For The Record, Pot, Like The Reader's

When A Child Is Born, I Once Explained To The Kids, Some Dads Lay Down Bottles Of Wine For Them That Will Mature When They Grow Up Into Ungrateful Adults. Instead, What You're Going To Get From Me, As Each Of You Turns Sixteen, Is A Library Of The One Hundred Books That Gave Me The Most Pleasure When I Was A Know-nothing Adolescent.

In, 1950, At The Age, 19 I Dropped Out Of St. George William College In Montreal, As It Then Was, And Sailed For England On The Franconia. Foolishly, No Arrogantly, Believing I Could Put Canada And Its Picayune Problems Behind Me, Never Dreaming It Would Become The Raw Material Of Most Of My Fiction And Non-fiction. Or That I Would Care So Deeply About Its Surviving Intact.

Canada Is One Of The Few Places Left Where The Small Decencies Are Observed. If, As A Young Man, I Was Scornful Of The Country Because We Always Seemed So Far Behind Style-setting New York, I Now Thank God For The Cultural Lag. Ours, After All, Is The Good Neighbourhood. A Society Well Worth Preserving.

Mr. Bernard Died On A Monday, At The Age Of Seventy-five, His Body Wasted. He Lay In State For Two Days In The Lobby Of The Bernard Gursky Tower And, As He Failed To Rise On The Third, He Was Duly Buried.

Beauty, Like Male Ballet Dancers, Makes Some Men Afraid.