Embrace the PDA*!

* PDA = Public display of affection

Confession time: my boyfriend and I are one of those icky couples that tend to express our affection for each other in public.

People often question how, after six years together, we can still be insecure enough that we feel the need to parade our love for other people’s benefit, but the truth is, it’s not about trying to prove our togetherness — we just appreciate the fun of sharing a spontaneous kiss with someone you like.

So when Michelle received a tourism brochure about the “10 best places to kiss in New Zealand,” I had a cartoon lightbulb moment: in honour of Valentine’s Day, why not share with all our readers what, in my opinion, are the 10 best places to kiss in the international region?

There are lots of opportunities for spontaneous romance here, if you’re open to them.

1. The arrivals gate at the Edmonton International Airport. My boyfriend, J, does a lot of traveling for work, so we’ve perfected the art of the happy return. If you’re feeling down, make like Hugh Grant in Love Actually and wander through the arrivals area. It might actually be the happiest place on earth.

2. The boardwalk overlooking Telford Lake. One evening in the fall, I was wandering around Telford Lake, taking pictures of the scenery to pass the time before my next assignment, when I interrupted a young couple taking advantage of the seclusion of the tall reeds and the beauty of the Alberta sunset to, ahem, get to know each other better. Whoever you are, I’m sorry about that, but thanks for the inspiration.

3. The hiking trail at Pigeon Lake Provincial Park. Technically, the park is located in Wetaskiwin County, but it’s a beautiful spot for a lazy walk hand-in-hand on a summer day, followed by a picnic on the shore.

4. In a canoe on the North Saskatchewan River. On our own canoe trip from Devon to Edmonton in the summer, J and I were too busy trying to get the hang of steering to steal a smooch, but if you can manage it without tipping over, the peaceful water and sun-dappled cliffs lend themselves nicely to romance.

5. The ferris wheel on the Black Gold Pro Rodeo midway. In my single days, I always thought kissing atop a ferris wheel would be the literal height of romantic perfection — as long as you’re not with a jerk who likes to play “rock the seat.”

6. The Amazing Corn Maze. ‘Nuff said.

7. A snowbank. You shouldn’t have a hard time finding one of those somewhere in the region. And nothing says ‘I love you’ like pelting your significant other with snowballs and then tenderly apologizing.

8. Over dinner at any of several great restaurants in the area. J and I are that eyeroll-inducing couple who hold hands over the table in between courses. Some of our best conversations have been had over delicious food and wine. I recommend laying off the spice though — the first time J took me for Thai food I cried so hard the other patrons thought we were breaking up.

9. Sportsworld Roller Disco. This is in Edmonton, but I can’t deny the romantic nostalgia of a roller disco. Fun fact: the first time I held hands with a boy was on my 10th birthday at the roller disco in Mississauga, Ontario. You never, never forget your first slow-skate.

10. Highway 39. Pull over on a range road, park, and watch the sun go down, or a thunderstorm roll in over the picture-perfect farm fields, or the stars, and contemplate the beauty of your existence.

Where do you find romance in the capital region?

(Photo: Alex and J get kissy at the 2009 Chamber Awards of Distinction Jan. 30.)

Avert your eyes

Last week, my boyfriend took me to the movies.

This was remarkable for a few reasons, not least because we can rarely agree on what to see, assuming there’s anything we both think might be worth seeing.

We love watching movies, but lately there’s been a real dearth of things we feel like spending $25 to watch in the theatre, and the good folks at Blockbuster haven’t seen our faces for months.

I was optimistic about Jennifer’s Body, the Diablo Cody-penned horror comedy about a high school hottie-turned-flesh-eating demon who happens to have a taste for cute boys. I’m not usually a horror fan, but the reviews I read had led me to believe the “horror” would be more silly than scary; plus, my boyfriend likes Megan Fox. It was about the closest we get to perfect agreement on choice of film.

As it turned out, we did agree perfectly — that Jennifer’s Body was a pointless waste of cash.

We sat through the first hour and fifteen minutes in dumbfounded discomfort. I was ready to leave after watching Megan Fox vomit a voluminous stream of black ferromagnetic fluid; I can’t handle puke — even poorly computer-generated images of puke. But I stuck around to find out if the painfully drawn-out scenes of Fox’s one-dimensional victims walking into obvious and implausible traps might result in me feeling even slightly entertained.

As the fictional town’s token emo kid was being lured towards his gory death, my boyfriend leaned over and whispered the words that had been on the tip of my tongue for an hour: “We could always just leave.”

I nodded my agreement, but at first, we just sat there. Having never walked out of a movie before, we weren’t sure of the etiquette. Should we wait for a break in the action? Should we wait for the quiet dialogue to be over so we wouldn’t disturb our fellow moviegoers?

Finally, we stood to leave, crouching as low as possible as we moved between the seats.

There was no one else in our row to step over, but my boyfriend kicked a plastic bottle, which clattered noisily down the stairs.

For a moment, all eyes in the theatre were on us.

As we walked into the brightness of the lobby, we traded feeble jokes about how terrible the movie had been, as if trying to reassure each other that leaving had been the right decision. I felt awkward, almost guilty for not enjoying the movie.

A couple of days later, a friend who noticed my grumpy Facebook status about the flick asked if we had demanded a refund from the theatre. The truth was, it never even crossed our minds.

I’ve sent plates back at restaurants when the food was sub-par, and would never keep new clothes that didn’t fit properly, but I’d never considered my rights as a consumer of entertainment.

The problem is, as one celebrity blogger I enjoy puts it, paying admission at the movie theatre is like casting a vote for the type of films you want to see more of. All the times I stayed home while my boyfriend and his buddies went to see the latest high-octane action-thriller, I was quietly stating my preference for fewer explosions, more plot (not that my vote counts for much against the obvious appeal of watching sexy leather-clad actors blow stuff up in high definition for two hours).

