Rose's Cantina

One of my fondest childhood memories is sitting outside my Granny's farmhouse and squishing a bag of orange and white liquid together to make "margarine". It didn't occur to me at the time that I was making an edible oil product for the family to use to slather on sandwiches and toast. To me, it felt like some miraculous operation to make something out of nothing. I also loved sitting with my Grandpa Loyal and cleaning smelly old smelt that we had caught in the local crick. Or shelling peas on a sweltering July afternoon, and sucking up the tiny jewels with my extended tongue and feeling the burst as they popped in my mouth. I loved my grandparents, and my Uncle Vern, with whom we lived until they left this Earth over a six year period, exactly two years apart. Vern was a 50ish man-child whose dad had died in the Great War and was adopted by my grandfather, a widower who lost his first wife and one twin in childbirth. In the 20s and 30s, that was how blended ...

Like most fatherless daughters, I have a complicated relationship with Father's Day. As a young kid, I was embarrassed that I was the only person in my class who didn't have a father. In fact, I was so skittish on the subject that I actually lied and claimed my father was still alive, farming the land. That person, of course, was my grandfather who helped raise me. But it took me years to even talk about the man who left this world when I was only eight months old. I tried to avoid any situation which required the attendance of a dad. I skipped the annual Girl Guide Father-Daughter banquet. I prayed every year that we wouldn't have to make a Father's Day card in class. Fortunately, back in my childhood, people didn't make a fuss over dads who were seen as not being as needy as moms. Dads didn't require cards and flowers and chocolates. They just got a nice meal at home, or something. Because I was fatherless, I had a big void in my life to fill. I looked fo...

Embed from Getty Images On the day the planes hit the World Trade Center in New York, my entire view of the world changed. I had been going through some really rough stuff, trying to raise a small group of hellions who were out of control; desperately searching for work when there was none; and hanging on to a house I hated, one which I had bought irrationally post-divorce. It often felt like I had stepped in quick sand and it was all I could do to cling for dear life onto what was left of the solid ground. Every night, I would sit in the living room and stare at a tree in the middle of the green space behind my house, and imagine building a fort, and just going there to live. I wanted to be in a place where nobody could find me, not the collection agencies, or the ex, not even my beloved children. Instead, I just sat there with a bottle of wine in one hand, and a self-help book in the other. Then the planes hit and the entire world was turned upside down. My kids came r...

You never forget your first, right? Mine was a man who resembled a toad who forced me as a six-year-old to sit in his chair with a slobbering bulldog atop me while he chiseled and pulled my beloved baby teeth. I seemed to have a lot of cavities that needed to be filled, even though most of my later life was spent cavity-free. He was a welfare dentist so I assume he took advantage of a golden mouth.  He also scheduled me for two operations, one to remove my tonsils, and another to have my wisdom teeth removed, in the hospital, at the tender age of 15. That wasn't the worst of it. Even as a tiny tot, I recoiled as he pulled back his liver-like lips into a slimy smile and insisted that I hug him. Then he gave me a toy, as if to reward me for having to put my arms around his girth. Uh, just thinking about this eel today makes my skin crawl. My worst experience came after I broke my front teeth playing dodgeball in Grade Eight. I was literally in shock when I went to see hi...

Two years ago, her parents entrusted me with her care. Next week, I will hand her back to them, and she will enter the big, bad world of daycare. I'm sad. I can't lie. But it's time. Alas, she remains untoilet-trained, and continues to speak a combination of Russian and French with a hint of Hindi -- unless she wants peaches or supe. Then, her English is just fine. Oh yes, and she drinks more juice than water most days. I make no apologies. I am her grandmother, not her mother. And I've never been a particularly focused caregiver. When I need a nap I take one. So for a time every day, the iPad has been the nanny. Which might explain the Russian and the Hindi. And her fixation on ghosts. In my own defence, I kept her out of the hospital, though we did have a few close calls. Like the time she brought the occasional table down on her neck. Or the other time she tumbled down the stairs because a certain grandpa couldn't remember to close the...

Courtesy of Fred Bowering It's hard to believe a year has gone by since Ashley Simpson disappeared without a trace from her home in Salmon Arm, British Columbia. What a world we live in. In honor of our Ashley, I am posting some thoughts from her family. Please add your thoughts and prayers. If you have a little extra in the bank, perhaps you would consider contributing at Go Fund Me to help her father, John, who will soon be on the road back to Salmon Arm to look for her. God Bless. John Remembers: Well, Ash, my girl. It's been a long, very long year with so much confusion, heartache, pain and sorrow. One would think we would break, end all the drama that has been made since your disappearance. We walk the talk and breathe you every moment of our lives. Your sisters are all in a very bad spot with you gone and no answers as we all hope every day is that we will wake from this nightmare. Amanda Langlois Remembers: I can't believe it...

