On the occasion of its 70th anniversary, Thelma Phillips writes Stewart Memorial Hospital a love letter.

Last summer, once the lockdown was over and it was permitted to hold small face to face meetings, I went to my first meeting of a non-profit board I sit on.

I arrived second to last, and found that those who’d arrived ahead of me had removed their masks. This made me uncomfortable, but so as to not be an outlier, I removed my mask too.

A few minutes after I arrived, our final board member arrived, a long-serving and much-respected board member, and he kept his mask on for the entire meeting, thus normalizing something I previously regarded as aberrant.

Needless to say, I kept my mask on for the next meeting and those that followed.

Bill is an avid cyclist in our neighbourhood. He cycles year round, and has a well-worn through the rabbit warren of downtown streets. Often he’ll stop to chat when our paths cross. And he’s always wearing a high-vis vest when he rides.

It had never occurred to me to wear a high-vis vest while bicycling, but that it made Bill so much more visible won me over. And so when I go to get groceries in the evening on my bike, now I wear one.

Like my brave board colleague, Bill normalized something that previously seemed weird.

We get wrapped up thinking that change is hard and takes money and campaigns and social media outreach; often all it takes is one person to bravely lead the way.

Kudos to Jeff Jenkins, Manager at Allen Street Sobeys, for having a new bicycle rack installed. It’s better, stronger, and more conveniently located than the one it replaces (which, in fact, has simply been moved to the Farm Centre side).

Remixing my own work for the tiny gallery at 100 Prince Street.

“Life is short,” wrote a friend in an email last week.

Typographic gears started to turn in my mind.

Which begat this.

Yellow ink with a splotch of red added in, creating an interesting shimmering effect. It’s off-putting to look at, which is the point.

Regular readers will know that I frequently use the phrase “by times” in this space:

…and, by times, an overpowering feeling of wanting to smash my new eyeglasses with a hammer and revert to my old prescription. (from)

John was, by times, my mentor, my teacher, my landlord, my boss, my interrogator, my arch nemesis and my friend. (from)

Patient. Kind. Accepting. Calm. Generous. Daring. Colourful. Iconoclastic. Brave. Inclusive. Witty. Wise. Bossy, by times. (from)

So we stayed. Oliver took deep breaths and, by times, squeezed my hand so tight I thought it might fall off. (from)

It wasn’t until this afternoon that I learned that this is a turn of phrase strongly associated with Prince Edward Island.

From Dictionary of Prince Edward Island English:

by times
Prepositional phrase. Also spelled and pronounced betimes. Frequent generally, but infrequent in Summerside; especially rural, male. 
From time to time; occasionally.

‘What about Milton and Shakespeare? And the poets of the Bible? They tell me Milton could not get along with his wife, and Shakespeare was no more than respectable by times’ (MONTGOMERY, LUCY MAUD, Rainbow Valley, 1923, 77).

The day had been cloudy by times but now the sun suddenly came out and performed its usual miracle (MONTGOMERY, LUCY MAUD, A Tangled Web, [1931], 268).

Tue. 19. Warm day, I am in bed had Dr. Moyse to see me my temperature is over 102. … Sat. 23.1am up by times (CAIRNS, SCOTT,Diary:January 2—March 31, 1939, April, 1938).

But don’t think the winter days were all work and no pleasure. Apart from a bit of loneliness by times, Andy was really enjoying his new experience (WARREN, EVANGELINE, Andy the Milkman, 1957, 58).

It would get pretty cold by times but we were dressed warm and we were young and active and kept ourselves warm (CAMPBELL, FRANK, As the Fella Says …, 1983, 75).

So it seems I have internalized an infrequent-in-Summerside, rural, male part of the Island vernacular to the point where I’d simply assumed it was used the world over. By times.

Here are photos of our back yard, both taken on May 23rd, the first in 2019 and the second in 2021.

There’sa big difference in the lawn due the absence of Ethan, and a palpable difference in the leaf growth in the trees.

Just over a year ago we started the tradition of Friday Family Zoom, gathering my family from PEI, Quebec, Ontario, and California together every Friday night for some family fun. At full strength there are 13 of us in the transcontinental clan, and the weekly connection has been a significant boon to our collective mental health. Indeed I’ve spent more time “with” my family over the last year than in the decade before; among other things that’s allow me to see my five nieces and nephews grow a year older, week by week by week.

When I mention this to friends, they often reply along the lines of “oh, we tried that early on and it was chaotic and we stopped,” which prompts me to describe here the elements that I think contribute to the success of the Rukavina approach to Family Zoom, which have evolved based on doing it more than 50 times.

The essentials of the template we use today was one that Olivia came up with after we’d been at things for a while, and we all owe a lot to her for that.