Jennifer’s Body didn’t do well on its opening weekend and revenues have dropped steadily since, but it still made millions of dollars. Most people who go to movies and don’t enjoy them tell their friends to avoid them, but how many films have become moderate hits instead of major flops because those people shrugged and kissed their $25 goodbye?

There’s no accounting for some people’s taste in media — consider the television show The Hills, whose whiny, illiterate protagonists are preparing for a sixth season of fake catfights and breaking down in fake tears at their fake jobs. Perhaps if more of us tuned out, turned off and spoke up when presented with sub-par entertainment instead of sitting through it and laughing about it later, we’d be presented with less of it.

Money drives the entertainment business; I plan to be more discerning with mine in the future.

(Photo: Megan Fox in Jennifer's Body, from Flickr)

Where were you when ...?

This morning, I woke up at 7 as usual, laid in bed until 7:30, got up, ate a bowl of cereal, checked my email, poured my coffee into a thermos and headed out the door.

I drove my boyfriend to work, headed onto the Whitemud, sang along with the radio and started to plan my day in my head.

I thought about the interviews I had to do, the conference I would attend in the afternoon, and allowed myself a moment of excitement at the thought of tonight's party. It never occurred to me that there was anything remarkable about today, anything significant other than the fact that it's Friday.

And then, as I was turning off the highway at my usual exit, the radio station played a series of sound clips — a woman screaming, a news anchor saying "Smoke is pouring out of the Pentagon," a woman saying "And then he said, 'I just called to tell y'all I love you,'" a man yelling "Oh my God, there's another one" with screams audible in the background. A weight immediately settled across my shoulders. September 11. How could I have forgotten?

It's been eight years, but my reaction to the sound clips is still visceral. 9/11/01 was a day that changed the world — it changed lives, it changed policy, it set countless stories in motion. And, on a more personal level, it was the day I woke up out of my childhood and truly began to think about the world around me.

I was 15, in my second week of Grade 11 at my high school in Mississauga, Ontario. I was walking with my friends to our second-period music class. It was about 9:45 by then. We passed another kid in our grade who was leaning casually by the water fountain outside the gym. "Did you hear?" he said. "The World Trade Centre's been bombed by terrorists."

It's a sign of how deeply self-involved I was then that I couldn't even picture the World Trade Centre in my mind. I had never been to New York City and no one had ever sat me down in front of a picture of the skyline and pointed out the twin towers. Why would they?

We walked into our classroom and made a beeline for the teacher, who was sitting behind the piano.

"Jonathan said the World Trade Centre was bombed by terrorists," I said by way of greeting.

Our teacher didn't skip a beat. "I don't know anything about that," she said.

As more students trickled in, there was vague chatter about a terrorist attack, but the teacher launched straight into the lesson and there was no more time for talk.

The class ended shortly after 11. I was hungry and looking forward to my third-period lunch. The vague bombing talk had been forgotten. I was heading to the cafeteria when our principal's voice came over the PA system.

Calmly, without preamble, he informed the silent hallways what had happened. Planes had flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center earlier that morning. Both had collapsed. Another plane had crashed into the Pentagon; a fourth had crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. Thousands were believed to be dead. The situation was still developing. Students who wished to contact their parents and leave school early would be permitted to do so.

The principal ended his address by asking everyone to observe two minutes of silence immediately following the announcement.

I looked around. The hallways were jammed with people on their way to lunch or their next class. People were hugging, some were crying silently. Others leaned against the lockers with blank faces. It was a long, tense, suspended moment. I had to close my eyes.

I took my lunch outside and sat on the front steps of the school. It was a beautiful, sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. Some of my older, more knowledgeable friends talked over my head about the attacks. Unfamiliar words — "Syria," "Osama bin Laden," "jihad," "Saddam Hussein" — drifted down to my ears, meaningless without context.

I stayed at school for the rest of the day, watching CNN. My English teacher tried to encourage us to talk about our reactions to what we were seeing but conversation was thin on the ground. For probably the first time in my life, I had nothing to contribute. I didn't understand any of what I was seeing and hearing. Everything around me — the classroom walls, the desks, the novels and plays stacked on the shelves, the bowed heads of my classmates — seemed improbably normal. After such a momentous and tragic event, shouldn't the laws of gravity have been overturned? Shouldn't the sun have just set at 10 in the morning and refused to come up ever again? How could it not signify the imminent end of the world?

I still experience a moment like that every September 11. It feels wrong somehow to treat it as just another day. The date should be retired from the calendar, like the jersey number of a beloved hockey player. We should skip straight from Sept. 10 to Sept. 12 the same way high-rise apartments omit the thirteenth floor.

I've told my personal 9/11 story countless times. It's not particularly dramatic or moving; I was still a kid with a kid's bewildered, self-interested awareness of world events. But it still feels constructive to remember, to consider the world we inherited that day upon the spectacular death of innocence. It imbued me with an energy to know, to learn, to understand, to combat ignorance, especially my own.

We were all there that day, in one way or another. What did it mean to you?

Lost in transit

If you had asked me one week ago who I thought had the most difficult, important job in the world, I probably would have said a surgeon or a paramedic — someone for whom quick thinking and action is literally a matter of life and death.

However, a recent experience has caused me to revise my opinion and add to that list people who work in airports.

I’m only being slightly facetious. They may not have to perform delicate operations or feats of incredible bravery and strength in a race against the clock on a daily basis, but ticket agents, security personnel, ground crews and flight crews often see people at their most vulnerable, and the smallest gesture can mean the difference between a difficult-but-tolerable situation and a waking nightmare.

I have the worst travel karma of anyone I know. Thankfully, I’ve never experienced a real emergency, but minor setbacks such as flight delays, cancellations, bad weather, lost baggage and general organizational screw-ups tend to compound for me into epic detours. In 2006, I missed my own university graduation ceremony because of a one-hour delay on the first leg of my trip.

