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My Two Year Strokeaversary

ambulance trip for heart surgery

I can’t believe how fortunate I am to be where I am this on this anniversary, slowly typing these words with both hands (!), sitting at our kitchen table.

How It Started

Two years ago, a stroke caused the paralysis of the left side of my body and began a four-month sojourn at St Martha’s Regional Hospital, Antigonish. In those early dark days, as a roughly two-centimeter sphere inside my brain died and a larger area of cerebellum around it went into temporary shock, it looked like I might lose my ability to eat, talk, and even swallow. To hear and to properly understand others. My speech slurred and for a few days I was forbidden solid food. You can read my early thoughts, during those first moments, here.

I’m thankful, every day, that the worst didn’t happen. It happens to others. I was fortunate.

I’m also incredibly thankful I live in a place with a public health-care system. Sara and I did not go bankrupt over my stroke. I was not rushed out of care prematurely. Sure, things weren’t always perfect. Mistakes were made, and not all care workers are equally competent. In any system. But I was looked after for four months, then followed up for a long time, by hard-working professionals who cared deeply about my recovery. Nova Scotia’s creeping (and very intentional) health-care privatization is a threat to outcomes like mine. In our lives, in the lives of neighbours and loved ones, we will all face some of what I did in those months. We need to stand up for patients over profits.

Anyway, after it was clear I’d survived the stroke, thinking and speaking intact, other questions started swirling. Not, ever, from Sara, who just kept showing up day after day that fall, advocating for me, writing notes as doctors and physios came in and out, never questioning this new phase in the autumn schedule, like it was just another work contract that had come up unexpectedly. Not really from me, either, so single-minded on recovery. But from the extremely helpful, caring, and busy health professionals just trying to do their jobs and facilitate my adaptation to a new reality they’d seen many times before: how will you use the bathroom? Do you have stairs at home? We’ll get you a spike to hold vegetables while you cut, a post to help you stand up from the toilet. A shower chair. A walker to move from room to room. And, by the way, you’ve lost your license.

Two days after triumphantly leading a group of walkers on a 25-km jaunt from Pomquet to St Ninian’s Cathedral along roads I optimistically called “The Nova Scotia Ninian Way,” I couldn’t even to get out of my hospital bed without a two-person lift.

I’d been plucked from my comfortable, happy life and set at the base of a high mountain. No one ever told me (and Sara) we had to climb it. We just did. People have told me we were brave. Perhaps that’s true. I certainly never felt it.

In an instant, my world had been reduced to chrome bed rails, thin sheets over rubberized mattress covers, a call button that was often out of reach, IVs, meds, blood tests, and a body whose left half seemed permanently asleep. My usual varied routine had been exchanged for three hospital meals, two physio sessions a day, one quick physician visit, if I was fortunate, and hours and hours in a wheelchair by a window, left hand lifeless, furiously writing notes with my right to keep my brain active and record what life had become.

Eventually I realized I had a choice: to apply myself and do my exercises every day – or not. I’m thankful my determination had clicked in. I had flowers and cards almost daily, thanks to a community (many of you!) that kept me going. Sara kept bringing in books, quilts, and art for my room. She arranged things to make me comfortable and, as I came to realize, as a subtle way of reinforcing my individuality and worth to an institution and in the face of overworked systems that sometimes reduce real people to “bed 355B.”

I was admitted September 17th, 2024, discharged Dec 20th. Just in time for Christmas.

First steps, post stroke

How It’s Going

It’s going well! Two years on and I’m not quite back to my old self. Since the aging process stops for no one, maybe that “old self” is forever in the rear-view mirror. But it’s amazing what I can do.

I use no mobility or bathroom/shower aids, and I passed my recertification on what turned out to be the 50th anniversary of my teenaged driver’s test. I have a handicapped parking sticker I enjoy, although I’ve started to feel a bit guilty. I sleep through the night in my own bed. I’ve had heart surgery to repair the hole in my upper chamber where the clot may have slipped through (thank you again, public health care!). I climb stairs using a handrail and although I have a limp I’ve walked up to two kilometres at a go, aiming at more. I can easily crouch to fetch a saucepan from the cupboard. I can hammer a nail, use a spade in the garden, make jelly, and even climb a ladder to hammer a T-post for our saplings needing support. If I’m careful.

This summer I dared to travel by myself to a conference in Quebec City , and even managed the steep hill to the Old City (but a shout out to David Duncan and Colleen O’Toole for all the rides!). Just recently I started using my left-side pockets again. I often stop something I’m about to do with my right hand and switch to my left: unscrewing the small plastic milk lid, fetching a jar from the fridge – or if I’m brave – from a high shelf. I can tie my shoes again – although annoyingly, I threw away my old laces back when I couldn’t.

But especially in the mornings and later evenings, sometimes I feel have a robot arm…everything’s so disconnected and jerky. Nonetheless, my guitar playing gets better weekly, helped when I remember that actually, I was never that good!

I do have more “guitar face.” Guitar face is just the continuation, in a more subtle form, of the sympathetic body movements I’ve had to make ever since the resurrection of my left side. The first time I was able to very slightly twitch my left thumb, it was only after minutes of vigorously pumping my right leg up and down, straining my face, and clenching my stomach as if doing sit-ups. That ever-so-slight movement left me exhausted.  I remember telling hospital staff I couldn’t show anyone else my thumb because the rest of me was too tired!

Now, in the mornings, my left eyelid sags. I practise raising the droopy offender in front of a mirror, hoping I won’t look too unbalanced for the 8:30 am class I teach at Saint Francis Xavier University.

That left eye is the sign that my entire left side was hit by the stroke – not just my hands and feet. Occasionally, when tired or cold, I still stumble over multi-syllabic words that never would have tripped me before. And my hearing! An “F” and an “S,” or a “T” and a “P” sound so similar I often can’t distinguish them. It’s made for some funny misunderstandings.

Maybe it’s because my arm and hand have improved so much, this summer I’ve been focussed more on trying to improve my walking.

