I wrote recently about falling down a Scandinavian rabbit hole. In fact, I’ve been reading my way into multiple burrows, picking up old books and thinking about once-famous lives and adventures, some of them wounded and raw. Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, a Swedish Canadian ornithologist and writer. Her cousin Karen Blixen—pen name, Isak Dinesen, the […]
I fell down a rabbit hole after reading Merilyn Simonds’ excellent biography, Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay. It tells the story of a Swedish Canadian woman, an aristocrat who led a life of unprecedented twists and turns. She married her White Russian husband while working as a Red Cross nurse […]
Andrea Barrett’s new collection of short stories opens, “The cover is faded olive, not flashy; not the first thing you’d pull from a bookshelf.” Maybe Barrett and the book’s designer had a bit of fun, since the cover of her collection, Natural History, features a fine selection of greens, browns and purples against a slightly faded […]
I’m still spending a few minutes every few days going through old notebooks, the ones I always carry with me, transferring phone numbers and email addresses. This one contains an entry from the waiting room of a medical office. A neurology unit, the note says, so we would have gone there for one of my […]
I’ve been going through old notebooks so I can harvest phone numbers. These are the notebooks I keep in my bag and toss in a drawer when they’re scribbled full. In one, I wrote down a conversation between two men in a restaurant. True story. “How’s Gillian?” “She’s fine. She’s busy. Daycare. Lessons…” “Do you […]
The suspect in the death of long-time CBC journalist Michael Finlay turned himself in to police this morning at Toronto’s downtown 52 Division. Robert Robin Cropearedwolf, 43, later appeared via video conference at College Park Court. He has been charged with manslaughter. I haven’t written a paragraph like that since Michael and I were both […]
Fort Macleod banker John Cowdry was nicknamed Sorreltop Jack for the reddish-brown colour of both his hair and his horse. He got the nickname from his friend, Crop Eared Wolf, Makoyi-Opistoki, who in 1900 would become chief of the Blood nation of the Blackfoot confederacy. I wrote last time about J. Edward Chamberlin’s memoir, The Banker and the […]
Crop Eared Wolf was a small man. He’d been shot in the leg in 1865 when he was about 20 years old on a raid against the Cree, and it left him limping. The injury also meant he rode with long stirrups the way white settlers on the Plains did, the Northwest Mounted Police officers […]
Please see the latest update on this story here: https://lesleykrueger.com/sentence-hearing-in-michael-finlays-death/ Police have released the name of a suspect wanted for manslaughter in the death of our friend, Michael Finlay. Michael died on January 31, a week after he was randomly assaulted on Danforth Avenue in Toronto. The suspect has been named as Robert Robin Cropearedwolf, […]
Our friend, Michael Finlay, died yesterday after being taken off life support. As I’ve written, he was randomly attacked on the Danforth in Toronto last week by an unknown person who pushed him over. I didn’t publish Michael’s name at first at the request of his family. But he was a long-time journalist with many […]
Update January 31, 2023: After an MRI showed no brain activity, our friend is being taken off life support. We’re gutted. I hope that re-publishing this photo will help identify the person suspected of assaulting him. It’s so ironic. All his working life, our friend tried to help society’s disadvantaged and struggling and lost. Now […]
I broke my ankle on the winter solstice, which I hope means it will grow stronger as the days grow lighter and longer. No dramatic hockey accident, although I usually play hockey twice a week. The sad fact is, I tripped while carrying too many Christmas presents down the stairs. As I fell, my ankle […]