An important Valentine message, courtesy of His influencer

CARLO'S A CUTIE ALRIGHT: What's not to love?

Earlier this week--and for reasons I'll explain in a minute--I was researching the newest appointment to the Vatican's roster of saints, namely, Carlo Acutis--patron of the Internet--when I uncovered a bit of intel that might bring down a multi-billion-dollar industry.

I am of course referring to the Valentine's Day business.

This is serious. And I apologize in advance for any broken hearts that result.

But at this point, you're like, "Hold on a second. Did you just say 'patron of the Internet'????" 

I did. And there's a darn good reason I was looking him up and why he is interrupting this important breaking news story.

Thursday I was lucky enough to attend the annual Canadian Online Publishing Awards, held at the Dim Sum King in downtown Toronto. The event celebrates some of the finest Internet-based journalism in the country. I was a judge in the 2025 competition.

I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool to tell the awards giver-outers about the cool new guardian angel of social media? A saint they can call their own! Maybe even name an award after him, like Oscar."

In other words, I was doing serious journalism.

For the moment, all you need to know about Carlo is this: 

He was born in Monza, Italy. Carlo was on this side of eternity from May 3, 1991 until he died of a horrible ailment called acute promyelocytic luekemia on Oct. 12, 2006. (Oct.12 is his feast day.) He spent so much of his short time here using tech to spread the Word in all manner of social media formats with such miraculous results--Vatican saint people say--that Carlo the kid became Carlo the very first millennial to be canonized, on  Sept 2, 2025.

VALENTINE'S DAY. MASSACRED: One upside
is,  Al Capone's dreadful VD-memory... cancelled!

Check out his website.

By now you're asking, "What has this got to with Valentine's Day?"

In doing my research, I learned this: 

In I969, the Vatican removed Valentine and a couple of dozen other saints from the general church calendar.  

While they didn't take away Val's saint licence, he in effect lost his day job. Read about it here.

I know my theory would hold up in court. 

It's not easy being a messenger.  And I apologize in advance to Hallmark, chocolatiers and manufacturers of tacky lingerie everywhere. 

As far as I can tell, Feb. 14 is no longer St. Valentine's Day. End of story. Full stop.

I warned you this was big.

And I am only one man. I'm hardly in a position to come up with a remedy to what I foresee is a huge fallout. 

The only thing I can think is, forget about this one day. 

Cover your bases. Show your love, with all your might, every day of the year.

I'm sure Carlo would give this idea a like. 

2025: The days of your

SURVIVING A CRASH COURSE: The bike story could have had a far worse ending.

My daughter Ria asked what my favourite moment of 2025 was.

My first response?

"Walking away from a motorcycle crash was pretty awesome. How many people get to do that?"

Publishing a very warmly received book of stories wasn't bad either.

Neither was enjoying my day job and the people I work with all week.

I'm alive and healthy in one of the most comfortable societies in the world in the absolute best time in history. With an insanely fun family.

Is this barfy enough for you yet? I'm not done.

2025 was a standout year for me.

But a favourite moment? That had to be Saturday., Dec. 13, at 1:30 in the afternoon. 

THE LIKE BUG: The only car that makes
people smile and punch one another.

My wife Helena and I were in our 2016 Beetle travelling from Toronto to my hometown of Sudbury for a Christmas dinner hosted by my sister Bertholde. 

Of course it was snowing and except for a few overconfident types in 4x4s, traffic was just creeping along. But welcome to central Ontario in mid winter.

Helena and I were discussing the words "you're" and "your".

 

Helena has a masters degree in speech and language pathology from the University of Toronto so she knows a thing or two about articulation and hearing. She suggested that even though one might think the words "you're" and "your" are pronounced the same, there's actually a difference and that we can detect the distinction if we listen closely enough.

I didn't agree.

 

So we tried an experiment.

Her idea, folks.

I'm paraphrasing but it went something like this. Helena: "I'm going to think a sentence containing either 'your' or 'you're,' but I'm only going to say that word out loud. And then you guess which one I'm using."

Are you still with me?

 

I barely know how to transcribe what happened next. Bear with me.

Helena: "Silence silence silence silence your [or you're] silence silence. Which one was it?" 

Peter: "You are?"

H: "You're right."

DATING OURSELVES: Me and Helena
in our pre-broken-oven days.

P: "You are."

H: "What?"

M: "You said 'you're."

H: "Okay your turn."

P: "Your."

