It’s been a couple of years since Jeremy in the Rome office wrote about Komoot, and it’s taken me until now to start using it to plan and track my own cycling.

Saturday we cycled from Tyne Valley to Northam to Ellerslie and back to Tyne Valley. It was a beautiful day, and but for a somewhat muddier Confederation Trail than we’d have liked, a gentle ride of 15 km. We celebrated with a burger at Moth Lane.

Yesterday was our biggest cycle training day yet: 21.2 km from Brackley to Dalvay and back, on the path through PEI National Park. We had a heavy crosswind, but we made it. We celebrated with a burger at FiN.

(We need to decouple cycle training from hamburger eating.)

As I write this, here in Stratford, Lisa is working out with her coach nearby, and I am camped out at Starbucks, warming up (it was 2°C when we left the house).

Komoot does all the things I need: plans cycle-friendly routes, provides turn by turn voice navigation, tracks speed and distance.

Our longest daily distance on our upcoming cycle through Belgium is just over 60 km, so we’re going to gradually work to increase our training distance as the trip draws nearer. 

For my 60th birthday, Lisa gave me a trip to Belgium and the Netherlands in May, and we’ve decided to use part of our time there to bicycle from Brussels to Bruges. 

While the direct cycle route between the two cities is just over 100 km, we’re taking the scenic route, through Antwerp and Ghent, so our total distance cycled will be just over 310 km. 

Which is to say “more than I’ve ever possibly imagined cycling before.”

When I was a kid, I used to regularly cycle from our house near the 8th Concession to Timmy’s house on the 13th Concession, which was a 30 km round trip, so it’s not like I can’t imagine cycling 40-50-60 km a day in flat Belgian countryside.

But I haven’t been on a bicycle since breaking my elbow last year, and I’m 60 years old, not 12.

So: training.

Today was day one. 

We dropped our bikes at Outer Limit Sports a couple of days ago, and picked them up after lunch today, and then headed out on a test ride.

We rode out the Confederation Trail to the bypass, stopped at Gallant’s for an excellent coffee, and then continued east on the Riverside Drive cycle route, past the hospital, and home along the old Water Street extension.

Total distance was 14.4 km. Thanks to the improvements in the city’s cycling infrastructure over recent years, 85% of that was on separated, paved active transportation paths.

The ride gave us a chance to break in our bicycles, gave me a chance to see if I could even cycle at all (I can!), and also gave us to try out our newly-acquired cycle shorts—mine are Bontrager from Trek—an entirely new wardrobe extension for me.

My recovering arm certainly felt the ride: the elbow was fine, but the muscles needed to hold the handlebars haven’t been worked in a long time, and they felt every single bump on the path. A lot of this was absorbed by a pair of padded gloves I picked up when we picked up the bikes. I’m very happy that I’ve been back in the gym since October: it’s conditioning and strength that I can feel helping.

The cycle shorts were a rousing success: uncomfortable and awkward on dry land, but very, very comfortable in the saddle. I never thought I’d be one of the lycra set, but I am, and I’m proud.

We’ll be back out on the trail, in some form, tomorrow, and most days between now and departure date. Watch out for us!

This piece was commissioned by This Town is Small to accompany the launch of Fanatics, an exhibition mounted in the Hilda Woolnough Gallery at The Arts Guild that opened April 15, 2026.

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On summer days we’d walk down the long laneway, arrive at the swimming hole, strip off our clothes, and dive into the water, a cool, deep pool at a bend in the river. We’d emerge, refreshed, and lie on the warm rocks, basking in the sun.

We were a group of friends in that way that you can only be in your 20s, and we were free from shyness. The usual rules didn’t apply; being naked together was okay. Indeed, not only okay, but vital, connected, seen.

I’ve learned in the years since that when we walked down that lane together, we were entering a magic circle, a place where regular rules didn’t apply, where we could act in ways that, outside of the circle, would be profane. A shared experience of transgression bound us together.

I’ve been seeking out that same feeling ever since.

Crowded into the back of the bookstore on a Sunday night to talk about fountain pens. Geeking out about typefaces with a fellow printer in his letterpress shop in the woods of Nova Scotia. Being silly trading “yes, and” on the improv stage. Gathering with fellow widowers on Zoom, in the heart of the pandemic, to talk about our dead partners.

