On Boker Tov, this week, we introduced a new segment to our show, The Writer's Corner. It seemed only fitting that we should have one of Canada's funnier writers, Gordon Kirkland. He hails from Toronto and London and now, BC, and regales a large newspaper audiences with his weekly article about life according to Gord.

I first met Gord in San Diego, at a writer's conference. Gord believes in 'pay it forward.' He spends countless hours travelling across North America giving back by teaching writer wannabes like me how to be funny when we write, or how to write in dialect, or how to cope with adversity that comes your way by using humour. Gord is an 'incomplete paraplegic.' Only you don't really notice it. He weilds his six foot six frame around on arm crutches, but Gord has made it such a part of him that it is unremarkable to see. But he does write about it. I've copied one of his articles for you to see the great man in action.

SNOW ISN'T FIT FOR MAN NOR BEAST

In 1996, I wrote a column about the problems we face in the Northwest when we have to deal with snow. In the twenty three years I've lived on the coast, I've only had to deal with a few snowstorms. As a result, snow scares the bejeezus out of me as much as it does the people who have spent their entire lives out here.
That particular column was called Disaster Strikes Vancouver - Many Left Without Cappucino. For many of the residents of this area, a disruption in the supply of cffeinated beverages is one of the worst things that could happen to them.
We've just come through one of those periods of snowy weather. For much of the last ten days, most of the region has been all but shut down by a horrific dump of snow.
We got nearly four inches.
The greater Vancouver area is home to approximately two million residents. There are about twenty snowplows to serve the entire area. I think that one or two people might actually own a snow shovel, but they are just people who moved here and forgot to leave it behind when they packed up their belongings.
I've a special reason for disliking the snow. When it arrives, I am, for all intents and purposes, placed under house arrest. My crutches seem to develop a mind of their own on icy sidewalks. My wheelchair is just as useless, although it might be better if I could find a little set of chains to go on the tires.
I spoke to a police officer in Seattle during a snowstorm a few years ago. He said that there are three kinds of drivers in the snow. There are the people with old or economy cars who drive with extra caution because they don't want to run into a luxury car or a truck. There are the people with luxury vehicles who drive with extra caution because they don't want to be hit by someone in an economy car. Then there are the people with SUVs who think that their vehicle can do anything in the snow, rain, mud, or sleet.
"Take a look as you go along the highway," he said. "Eight out of ten of the vehicles parked upside-down in the median will be SUVs."
It's not just the human population that suffers when snow comes to the Pacific Northwest. Animals seem less able to deal with it than their relatives in other parts of the country.
Tara, my assistance dog, is supposed to keep me standing up on my crutches. When she sees snow on the sidewalk she gives me a look that clearly means, "All bets are off, Gord."
Because of the snow, I had to drive her to her favourite spot to take care of business one day last week. For some reason, this dog likes to poop on a hill, and seemingly the steeper the better. Like many other dogs, she has a habit of kicking with her back legs after she has completed the job at hand (or in this case I guess it would be better to say 'at paw.')
She learned a valuable lesson that day: it is not wise to kick your back legs out behind you when you are standing on a snowy hill in a squatting position. As soon as her back legs were off the ground, her front legs lost their footing and she careened downwards without even a modicum of control.
If dogs could blush, she would have been crimson.
Tara is a dog with a long memory. She was stung by a wasp two years ago and still won't walk past the window at the post office where it happened. I'm a bit concerned about what this latest calamity that has befallen her will do to her psyche.
Just this morning, when I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk, she gave me a pensive look that seemed to say, "Y'know, Gord, I bet if you got me a magazine I could learn to sit on the toilet, the way you do."
Yeah, sure. Like she could hold a magazine.

