The Brown Knowser

I was early. I had more than an hour to kill and, because we're in a province-wide lockdown, because I was in one of the hottest zones in the province, I needed to find a place to go where I could keep a distance from people. I suppose I could have found a place to park and could have just sat in my car for that hour or so, but I had already sat behind the wheel for more than four and a half hours, was going to spend another four and a half to five hours behind it some more, for the return journey. I needed to get some circulation through my veins, needed fresh air in my lungs. I headed to the lake. I can't remember the last time that I looked out onto Lake Ontario; I mean, really looked out and admired its vastness. Years. Perhaps, as many as 10, when we took our kids to the top of the CN Tower, in Toronto. So I headed south, from where I was to help my eldest kid move out of her residence, and kept going until I hit the lake. I had never been to this part of the lake before, ...

It started off with a simple text. One of my oldest and dearest friends, Karen, and I have known each other for almost 50 years. By the time we were in high school, we had moved from classroom acquaintances to good friends, and by the time that we finished high school, we belonged to a fairly tight-knit group that included my bestie, Stuart. And because both of us took a year off, after high school, Karen and I were practically inseparable, so much so that my parents thought we were dating. We weren't. And though Karen has lived in Guelph for about 30 years, we still keep in touch. Hence, the aforementioned text, which I sent earlier this month. She had a lot of memories to choose from: Montreal, where we went with Stuart and a gone-but-not-forgotten friend, Sherrill. Hopping from bar to bar, we all got shitfaced and eventually Karen and I ended up making out. No, we never dated. And no, we weren't in Montreal on the date in question. After a couple more guesses, I told her to ...

I prefer how it used to look. It was somewhere between burnt gold and dulled brass. A monotone colour that seemed to blend well with the nearby castle that was on top of a dormant volcano. Ross Fountain is a famous landmark in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was one of the places that I wanted to virtually see when I finished last night's workout for my LEJOG challenge. Because there were strong wind gusts in Ottawa, I chose to get on my spin bike, rather than my road bike, and I calculated that I would need to cover a distance of between 33 kilometres and 33.5 kms to reach the south end of Edinburgh, from Peebles, in the Borders district. With the number of klicks that I would cover, simply by walking around the house, I easily made up the distance that was required to get me to my ultimate destination, Edinburgh Castle. Using The Conqueror app, I logged 33.43 kilometres and came within a couple of blocks away from Salisbury Green Hotel, where I stayed in 2010 with my best friend, Stua...

On the day that I started my latest virtual challenge , using my spin bike and my feet to cover the distance from Land's End, in southwest England, to John O'Groats, on the norther tip of Scotland, I was hoping that DW would join me, switching from her feet alone to sharing our spin bike and, when the weather improved, hitting the road on our bicycles. I also invited readers of The Brown Knowser to join us, too, but knew that would be a long shot. I realize you have lives of your own. And on the first day, DW did get on the spin bike for a few minutes, covering about three kilometres. But she stopped, telling me that because she hadn't yet finished her Camino de Santiago virtual journey, it didn't seem right to her. She was travelling with two of our friends, and she didn't want to feel like she was in two places at the same time. She decided to stick with her gals, promising to join me as soon as she was done. I couldn't wait. Because she and the other Bytown ...

I don't think I gave this photo much attention when I first had it developed, as a slide, in 1996. I'm sure that when I first received my processed slides, I loaded them into my projector and viewed them, enlarged, on the blank wall in DW's and my Deerfield Drive apartment. I don't remember seeing the smaller, white flowers, tucked in the grass behind the flowering plant by the bank of the Upper Salmon River, in Alma, New Brunswick. I must have seen them, as I was standing there, composing the shot, but I didn't remember them afterward. What I do remember, as I looked at the slide, was that the sky, which was a dull overcast, was blown out and offered nothing but blank space. The colours were dulled, and it was an overall boring shot. My main purpose in taking the photos, in the first place, was to show the difference in the river during high tide and low tide. It was our first day at Fundy National Park, and I wanted to capture various tide changes around Alma. I h...

Because we are under strict lockdown in Ontario, and because I want to do my part to limit my travel to essential-errands only (cycling outdoors is essential as exercise and for my mental health). As a result, I've resisted the urge to pick up my camera and go to places outside of my neighbourhood. And as a further result, I'm not taking many photos these days. As my recent series of blog posts have shown, I've turned to old photos and slides to try to virtually travel back in time. But I've also looked at other slides that I had taken over the years before digital photography, running them through my photo-editing software to enhance the image or sharpen them up. Some, I've made into new photos, altering the time of day in which they were shot. If the pandemic doesn't get under control soon, I may have to include these rebooted photos in my annual year-end post of my favourite photos of the year. Lately, I've started looking at the east-coast trip that DW a...