Magic circles are my favourite places. They are where I feel most alive, most myself, most able to reconsider what “myself” means.

A friend once described being a nerd as being someone comfortable inhabiting their interests, no matter how weird, in community with others who share them.

In community with.

It’s central to the power of the magic circle, that community: revealing our innermost selves, accepted as we are, where our weirdness overlaps. It’s a home.

One of those widowers, in my pandemic grief Zoom, told the story of how he and his late wife would make their bed together every morning; he missed doing that so dearly it hurt. I have been unable to make my own bed, in the six years since, without thinking of that, and in that he gave me a gift: allowing myself to feel, allowing me to feel with him.

Magic circles change us. We might emerge titillated, energized, accepted. We might emerge daunted, challenged, stuck. But when we walk toward deep engagement, whether it’s with grief or Japanese paper, when we share what we usually don’t, we can’t walk out without something moving inside us.

That internal movement, in community, is a powerful drug.

I’ve been spending a lot of time of late trying to answer the question “what do I want.” Part of the answer lies in the realization that I’ve been chasing that pure feeling of stripping down naked, laying myself bare, in whatever form that takes.

“This is what I love, come find me.”

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Thanks to Alibis for Interaction, especially Luisa Carbonelli, Nene Ormes, and Johanna Koljonen, for teaching me about magic circles (and for drawing me into a particularly good one) and to my naked swimming mates, my grief club friends, and my fountain pen nerds for being comfortable in vulnerability with me.

Fanatics is a group exhibition opening this Wednesday, April 15, 2026, at The Arts Guild:

Artists are passionate people and their work is informed by the ideas, objects and experiences they value. Have you ever wondered about the deep dives your favourite Island artist takes on snow days when the power stays on? Are you curious about the collections they maintain, their hobbies, or the bands they can’t seem to get enough of? If so, you will not want to miss Fanatics!

I was commissioned by the organiziers to write an essay for the show. My brief was “a text in the range of 250 to 500 words that reflects on fanaticism in relation to artistic practice, obsession, devotion, or creative drive.” Copies will be available at the opening on Wednesday.

Bonus feature: Olivia has a piece in the exhibition.

My travels took me back to Peterborough, Ontario last week for the first time since I last visited in 2008. It was a quick visit, barely more than 12 hours in the city, barely enough time for a good meal, several rounds of dominos, a good sleep, and breakfast.

I took time for a walkabout, much as I did 18 years ago, revisiting the places I’d lived, the places that had been important to me. I was wearing different lenses on this walk than I was then: it was less warm nostalgia mixed with discomfort with change, and more “I’ve invested so much meaning into these places over the year that they have become mythological, and yet… they are just places.”

Here’s what I saw.

The Cottage

The Cottage, on 733 George Street North was once Trent University founding President Tom Symons’ office, and I interviewed him there in the mid-1980s, over a pot or two of tea (a delightful interview with a deeply caring and thoughtful man; alas, there’s no record of it as I forgot to press “record” on the tape recorder). 

It’s clearly fallen on hard times, likely because Trent divested its downtown Peter Robinson College years ago. Here’s what the building’s heritage designation says:

Built in 1855 by T.G. Hazlitt for his bride, Mary Anne Dickson, daughter of lumber baron Samuel Dickson, 733 George St N is an excellent example of a Regency which may have had a central dormer added to create an Ontario Gothic Cottage. In 1875, the property was purchased by Henry Denne, member of Town Council and the Public School Board, for his daughter. Denne owned the Blythe Mill and the Sperry flour mill built on the site of Adam Scott’s old mill. In 1967 Trent University purchased the house and for many years it served as the office of Founding President Thomas H.B. Symons.  

Trent Radio House

Trent Radio House is at 715 George Street North, just down from The Cottage. I spent thousands of hours in this house. I had sex for the first time in this house. I developed lifelong friendships in this house. I came of age creatively in this house. I cannot imagine any building played a more formative roll in my life than this one.

241 Dublin Street

I lived at 241 Dublin Street for 9 months, starting in the fall of 1988. At the time the ground floor housed Ed’s Music Workshop at the back, and a screen printing shop at the front, while the top floor was our roomy four-bedroom apartment. Many many hands of canasta were played there. I had my only one-night stand ever there. 

