Right now I’m sitting on a train on the way from Toronto to Ottawa on a cloudy and rainy summer day. It’s got free wireless internet so I figured I’d take a moment to update this space. Sitting here I realized I haven’t really explained to a lot of people what exactly I’m up to at the moment (career-wise) so here it goes.
I’m officially on leave from the CBC for the summer to work on a writing project funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. I applied for one of their Creative Writing grants about a year ago, and found out last fall that I got it. I told my boss at CBC Manitoba about it and he was very supportive. The only stipulation was I’d have to go on leave for a couple of months to get the project done. We agreed back then that June and July would be the best months to take the leave. I planned on doing it back home in Ontario.
As spring rolled around, it became clearer to me that if I spent those two months back home, I wouldn’t want to return to Winnipeg. I’d been in the city for four years at that point, and although I loved it, I was getting very homesick. I missed my family and friends a lot. So at the end of May I packed up my life in Winnipeg, rented a cargo van, and drove it back to central Ontario with the help of my brother Musky.
Now I spend my days writing. I’m doing it mostly in my home community of Wasauksing, with small stints in Toronto and Ottawa. Without going into too much detail, I’m working on a novel about an Anishinaabe family on the reserve who turns to the traditional ways to deal with a tragedy. Vague, I know, but I’m still developing the story so I don’t want to give too much away. It’s the second book I’ve worked on funded by the CCA. I received my first grant from them in 2004 to write The Midnight Sweatlodge, a collection of short stories that will be published early next year by Theytus Books and will be available everywhere.
Storytelling and writing have always been my biggest passion, so I guess right now I’m basically “living the dream”. I hope to return to CBC later this summer (I can’t say exactly where yet either because we’re still working out the details) because broadcast journalism is another huge passion of mine, and I love that field of work. Plus I’ll need to pay the bills somehow. Haha.
I want to say chi-miigwetch to everyone who has been so supportive with this decision. It’s not easy leaving a full-time job in a city you love, but it’s something I had to do to move on with the next chapter of my life. It’s very exciting and I’m looking forward to what happens next. I will keep you posted on when exactly you can buy The Midnight Sweatlodge. Hopefully this new novel will someday see the light of day as well.
While looking through my old computer for some material, I stumbled upon this gem from the fall of 2004. It’s from the classic Canadian comedy show Buzz that was produced in Toronto. I was walking along Queen Street West one Saturday morning and stopped to watch them tape this segment. One of the associate producers asked me if I wanted to give it a shot and of course I obliged.
Although I emerged victorious, my dekes do appear quite slow in the video. I blame that on being out late the night before. A funny sidebar – I actually went to high school with the goalie “Wayne Fatzky”. His real name is Marty Adams and you probably recognize him from lots of commercials and comedy shows. Really funny dude. He and I are both chasing down Bobby Orr as most famous Parry Sounder EVER.
The past few weeks have been crazy. The day job has pretty much consumed all of my spare time, due largely to rising water. I went to Fargo, North Dakota to watch people fill sandbags in anticipation of a flooding disaster. I was inspired by the sense of community that blossomed through the anxiety of losing homes. I followed that nervous urgency north, to smaller communities in southern Manitoba that had seen water steal their towns from them 12 years ago. I met people who were determined to never let that happen again. And then, days later, a weird natural phenomenon of jamming river ice forced that water over roads and into homes north of Winnipeg.
Then I went to Vancouver for something totally unrelated but important to me. I sat in on meetings about how to improve TV journalism to better include the diverse faces that make up Canada today. It was enlightening and I felt very fortunate to sit in on such discussions with so many talented people. I just hope things will change now. TV news does a pretty bad job of reflecting the people that make up this country and hopefully that’ll change sooner than later.
From there it was back to the Prairies where the water was high and the clock was ticking. And that’s where we are today. In a nutshell, that’s why I haven’t updated the blog in a while. And I’ll have to neglect it for another couple of weeks, because I’m heading to the land of Maya. I’m going to Guatemala for a bit of a vacation. It’s been a while since I’ve taken a trip like that and I’m pretty damn stoked.
