I’ve spent most of my life curious about people.
What they believe, what they worry about, what they want for their families, what makes them laugh, and why two perfectly reasonable people can look at exactly the same thing and come away seeing something completely different.
That curiosity has taken me to some interesting places. I’ve worked in radio and journalism, built businesses, taught music, owned a restaurant, written books, spent years living in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, and somehow ended up driving rideshare and discovering that a car with two strangers in it can be one of the most interesting places in the country.
None of it happened in a particularly sensible order.
I’ve never been especially motivated by accumulating things. Experiences have always interested me more. I wanted to try things, build things, meet people and find out what was on the other side of whatever door happened to be in front of me. Sometimes it worked brilliantly. Sometimes it didn’t. Occasionally I probably should’ve left the door closed.
But I’ve rarely regretted opening it.
Writing has been the constant through almost all of it. Even when I wasn’t sitting at a desk writing a book, I was telling stories. I did it behind a microphone in radio, in newspapers, through podcasts and in conversations with people. I’ve always been fascinated by the difference between what something looks like from a distance and what it feels like when you’re actually there.
That’s probably why I’ve never been very good at accepting the conventional explanation simply because it’s the conventional explanation. I want to know why. I want to hear the other person’s version. I want to know what happened before the part everyone is arguing about.
People are usually more interesting than the categories we put them in.
That became especially obvious when I started driving rideshare. It began while I was living in Ottawa and continued after I returned to Toronto. What I discovered was an extraordinary little window into the country.
People get into the car and talk.
Sometimes it’s small talk. Sometimes it’s hilarious. Sometimes you hear something deeply personal from someone you met twelve minutes ago and will probably never see again. I’ve spoken with newcomers beginning their lives in Canada, people worried about their jobs, students trying to figure out their futures, professionals watching technology transform their industries, parents worried about their children, people who love this country and people seriously wondering whether they should leave it.
I’ve also met plenty of people who just wanted to get to the airport without having a philosophical discussion about the future of Canada, which is probably a healthy reminder for me.
Those conversations have reinforced something I learned much earlier in life: almost everyone has a story, and most of those stories become interesting once you stop waiting for your turn to talk.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have a lot of different vantage points myself.
I know what it feels like to employ people and be responsible for making payroll. I know the excitement of building something from nothing and the considerably less exciting experience of discovering that your great idea wasn’t quite as great as you thought it was. I’ve experienced journalism from inside a newsroom, broadcasting from behind the microphone, hospitality from the restaurant floor, education through the music schools I built, and now publishing from both sides of the page.
There are easier ways to construct a résumé.
I’m not sure there are better ways to collect stories.
Somewhere along the way, all those experiences started connecting. The questions I’d been asking about people became questions about communities, and eventually questions about Canada itself. How do millions of people with different backgrounds, experiences and beliefs manage to build something together? What do we owe each other? What should we expect from the country we share? How do we disagree without deciding that everyone on the other side must be an idiot?
I’ve spent a lot of time writing and talking about those questions lately. Politics has become part of my life, but it isn’t my life, and this part of the site isn’t intended to be another political podium.
There’s plenty of room elsewhere for that.
This is where I want to write about the other stuff.
People I’ve met. Places I remember. Restaurants that disappeared and somehow took a little piece of an era with them. Music. Radio. Family stories. Things I’ve built. Things I’ve screwed up. Things I still don’t understand. Observations that aren’t important enough to become a manifesto but are interesting enough that I can’t quite leave them alone.
And probably food. There will definitely be food.
At this point in my life, I’m less interested in pretending everything followed some grand design. It didn’t. One thing led to another, something unexpected happened, plans changed, somebody interesting walked through the door, and off we went in another direction.
Looking backward, though, I can see the thread.
Stay curious. Keep experiencing things. Talk to people. Listen when they answer. Build something when you can. Write down the good stories before you forget them.
And don’t worry too much about putting them in order.