1. What’s your name?

When I was adopted at ten months old, I was renamed Robert Alan McLennan, although I was born Duncan Warren Andrew Adams. Professionally, I go by “rob mclennan.”

2. Where are you right now?

The south-end of Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa. My home office, as our youngest is e-learning in the master bedroom, and our older daughter is e-learning in my wife’s home office (our converted sunroom). Normally they would be in the living room/dining room area, but we’ve someone coming to tune our century-old piano (recovered from the McLennan homestead after my father died) in about an hour, and I needed to shift the young ladies so they might not be interrupted.

3. What is your most precious memory?

I don’t know about “most,” but I have a memory of wandering the back fields of our farm as a six year old, family dog in tow (my recollection has me already school-age, so the spring/summer-ishness would have suggested it into the later months of my kindergarten year, at the earliest). I had a water-bird whistle, and warbled an afternoon south, along the back laneway, and into the treeline. I was wearing blue overalls. The sky was endlessly, effortlessly blue. There were no other sounds than my warbling, errant birds, perhaps a tractor along one of the fields. Our dog Heather, barking and leaping in and out through the long grass and the cattails along each side of the lane. Perhaps the sight of a jet arrowing overhead, leaving its trail.

4. Tell us something about falling in love?

It occurs in waves, and with great regularity, upon interacting with my dear spouse.

5. What ghost haunts you?

Past failures of judgement.

6. Where are you least anxious?

Amid the security of domestic life, where I have been with dear spouse and (subsequent) ridiculous wee children for nearly a decade. It is a good space.

7. What was your most extraordinary movie experience?

Captain America catching Thor’s Mjölnir was pretty cool. For a decade, I caught new movies in theatres every weekend with my eldest daughter until she was nearly seventeen. We always caught the noonish Saturday showings, which was almost completely empty, even for opening weekends. When she was eight, we caught Doug’s 1^st Movie, a Nickelodeon offering, and the empty theatre meant that she was invited into the booth to push the button to start the film. That was pretty cool also. The other night, Christine and I caught Everything Everywhere All at Once, which was quite remarkable.

8. Have you ever felt the presence of the supernatural?

The mind does play tricks. I have felt the edges of perception blur, during bouts of particularly high levels of youthful anxiety.

9. To what/whom would you most like to return?

I’m not really sure. The house where my great-grandparents lived in Kemptville until the end of the 1970s, to see if my scant memories might match. To a particular castle in the Highlands of Scotland that Christine and I brushed by during a 2018 bus tour, so I might examine it more closely. To my sister’s house, post-Covid, to see in-person their remarkable renovation. To the regularity of friends and family, both geographically close and afar, some of whom, during this period of lockdown, have since become lost.

10. Tell us a secret.

I have never seen the movie Spaceballs (1987). For some reason, this recently shocked my dear wife. Over the past couple of years, I have also discovered that I have multiple half-siblings. At least eight. Possibly more.

11. Who would you most like to touch?

That seems an odd question. Invasive, almost. I suspect most wouldn’t wish for a stranger to touch them.

12. What dream have you had that feels more real than anything you actually lived?

Some follow, as you know, into waking, and hold as disappointments, for not occurring during wakefulness.