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Here I am, on a Saturday night, gazing out over the eighth green of Pointe West golf course, my backyard, and writing to you. I am listening to Michael Arden singing a song from the off-broadway show, Bare. The words are full of pain and the song is haunting. Michael, of course, sings it masterfully and every word he sings tears at the heart. When I listen to music like this it makes me feel so grateful for my loving family and wonderful friends.
The show is about two gay men and the anguish they go through in their relationship. Very real. And just like any other relationship between two lovers.
It is astounding to me that there are people in this day and age who still think gay people are perverts, Satan's children, evil, society's outcasts... Well, you can fill in all the names you've heard. Has anybody ever heard of genetics? A gay man can no more stop how he feels than a heterosexual human can. It's in the genes.
When I was a kid, I lived near a family of six. The father was bisexual. So was the eldest son. Of the five remaining siblings, one boy was gay, as was one daughter. Three were heterosexual. I knew from grade school that my friend was gay. He and I played dolls together, dress up, and we were the very best of friends. We never discussed his sexual preference, he knew he didn't have to. We introduced our boyfriends to each other and talked about our relationships like friends do. And it felt so right when we did. It had never occurred to me that my friend faced such hate and disgust for something he had no control over until I spent nights bathing his wounds a workmate had inflicted on him. We're an auto industry town, no place for a gay man to work.
His cousin was a bisexual, a beautiful and loving man who loved life with a passion the likes I have never seen. He was Windsor's first AIDS victim. None of us had heard of this disease and were stunned when we discovered our friend was dying. Welcome to the real world Windsor. It's ugly and has terrible diseases that kill our loved ones.
To most Windsorites' credit, our beloved was mourned by many. His joie de vivre had been contagious and cherished. Hundreds of us attended his funeral and wept for the beautiful soul that we had lost. To think of this man dying at such an early age because of a virus is heart breaking. To think of so many people dying from this horrible disease is terrifying. Because mostly gay people were being infected, many religious zealots quickly declared it to be God's punishment for their depravity. And many people agreed. Shame on the lot of them.
So we lost one of the best dancers in the world - Nureyev. We lost Peter Allen, Michael Bennett, Rock Hudson, and thousands of others. And millions in Africa where the disease was first discovered.
Back then, once diagnosed, AIDS victims lived for only a short time, months, a year or two if lucky. There still isn't a cure, but treatments give AIDS victims a few more years. But there will be a cure. It's close. It's going to be simple, too. Something so obvious that we will smack our foreheads when we hear of it and say "Of course. That makes sense." And we will discover that this will lead us to a cure for countless other diseases like cancer and MD. Of this I am sure.
My biggest fear is that we'll never find a cure for those 'religious' people who cannot see that being gay is as normal for a gay person as being heterosexual is for me. Are blind hatreds and anti-semitism symptoms of a genetic disease? Dear Lord, I pray so, then we could find a cure for those vile humans and their curses.
I loved my friend and though we haven't seen each other in years, I still do and he knows it. He is a beautiful soul just like his cousin had been. And I was blessed to have known them both.

For more information about AIDS call the AIDS Society near you. It's in your local phone book. For more information on how to cope with being gay, listen in to CJAM on Monday nights for Chris Cecile's show, Queer Radio.

I just heard on the radio that Christmas is fast approaching and we better start our shopping now to get those savings. What?! Excuse me? Whatever happened to fall and Hallowe'en? I'm beginning to think this kind of rushing the days and months away is a bad symptom of our society. Nobody ever seems to want to savour the moment anymore. We all have to rush, rush, rush to the next event, the next appointment, the next day.

I never hear of parents taking their kids for a walk in the woods, or to a play, or concert by a symphony. Or real pumpkins on Hallowe'en!!! One mother told me she would never allow a real pumpkin. It was too messy. That's the best part!

There doesn't seem to be such a thing as taking the kids for a picnic at Point Pelee, anymore, a ritual Sunday event when I was young, spring, summer, and fall.

When I was about seven or eight one of the highlights of the week was to plan with the neighbours a meeting spot in Point Pelee. We would pick up homemade bread at a stand on old Highway Three and fresh tomatoes and cucumbers. Our car then stopped at an Inn in Cottam to get fried chicken that put Frankenmouth's to shame. Our next stop, further down the road, was a stand that made the sweetest tasting apple pies I've ever bitten into. And off we would go.

