It is fitting that the obituary of Chris Haney, a Canadian inventor of the world's greatest board game since Monopoly and Scrabble - Trivial Pursuit - has been published on Canada Day, in the Guardian. Haney helped to invent the game in my home town of Montreal, when a journalist at The Gazette. As a paperboy I used to deliver The Gazette, and still recall that most memorable of headlines, first glimpsed groggily at the crack of dawn some summer day thirty years ago: BOY MEETS HERO AT BOTTOM OF POOL. No Canadian cottage or dinner party was complete without TP - which for awhile, with its pie pieces - seemed to be more popular than TV. I had an Uncle, Ed, who memorised all the cards, and therefore could win the game on his first round, which was annoying. He has since died, tragically.
A poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.
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