Science Fiction, Canada, and I (5 July 2026)
This piece, here slightly revised, was originally presented orally as my Keynote Address as Scholar Guest of Honour at the Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy (ACCSFF), at York University, Toronto, 8-9 June 2024.
Gone To Look for America: June-July 1976 (7 July 2026)
An account of my two-month journey, by Greyhound Bus and thumb, around the USA during its Bicentennial summer of 1976. It was a time of renewed American optimism after dark days, and the mood was strikingly different from that of the Semiquincentennial that has just passed. That said, in many ways Americans haven’t changed in the past fifty years.
Coming to Canada: 1974-75 (16 July 2026)
A feckless youth aged 21, I landed in Canada on 8 September 1974, intending to stay for no more than a year. I thought that by coming here I could postpone having to face the problem of what to do with myself for the rest of my life. Having arrived, I quickly came to believe I’d made a terrible mistake. Fifty-odd years later, I’m still here. So, what happened?
Europe with/avec/mit Kids May-July 1993 (6 August 2026)
In 1993, while living in Regina, Saskatchewan, my wife and I took our two kids on an epic European trip. We visited Paris, newly-unified Berlin, Vienna, the Tyrol, and the Rhineland, and spent some time in London with my late chum John Sessions. We had a very interesting time, and the kids broadened their horizons in more ways than one.
The Bruce Trail End to End: Niagara to Tobermory the Hard Way (10 August 2026)
My old friend Mike and I hiked the Bruce Trail, all 894 km of it, from Queenston on the Niagara River to Tobermory at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula, between April 2018 and November 2020, completing our odyssey in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Holmström Ruddick 