Thursday Thirteen: 13 Things you can do to support others


The world has become a pretty shitty place recently, where people record incidents instead of helping, or think that social media is reality. They think they know everything and that its okay or cool to speak to people in a less than respectful manner. It’s a crying shame, and certainly not the way we were brought up. Here are 13 ways we can support each other (even when life gets complicated or we don’t support or agree with their views).

13. Accept that everyone is carrying something

Some people carry groceries. Others carry grief, stress, uncertainty, or a mental to-do list that never sleeps. Support starts when we assume the load is heavier than it looks. Just because you can do something or see something one way means others can, or should, or that’s its right or better. Take a step back, a deep breath and think.

12. Offer flexibility when weather and circumstances take over

Extreme weather has a way of reminding us how little control we actually have. If someone is late, distracted, or running on fumes, a bit of patience, compassion and understanding goes a long way.

11. Treat mental health like the health issue it is

Burnout is not laziness. Anxiety is not weakness. Depression is not a personality flaw. Support sometimes means listening without trying to fix anything, which is surprisingly hard for adults.

10. Show quiet solidarity with communities facing fear

When any community, including the Jewish community, is experiencing heightened fear or isolation, support does not have to be loud. Sometimes it is as simple as checking in, listening, and standing beside people instead of explaining things to them.

9. Speak about others with care, especially when they are not present

Words have a way of sticking, particularly when shared with people who trust us. Support includes being mindful that stories are rarely one-sided and tone matters more than we think.

8. Remember that respect is not something people age out of

Children, teens, parents, and adults all deserve to be spoken to with basic respect. Support does not mean agreement, but it does mean decency. This one sounds obvious until it is not.

7. Be curious before being critical

Most people are not difficult just for fun. Asking “what’s going on here” instead of “what’s wrong with them” changes the entire conversation.

6. Understand that not everyone is operating from stability

Some people are rebuilding careers, finances, routines, or identities. Support looks like recognizing effort even when progress is not obvious or Instagram-worthy. Turning your back on someone going through a hard time doesn’t make you right, it shows your true colours.

5. Acknowledge effort, not just outcomes

Sometimes showing up is the win. Support includes noticing persistence, especially when results are slow or invisible. There will, however, come a time when people who show up for you and are treated poorly, slowly just stop showing up. Acknowledge, and appreciate. Life’s too short to be a dick.

4. Support parents who are still trying

Parenting does not come with performance reviews or annual raises. Many parents are quietly navigating complex family dynamics while still trying to show up. Support can be as simple as not making it harder.

3. Keep humour in the toolkit

A little humour can lower the temperature in almost any room. Support does not always mean serious talks. Sometimes it means laughing together so nobody loses perspective. Not everyone wants to, or is comfortable having that difficult conversation every time. Read the room. Earn their trust. Show your maturity and react appropriately.

2. Create space for disagreement without disrespect

It is possible to disagree without being dismissive. Support thrives in environments where conversations stay human, even when opinions differ. History has shown that those who always out shout their opponents might think they’ve won the battle when in fact their opponents just no longer wish to engage and be shouted at or over.

1. Lead with empathy, even when it is not returned

This is the hardest one and the most important. Empathy is not a transaction. It is a choice about who we want to be, especially when things feel unfair or unresolved. Anyone can be empathetic. Again, read the room, seek feedback from others. Replay interactions and see if you were empathetic or if you could be more understanding. Don’t be pathetic… be empathetic. It’s a solid trait to develop and supportive to those in your closest circle.

Happy Birthday Dad


Today would have been my father’s 87th birthday. He passed away when he was just 62 years old (25 years ago). It was a complete shock at the time. He missed the birth of my three children and he would have loved to have spent time with them. It’s one of those things where the older we get we look back and realize that we were robbed of those moments because in the moment we’re so caught up with what to do that we don’t really have the time to sit down and reflect.

Sure, we look forward at the hole his absence will leave in the family, but looking back it was bigger than even I expected.

My dad would have also would have hated the way the world is today… Especially in Canada with this long-governing Liberal government and their scandals and general mistreatment of taxpayer funds. He loved politics, and because he was an avid reader of the newspapers, he was in tune with everything that was going on, and from all sides, because he read pretty much all the papers… daily.

As I think about his impact on my life and that of my sister, I am constantly reminded as she’s picked up and displays many of his finest qualities… OY. I am also reminded of his dislike of hockey because the sport had tons of rules that it never followed, and wrestling because it was “fake”. Probably the same reason he didn’t like movies… fake too.

He loved music, especially classical, and he was an avid photographer. As a university student, him and his closest friends started a photography company that they used to meet women, often offering to take revealing photos for less than clothed ones, but nonetheless, it was his hobby.

