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I was headed to my mother’s condo, where the family would assemble for the trip to Guelph. On the way, I passed Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, and thought about how unusual it was for a church to be named for a mortal individual, and more broadly about the ways we strive to be remembered by future generations.

Those who have the energy and cleverness to amass wealth sooner or later face the question of what to do with it. If the wealth is liquid, once a decision is made, it is relatively easy to implement. If the wealth is illiquid, implementation becomes much more complicated.

In the seventies, my parents established a store that sold weavings, wall hangings, and other items for interior design. Some things, like clumpy weavings, macrame, and marimekko fabric, were very seventies. But my mother became interested in Inuit art, and over the years, she began to focus on Inuit sculpture, prints, and graphics. I’m not exactly sure why: I think it was out of respect for the Innu artists’ ability to represent the challenges of their way of life. My mother felt a responsibility (and opportunity) to make their art available in this large metropolis. After a while, the Pareto rule began to assert itself: Twenty percent of the items – the Inuit art – were responsible for eighty percent of the business.

My parents retired from the business in 1984, but my mother retained and deepened her interest in Inuit art. She continued to buy from wholesalers and sell from her house to loyal customers. Almost every summer she went north on a buying trip, adding exceptional pieces to her inventory. Ultimately, her personal collection grew to several hundred pieces, one of the major private Inuit art collections in Canada. Along the way, she made some major donations, for example to the Mount Sinai and Baycrest hospitals and to the Rotman School of Management. When she moved from a house to a 1500 square foot condo about a decade ago, the pieces she took with filled several rooms.

My siblings and I have some interest in Inuit art, but do not share her passion. The question we faced as a family is what to do about the majority of the collection that the three of her children were not interested in inheriting. This became a family preoccupation for several years. There was far too much to attempt to sell. Donations were also a possibility.

In the last half-century Inuit art has achieved iconic status as Canadian art. The primitivism of the stone carving – its absence of detail and ornamentation –fits well with “Canadian school” of public architecture, with its blending of stone, wood, glass, and natural light. The problem with donating Inuit art to display in these buildings is that the art is part of the building, in effect a sort of accent. And there are limits on the amount of accenting any building can use. Thus, the Borins donation to the Rotman School shows both the strength and limits of this approach.

My mother began to look for a place that wanted the entire collection for its artistic value. Through the good offices of Inuit art consultant Heather Beecroft, the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre (MSAC) at the University of Guelph contacted my mother. The MSAC has a fine collection of Inuit wall hangings and graphics, but less sculpture. So a donation that is primarily sculpture would complement their collection very nicely.

My mother had three large display shelves in different places in her condo. She gave the MSAC the shelves, and they now cover an entire wall in a small lecture room. The cases display a variety of pieces, some large works in stone and others tiny ivories. In addition, my mother donated a number of large pieces carved of white quartzite. One, a tall sedna, or ocean spirit, will be displayed in the university’s arboretum, and others in the gallery.

Finally, my mother gave the museum an amautiq – a woman’s parka with a large hood for carrying an infant – that she had made. The amautiq, a replica of one in the ROM, is of heavy wool, with 2000 small beads that she added herself. The amautiq required enormous perseverance and discipline.

We attended the reception at which the gift was unveiled last week. My mother was interviewed by MSAC’s director and curator Judith Nasby, and spoke about some of the pieces and how she acquired them. I realized, then, that each piece has at least three stories – the story it tells itself, the story the artist tells about how (s)he came to make it, and the story the owner tells about how (s)he acquired it. Our thanks go to Judith Nasby, curator of contemporary art Dawn Owen, and coordinator of education and development Aidan Ware for organizing the event.

I greatly admire my mother for the role Inuit art has assumed in her life, in terms of both her passion to gather a fine and deep collection, and her finding a new home for the collection that will preserve it and use it to further the appreciation and study of Inuit art.

While visiting the Whetung Ojibway Arts and Crafts Gallery last week, I learned that the Metis artist Michael Robinson died last summer at the untimely age of 62. I never met him, but I mourn his passing.

I had the good fortune to discover his glass sculptures at Whetung’s thirty years ago. As I understand it, glass was his original medium, but injuries from a traffic accident in the mid-Eighties forced him to shift to less demanding art forms.