When I think of the heart of my 20s, it’s this apartment I think of.

The building has been substantially renovated since I visited in 2008: the red brick has been “parged” and painted brown, and there are new windows.

621 George Street North

The duplex on the left was where I lived for a year, from the spring of 1991. My room was in the attic: the three-pane window at the very top. 

Catherine lived in the house next door, and she presented me with the keys on the day I pulled up in my rental van after driving back from 9 months in Montreal. We became friends, nudged toward each other by our respective roommates. I made space for her on our living room couch, and made her a rootbeer float one day when she was sick. She hosted bonfires in the back yard, the same back yard  where she eventually asked me to kiss her for the first time. It’s the house that launched our 28 year coupledom.

Peterborough Community Credit Union

The former home of the Peterborough Community Credit Union, on 167 Brock Street. It merged with a larger credit union some years ago, and this branch closed in 2024. 

I opened my first credit union account here, and got my first loan (less than $300, to help me bridge cash flow for a print job). I became a believer in the power of credit unions here.

The Cheese Shop

The Cheese Shop, now on 158 Brock Street, was, before a fire, on Hunter Street West, right across the street from the Peterborough Examiner. When I was working in the Composing Room there in the early 1990s I used to get cheese sandwiches from there for lunch: “I’m going across the The Cheese Shop… anyone want anything?”

139½ Hunter Street West

Catherine and I moved out of our neighbouring houses on George Street, and into the 3rd floor apartment here. At the time it was owned by the man who owned the Sam the Record Man franchise around the corner. 

It was a lovely apartment. 

The building has clearly received a lot of attention over the years: it’s in much better shape than it was in 2008.

451 Water Street

I first lived in a tiny apartment at the back of the second floor while friends of a friend were tree planting; a few years later they’d moved into the huge apartment on the second floor on the right, and when they moved out, I moved in. 

It was perhaps the nicest apartment I ever lived in and it’s sad to see the building painted such an ugly colour, and to clearly not be receiving the care it used to. 

Some of the best and worst memories of my 20s played out in this building.

The mid-April refresh of our hallway art-on-a-wire gallery, a mix of new work and deep cuts. 

From left to right:

• I Don’t Mind What Happens, printed for Lisa in 2022.
• The first paragraph of Anne of Green Gables, printed on my Adana Eight Five in 2010.
• GRACIAS. Origin unknown.
• Let Go & Love, from Expedition Press.
• Stop Acting, a gift for a friend this spring.
• Fuck, printed this spring, after Stop Acting was complete.
• Anthemis Nobilis, a screen print by Brandon Hood.
• A bookmark guide to letterforms from Snap + Tumble.
• A Map is the Greatest of All Epic Poems, printed in 2018 on recycled maps.

Jean-Paul Arsenault, one of the smartest minds on Prince Edward Island on matters concerning the environment and land, and an incisive writer, published the best take I’ve read in the Gilles Arsenault affair.

He begins:

I was born and raised in downtown Wellington in the house my grandfather built in 1914 on a wetland beside the Ellis River, and I lived there with my young family until 1990. Much of Wellington lies on what is now defined in the law as either “wetland” or watercourse “buffer zone”.

I received some lovely birthday gifts, including a beautiful typewriter print, a fetching T-shirt from Portugal, a tiny printing press, and a yellow rollerball pen.

By far and away the best gift of all came yesterday, in the gym, when, on hearing I’d just turned 60, one of the coaches, just finishing up his own spicy workout, said, matter-of-factly:

You don’t look it.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with “looking 60,” and I find myself embracing aging more than rejecting it. 

I take the compliment, whether intended as such or not, as “you’re not giving up.”

No, I’m not giving up.

Here’s how the house I grew up in, from ages 6 to 18, appeared on Google Maps in 2023. My house is the one of the left, the simple two-storey house with dormers; to its right is a new house going up behind it.

Here’s how the house looked—or rather didn’t look, as it was gone—when I drove by last week:

My boyhood home is gone, replaced with a garage for the new house.

My boyhood driveway, my boyhood trees, the boyhood shed where our dog Jake used to sleep at night, they are all still there.

My therapist, who is a spiritual man, suggested that it’s not a coincidence that I happened to drive by the house and discover this now, at a time in my life when I’m evermore grappling with the relationship of my childhood to my adulthood.