Author: Andrea Cordonier
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Walking the Carleton Place Labyrinth
We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us – the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to… Read more
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The Inconvenient Indian
On the Canadian and American policies of forced removal and relocations – and re-relocations – of First Nations peoples from their own treaty-protected lands: Moving Indians around the continent was like redecorating a very large house. The Cherokee can no longer stay in the living room. Put them in the second bedroom. The Mi’kmaq are taking up… Read more
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Repose
I thought, I created, I imagined. But mostly I floated under a duvet on the sofa in a slack-jawed, winter-induced repose, too relaxed even to read much. Read more
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Ellis Island: JR and the Art of Immigration
The United States, like Canada, is a country of immigrants. Between 1892 and 1954, twelve million citizens of other nations landed at Ellis Island seeking asylum in their new homeland. Close to 40% of Americans can trace their genealogy through these early immigrants. ((http://www.history.com/topics/ellis-island)) There are two kinds of Ellis Island tours available. The first is a free… Read more
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Three Days, Two Skates and One Big Apple
In my rural village of a hundred souls we wait for a deep spell of cold, with little snowfall, to produce sturdy, pristine ice on the canal. Our natural rinks, spontaneously cleared by locals, last a few hours or a few days, eventually kiboshed by fluctuating temperatures, freezing rain or heavy snowpack. But while they last, those… Read more
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Arrested Developments
So there I was watching Arrested Development reruns when the Bluth family model home flashed up on screen. It’s the running gag where the turreted McMansion sits alone in desert-like surroundings, where the family lives amongst the staged bowls of plastic fruit waiting for prospective buyers who never come. And I laugh, of course, because it’s… Read more
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What a Fleurt
Excerpt from A Tale of Two Hotels: The Gladstone (Part 1), November 2011 We were lodged in Room 303, the Red Room (or the ‘REDRUM’ as I joked in my best Jack Nicholson voice), designed by Kate Austin and Kristin Ledgett of RUCKUS. It was, all at once, intimate, stylish and homey… In a strange small-world occurrence on Friday, I… Read more
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Winnipeg: Stuck in the Middle
A couple of days ago I posted a piece trumpeting Winnipeg’s virtues and shortly after this appeared: https://twitter.com/HolmesDoug/status/525013976028311552 Of course I dove into winnipeglovehate.com, and discovered the book Stuck in the Middle: Dissenting Views of Winnipeg, photographed and written by the dynamic duo of Bryan Scott and Bartley Kives. Thanks to the miracle of strangers on the internet… Read more
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Winnipeg is the Most Interesting City
Over dinner last week in Manhattan I declared to our three local hosts that Winnipeg is The Most Interesting City in Canada. They appeared politely skeptical as I tried to explain. I’ve written about the city before here, here, here, here, and here, praising it up one side and down the other. I can easily list the qualities I… Read more
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Displaced Words
I spy with my little eye a billboard I don’t understand. This inscription is “AP3851,” a remnant of Palestinian artist Emily Jacir’s recent installation ex libris (2010-2012) at Alexander and Bonin in Chelsea. The 1948 Palestinian exodus, also known as al Nakba (Arabic for disaster, catastrophe, or cataclysm) ((http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/al-Nakba)) occurred when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes, as a result… Read more