Storyphile | Your life. Your story. For the people you love.

Remembering Mama

Had she lived, today would have been my mama’s 102nd birthday. It would also have been my parents’ 77th wedding anniversary. My parents got married on Mama’s birthday because my grandfather, Mama’s dad, thought that would be an auspicious day. But poor Mama found herself in a predicament when it came time to sign the … Read more

Why We Tell Stories

I recently came across this quotation by Brandon Sanderson: “The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.” Truth be told, I’d never heard of Sanderson. (He’s an American fantasy writer.) But his comment made me think about storytellers and stories. I agree … Read more

More on Grandmothers

My late mother-in-law, Lillian (née Winters) MacLeod, grandmother par excellence.

I heard an interesting idea on CBC Radio the other day, on one of the summer reruns. Canadian novelist Katherena Vermette was talking about her latest novel, The Strangers, which I liked a lot. It’s about family—grandmothers, mothers and daughters—and the complicated ties that bind generations together. Vermette made the point that girl babies are … Read more

Crosswords

I’ve been a word nerd for as long as I can remember. And I’ve been a cruciverbalist—a crossword fan—since at least junior high. That’s when my big sister started buying me Dell magazines, which had crosswords of varying difficulty plus many other kinds of puzzles: logic puzzles (You solve a problem by deciphering a series … Read more