2025 was the year of graduations, funerals and mergers. Both of my kids (Zack and Emily) graduated university and high school, respectively (both greatly affected by being Co-Vid cohorts). This year we lost my cousin, Ronald “Ronnie”, a brilliant detective sergeant at Toronto Police Service; my colleague Michael Blake, a brilliant actor; my mother’s two sisters Judith and Barbara; my cousin, Jim; and agent Penny Noble. I worked on Paramount, Netflix and BET+ originals and two more independent arthouse films, released an independent film theatrically as producer, keeping myself busy and productive. I have gotten older, having now experienced Kodak film, cassette, VHS, Beta, CD-rom, DVD, Blu-ray, digital and now AI. I will watch Casting be honoured at the Oscars in 2026, while the Palestine-Israeli conflict is ravaging and dividing, the industry implodes, my kids despair about their futures, and rhetoric so disturbing is permitted and retransmitted like a plague. I am celebrating twenty-five years as a tenacious and outspoken member of the film and television industry in Canada, but it is a dumpster fire out there. Hold tight to your people. Hold tight to friends who have your back. Double down on your faith. Write. Connect. Be good.
13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.