Parenting

On April 28th, 2025, I did something I’d never done before: I worked at a polling station. It was the day of one of the most historic Canadian Federal elections, and I was in the thick of it. Twelve hours of helping strangers register to vote, answering questions, filling out forms, and making sure everyone could cast their ballot. There were also 4 more hours for setup, vote counting, officially packing everything up, and finally, cleaning up the gym. It was long. It was tiring. And honestly? It was a pretty rewarding experience that I never really thought I would ever do.

When you’re the dad of teenagers like me, you spend a lot of time marveling at how quickly everything changes. One day, you’re tripping over LEGO bricks and trying to survive the 100th read of “Paw Patrol,” and the next, you’re negotiating curfews and wondering why your grocery bill has doubled. As my boys have grown into teenagers, I do find myself missing certain things about their younger years—moments and routines I never realized I’d long for until they were gone.

As parents, we wear a lot of hats—caregiver, chef, chauffeur, tutor… and the list goes on. But what if you could add “extra income earner” to that list, without piling on more stress or needing extra skills? Whether you’re saving for your child’s next birthday party, tackling rising grocery bills, or just want a little extra breathing room in the family budget, finding ways to make some extra cash from home can be a game-changer.

Can you believe it’s been five years since the pandemic began? It feels like just yesterday we were all frantically searching for toilet paper, wondering if the world was running out of Dasani water, and trying to figure out how to do a decent fist bump without feeling awkward. Five years have passed since the COVID-19 pandemic turned our lives upside down, and it’s hard to believe how far we’ve come. From the early days of panic shopping to the endless Zoom meetings and “quarantine haircuts,” it’s been a wild ride.

The other day I was poking around the backend of my YouTube account and came to a stunning realization. There were a lot of personal videos of my kids I had uploaded well over 10 years ago. There is nothing wrong with the videos, but what didn’t hit me until just then was – why am I letting the whole internet still see them?

YouTube (and social media) is in a much different place than when it first came online in the early 2000s. Every parent with a fancy, new Smartphone was uploading hours and hours of all the cute things their kids were doing. But now in 2025, those kids are in their teens or older. Guess what? They don’t want people seeing those videos anymore.