Comorbidity is defined as a “medical condition that exists alongside a primary medical issue and affects your health.”  I’ve been so focussed on getting my left leg going I didn’t realize that in the meantime I’d developed a kind of arthritis – it’s turned that side’s big toe inward into a “claw appendage.” That’s one reason my gait hasn’t improved more (try walking while avoiding pushing off from one of your big toes. It’s almost impossible).

So, this summer I bought two different straightening devices, and now I consciously spread my toes whenever I remember. The results are encouraging. I also finally got a foot brace to keep me from snagging my left shoe so much. I’m hoping it will help for longer walks and give my brain a break from having to remember to lift that foot every step.

Everything After Everything Falls Apart

In two weeks, I’m the guest speaker for a gathering of Nova Scotia United Church clergy. I asked them: “what would you like? I could lead a retreat on biblical studies, on pilgrimage, on Leonard Cohen, on settler-Indigenous relations…” They replied: “would you be willing to talk about your stroke, and your life since?”

I’m not completely sure what I’ll say. But I’ll start at least, by saying that when everything – absolutely everything – falls apart, it may not feel like it, but it can be a gift. For ourselves. And for empathizing with others.

Two years ago, I was caught briefly between life and death, and I got life. Not because I deserved it. That’s just what happened. For a few critical hours I hung on a pendulum between silence, isolation, and pablum on one side, and full, rich communication on the other. By some miracle of timing, clot placement, and grace I came through the tunnel still able to process thoughts and speak words others could understand. What a gift.

It’s no surprise that every day feels like a privilege. Because it is. That’s true for everyone, of course. All the time. Life is the miracle we spend most of our lives too dulled to notice. But to feel the brush of death’s passing and this time at least, not be taken? Wow. Mostly, I wake up every day remembering that. Every berry I pick shines with more colour, every bite of apple crisp or cheddar cheese or roast chicken tastes more luscious. Sara and I already tended toward gratefulness: my stroke has increased all those Pollyanna attitudes.

I’ve been permanently wounded, but my ongoing and slight disabilities are reminders I’m still here. Every time my toe catches, or my fingers don’t quite work, or my hip lifts, or I misunderstand a word, it’s like fingering a prayer bead. Maybe I’ll say that to the group at the retreat.

Gratefulness isn’t just personal – it’s meant to be social. It’s religious. It’s creative. And it’d better be political. It can, at its best, spill into everything. Our solidarity and our empathy with others are ways of expressing thankfulness: thankfulness for still being here, still being loved, still loving, even after everything falls apart.

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academic research media and publications Pilgrimage Uncategorized

The 13 Pilgrims

What is The 13 Pilgrims card deck?

This summer I surprised myself by inventing a “pilgrimage card game”! It’s a deck of 13 cards, each card containing a different pilgrim “role” or “type,” such as The Hero (focussed on goals and achievement), The Squire (helping others and thinking ahead), The Misfit (on the outskirts of every group but bringing unique gifts) and more. Alongside the cards I’ve written a detailed instruction booklet outlining who each of the 13 Pilgrims are, and how I suggest the cards can be used.

So far I’ve come up with five different uses for the cards, from ice-breaker, conversation sparker, and experience-integration tool, to a personal catalyst for spiritual reflection and a group visioning exercise.

The fun thing is, people keep suggesting inventive new possibilities for the cards, so there will be new uses added to the list!

How did the cards come about?

I’ve been on a lot of pilgrimages, yet on each one I’ve never been exactly the same kind of pilgrim. Different reasons for each pilgrimage shaped each experience. On the prairie pilgrimages I wrote about in my book The Good Walk: Creating New Paths on Traditional Prairie Trails, my fellow trekkers and I were trying to live out a prophetic role by bringing awareness to Indigenous trails. When I walked part of the Luther Weg in Erfurt, Germany, I was a tourist, enjoying the Saxon sausage, beer, and landscapes. On Scotland’s Whithorn Way and also here where I live in Nova Scotia, I’ve walked as a researcher, investigating the mysterious St Ninian for my book, Someone Else’s Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia. When I was one of the first group of Canadians to walk St Olaf’s Way in Norway, I expected a religious pilgrimage. But I’d just gone through a difficult cancer surgery a few weeks before setting out in Dovre. The Nordic Camino turned out to be my much-needed recovery. I’d find myself at the top of a Norwegian mountain, weeping with joy just to still be alive.

In short, I realised I’ve seen – and been – many different types of pilgrim: a political prophet, a wandering tourist, a researching scribe, a pious practitioner, a therapeutic patient, and more. And I’m certainly not the only one! (Many of these walks feature on my podcast.) I also came to the realisation that I’ve met many of these pilgrims on my walks, and that each has contributed something unique to my experience.

Distilling these roles helped me come up with The 13 Pilgrims.

Who made and who sponsored the cards?

The artist I’ve been working with is the talented Kate Phillips, of Cape Breton. Kate and I worked together with my descriptions to come up with the figures. You can find more of her art at her website, https://katephillips.net/kate/.

I’m presently the Gatto Endowed Chair of Christian Studies, in Antigonish Nova Scotia, and so my work is actively supported by St Francis Xavier University’s Father Edo Gatto fund.

I’m also very fortunate to have received grants for The 13 Pilgrims from the Eastern Synod of my Lutheran church, the ELCIC. The Rev Adam Snook, one of the assistants to Bishop Carla Blakley, has been especially encouraging. We are working on ways to develop the cards for use in discernment, visioning, and shared decision-making.

What’s next for The 13 Pilgrims?

Right now (August 2026) I’m finishing my most recent edits to the instruction booklet. I’d like to have it professionally printed, and distributed together with the cards. So far, I’ve only printed 20 decks, with a wonderful local printer, Breton Print, of Nova Scotia. That initial run of 20 sets that I took with me to the Sacred Journeys annual pilgrimage conference in Quebec City was quickly snapped up by participants! So I’ll have have more printed! I’m also working to have the booklet translated into French for the many French-speaking pilgrims who expressed interested.

