I have to admit it, we Canadians are not known for romance. If someone were to ask you to name the most romantic people on earth, Canadians would not immediately come to mind. Might not even make it onto your list as a postscript.

"Nice people" yes we would be near the top of your list. "Polite", "clean", "nice neighbours", okay you got us.

If you're ever in a fight, a couple of our hockey players would be handy to have around. But women seldom dream of toothless lovers.

If you need comedians for the Hollywood grist mill, Jim Carey, Martin Short or Mike Myers will do just fine. They'd be fun to have at a party, but they're not romantic. Oh Hollywood did its best to make us romantic, with those singing Mounty/beautiful Indian maiden movies back in the thirties. But the Canadian Mounted Police don't dress in those red surge jackets any more, they don't ride horses and they sure don't sing. If you get stopped for a ticket in Alberta, they'll look like any other cop in North America. And the same old, same old isn't romantic.

That's what makes it so strange that the entire population of Canada should have fallen in love, deeply passionately in love. The stand in the freezing cold just for a glimpse, a taste of the ardour of your affection, kind of love. Romance on a grand scale.

With a chain of donut restaurants.

Cue Enya, dim the lights, we are about to name the object of our affection: Tim Hortons



Just listen to what Wikipeadia has to say:

"Tim Hortons Inc. is a coffee-and-doughnut fast food restaurant chain. Founded in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1964, the store rapidly expanded across Canada to become the country's largest quick-service food chain.

"Tim Hortons franchise stores are plentiful in Canadian cities and towns. As of July 1, 2007, there were 2,733 outlets in Canada, 345 outlets in the United States and one outlet just outside Kandahar, Afghanistan. Tim Hortons has supplanted McDonald's as Canada's largest food service operator; it has nearly twice as many Canadian outlets as McDonald's, and its system-wide sales surpassed those of McDonald's Canadian operations in 2002. The chain accounted for 22.6% of all fast food industry revenues in Canada in 2005. Tim Hortons commands 76% of the Canadian market for baked goods (based on the number of customers served) and holds 62% of the Canadian coffee market (compared to Starbucks, in the number two position, at 7%)."

Have sweeter words ever been spoken? Can you not feel our hearts beating. Our soldiers in Afghanistan could not exist without Tim Hortons and our troops wrote enough pleading letters to the restaurant chain that they opened a store on our military base in Kandahar province.

And Tim Horton, the man for whom the entire chain is named, was a hockey player.

If you want to find romance in Canada, just go to any Tims and look for the line-up that stretches from the counter out the door into the cold frigid morning.

We are not afraid to suffer for our love.

Have pity on us, we're Canadians.

I'm wearing four layers of clothing. My head is protected by a toque, a scarf covers my face from nose to chin, my hood covers everything except my eyes. The cold is raw and bone-chilling, by far the coldest day of the year so far. I'm taking the dog for a quick run before heading off to work, but my mind is on death and I really don't notice the cold.

I had been reading Tomme's "Maybe A Surprise Or Two" blog on Near Death Experiences yesterday and it had taken me back a long, long way....

Before the term "Near Death Experience" was coined, my mother would often tell of her own NDE. It happened while she was pregnant with me during the Second World War, when my father was a Canadian soldier and she a young British Nanny. It was a terrible pregnancy with my mother having pernicious vomiting throughout, her weight dropping to 90 lbs. She could keep no solid food down and she was kept alive through feeding tubes.

As a staff Sargent responsible for his men, my father had to live on base. My mother lived in a small cottage beside the base and was cared for by my grandmother. My father awoke one night, literally soaked with swet, haunted by a terrible premonition. Rushing to the officer in charge, he was given a special 24 hour pass and then ran the two miles from the base to the cottage, only to find my mother collapsed at the bottom of the stairs, my grandmother in a complete panic. He phoned for an ambulance and my mother was rushed to the hospital on the military base.

But in her sixth month of pregnancy my mother died.

She saw herself leave her body through the large toe on her right foot. Death was the most peaceful feeling she had ever known. Hovering at the level of the ceiling she could look down at her wasted body with a feeling of relief. She saw the light, she felt its alluring pull, but before she could enter, she felt herself reluctantly return to her body as doctors and nurses came rushing to help her.

Unknown to my mother, the doctors decided to conduct an abortion the next day, it being a choice between my life or hers; but by the morning she was feeling hungry and rapidly gained weight through the final trimester.

I was born, well as normal as I am. My closest shave with death being three months before I was born.

My mother turned 89 last week.

This year's TED conference kicks off today and runs through to Saturday:

It is an elite event where leaders in technology, entertainment and design gather to cross-pollinate ideas and gain inspiration from presentations on the latest developments in sciences and the arts. Political leaders take the stage too: Former President Bill Clinton received the annual TED prize at last year's conference; former Vice President Al Gore has also been a speaker.