Since I won’t be here for a while, you’ll notice a little box on the right hand side near the bottom there. That’s my twitter feed. If you wanna know what I’m up to while in Central America, just stay tuned to that. A lot of people have different opinions of twitter, but as a professional and passionate communicator, I think it’s a fantastic tool in this ever-closing digital world. And to think, I used to write letters!
So watch that, and come back in a few weeks. I’ll post pics and share my experiences of being in a land that was brutally raped by colonizers, but today has one of the strongest indigenous cultures in the world.
They’re by no means necessities of life, but people sure are passionate about what kind of furniture they can buy and where they watch live football. In some towns there’s a wide array of these stores (there’s even more than one of the same brand!) and world class venues for live sports and entertainment. In others, people argue until they’re blue in the face about the particulars and viability of these new ventures. The escalating fuss about things that don’t even exist yet threaten them from even materializing at all, and distracts the rest of us from some of the real issues that confront our towns.
Sometimes we see commercials of funky-looking shelves that look fun to put together. The ads portray the shelves as unique and odd enough that we have to have them. And if there’s no place in our town to buy them, they become even more exotic. So we take off in the car to the closest town with this store. We come back and brag to others about how fun it was and how our apartments look so much better with said shelves. The demand for this store grows. The store gauges this, and decides to get the wheels in motion to build one in our town. But others catch wind and take issue with where the big box will be placed and how it’ll be developed. So it stalls.
If it’s hard enough getting something like that off the ground, imagine what it’s like trying to build a football stadium! Something that’s bigger but in lesser demand and will need money outside of private interests. The “not in my backyard” people scream even louder, as the stadium proponents take a cookie-cutter to a map and try to figure out just where in the town it’ll go. No matter what, people won’t be satisfied. They’ll debate for years about big buildings that aren’t even there.
The people who want to build these things have lots of money. And those who are against them live in homes they worry are too close. All the while, others in their town go hungry. Others need a home. And others have to deal with violent and unfair circumstances none of us could imagine. But these behemoth projects will keep grabbing headlines, even they’re nowhere close to becoming real. Nowhere near to kickoff, and nowhere near to packing a weird-looking side table into a trunk. Not as real as dying in the street.
Over the weekend the Buffalo Bills signed probably the most polarizing player in the history of the NFL: Terrell Owens. He’s the epitome of a “love him or hate him” pro sports personality. And if he’s on your team, you love him – in the beginning anyway. The Dallas Cowboys released Owens after three headline-inducing years Friday, and on Saturday the Bills signed the free agent to a one-year, $6.5 million contract. It’s a move that’s pretty much split the opinions of Bills fans across Western New York/Southern Ontario, but it’s also one that will only benefit a team trying to redefine itself.
The Bills have been nothing more than a disappointment for almost ten years now. There have been flashes of brilliance here and there, especially early in the Drew Bledsoe years and at the start of the 2008 season. Still, the team has not made the playoffs since the start of the decade and they’ve failed to land any marquee players or generate any long-term momentum. Owens clearly isn’t a long-term solution for the Bills, but he’s the offensive weapon they need to get back into the playoffs.
Even though he’s getting older (35), his stats show he’s still able to make big plays and score. And since he was dumped by his old team, he’s gonna try to spite them as much as he can. Granted, Bills quarterback Trent Edwards isn’t as good yet as Tony Romo, but he’s never had as many people to throw to. Now he’ll have Owens and Lee Evans on either side of the field. Edwards has proven his leadership and blossoming expertise over the past couple seasons, and this year he could truly develop into a Pro Bowl calibre QB.
I’m not naive enough to think this is all gonna work out perfectly for the Bills, and they’ll be back in the Super Bowl in 11 months. This has all the makings of a disaster: problem child star receiver working with an inexperienced QB under a head coach with a questionable backbone. But all three have something to prove and they’re at different enough stages in their careers to work together to succeed. There will be times that T.O. calls his team out, but that’s just the way he is. That shtick is running a little dry anyway and I don’t think it’ll be distracting enough to cause the Bills to implode. They’ve done that well enough over the past few seasons without T.O.