Eventually, I’ll have to solve two problems: what’s the best way to make these cards available to the many folks who have already expressed an interest in having a deck, as well as to those further afield, in a way that is economical, ecologically friendly, and packaged sturdily but lightly in case of use on an actual pilgrimage?

Ideas welcome! Stay tuned for news as this all gets worked out!

Where can I get more info?

I recently presented The 13 Pilgrims card deck for an online pilgrimage talk. You can watch my presentation here: https://vimeo.com/1221854641?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci . Thanks!

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The Importance of Second-Place: Times I Was THAT Close

Our cat Theodore is no runner-up to anyone…

There are few moments that offer the “glass half full / half empty” opportunity so effectively as the instant you hear you’ve won second place for something.

For most of my adult life, friends — and even casual acquaintances — have remarked how lucky I am (although I don’t hear that quite so often since my stroke (2024) and cancer surgery (2013)). I do feel lucky, fortunate, and blessed! But behind every win and achievement, there’s a mountain I’ve built of near-misses and almosts.

In high school, I was the “sixth man” for our five-man basketball team. I got lots of silver or bronze medals in track meet. I came second-highest in the province in several Grade 12 provincial exams, only to find out that of all the students in Saskatchewan, it was the same girl who always scored just a percentage point or two higher than me in elementary school, who’d come back to haunt me six years later.

What has me reflecting on this is the WFNS Rita Joe Poetry Prize I was recently a finalist for:

I wonder if I’m the only Rita Joe finalist who was also a runner up for the WFNS Budge Wilson Short Story Prize!?

Turns out that I am the glass half full type. You probably knew that.

So, in the spirit of a “CV of Failures,” this post celebrates all my near misses and brags them up. Here’s a list of all the things I’ve NEARLY won….all those times I was “close but no cigar” (by the way, if you’re here for a stroke update, I promise to release one soon!).

2026

I was one of five finalists for the WFNS Rita Joe Poetry Prize for “The First Frost,” a set of poems about my stroke and 4-month hospitalization at St Marthas’ Regional Hospital, Antigonish NS. Lovely judges’ comments.

2025

I was one of ten finalists for a Canada Prize for Prophets of Love: The Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul (McGill-Queen’s). It’s a great book, if I do say so myself.

2024

I was one of two runners up for the WFNS Budge Wilson Short Story Prize for “A Life in its Pieces,” an elegiacal tale of an aging quilter and her great-grandchild. Winner was J.P. Smith.

I was also one of three authors shortlisted for the $10,000. Koffler Vine Canadian Jewish Book Awards for Prophets of Love: The Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul. Winner was Naomi Klein, for Doppelganger. Quite an honour even to be on the same virtual podium as Klein!

2023

I was runner up for the Pottersfield Press Non-Fiction Prize, for the book manuscript Someone Else’s Saint: How A Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia. In this case, second place still included a publisher’s advance and publication of the book – I’m grateful! (No thanks to Premier Tim Houston.)

2022

I was the 11th choice of a Canadian Small Press (that only selects 10 books a year to publish) for my two-time Canada Council Grant winning novel manuscript The Clergy House of Rest. I received a nice email from the publisher (at least I get personal, nice rejections) stating my novel (still unpublished) almost made the final cut – but not quite. That email was tough.

2019

I really could have used the $10,000 that year, but I was runner up for the Dalton Camp Award, for my essay “A Blanket Argument for Empathy.” Instead I got $250 (hey, it’s not nothing).

2014

I was a finalist for the CBC/Quebec Writers Federation Short Story Competition for “The Backhoe,” published in Salut King Kong (Vehicule Press), edited by my friend Elise Moser.

2010

I got Honourable Mention in the Short Fiction Category of the Prairie Fire-McNally Robinson competition for “A Street Called Generous,” which was published in Prairie Fire Magazine.

My CBC Ideas proposal titled “Burying the Master Race,” came extremely close to being chosen. The nice email from a CBC idol of mine, Producer Bernie Lucht, said mine was the “last one that fell off the table.” I still hold on to that email.

2005

I was a finalist for the CBC/Quebec Writers Federation Short Story Competition for “Marathon of Hope,” published in Short Stuff: New English Stories from Quebec. Lalumière ed. (Véhicule Press).

2004

I was a finalist for the CBC/Quebec Writers Federation Short Story Competition for “Europa,” published in Short Stuff: New English Stories from Quebec. Lalumière , ed. (Véhicule Press).

I came Second Place in a literary competition for short fiction, for my strange little piece “Yard Art Love,” in Maisonneuve Magazine. The funniest part about this one is that the judges sent me an email that said, “why did you get second place instead of first place? Who knows? Luck of the draw!” Ha!

In addition, balancing all these close calls, and the few times I’ve won something, are the many times I haven’t even heard back from a publisher or a contest. Nothing. Nada. Crickets.

You get the picture! If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again! Some folks like to say that “second place is no place” and runners-up are losers. That’s baloney.

The fact is, many of my second-place finishes still allowed me to be published, or to receive some small award money, if not the big prize. And by keeping at it, every now and then I DID manage to win something! So if you’re ever wondering if second-place is worth it, my hot take is that it’s proof you’ve put in the 10,000 hours… and the answer is definitely yes!

First Prize….definitely. But it took 10,000 hours.
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academic research media and publications stroke-recovery Uncategorized

A Year and a Half Strokeaversary

This week I found this old alarm notice on my phone. It brought me back with a jolt to my four months in hospital from September to December 2024. As I deleted it I said a prayer of thanks that, as much as I appreciated their care, I’m no longer at St Martha’s Regional.

In a minor coincidence, this week I also heard that the unpublished collection of “stroke poems” I wrote in the hospital was shortlisted for the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia‘s “Rita Joe Poetry Prize”! Rita Joe was a famous Mi’kmaq poet. It’s an honour just to be shortlisted. I have the privilege of being friends with several extremely talented poets, but have never published poetry myself. I’d love to share these poems with other stroke survivors and carers, so fingers crossed!

Eighteen months since my stroke, already! The reminders that popped up spurred me to write an update. Only, what to report?

