The Edmonton Journal: Highwood Distillers' Flood Recovery

Barry Wilde, President of Highwood Distillers.

The staff at Highwood Distillers had about six minutes to get out of the distillery. Still, on their exit two feet of water had flooded 1st Street in High River. Many were later stranded in their cars on the surreal drive home.

The Highwood River often floods the deck of the centre street bridge, but this year on June 20th, it did the unimaginable: it flooded most of the town.

Much of the distillery's spirits ready for shipping were destroyed, however, their whisky stocks were saved. When I toured their facility, 40 days after the flood, staff had worked 30,000 hours for 30 days. 300 trips had been made to the dump. While their losses were yet to be tallied, Barry Wilde, President of Highwood Distillers, said with a hint of resignation, "It represents millions of dollars of lost product and revenue." They still do not know if their bottling line can be repaired: and store stocks dwindle.

This Spotlight on Small Business feature was was printed in the Edmonton Journal on August 23, 2013 and the Calgary Herald on August 24, 2013.

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.

Avenue Edmonton: A Night of Scotch with the Ladies

Meet J.

Pictures by Tim Wilson

He's a Scotch educator from Authentic Wine and Spirits Merchants in Calgary, AB.  I was doing some early research for a couple pitches on the changing relationship between women and whisky and Kate (in marketing for Beam Int'l)  suggested I speak to her husband, J. He had facilitated scotch tastings for over a decade and had started to see more women in the room.

I emailed him and he suggested I come to Calgary for a tasting. A couple girlfriends and I schemed about a weekend of women and whiskey... but no date worked for me to travel. Then his job brought him to Edmonton, AB.


He suggested we organize our own tasting.
I suggested I host it, put food on the table, and find a dozen women to try it.

Then, together we threw a party. 

Avenue Edmonton agreed to feature the evening in its July 2013 Food & Drinks Issue. Find my feature on A Night of Women and Whisky here.

There were a few more ladies in the kitchen and tucked in the living room. My husband and brother-in-law are slinking around back (actually my brother-in-law is behind the lens!), hoping for a few drops of scotch. 

This was the night's door prize. My neighbour and friend, Becky Pickard, originally painted this work for a silent auction fundraiser. It is one of my favorite pieces - now made even better! She's added it (among other of her pieces) to a 7 oz flask. Check out her facebook page. If you want one, they are also sold at The Carrot Coffeehouse and Zocolo in Edmonton, AB.

E-Trail Alumni Newsletter: Tom Yonge Profile

High school is a critical season of life. It’s hard, funny, filled with ennui and other unnamed, uncomfortable emotions. For Tom Yonge, teacher at Scona High in Edmonton, AB, these critical three years represent an opportunity to expand kids’ sense of possibility. For his leadership students, he is working to build a community that will be a model of what can be.

This profile was for the digital, monthly newsletter directed to University of Alberta Alumni (of which I am one: grad '03, baby).

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.

Leap Magazine: Discovery in Melanoma Clinical Trials

I've always been pretty blase about using sunscreen- on myself and my kids. None of us burn easily. But after meeting melanoma doctor and research, Dr. Smylie, I have had to reconsider my  approach to the inconvenience that is a minute of applying lotion to the years it may add to my/kids' life...

Read the full article, printed in Leap Magazine Summer 2013, here.  The original web address is here.

Open Mind: Evolution of Alberta's Construction Industry

There's been a lot of change in Alberta's construction industry since the global recession. In Alberta, however, it looks a little different than in other places. Construction continues to be robust in face of a global recession and it is one of the few places in the world where the construction industry has seen predictable gains over the past five years. With this growth has come greater competition as the world's companies come to Alberta for a piece of the profits.

In this article (published in Open Mind, Spring 2013) I talk to three different companies who have evolved- grown-differently. In part inspired by  succession planning, and in part due to competitive necessity, these companies offer insight into the industry's options at a time when competition makes it virtually impossible to be content with the status quo.

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.

Alberta Views: The Social Services Industrial Complex

When I first moved to Edmonton from my hometown of The Crowsnest Pass, I spent two years as a volunteer at downtown service agency, The Mustard Seed Edmonton. I then went to university, completed my BA as a political science major, then came back to the Seed as a summer student. Through the course of that decade, I would work in a half dozen positions. In my last position as Managing Director, I facilitated the difficult merger of our organization with a much larger one in Calgary. 

It was a decade that saw incredible growth in the scope and revenue generation of many non-profits in Canada. In this report (see screen shot to the right) "There is No Accounting for Landscape" published by The Institute for Non-Profit Studies at Mount Royal University College in Calgary, AB, author Cliff Spyker notes that government revenue sources grew from $54.3 B in 2000 to $124.6 B in 2008. A 129% growth rate- despite a significant recession.

This growth is largely due to a change in government policy- a shift towards government- contracted services.  For more on what this has meant for Alberta's non-profit sector and social service delivery, read the full article here. 

Gardener for the Prairies: Fruitscaping

It's that time of year: early plum nodules have replaced blooms, purple-headed chives are unfurling, the hops stretch from hibernation towards the sun. It's the time of year I begin to crave berries with my sunshine. This article was printed in  Fall 2011's Gardener for the Prairies and lists some of the many ways you can landscape a northern garden with fruit. Happy planting.

And if you are eating from your Northern garden, I want to know: what's staining your hands and bursting in your mouth right now?