“When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground."

It’s an African proverb. I think every person is a library of stories, and the world is made up of our stories.

Every Sunday morning, I share people’s wildly authentic, heart-stoppingly real, or funny stories for you to read while you enjoy a morning coffee. Occasionally, I send out something I have written myself. I’m a slow writer, so it takes me a while. All of us of a considerable age have something to say.

I love people's stories, and I can listen to someone reminisce, if not for hours, then at least for the duration of a shared meal. Some stories take a while to tell, like a friend's story about the time in the 60s when he was sure his tennis partner was Abby Hoffman, living under a pseudonym in Montreal. Others are short, but funny, like a story told by another friend about getting on a bus to go to his first protest when he was eighteen and seeing his mother at the back handing out salami sandwiches. I finally understood he came by his left-wing anti-establishment views honestly.

My dad shared his stories over many successive conversations during the last three years of his life. His stories were the kind that took a while to tell. My own storytelling started then when I wanted to share my dad’s stories.

I love it when a story teaches me something, touches my heart or makes me laugh. I ache when shit happens to someone that's hard to deal with, and I marvel at their incredible resiliency. I'm curious about all the granular details of people's lives. Yet I consider myself a private person — or I thought I was until I started sharing my stories online with strangers.

Thank you for your support and for coming along with me every Sunday morning. It's a labour of love, and I'm so appreciative you are here, and in this crazy world, we can connect across boundaries, real and perceived. I hope you will consider sharing your stories. We have so much to learn from one another (thank you to one reader who reminded me of that).

Finally, you can read all the stories for free. A paid subscription, if it is something you can afford or want to do, is optional and a vote of confidence. It allows me to collaborate with a talented digital artist, Stella Kalaw, who creates the artwork for every story starting in February 2024, and for help from editors working with some of the writers to polish their stories.

Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have a story you wish to share—I’ll do my best to help you tell it, if need be. And feel free to comment about something that was published. My email is agoldbloom@videotron.ca

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People

A believer that stories connect us all.
Beth Kaplan is the author of five books: a biography, two memoirs, and a guide to creative writing that's the textbook for the nonfiction writing courses she teaches at U of T. Her latest book is Midlife Solo, a memoir-in-essays. www.bethkaplan.ca.
John Aylen is a book publisher and marketing professor who divides his time between Orford, Quebec, and Montreal.
Former Montreal Gazette editor. Still writing, still editing.
I'm a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto who recently retired from clinical practice - so now I have more time to write.
Montrealer Mariam Pal's first book, Ballet is not for Muslim Girls was named best multicultural memoir of 2023 by Memoir Magazine. She is completing her second book, Definitely Not One of the Guys, a memoir of her international development career.
Sings alto, unrelentingly optimistic, and believes in the Oxford comma - most of the time.
Virginia Fisher Yaffe is intensely grateful to have reached a considerable age. She tries hard to keep looking forward imagining a world where humanity prizes similarities rather than differences.
Retired hospice chaplain and archivist, Susie Kaufman, is the author of Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement. Her focus has always been on lifting up people's stories and seeing them in the context of the larger story that embraces all of us.
jen parker is a writer living in the bay area with her husband, 4 kids and 0 dogs. her family had a fish that seemed neglect-proof, but it died. please don't tell her youngest.
Somehow, sometime, somewhere, I stopped writing. Detour -marriage, kids, and a fulfilling interior design career. I am thinking that all the decades of words I stored are now busting to get out.
Retired magazine editor living in the beautiful Gatineau Hills of Western Quebec. Grateful for finally having the time, perspective and opportunity to write and share stories.
Author of STARTER DOG: MY PATH TO JOY, BELONGING AND LOVING THIS WORLD. Former Editor of Chatelaine magazine. Married more than 50 years despite predictions we would never last. Avid urban hiker with the rescue mutt known as Casey.
Anna designs and teaches memoir-based writing courses.