Last week, I arrived at the airport in Venice, refreshed after a weeklong vacation and ready to go home. I had a sinking premonition the moment the word “delayed” flashed on the screen beside my flight number that what should have been a straightforward journey home would be anything but. I was right.

The first leg of my trip took me to Rome. We were an hour late, leaving me with less than 45 minutes to make my connecting flight to Toronto. I ran through the maze-like terminal, growing more panicked with every passing minute. My gate was, of course, at the complete opposite end of the airport. I heard the final boarding announcement as I raced up the escalator to the Air Canada connections desk. Gasping for breath, I flung my passport at the agent.

“You might as well take a seat, Miss Pope,” she said. “The flight is full.”

Full?

“But I have a ticket,” I said.

“You’re in transit, and you’re late,” she said.

I explained about the delay in Venice.

“It’s Alitalia’s mistake, not ours. You’ll have to talk to them.”

Three hours, five different desks and one epic lineup later, I had a hotel voucher and a new ticket for the following morning. At the hotel, I peeled off my sweat-soaked clothes and tried to relax and not worry about my luggage.

The next morning, all seemed well; I checked in early, got a coffee and went to my gate … where I noticed with dismay that the flight had inexplicably been delayed an hour.

No problem, I thought. I still have two hours to make my connection in Toronto. It will be fine.

I hadn’t counted on Aug. 4 being the day a line of severe thunderstorms rolled through Toronto, causing utter chaos at the airport. Upon landing, the problems stacked up: there was no available gate because all planes were grounded; the ground crews were not allowed out to fetch the baggage or even bring stairs to get us off the aircraft; there was no one to unlock the gate to let us into the customs area.

As I sat on the floor beside the baggage carousel, waiting for a suitcase that turned out to be languishing in a lost and found in Rome, I told myself it could be worse — much worse.

Despite my attempts at reasoning, more than anything I wanted a magic portal that would transport me home to a hot shower and my own bed. The thought of my bed, still a four-hour flight away, sent tears of exhaustion and pent-up anxiety rolling down my face. I was not the only passenger on the brink of a nervous collapse.

For most people — myself included — air travel is a stressful enough experience without setbacks. When setbacks do occur, it’s enough to send even the most rational person into an emotional tailspin.

Airport staff bear the brunt of this outpouring of frustration. They’re working in the dead zone between home and away, a place no person wants to be any longer than they absolutely have to. They have to deal with rude remarks, belligerent passengers and bureaucratic backlogs.

I don’t blame the ones who end up snapping at the hundredth person who asks them when the planes will be allowed to fly again, or who take one look at the ticket lineup stretching around the corner and decide now would be a perfect time to take their 15-minute break. But I thank, from the bottom of my heart, the ones who make an extra effort to humanize the process of being lost in transit.

There was the supervisor who made announcements every five minutes updating people on the status of their bags and who had bottled water brought in for the families with young children. There was the gate assistant who prevented a passenger mutiny by keeping her tone light and sympathetic every time she announced another sliding delay. And there were the booking agents who worked overtime to get people out of lineups and onto flights or into hotels.

When I finally landed in Edmonton that night, I was so happy I wanted to kiss the tarmac (I didn’t).

I could swear never to fly a certain airline again, or write angry letters to every authority who conspired to keep me from my bed for 48 hours, but after a century of flight, this is simply the reality of air travel. We pay a steep price for the privilege of experiencing life in other countries in this jaded age of terrorism and economic turmoil.

Ultimately, the thing to remember is that, in this case at least, the destination is more important than the journey.

Ghost stories

It's amazing how a train of thought can completely jump the track.

I did not intend to write about ghosts today. I didn't even plan on thinking about ghosts today. But a hilarious news item on CTV, scoped in a moment of boredom, has taken me on a 45-minute journey deep into the shadowy territory of the paranormal.

The news item in question was about two men who have been charged with trespassing after firefighters had to rescue them from the roof of the Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton. While exploring the long-abandoned building with their friends, they somehow thought it would be fun to try to scale down the outside of it, and wound up getting stuck.

Apparent fun-ness of rappelling down the outside of a building without equipment notwithstanding, my first reaction to this story was: "exploring the Charles Camsell Hospital in the middle of the night WHAT?!"

As I mentioned to Laura, this building is creepy as all get-out. When we first moved to Edmonton, my boyfriend and I stayed with a friend of his who lived just down the street from the hospital. It was late when we arrived, so I wasn't able to see much of the city during the drive from the airport, but I did see the hospital — a yellow-brick monolith plopped in the middle of quiet suburbia, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and signs warning would-be urban explorers of guard dogs that like to snack on trespassers. Not one of the building's hundreds of square windows has its glass intact.

Even in the light of day, I felt the urge to quicken my step when walking past the hospital. That had more to do with being warned that it was a popular hangout for crackheads and gangs than any suspicions of paranormal activity, but the decrepit appearance of the building, which has been defunct since '96, didn't make me feel any more comfy.

Laura's response to all this was "I bet it's haunted."

A quick Google search produced satisfying results: this guy says it's haunted, this guy implies it's haunted and has photos of the interior that certainly make it look like an appropriate setting for an Amityville-style paranormal throwdown.

The hospital reportedly has a checkered past. It housed a psychiatric ward, and a secondary structure, which no longer exists, served as a quarantine for tuberculosis patients in the mid-20th century. Darker stories suggest that Mengele-esque experiments were carried out on Aboriginal children there.

A place with such sad and morbid connotations as a hospital — especially a decrepit, abandoned one — is a perfect breeding ground for ghost stories.

Someone allegedly recorded a woman's scream on the fourth floor of the building, and if you click the second link I posted above, you can read through the debate around a photograph that purports to show a masked figure peering around the corner in the basement of the hospital. (I could totally see it, but darkness and the suggestive power of fear can tend to morph something as innocuous as peeling paint into a ghoulish apparition.)