One story he used to tell us was when he went to the University of Toronto he and his friends had an interest in economics and politics and went to the communist bookstore in Toronto to buy a copy of the book “Lenin”. He said that him and his friends were followed for weeks after that, likely by the government, because they must have thought he was a communist. I’m not sure if he ever read the book, but I have it. He bought it for $0.50.

My dad worked hard, but had some tough luck at work. I remember when he moved from accounting to auditing to insurance and then risk management within his firm, trying to keep up with my mother’s spending, only for the firm to downsize and shuffle him out as a consultant. He was shocked, and it really set him back. It really reinforced the old adage of giving your all for a company only to have them find someone younger and cheaper and kicking you to the curb without a moments notice. It took a toll on him.

Fortunately for the family, my mother was working, and my sister and I were working while attending high school and university, so we were able to help out. A couple of times I’d just give him my bank book and he’d write a cheque to be used to keep the family going. I was lucky enough to have a roof over my head and food on the table, and while I likely bitched about it at the time, I’d have done it again over and over again without hesitation. Without family, what do you have?

I credit my dad with steering me away from accounting and towards my MBA, when he told me how bad I was at accounting. I was in absolute denial about how difficult it was to comprehend consolidations and he could see how frustrated I was. He was always there to help me even if it always started with complaining. I think it was part of the act for him.

I did have the opportunity to see him before he passed and I stopped on my way out of the house, turned back to him, gave him a hug and a kiss and told him I loved him. Still makes me sad knowing that was the last time I’d see him alive.

Having lost both parents, it’s crazy to think about the void of not having your parents around for the highs and the lows. They put all this effort into raising you and helping you make the right decisions, then… poof. They’re gone. I truly believe you can’t fully understand the loss unless you’ve actually lost your parents. It never gets easier, just more distant.

What I wouldn’t give for a bit more time with him, especially as I got older and lived all these milestones without him by my side.

Love you dad!

Empowering Parents


Empowering Parents: From VHS Remotes to Virtual Realities

Parenting has always been a strange mix of joy, confusion, pride, fatigue, and the occasional moment where you stare at your child and wonder how someone can generate so much laundry. But the way we talk about empowering parents has changed dramatically over the past two decades. It has grown from the simple act of keeping the household functional to the complex world of raising tech fluent children who treat smartphones like a natural extension of their hands.

When I look back at parenting over the past 20 years, the contrast is almost unbelievable. The kids have grown, the technology has exploded, and the expectations placed on parents have become more layered than a well built lasagna (which happens to be my favourite food). And through all of this, the idea of empowerment has shifted from survival to strategy, from instinct to information, and from quiet authority to collaborative guidance.

Twenty Years Ago: You Were Empowered If You Could Program the VCR

If we turn the clock back to the early 2000s, empowerment looked quite different. Parenting was a hands on, manual experience. There was no app to track sleep schedules, no GPS watch to locate your wandering child, and certainly no online groups where hundreds of strangers debated bedtime routines for sport.

Empowerment two decades ago meant having the confidence to raise your children based on what you knew, what you remembered from your own childhood, and whatever information you could gather from books, magazines, or that one relative who always had something to say. If you could keep everyone fed, reasonably clean, and prevent your living room from becoming a Lego minefield, you were already winning.

Technology was not your co parent. At best it was the thing you yelled at when the VCR clock started blinking again. Your children were not online. They were outside getting dirty, climbing anything climbable, and returning home only when hungry. Parents felt empowered because the expectations were simpler. You were trusted to know what you were doing. And if you occasionally did not, well, nobody had the means to record your mistakes.

Fifteen Years Ago: Enter the Internet Parent

Move forward to the late 2000s and early 2010s and suddenly everything changed. The internet became part of everyday life and parents had access to more information than they ever asked for. This was the era when empowerment shifted from instinct to research.

Parents began looking up everything. We looked up developmental milestones, fever thresholds, nap schedules, and whether that rash meant anything. Sometimes we learned useful things. Sometimes we scared ourselves unnecessarily. But either way, we were now connected to a world of information that made us feel like we had more power than ever before.

This was also the time when early social media and parenting blogs emerged. Communities formed online. Parents shared stories, tips, and the occasional digital eye roll. There were supportive voices and, inevitably, judgemental ones too. But it was still a time when most kids were not glued to devices yet. Screens were a novelty, used occasionally and with some parental fanfare. Remember when handing your child your phone was a last resort, not a daily ritual

Ten Years Ago: The Era of The Great Screen Takeover

By the mid 2010s, empowerment required a whole new skill set. Screens had officially moved in and made themselves comfortable. Tablets, smartphones, laptops, video games, and streaming platforms became the backdrop of everyday family life.

