canadians can see it.
This week’s #HappyAct is to take buying Canadian to heart and own a piece of Canadian history. Happy bidding!
Ed. note: if you are a fan of Indigenous art, be sure to make a trip to the McMichael Gallery in Kleinburg before March 29, 2026 to catch the exhibit, Early Days: Indigenous Art at the McMichael.
Sometimes when I get down on my writing, I think of Frank McCourt.
McCourt is best known for his novel Angela’s Ashes which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 (one of the most depressing books of all time). What’s interesting about McCourt is he didn’t start writing until he was in his 60’s and published Angela’s Ashes when he was 66.
I read another of his autobiographies, ‘Tis which chronicled his time teaching in the New York City public school system for 30 years. McCourt said while he was working, he had no energy and brain power left at the end of the day to tackle creative writing projects. It was only when he retired did he find the drive and creativity to write his series of award-winning novels.
I was reminded of this yesterday when Dave sent me a text that said “It’s never too late” with a link to an article in last week’s The Kingston Whig-Standard. The article was about a first-time author who at the age of 98 just published a book of poetry about living at Kingsbridge Retirement Community.
Lois Tryon started writing poems to while away the time, and the staff at the retirement residence had the idea to insert her poems in the daily menus to inspire her fellow residents.
This week’s #HappyAct is to remember it’s never too late. If you’re feeling like you should be further ahead in life, or in achieving your goals, keep at it. Here are some more examples of people who achieved greatness later in life:
Colonel Harland Sanders of KFC fame was 62 when he franchised his famous secret chicken recipe and opened his first restaurant
Julia Child didn’t publish her groundbreaking cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking until she was 50.
Ray Kroc was a milkshake device salesman until at the age of 52 when he bought McDonalds and turned it into the world’s largest franchise
Henry Ford was 45 when he created the Model T in 1908
The great Morgan Freeman didn’t make it big in acting until he was in his 50s.
Photo of Lois Tryon by Elliott Ferguson, Kingston Whig-Standard
Happy Act 