News

Stephen Jenkinson interviewed by Daniel Vitalis on Rewild Yourself. "I was humbled by my conversation with Stephen Jenkinson, teacher, author, storyteller and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School. This, my friends, is a very powerful interview. Stephen will make you re-think everything you thought you knew about dying." ~...

Stephen Jenkinson, whose work with dying people is profiled in Tim Wilson's, National Film Board (NFB) feature documentary Griefwalker, comes to the nub and quick of why end-of-life reckoning is often so hard. New, not seen before footage of Stephen speaking with Tim during the filming of Griefwalker.

When you have a website, all manner of phone calls and messages come your way. Some people seem to think that the internet is a mall of sorts (which it is, I suppose), and that if something of yours is there you have a stall there and must be...

That most heroic bard, and exemplar non pareille of all he advocated, Dr. Hugh Morgan Hill, late of Cambridge, Mass., was a man steeped in the wild comedy rising always from being a true human, alive, in a time unfriendly to grace and to a deepened mind. Which means that...

On this you might rely: there are times when magic, mayhem and the mandate of your days gather themselves together and will make a claim upon your attention. If good fortune and good timing prevail, those times won't be lost on us. Generally the visitation is a subtle one,...

At the Orphan Wisdom School I teach with one weather eye on the rhythm of the kitchen. That means that I time the ebb and flow of my teaching day to the menu awaiting the scholars and to the considerable labours that underwrite it. For a few minutes early...

Whoever is in charge these days might consider combing the populace for anyone still alive that has a reliable memory that goes back to the 1950's or 60's. A little later would be even better. Those rememberers should be given a stipend for life, and their only job would...

Being the subject of a documentary film is not employment for the faint of heart, nor is it for those with average skin density. The camera catches you in odd moments - at least you hope they’re odd. It portrays you sporting questionable discretion sometimes, and dubious lucidity...

There comes a time in the epic saga of parenting when you have to decide whether you’ll introduce kids to darkness, so that something of the mysteries of having a human life could be their companion, or whether you’ll let the world do that for you, so that they...

I don't know when I stopped being a young person, or when I started being something else. I do know that I never chose that particular ending, and that it ended anyway. The whole thing is mysterious: when do you begin turning into what you are now? And how...

Watch Stephen's address at the Compassionate Choices conference speaking about the The Skill of Brokenheartedness: Euthanasia, Palliative Care and Power.

The last ice age surely had its way with our corner of the world. They say the ice sheet was a mile or more thick here, which is a mind boggling verticality. It is almost beyond imagining that anything could emerge from that frozen compression with the ability to...

One of the running prejudices that shows no sign of fatigue or going away in the corner of the world I know something about is the idea that all, or most, of our principal lunacies and strategies for self defeat live in our cities. Cities, full of operatic potential...

For years we've had beavers on the land, and so far the risen water and the beavers together have killed five acres of bottom land on our already small farm. I've broken the dam several times and found it rebuilt and stronger within a day. I've tried trapping them...

My daughter made the many mile drive to our farm to be with me on Father's Day, and I rewarded her by at one point talking about how I'm getting older. As is proper, she refused to have the conversation, which deepens my respect and admiration of her. Eventually...

To all the friends of this work, and to all those who still believe in a better day: Armloads of thanks as always for your encouragement and your passion for our Orphan Wisdom projects. The great surge towards summer, towards growth and heat and all things green has been...

We have a little land in eastern Ontario, and a little of that land with a lot of manure seems willing to grow food for people. Those who come to our school are fed by her. The land is a glacial flood plain, sand and stone, one...