We probably covered 60 kilometres with this important experiment. And it's way harder than you think to just "think" most of  a sentence but say only one of the words out loud.  

Turns out Helena was (duh!) right. There is a teensy weensy difference in tone between you're and your. 

We then tried a few similar words and only stopped when

I told Helena about the lady in the delivery room who was shouting "Don't! Won't! Can't!" and the doctor said "Not to worry. Those are just contractions." 

Best moment of the year? Why not?

We weren't talking about why our three grown children Ewa, Ria and Michel have all taken to living in the boonies; Ewa on Vancouver Island, Ria on Manitoulin and Michel 15 minutes north of Weber's Burgers. We weren't discussing the rising cost of cheese and apples; we weren't talking about the food trap epidemic that makes us nervous when we're running out of toothpicks; we weren't describing aches or medicine or steps we should be taking to replace our aging Bosch oven that has a cracked burner. 

We were having the serendipitous kind of baggage-free conversation people enjoy when they're dating. 

If you don't understand why such a moment could be the highlight of a year, you haven't been married  long enough.

I hope you're enjoying the first week of 2026 as much as yours truly is.

 

Mining your pease and qeues

JOINED AT THE WORDLE:
Rose Rice and the author,
back before Wordle or colours were invented.  

"Ask your friend Tracy."

The speaker was my cousin Roseanne Rice. (I know. Her name Rose Rice sounds like the fancy car, the one that's known for not making any sound! Haha.) 

Roseanne was referring to Tracy Bennett, the Wordle Editor at the New York Times. I'd asked Rose if she thought today was the first time in Wordle history that the word started with .. oh never mind...but that's when Roseanne advised I consult Ms Bennett.

Tracy Bennett's not really my friend. 

We've never met. For all I know, by the time I post this, she might have been promoted. Maybe now Tracy Bennett oversees six-letter words. Haha. 

That's a very good joke. Tracy Bennett works at the New York Times; arguably the finest newspaper on the planet. Motto: "No slouches need apply." Thinking about Ms Bennett's skill level brings to mind the expression, "she has probably forgotten more about editing than you'll ever know. Peter."

Imagine how many people benefit from Bennett's deft Wordle work. Two years ago I was in the All That Jazz coffee shop near my house. I turned to the woman behind me, whom I had never seen before and without any introduction, asked, "Get your Wordle this morning?"

As if she'd been expecting the question, the stranger immediately started in about how close that morning's answer was to her go-to opening word. 

Me, I don't use a standard opening word. I have no "system." In any part of my life.

But every day, around North America, more than 10 million people stare at their phones and then punch in five starting letters, hoping they will be---out of the more than 165,000 five-letter words there are in English (I looked it up)--right.

So, you, Tracy Bennett, for doing your part in making this daily ritual a life-affirming event for everyone, deserve a high five. (Five? Get it?) 

Same as all those other anonymously working editors out there: Wordy craftspeople who do precisely what you might have assumed your grandma believed you did when you told her you worked as an editor. 

GAMED AND CONFUSED: Often, my
Wordle chart looks eerily like Tetris.

They smooth out the language; assure (or is it ensure?) accuracy and mostly, keep writers from sounding dorky.

Jen Lauriault is one such. She's the copy editor at the publication I work at, Law360 Canada. I'm not saying nice stuff about Jen solely because she was a high school student at Elliot Lake Secondary School when my nephew Hugh and nieces Norma and Jennifer were there. Or because she met her husband Marc when they played on the same hockey team. That scenario alone conjures up a heartwarming Netflix holiday feature.

In the few months I've worked with Jen, she has edited my choice of words and politely suggested the equivalent of, "Peter if you say that, you'll not only sound like a jerk you might bring this whole place down." 

An extraordinary editor doesn't merely make sure words and colons and stuff are in the right places, they guard against tone deafness. When we're all exactly three clicks away from being cancelled, tone deafness can be fatal.

Back at Chatelaine I wrote a lot of headlines, including for gardening stories. One day, I thought I'd cleverly incorporate a popular Oprah Winfrey saying; i.e., "You go, girl!" Our story was about hoeing. Do you see where I'm going with this? Can you believe I thought "You hoe girl!" would make a great attention-grabbing headline?  

More times than I want to admit, people like Jen, the Chatelaine editors and Tracy Bennett keep the world safe other people's klutziness.  

In doing so, they make all our lives better. 

Which brings me to a something I've noticed and wondered about Wordle. 

Am I the only one who thinks Wordle words are always sorta positive? 

