Janice (48/261)

With her soothing voice and endlessly calm demeanour, Janice is the ideal yoga teacher. She’s also the person who I want sitting next to me if I’m ever in a plane that is about to crash, or a giant asteroid is hurtling towards the earth.

Mona (47/261)

Mona’s art seems happier than she is. Her pieces are full of children cartwheeling through sunny skies, whereas Mona often appears to be struggling with a complex grief. This is perplexing, given that her outward circumstances also appear to be turning cartwheels through sunny skies.

Carolyn (46/261)

She’s a crochety old hippie of the activist (versus the “hey man” giggling) sort, rambling around the country in her Volkswagon van, yelling at those indulging in too much free love; not because of any sexual inhibitions, but because of its potential contribution to overpopulation.

Alice (45/261)

Alice’s art schooling was funded by a nun, whose vow of poverty precluded her from retaining a sizeable inheritance. The driver who picked her up at the side of the road contributed to the costs of her massage training*. Alice is also generous to perfection.

* (Here I go with the footnotes too...) NO, this is not what you’re thinking!

Jan (44/261)

Glamour swirls around Jan’s life. Studious until the hour of 11 pm, she then shelves the books, and dons her second wind and a pair of glass slippers that numerous Prince Charmings have fitted to her feet. The ball lasts until 2 or 3 am.

Wilma (43/261)

Wilma, like her brother Dan, also skips the crawling stage in most undertakings. Her latest venture involved stopping the slaughter of 122 deer, arranging short-term room and board, corralling them for TB testing, and transporting them to a bucolic retirement home on a nature reserve.

The face of poverty (42/261)

So many oozed desperation that we didn’t see you. Instead, we discussed the foreign aid that transmogrified into a fleet of private jets for the king, and agreed that enormous social change was needed. I’m sure you would have been grateful for a band-aid though.

Richard (41/261)

Saviours don’t seem to have much balance in their lives. Did Gandhi read Dr. Suess to his kids? Does Mother Teresa ever go to the movies? Richard dispenses remedies to alleviate depression, pain, migraines, other societal ills; does he have one for workaholism, I wonder?

Sharon (40/261)

She’s a steamroller covered in marshmallows. At the last meeting she smiled, joked, waved away personal health information from the agenda as if it were an irritating fly, set a new trajectory for the project and decided that the impossible August 31 deadline was nonnegotiable.

Dan (39/261)

Dan doesn’t believe in mild-mannered half-measures. He paid off his mortgage in 8 years by becoming a shivering hermit, foregoing the pleasures of heat and entertainment. When his boat capsized he swam to the nearest island and torched someone’s cottage, creating a gigantic smoke signal.

The Other Woman, who I finally get to meet 10 years later (38/261)

She’s warm, appreciative, likeable. During the massage, she mentions that she trained as a nurse, used to live in Peterborough and studied epidemiology. WAIT A MINUTE... wasn’t the woman Lorne dumped me for 10 years ago a nurse living in Peterborough, with an epi degree?