Boreal

FAREWELL POSTINGS

Christmas 2025

December 24, 2025 - Farewell Postings begins (Prologue) with a remembrance of two remarkable women and ends with three murders: two men and one woman. The whole point of my Epilogue was to draw your attention to the killing of the woman from Kabul and it’s significance.

Wiki Commons

Woman falsely accused of burning Koran is killed by mob. The 27-year-old religious scholar Farkhunda was beaten, pushed from a roof, run over by a car and set alight before her body was thrown in the Kabul River.

Globe and Mail, March 23, 2015

That children raised on a steady diet of the Koran would, when grown up, do this to another human being should give you pause. The reason for my last, and what I consider my most important recommendation; that you read Children and the Koran - The End of Empathy, Boreal Books, to fully grasp the implication of this wretched scene.

Epilogue

What I wrote about my father’s murder got all the attention and elicited a warranted rebuke. Sorry about that! The sad truth, if he was sober when it happened, he was capable of changing, but, for reasons unknown, only late in the day for his wife.

The irony:

Unlike my Lucette, I have lost the courage to say “today is the day that I die” and go through with it. I now pin my hopes on getting noticed by someone I offended because of something I wrote about Allah and His sidekick spotting me enjoying a glass of wine at my favourite outdoor patio on Elgin Street—or any other venue for that matter, doing whatever—and slicing my throat, if not completely taking my head off.

Of course, if I wanted it to happen sooner rather than later, I would trigger a Pavlovian-like collective reaction in the ummah (the community of believers) by publicly burning the book in which they have been indoctrinated. The problem is, I don’t believe in burning books no matter the content. I prefer an honest objective discussion like the type I have been promoting with my books and postings.

Epilogue

December 25, 2025 - A couple of ill-considered assumptions on page 463 of a 468 page manuscript, and it’s all for nothing. I cannot even hope that those who have received the book I intended as a Christmas present will even read it now. I am reminded about how her with the Koranic surname took the time to read Remembering Uzza in its entirety before telling me that I had insulted her bad boy, the Prophet Muhammad.

December 26, 2025 - Woke up this morning from another largely sleepless night thinking about "the best-laid plans of mice and men." I have had my share of disappointments. A short time before her passing, Lucette and I talked about regrets. She said she had none. I had more than a few. One that haunts me to this day is the death of a young woman whose suicide I should have anticipated.

December 27, 2025 - How I miss not being able to look at you.

December 28, 2025 - At 3 this morning I found myself staring at a favourite photograph of us as a married couple. A toast to us on the occasion of our 25th wedding anniversary:

In spite of everything, she always felt loved. When I told her that my biggest regret was what she missed out on because of my firing, she reached out and placed one hand on top of mine, looked at me with those soft blue eyes, and said, "Don't be sad; that doesn't matter. What matters is that during my life with you, I have always felt loved. What more could a woman ask for?"

At 4 this morning, thinking it would be a shame if you didn't read a book that is very much in her memory because of what I wrote about my father's demise, I got up and made changes to Farewell Postings.

At 5 this morning I submitted a revised proof to Amazon that only mentions that he was murdered. Those changes should be reflected in the print edition in two or three weeks.

At 6 this morning I made changes to the free PDF and updated my website. If you have downloaded it previously, please refresh your browser to get the latest version.

At 7 this morning I went back to bed when it dawned on me that my two younger sisters had gotten to know a different dad.

December 29, 2025 - When I start feeling sorry for myself on days like these, I remind myself of why I deserve to feel that way and I get to feel better by feeling bad. On Christmas eve it was what I assumed about my father’s murder. The day after that, it was failing to prevent a suicide. Today it is getting a secretary fired.

December 30, 2025 - A memory that still sends shivers down my spine is the day I threatened my cousin Réal in the manner father threatened mom. I said I had something to show him in the basement. I then took out a knife and said he was not getting out alive, or something to that effect. He made for the stairs, but I was faster.

I was standing at the bottom of the stairs, the knife in his face, when the door at the top of the stairs flew open and a voice shouted “Bernard, qu’est-ce que tu fait!” (Bernard, what are you doing?). It was Jean Guy, my adopted brother and the father of Réal. I dropped the knife and ran upstairs followed by Réal. Jean Guy told his son they were going home, and that was that.

I never threatened anyone again even when being threatening was what was called for. I still don’t understand why I did it that one time.

Apart from trying to run Albert over for interfering, dad never, to my knowledge, threatened anyone but his wife, and it didn’t seem to bother her that much.

Mother seldom cried. The last time I saw her cry was a Friday night. I had driven in from Vancouver for the weekend. There was no one home but her. After sitting down for a few minutes I said I was going out for a few hours. She burst into tears. There was no mistaking the loneliness. I didn't go out that night.

December 31, 2025 - A Muslim helped me get through another miserable Christmas week. Abbas called every day and brought Diana, his former business partner, whom he looks after, for a short visit. They could not stay long as Diana suffers from Alzheimer.

Lucette and Abbas became good friends. She liked Abbas, not only because of what he had been through, but because he was very much the perfect gentleman.

In Islam, it is men, who, in keeping with the example of the Prophet, perfume themselves before going out in public.

The Most Noble Messenger was so fond of applying perfume that he would skip his supper so as to procure his needed perfume… Likewise, before going out he would always look at himself in the mirror or water, and groom himself to such an extent as to always be an embodiment of adornment and dressing well. He would apply so much perfume that his beard had turned white as a result.

An-Nisa’i

A female who wants to remain in Allah’s good graces does not dare to do so.

The Prophet of Islam stated: “Any woman who perfumes herself and leaves the house, is deprived from the blessings of the Almighty Allah until she returns home”.

Bihar al-Anwar

Abbas shared Muhammad ’s love of perfumes. I could never bring myself to tell him that sometimes he put on a bit much. It would be up to Lucette. It was early one morning when he came to see me at home when the fragrance he wore was particular overpowering and Lucette had yet to have her morning coffee.

Still in her bathrobe, she shouted from the top of the stairs that he smelled like a woman. It's not the words I would have used. Abbas took it stride, they both laughed and my nose got a break.

When she was alive and Abbas and I talked on the phone, he would seldom end our conversion without asking, “How is Lucette?” or “How is my sister?”

Should I decide to edge my bets before the inevitable and pick a religion, after this week, it will definitely not be Christianity.