1. Every week there’s a host. Olivia came up with a complex scheme to schedule the host for each week, and we have a shared family calendar so that we’re all up to date on who’s time it is. If, for some reason, someone can’t meet their hosting duties, they find someone to swap with. 
2. Participation is voluntary. Not every one of our thirteen attends every week. People get sick, or have other plans, or just don’t feel like coming; there’s no social pressure for complete attendance. Whoever shows up shows up.
3. Same time every week. We always start at 8:30 p.m. Atlantic, which is 7:30 p.m. in Quebec and Ontario and 4:30 p.m. in California. Not too late for the youngers, not too early for the west coasters. On rare occasions we’ll go an hour later if schedules demand it, but we tend to stick to the predictability of the 8:30 p.m. start.
4. We start with a discussion. As a warmup, we start with a discussion on a topic, selected by the host, and related to the week somehow–an event or holiday or birthday that happened that week. Discussion topics past have included “Remembering Catherine,” ”Lesbian Visibility Week,” “Endangered Species,” “National Eat What You Want Day,” “different April Fools pranks that you have done or heard of,” and “what is your favourite snack food.” Discussion period lasts about 15 minutes, and everyone gets a chance to chime in.
5. Next we have an activity. Like the discussion topic, the host is responsible for coming up with the activity. Because our ages range from 5 to 82, activities are skewed toward something that everyone can participate in. “Let’s recite Shakespearean sonnets as fast as we can” gets trumped by “let’s pick the worst song of all time.” Because we’re a neurodiverse bunch, we tend to avoid activities that involve timers or rushing or a lot of pressure; winning is never the point.
6. It all lasts about an hour. Sometimes less, sometimes more, but generally about an hour. When we’ve gone longer, people get tired and grumpy and don’t want to do it again.
7. We finish with a family photo. Which is just a screen shot of the Zoom. Sometimes there’s a prompt, like “okay, everybody look super-scary,” and sometimes there’s not. It’s a good way to signal the end, and a nice keepsake for everyone.

All seven of those points–host, voluntary, same time, discussion, activity, about an hour, photo–has proved integral to the enterprise. It’s also been helpful to have a Zoom paid subscription so we never hit the 40 minute Zoom timeout that comes with free accounts; it’s worth the $18/month for that.

Here’s a sampling of the activities that have proved successful:

• Pictionary. I think this has been the most fun, in part because it’s something everyone can do and enjoy. We started off trying to use an external shared whiteboard app for this, which worked but was a little kludgy; then Zoom rolled out its own shared whiteboard, and that’s worked well. The host chooses the drawing subjects and private messages them in Zoom to each person in turn; sometimes the subjects are simple–”raccoon,” “ice cream sundae”–and sometimes they’re harder, like “the love you feel for your partner.” 
• Kahoot. This does require use of a third party website/app, Kahoot, but it’s proved simple enough for everyone to use. Kahoot is essentially a “multiple choice test builder” and we’ve used it for things like “Rukavina family trivia” most successfully. There’s a little bit of countdown tension in Kahoot, but it’s seldom proved too much.
• Scavenger Hunt. Host comes up with a list of common household things, and spools them out one by one, with time for each squad to locate one. It’s not timed: you get a point simply for finding your quest, with bonus points awarded for creativity. 
• Charades. If I had my druthers, we’d do charades every week (if I had my druthers I’d be a professional charades player). It’s a little challenging to get the various Zoom devices set up to work well for this (placing an iPhone or iPad on a table and standing in front of it works well). As with Pictionary, the host hands out the charades by private message to each person in turn.
• Make a craft. Host provides a materials list for a simple craft, common things found in every house, and then instructs us in how to make it.

Again, the key to the activity portion is that it’s something everyone can do, no matter their age; one of the great things that’s evolved over the last year is that nephew E., the youngest among us, has gone from being antsy passive bystander to active participant; he hosted his first Friday Zoom in April.

Our family, like many families, I imagine, has experimented over the years with things like “Christmas morning Skype call,” and they’ve always proved chaotic and disappointing; the difference between those and Friday Family Zoom (other than Zoom itself, which is much-evolved from ye olde Skype) is the structure and the emphasis on inclusion. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Friday Family Zoom helped keep my head above water over the last pandemic year, and I’m proud of, and grateful to, my family for rising to the challenge.

It’s possible that, like me, you ended up with a bunch of “Scene” points from the Cineplex movie theatre chain from the Before Times, and now find yourself thinking “why oh why would I ever go to a movie theatre again.”

It turns out that Scene points can be used to rent films from the Cineplex Store to stream at home.

The process is a little clunky because the various Cineplex apps don’t support in-app purchasing, so you need to purchase on the web before streaming. But it works, and Cineplex has films in its catalog I can’t find anywhere else.

If you can look beyond the “Hugh Laurie playing Dr. House again, but as a consulting psychiatrist in San Francisco, with more violence,” the TV drama Chance, streaming on Disney+, is compelling. Laurie is supported by a strong cast, most notably Ethan Suplee, who is brilliant.