Here's my Coles Notes version of my life this past 57 years, not quite as eloquent as Marc's eloquent memoir.

In June Martha (Marty) Plaine and I will celebrate our 50th anniversary. We married at the Temple Gates of Heaven in Schenectady, NY. Marc was there. We smoked hash before the ceremony and cigars afterward. I sat down at the keyboard when the band -- at the reception at the Walhalla club on the Mohawk River -- took a break. Marty and I have three kids, 37, 41 and 47, and an 11-year old granddaughter. Since 1971 we have lived in: Montreal; Saguenay, Que.; Gumel, Northern Nigeria; Fort McPherson (Tetlit-Zheh), a Gwich'in community north of the Arctic circle; Toronto; and Ottawa. Earlier I  lived in NYC for a while, on the Upper West Side. Spent some time at jazz clubs, such as Slug's on the Lower East Side, and even more time at the West End Bar on Broadway around 104th. (In high school some of us used to go to the Black Bottom on St Antoine to hear Nelson Symonds and Charlie Biddle and various visiting players. I sat down at the upright piano once and hoped nobody would shoot me.)

As penance for being such a pain-in-the-ass student I spent five years teaching high school, then got into media work at the CBC, starting with the old Morningside radio show, hosted by Don Harron, and moving on to more assignments than I can remember.

Over nearly a quarter century my various CBC and (in French) Radio-Canada gigs got me to some exotic, and some scary places, to wit: South Africa, during the darkest days of Apartheid; the north coast of Labrador, to film the conditions of life for the Innu and Inuit people there; an underground, illegal garment factory, operating at night in rural Quebec; the Hell's Angels heavily guarded 'clubhouse' in Lennoxville, Que. (they told us to fuck off while ostentatiously fondling the handguns in their pockets); the inaccessible Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, travelling by homemade, wooden boat (during the U.S.-supported Contra insurgency); the James Bay Cree territory; and the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Laboratory in California, where we had a sit-down interview with the father of the H-bomb, Edward Teller. I also spent some time in the jungles of Parliament Hill, here in Ottawa. Some fools even decided to give me a few awards for my work over the years. So far, I have not had to hawk them for lunch, as one poor Oscar winner once did. 

I took a leave of absence from CBC in 2000 to help set up and run communications for a federal-government funded international network on federalism, the Forum of Federations, led by former Ontario premier Bob Rae, but never went back. That work led to a gig as head of a giant communications shop at the Canadian Institute for Health Information, which led to a similar roles at smaller and (for me) more manageable Cuso and Volunteer Canada. By 2010, I was ready to get out of clocking into an office everyday. My ticket was a documentary project which I wrote and rescue-directed (the producer had to fire the original director), "And Who Are You", about four Canadians of Polish heritage, two Jews and two gentiles, who travel to Poland to search for their roots, if any roots could be found. That film led to another that I produced myself, "Never Come Back", about the relatively young Roma (Gypsy) community in Canada and the conditions of life in the countries they fled (Hungary and the Czech Republic).

Since 2011, I have been writing federal political stuff for the frisky, left-of-centre online newspaper rabble.ca, which was founded by my friend (and Marc's) Judy Rebick. I spend a lot of time making music these days --still jazz -- and cross country skiing in Gatineau Park. In the warmer weather Marty and I love bicycling, swimming and hiking. Years ago, Avrim got us into going to the Adirondacks to hike, with our families. Marty and I still go at the end of every summer. I love the feeling of climbing a mountain. There is nothing quite like it.

I might be the only person in this group about whom there is a Wikipedia entry. It gives some more salacious details than I have provided here. Here it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Nerenberg Truth to tell it is largely about the notoriety gained through taking on right-wing demagogue Ezra Levant, not true noteworthiness.

I promised to be brief. I guess that was fake news. Can't trust the media these days.

   Karl