For many years now, my brother Matt has been involved with Breakthrough T1D (formerly JDRF), a benevolent research and advocacy organisation who are working hard to find a cure for type 1 diabetes (hence “T1D”).

For a considerable fraction of his adult life, Matt has been dedicated to, and played a leading role in the organisation, despite having a time-consuming job, abundant other interests and a busy, active family. 

He recently retired, and rather than put his feet up (as our late, beloved Auntie Millie would have counselled), he has re-doubled his commitment to Breakthrough T1D. In May 2025, he is going to take on an astonishing challenge: 

Matt is going to bike across Canada in order to raise money for the organisation.

Please let me put that in context for you, as not a lot of people – even Canadians – know quite how large Canada actually is: 

Matt’s journey will take 57 days and he will pedal for 7,500 kilometres.

For my friends in the UK: that is more than seven and a half times the geodesic (Great Circle) distance of Land’s End to John O’Groats. For my friends in France, it is pretty much the same: about seven and a half times the distance from the northernmost French border point with Belgium, to where the French-Spanish border meets the Mediterranean. To my friends in Canada, well, he’s going to bike the whole damn country.

Speaking to Matt recently, he couched this effort in typically unselfish terms: he said now that he had made the commitment, he was worried: he didn’t want to let anyone down. 

But I know another part of his motivation, from something he said to me long ago, a throw-away line, really: 

“I like a challenge.”

So it would seem…

For those of us who will not be in the saddle for 57 days, I think there is only one valid response to the courageous challenge which Matt has taken on. Support him.

You can read more about what Matt is going to accomplish – and you can make a donation – via this link….

Why I ride – Matt Varey

So please be generous with a donation. You’ll be supporting a good cause and a great guy.

And then you can put your feet up…

Although the summer of 2024 has seen abundant sunny days here, recently, the past few have been unseasonably rainy and cold. 

Not much fun.

On balance, though, the season has been great, so I’ll not complain. And when today presented itself clear and bright, a bit cold, perhaps best termed “vibrant”, I was not about to argue much. I was about to enjoy.

The early evening was spent on the west deck, with a book and a beer and a dog and a sun going down. 

The dog, Snag is not well, and probably mortally so; his days are most likely numbered. His energy levels are curiously undiminished, and he seems oblivious to what is growing inside him. But the vet has been clear this happy, energetic state is unlikely to persist. Hence the time with him is precious. That time on the deck to share with him was precious.

Despite the adage “Man’s best friend”, there are plenty of things that make dogs inscrutable to humans, and no doubt the inverse. I gave him a scratch under the chin; he liked that. I purred some nice “good dog” words to him, and he liked that as well. 

But for me, the sun was going down in a blaze of glory. The air was clear and very still. There was not a breath of wind. The stream made a very pleasant background singing. The mountains dark in the midground, their profile sharply cutting the sky behind. 

It was beautiful.

But there was no sharing this with Snag. Dogs just don’t do sunsets. They have no sense of awe. 

He laid himself down, crossed one paw over the other, placed his head on top of that pile, and dozed.

This made me feel doubly distant from him: I could see the sunset and he couldn’t; I knew he was ill and he didn’t. 

For a moment it all seemed rather dismal.

But finally the last little bit of sun went down behind the mountains, and as so often happens at precisely that moment, there was a stirring in the air, just the whisper of a breeze, nothing more. It was as if, the day’s work done, the Earth sighed.

Snag was on his feet in an instant, his muzzle — the very dark end of which the French call his “truffle” — pointed towards where the sun had just set, and he sniffed the air.

Two or three times; short inhalations; then a few much longer ones. You could see he was interested in them; you could imagine he was taking pleasure in them.

That was his sunset.

And then I realised how stupid I had been. Why should the dog come to the human, and not the other way around? Why should I expect him to appreciate my view of the sunset, if I could not appreciate his scent of it?

So I raised my truffle as he had, and sniffed the air, as he did. 

Truth be told, I didn’t get much of a scent out of it. Everyone knows that dogs are much more sensitive to smell than humans are. But I did sense, if not a scent, a least the presence of something, the intimation of some perfume, the slightest suggestion of some flower, some mushroom, some pine. It was so indistinct, I almost want to call it a pre-scent. But it was definitely there.

It was something I surely would have missed, had not Snag sniffed, had he not led me to it, had I, through him, not become more attentive to my nose.

It made me wonder: if we are to empathise with friends not of our own species, we might do better to do it in their terms, rather than our own. 

I suppose I had wanted for Snag to see my sunset.

I suppose what happened, in some small way, was that I sniffed his.

It is a very good way to share some time with a dog who is not all that well.

Mom at 94

My Mom died on 26 August 2021. It fell to me to write the obituary, which, as a task, is at once both an honour and an impossibility. The reason for the former is obvious; the reason for the latter is that no words can capture and condense a person’s life.

Mom’s Life

Mom was born in Toronto and spent all her early life there. As a child, she was particularly close to her father, Ed Sproule, and it would appear it was from him she inherited her great love of walking. One of her earliest childhood memories was of him coming home each Friday, having been paid, and giving her some small coin so that she could go down to the shop and buy the fish and chips for dinner.

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