Thinking of Ukraine

July 23, 2025.Reading time 1 minute.

Antics from our neighbour to the South have empowered Putin and the attack on Ukraine has escalated. A friend reports that family back home are unable to work as their place of employment was bombed twice in one night. Another tells me the university in her city was bombed, destroying years old history. These are […]

Three years

February 19, 2025.Reading time 1 minute.

“Did you believe that war would happen?” We are sitting around chatting with some Ukrainian friends. It’s three years since the war in Ukraine started and we are remembering how unreal it all felt in the beginning. Surely Putin was just putting his troops through a military drill, we all thought/ hoped, when the tanks […]

Stop War

February 28, 2024.Reading time 2 minutes.

You can’t tell from the photograph, but one woman’s cousin has been missing for 20 days. He is in the military, and all they know is 22 from his regiment are dead. Another’s brother just turned 16. She wants to bring him to Canada before the war makes a statistic out of him, but their […]

Words Worthy of Our Attention…

January 18, 2024.Reading time less than 1 minute.

War Continues

January 7, 2024.Reading time 2 minutes.

I survived Covid, and Christmas, and was preparing to take a breather – maybe work on my memoir, or get re-inspired in the art room – when the first call came: “VJ, there is a situation I need your help with!” The caller lived in a nearby town, and was leaving the country the following […]

War – Not War

July 7, 2023.Reading time 2 minutes.

Somedays, words elude me. I want to say the war continues in Ukraine, but ‘war’ is not the right word. It suggests two-sided, as in a dispute that has escalated and come to blows. What happened in Ukraine is not that. It is an act of terrorism and greed at its most heinous. Ric and […]

For Ukraine

June 28, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

War Stories

June 3, 2022.Reading time 1 minute.

The stories dwell inside me now, a gift I suppose, for a writer. The young woman, having escaped Russian occupation, who wails for her mother and eleven-year-old sister, left behind. The mother of three, who confesses that the darkness of war has all but consumed her. “My brother’s home was bombed this morning,” she writes. […]

Plus Five

May 20, 2022.Reading time 2 minutes.

Arrogant of me to ask you to stop and read while I have been so absent, yet I have much to share. How did this broken woman, debilitated by disease, find herself deeply entrenched in the humanitarian side of war? I ask myself this question daily. It is a lesson for all us, I believe. […]

Everyday Miracles

April 29, 2022.Reading time 3 minutes.

Can you help my friend, please? She is 32 weeks pregnant. The text came in mid-morning. I said I’d look into it. Mom, husband, 10-year-old, and baby on the way. Afraid of the encroaching war, they gambled their money on tickets to Canada. I thought of my own daughter-in-law, happily registering for an upcoming baby […]