I collected eleven of his vases over the years. They are all solid and substantial, yet also graceful and beautiful. The designs are abstract, rising from broad bases to flattish tops, generally with a small hole for inserting a flower. But I think they were meant to be seen on their own, rather than as a vehicle for flowers.

They often remind me of the shape of a human torso, clad in a robe or tunic. The glass itself is usually deep blue, purple, or crimson, though I also have one that is clear. While the glass is strong and thick on the outside, somehow Robinson was able to pull delicate threads of glass through the openings of the vases. The contrast between power and delicacy captured my imagination, and I bought one or two on every trip to Whetung’s.

I note on Michael Robinson’s website remembrances of his creativity in printmaking, etching, and poetry, and his role in his family, but nothing about his glass work. So I hope this post stands as recognition of that important element of his artistic output. These works stand in my home, and inspire me with their beauty and their demonstration of a unique talent. Thank you, Michael Robinson.

Today’s post looks back to the last year or two of blogging and forward to the next year. In the past, my blog posts have often been linked closely to my classes, for example reporting on or continuing a discussion initiated in class. In the 2010-11 academic year I am on research leave, so will have no classes to stimulate postings nor a group of students who eagerly look forward (at least I can imagine they do) to what I write.

My main focus in September will be on a proposal to SSHRC for funding to do a book about narratives about private sector management, using the same approach as the book I’m completing about narratives about public sector management. Grant proposals have tight deadlines and demand intense focus, so I may go offline for a while.

After completing the grant application, I will go back to finishing the book on narratives about public sector management. So the process of writing may serve as the basis of some postings.

I may weigh in on some public policy issues as they arise. This past summer the census long-form controversy kept demanding my attention. That story is not ended, and I expect to continue writing about it. The long-form census controversy led to my post about the Globe and Mail’s Neil Reynolds, which quite a few people told my they noticed – and agreed with. The Globe and Mail has not immediately accepted my recommendation of putting the 70 year old columnist out to pasture, but maybe they will. I notice that in a recent column Reynolds used the phrase peer-reviewed research, so maybe he read my post, and has decided to be more careful in how he refers to the articles he quotes.

Finally, I should mention a big technical problem I had to deal with during the summer. My website got spammed and some malware was insinuating onto it, and I was receiving somewhere on the order of 40 comments every day that were simply links to websites in Russia or the Ukraine selling Viagra or Cialis at bargain basement prices. With the help of web consultant Wes Bos (www.wesbos.com) the malware has been eliminated and the spamming has stopped. He had to take the site down and repost it and, along the way, some content was lost. So some posts have shortened titles and others just a word or two. Right now I don’t have the time to repost it all, but in the future I may do some reposting.

For those who, like Jews and academics – I’m both — think of September as a time of new beginnings, I’d like to wish all a happy and healthy new year.

First, an explanation for my silence for most of the month. One week I was in Cambridge, MA for the end of the week (when I normally post), and I have also been busy preparing and grading exams, doing my annual reports for the university, writing a grant application, and revising a paper for resubmission. My desk is a bit cleaner now, and I will be back to posting more regularly now, including some posts about the final exams in my courses.

But today’s post is about something completely different. On this trip to Cambridge I stayed into the weekend and my wife joined me, and we had a chance to visit the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Realizing that we will be in Boston again with the children later in the year and also realizing that an annual membership is less expensive than two visits, we took out a membership.

Beyond all the things we saw on the visit – particularly a superb special Egyptian history exhibit “The Secrets of Tomb 10A” – getting the membership gave me the feeling of joining a cultural community in a city that is not my home, but one I frequently visit.

And this takes me to the deeper question of why we travel. For me, the key reason is to understand the history and culture of other places. My main attractions are museums, art galleries, and religious shrines. In the Eighties and Nineties, when I travelled frequently, especially in Asia, I wrote quite a few travel pieces for the Globe and Mail, about things like Kabuki theatre, Chinese and Japanese gardens, and religious shrines.

To my profound regret, the travel pages have increasingly become dominated by foodie travelers, who travel primarily to visit a handful of upscale restaurants. And while local cuisine is a part of local culture, and for that reason deserves some attention, many foodie travel articles display little locavore interest, and simply go for the places with the Michelin stars.

