Alex Carrick’s Blog

David and Maria made sure to arrive home on a Tuesday evening before 6 p.m. after long hard days at work for both of them. They were a married couple in their mid 40s, with three children – William aged 20, Walter 10 and Wendy 5. Later that evening, they would be meeting with Maria’s […]

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Pug-nosed Pat and gum-chewing Chris, two long-time Irish cops, were back on the day shift after a month spent on the night rotation. Their patrol area ranged from the entertainment district in the east to the upscale shopping blocks downtown. Being a cop in these days was quite a different experience than it had been […]

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Gerry Westerfield was the kind of 25- to 30-year-old who disappears into the background. He grew his mat-black hair long, cultivated a beard and was perpetually attired in denim. He’d studied computer science at Sir Wilfred Laurier University but hadn’t quite earned his degree. There was no question he was a savant when it came to […]

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Little Jimmy Flotsam, aged 10 and living in Tampa, had never known Christmas. The current year was 2025 and in 2015 Santa Claus and his wife had wrapped things up at the North Pole and skipped town, so to speak. In a sadly mimicking blow, Jimmy’s father abandoned his family when his only child was […]

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My family – wife and two daughters – had already re-located to Calgary. My job in the energy sector was taking me to where the action is, Alberta’s oil patch. I was staying behind temporarily to spend time with our real estate agent, trying to sell our townhome. It was mid-fall and we’d been conducting an […]

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Now that the weather has turned a little cooler, it’s easy to grow nostalgic about the warm relaxing days of summer. But it’s worth remembering that those days weren’t perfect either.   I knew this day would come, so I wrote down a quick summary of some of the little annoyances that made me glad to […]

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A weatherman, an economist and a little old gypsy lady were attending a forecasters’ convention. After all the speeches and the events of the first day, they met in a bar and had a few drinks together.   As the night wore on, they challenged each other to reveal their worst forecasting errors.   The […]

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I made it. I’m free. I can’t believe it. This is so great!   I can hear them talking below me. They think this is a tragedy and it’s making them sad. They suspect the tree was lurking to ensnare me. They couldn’t be more wrong. I saw my opportunity and I took it.   The […]

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North of the city, this past weekend, I eaves-dropped on the following conversation in a local diner.   MAN: Do ya suppose it’s okay to bury Barry in Barrie?   WOMAN: He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.   MAN: Bad how he bought it, though.

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You have to like Twitter. It yields access to large numbers of people that one could not otherwise reach. Through “following” and “followers”, direct messages and other commands it is a far more powerful tool than its simplistic design suggests.     However, its drawbacks are obvious. First is the brevity with which one’s message appears on […]

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