I don't know if I believe in ghosts, but I do believe that a place can seem to exude a palpable atmosphere of sadness and fear when it is known to be the site of a distressing event.

So far, my only encounter with a "ghost" was quite a joyful one. In the summer of 2003, I worked at Restoule Provincial Park in northern Ontario, a place that really lent itself to ghost stories because of its rich history. The remains of a root cellar in the midst of a thick grove of pine trees stood testament to the first family to homestead in the area, and an archeologist had discovered evidence of an Iroquois fishing village on the banks of the Restoule River.

The more experienced park employees told of a spirit who wanders the forest by night, swinging a lantern, looking for his hunting party. A few people claimed to have seen the ghost of a small boy wandering the fire tower trail at dusk; some said they could hear the frightened sobs of a lost child.

I wrote these stories off as good campfire fodder, but then, one night, I had a strange encounter.

In August, I had come down with a bad cold, and, not wanting to bother my roommate with my constant coughing in the night, I decided to set up a tent in the staff campground and sleep there until I was better. This worked well, and so on the night in question, I set out from the staff house with my little table lantern and headed down the dirt road to the campground. I soon found I didn't need the lantern; the moon was so full and bright it cast shadows.

As I walked down the hill towards the group campground, I saw a silhouette a short distance in front of me, walking in the same direction. My first thought was that it was another camper, but the silhouette, although human, seemed insubstantial somehow, more shadow than solid flesh.

I turned on my lantern. There was nobody else on the path.

I didn't feel afraid or intimidated, just oddly exhilarated. I feared nothing that summer but the toe-eating muskies of Stormy Lake — but that's another story.

And that's where this train of thought disembarks. Ghosts — are they real? Do we want them to be? Are they gentle? Scary? Both? What say you? Is Leduc haunted? (Apparently New Sarepta is). Leave your comments.

(Photo: Casper! Via)

Leducians? Leducites? Let's call the whole thing off!

According to a story in today's Globe and Mail, the citizens of the city of Red Deer have elected to officially call themselves "Red Deerians."

Tres originale. Personally, I think "Red Deerios" — the name suggested by a group of Red Deer school children — is much catchier. It rhymes with Cheerios, and Cheerios are delicious. But hey, if Red Deerians are happy with their new title, then that's what matters.

I've been working in Leduc for more than seven months now, and I'm still not sure how to refer to residents of Leduc. It comes up from time to time in my writing and I wish I had something punchier than "residents of Leduc."

Back in February, Bob Palmer, better known as Flyin' Bob, performed at our Maclab Centre, and right off the bat, asked the audience how they like to refer to themselves.

"Leducians?" he suggested.

"Leducites!" someone shouted.

Leducians it was, at least for the duration of the show.

But honestly, in all (okay, partial) seriousness: what do you call someone who lives in Leduc? Leducians? Leducites? My personal favorite, Leducies?

What say you? Leave your suggestions in the comments or Tweet us!

The rural life is for me

Some of my favorite memories from my childhood were made on my uncle's daylily farm near Orono, Ontario. Henry Lorraine and his late partner Doug Lycett started the business to breed daylilies, and once a summer hold a public open house to debut and sell their new flowers. Several times when I was a child, my mom and I travelled to the farm to lend a hand during the open house and visit family.

I lived in the suburbs but even as a child, I knew I preferred wide open spaces and through these occasional visits to the farm, I discovered I enjoyed working on the land. My cousins and I were "runners" — whenever a customer placed an order at the farmhouse, it was radioed to the gardeners in the fields, who dug up the plants, bound them, and gave them to one of us to run back to the farmhouse.

Daylilies only bloom for one day, so at sundown we would walk up and down the rows of plants, deadheading the day's blossoms to make room for the buds that would bloom the following morning. It seemed to me an idyllic way to live. That may be a little naivety on the part of a city girl, but it inspired in me a lifelong dream to marry a farmer — which, as I've grown up (and fallen in love with a man without a single rural bone in his body), has translated into a dream to at least own land someday.

Until I gather the capital to make that dream a reality, I have to settle for events like the one pictured above: a celebration of the newly-approved carbon-free village in Leduc County. The project is not expected to break ground until the fall, but the designers held a potluck on June 27 to give the project partners — and potential future residents — an opportunity to see the property.

We also helped plant some donated trees on a section of the land designated to become a future nature reserve for all the residents of the village to enjoy.

I may have unnerved Leduc County councillor Reinhold Ortlieb with my enthusiasm for digging holes, as he kept cautioning me not to break the shovel in the hard clay ground. I can't help it — give me dirt and an open field and something green to lavish with TLC, and I'm good to go.

Bobby will have some more photos from the event in the July 3 Rep.

The fluff of dreams — Part 2

I've heard it said that Canada has only two seasons: winter and July.

Well, I've realized that Alberta also has only two seasons: snow and fluff.

I've thanked God every day this month that I don't suffer from allergies, because this is ridiculous:


I snapped this pic in Irene Parlby Park in Edmonton because that is a ridiculous amount of fluff. I could make a fluffball or a fluffman out of those fluffbanks.


There is a certain species of tree that apparently reproduces via fluff:


Amazing.

Weekend madness!

I just had the most intense and tiring weekend workday I've had since I started working for the Rep. It's almost summer in Leduc and the surrounding area, so of course every weekend is stacked with outdoor events, and this one was no exception.

I went to an equestrian show and Timbits soccer jamboree in Beaumont, met some amazing young people who are making a difference in Devon at the Servus Credit Union Leaders of Tomorrow awards, and saw bad fashion and drunken baseball converge at the 37th annual New Sarepta Fair.

It was also an historic day in Leduc: the Southfork Moms (by far the Koolest moms in the city) realized their dream of having a playground in their own neighborhood for their kids to play on. Construction started at 8 a.m. and by 3 p.m. the park was full of kids swinging, sliding, running and climbing. It was inspiring to see how hundreds of volunteers could make quick work of the very labour-intensive building process, all with the best interests of the kids at heart.

