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.

Annual Report: Avenue Revitalization Initiative

The Kaleido Festival's main stage.

My husband and I moved into Alberta Avenue just as the Avenue Revitalization Initiative was kicking off.  It is has impacted our life in countless ways: our streets are brighter, greener, livelier (with music and art), more fun.

Last year, I had the privilege to write all of the stories in this 2012 Annual Report.

Spezzatino: Mining for Mushrooms

I pitched the idea for this feature after working as a tour guide at the Bellevue Mine Tour in the Crowsnest Pass, Alberta. The stripping of the coal mine's seams had ended half a century ago and I would occasionally have people ask me if anyone had considered re-purposing the mine. I'd ask, "Into what? Perhaps an underground swimming pool (the abandoned shafts were flooded with water)?" "No," they'd say, "into a mushroom farm."

There were rumours of such a farm in Drumheller, Alberta, and in fact, one of the US' largest mushroom suppliers used an old mine site for decades before technology made other above-ground farm settings more profitable. I was fascinated by the idea of re-claiming abandoned mine sites and when the opportunity to write about mushrooms came up for Spezzatino (an on-line magazine based in Toronto), it seemed like a great way to learn more about the possibilities.

Read the full article here.This article also appeared in the American magazine Fungi, Spring 2011.

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.