If you’ve ever closed down a restaurant, you know the feeling. The lights dim. Chairs go up. The staff starts wiping down the counter. And somehow you’re still there, laughing with the same people you came in with, long after the plates are cleared. For me, that happens a few times a year at Marcello’s, a pizza place at Dufferin and St. Clair. Four of us, Laurance, George, Jamie, and me, who once worked together in a drafty brick office in a neighbourhood our moms would have warned us about. That office is long gone, but the friendship isn’t. We named our group chat TAK Talk, after a Polish colleague who punctuated everything with “tak” — yes. The name stuck. Every friend group has one of those threads: the inside jokes, the memes, the shorthand that only makes sense to your crew. That’s one of my tables. Another is Alison’s Christmas table, loud, multicultural, joyful chaos. I married into it. I’m the only white guy there. Every year someone teases me about the time I overpaid for fancy spiced nuts trying to impress everyone. Now it’s tradition. When one friend recently lost her grandmother at 101, nobody needed instructions. We […]

If you walk into my office, your eyes will probably land on the shelves. Rows of books I’ve collected over the years sit alongside a honeybee painting, a Lego DeLorean, a vintage-style Lego typewriter, and a little flip clock my wife once found after I mentioned how much I loved it. There’s also a Made to Stick copy that shaped how I think about communication—and a Hallmark Jesus doll my sister and nieces gave me when I finished my doctorate. Equal parts cheesy and thoughtful, which, if I’m honest, is my favorite combination. Every shelf tells a story. The DeLorean? Nostalgia and possibility—a reminder that imagination should go somewhere, preferably at 88 miles per hour. Statler and Waldorf, the Lego Muppets? My friend Brad and I keep them on our desks as proof that sarcasm counts as a love language. And then there’s Grimace, the jolly purple blob from my McDonald’s days, laser-focused on joy and milkshakes. Most of us have something like that—a shelf, a wall, a box—where the artifacts of our lives quietly collect. A friend of mine has her husband’s childhood microscope mounted in a collage of art and objects. It’s beautiful, not just because it looks […]

In the corner of my parents’ living room sits a brown leather Lay-Z-Boy. My dad’s chair. You always knew when he was in it. The leather would sigh, the footrest would clunk, and tucked under the cushion were brochures for Dodge minivans. He never told us not to sit in it, we just didn’t. It was his spot. After he passed, the chair sat empty. Not as a rule, just out of respect. Eventually someone sat in it again, and it didn’t feel wrong. It felt like life quietly making room for someone new. Almost everyone I talked to had their version of that chair. A squeaky recliner. A couch corner no one else dared claim. These chairs aren’t just furniture, they’re memory holders. Anchors for routines, relationships, and sometimes grief. At our house now, we’ve got two gray stools at the kitchen counter. We pictured morning coffees, quiet chats, fresh baking under one of those diner-style glass domes. But they mostly sit empty. The counter’s a drop zone for mail and chargers. We gather in the other room instead. Those chairs? They’re not failures. They’re reminders of the things we meant to make time for. Some chairs we sit […]

For his 50th birthday, my brother-in-law made something quietly brilliant. A playlist with one song for every year he’s been alive. But it wasn’t just a greatest hits list. He arranged it like a story. A life set to music. He and a few friends swapped their own “50 songs for 50 years” playlists, and I still find myself queuing his up on long drives or lazy Saturday mornings. It’s more than music. It’s a glimpse into who he is. That idea, the soundtrack of a life, got me thinking about mine. Not just the songs I liked, but the ones that helped shape me. That connected me to people and moments I still carry. So in this first episode of *Turning 50*, I go back to where it started. For me, that’s 1989. My sister’s Sinead O’Connor cassette. Conversations on a cottage beach about album tracks that never made it to the radio. Then came high school band rooms turned into impromptu Nirvana jam sessions, friendships rekindled by obscure band shirts, and cassette swaps at youth camps. And of course, the festivals. The sweat, the sun, the windows down drives, and the arguments about which band stole the show. […]