I was recently doing some re-reading from my bookshelf and came across my collection of Bill Bryson. In 'Mother Tongue,' he describes a time when there were no dictionaries. But once the idea took hold, a number of people jumped into the business and started putting words and definitions onto pages.

Since those heady early days, dictionary-makers have had a number of troubles, among them the decision of whether to be descriptive of proscriptive when it comes to language. For example, should they include 'Jared Leto' under the 'douche' heading, since people do call him that (descriptive)? Or should they leave it out, since officially, douche is a feminine hygiene product (proscriptive)? For the record, the example is mine, not Bryson's.

I didn't grow up watching hockey. I know, that makes me questionably Canadian, but I'm trying to make up for it. Last year, I joined an office hockey pool for the first time, and this year I came within four points of winning the regular season thanks to my judicious picks - both Sedins, Alexander Semin and Roberto Luongo.

I can now say that I love watching hockey. I think I've missed only one game since the playoffs started, though I'll grant you that I do a lot of knitting and laundry-folding during the east coast games (for some reason it's the teams in the west that I really dig). I now have an appreciation for the skill and heart it takes to play the game, but my true admiration is reserved for the announcers and commentators.

On Sunday night, I watched 'Keep Your Head Up Kid: The Don Cherry Story' on CBC because, as my beloved said, "We kind of have to, don't we?" I think he was thinking of my job as a Canadian TV columnist, our status as hockey fans or maybe he only meant there wasn't much else on.

But watch it we did (the first half anyway - the rest airs Monday March 29, 8 pm, CBC) and frankly, I thought it was pretty good, and I'm a little surprised about it.

CBC miniseries are not usually my cup of tea. The subjects are usually dead white guys who made Important Contributions to Our Country, which I always feel I'm supposed to know about already.

Don Cherry even agrees with me. "I feel like I should be dead," he said at a press conference for the series. "Don't they usually do these kinds of movies about dead people?"