My brain was full. In seven days, DW and I had driven from London, England, to Stratford-upon-Avon , through the north of Wales , across Snowdonia, along the western shores , and to the southeast before crossing back into England, where we visited historical Bath and Stonehenge. We were now in Salisbury and we had to have our car back at the rental agency, in London, by mid-afternoon. There were so many places still to discover on this magnificent island and we knew that someday, we'd have to return (excluding Heathrow Airport, it's coming up on 30 years since we've made that promise and have yet to see England or Wales again). We wanted to see one more historic place, and when we checked the maps to see what was within range and our window of time, and we decided to head to the birthplace of England's institute for higher education. We drove to Oxford. Now, I'm sorry to say that I had run out of film after stopping at Stonehenge. At least, I thought I had run ...

Our trip was coming to an end and it seemed like such a whirlwind that it was hard to take in all that we saw. Maybe that's why, today, DW and I still can't remember the trip in clear detail. We were in the city of Bath, in England, for such a short time that I think of it as just a dip. As in, we just dipped our toes into Bath. Get it? (Of course you get it.) Our destination was the Roman baths. One of the things that I remember most about driving through the various towns and cities in Wales and England was that we never seemed to have any difficulty parking, no matter where we went. I mean, we did have someone key our rented Ford Fiesta, but we never had a problem finding a place to park the car. I'm generally a cheapskate when it comes to paying for parking, especially when I was young and didn't have much money in the first place, and I also had great luck in finding a free parking spot when there was very little available. I remember that we parked our Fiesta on a...

For the final full day in Wales, in 1991, we were finally on schedule, weren't rushed to get to our destination. From Cardiff , we made it to Chepstow, in the southeast corner of Wales and right on the border with England, and we were able to pitch our tent before we lost light. But the full day in the city that has a family connection, mixed with the earlier drive, from Caerphilly, wore us out and had us call it an early evening. We wouldn't explore the city until the next morning. We awoke the next morning energized and ready to tackle the day. Time with our rental car was coming to an end and we needed to be in London before the rental agency closed, the following day. And before then, we still had a lot of ground to cover and two more Welsh sites to see. When we were planning our trip and learned that there was a castle in Chepstow, high on a clifftop over the River Wye, we knew we had to pay it a visit, especially since it was so close to our last planned stop before cross...

The following is a rough-draft excerpt from my novel, Gyeosunim . Friday, June 4, 1988 Photo: Google Maps “Are you sure she was in the club before you arrived?” “It wasn’t a nightclub, it was a restaurant and bar.” “What’s the difference?” shot back Charles, obviously upset. “Sir, a nightclub usually has a DJ and a dance floor. This was a large bar with lots of tables and no room for dancing. They had a full menu, like a restaurant. Very different.” “Spare me the lesson, Axam, and answer the question.” We were in Kaufhaus des Westens, or KaDeWe, as Berliners affectionately called it. It was a large department store that dated back more than eighty years, situated along  Tauentzienstrasse, just a couple of blocks to the southeast of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and Europa-Center. Charles Townsend was taking me clothes-shopping. “I’m not one-hundred-percent sure that she was there before me but I know that she hadn’t followed closely behind me or I would have noticed her. When ...

My mother told me that I had met my aunt when I was too young to remember. It was in Montreal, when I was a baby. The Brown family comprised 14 kids: my dad, lucky number 13, had siblings who were old enough to be his parents, as the age gap was considerable. And when my grandfather, Sidney Brown , died, my dad was only two years old and many of his eldest brothers and sisters helped to raise him and his infant brother, my Uncle Don. 'Nanny' Brown, 1950s. My grandmother (who I called "Nanny"), Vena Penk, was Welsh. I don't know if she ever returned to her home country after marrying my grandfather and moving to Canada, though I do know she lived for a time in Haiti and in California. The last time I saw her, I was about 10. But one of my older aunts, Miriam, moved to Cardiff, Wales, after she married, and she was still living there when DW and I were travelling the Welsh countryside in spring, 1991. When I told my mother that DW and I wanted to reach out to Aunt M...