The Rebirth of Slick

Six years ago I lived in a place called Akron, Ohio. It’s a city about the size of Winnipeg a half-hour’s drive south of Cleveland. In what’s called the “Erie Rust Belt”, Akron is another one of those cities that industry exploited and left behind. The tire factories that kept the local economy on the track had long picked up and relocated south. From a distance, it looks like a fairly prosperous city; a prominent skyline features high-rises branded with names of some of the biggest American banks. But when you get to the heart of the city, there’s a blatant void that a vagabond industry has created. It’s like a ghost town. The only people you see downtown in the middle of the day are truant teenagers smoking blunts in the bus shelters.

I was there for a job in a place where so many jobs had disappeared. I had a six-month contract with the university there, doing editorial work like copy editing for the English department. The ink was still wet on my journalism degree, but I wasn’t having any luck finding steady work in Toronto. So I looked elsewhere and ended up in the suburban American midwest.

It was a country that was about to go to war once more with another country on the other side of the world. Fervent patriotism gripped the traditionally conservative state I was in and there was little tolerance of dissent. A lone Indian kid from Canada would surely be outnumbered in any debates. But as an entire country jumped on an aggressive ideological bandwagon to hone its identity, I used that time to also try to figure out what the hell I was doing with my life.

The shortfalls in my premature career were taking a toll on me. I was badly out of shape. A four-year relationship had also come to an end just a few months before I moved to Ohio. I struggled trying to balance the traditional Anishinaabe values I learned in my upbringing with a contemporary urban life – now in a place where the Indians had long been killed off or moved on.

So I decided that once my contract was up, I’d go back to Toronto and basically just give’r. Work the feast-or-famine freelance life and try to make a name for myself. I had a part-time job prospect with a specialty cable network that would provide some income. The rest of the time, I decided I’d relentlessly solicit myself to anyone who would publish anything I wrote.

I ended up back in Toronto that summer and things slowly picked up. But after a few months, I decided I needed a reference point in this vast digital expanse we call the internet. I typed www.waub.ca into a browser, and nothing came up. That’s where I decided I’d drive a stake. I called up my good friend Chris (aka Chunk) – who is an expert at all things computer – and inquired about a making a website. Within weeks, he had something up for me, and it paid off tremendously. I was turning down freelance contracts after a while.

The stint with that specialty network eventually became a full time gig, and after a while that experience led me to a job with a national public broadcaster here in Winnipeg. I don’t do much freelance stuff anymore, but this here little website is what helped me get where I am today. And now Chunk has helped me revamp it. I have a newfound dedication to sharing some of my thoughts with you, so please come back regularly.