It was Sunday afternoon, a time when downtown Washington, D.C., is generally empty, save for museum-going tourists. Not this past inaugural weekend. My son and I sat in grid-lock traffic, stretching the seven miles from our home to Union Station. He was supposed to catch a 4 p.m. train back...

Every weekday morning at 7:45 a.m., I make my 11-year-old daughter's school lunch. It is something I generally complain about doing. My daughter attends a public elementary school in Washington, D.C., at which a hot lunch is served everyday. She won't eat it. I insist she's being too fussy.

Each...

Ogni mattina dei giorni feriali, alle 7:45, preparo il pranzo che mia figlia undicenne porterà a scuola. E' una cosa di cui sono solita lamentarmi. Mia figlia frequenta una scuola elementare pubblica di Washington, D.C., nella quale servono un pranzo caldo tutti i giorni. Lei non lo mangia. Insisto nel...

Cada día, de lunes a viernes, a las 7:45 de la mañana, preparo la comida que mi hija de 11 años tomará en el colegio. Suelo quejarme por tener que hacerlo. Mi hija va a una escuela pública de Washington D.C. en la que sirven una comida caliente todos los...

Chaque jour de la semaine, à 7h45, je prépare le déjeuner de ma fille de 11 ans avant l'école. En règle générale, je me plains de devoir le faire. Ma fille fréquente une école publique a Washington, D.C., où l'on sert un repas chaud tous les jours. Elle ne veut...

We admit: We are unlikely cookbook writers. Anne is a historian and columnist who has spent most of her career covering the politics of Eastern Europe and Russia. I'm a Washington-based journalist who has mostly occupied herself with politics and women's issues. And many people would suggest that Polish food...

So it's raining and the gusts are picking up a little outside my window here in the Nation's Capital, but you'd think the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were about to arrive. I don't want to underplay the hurricane ("The worst of it is coming at 4 p.m. ... no,...

Last night I stood in the kind of hip club space I haven't visited since my 20s, jammed with nominees for the annual Canadian Online Publishing Awards. As the venue suggests, it wasn't your usual awards event: no sit-down tables and earnest acceptance speeches. Indeed the winners could...

Oh what a completely gratuitous way of getting you to read this blog! Shameless sensationalism, pure and simple. We try to be more high-minded than that at HuffPost, at least over here on the blog rail, where we would never post links to the red-headed royal frolicking around...

So declared our main news splash on Thursday, announcing the birth of two new regional editions of HuffPost, in Alberta and British Columbia. As other major media organizations across the country lay off staff and shutter their presses, HuffPost's expansion west is good news -- great news -- for readers...

Some of you may remember my column about the Olympic Games (of course you do, it was a literary jewel), and how I don't watch them. It was kind of a big admission. Like standing in a stadium full of Leafs fans and saying, "Hockey? It's not really...

So if you're reading this it means a) it's raining or b) you are in full-body traction, because every other Canadian is out celebrating... what?

The sadly, but safely, named "Civic Holiday" is one being celebrated across the country (although according to Wikipedia -- hey, it's a long...

Does this make me a bad person? I was sitting in the HuffPost newsroom on Friday afternoon when the noise of the overhead televisions -- and the funny, running commentary of the news team -- drew me over. I watched as the surreal montage of industrial smokestacks, dancing chimney sweeps,...

In the wake of the "Dark Knight" shooting, there is the inevitable and understandable desire to seek an explanation -- to make sense of the senseless. Somehow this monstrosity might have been averted -- if gun laws were different, if someone who knew the killer could have stopped the crime...

...not. Got your attention though didn't I? This week our news editor, Brodie Fenlon, sent around a plaintive request with his daily morning editorial notes:

"Wanted: News of any kind."

The old saying "No news is good news" was never said by a journalist. No news = no customers....

Soooo ... on Mother's Day I'm supposed to wake up to lumpy pancakes, handmade cards, and a general, overall worshipful sense in the household that without me everyone would be river orphans. If this doesn't happen, I pretend not be offended, and stoically -- indeed dismissively, in the most good-humoured...

I know I should be more high-minded when looking at the week in hindsight. Of course you want to hear about the very worthy and important events that have happened, and how HuffPost has rocked in every way in covering them. And yet... Ding dong! "Package for you....

Well, it was quite the week -- beginning with a showy demonstration of fireworks for the visiting Royals and ending with demonstrations by thousands of student protestors in downtown Montreal. In between, HuffPost Canada celebrated its first birthday with quite the party.

First the Royals....

In all the preparations that have been taking place for the celebration of HuffPost Canada's first birthday -- among them collecting stats such as "How many bloggers do we have now?" and "How many comments have we posted?" -- one seemingly unanswerable question kept popping up:

How many original Canadian...

I've found the quickest way to bore my young colleagues (and the majority of them are all young, as in 20- and barely-30-somethings) is to tell them about the "olden days" of Canadian newspapers, the world in which I grew up.

Gather around, kiddies, while I tell ye a story...