109/365: Dr. C

He did a nice job straightening out my teeth, and I liked him a lot better than my previous orthodontist. He had a huge cabinet of casts of people's teeth that fascinated me for the fact that they were white, clean and smooth while at the same time ugly and misshapen. The only thing I really didn't like about him was that he had very large hands. This wouldn't have been a problem except that I have a very small mouth, so I left every appointment with split lips. Not really his fault.

108/365: Anthony

Anthony does lots of things people think he's not supposed to do. He wrestles, climbs mountains, rides bikes and drums in a band. When he wants to do something, he just tries it. Sometimes that works out well, and when it doesn't he just moves on to something else. In high school he was one of the few guys to take the time to be nice to me and treat me like I was pretty. He's blind.

107/365: Stephen

I could tell you that Stephen is a friendly, nice looking guy who plays hockey, gets good grades and raises money for social causes, but no, I want to tell you about his laugh. He has a deep, booming belly laugh that carries really far. You can hear him from the other end of the building. When people ask me to describe him to them this is always something that I mention. Then I get odd looks.

106/365: Peter

He's got a Chinese name which can cause some confusion until you realize that he's such a hardcore feminist that he took his wife's name when he got married. He's a great prof to take classes with. He often starts his lectures by asking how everyone's weekends were and a discussion about the most recent episode of Battlestar Galactica, and then the next thing you know you're all talking about database logic, data mining and protection of privacy. I'm not sure how that happens but it's great.

104/365: S.S.

I did her filing because her work space looked like it was out of A Beautiful Mind. One minute she'd be proudly showing you pictures of her grandkids, the next she'd be muttering that she wanted to throw herself off a bridge and the next she'd be asking if your shirt was new. As much as this sounds like a chaotic and completely unworkable arrangement, I actually quite liked working with her because she was really a nice person. "Erin, you're like valium," she said to me one day "I see you and then I calm down."

103/365: Abby

Abby is my sister. I've known her since she was born. Well, maybe not quite because I wasn't there, so technically I've known her since I climbed into Mom's hospital bed and ate her hospital dinner. Abby was born in the middle of the Three Stooges Film Festival on TV. Then she was almost born on the porch, in the car and in emerg. She was purple for about three weeks after that, but I'm happy to say her complexion has improved since then. I also thought she smelled kind of funny at the time but that has also improved. One thing that I've noticed though is that she seems to have gained a lot of weight - a hundred pounds or so! Mom set a new record for post-natal hospital discharge because she needed to go home and finish my Halloween costume. The hospital staff thought she was insane but clearly my mother has her priorities in order.

102/365: Rachelle

Rachelle was our cool Guide leader. She had radical ideas for planning camps and events that involved large tracts of unstructured free time, cool crafts like friendship bracelets that you could work on whenever and letting us choose what we wanted to eat. So through consensus-based decision making we always decided that we'd have stuff like tortellini and cardboard box cupcakes.

Eventually the legal firm she worked with offered her a better job in Calgary and she jumped at the chance to be able to flaunt her love of country music out in the open. All of us who had been in her group moved to another group that was run in the old-fashioned paramilitary British way, which was hell compared to what we had been used to.

101/365: Franklin

One moment a group of young Spanish tourists were horsing around outside the Doges Palace in Venice, and then the next moment they had disappeared completely, leaving in their wake a twenty euro bill on the ground. I was the only one who noticed it, and not knowing who exactly had lost it or how to contact them, it was fair game.

I made the mistake of declaring aloud that there was money on the ground and Franklin was in like a shot. It turned out to be a wad of bills. He took a forty euro cut and gave me the remaining twenty. That night he bought a round of drinks for his table at dinner, taking great care to let everyone know that he was being generous.

Later on he was to make a big deal about how he was going to do his undergrad studies at Yale because Canadian schools aren't good enough, further solidifying my impression that the majority of people who study at expensive, big named schools are assholes. If you are genuinely good at research, academics or sports you shouldn't need to use your school's name as a crutch.

100/365: Wesley

Wesley has a kind of quiet awkwardness about him that is really endearing. He kind of speaks better through music than he does with words. After high school he left to do volunteer work all over the place and eventually returned with a really sweet Quebecois girlfriend and substantially better musical taste.

99/365: Mrs. Digance

She was my grade two teacher. She was an artist and that made her an authority on everything artistic. She taught us to colour in the lines the correct way with individual lines of colour running in straight lines vertically until everything was uniformly coloured. That was the way that artists did it. She knew this because she was an artist. We didn't get along very well.