Parents were no longer just caregivers. They became digital managers. You learned to adjust privacy settings, approve downloads, monitor screen time, and pretend you understood what your child was watching on YouTube. You had to keep up with school work that involved online platforms, digital submissions, and group chats that were somehow more complex than anything from your own school days.

The empowered parent of ten years ago tried to balance technology without letting it run the entire household. You learned how to use parental controls even though your eight year old could bypass them faster than you could type the password. Yet this was also the period when emotional awareness became a bigger part of parenting. We started talking openly about resilience, anxiety, and mindfulness. We learned that empowerment required both technical skills and emotional understanding.

Five Years Ago: Empowerment Became About Communication

Fast forward to the late 2010s and early 2020s and parenting became as much about emotional navigation as technological management. Children were growing up in a world that moved faster than most adults could keep up with. Social media was everywhere. School demands increased. Activities became more intense. And global events added stress that every parent felt in their own way.

Empowering parents during this period meant equipping them with communication tools. Parents worked to build open dialogue, deeper trust, and awareness of what kids were going through. We learned to ask questions differently. We learned to listen more. We learned to recognise that a child who looked perfectly fine might still have a lot going on beneath the surface.

Technology was fully entrenched but the focus had shifted toward managing its effects. Parents became advocates at school, guides at home, and occasional detectives trying to understand what was happening on TikTok and why everything had a new trend every 48 hours.

Today: Empowerment Means Navigating Real Life and Digital Life At The Same Time

Now we arrive at 2025 where empowerment looks more complex, more dynamic, and oddly more collaborative than ever before. Our kids are older, savvier, and often better at technology than the adults trying to raise them. They live in group chats, online games, virtual classrooms, and social worlds that feel light years away from anything we experienced growing up.

Empowering parents today means helping them navigate both the digital world and the real world without losing their sanity. It means teaching kids digital literacy, boundaries, and online safety while also guiding them through friendships, responsibilities, and emotional health. It means knowing enough to help your child but also admitting when you do not know something and are willing to learn.

Parents in this era are expected to be more flexible, more informed, and more emotionally aware. It is a lot. But it also comes with an upside. Today’s parents have resources, communities, and tools that did not exist twenty years ago. We have more understanding of child development. We have better conversations about mental health. We have support networks both online and offline. And most importantly, we have kids who, despite all the technology, still need hugs, encouragement, guidance, and the occasional reminder to put their dishes in the sink.

A Final Thought: Empowerment Has Evolved Along With Us

Looking back across the last two decades, the idea of what makes a parent empowered has changed dramatically. What has not changed is the heart of parenting. We still want the best for our children. We still try our hardest every day. We still learn as we go. The tools, challenges, and expectations have changed but the desire to raise good humans has not.

Parents today face a complicated landscape that mixes real world responsibilities with digital realities. But we are more capable than we realize. We try. We adapt. We improvise. We grow. And we do it all with humour, resilience, and a level of caffeine intake that probably deserves its own research study.

Why I’ve Never Really Liked Halloween: Even as a Kid


I never really liked Halloween.

Not as a kid. Not as a parent. Not even now. And I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Maybe it started in the 1970s, when I first realized that Halloween came with pressure. You couldn’t just throw on a costume. It had to be cool, not nerdy. You had to make sure it wouldn’t get you picked on, because back then, kids had zero filters and even less empathy.

If your costume looked weird, or if you wore something even remotely “off,” you’d hear about it, loudly and often, for years. We didn’t have the kind of social awareness or kindness that’s common now. There was no “everyone’s welcome” energy on Halloween night in 1978. You just got roasted.

And the whole concept never sat right with me. I didn’t love the idea of dressing up, and even less, the idea of wandering around in the dark knocking on strangers’ doors, asking for candy. It always felt… weirdly transactional. Almost like begging. I don’t know that I thought it was beneath me as a kid, but I definitely didn’t like it.

Growing up in Toronto, we didn’t have fancy decorations or inflatable skeletons on lawns. Some houses were dark but still gave out candy; others had pumpkins glowing on the porch but turned you away. So every door knock felt like a gamble — yelling “trick or treat!” and hoping you wouldn’t be met with an awkward “Sorry, nothing left.”

There’s one memory that still makes me cringe: my dad once sent us back to the same house three times because they were giving out pads of paper and pencils. He loved the practical treats, as an accountant, and a bit of a packrat (I believe we now use the term “hoarder”) But by the third trip, the poor guy at the door recognized us and handed me a whole box of paper. I can still feel my face burning from embarrassment. For all future years I refused to go to that house.