It was fitting that the build happened on the anniversary of D-Day, because the park has been named for the late Jose Agostinho, who was not only an RCMP officer who gave his life in the line of duty on July 4, 2005, but also a former commanding officer of the Leduc 831 Black Knights Air Cadets Squadron and a huge proponent of the cadet program. The park is a fitting testament to his commitment to encouraging children to grow into helpful, respectful, active citizens of their community.

Check out the June 12 Rep for full coverage of the build. And also check out the Beaumont News and the Devon Dispatch, our sister papers. We share a lot of content but they also contain exclusives contributed by the Rep's staff. We're all one big, happy family.

And because no one reads this blog, I have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about posting this as a final thought: my very own LOLcat, starring Loki, the baddest tabby in Renaissance Place.

Bloomin' Leduc

I have this fascination with taking pictures of plant life in its various states of bloom and barrenness throughout the year. I've done frosty berries in the fall, ice-encrusted trees in winter and budding branches in early spring. This has got to be the prettiest season yet, though:


This is a bush right outside the entrance to our office. Not sure what it is, but it's lovely.


I really feel like we've earned this spring, considering two weeks ago another bush outside our office looked like this:


Welcome to spring in Alberta!

An ode to my favorite songs

Supposedly, scent is the human sense most strongly tied to memory (according to a commercial for men's body wash, anyway), but I think I can make a pretty convincing case for the power of sound — especially music.

Last Friday, I went to Smitty's in Leduc to photograph the performance of Prince Edward Island musicians Richard Wood and Gordon Belsher. I thought I had been away from the east coast long enough to handle an evening of east coast music without succumbing to homesickness, but I left the restaurant after the first set feeling emotionally raw in a way I hadn't expected — devastated and yet uplifted at the same time.

It wasn't one particular song but rather the whole sound that somehow reached into my chest and wrapped itself tightly around my heart. Images flashed through my head — of summer road trips to the Bay of Fundy and wading in soft, ankle-deep mud at low tide, of kayaking on the Saint John River at sunset, of my mother's house in Fredericton. I recalled the strange day I found out I was moving to Alberta and how my feeling of elation at getting hired for my first journalism job was offset by a powerful sadness that I was going so far away from the place I had come to call home.

As I listened to him play, I remembered what Belsher, a former Edmontonian, said in our phone interview a few days before the concert: that travelling to P.E.I for the first time felt like coming home. I could relate; something about the smell of pine trees in the cool May evening when I first stepped off the plane in Fredericton six years ago told me I was welcome there. Maritime music always, ultimately, brings me back to that moment, no matter how far away I get.

I read somewhere that Canadians have become a very transient people. Despite the hugeness of our country, many of us don't think twice about moving to different cities, provinces and coasts in pursuit of work, education, love, adventure, a fresh start.

This is certainly true of my own history. The other day, my boyfriend and I added up the number of different houses we've lived in throughout our lives to see who has moved around more; I think I beat him, but not by much. We've both lived in four different provinces, in many different cities, sometimes briefly, sometimes for years. As a result, "home" has come to take on a rather flexible meaning.

Every place I've lived has eventually come to feel like "home," even when I resisted becoming attached to a particular location. When I left the Dominican Republic, I cried for the loss of the beaches and the wild beauty of the southern coast, for tostones and fried salami and the friends I hadn't expected to make.

When I left Whitecourt — though I had spent most of my brief time there pining to be elsewhere — I missed the Athabasca River and the local sandwich shop and the sound of trains rumbling by in the night.

The question I've been wrestling with for the past three years — a period of my life in which I haven't lived in a single place for longer than eight months — is how to hang on to the things you love about a place, the things that make it feel like home, and use them to help you get through the loneliness and upheaval of going somewhere else.

The best answer I've been able to come up with is music. As I proved to myself at the Maritime show, I only have to hear a fiddle to be instantly transported back to the happiest moments of my time in New Brunswick.

Likewise, when I hear anything remotely Spanish in flavour, it isn't hard to recall the giddy joy of roaring down the highway on the back of a motorcycle, the deep-fried smell of the propane-powered public cars in Santo Domingo, or the fresh, watery flavour of a sun-ripened avocado.

I am already building up an arsenal of "Alberta songs" — mostly country — that in the future will bring back memories of learning to drive on the winding mountain highway through Jasper, the sight of the fields and trees along Highway 39 frosted with ice after a spring fog, and Edmonton's skyline at sunset.

Sometimes, when my heart is heavy and I can't see clearly past the darkness of my own mood, I put on an old favorite song and wish to be back in what seems, in retrospect, to have been a simpler time. I look back at past problems with nostalgia, believing them to have been more easily overcome than my present difficulties. I want to stay inside the familiar melody, where it's safe.

More than anything, I want to be "home," until I realize that, for me at least, at this time in my life, "home" doesn't exist in a concrete way anymore. It's not a place I can travel back to on a free weekend, but a place I have to find inside myself over and over again.

It takes time to get to know a place and really feel at home there, the same way it takes time to learn a new song. It's only when you hear the song again, years later, and can still sing it note-perfect, that you realize how well you knew it all along.

Education innovation

This week, I wrote a story about the St. Thomas Aquinas Roman (STAR) Catholic School Division, which has undertaken some neat initiatives to make learning more interactive for their junior high and high school students in Leduc, Ponoka and Drayton Valley.

On May 1, I attended STAR's celebration of the first six months of their "Building I.T. Together" project and left feeling really excited about the opportunities that are available for students nowadays.

When I think back to elementary school and learning how to use a "word processor," I'm amazed that students today are using Skype to chat face to face with experts and other students all around the world.