#NoPlateau

Quite early on in my recovery, local physios warned me not to be disappointed when I hit the “plateau” at six months or so. But at the same time, they kept being pleasantly surprised at my determined progress. Sara developed the pep-phrase “HASHTAG NO PLATEAU”! I still haven’t hit one and don’t plan to.

I thought of calling this post “and then, one day, you’re putting on your belt using your left hand.” Or: “and then one day, you walk down the stairs and realize you didn’t hold the handrail.” Both statements are true in just the last two weeks. The idea that I could now be twisting my left arm around my body to dress, or to towel myself off after a shower, is an answer to prayer. For the first time since my stroke I can convincingly squeeze shut my grip exerciser. I can now actually “walk” a short base line on the guitar with my recalcitrant left pinkie. My hard-working Halifax Occupational therapist Lindsay is giving me more complicated wrist exercises on my phone’s Tenzr physio app, like tracing the entire alphabet in the air with my left fist. Miracles never cease. (Sara encouraged me to do it in Greek. Okay, not all miracles materialize.)

But the truth is, I also could write: “and then one day you’re stopped by a colleague to talk in the parking lot, and after just an extra 60 seconds in the cold, you suddenly need help to the car.” Or: “when you’re tired you still slur words, and once after climbing a bunch of stairs you lost your balance in front of a group of students and almost fell sideways into the wall.” Those statements are true also.

In a nutshell, THAT’S how it’s going. I’m grateful beyond words that my recovery continues even now, a year and a half after my stroke. Every day I have just an incremental bit more strength and flexibility and control in my left hand and arm. Every week my balance and my ability to crouch down and stand and walk improves very slightly. I mostly know this from others like Lindsay, who only see me every month or so and are amazed at my progress. Every week there are several new #StrokeFirsts I can celebrate when Sara and I read through all the slips we put into the weekly gratitude cup. Every week I’m surprised by what I can do. And less and less by what I still can’t.

Like the saplings

Sort of like Spring, my recovery is happening in bits and pieces. I almost felt like my old self again – and certainly felt a kinship with the earth – when I took a walk around the property this week. Like me, the saplings Sara planted while I looked on seem to have cheerily survived.

The stones I dumped by the inlet last summer need spreading, but it’s not yet the time.

A wild-seeded pine will almost only pop up where there is already a birch, so perhaps the birches are “parenting” the saplings? Some creature left its scat nearby but I’m not sure what kind it is, and I don’t have an app for THAT yet…

The brook on one side of our property is doing well, and this week the robins reappeared. Their singing is a joy, and might be the reason Theodore the reformed barn cat is crying so sadly to go outside for the first time since he so gleefully adopted us and moved in.

The sunset of my fellowship

There’s only a year left in my renewed Father Edo Gatto Fellowship at StFX, so I’m busily checking off my Gatto Chair goals. A big one happens this week. As soon as I knew I would be translating my historical research on the fourth century Saint Paula to fiction, I wanted to talk to other academics who do this. It’s finally happening this week! Sara will be moderating the webinar conversation, “Novel Research: Meet Four Historians of Religion Who Write Fiction.” I’m excited to talk about writing with these scholars I admire. You’re welcome to join us: register here!

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academic research media and publications stroke-recovery Uncategorized

Strokeaversary: Sweet Pea

Our beloved 14 year old Sweet Pea just died. I’d had my most recent Botox shots to my left calf and arrived from the long back and forth drive to Halifax to find our elderly lady sprawled awkwardly on the bedroom floor by her food dish. When she saw me she stood to walk but kept falling sideways. I picked her up. Her head jerked in spasms every time I tried to get her to eat or drink, even her favourite tuna snack. She seemed to be experiencing terrible dizziness. Sara rushed home.We arranged an emergency vet, spent hours holding her, and only late that evening, after blood tests and consults, accepted the fact there was nothing we could do to help her. The vet believed Sweet Pea, who has been noticeably frailer recently, may have had a brain tumour (many from her semi-feral colony in Montreal had died from cancerous tumours) and that it had reached her optic nerves.

There’ve been lots of tears since. The day after she died, a letter arrived for Sara from a Montreal cat adopter who just lost her own kitty. She had sent some left-over anti-nausea meds to Sara (they’re expensive and were needed for every long car trip).

When Sara opened the letter, it simply said “Hope these help Sweet Pea in her travels.” “I hope so too,” Sara sobbed, and a fresh round of tears for us both followed.

Sweet Pea

Grief is natural. It’s not to be rushed. Sweet Pea was Sara’s first adoptee. Somehow, despite being the runt, she was the last of the brood to survive and to still be with us. She travelled with Sara back and forth across the Atlantic. When we moved to Dublin we crossed the Irish Sea by ferry – just for her. She was such a trooper. She was annoyingly anal about her schedule, perfectly indignant when food was late, completely trusting of strangers, very patient under duress, a true companion, and very, very smart. She loved being lightly vacuumed.

Also in the mail the day after her passing was an author’s copy of “Touchstone,” the United Church of Canada’s theological journal. The issue title? “Death.” I’d forgotten that I’d written an article on “Death and Mortality From a Biblical Perspective” for them. And here it was.

Given that Sweet Pea’s condition at first looked to me a bit like a stroke, and that journal article, I’ve been thinking about death, aging, frailty, grief, relationships, and all of our shared weaknesses these last few days.

Snow

During our winter break, Sara and I were at the Atlantic Lutheran Leader’s Retreat. Bishop Carla Blakley and the Eastern Synod staff asked how my recovery is going. I told them what I’m telling you: I can’t believe how supported I’ve been. I’m still so appreciative of the support of Sara, of the medical teams in Antigonish and Halifax, and of many of you, as I fight my way back from my stroke. It’s a communion of all kinds of “saints,” and I’ve been blessed by it.

