0°Recent Blog Posts - Urbane Adventurer
Why you need to understand Treaty 6
The upcoming election is an opportunity to address issues that are not currently being dealt with by our municipal representatives. While I have been happy to see our city make strides in its awareness of Indigenous roots, and attempting to create stronger relationships with the Indigenous commun...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
The upcoming election is an opportunity to address issues that are not currently being dealt with by our municipal representatives. While I have been happy to see our city make strides in its awareness of Indigenous roots, and attempting to create stronger relationships with the Indigenous commun...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
CBC Radioactive Interview
CBC Radioactive Interview CBC Radioactive has kindly linked to the audio from the interview I did with Rod Kurtz on Thursday in response to my blog post about the canal proposal in Pehonan. (Just click on the link above). I wish I’d explained Treaty differently — I should have emphasized that lan...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
CBC Radioactive Interview CBC Radioactive has kindly linked to the audio from the interview I did with Rod Kurtz on Thursday in response to my blog post about the canal proposal in Pehonan. (Just click on the link above). I wish I’d explained Treaty differently — I should have emphasized that lan...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
You call it Rossdale, we call it Pehonan
I’ve been promising Mike and Scott at the Charrette a piece on Rossdale for a few months now. But PhD life being what it is, I’ve struggled to get to it as I try to meet multiple competing deadlines. But I woke up early this morning to a story by David Staples on a proposal … Co...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
I’ve been promising Mike and Scott at the Charrette a piece on Rossdale for a few months now. But PhD life being what it is, I’ve struggled to get to it as I try to meet multiple competing deadlines. But I woke up early this morning to a story by David Staples on a proposal … Co...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
letter to the editor
Earlier this week I sent in a letter to the Guardian, expressing my frustration with blatant and unreflexive cultural appropriation in the UK. Specifically: expressing my annoyance with fashionistas and festival-goers appropriating headdresses and tipis at festivals like Glastonbury. This is hard...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
Earlier this week I sent in a letter to the Guardian, expressing my frustration with blatant and unreflexive cultural appropriation in the UK. Specifically: expressing my annoyance with fashionistas and festival-goers appropriating headdresses and tipis at festivals like Glastonbury. This is hard...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
On Fraggles and Urban Development
A few years ago my aunt told me about my cousin’s friend’s term (are you still following?) for the new suburbs popping up in Calgary: ‘dozer bait’. As in — they are so poorly planned and constructed that they are just going to be bait for bulldozers in the coming zom...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
A few years ago my aunt told me about my cousin’s friend’s term (are you still following?) for the new suburbs popping up in Calgary: ‘dozer bait’. As in — they are so poorly planned and constructed that they are just going to be bait for bulldozers in the coming zom...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
Rush hour, rural Alberta
Some days on a dirt road only one car might pass. Some roads probably only feel the grip of a tire on its back once a week. Or less, who knows. Summer and winter are the slowest times, when the countryside feels most empty, and the skies the biggest. However, in spring and in fall, … Contin...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
Some days on a dirt road only one car might pass. Some roads probably only feel the grip of a tire on its back once a week. Or less, who knows. Summer and winter are the slowest times, when the countryside feels most empty, and the skies the biggest. However, in spring and in fall, … Contin...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
Where the heart lies
I can’t explain it, but as I stood on the edge of the Red River this morning, I could feel my ancestors standing there with me. And I felt an overwhelming sense of love and emotion. There is something to be said for pausing and remembering in a space where your ancestors once lived. And ...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
I can’t explain it, but as I stood on the edge of the Red River this morning, I could feel my ancestors standing there with me. And I felt an overwhelming sense of love and emotion. There is something to be said for pausing and remembering in a space where your ancestors once lived. And ...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
loss and movement
Sometimes life presents us with circumstances that are not to our liking. Sometimes life forces us to move on, even when we wish we could linger forever. Like spring turning to summer and eventually the cold of winter, certain things are beyond the reach of our mortal hands. The dizzying but comf...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
