I had the best day on Friday: Plowed through a ton of work creatively, attended to a number of Department Chair duties successfully, spent a few hours just walking around my lovely city, wrote and published some stuff on my websites, then came home and clicked on my email to receive my student evaluations, which were all wonderful. Then yesterday morning a buddy of mine at Kwantlen called and asked me to his witness at his wedding. And after that  I had coffee with a brilliant, delightful woman working with me on various initiatives part of a research project on gangs in the Lower Mainland. Right before we parted, I mentioned to my colleague how perfectly wonderful the last 24 hours had been, then added, “But I know things can turn on a dime.” Came home, turned on the TV: the dime.

My first memory of moving to the United States from Ontario — I was four —  was learning about JFK’s assassination on TV. That event is why I never became an American citizen, or even wanted dual citizenship. The killing just freaked me out. But I came to love the land where I was raised, and for a lot of my career I made the United States the subject of my study and work. Although I became a joyful person only after moving back to Canada, there will always be a lot of American in my mind and heart. And yesterday my heart felt broken.