I really feel that there's no better education than the one you receive by experiencing the world, especially through travel and interface with people who live differently than you do, but for many kids, that's not economically feasible. So the fact that they can learn about other countries from the people who live there without having to fork out thousands of dollars for a plane ticket is incredible — and for many of them, it will likely pique their curiosity enough that when they do have the financial means to travel, they will.

You can read more about the BIT project in the May 8 Rep, but I wanted to share the video above, which Brad Clarke from Alberta Education showed to demonstrate why radical change is needed in the way we teach our students in this ever-shrinking world.

Divas hypnotized

Last night was the Leduc and District Chamber of Commerce's "Divas L.A. Style" ladies-only party at the curling rink. Hypnotist Colin Christopher provided the entertainment and several ladies fell right under his spell.

I had never been in the audience for a hypnotism show, so it was pretty interesting to watch. Some of the ladies who volunteered to go up on stage didn't go under at all, while others seemed so out of it they flopped right over in their chairs like rag dolls (see above).

I volunteered to be hypnotized at a similar show at my campus pub a few years back. I don't remember much about it, but I do recall that I didn't really feel like I had surrendered my consciousness to the hypnotist. I simply felt I should go along with the act because hundreds of people were staring at me expecting, well, to see someone do silly stunts at the will of somebody else.

I remember that I had to pretend my chair was the sexiest man I'd ever laid orbs on and he was waiting for me to make the first move.

I've done a lot of improv in my life, so it wasn't hard to feign something like desire and wrap myself around the back of the chair. I could have dropped the act and walked off the stage anytime, though — I think.

So last night, watching the show unfold, I wondered how this whole hypnotism thing works. Are some of the subjects really at the mercy of the hypnotist, suspended in a dreamlike state between sleep and waking? Or does a hypnotism show work on the power of suggestion — everybody is thinking everybody else around them is really hypnotized so they'd better play along for the sake of the show?

I guess it's one of those things that only the hypnotist — like the magician who masters sleight of hand and optical illusion — really knows.

Step AWAY from the phone

Disclaimer: I am fully aware of the irony of tackling the subject of technology addiction on a blog, but I've been dying to rant about this for weeks and it's not my turn to write a column for another two weeks.

The crowd is hushed as the stadium goes dark. An electrical current of anticipation passes through the 10,000 people gathered to witness what promises to be a fantastic spectacle. The dull murmur of conversation suddenly builds to a collective roar as spotlights come up on the stage to reveal a shimmering curtain, behind which can be seen a curvaceous silhouette flanked by willowy dancers.

It's her, the multi-platinum recording artist we have all paid hundreds of dollars to see in the flesh. The curtain parts — and 10,000 blue and white screens suddenly pop up in the darkness, aimed toward the stage.

A large part of what follows over the course of the next two hours will be seen not with the human eye, but through three-millimeter lenses attached to cell phones. The audience is not just the people who have paid to fill the stadium seats, but the entire world.

Within moments of Beyoncé taking the stage at Rexall Place in Edmonton on March 26, pictures were being remotely posted to Facebook and MySpace. Video clips were being streamed wirelessly to celebrity gossip websites like Perez Hilton. A running commentary of the show was supplied via text message, email and Twitter.

You didn't even have to be there to see the show. I'm not convinced the people who were there saw it.

I'm not a technophobe by any stretch of the imagination, but I was shocked. Number after show-stopping number, the people all around me had their eyes glued to the four-inch screens in their laps, thumbs flying, documenting for all and sundry an experience they paid $200 not to see.

Even I'm not that hardcore, and I'm paid to document events.

To an extent, I get our collective fascination with technology. I was 12 when the Internet went commercial and for many years I felt my online life was just as rich as my real one.

After I went to university, I used instant messaging to stay in touch with friends back home, and I've had a few websites and blogs over the years, none of which lasted very long or rocketed me to my hoped-for level of Internet fame and which I am now kind of embarrassed about.

Nowadays, I'm more of a consumer of online content than a producer. I use Facebook to share photos and interesting articles I come across, and try to update my status once a day because reassuringly, there are people out there who care what I'm up to.

I've become more selective in what I choose to share with the world online, though. My contributions to the global digital dialogue are carefully edited to remove any suggestion of private pain or indiscretion. The result is a mostly superficial online presence — an objective, bare-bones chronology of the past five years of my life.

There's more to me than lists of my favorite things and random facts, but as Technology Review editor Jason Pontin aptly put it, "I never broadcast the substance of my inner life, because I know it would become insubstantial the moment I did."

In a world where it seems things don't happen unless they happen online, I feel an urgent need to keep some things for myself.

Most of the time, that just means self-censoring when I go to post something on Facebook or this blog, saving my gut reactions and deepest feelings for the handwritten journal I have kept since I was 7.

But it also means spending more time on simpler, yet more somehow more meaningful pursuits: losing myself in a good book, going for long exploratory walks, sketching, talking to a friend face-to-face.

I recognize that our world is pretty much driven by the rapid dissemination of information, all made possible by incredibly complex and admittedly fun technologies. But when I see young people and adults alike unable to focus on a single task for more than half an hour without reaching for their phone to check their email, their stocks, or the score on the hockey game, it truly saddens me.

When I think back to some of my happiest memories, they are of times when there was no digital camera present to capture the fun, when my phone was off and the nearest computer was miles away. These memories are also my strongest, perhaps because, undistracted by the compulsion to document the experience, I was able to be more fully present in it.

The undisturbed, late-night conversation over a bottle of wine, the five-hour hike to a sweeping panorama, the moment spent in silent contemplation or prayer, the fulfillment of doing absolutely nothing — are these experiences becoming lost to future generations? Are they just bland, outmoded maxims to be worn on a tote bag alongside reminders to floss, breathe and recycle?

Is anything sacred anymore?

You might be thinking to yourself, "All this because some kids took some pics at a Beyoncé show?"

