PART 2: Retracing Samantha’s Footsteps Fleur De Lys is a quiet fishing community on the Baie Verte Peninsula in Newfoundland. In February, 2000, it was the focus of the entire province, country, and beyond. On February 6, 2000, 13-year-old Samantha Walsh went missing. People near and far searched, prayed and hoped. After 17 days, Samantha’s…

When life goes sideways, children are often the first to feel the impact. Illness, loss, family struggles, financial hardship, and unexpected challenges have a way of rippling through an entire household. While adults carry the responsibility of managing crises, it is often children who must quietly adapt to a new reality. Their routines change. Their…

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Across dinner tables, across social media, and across every political stripe, we hear the same exhausted refrain: the system is broken. The education system is broken.The justice system is broken.The health-care system is broken. We say it so often that the phrase has become almost meaningless — a slogan of frustration more than a diagnosis.…

There are days when the feeling arrives without warning—quiet, persistent, and strangely familiar. It sits somewhere between memory and longing. The only way I can describe it is this: I am homesick for a place that may not even exist. I grew up in a small place on the Atlantic Ocean, where the wind had…

Yesterday was rough. It really sucked! One of those days where nothing quite lands right. I didn’t like the way it went in any respect. Miscommunication via email, and I was on the defensive immediately. Moreover, the feeling of uneasiness stayed with me the whole day, and throughout the evening. Over the past two years,…

There was a time when I felt an almost reflexive need to explain myself. If I hesitated before answering, I would fill the silence with reasons. If I changed my mind, I would provide a detailed account of how I got there. If I pulled back, set a boundary, or chose a different path than…

When people talk about family trees, they tend to focus on the same characters—the larger-than-life ones, the rule-benders, the storytellers. The ones we’re proud to claim. But every family tree has another kind of branch—the ones we don’t talk about nearly enough. The steady ones. The overlooked ones. The ones who didn’t chase anything except…