Happy Birthday to Kaitlin who turns twenty-something today. Below she is pictured in the middle of he Zack and Jared on Christmas 1997 when it appears Tele-Tubbies were all the rage.…

As the primary caregiver for my lovely wife Abi it sometimes looks like we are never going to be Normal again , If it isn't the pain my wife feels or the diabetes or the drugs the doctors keep changing for her it will be the depression that comes with it , I feel so alone in my quest to make her the most comfortable that she can be and it hurts me so. Some days she is not in pain but is higher then a kite with the drugs and it takes all my effort to get her to eat or even go to the…

Stone Unturned

After 18 months, hundreds of joyful hours of writing, rehearsing, recording and producing, Mileage 51's debut album "Stone Unturned" is set to launch.

I know I have reported on this periodically over the course of…

It was a still, hazy early spring morning on Lake Muskoka; April 2 to be exact.  I was alone in the cottage with my English Cocker Spaniel puppy, Phoebe.  The other cottagers were in the city as was my husband.  Every morning for the past six weeks, a crew had been building a dock across the bay, but not today.  Not a soul in sight.  I loved this time of year.  The ice was breaking up on the lake and the only sound was the odd crack.  Total silence; peace.

There was a meeting at the…

These blogs I will use to preserve memories of the past, such as I remember. And I will be as truthful as I can be - but not more!

One Sunday morning, in January or February of 1958, when I was still not quite nine years old, and living in Delhi, my mother sent me with a servant, Sohan Lal by name, for a haircut, to a market about a mile away from our house. (It must have been a Sunday because back then we used to have…

I was a grad student at the time - the seventies of the last century – and the area of my study (what a grand phrase this sounds now – “the area of my study” – but I think I’ll let it stand) was Physics. I had gone to Ohio University, after completing a Master’s degree at Delhi University, India, with the hope of obtaining a Ph.D.

But midway I lost interest, because I thought the problem I was working on was insoluble, and so, in the summer of 1975, I decided to take off for…

I WAS IN THE BALTIC STATES THIS PAST AUGUST, 2015. BEAUTIFUL AND HISTORICLALLY INTERESTING COUNTRIES. LOVELY ARTISTIC PLACES, WITH THE BALTIC SEA. WENT TO BERLIN AND HELSINKI AFTER. NICE TO SEE THAT THEY HAD SYNAOGOGUES THERE,ESPECIALLY IN FINLAND WHERE THEY PROTECTED ALL THEIR JEWS DURING WWII.

FOR THOSE OF US WHO TRAVEL ALONE I HAVE A GREAT TRAVEL COMPANY IN USA, BLUE SKIES TO ALL, MG

I recently had the great pleasure of attending a wedding in northern Spain, in Basque country...actually just on the border to be precise. Two long-time friends Tony and Chen had finally decided to tie the knot and, given their proclivity for great food and wine, opted to hold the ceremony and celebration in a small town called El Ciego in the heart of Rioja.

I…

It’s impossible to relay a life time of memories in a blog. Harder still to write about them on the heels of the untimely and painful loss of a life-long friend. But I owe it to my friend Alain “Boo” Bouillon to try.

I first met Boo in elementary school. My early memories were of a highly energetic, physically strong and precocious young man. He was shaving…

I saw this quote this morning and I was inspired to capture some of the things that visions of countries, teams or even individuals have delivered to the world because they were too driven (or stubborn ;-) to be silenced or demotivated by the naysayers.  

“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose…

This story was originally written by my eldest son, Lark, for Billy Pellow's Chapleau Trails book of local stories. I recently re-read it when Brian brought it by my new place in Hamilton to remind me of all the family and to re-live my experience through Lark's words and our old family pictures. Thanks Lark for documenting this story of my life with my own family and with Esher and our four boys.

I was originally nervous about Lark sending the story to Billy for his book but…

As an expat, vacations usually mean going home and trying to jam…

A very special Throwback Thursday of me and my beautiful wife Loreen who I married 32 years ago today. Her and I are pictured here with her family dog Sandy during our honeymoon at our cottages on Prairie Bee Lake.

In some ways it has been a long ride raising our beautiful children and going through our respective career changes; in another way, it seems like we're…

Breaking Down Camp 

Copyright Lark Ritchie, 1998. All rights reserved.

Copyright Lark Ritchie 1997. 

This Article was featured on...

'The Ultimate Sportsman' Website, and

the Paperback Edition of the same name (November 1998) ISBN: 0-9668789-0-6

Each of us has within ourselves the ability to create life-memories and experiences for someone else,and through that, add to our own life-experiences. The wilderness can be an important element in a reciprocal…

Today, I was at a celebration of a friend's fiftieth wedding anniversary, and got talking to a few other friends who encouraged me to post more of my stories...

After getting home, and thinking about it, I decided to re-post a few here at Kamazooie, because the old site (Geocities.com) I used back then closed in 2009, and the stories are now only archived and cannot be edited, or new stories added.

If you have the interest, you can find more by…

Ok this is long overdue and is likely to be short. So apologies in advance. Earlier this year I had to travel to London on business for an array of media and conference work. I love going to London for any reason, including business. But as it turned out, my daughter Bianca was able to book time off and join me.

It worked out extremely well...although I was working for a number days while she was there, she had friends who lived in the city (school mates from our days in Germany and…

We all have this idea in our head of what an actress's life is. You get to be anybody you want to be, travel, tell stories that are important and go to the magical Hollywood parties. But to get there, we have to go through every hot level of Hell.



Audition after audition. Tiny pay-check after tiny pay-check. Joe-job after Joe-job. Public transit that seems to want only for you to miss that callback. The poorly disguised look of disapproval received when you tell…

This is a very special Fathers Day as it occurs on the Summer solstice and it is also my father's birthday so there are many things to celebrate.

Here's to you all you great fathers out there and to all of those celebrating their fathers or remembering ones who have passed already.

Hope you have a great…