That was the catalyst for this post, but I've been mulling the issue over for a while. Every time I see a group of kids walking down the street together, each one engrossed in his or her own online handheld game, or a young woman more involved in text-messaging her friend three rows back than in watching a live show, I feel a little panicky.

It seems to me that while we are increasingly driven to prove our existence by leaving a running stream of consciousness in our wake like a slug leaves a slime trail, all this distraction is actually eroding the processes of thought and memory. Everything is evanescent, "live" for a day or two and quickly buried beneath the constant influx of new information.

There are so many layers to this phenomenon I can't possibly tackle them all in one blog post, but it seems to me that the ultimate result of all this documentation will not be a collective remembrance, but a collective forgetfulness — and because I believe that at the end of the day, all we really have is our memories of a life fully lived, that is very scary indeed.

(Note: No phones were harmed in the shooting of the above photograph. My cell phone is three years old and has been dropped so many times it comes apart quite easily, which makes it a handy tool for illustrative purposes.)

72 hours

Ask anyone you meet if they've ever had a brush with large-scale disaster, and a surprising number of them will say yes.

At the Riggers awards banquet last weekend, I started chatting with a couple whose son was on the team. They had lived for 25 years in Yellowknife (which was very interesting in itself), but the dad revealed he was originally from a little town near Hamilton, Ont. called Hagersville.

I immediately looked to my boyfriend for some sign of recognition, since he grew up in Pelham, about 40 km down the Niagara escarpment, but the name didn't ring a bell — until the man said, "That's where they had that big tire fire."

A Wikipedia search for Hagersville reveals that the most notable thing about the place is that in 1990 a "gigantic, uncontrolled tire fire" broke out and raged for 17 days, spewing toxic smoke all over the region. Oddly enough, the fire didn't start in Hagersville; it started in nearby Townsend, but the media felt Townsend was altogether too small, unknown and unimportant to be capable of producing such a monstrous disaster, so they attributed to the fire to Hagersville.

One thing I have in common with Michelle is that we both lived for a time in Mississauga, Ontario, which usually gets absorbed into the Greater Toronto Area unless you bring up the train derailment of 1979. Then suddenly everybody knows where Mississauga is. Michelle likes to say, with some degree of pride, that the derailment happened really near her house.

I could give lots of other examples — virtually my entire extended family, who are concentrated in Montreal/eastern Ontario, suffered through the Ice Storm of 1998; a friend of mine's father lives in New Orleans and shared with us the insurance photos he took of his home after Hurricane Katrina.

My own closest brush with disaster happened while I was living in the Dominican Republic. On Oct. 28, 2007 (my 22nd birthday), a tropical depression formed over Puerto Rico and began tracking northwest. By the time it hit the south coast of the D.R., it had a name, Noel — although everyone called it "Noah" because of the devastating amounts of rain that fell during the five days the storm remained stationary over the island.

In hindsight, the storm could have been a lot worse, but at the time, it was frightening. A tree fell on the power lines in my neighborhood on the second day of the storm, knocking out electricity to the entire area, and crews could not safely get in to fix it for three days. I could still get out to the stores to buy clean water and provisions, which I cooked on my gas stove, but my drains backed up and my apartment was invaded by cockroaches and centipedes. The lack of light, especially in the evening, played on my fears as I huddled in bed with a can of aerosol insect spray, reading by candlelight.

After the storm came mudslides in the central mountains, massive crop failure in the southwest and outbreaks of disease — dengue fever and various bacterial illnesses that thrive in standing water.

As the government and military scrambled to co-ordinate helicopter evacuations for people cut off by mudslides, clear inundated roads and repair dams and bridges, relief organizations sprang into action, setting up mobile medical clinics and distributing food to the hardest-hit villages.

It was not the worst storm ever to hit the island — that distinction still belongs to Hurricane David, which killed 2,000 people in 1979. But the aftermath took months to clean up. For the most part, the islanders were left to take care of their own affairs with whatever resources they had at their disposal.

In a sense, countries like the D.R. have a natural advantage in that hurricane season is an annual event. The likelihood of one or more severe storms making landfall in that six-month window is quite high.

Still, when you live in a place day to day and fall into an unremarkable, perfectly safe routine, it becomes difficult to imagine anything disturbing it and emergency preparation takes a backseat to more immediate priorities. How else to explain the fact that even routine, fairly predictable events like hurricanes consistently take leaders and residents by surprise, with heartbreaking results?

The same is true everywhere, whether it's in a small town in Canada or a crowded city in the developing world.

Disaster can strike anywhere, at any time. Fire or flood, wind or hail, drought or accident, it doesn't discriminate — everyone is vulnerable to random devastation.

In light of the recent emergency planning exercise held by our local municipal leaders and the fact that May 3 marks the start of emergency preparedness week in Canada, take a moment to consider your response to a disaster. How would you protect yourself and your loved ones?

Whether it’s having enough food and water stashed away to sustain your household for at least three days, a little cash set aside, or a home evacuation plan, a little foresight goes a long way.

It’s natural to hope for the best, but wise to prepare for the worst.

Related: Noel trumps the race card
Everyone has role to play in emergency

Las Vegas in a recession

Last weekend, as I was sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to depart, I came up with a list of life experiences I wanted to get under my belt during my four days in Las Vegas.

I wanted to visit the lobby of every single hotel and casino on the strip, rack up a $150 restaurant bill, see what a pair of $500 designer shoes looks like in real life, walk the strip at night pretending to be CSI Katherine Willows on the trail of a hot case — you get the picture.

I have champagne taste and a wine cooler budget. I didn’t want to spend money in Vegas so much as I just wanted to soak up the atmosphere of pure luxury that permeates the lobbies of the Mirage, the MGM Grand and the Venetian. I was willing to take the tackier aspects of the strip in stride just for the chance to be in close proximity to money.

I found myself peeking into the “high roller” lounges in each casino, hoping to catch a glimpse of a confident, jaded James Bond type playing baccarat or someone channeling the glory days of the Rat Pack in the cut of their jacket and gentlemanly swagger.