As far as I can tell, Wordle never sparks anxiety. They're always, well, nice. Has anybody been "triggered" by a Wordle answer? My guess is no. 

Which, even if it does cut the number of opening-word possibilities down to, say, a piddling 100 grand, is more scientific proof why all skilful editors go to heaven.

Benchmark strolls in the park, featuring love, kisses and beer

BENCH PRESSING, ED STYLE: Finally, an exercise
my brother would proudly lean into.

After my brother Ed passed away in January 2022, my sister Norma petitioned (a.k.a., paid) the City of Toronto Parks department to install a memorial plaque in Ed's memory on a park bench somewhere in the city. 

After Norma's oldest son Paul passed away far too early in August 2023, my sister Charlene did the same thing in Paul's honour. 

Miraculously--and I mean that--Ed's and Paul's benches somehow ended up in Toronto's spectacular High Park, five city blocks west of our house. (You can ask that a plaque appear in a specific Toronto park but the City of Toronto is quick to point out they can't accommodate everybody's request and there are more than 1,000 parks in the city.) 

More astounding? Paul's bench is about 75 steps away from Ed's. 

Visiting those benches is one of my favourite things to do. Magic happens each time out.

A week ago, for instance, I set out for the benches but before I reached the  entrance, I ran into a friend I've known since 1983. 

It was sunny out, about 2 in the afternoon, and as hard as it is to believe, neither of us had anywhere else we had to be. We talked for about 40 minutes.

The last time I'd had such a long conversation with the guy was a year earlier when he was in a rehab centre recovering from Guillian-Barre syndrome and wondering if he'd ever walk again.

ILLEGAL SMILE: Another Ed-
approved bench activity

Here he was a year later and not only was he healthy, he was riding his bike. We stood on the sidewalk, discussed music--why some people think Wynton Marsalis can't swing--geopolitics--what life must have been like for regular people in Germany and Poland in the leadup to Second World War--and, coincidentally, both our Europe-born partners. We agreed the world was moving forward in a positive way and then just before we hugged and parted ways laughing, he said, "Why do I get the feeling that after all this sunny optimistic talk one of us is going to get whacked by a car on the way home today?" 

Both Paul and Ed would have approved. 

And yesterday's trip? 

Once I got to the park, I followed a different path than I'd ever taken before and realized that even though we've lived near High Park since 1987, there's still parts of the 400-property park I hadn't seen before. 

I walked towards Ed's bench. 

It was being put to its best possible use. A young couple was smooching. 

They probably wouldn't have been thrilled if I interrupted their fun with "Hey wait'll I tell you about my dead brother." 

So I walked the 75 steps northeast to Paul's. 

This next part you have to keep secret: I sometimes have a beer when I visit. When John George Howard bequeathed the property to the City of Toronto in 1873, he did so on several conditions; that he and the missus could spend the rest of their days on the property; that they'd be buried on site, that the park always be free to visit; and finally, no alcohol be consumed with its borders. 

Ed and I still laugh about that.

JOHN GEORGE HOWARD: He sorta
 resembled the whiskered guy I met
yesterday.

When I was at Paul's bench yesterday, I asked a dog-walking passerby to snap a photo so I could send it off to Paul's mom. The guy read the plaque and said, "Paul was a musician? And he taught music? I do, too." And thus I made a new friend, Jeff.

Jeff was with his grade-school-aged son Rio, who, Jeff affirmed, is a very skilful drummer. 

"Drummers," I said to Rio, "get all the girls." Jeff said, "I used to think it was guitarists."

The older of the two musicians also politely turned down my offer of a cold Corona. "But if I were going to have a beer, it'd be a Corona," he added before they headed off.

I sat and talked to Paul a few more minutes. Around 3:30 I started home.  

At the park's gate, a panhandler with long scraggly white hair and matching tangled beard asked if I had any spare change. 

"I got no cash," I said, "but how about a beer" and handed him a tall boy.

"Whoo-hoo," he said, adding, "Happy Thanksgiving!" 

I'm already looking forward to my next visit.

 

Harley har har

Here's the joke Ian the paramedic told while we were heading to St. Mike's hospital emerg after I crashed my beautiful Harley Sportster on a downtown Toronto street last Friday. 

IT ONLY HURT WHEN I LAUGHED: The neck
brace was just temporary and kept me from doing more harm to myself. 
You know, like those collars vets put on cats.