I continue to measure my progress by small victories. For the first time since the stroke I can now straighten my fingers enough to put on just about any gloves (you’d be surprised how hard that’s been). After one of our seemingly endless snowstorms I backed up the car and realised I wasn’t using the camera but doing it the old-fashioned way: steering with my left hand, and looking over my shoulder with my (good) right hand behind the passenger seat. Like everyone else in Nova Scotia I’ve done a LOT of shovelling lately, using both hands. On one sunny day last week last week Sara and I had a hot chocolate date in the snow. I’m able to sit down and get back up from those more difficult places much more easily. My typing is faster and my guitar playing just slightly smoother every week.

Although I walked 1.5 km recently, my left foot was dragging by the end – a hard thing for someone who identified as a “walker” for so many years. But I’m able to dress myself, put on a belt, and dry off after a shower with both hands now. I can even tie a knot again, if there’s no rush and it doesn’t have to be too tight. In so many ways I feel like a toddler who’s had to learn how to move through the world.

Sauna

As I mentioned in a recent blog-post, when I had a brief but serious cancer scare not long ago, I decided life is short, and I’d buy a Finnish sauna kit. Ever since my wonderful years with the Finns of Montreal’s St Michael’s church, saunas have been in my blood – and my dreams. I know it’s an incredible privilege to have retirement savings, and to spend some of them on such a luxury. But when I get cold my entire left side seizes up, making walking difficult. And the sauna sure makes my left side – AND the rest of me – feel good!

Serendipity

We were thinking Sweet Pea would be our last cat. But then, as I’ve mentioned on this blog, a big feral male showed up near our door in the coldest and snowiest of days last winter. He wouldn’t go near humans, but we’d wake up sometimes after VERY cold nights to find him on a chair on our deck, in the snow. He’d been terribly injured in one front paw somehow, and was un-neutered. Eventually, Sara managed to trap him. But when she opened the cage on his return from the vet, instead of springing away as expected, he turned and came into the house! Theodore is an 18-pound tabby. He’s incredibly affectionate and intelligent, even though (unlike Sweet Pea), he’s scared of any humans but us so far.

Back in his wild days, Sara named him Theodore. Both Sara and I have taught Greek. But until Sweet Pea’s passing just now, somehow we didn’t remember that Theodore also means “gift of God.”

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book reviews Uncategorized

A Translucent Read for a Canadian Winter

There’s a bleakly beautiful quality to many stories set in northern climes in winter, a dark, dreamlike state that can settle over the entire narrative. I first felt it in the novel Smilla’s Sense of Snow, and it’s palpable in most Scandi Noir TV crime series. You also feel it from the first page to the last in Sheila Graham-Smith’s translucent novel, If, After Snow, set in the Annapolis Valley and published by Askance in 2025.

As I write this, the temperature in Northern Nova Scotia sits in the double digits below zero. Winter’s darkness falls early and completely. The shore ice is cracking, sometimes with sharp, breaking-glass splinters, and sometimes in low thrumming woofs that hit deep in the chest. Among many Indigenous peoples, storytelling is reserved for winter.[1] The reasons are partly practical. But they’re also an age-old recognition of relationality: wind, ice, dark, and cold are not merely “environmental.” They’re agentic. They’re characters, as Graham-Smith makes clear. And the relationships formed or broken between people huddled together for warmth and mutual support during this season develop in interaction with those hibernal characters.

“No breath of wind, No gleam of sun – Still the white snow whirls softly down… Twig and bough and blade and thorn all in an icy quiet, forlorn” (283).

For all our exposure to wind-chill factors and our jokes about shovelling driveways, we Canadians have not always cultivated the intimacy with winter’s vicissitudes and possibilities that characterises other northern cultures. Graham-Smith quietly but firmly redresses that possible omission in “If, After Snow.” The book’s enigmatic cover could be an overexposed photograph taken during a whiteout. The plot unfolds like gently falling snow gathering momentum until arriving at the inevitable storm and its morning-after digging out.

The novel is set in late winter along a snow-bound stretch of the Fundy Coast. Carl Zoëga, facing a terminal illness in his 90th winter, has fled the seniors’ complex in Montreal where his well-meaning son Coby placed him to live out his final weeks with his daughter Miriam, a world-class cellist and experimental composer, at his summer home in the Annapolis Valley. In the neighbouring farm, Kip, a writer who has also taken winter refuge, is struggling to understand his life in light of a collapsed marriage, the death of his own father, and his consequent writers’ block.

Of course, the protagonists meet. With her preternaturally pale skin, her snowy hair, and her half-wild attention to the natural world and comfort in silence, Miriam physically embodies winter. Carl is a native Icelandic speaker, and stranger neither to winter, nor to a certain type of stoic Scandinavian philosophy. He represents the wisdom not only of his years, but also of the way that fate chose him, decades earlier, to be the father of Miriam and Coby.

“Not much can prepare a person for death but love is most effective. Only in those two instances do we give ourselves so completely to the unknown. To the other. And in the case of love, we do it willingly, so it’s like a practice run” (Carl, 155).

Carl had been a 60s-something single man placing groceries into his car when a desperate-looking young woman got her grocery cart stuck in the snow beside him. She asked him to watch the cart and a baby and older sister while she ran back to the store for her purse. She never returned, and Carl became the parent of two children “in none of the usual ways.”

Although the novel’s point of view shifts between protagonists, and the reader is privy to the thoughts of all the characters, it is Kip with his stumbling questions and his fears of mortality who most stands in for the reader. Carl’s – and sometimes Miriam’s – words to Kip are intended for us. The conversations between the three turn out to be as beautiful and delicately fragile as winter hoarfrost.

“the world continues to offer itself as solace for what can’t be cured” (Miriam, 254).

My only moments of readerly disengagement with this extraordinary novel happened during its penultimate pages, during those conversations I was most enjoying. The ability of nearly all the characters at that point to recall complex philosophical arguments in their entirety and never to stoop to banality or small talk (or to ribald humour, a well-loved Maritime trait) at times broke the spell Graham-Smith had otherwise so successfully cast for most of the book.

The author leaves us with both a quiet life wisdom and a profound learning reminiscent of Marilynne Robinson in Gilead. Kip’s writerly realization – and his breakthrough in his fear of death – is perhaps Graham-Smith’s nod to the writers’ craft:

“he had been looking, he realised, not for language to acknowledge life, but language to contain it” (Kip, 319).