The conference attracts a wide range of people, from Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to musician Peter Gabriel and filmmaker J.J. Abrams.

At $6000 per ticket, TED certainly lives up to its 'elitest' tag. However, we'll let them go for now, considering they put free videos on their website of some excellent talks from previous years.

In honour of TED, I plan to post some of their best talks here every Wednesday. Lets begin with the funniest, laugh out loud, laugh til you cry, most moving talk you have ever heard.

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. With ample anecdotes and witty asides, Robinson points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize -- much less cultivate -- the talents of many brilliant people. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. The universality of his message is evidenced by its rampant popularity online. A typical review: "If you have not yet seen Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk, please stop whatever you're doing and watch it now."

CAUTION, THIS IS THE FULL 20 MINUTE VIDEO SO DON'T BEGIN IT UNLESS YOU HAVE THE TIME AVAILABLE. If you don't have the time, make time later and come back. This is less a talk and more a mood altering substance that you owe it to yourself to experience.

The very touch of daylight is enough to cremate vampires, as if they were the hapless victims of some nuclear explosion. Although vampires leave no fallen shadow of themselves upon the ground. Or so Bram Stoker claims.

So I am safe in the morning light as Lindsay and I run the pathway along the top of the Scarborough Bluffs. If not vampires, certainly daylight incinerates the worries, torments and terrors of a troubled sleep.

I've been visiting the elegantly chilling blog written by Fairweather Lewis and her stories have reminded me of my one close encounter with horror. It's troubled me all night, but in the daylight the sense of dread has faded.

As a young man, I traveled to England where I worked and roamed the country for two years, before University. My travels eventually brought me to Buxton and a tour of Poole's Cavern.

The cavern gains its name from 'The robber Poole', who is reputed to have lived in the cave in the 15th century. However, the cave has been used by Man since Neolithic times and archaeological digs have revealed Stone Age tools and artefacts, Bronze Age pottery, a wealth of Roman material and human bones. It seems that at one time in the Roman period the cave was used as a workshop by a craftsman who made bronze brooches and other metal items. Many Roman coins and pottery were also found.

The cavern has attracted visitors for hundreds of years, and there is a local tradition that the ill fated Mary Queen of Scots came to visit on one of her trips to take the waters at Buxton during her imprisonment at Chatsworth.

Poole's Cavern is also reputed to be haunted.

I know it is.

In those days the tour was guided and the lighting poor. We were led in groups of twenty and in the Great Dome, that was scoured out of the solid limestone in neolithic times by the power of swirling flood-waters loaded with rock and sand, the guide would turn out the lights to plunge us into pitch darkness. In the dark he told the story of hauntings and terrifying footsteps he had heard when in the cave alone.

I felt chilled by the story and when the lights were turned on and we were led back to the surface, I made certain I was in the middle of the crowd, not wanting to be the last one leaving the cave. Eventually, with the comfort of people laughing nervously and chattering around me, I grew calmer and finally could see the light of day at the cave's entrance.

Our guide stood at the entrance with a clicker, counting off our number to ensure no one was left behind. As I emerged in the middle of the group he said, "Ah, here comes the last one now."

I turned and realized I was alone. All of the people who had been walking and talking and muttering behind me were gone. In fact, had never been.

I run in the daylight now, away from that memory that has been disturbing my sleep all night.

In the beginning came the snow. It fell upon the earth in great fluffy flakes and settled soft upon the land until the land was filled unto the horizon to the depth of several feet.

And it was good.

Then came an explorer. See his great six foot frame drive massive winter boots deep into the snowy banks, his faithful black spaniel prancing through the depths with tail wagging glee. He trod a trail he knows to be there but can no longer be seen.

And it was also good.

Behind him, over weeks and months, come others. The great and the small, the young and the old, the female and the male, the races of man untold. And their dogs. Each leaving upon the virgin snows the imprint of their passing.

And god cast upon the land a deep and abiding cold, freezing the imprint of the passing multitudes, like memories of the past encased in cement.

And now comes an explorer once more, his dog flying across the slippery uneven pathway like a breeze across the water. But he trudges on, eyes forever locked at his feet, seeking safe refuge for the next step in his progress. He looks not up at the glory that surrounds him. The sky is a brilliant blue, the great lake washes the shore the sun dancing upon its waters, graceful birds glide and swoop over head. He sees it not. He sees, instead, a three foot section of frozen pathway and the ruts therein.

And it is good.

He will not break a leg this day. His body will benefit from the exertion and his dog will love him the more. His soul, however, will be left to seek its nourishment some other day.