I am most grateful on Christmas Eve when my brood lumbers into our house, clutching presents. food, kids and dogs. The configuration changes every year; sometimes they have spouses, sometimes they don't. It always makes for an interesting family picture, that's for sure. For many years, Christmas Eve was full of friends. Now it's kids and spouses. Having three kids, you can always count on a crowd. Today, Stef arrived, with Belle, his year-old Bassett Hound, in tow. He'd dropped his presents walking over, and murmured that the hot sauce selection he'd bought for Jeff might have broken. Luckily, the Ghost Pepper Sauce was intact, and would revisit Jeff over, again and again. Stef is single this year, and has recently moved back into the neighborhood with Belle. We are happy to see him after a three-year girlfriend experiment that went sideways. He is always the ember to the flame, and I will always be happy to see his bright and shiny face. Next in the...

My granddaughters will never know their great grandpapa who died last month at the age of 95. Those who did know him would never forget him. If I'd written a Most Memorable Character for Reader's Digest , I would have written about the father of my children's father, Carlyle Gagnier. He truly was one of a kind. I wanted to get down a few memories for my grandkids in case they asked their parents about him one day. My kids were young the last time they saw him, only teenagers. They lost him to marital estrangement and it is a guilt I carry with me always. Here goes. Carlyle was born in February 24, 1921, the same day as my own sainted mother who passed away more than two decades ago. Carl was one of gaggle of Gagnier children including Patrick, Armand and Marquita. As the legend goes, his French Canadian father married his Irish mother who spoke no French whatsoever. Kathleen spent her life among the French not understanding anybody, including he...

Embed from Getty Images In eight weeks, give or take, we will be welcoming our second grandchild, another girl, who is giving my daughter more than a little trouble these days. Kennedy is growing like fescue grass on a Scottish golf course and that's caused problems. My daughter Marissa learned a few weeks ago that she has gestational diabetes and now has to test her blood sugar and give herself insulin shots. Thankfully, this kind of diabetes is treatable and won't hang around after the birth, but it's created a tricky living situations for Marissa who was hoping to experience the pre-natal gorge of all the food groups she's denied herself over the past few years. I've admired her discipline, and it hurts me to see her these days all blown up like Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit. She is swollen from head to toe -- even her tiny perfect nose has grown three sizes. She's virtually unrecognizable! But she's happy, and that's all that count...

We've got lots of people coming over for Canada Day today. No matter. Nothing can beat this. Happy Canada Day to all my peeps.

As I sat in the radio sound booth in downtown Ottawa, it was just me, alone with my thoughts. I was about tell a national CBC audience on DNTO about the time my husband took me on a flight to London as a farewell present before he left me standing in the Toronto airport while he boarded a flight to Bermuda to be with another women, who later became his wife and step-mother to my children. The episode runs today. Anna, the producer from Winnipeg, got on the line and we went over my story. She asked me a couple of questions. I felt slightly uncomfortable. "What?" I asked. "You don't believe me?" "It's not that we don't believe you. We just can't believe this could happen." I smiled to myself and thought, "you don't know the half of it sister." And then I began to tell the tale of the flight from Toronto to London that ruined my life more than 22 years ago, the flight that took all my hopes and dreams with it and lef...

#157436043 / gettyimages.com It's been nearly seven years since I've lived in the real world, gotten up, got dressed and went to a real job. This is not a life that I've chosen; it's a life that has chosen me. Since I've been on Plant Earth, I've only worked in real jobs for five years. Five years, and I'm coming up on 58. Not much to put on the old resume, is it? Itinerant. That's the word that comes to mind. How did this happen? Life happened, of course. I came out of journalism school with the usual expectations and sat myself down at a typewriter -- man, now this is really aging me -- and set about to have that exciting career that was promised me. I had that for three years, first as a part-timer, then as a full-time night reporter for the Ottawa Journal . Then the paper folded and I was out on my ass. I freelanced for the Ottawa Citizen for about year, writing a music column and all sorts of stories about going out in th...

My husband Scott put this video together way back in 2007 when my daughter Marissa was moving out of home. It's a wonderful look back at my life with my kids and the dogs. Made me tear up seeing Hannah as a puppy. If you have kids still at home, I hope you take the time to spend Family Day together. Before you know it, they'll be putting you in a home.  

This photograph was taken by my cousin Pat on a Polaroid camera when I was 23. I was home for Christmas with the swagger of a girl with her first -- and only as it turns out -- newspaper job. I had many stories to tell back then, about life on Parliament Hill, drinks with celebrity journalists, reporting on the issues of the day. Just a year out of journalism school, I had managed to get a ticket to the Big Show, but my relatives didn't care. They didn't want to hear about it. Sometimes I felt like an alien who had landed in Pleasantville where everything had stayed the same and people lived their lives in black-and-white while I was being colorized. My mom and my Aunt Alwyn were always listening, though, fascinated by the stories of a time and a place that they could only imagine. And how I loved to talk about my new life, for hours into the morning. Sometimes, we would stay up til 3 a.m. talking. At Christmas, especially, I miss those talks. Like man...