Sometimes life presents us with circumstances that are not to our liking. Sometimes life forces us to move on, even when we wish we could linger forever. Like spring turning to summer and eventually the cold of winter, certain things are beyond the reach of our mortal hands. The dizzying but comf...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
The City and Song
I write music for fun. I have no formal training in either singing or guitar (although I did take piano lessons when I was little, and benefited greatly from the Edmonton Public School’s music program. My elementary school, Holyrood, had an amazing music program and I think I can credit our...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
I write music for fun. I have no formal training in either singing or guitar (although I did take piano lessons when I was little, and benefited greatly from the Edmonton Public School’s music program. My elementary school, Holyrood, had an amazing music program and I think I can credit our...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
love
Every conversation I’ve had lately comes back to love. How do we make a better world? Be gentle with ourselves and with others. Find it in your heart to be empathetic, patient. Oh yeah, and love. Love fiercely. Love unrepentantly. Ferociously and without remorse. When the tigers are at your...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
Every conversation I’ve had lately comes back to love. How do we make a better world? Be gentle with ourselves and with others. Find it in your heart to be empathetic, patient. Oh yeah, and love. Love fiercely. Love unrepentantly. Ferociously and without remorse. When the tigers are at your...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
smell: an ethnography (of sorts)
The one thing we can’t easily re-capture is the smell of a space or a moment. This morning as I was doing dishes, I thought (for just the briefest of moments) that I could smell the rich aroma of fresh char cooking on a stove, and I was instantly pulled back to happy memories with … C...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
The one thing we can’t easily re-capture is the smell of a space or a moment. This morning as I was doing dishes, I thought (for just the briefest of moments) that I could smell the rich aroma of fresh char cooking on a stove, and I was instantly pulled back to happy memories with … C...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
love and space
It seems like a lifetime ago that I met significant people in my life in buildings no longer standing. It’s a common theme in literature, in storytelling, in day-to-day life to talk about the importance of particular buildings or places to our own life narratives. The Eiffel Tower, the Empi...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
It seems like a lifetime ago that I met significant people in my life in buildings no longer standing. It’s a common theme in literature, in storytelling, in day-to-day life to talk about the importance of particular buildings or places to our own life narratives. The Eiffel Tower, the Empi...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
An old post (circa 2010)
I wrote this in February 2010, on an old (now defunct) blog. I thought I would return to it as I sit over here in Scotland, missing home. I could tell you about a million things I don’t like about my old writing style, but instead I’ll share it unedited, to mark the passage of …...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
I wrote this in February 2010, on an old (now defunct) blog. I thought I would return to it as I sit over here in Scotland, missing home. I could tell you about a million things I don’t like about my old writing style, but instead I’ll share it unedited, to mark the passage of …...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
Take the First Right Outside of Town: Rural Wayfinding
Although the roads are laid out along a grid system where I grew up, I never used addresses or range road numbers or anything like that to find my way around or give directions. In fact, until recently, roads were not marked with their numbers, and houses didn’t have addresses. Well, they did, bu...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
Although the roads are laid out along a grid system where I grew up, I never used addresses or range road numbers or anything like that to find my way around or give directions. In fact, until recently, roads were not marked with their numbers, and houses didn’t have addresses. Well, they did, bu...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
home
It’s hard to capture what it is that makes Canada home. There are so many equivalent and similar landscapes that skirt the northern latitudes of the planet. Sometimes when I squint I can mistake a Scottish river for a prairie one, or pretend the North Sea is the Arctic Ocean. But there is s...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
It’s hard to capture what it is that makes Canada home. There are so many equivalent and similar landscapes that skirt the northern latitudes of the planet. Sometimes when I squint I can mistake a Scottish river for a prairie one, or pretend the North Sea is the Arctic Ocean. But there is s...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
