The son, who had grown up listening to his father's stories around the kitchen table, was the one to suggest that his father write a book.

"I could never do that," the father said, the thought of a book, all those words, daunting. "I never liked writing. I was more comfortable with math…

This happened nine years ago in a Roman Catholic church in a little town in the Canadian Rockies.

I should have shaken it by now. But the memory rears its ugly head at random times. Prejudice is like that. Or maybe the correct word is contempt…