I was the household dishwasher from an early age, pulling my weight you could say. Scrubbing dishes after a meal, cleaning up after my family. My favourite part was always putting dishes away exactly how they should be. It brought a strange sense of glee to have control over this one tiny aspect of our
Nick was born in Trinidad. His complexion was the color of milky coffee, and he had beautiful hands and wide brown eyes. He moved to Vancouver from Toronto, after coming into money in the form of travelers’ cheques. I suspect the cheques were fraudulent, but Nick was evasive and skipped over any details. In Vancouver,
Angel looked at the bric-a-brac that hung on the restaurant walls. Rickie examined thelabel on his beer bottle. Mary folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. Todd shrugged.“A woman cannot be a feminist and work in a corporation,” Todd said.“It’s that simple,” Mary said.“It’s that simple.”Angel shook Rickie’s arm.“Look,” she said. “They’ve got
It was Dec. 8 last year when I decided to visit one of my favorite recovery clubs to commemorate 28 years of sobriety. It had been a long time since I’d been to a meeting and even longer since I’d worked the steps with a sponsor. The last one I had only met with me
We are at my grandma and grandpa’s property at Chain Lake near Princeton. They bought it so the whole family can come here on weekends to camp with them. I’m wearing my flowered flannel pjs and I have my Holly Hobby sleeping bag pulled up right up to my chin. My dad likes to turn
This story takes place in a quiet town. It has a downtown that is the centre of almost all the commercial activities, but a considerable rural area has remained over time. In a yard, an old but decent dwelling prolongs its existence. Inside this dwelling, two sofas decorate an empty living room with a table
If you consider how many bears and humans are scattered across the north of Canada, it is incredible how few encounters there are between them. Despite this, I have had a few memorable encounters. The Scotland that I grew up in had no large wild animals such as tigers, lions, elephants or bears, so my
So often do I want for home, for family. Where others seem so happily sheltered by their place and blood, I have long felt transient in both. Houses and kin have been left behind, their memory a mine once rich caved in with time, or burned quite literally to ash. I make wishes through my
“If we didn’t do anything, my heart probably would have shattered in 2 billion pieces.” Henry Chillihitzia Videos of flooding and mudslides caused by the first of the atmospheric rivers to hit BC last November were horrifying and the damage left behind devastating. Numerous sections of major highways gouged away by raging flood waters; bridges
I used to live as the wild things did, the trees and the spirits that roamed the woods day and night. Let us not forget the time when the life force was felt between every wall, inside every colour. I did not wait for daybreak to go exploring, any time and everywhere was my place,
Afterword by Ingrid Love The 30’s – Edinburgh, Scotland My adventures started even before I knew where I lived. According to Mum, as a child, I would tend to wander away from the avenue in which we lived and end up on one of the avenues that ran parallel to ours. In those days, mail
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