Bethany Lee

Books and sex-ed at school don’t take the place of the parents’ role, or cover every situation.

Over the week we got into some serious battles in the mornings, pushing the time envelope until everyone had to rush off to work and school.

“I like her,” he said, pulling her out from under the deck where the pups were all in various positions and states of sleep in the dry summer dirt.

I am lucky to say that most of the scars on my body are tiny. Each one tells a story, though.

A beach towel. A snorkel. Shorts. Flip-flops. Beach shoes. T-shirts. Underwear. A pair of pants for cold nights. Toothbrush and toothpaste. Sunscreen.

Snap, snap, snap – take a photo or two, or a few for the record. Then put the camera down and just be present.

It was a summer that shone so brightly for me that I will never forget it, and neither will my son.

Down we would go to the CNE, with horses, food, and family squeezed in tightly.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research says that one in five Canadians will experience a form of mental illness at some point.

For a while, we renamed it “The Employed Table,” but the retirees didn’t think that was very funny.

“Don’t tell Dad! Don’t tell Bethany! Stop telling everybody in this world!”

I like the idea of being adopted into another family’s fridge Bill of Rights, of being accepted on this most basic level. It says, “What’s mine is yours” and “I trust you not to judge me.”

We perfect our children’s histories through scrapbooks we can show our friends.

Blankets are shared and campfire conviviality fills the room. Winter campout is on – indoors!

From my position, lying in the back seat of the car, it always seemed to take forever to get to my grandparents’ house just off Victoria Park Avenue in Toronto.…

The shortcuts that really interest me are the informal ones that develop naturally through use over time.

As I walked the pathways that had been inaccessible through the winter months, the sounds and smells greeted me like old friends.

Our third annual salute to the people who make our community, and our world, a better place to live. By Jeff Rollings, Photographs by Pete Paterson In the following pages,…