It’s a warm Friday night in Vancouver, and the sun is disappearing beneath the horizon. We’re standing on a hill in Jericho beach, looking out across a multitude of music fans hunkered down on Mexican blankets, multi coloured towels, Japanese mats, bright blue and orange tarps. On the brightly lit stage, a musical ensemble plays… Read more »
The day that Doreen’s husband announces that he is leaving her for a nineteen-year-old nursing student happens to be the first day of Summer. Nina is away camping with friends. Beams of sunlight pour down like cream coloured banners onto the living room rug, illuminating the pages of the Sunday paper. She puts on her… Read more »
Fifteen ways to unleash your inner anarchist and overthrow the tyrant that holds you in check. 1. Burn your “World’s Best Barbecue Chef” apron. Organize a seance or a luau. 2. Cancel your subscriptions to Maclean’s and The National Post. Subscribe to a French surrealist magazine or blow the cash on a glow-in-the-dark Buddha. 3…. Read more »
Uncle Simon had a cat named Mephistopheles and a stuffed barn owl, both of which sat in the window of his book shop watching the world pass by. When he babysat us on Saturdays, he would let us rummage through the old rolltop desk in the back office, unearthing mysterious coins, peppermints, abandoned fountain pens,… Read more »
July is upon us, and out here in the big city on the Wet Coast the rain clouds have temporarily departed and the dog days of summer are lying in the shadow of our front porch, their tails swishing and their tongues hanging to the ground. It’s the time of year that a middle-aged gourmand’s… Read more »
For Canada Day, our friends Raj and Sara invited us over for a backyard fireworks display. Sara is a vet, and she’d bartered a box of fireworks in lieu of cash payment for some surgery on a poodle belonging to the owner of a grocery store. We set off roman candles and bottle rockets, and… Read more »
Down in the jungle, got a proper flat Do a bit of this and do a bit of that; The punters come and the punters go, Suits me fine, I’m Cushty Cho! Down in the jungle down on my luck. Me downhearted? Like fuck. – Ian Duhig We were bad. We read Andre Gide and… Read more »
She’s a trickster, stealing fire from the gods, sharing a joke with her sisters, crashing elevators through glass ceilings. She’s a coyote, circling the campfire, a raven singing a raunchy song. She’s a witch, keeper of arcane knowledge, performer of healing rituals, holding a wet face cloth to the forehead of the fevered child. Like… Read more »
Here’s what I should be doing: finishing the editing of that insurance broker’s human resources manual so I can finally get paid by my client and pay off some of my line of credit. Failing that, I should be organizing the filing cabinet, replacing that washer in the leaking kitchen sink, updating my resume. At… Read more »
I’m looking for the face I had Before the world was made — W.B. Yeats Sometimes, standing before the bathroom mirror, I find myself confronting the wraith. Like a swamp creature, he rises up to meet me as if from the depths of a great dark pool. In a gesture of friendship or demonstration of… Read more »