98/365: Hunnings

Hunnings was the English teacher who told the class that he and all good people are feminists, if not in name, because it wasn't fair that I (he singled me out) am destined statistically to make 70% of what my male counterparts would make in wages. He then went back to finding phallic imagery in our readings. He was really good at that.

97/365: Anita

She had a long, Russian sounding name that sounded exotic and cool to my seven year old self, and my fascination with it embarrassed her. Her parents constantly hovered around. When I invited her over to my house her father followed in his car as my mom walked the two of us home, and then parked outside for the duration of her visit. "You don't understand," he said, "You have two. We only have one, and if we lose her that is it." Mom was deeply offended at the suggestion that either of her children were expendable in that way. Anita never came over to my house again.

96/365: Matt

Matt and I met in kindergarten and went to the same schools until we graduated. His parents were military people and very involved in the Legion and the Royal Elks. He was often in trouble at school, but he was not a bad person.

One day in grade 12 I was feeling really crappy and he was standing by my locker. He didn't say anything but he gave me a hug. That's the last time I remember seeing him.

It suddenly occurred to me the other day that there's a good chance he's getting shot at in Afghanistan or Haiti right now. I hope he's well.

95/365: the other Jess

She's good friends with the previously mentioned Jess. We met in middle school when she suddenly started spending a lot of time with my friends and we got along well because she liked camping and a lot of outdoorsy stuff that she did through scouts. She had a baby just out of high school and she went through a bad bout of depression that I'm glad she seems to be over now. Her son is one of the most happy, friendly kids you will meet so I think she's doing a great job.

94/365: Jess

Jess and I went to elementary school so we've known each other for at least 18 years. Like some of the other people I've known for practically forever, our goals, lifestyles, education and experiences have diverged so much but we're still good friends and will probably continue to be. I like that we don't seem to grow apart.

93/365: Sharon

My mother's aunt. I don't understand her, which is why I can't bring myself to dislike her. She seems to have a pathological fear of me, and from the day I was born she has gone out of her way to shun me. Every time I have ever seen her I have made a point to say hi to her in the most polite and friendly way I can. Every time I do this, she stiffens and without a word she turns on her heel and walks away.

It's just as well though. I don't know what we'd talk about if she had actually bothered to have some sort of a conversation like a normal human being. I really can't think of anything innocuous to ask about. Her hysterectomy? The crazy that rubbed off onto her when she worked in a mental institution? Her horrible cooking? Her multiple divorces?

Or perhaps I could ask for advice about how to save every single penny you earn, alienate your friends and family, turn your previously domesticated cat feral while it still lives under your roof and then wonder why the hell you're lonely?

I think it's better that I say nothing.

92/365: Colleen

I didn't see it in the interview, but on my first day of work I found out that one of her legs was completely covered with dark brown spots. Yet that didn't seem to bother her at all. She strode around the pool deck without embarassment and answered peoples' questions about her leg with a confident nonchalance. It made me feel better about my own scarred, blotchy legs.

91/365: Rainer

He was a rower, but clearly not made of the same cloth as the rest of them, and had a fondness for homemade gadgets like sunglasses with rear-view mirrors that no one actually needs. He had crazy stories about how his boat sank in the Amazon while he was racing in Brazil in the 70s, and how he was bitten by fish. After I met him he began to pop up in the most unexpected places, like in the community band one day, where he played the digeridoo.

90/365: Uncle Lloyd

If you google him one of the first few results will be the Tamil Tigers who have apparently relied heavily on one of the articles that he wrote about Quebec separatists to justify their cause. I told him this one day and he said that it was widely regarded as his best article ever, not by him, mind you, but others. He's pompous and self-important, but I kind of like that. There must be something to it because you don't get to be a professor emeritus unless you've achieved at least some level of respect.

He's been to each continent at least twice, including Antarctica. Every time he comes home he speaks another language, but French and German the best. French because he worked in the civil service and German because he spent his sabbaticals teaching political science in Austria.

I rated him as "hot" on ratemyprof.com but it didn't stick for very long.

89/365: Ingrid

I'd meet my friends at the same place for lunch every day and one day she was with them. She just kind of appeared, and no one bothered to introduce us so it was over a week before I learned her name. She had a crazy sense of humour, and because she had foreign parents her stories always seemed more interesting than ours. In high school we'd leaf through Vogue, Elle and GQ with the metro guys and commiserate about our IB assignments. She stubbornly refuses to get a facebook account, which makes it harder to keep in touch.