I’m back home now, after a vacation there recently. That feeling was still there, as powerful as ever.

     Hiraeth, the Welsh call it. The nostalgia and yearning for the lost places of your past, a homesickness for a time you can no longer return to. Still, stubbornly, I remain attached to those places I have been, those I have known, and the times and places I have known them all in. The memories from so long ago crept back in, hiding around so many corners and […]

The very first thing I have to do is tell you about my friend Matt.  He is a major part of the story of how I got to here, although the moment of truth itself was merely a flip and a flash.

     I first met Matt at The Crime Lab, a small cocktail lounge he owned near Coal Harbour in downtown Vancouver, in 2000. The Crime Lab was situated in a tiny flatiron building built in the 1940’s, and was at once the site of a […]