"A guy comes home from a visit to Mexico and says to his brother, 'We should start a bungee jumping business down there. I saw tons of rich tourists but no bungee jumping.' His brother agrees. They buy gear, head to Mexico and set up. The older brother says 'Let's do a test jump. You go first.'  The kid brother harnesses up and leaps. 

A few seconds later be bounces back, but when he comes back up, his brother notices that he has a few cuts and scratches. Big brother tries to catch him but can't reach and the first guy goes down again. Happens twice more and each time, he's got more injuries. His brother finally catches him, pulls him to safety and asks,'What happened? Did you hit the ground? Was the cord too long?' 

The kid says 'No, the cord was fine. But what the heck's a pinata?'" 

That superb story was just one of the many wonderful things to come out my accident.

Another?

Food. I think my siblings competed to see who could get their sick-bay brother to eat more. At one point, sushi got delivered to my house just moments before a pile of Indian food showed up. 

Before that, a charcuterie board like I've never seen and afterwards, pizza. My kitchen was like I imagine the one at the UN is.

Friends arrived with beer! And more jokes. 

NOT SO MUCH AN ACCIDENT AS A
Provender bender

I told our neighbour Calvin that just two days before the incident I had purchased a fancy full face helmet and this was its first trip. I also mentioned that it saved my teeth but now had to be discarded. Calvin said, "So it went down on its maiden voyage. Like the Titanic." 

And get this: Monday after the crash, I was hobbling down the street, thinking I looked like one of my favourite TV characters, Frasier Crane's dad Marty. 

Another neighbour, Austin, caught up to me, which of course wasn't too difficult, and asked about the accident. He wondered if I'd be going to court. I told him no, I'm hoping to keep the legal stuff to a minimum. 

DICAPRIO AND I ARE IDENTICAL
when wearing our Titanic helmets.

Austin said, "I see. Just like your dad. At the bus station."

Austin had read Storyworthy And you don't get to the part about my father being thrown through the picture window until about half through the book!

What a nuclear-fuelled compliment that was!  Austin actually paid attention to my memoir and he thought I was like my father! That alone was worth the sore bones.

For the record, (your honour, ha-ha) I was southbound on a downtown street mid-afternoon last Friday, going pretty slowly, when a driver in the adjacent lane veered right, knocking my bike down and me into St. Mike's emerg, where I got bandaged, x-rayed and, thankfully, sent home from. No broken bones; just a busted ego, and the bike was damaged a bit, too.

AUSTIN'S POWER: 
What a compliment!

How much worse could things have been? Lots.

For one thing, the accident happened at the beginning of the only rainy week of the summer. So I couldn't have been riding last week anyway!

And that extra helmet you see strapped to the back of my bike? My guardian angel's.

Finally, I have to agree with Dr. Rob Buckman who said, "Laughter is not the best medicine. Medicine is the best medicine. Laughter is the second-best medicine."

And the Canadian health care system? It might not be perfect but it's always been there when I needed it, bungee jokes and all.

Goin' up the country, got to get away

FAMILY PETS: Alex, Charlene Sput, Ed, and Nik.

When I was growing up in Sudbury, our family had lots and lots of pets

Fish. Dogs. Rabbits. Cats. We even had a chicken once. It could run around the backyard tethered to a rope linked to the clothesline. Turtles, too, though you didn't have to tether them.

And it's not as if we lived on a farm. We were in the middle of the city.  

So in addition to the 10 kids my mom gave birth to, various cousins and workers and strangers staying at our house, we always had animals around. 

I can name a few of the dogs. Sput and Nik were  twin pups that came to our house courtesy of a Russian guy named Nick Soulhani who worked for the bus company my dad and his brother Ed ran. The ingenious dogs' names were my father's idea, I think.

Others? Lucky; Jigs; a mutt called The Grump. "Mixed-breeds" weren't a thing. I believe my older brother Tom won The Grump in a poker game; Loonie; Casey the St. Barnard, and I know I'm forgetting some. 

The only cat's name I recall is Kitten Little.

I was likely kindergarten age when Lucky and Kitten Little were palling around like a pair of cartoon characters. Lucky taught Kitten Little everything. She didn't meow so much as she barked. 

Another thing about the Carter menagerie. Animals came and went with dispatch. Fact of life. And death. The gone-boy script was followed regularly. That was okay. We were Catholic. Mysteries are just something you live with.

So were minor miracles. Once,  I think it was The Grump who went AWOL. Young Carters postered the West End and recruited friends in the search party. Somebody finally called the Humane Society. Turns out the dog catcher had nabbed The Grump. My mom forked over the $15 or whatever it took to bail him out, and we learned a few years later that she was the one who called in the dog catcher in the first place. That, too, had cost her.