Our favourite spot was just after the NorthWest beach. The moms put out the food, the dads started a barbeque and smoked(it was the in thing to do back then). They had the Tiger's baseball game tuned in on a portable radio. You just knew that all was right in the world if Ernie Harwell was giving us play by play descriptions of the game.

After lunch, us kids ran amuck on the beach collecting shells and playing ball. We spent hours watching clouds roll by, deciding whether or not the cloud resembled anything on earth. They always did!

When I had children of my own, I tried to give them the same kind of Sundays I had experienced, only life was so much different. The stand with the fresh homemade bread was gone. We had to find a replacement for the great chicken because the Inn had closed. The pie stand was closed as well, so we'd stop at Colasanti's for broasted chicken, apple pie dumplings, and fresh tomatoes and cucumbers. Ernie Harwell retired several years back so my kids never got to hear his calm, reassuring, Midwestern voice. And you know what? Things really haven't been right in the world since he retired.

My kids did get to run amuck on the beach, play ball, and watch clouds, but we were by ourselves. Neighbours were too busy to join us. After all, both parents worked during the week and they had grocery shopping, laundry, and housekeeping to do. The kids'friends played hockey or whatever other organized sport they were into. And mosquitoes and horse flies were rampant!

I often wondered if Joe Colasanti was making a valiant attempt at keeping Sundays special for families with his greenhouses and food, if maybe he too grew up with picnics on Sundays in Point Pelee. His complex now has a miniature golf course, a kids' zoo, kiddie rides and ponies to pet. On Hallowe'en he has wagon rides and haunted scary events for the kids to experience with their parents. And real pumpkins to carve.

People say times are better now for kids, but I'm not so sure about that. True, the kids of today seem brighter and far more sophisticated than we ever were, but they seem more nervous and easily agitated and they don't enjoy the small things in life - picnics, clouds, and real pumpkins. And that's just wrong, don't you think? Life is too short to miss a great cloud day.

I wonder; if Ernie Harwell came out of retirement to announce the Tiger games, would everything become right with the world again?

It's another dreadfully gloomy autumn day in the Windsor/Detroit area. We've had so much rain that we now have mushrooms and little trees growing out of the wood on our patio! But, it is a very good day to write.

Windsor is having municipal elections on November the thirteenth. As a radio show host I interview as many of the candidates as I can. Some of them are proving to be very interesting, but, so far, they all have one thing in common...a desire to see Windsor become a flourishing, happy city that is recognized as a good place to live and raise families.

I don't think there is anyone who would argue about the merits of Eddie Francis as our fearless mayor. He's fantastic. Eddie had proved his nettle when he was a councillor, but I have to say I had my doubts someone so young could handle the task of mayor. I should never have been worried. He has nearly completed every task he set out for himself as mayor.

Eddie has even tackled the truck issue. And when the Federal and Provincial reps arrived in our town and handed over a lousy two million dollar cheque a few years ago, they hoped that bandaid would get Windsorites off their back in regards to the Border issue. Eddie's refusal to acknowledge them was the absolute correct thing to do and I applaud him for having the courage to turn his back on them! There are people out there who say he slapped them in the face and put a strain on Windsor's relationship with these people. Not so. When my daughter sat on the Air Quality Committee of Windsor for four years she and I were appalled at the absolute indifference and disregard both governments had for Windsor. They wouldn't even come to the table! After Eddie's rebuke they are now paying attention to us. They don't seem to have grasped the severity of the situation yet, but at least they are at the table looking at the situation. And Eddie isn't backing down from them. He's done his research, he knows anything outside of a tunnel corridor is disastrous for us. And you know what? I believe in him. I truly believe this young man will get the job done. I only hope he stays around long enough as our mayor for us to thank him when the border issue is finally laid to rest.