It’s that time of year where we decorate our windows with spooky images and silhouettes, carve pumpkins for our front porch, get dressed up in costume, hand out candy and watch the young ghouls and goblins run the streets on all hallows eve. It’s a unique celebration where you can be someone or something you aspire to be without judgement. When we were young, we really looked forward to Halloween. From making spooky crafts in elementary school to watching scary-ish movies like the Goonies or the Addams Family by candlelight with your family. We hunted for weeks for the perfect costume, which in the 80s was usually made up of a cat, Zorro, a witch, a vampire, or your favourite He-Man type character – with a plastic mask where seeing was optional and the elastic tied a little too tight around your head. We could proudly carry plastic weapons and our suits were most-likely flammable – but we didn’t care. We just wanted to be out there, in the dark, past our bedtime. It felt so rebellious....

Our family has always been melodic. Growing up with a mom who is a concert pianist, plays violin in an orchestra and is a piano teacher – meant our house was always filled with classical and mainstream musical refrains. In addition to learning piano – my siblings and I each played a wind instrument as well. I played the saxophone, my brother the trumpet and my sister the clarinet. I'm sure we could have branded ourselves as a modern Canadian Partridge Family but unfortunately we didn’t have good PR back then. I was raised to appreciate all genres of music. From a young age, Anne Murray, Raffi, Mini Pops, Kylie Minogue, Tiffany, The Bangles and Whitney Houston wore out my tiny pastel pink ghetto blaster that sat on my desk. My dad liked to listen to James Taylor, Carly Simon and the Beatles in the car, and mom liked  Laura Branigan when she washed the floors, Paul Anka or the Beach Boys when she felt like belting out a tune and of course all things classical. And without even...

Grace and I were enrolled in the early immersion program at our elementary school. This is an education stream in Ontario that enables students to learn 100% of their curriculum in French (except for English class, which was – you guessed it – taught in English) – and it slowly moved towards 50% French curriculum once we’re finished school. For those who do not know what immersion is, according to the Canadian film "French Immersion" written by Jefferson Lewis and Kevin Tierney – "French immersion is a form of bilingual education in which students, who do not speak French as first language will receive instruction in  most subjects such as history, music, geography, math, art, physical education and science in F rench. Most school boards in Ontario offer French Immersion starting in grade one and others start as early as senior kindergarten." Yup - sounds about right. We started learning French in kindergarten. Thank gawd the silent act of "sharing" is a ...