I read an egregious example of this in the New York Times on Sunday April 25. In the “36 hours” feature, correspondent Jaime Gross was in Kyoto, a place so significant to Japanese culture that, during World War II, it was the only major city the Americans did not bomb.

She began by noting that Kyoto has 2000 ancient temples and shrines, and then suggested twelve activities. Four were in some sense cultural (the Geisha district, a well-known park, a museum devoted to the tea ceremony, and a comic book (manga) museum. Five were restaurants, two bars or clubs, and the twelfth was shopping. Clearly, none of the 2000 temples or shrines nor the famous Nijo Castle appealed to her.

On two visits to Kyoto, each a weekend, I rented a bike, and cycled from shrines to gardens to castles, treating the meals as refueling stops. I couldn’t imagine a more fascinating way to spend a day – anywhere.

There are two terms, both of biblical origin, I would apply to Ms. Gross’s notion of travel, at least as displayed in this article: philistine and Am Ha-aretz. The latter is a Hebrew phrase from rabbinic Judaism, literally “people of the land,” connoting people who are rustic, uncivilized, and ignorant.

The challenge of the “36 hours” concept is to accept the time constraint and make choices. That article displayed unwise and uncivilized choices. In its essence, foodie travel is about indulging the senses and ignoring the mind. A bad choice, and not my choice.

Back in high school, I played golf as often as I could. My family didn’t belong to a club, so I played the public courses and the one I liked best was the City’s Don Valley Golf Course. If I recall, the total fee for juniors under 18 starting before 11 am was $.95, of which $.75 was for playing and $.20 for insurance. Adults had to pay all of $2.95. That was quite a while ago. For example, the lowest rate for juniors is now $28.

I stopped playing golf in university; it just took too long and didn’t provide as much cardio as a good run or swim. What led me back to Don Valley was the interest of one of my sons in Toronto’s many ravines. He wanted to see the Hogg’s Hollow ravine, and the Don Valley Course was the best way. We went to have a look as the golf season was coming to an end. And this led me to revisit the course as a runner.

There’s a brief period of less than a month between the end of the golf season and the first snowfall of the year, which happens to be coming down as a write this post. The course is being used by runners and dog-walkers, but when the snow falls, the trails disappear.

I found four ways to access the course: the club house, the service yard on the west side of Yonge just north of York Mills, under the bridge over Wilson just west of Yonge, and through a gate from Earl Bales park on the northwest corner of the course (near the green on the third hole). The most daunting of these is the bridge, because there is a steep slope down from Wilson and because some homeless people have set up underneath it.

Instead of running through the course on the way to somewhere else, I decided to make the course the object of the run and retrace each of the 18 holes in the same order as a golfer would play them.

After the first hole, the course goes under Highway 401. I vividly recall from my earliest days there before the widening of the highway that the second hole was a long par five, with an elevated tee, and a double dogleg. As the highway was expanded and cut more and more of a gash through the course, the second continually diminished, even becoming a short par three. At least it has been restored to something approaching its former glory, and is now a long par four. The front nine is relatively flat, and what surprised me is that so many of the holes – the second, third, sixth, and eighth – are all long par fours or fives.

The back nine is to the south of the 401. The holes are quite a bit shorter – a total of 2700 yards compared to the front nine’s 3400 yards – but from the twelfth on they are much hillier, with elevated greens or tees on the valley wall abutting the 401. These holes run back and forth between the river and the valley wall. So I followed the holes, running up and down between tees and greens. This was a serious workout. My preference was to run the back nine first, get the hard slogging over first, and then coast on the more level ground.

Altogether, it was a great run, combining physical challenge with the mental effort of reconstructing how the course was configured. Thinking back to my acquaintance with Don Valley four decades ago, I was remembering playing rounds after I had completed the school year, with a sense of both achievement and expectation. The sun was so bright then, the sky so blue, and the grass so green. Put together the effort and the recollections, and I had quite a run.

With winter upon us, I’ll leave Don Valley for trails with surer footing, but I look forward to visiting it again in running shoes in the spring, in that brief window between snowmelt and the start of the golf season.