What I saw were lushly carpeted rooms, set back from the noise and smoke of the main casino floor, scented with fresh orchids, gorgeously lit with a soft amber glow … and completely empty.

As were the high-end shops at Caesar’s Palace, and the $65-a-plate restaurants, and the nightclubs that once upon a time could charge $100 cover.

It seems that even in Vegas, the very seat of conspicuous consumption, luxury and excess have fallen out of fashion in this bust economy.

Each morning at our hotel, I read the Las Vegas Review-Journal and gained a clearer understanding of what has taken the wind out of Sin City’s sails.

Nevada leads the United States in foreclosure filings, while Las Vegas ranked second in a report on foreclosure filings in major U.S. cities.

Unemployment stats in Vegas also paint a grim picture of how the recession has affected a city whose main economic driver is tourism. Even with several new resort projects opening or under construction, such as the M Resort and the luxurious Fontainebleau casino, one in 10 people in the Clark County area is unemployed.

An open letter from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority appeared in the March 9 edition of USA Today, begging businesses to consider hosting conferences and trade shows in Vegas despite President Barack Obama’s admonition that large-scale meetings would appear to be a frivolous use of taxpayers’ money.

It’s not just Las Vegas that is having to revamp its image to appeal to a population that has suddenly found itself with a lot less disposable income to play with. For months the covers of upscale fashion magazines have been pushing the idea of “recession chic.” They haven’t actually gone so far as to suggest that you wear last year’s clothes again this year, but they have begun to grudgingly admit that you don’t have to drop $500 on a dress to look like you did.

Maybe one of the advantages of the recession is that we will come to develop a more realistic sense of the value of things.
Monetary value is assigned to goods and experiences partly based on their rarity, with higher cost usually presuming higher quality — a couture gown, a meal prepared by a celebrity chef, a stay in the penthouse of a four-star hotel. But as the pool of individuals able to afford them continues to shrink, they become less desirable icons of status than laughable vestiges of a time when achieving that kind of financial security was even possible.

Consumers still want to have fun with their money, but now we want it to go further as well. If “luxury” businesses are going to ride out the downturn, they’re going to have to become accessible to a wider range of clientele. From a middle class consumer perspective, the time has never been better to live like a rock star while still living within your means.

A little shameless self-promotion

About a year ago, I had my first taste of life as a television actor in Toronto.

An instructor of mine from the University of Western Ontario, Rita Deverell, had written a docu-drama, Not A Drop, based on a real class offered during the 2007 spring semester on diversity journalism. Diversity journalism, as we came to understand it, is about looking at stories from the perspective of a worldview different from our own.

Everyone experiences life through a unique lens and their perceptions are shaped by their culture, race, ethnicity, religion, family background, sexual orientation, economic situation, age and ability. Often, fear of these inherent differences means journalists don't talk to all the people connected to an issue and miss an important part of the story. Overcoming that fear, recognizing one's own prejudices and learning to listen to other voices is at the heart of diversity journalism. 

Rita wrote the script for the docu-drama with certain students in mind for each role, and dramatized our circumstances to make a point about diversity. We all had input into our characters, and the entire process — from vetting drafts of the script to filming scenes at Wallace Studios in Toronto and on location at the Walpole Island First Nation near Sarnia, Ontario — ended up being quite a powerful learning experience for everyone involved.

An excerpt from the press release explains the premise:

When students of diverse backgrounds — Japanese-Chinese (Hiromi Okuyama); caucasian (Alexandra Pope), and Afro-Canadian (Jeremy McDonald) — claim they are already “diverse enough,” their professor, a black, former U.S. southerner (played by Stefanie Samuels) and an Aboriginal activist (Pamela Matthews of One Dead Indian) take up the challenge and assign the class to report on the Walpole Island First Nation, located in what the locals in Windsor, Sarnia, and Detroit call 'Chemical Valley.'

"The people of the Walpole Island First Nation feel they represent all those communities who have not yet been able to say ‘No’ to the toxic living conditions some industries create,” says Rita Deverell, producer/director of Not a Drop. “My message with Not a Drop is that while we as journalists can be serious whistle blowers, taking action isn’t always part of the story – and I am deeply grateful to OMNI for their support in helping focus attention on this particular story, in hopes that real life action will be taken.”

The result of Not a Drop is that its characters — as well as its viewers — are provided with a first-hand learning experience about the deeply troubling issues of so-called “disposable peoples” in North America.

The finished piece premiered in Walpole Island in summer 2008 and at Wallace Studios in December. In honour of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Not a Drop will air in Portuguese on OMNI Television on March 21 at 10 p.m. ET and in English on March 22 at 8:30 p.m. ET.

If you have an hour to spare, it's worth tuning in.

(Photo: Me taking direction from Rita during filming at Wallace Studios)

Introductions

Hey everyone,

My name is Alexandra, I'm a reporter for the Leduc Representative. I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself. Alberta is the fourth province I've lived in — I was born in Quebec, raised in Ontario, educated in New Brunswick, and am now enjoying launching my media career in the wild, wild west.

I've worked in media in one form or another for about five years now. I was arts and entertainment editor of The Brunswickan, the student paper at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. While finishing my Master's degree at the University of Western Ontario, I enjoyed a brief stint as co-host of a weekly news-talk radio show and followed that up with a mind-blowing two weeks as a reporter for CBC radio in Fredericton. I also completed two television internships, one as a writer for The Weather Network and the other as the host of a mini documentary series on immigrants and refugees in New Brunswick for Rogers Television, entitled Crossing Borders.

Prior to coming to Alberta, I spent six amazing months in the Dominican Republic, working for an online English publication called Dominican Today.

I am very excited about the role the internet can play in bringing communities together and hope that you will find this blog informative, interesting, and above all representative of what matters to Leduc.