Edmonton Arts Council Grant- Hurrah

Last month I received a letter from Edmonton Arts Council with news that made me hoot, shriek, and generally scare the children. My mouth gaped like it does to those artists on the award shows, and - in my basement, surrounded by my concerned family- I rambled thanks to God, my city, my colleagues, my editors. Right, and to my family.  The feeling of euphoria has continued to buoy my days (I fear that it has also revealed to me just how starved for affirmation I have become working from home in my little freelancing bubble.)

Along with the hysterical energy has come a stabilizing feeling I can only describe as dread. I have to write a book. The Council has agreed to fund a significant portion of my salary for the next few months so I can focus on writing the first couple drafts of a manuscript about my neighborhood Alberta Avenue, Edmonton.  It will be a book of essays, rants, profiles and obituaries. It will be a book without any easy answers, and hopefully, very few glib pronouncements on the glorious, wondrous, fantabulous privilege of living where I do. It is not to be a book of urban boosterisms. It is meant to be a book about the complexities and hylarities inherent when you live in a changing community.

I will be writing a lot less articles over the next few months.  I hope to emerge from this process in May with my clothes tattered, and my soul refreshed. Wish me luck!

And, thank you Edmonton Arts Council.

Globe and Mail: I Know Nothing About Raising Her Right

Art by Tara Hardy as published in the Globe and Mail, August 21, 2013

At the moment of our daughter’s conception, we threw caution to the wind, but soon found ourselves scrambling to get it back.

It’s not that we didn’t want a baby, but we had debts to pay, grad programs to start and a pathological fear of minivans that hung heavily over bi-monthly talks titled “Children and Other Distractions.”

Circuitous conversations, they went something like this: “Let’s try to have a kid – but we’ll need a new car – we can’t afford that – so we’ll just work a little longer – but if I had another degree surely I’d make more money – yeah, let’s wait to finish school – but then I’ll be too old – fine, let’s try to have a kid – but…”

On the evening in question, her dad declared: “Seriously, will there ever be a good time?” Locked in an embrace that would distract him from that question, I never did voice the fear that hovered above my right ear: What if we raise her wrong?
I know so little about everything. Well, at least everything that is important to raising a child right.


Click here to continue reading

This essay, originally titled Trust Me: I Don't Know,consumed me the month after my son was born: writing between feedings, editing in the middle of the night. It has been written and rewritten a dozen of times since. Today, it found a home off my hard drive, in a very condensed format (there are about 2000 words more), in the Globe and Mail.

If you enjoyed this narrative non-fiction style, check out my other essays: My Neighborhood In Transition and Backyard Betrayal.

Alberta Views: My Neighbourhood in Transition

 This was a piece I wrote for a competition that, like so many, I never won. The great thing about writing for competitions (besides helping to support many of my favorite print magazines with the registration fees) is that the exercise presents a deadline to work toward. Working alone can be rather uninspiring: deadlines are my critical 'kick in the butt'.

I've lived in Alberta Avenue in downtown Edmonton, Alberta for eight years: we moved here just as the community received millions of dollars of revitalization funding from the City of Edmonton. It's been an interesting, critical, transitional time to live here and this piece is, in part, an exercise exploring my relationship with my neighbourhood and with my neighbours.

See the PDF here. It first printed in Alberta Views in April 2012.

Hyperlocal CBC Finalist: Backyard Betrayal

Go to the Hyperlocal website, to check out other stories that map the experiences of our country's writers. The following story can be found at here. 



A decade ago, my back alley was dotted with shelled sentries: rusted Buicks and sheds shrunken by fire. Fence posts leaned like wind-swept trees; the pavement cracks were filled with the deflated balloons of last night’s tricks.  

Today, most of the cars have been towed and sheds replaced with modest garages. Despite the upgrades, it is an alley where people still put out old furniture knowing it’ll be gone the next day, but the furniture is different now. Lamps with silk shades and recently removed bathroom vanities have replaced stained mattresses hosting bloated bugs. Bottles now sit separate from the trash- put out in a friendly way, almost like a tithe. Thankfully, it's an alley that still has grace for my overflowing compost pile and wild gardens: I like to think my cheery red garage door makes the stinking heap of veggies appear quaint and shabby chic.  

It is in this alley where my Italian neighbour introduced me to arugula and showed me the right way to mate a pumpkin flower (with another pumpkin flower, of course). Neighbours bond over gripes about city potholes and the growing army of tomcats. It’s still an alley where strangers can become friends. 

It’s also a place, I realized too late, where friends can become strangers. The sky was darkly preparing to deliver a mid-afternoon thunderstorm and I hurried to strap the kids into their seats for a quick errand before the torrent. I was rounding the van to the driver’s side when I saw him. The veins in his long, skinny arms popped out. Stretched like earthworms struggling for breath, they ended in balled fists that gripped black bags of bottles. His gait was slow, broken, cautious. His eyes were the vacant moons of a cheap high. He didn’t appear aware of me and I looked down to appear unaware of him. But I was hyper-aware of him. I knew him. I knew him from a place 600 kilometers away, from twenty years ago. Flashing behind my downcast eyes, I remembered another alley behind our elementary school. I was the new kid, but he stood out: the only boy with braids.  We acknowledged each other tentatively then. We would grow to know and like each other. We would finish school and go separate ways until this one day, in the middle of the big city behind my grown-up home, we would pass each other without visible pause. My heart beat with discomfort in this alley where dust rises from bumping cars and is trampled back down by the feet of bottle pickers and school children.  All along the road, the fences are being rebuilt. Just now, they are all a little higher and a little tighter than they were before.  

Avenue Edmonton: Wooed by the Antique Auction

I'm  a furniture-phile and deal hunter who will willingly spend summer Saturdays hunting through stuffy second hand shops. That said, I'd never been to an antique auction until last fall when I took my virgin trip to Ward's Auctions for Avenue Edmonton (I had the mis-fortune of mentioning 'virginal trip' to the auctioneer, who responded, "I'll be gentle." Then I turned the unprofessional colour of rhubarb.)

"Tripping to Auction" may be the start of a life-long love affair. The deals are great, but the adrenaline rush and energy of the crowd is something else. Pick up the May edition of Avenue Edmonton, or link to: http://avenueedmonton.com/articles/tripping-to-auction.

If you go, please let me know if it captures your imagination too.

My girlfriend, Tina Faiz, dragged this desk to Edmonton from Seattle. The bookcase is from Strathcona Antique Mall, and chair I bought from a film director I met on kijiji.

The couch was the source of major marital tension: it was a five-piece sectional that I brought home without consultation during my "nesting phase" ( pregnant with my third kid). It filled our tiny living room: "but it has a turning martini bar in the corner," was my plea for keeping the massive monument to sixties largess. We negotiated a compromise: three sections. This arrangement has seemed to satisfy everyone, though it's not exceptional for 'sprawling'.

This table was from Stan's Pawn Shop. Quebec maple, the top was sanded by me and varnished by Mat. The chairs cost me $60 a pop through Kijiji.

This piece languished in the Strathcona Antique Market for two years when they finally dropped the price by $500. I saw it and loved it... probably would have paid the previous price too.