So now the Bills finally have a superstar back in the lineup, with a commitment to help them get back to the playoffs. I feel like a bit of a homer posting about this with the NFL season still six months away, but I have high hopes this will work. Until T.O. takes the money and runs anyway.
These smoke signals aren’t as clear yet as I intend them to be, so bear with me. “Blogging” has become a lot more sophisticated since I used to do it regularly, so there are a few new tricks this old dog’s gotta learn. I’ve got lots of photos I still wanna upload, but you can dig the work in progress on the right there (“W’s eyes” link). Also, you’ll notice a link to my old site, where the old blog still exists. That one peaked during my years in Toronto, so if you really wanna know what kinda cool guy I thought I was back then, check out those old posts.
Thanks for tuning in so far! I appreciate all the feedback. The revolution starts now.
Winnipeg’s media outlets got together today at Academy Uptown Bowling Lanes for Bowl for Kids Sake – a fundraiser for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Winnipeg. It was a really fun event with some good-natured rivalry between some of the newspapers and radio and TV stations in town. We were all teamed with some awesome kids and their Big Brothers/Big Sisters. CBC was well represented with two full teams, but it wasn’t enough to take the mounted bowling shoe that was the top prize. That went to CityTV (although they had a ringer for a Big Brother!). Not sure what the final fundraising tally was, but it was a lot. And most importantly, all the kids there had a blast.
CBC News at Six’s Sheila North-Wilson, the weird Winnipeg Goldeyes mascot, and HOT103′s Ace Burpee.
He’s got his own statues, upright and proud in various historic locations around town. His face is on t-shirts, worn by proud youngsters and naive hipsters alike. His death row writings fetched more than 30 Gs on the auction block. His image and posthumous popularity are reaching Che- and Tupac-like proportions. Canada killed Louis Riel more than 120 years ago, but today his people are resurrecting him as a modern-day messiah.
That spirit is simmering to a scorching boil here in the heart of Métis country – Winnipeg. This week marked the second annual Louis Riel Day: a midwinter holiday to celebrate his accomplishments as a revolutionary leader and founder of this country. A country that executed him now celebrates his contributions, and that has solidified what was once a tenuous (and maybe ambiguous) cultural identity called Métis. People with only vague notions of Métis in their bloodlines are now finding out what that really means, and those who have celebrated it all along are screaming even louder.
In a lot of ways, an historic face is shaping the character of a new generation not only here in Manitoba, but across the country. It’s quite remarkable, and I share in the pride of my Métis brothers and sisters in this modern revelation of Louis Riel. Honestly, it makes me a little jealous. Being a proud Anishinaabe, I have my own cultural icons who have played a huge role in shaping the history of this continent. But they don’t have holidays named after them. On a superficial level, I want t-shirts of some of my Ojibway heroes to sort of hiply objectify my background. At least it’s awareness.
And that awareness goes beyond getting “the card” or wearing a sash, just like with any aboriginal culture struggling to maintain its relevance and traditions in a rapidly evolving society. The Metis foundation here in Manitoba is now so much stronger, and it’s up to the young people to keep building that momentum. We saw lots of sashes and jigging this week. But it’s up to the youth to ensure this doesn’t become one of those “only go to church on Christmas” kinda deals. Like my dad always said, “You can’t just be Indian only when it’s convenient for you.” That’s not to say at all that this current cultural renaissance is in any way purely cosmetic. Rather, the seed is in the ground, and it’s so empowering to see the rain get stronger, and a new generation of Métis flourish.
Winnipeg has been called “Capital Rez” for a long time now, because of the strong Aboriginal presence here. And now it’s officially the Metis capital of Canada too. I’m proud to call a place with so much indigenous history and pride my current home. And because Louis Riel’s face is now everywhere, I’m excited to see what’s in store for this town.
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.
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