Michael Atkins

I made a brief return to the homeland (Nova Scotia) last week for a little business and family. A cousin welcomed me for tea. She apologized for the lack of biscuits and explained her car had been stuck in the driveway since Feb. 28.

I’m lucky. I have a number of friends and colleagues whom I have known for many years.

Politics is always potentially crazy and fraught with intrigue. And why not. It’s about power and power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. The curious thing is trying to figure out what it is that determines success or failure.

I was in Ottawa a while back to celebrate Christmas with our employees at Conceptshare Inc. and found myself face to face with the new and rapidly expanding “sharing economy.

My friend died a few weeks ago battling for life the way he lived it: full throttle. I met Ron in the fall of 1973. I was the editor of the Manitoulin Expositor. I didn’t know anyone in Sudbury and needed an accountant. Someone recommended Ron.

My love affair with Northern Ontario started in a small dingy office in the Port Arthur Post Office next door to Michael Gravelle, our current minister of Northern Development and Mines. It was 1971.

I bought my first denim grocery bag the other day in Sault Ste. Marie. Not only does it match my jeans and carry vegetables and my favourite Häagen-Dazs peanut butter ice cream, it has a pocket on the outside for car keys.

I still think about apple fritters. Actually, whenever I drive by a Timmy’s I think of them and find my mouth watering at the thought. They are wonderful.

When I was in my teens in the 1960s, I used to steal away from Don Mills, Canada’s first completely planned and boring community, and go downtown to Yorkville in Toronto where something really seemed to be happening.

It’s been a long time since I took a little time out waiting for the old swing bridge at Little Current, Manitoulin Island to grant me access to this fantastic “largest freshwater lake island in the world.