If, After Snow successfully acknowledges life, and hope, and love – and even spring – while never trying to control or contain any of them. The novel ends with a funeral, and yet it is not (as Byron would have had it) therefore a tragedy. Perhaps this is because of a quiet glimmer of relational warmth in the final pages. But for me the theme is found more in the Icelandic phrase from Carl that Miriam repeats as an epithet at the funeral, and which brings us back to the gift of how this is a properly Canadian winter novel. Halda fyrir veðri: “stand before the wind.” “We used to stand on what we called the seaward ramparts of Fort Anne,’ Miriam says, “holding hands, in blustery weather. For exercise, Carl said. For practise (335).”

“Stand before the wind…for practise.”

In all those dark, Nordic narratives, winter is not really an enemy. Its hardships are real, but they’re ultimately generative. Winter, the season, is a chance to listen, to gather together, to tell stories, and to hold on. The title If, After… (an allusion to the Sappho fragment and Anne Carson book If not, Winter) says it all. Sheila Graham-Smith’s novel is a bleakly beautiful reminder to hold fast to one another in whatever winters we experience, and to always practise love, but especially in the face of death.

Matthew Anderson

January 2026

[1] Bob Joseph, Indigenous Corporate Training: https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/11-things-you-should-know-about-aboriginal-oral-traditions

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stroke-recovery Uncategorized

Strokeaversary: All the Things It Wasn’t

This week, something unusual happened.

It wasn’t the snowstorm. Having to park the car by the road at the end of our lane to be sure we can get to work in the morning isn’t that strange, even though the snow-laden trees are beautiful. Here in Pomquet, in Antigonish County, a storm day requiring our neighbour to come plow us out is starting to feel like a bi-weekly event. I had some trouble keeping up with Sara on her march to the car. But no, it wasn’t that.

Nor was it the sauna. In December, on receiving unexpectedly good news after a scary cancer test, I decided I’m not getting any younger and I’d buy that sauna kit I’ve dreamt of for years (ever since being pastor to the wonderful Montreal Finns and enjoying the rite with them). With the help of local carpenter extraordinaire Evan Theriault (Theriault Timberworks) I’m hoping we soon have our very own sauna in action for relaxing in this deep-freeze. That will be great. But no, it wasn’t that.

And no, it wasn’t that I’m starting to feel increasingly guilty about my handicapped parking sticker. Yesterday I felt badly using the space at the Farmers’ Market, although in the end I’m glad I did, since my balance on ice still isn’t the greatest. I’ve started to leave spots closest to the door for those who need them more. I guess that says something about my recovery and the general improvement to my walking! It’s easier and easier for me to tramp around the property, even on days like this (see below). But it’s still not that.

Nor is it that the big, furry feral feline we named Theodore, whom Sara trapped, neutered, and had patched up by the vet for his infected paw injury, didn’t immediately spring back out into the wild on his release. Instead he surprised us by turning into some kind of indoor love-bunny. He has apparently decided to adopt us. He’s incredibly smart and affectionate. As a dog person and someone with mild allergies I don’t encourage Theodore too much, but he seems to think I’m okay. We’re warming up to each other. But it’s not that either.

Nor is it that Sara tried her hand at making bagels (Montreal-style, of course!). As I write this I’m enjoying that yeasty, honey-laden smell and taste, and I can’t wait to try them with cream cheese. A rare delight and pleasure, indeed! (Recipe here). But no, not that…

Finally, it’s not that for the first time in months I dusted off my completed novel manuscript and read through it again, and I still think it’s great! I’ve been inspired to start sending it out to publishers again. The drawing below is from my friend Robert Aubé (more at his website). The novel is set in the very real location of St James Anglican Church, Cacouna QC. I’m rejuvenated. But no. Not that either…

What it IS, is that this last week I had Sara film my daily attempts at guitar. Every day I try to get my left hand fingers to move better by practising my playing. Here’s where I’m at post-stroke as of yesterday: https://vimeo.com/1157626018?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

And here’s where I was pre-stroke, with that same piece (and with help from my youngest). I hope someday to get back to this level: https://vimeo.com/433444043 . 

No. What actually happened this week that was unusual, was that I watched the recording Sara made, then the one from a couple of years ago. Then I broke down and cried.

I don’t weep like that often. It wasn’t from sadness, exactly, although I know I’ve lost much. I had to reflect a while on it. It’s complicated. While some of it was sadness, more of it was happiness – happiness I’m alive. Even though a year ago I could only twitch my thumb (and barely that), and now my hand has dramatically improved and is still getting better. Some of my tears came, I think, from realizing just what an endurance test recovery has been, despite the help and support of so many: the months of struggling with coats, and socks, and shoes, and bags, and silverware, and backpacks, and grocery bags, and everything else. Every day making the decision to use my left hand even though every time, it’s harder. (I just remembered to do it again, while typing this sentence.)

My point is NOT that congratulations are needed. There are lots of folks who’ve had it much worse. And there are certainly others who have to be much much more courageous. It’s that we are, all of us, emotional creatures, whole beings with needs, regrets, hopes, sadnesses, and joys. All. And life can sometimes feel the most beautiful, and the most rewarding, in precisely those times when it’s not the easiest.

I wouldn’t wish my stroke on anyone. But I was glad, this week, to go through such a heart-filling experience as that unexpected cry. Given the state of the world right now, we probably all need one.

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book reviews Uncategorized

Sheila Graham-Smith on Someone Else’s Saint

(and on pilgrimage in its varied forms)

This fall, while signing copies of “Someone Else’s Saint” at the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia‘s annual Booktoberfest in Halifax, I had the good fortune that the Pottersfield Press table was right beside the Askance Publishing table, where Sheila Graham-Smith was signing copies of her novel, “if, after snow.”

She had never heard of my book, nor I of hers (although apparently I was the first to recognize the Sappho reference in her title). We exchanged our books accompanied by firm promises to read and report back.