On the flip side, I remember running out of candy one year while we were giving it out. We turned off the lights to signal “we’re done,” but older kids kept knocking. And these weren’t cute five-year-olds in pumpkin suits — these were big, intimidating teens in masks, the kind that made you wish for a locked screen door (we didn’t have one). Opening the door felt risky. And in those days, we’d all heard stories about houses getting egged or trees getting TP’d for handing out “bad” candy or worse, none at all.

I grew up in a pretty sheltered home. My parents didn’t let me go south of Eglinton Avenue until I was a teenager because it was considered to be downtown and dangerous. It’s actually midtown and no less dangerous that Finch or Sheppard Ave. I had to sneak downtown in high school just to have lunch with my friends at the Eaton Centre. It’s funny, because while I wasn’t allowed downtown, I could hop on my bike on a Saturday morning, ride wherever I wanted, and not come home until dinner. That was the 70s for you, freedom with very specific limits.

When I became a parent, I thought maybe Halloween would finally click for me. I decorated – usually the day of because the kids wanted it but they didn’t want to do it, stocked up on candy, and took my kids trick-or-treating. I genuinely loved watching them get excited — the costumes, the energy, the neighborhood buzz. But I think what I loved most was how it connected us to our community for a night.

We had our own traditions: after trick-or-treating, the kids would dump their candy on the table, and we’d sort it — what they liked, what we liked (let’s be honest), and what no one liked. The stuff we didn’t want went back in the bowl for the last few groups of kids who came by. They’d leave with half a pillowcase full of loot.

We’d then “buy” the kids’ candy — trading it for a toy or something they wanted. They learned early that working for a toy beat hoarding chocolate bars. And yes, we still kept our own stash.

Fast forward to today. My kids are older now. Only one still does Halloween, as Boo will be handing out candy. I’ll be watching the Blue Jays playing in a World Series-clinching game and hoping the evening stays calm and safe.

I don’t hate Halloween. I just don’t love it. It’s always felt like a performance I was never meant to star in. My sister has always referred to me as the grinch who stole Halloween.

Some people wait all year for October 31st. Me? I’ll just be happy when the pumpkins are composted, the lights are off, and the mini Snickers are on sale.

Civil servant accused of washing his feet with vinegar at his cubicle


The Story That Kicked This Off

Back in 2016, the National Post published an unbelievable story: a federal civil servant was accused of washing his feet with vinegar in his cubicle. The smell alone was enough for a co-worker to file a harassment claim, and eventually go on long-term disability.

As wild as that sounds, I wasn’t surprised. Not even a little. It made me laugh, not at that specific situation, but because it triggered flashbacks from my own 11 years at the Canada Revenue Agency. The characters I worked alongside, the things I saw, heard, and smelled… I could launch a podcast based on those stories alone.

Bureaucracy at Its Finest

This foot-washing fiasco is a perfect example of how government offices operate. Instead of leadership stepping in quickly and shutting it down, issues like this are allowed to drag on. Decisions take months, sometimes years, and common sense rarely makes an appearance.

Going back to this story: the “victim” in this case actually won the legal right not to work in the same building as the vinegar-foot enthusiast. Why? Because she was found to be suffering “disabling stress” after enduring two years of his behaviour, behaviour that included walking around barefoot, farting, swearing, cooking or eating smelly food, and grunting loudly at his desk.

The Tipping Point

Her breaking point came when she called him an “espèce de cochon” (French for “species of pig”) after choking on the smell of his dill-flavoured popcorn, which he had topped with melted strong cheese. A pregnant colleague had already told her the smell made her sick to her stomach.

She admitted to investigators that the insult slipped out, but said it was the result of years of torment. By that point, she explained, she simply couldn’t apologize or even stay in the same room with him.

So what did the government do? They gave her an oral reprimand for harassment. Meanwhile, the allegations against him were dismissed.

Two Years, One Grievance, and a Big Payout

Because management failed to deal with this mess early on, and trust me, everyone in that office would have known about it, the situation escalated. She ended up filing a grievance alleging the federal government discriminated against her by failing to accommodate her disabling stress.

The Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board agreed. The government was ordered to compensate her for wages and benefits lost during the more than two years she spent on long-term disability.

Only in Ottawa…

Sound insane? It is. But it’s also typical when you’ve got inadequate processes being run by managers who don’t have the training, or the backbone, to actually manage. Instead, they kick the can down the road until everyone’s stressed, lawyers are involved, and taxpayers pick up the tab.

Only in Ottawa could vinegar feet lead to a two-year disability claim.

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