Why am I telling you this now?

Guilt. Good old guilt.

Stick with me here.

Recently, we packed our much-loved 17-year-old white heterochromic (two different coloured eyes) Iris off to a small house in the country to live with my son Michel. 

She didn't put in for the transfer. It just felt right. Still does. 

I visited a few weeks ago, and never mind that when she saw me on the deck, Iris took one look, twisted around, hoisted her tail and walked away, effectively giving me the feline finger. Otherwise, Iris fans will be glad to know she's healthy and calm.

Here's my guilt.

WHEN IRIS' EYES ARE SMILING:
The world is her litterbox.

Let's go with 10 years ago.

I was telling my wife Helena about how one day when I was a pre-schooler, our part-collie -part- something-else Lucky and Kitten Little went missing. Just like that. 

I asked my mom what she figured happened.

She knew. The furry friends, mom told me, decided to head to the nation's capital, about 300 miles east of Sudbury, because a day earlier, my dad and two older brothers, Alex and Ed, had driven to Ottawa to visit our grandmother.

Lucky loved Ed and Kitten Little loved Alex so much they followed. I don't remember the pets ever arriving.

When I told Helena this story--remember I was 57, she immediately said, "And you believed that, right?"  

She waited a moment and added, "You kinda still do, right?"

Right up until that moment, that is. 

Yes, I was a bit embarrassed. I had a very hard time with two things: Not only the thought that Kitten Little and Lucky met with some other kind of fate, but also, my mom had fibbed.

I've come around.

My mother wouldn't tell her baby boy a lie. Any more than I'm fibbing when I tell you Iris is happy living in the country with Michel. 

Helena was wrong. 

Kitten Little and Lucky did head down the highway, God bless their furry little ears. They're probably at Arnprior by now.

And Iris loves country life. Honest to Pete.

Meet Glad Lee the cross-eyed bear

"HEY CHATGPT": Would you please draw me
 a cross-eyed teddybear?

The following exchange happened a year and three weeks ago. I'm confident my version is accurate, because I've told the story so many times.  

Me, to the Pollock's Home Hardware cashier, whom I'd never seen before and who had a rather large bandage on her forearm that I was pointing at. These were the first words I said. No hello. No how are you. Just: "I am not going to ask you about that bandage."

Cashier, very calmly: "Negative capability."

Me. "What?"

C: "Negative capability. It's the ability to live comfortably with mystery."

Me: "I thought that came from growing up Catholic. Ha ha."

C: "Ha-ha. Negative capability is a Keats thing. He coined it."

Me: "Keats the poet?"

C: "Yes."

Me: "Why do you know this?"

Her: "I have three degrees in poetry." 

And I have the coolest Home Hardware store on the planet.

Negative capability. My newly discovered super power. And another of the secrets to happiness: You don't have to know everything.

A second conversation, a few weeks later. 

My daughter Ria: "Dad can I borrow the car tomorrow afternoon from about one til five?"

Me: "Yes."

Her: "Thank you." 

End of discussion.

Did I ask why she needs the car? I did not. Neither did I enquire who she was going with. Or where.

My life is no poorer for not knowing the answer to those and millions of other questions. 

You are reading a blog wrtten by the poster child of negative capability.

Yesterday, I figured out, in part, why. 

I was talking to my friend, a former Harrowsmith Country Life staff editor and author of more than 20 (!) books, Heather Grace Stewart. I mentioned that when I was a kid, one of the songs my very religious mom Huena used to sing was about accepting life's little burdens. 

The hymn focused on the idea of helping Jesus carry the cross up to Calvary to be crucified. Nice image, I  know.

Yet despite the gruesome picture, the song always brought a smile to my face. In fact it sort of cheered me up. 

The song? Gladly the Cross I'd Bear. 

Of course I thought it was about a vision-challenged animal named Glad Lee. Who wouldn't smile at the thought of a cross-eyed bear? 

Heather says "Have you blogged about this? Gosh you have to!"

So I fact checked Huena's song. 

Get this: No such hymn exists. 

My mom might have said something about Gladly the bear or even made a joke about the title, but Huena singing about Jesus and the cross? Couldn't have happened. 

I have no idea how Gladly the cross-eyed bear found his way into my brain.

I'm just glad he's there.  

Negative capability: Sometimes, not knowing is way more fun.