Sheila did much more than report! She penned a pensive and writerly review, wrapped in a meditation on pilgrimage that features Chaucer, writer (and StFX colleague) Anne Simpson, and my dear friend and pilgrimage expert George Greenia.

It’s a perceptive and wise review. A gift! For more from her, look up Sheila’s two books if, after snow (which I’ve only just begun, and which is enchanting and extremely well-written) and The View From Errisbeg!

A pilgrimage is a journey to engage the foreign as foreign, outside our comfort zones.

Sheila Graham-Smith
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stroke-recovery Uncategorized

My “Year + Two Month” Strokeaversary

Somehow my one-year strokeaversary slipped by without a blog post, even though Sara and I marked it privately. Now here we are: way past twelve months. Already to 14 and counting.

I’m not sure why I didn’t push myself to post a one-year column on the actual day.

It could have been that I wasn’t emotionally ready. I was – and I still am – processing the fact that as far as I’ve come, I haven’t yet mended as I’d wished. Paralysed and stuck in my wheelchair a year ago at St. Martha’s Regional Hospital, Antigonish, I told my youngest, Gabe, that by September 2025 we’d be going for another 100 km walk to celebrate my recovery, like we did on the Celtic Shores Trail along the Cape Breton coast in the month before the stroke.

Well….that won’t be happening anytime soon, although I still hold out hope. While I can walk farther and faster than at any point since my brain damage, my best distance is a couple of kilometres with a limp. It’s hardly 100 km in a week like we did in 2024, striding into a new coastal village every afternoon in the late-afternoon sunshine.

I also dreamt that at one year post-stroke the part of my body the slowest to recover, my left hand, would be fully back in use. I imagined somehow I’d be chording smoothly on guitar, holding my mug of tea, and most importantly, typing. The truth is that yes, I can actually DO all those things, sort of! It’s a miracle. And I recognize that miracle when I’m properly “glass-half-full” thinking. For instance, I’ve typed this blog-post using both hands.

But the deeper truth is more nuanced.  Chording is still slow….usually too slow for a song to really feel like a proper song. A full cup of tea is dangerous to hold in my left hand for too long – and a hot cast iron pan more dangerous still! But I’m able to reach, and lift, and manipulate more with that hand every week. I can now screw the milk and toothpaste lids off and on as a leftie. I regularly empty the dishwasher with my left hand as therapy. I can almost snap my fingers and make the Vulcan salute. Holding a nail in September while hammering was sometimes an act of faith. But the nails got in. Eventually.

Typing is not as slow as it was. But it’s still tedious, difficult, and tends toward errors. Sara says that she can tell my typing has improved because in the last month I’ve written a lot more pieces – articles, reviews, and the like. “You must feel more comfortable composing,” she remarked. “You’re getting back to your enthusiasm for new ideas.”

I feel that too. This fall I taught an online course on Leonard Cohen and St Paul, and had a wonderful time with my adult students. My classes about early Christian asceticism at StFX are fun, and recently I took first-year kids on a tour of the Saint Ninian Cathedral, being sure to point out features I write about in my book “Someone Else’s Saint.” Sara and I each gave keynote presentations on subsequent weeks at different institutions in Halifax, which was a chance for trips “to the big city” and mini-holidays.

My public talks and interviews are happening again. I was interviewed this fall by Jesse Zink of Montreal Diocesan College in his “Principal Meets Author” Series. Be sure to listen to an upcoming episode of CBC Radio’s “The Cost of Living,” where I’ll be on a segment talking about Advent Calendars! This week I’m also presenting in the Research Chairs Colloquium Series at my university, an honour for me.

So, the one-year strokeaversary slipped by.

When she read what I just wrote above, Sara pointed out that maybe it wasn’t disappointment that stopped me after all. Maybe I let the 12-month blogpost slide simply because my fall has been so incredibly busy. True enough. But the anniversary didn’t pass completely unmarked.

It turned out that I had a follow-up appointment at the hospital one year to the day from my initial TIA – Trans Ischemic Attack, September 16th. So I ordered two cakes from our local Sobeys and Sara and I took them in to mark the day: one for the physio ward, since that’s where I’ve spent so much time post-discharge, and the other for St. Martha Regional Hospital’s third-floor hospital wing, where I lived for almost four months last fall.

Those cakes turned out to be a pretty good metaphor for the hospitalization and recovery process, and for the nature of institutions. On the physio wing, it turned out that almost all of the Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists who’ve worked with me this past year were there. To a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs” the cake was quickly divvied up. There was lots of laughter and shared memories, and many thanks and congratulations given and received. It was wonderful.

However, when I carried my one-year cake to the nurses’ station, it was a different story. That day, none of the faces looked familiar at all, except my own GP, who was at the desk. Apparently, there’s been quite a bit of turnover recently on the ward. A nurse politely thanked me for the cake, took it, and congratulated me on my recovery. Sara and I stood around a minute or two awkwardly, then left. I’m sure the staff there that day enjoyed the sweets. But through no fault of theirs, they didn’t know me from Adam. There was no one at the desk from “my” past, no one who shared my memories, and no one to mark with me those tumultuous months that were so significant.

That’s life, I guess. In the end, our experiences change us profoundly. Sometimes permanently. But for everyone else, things can sometimes go back to normal pretty quickly.

Speaking of major life-changes this fall: in October, Sara’s parents moved back to Moncton for the winter, after a wonderful, but very busy, summer of cooking, canning, and building. I took a very quick, very short trip to Montreal to hug my kids after their own family tragedy: the untimely death of my ex, their mom. Sara and I made our first juice from our first grapes, and filled our pantry with summer’s jellies. Since then my own step-mother, Mary Anderson (Hattum) passed away, along with another good friend in Saskatchewan, John McPhail. Oh yes, and a feral cat we’re calling Theodore seems to have adopted us, on and off….

Things aren’t the same as a year ago in so many ways, some large, some small. I keep having to learn and relearn the lesson that life is beautiful, often fragile, and that the time to tell folks you love and appreciate them is right now.

