Day 802: Edmonton – The Opening Credits

originally published March 12, 2014 Last week, while another icy winter blast was gossiping through our beloved city streets, I heard a familiar question discreetly uttered in my office tower elevator. It’s a question that inevitably falls from the cliffs of quivering lips every year when the onset of March is mocked by November-esque climate. […]

Day 801: Billy The Kidd – A Brutal Pirate. Well, Maybe

originally published March 11, 2014 Sometimes our most loathsome villains have been misunderstood, their legacies forever stained by the thick-bristled brush of historical “common knowledge”. William Kidd’s name is uttered in the same venomous breath as Blackbeard, Black Bart, and that Rupert guy from Survivor. He makes nearly every list of famous historical pirates, and […]

Day 799: Poon Adrift

originally published March 9, 2014 Each of us possesses a limited reach of survival, a finite extension of our bodys’ and minds’ capabilities to endure. Fortunately, we live within the sanctuary of modernity, with a rather slim likelihood of our true survival being tested. This is a good thing. Let’s be honest, if most anyone […]

Day 794: London, 1858 – Awash In A Fecal Funk

originally published March 4, 2014 It was only a matter of time before this illustrious project, which had launched itself with such promise and potential, devolved into a dignity-free river of steaming poo. We can blame the natural progression of time and the tenuous maturity of an overgrown teenager at the keyboard’s helm, or perhaps […]

Day 792: The Day The Suffragette Was Run Over By A Horse

originally published March 2, 2014 It was a beautiful sunny June afternoon at the 1913 Epsom Derby in Surrey. Thousands of people had gathered to watch horses run in a circle because it was 1913 and television was not yet invented. Also, the horse of King George V was among the competitors, which added the […]

Day 785: Pledging Allegiance To The Desk

originally published February 23, 2014 After two days of stirring up controversy – first over my disdain for the institution of Scientology and then for my vocal indifference to the Who’s The Boss theme song – I thought I’d lay low today, and tackle a topic that should be relatively devoid of hot-buttonness, despite its […]

Day 782: The Mother Of Civil Rights

originally published February 20, 2014 History – even that special brand of history that today seems unflinchingly common-sense and righteous – is more deeply mired with confused and distorted perspective than a grease-trap full of one-eyed ants. We reflect on our civil rights champions with quiet applause and a brow-full of scorn for “those other […]

Day 760: The Classic Kings Of Edmonton

originally published January 29, 2014 Having spent all but three weird months of my life in Edmonton, a portion of my available fascination is perpetually woven into the snug threads of the city’s storied history. Admittedly, when the frigid fingernails of a late November cold spell are scraping bone through skin I will occasionally entertain a baffled […]

Day 748: Court Is Now In Session – 1964 Edition

originally published January 17, 2014 You might not be able to tell by the weather, the Ouija or whatever earthly vibrations to which you tether your chakras every morning, but we are seventeen days into a rather significant anniversary. 1964 was one of those game-changing trips around the sun in western culture, when society found […]

Day 738: World War II – The 1970’s Edition

originally published January 7, 2014 When Hiroo Onoda set off to receive his first assignment in the Imperial Japanese Army in December of 1944, his mother handed him a keepsake dagger and told him to do his family proud. World War II was still hugging the headlines, showing no signs of relinquishing its constricting embrace. […]