Category: Geography
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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
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Walking Jane Jacobs’ Hood
This week, a walk around Jane Jacobs’ neighbourhood in Greenwich Village was my unfinished business and a Google maps walking tour my guide. Read more
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Drive-By Shooting, Saskatchewan Style
Saskatchewan is ridiculously beautiful even on the rainiest of days. I am heart-broken that torrential rain is falling – and scheduled to keep doing so – for the three days we’re meant to camp in Grasslands National Park. I have saved some of the best for last, a coveted new stop before we make the final push home to… Read more
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Literary Houses: Margaret Laurence
That house in Manawaka is the one which, more than any other, I carry with me. Known to the rest of the town as “the old Connor place” and to the family as the Brick House, it was plain as the winter turnips in its root cellar, sparsely windowed as some crusader’s embattled fortress in… Read more
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When Spring Comes
Stand here on the bridge with me And look down below See how high the river is From all the melting snow I think the river is laughing Like a thousand old ladies Like a thousand silver chimes in the wind ~ Jane Siberry, “When Spring Comes” It’s physically ugly, this… Read more
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Illuminating Atlas Obscura
In an age where everything seems to have been explored and there is nothing new to be found, we celebrate a different way of looking at the world. ~ Atlas Obscura While I have zero interest in becoming the Mayor of Subway or checking in at my local drinking hole, I am in the throes of an… Read more
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The Hartsdale Pet Cemetery
When I was a kid, my brother and I were allowed to choose kittens from the litter of a stray cat. My mother wanted only one cat for the longterm, so she told us that at some future time one of the two would be given away. When that time came, my brother’s cat, Percy,… Read more
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I Have Shingles
“You must be so excited to get it done?” most people ask, a reasonable question after two years of exposed insulation, peeling windows, and flapping Typar. But I scramble for an answer. “What I love most is the adventure,” I tell them, which isn’t enough. There is no possible pat answer for a project… Read more