I feel very fortunate to be alive, and thankful every day for the chance to experience this world in all its confusing glory. Strangely enough, I believe my life has been enriched by my stroke a year ago, and by the struggles that have followed. I appreciate you who have accompanied me through this year (plus a couple of months). As the leaves drop, the Grey Cup finishes (yay SK!) and November tilts toward Advent and Christmas, I hope you find some love and joy in these days as well.

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Uncategorized

“Der Pilger (The Pilgrim)” reviews The Good Walk

Gotta love those Germans…

When my friend Traugott Roser contacted me to let me know he’d written a review of The Good Walk, for the magazine Der Pilger (The Pilgrim), I was overjoyed!

My hopelessly naive generalizations about Germans include that…

All Germans are fit and athletic and they LOVE walking and pilgrimages. So they’ll eat up The Good Walk. The book that really ignited the contemporary rise of the Camino was Hape Kerkeling’s fun and incredibly popular I’m Off Then: Losing and Finding Myself on the Camino de Santiago, first published in German and a sensation there.,

All Germans idealize the North American “West” and North American landscapes. Germany is a crowded country that has lost so much of its own “wildness” but still maintains a strong national mythology of origins around it. And yet …

All Germans are aware of and sensitive to Indigenous sovereignty and concerns, and …

All Germans love to read, and as a bonus, as truly civilized people are multilingual and can often read English books like mine, unlike most anglophones and folks like me, who struggle with anything more than simple tourist directions auf deutsch…

SO. After all these expectations, how did the review turn out?

Thanks to Google translate, you can read on for yourself….

The Review

p. 43 New Pilgrim Perspectives:

“A devout Muslim embarks on the Way of St. James, and a Canadian professor and long-time pilgrim follows the trail of spiritual wandering in the vastness of the Midwest. Two inspiring book recommendations from Protestant pastor and passionate pilgrim Traugott Roser.“

“The Search for a Lost Home (Die Suche nach einem verlorenen Zuhause)“

“Matthew Anderson, Professor of New Testament at Concordia University in Montreal, is an experienced pilgrim who has also led his Canadian students through Spain, France, England, and Norway and has made a name for himself as a documentary filmmaker on pilgrimage. After many trips to Europe, he wonders whether pilgrimage is also possible in North America and what pilgrimage might mean there. In his new book, “The Good Walk – Creating New Paths on Traditional Prairie Trails,” he tells a compelling story of humanity’s age-old paths through the prairie of the Middle West. It is an account of a painful yet healing search for home: “Pilgrimage together with others—in the broadest sense understood as spiritually motivated hiking—is a way of searching for a lost home.” Anderson is a descendant of settlers who farmed…

(P. 45) and built small towns on the supposedly deserted plains of Saskatchewan (see photo above), and [the region once called] the Northwest Territories. Since 2015, Anderson and his wife Sara have been traveling the trails once used by traders, settler treks, and the Northwest Mounted Police, a paramilitary force commissioned by the Canadian government. But Anderson not only gets close to the story of his own family, descendants of white European immigrants, but also of the people who lived there before and were deprived of their land through sham treaties, displacement, and targeted extermination.

Pilgrimage: intercultural and interfaith

Anderson is accompanied on his journey by various companions, including Don Bolen, the Catholic Archbishop of the Diocese of Regina. Descendants of the First Nations, the Lakota, the Nakota, and the Nehyawak (Cree) accompany them or host them, as do descendants of settlers and the Métis, descendants of European-Indigenous marriages, who historically mediated between cultures as fur traders and are now considered an independent nation.

Anderson sees his hikes through the vast landscapes as pilgrimages to places whose history has been partly forgotten, partly erased. This also changes the landscape and its perception itself: through narratives and archaeological evidence, places of living memory emerge.

The places create new relationships and deepen old ones. In this way, the pilgrims come into contact with the spiritual world, [sometimes] with the elders and wise men of the Indigenous peoples, [sometimes] with their own family history, and [always] with nature. Through Christian and Indigenous rituals, the pilgrimage becomes an intercultural and religiously unifying experience. At the same time, it is a painful journey that ties in with the tradition of penitential pilgrimage: The extermination of the North American bison took place in the vastness of the prairie. This deprived the Indigenous people of their livelihood, and thousands starved to death while faced with the government’s deliberate inaction. It is equally painful when the pilgrims encounter survivors from the church-run boarding schools (of both Catholics and Protestants):

On behalf of state authorities, children were taken from their families and  Nations and placed in Christian schools. Only in recent years did the public learn of the graves of thousands of nameless children who did not survive the ordeal.

Reward for Physical and Mental Effort

The paths across the prairie demand physical and mental effort from the pilgrims, but they also reward them: through community, forgiveness, and understanding. Matthew Anderson ultimately even succeeds in finding peace for his deceased parents and for his sister, who died very young. The pilgrim’s path is a good path, and with the project Anderson describes, a new, very unique pilgrimage tradition begins in Canada.

I couldn’t put either book down; it was precisely the different perspectives of both authors that inspired me to consider my own pilgrimage

I couldn’t put either book down; it was precisely the different perspectives of both authors that inspired me to consider my own pilgrimage on the Way of St. James in a new and more profound way: as a consciously religious experience, as a path to encounter God, and as a path to reconciliation.”

Dr. Roser’s Own Pilgrim Book

I wouldn’t be much of a friend, if at this point I didn’t mention that Traugott has published his own pilgrim book. It’s in German, titled Hola! bei Kilometer 410: Mit Allen Sinnen auf dem Jakobsweg (Hola! At kilometre 410 with all senses on the Camino de Santiago).

I wonder if a rather free, but still good, translation might be: “Hola! Fully aware and alive at kilometre 410 of the Camino de Santiago.” It’d be great to see this valuable book out for the English-language reader as well! (By the way, the other book he reviewed with mine in the above article sounds fascinating).

Traugott does all kinds of interesting teaching and research, including (like me) teaching Bible and Film classes. He is also an ethicist who teaches about ethics in healthcare and palliative care.

Thanks, Traugott, for the great review. Buen Camino! Looking forward to walking with you some day soon!