My neighbor had to move away, at the beginning of the holiday season, because she was being terrorized by her former crackhead roommate and his chums who kept breaking into her house, taking nothing, but leaving wet smears on her carpet. One night last fall, she realized someone had been in her bedroom while she and her daughter were in the next room. Being a seasoned member of the 'hood which we call Elmvale, I lent her my nine iron which she kept under her bed. On my advice, she also changed the locks. We felt bad for this fearless woman, a person about my age, who rented the house so she could let her grandkids sleep over. Recently, after a last straw visit by the Ottawa cops, she moved into a small apartment, driven from her home by the walking trash that had lived beside her and kitty-corner in the very same apartment building teenaged girls were held, against their will, for the purpose of prostitution. This is not a story about my sketchy neighborh...

On Friday, Scott presented me with my first Christmas present and I'm sharing it with you. It's a brand new (to me) desktop computer complete with Word for professional typists. That means I'll be able to chuck the old Student version of Word that has been the bane of my existence. I know, you're all saying: "Hey, Roseanne Rosanna Danna! I thought you were poor! How did you score the new tech?" The answer is this. Scott found a guy who refurbishes old government computers and sells them on Kijiji for, like, two hundred bucks. Oh you're skeptical? How can you possibly get a computer for two hundred bucks unless it fell off a truck in Gatineau somewhere?  It might have come from Idontgiveashitistan, for all I care. Who am I to look a gift horse? It's better than the six hundred dollar laptop I got from HP, the one that comes with a screen full of ads and free offers from other companies, the kind that gives you viruses unless you buy the vi...

Addicts are wily folk. In public, they are charmers, snakeoil salesmen, shape shifters, attracters of attention. Behind closed doors, they fall apart and decimate their families and relationships. Many of us who grew up in families gripped by addiction would rather see our mothers/fathers/spouses use rather than risk the consequences of seeing them live sober. We cower in closets. We mask our pain with headphones. For children and spouses of people who are alcoholics or drug addicts, sober is a chilling exercise. I was thinking about this when I saw Rob Ford retire to his mom's house in the wake of allegations that he was caught, by a Smartphone, smoking crack, peeing on buildings and walking among the good people of Toronto as a drooling idiot. Oh, my God, is it possible that there was an intervention afoot? Of course not, as Louis C.K. would say. Of course not, they've always enabled his antics before. But maybe. As a weird writer, survivor of paren...

In the end, I should have listened to my mother. And I shouldn't have trusted him, that's for sure. But the person I married, the person my friend Katie now refers to as "the bad man" became my everything, and then I became my nothing. Choosing love over career was a bad decision on my part. Having his children was an even worse one. "But look," said the bad man. "At least you have these beautiful children!" "Yeah," I said. "But I could have had these children with someone who didn't leave me." I was thinking about this conversation reading the New York Times this morning, a feature about women like me who "opted out," then, when their marriages fell apart, wanted to opt back in. I am one of those women, albeit a little older than the ones featured in the article. When I met the bad man, I was having a relatively successful career in Ottawa. Back in the 80s, before mandatory enforced bilingualism, I could ...

I pity the children who live in small spaces and have nowhere to hide from violence and abuse. Growing up on a six acre fruit farm, I found lots of spots to hide out during the day, but the dark, fragrant orchards were no place for a small child trying to escape madness. On the long nights when the fights raged, and I couldn't stand the yelling anymore, I would retreat to my mother's old car parked down the lane a far distance from the main house. Sometimes, I found peace sleeping in the doghouse with my beloved springer spaniel Susie who snuggled beside me. Nobody ever looked for me on those dark nights. They were too busy snapping beer caps and pointing fingers, too consumed with pacing and agitation. I don't know where my brothers were on these nights, I only know that I was alone with my fear and anxious thoughts. Sometimes I worried that when it finally went quiet, there would be no one left alive in the house. There were guns in the house, used fo...

Granny Crown broke her hip sneaking down to the basement trying to retrieve a beer, a fact she vehemently denied, but everyone knew to be true. Every night, it was her ritual to hobble down the rickety steps with her cane. None of us ever understood why a 74-year-old woman would take her life into her hands that way, especially considering any of us kids would have gladly helped her out. But she was kind of a mystery, an old dame who kept a lot of secrets, such as why my Uncle Vern was a 10-year-old living in a 52-year-old body. "He just never grew up," she shrugged, slurping the last bit of cold tea from the stove. Pointe finale. We were simply expected to accept anything she said at face value. I felt bad for Granny when she broke her hip and was carted away to the hospital for a lengthy stay, but I soon got over my sadness. That's because Granny always saved me her piece of hospital cake, my reward for visiting her every single night for eight months. ...