This collections is some of my photojournalism work done over the years for websites, print media, and my own collections.

In no particular order...

Trip to Montreal to see Cirque.

A man sits at a bar.

It’s a bustling Friday night.

It’s a slow Monday afternoon.

The bar is in a swanky downtown Toronto hotel, the kind with stone coasters and where everyone calls you ‘sir’…

It’s a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint in Boston’s Italian district. The waitresses snap their gum, heads tilted, as they take your order…

It’s a brewpub along the sparkling shores of Vancouver where the staff launch into a well-rehearsed spiel on their in-house microbrewery at the slightest provocation…

A man sits at a bar.

He has a notebook. It’s worn and creased.  He scribbles messily on manila pages.  The pen, the pencil, the fine-tip marker; races urgently to a final flourish in his hand. Put down. Replaced with a glass.  The beer, the liqueur, the rum; brought up for a slow sip as his eyes de-focus out into infinity.

For a second.
Two.

He draws back into reality and back to writing.  The pages turn.  Notes, dates, stories and lives behind.  Blank, exciting, terrifying empty pages ahead.

He makes eye contact with the bartender.  The french girl with distracting green eyes.  The Nordic boy in suspenders and a bow-tie. The mustachioed bald gent who seems to communicate only in grunts.  A double tap on the bar. A fresh drink arrives.

A man sits at a bar, with a notebook of his stories.

His notebook, his tome of his time.  Past filled with memories. Old stories. Barreling ‘cross the great prairies by train for days on end. Navigating pounding open ocean by sail along the western coasts. Hovering over elemental desserts and erupting volcanoes.  The stories seem ridiculous sometimes to him now.  But there they are, etched on the page.

They always said, ad nauseum, ‘Oh the places you’ll go.’

But they never warned him of the people he’d know.

These damn people. These insane, beautiful, brilliant people that he’d met along the way.  The ones that brought more joy and pain and meaning than any mountain summited or ocean swam.  Their triumphs, fears, dreams reverberating endlessly through his own story.  Become indistinguishable from himself.  And in this he is blessed.  The notebook is a labyrinth of paper and ink.  It stores beautiful memories to be sure, but also traps its share of demons.  Luckily for the man at the bar, no matter where or when he opens those doors, he faces neither alone.

A man sits at a bar.

It’s in a bar in the basement of an old Montreal hostel. He’s just caught the eye of a pair of cute linguistics students from Australia…

It’s on a Cuban resort. The sun is shining and the woman he loves saunters over from the pool…

It’s a pub in Fredericton where the staff all know him.  He hears his name as a familiar perfume drifts into the air…

A man sits at a bar.  He closes his notebook and smiles.

“How’s your day going?”

“Eh.”

“Tuesdays.”

“Yeah. … Yeah.  Double?”

“Single, please.”

He drifts off to take fill my glass and take an order from the group fresh in the door as they extract themselves from carefully constructed cocoons of coats and scarves.

Three days till I leave for Montreal.  At my watering hole, at that seat in the corner, killing time watching the crowd.  All my roommates are otherwise occupied.  Four bedrooms across three floors get eerie all alone.  Can’t blame  bumps and creeks on anyone.  I sought solace from silence in the pub’s hubbub.

Going through final itineraries and rooming of my traveling group.  I helped organize around two dozen travel legs and accommodations for our group of ten.  Spreadsheets upon spreadsheets.  It was fun really. A giant logistical Rubik’s cube.  Kept my mind distracted.  Something to focus on.

Alone at the pub is where I’ll work on those things.  Thinking, writing, rebuilding analytical reporting algorithms for my day job.  Sitting at the end of the bar, where I have a view of all the activity.  People coming in from the cold, scurrying staff as orders come and go, patrons lined up along the bar.

You can see whole series of stories unfold before you from that seat in the corner.  So many lives lived in bubbles, coming into brief contact along that polished wooden surface.   They’re all there for different reasons.  Some, like me that night, think they are just looking to be alone in a crowd.  Others, to be the crowd.  Each of us, subtly, inevitably, affects others around us.  The result is chaos.  The result is beautiful.  The result, is life.

There’s a girl at the bar.

Isn’t there always?

But for some reason this one…

She has a face the old masters would model sculptures on. Sculptures we’d prize for centuries.  Helen of Troy was a pretty lass, but this face could restart the space program.  A dangerous, distracting kind of beauty.

Distracting enough, anyway, that I get caught staring.

How long have I been staring?! Oh gods she’s looking right at me. Damnit you idiot look away, look away!

She smiles as my face burns.  I must have jolted, flustered, as I break my gaze.  She laughs.  A beautiful laugh.  Laughing is good though, well, better than not laughing.  I exhale.  When did I start holding my breath?

My drink becomes the most interesting thing in the world.

I’m good. I can play it cool.  Just be smooth.  I take a big sip of… ice cubes.  My drink’s been gone for a while now.  The ice lets free the tumbler’s bottom and crashes forward, as ice does. The cubes bouncing off my face does nothing to cool the renewed embarrassment.  A few cubes crash out, hit my shirt, and on to the table with noise louder than anything else I can hear.  Quickly, sweep them to the floor and wipe the splashed water off my face.

My failure is now complete.

I pray to whomever that she didn’t see that as well.  Then a quick amendment to -no- witnesses.  I daren’t look up to check.

By now the bartender has noticed my empty glass and a fresh drink is on the way.  I let my gaze drift, a lateral scan across the area.  That’s safe.

A vacancy.  She’s not there.  Maybe she didn’t see what I did.  Small mercies.  I relax slightly on the bar stool.

My drink arrives. With a napkin.

“Have a little accident there?”

I mumble something unintelligible that I hope communicates ‘yeah’ ‘haha’ and ‘shutup’ simultaneously.

But I’m ok now.  I can feel my cheeks cooling.  The drink in hand is comforting.  Confidence is a heavy glass.

“Hey there,” a voice in my ear.

I cough slightly as I choke on my confidence. It’s her. The smile is blinding. Green eyes daring you to break contact.  No statue could ever do it justice.

“I’m Casey.”

“Hi I’m…” (damnit what’s my name) “Alex! I’m Alex. Hello.”

She laughs again. Smiles.

You can see whole series of stories unfold before you from that seat in the corner.
The result is chaos.  The result is beautiful.  The result, is life.

I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-Yeats

The train car jolted as we crossed a switch.  I was shaken from my dreams of Quebec so long ago and woke to a still-dark train.  There was still far to go.   I smiled.

Walkway lights and a few reading lamps were the only lights around the coach of Via Rail’s Ocean line to the east coast.  My companion was dead asleep next to me. I did my best to avoid jostling her as I stretched and tried to settle back in.  Sleep is key in transit, though you’ll still be drained on arrival no matter your intentions.  There’s just something about the world blowing by you so fast; it’s exhausting.  I let the sounds of the train lull me back to the dark.

When I was young, young-er anyway, the train lines mumbled

clickitey-clack

clickitey-clack.

I remember long train rides to Montreal, then America to visit my grandparents.  I loved the train.  We’d get our seats and I’d rush to the observation dome car, amazed at the 360-degree glass roof.  We’d watch the countryside roll by for hours.   Then back to our sleeper-class cars where the staff would have converted our seats to bunk beds.

Falling asleep to that

clickitey-clack

clickitey-clack

clickitey-clack.

Those were some of my favourite sleeps. Disappointing when morning came and we approached our destination.  The adventure was over.

I’ve never liked endings.

Now, a decade later, the new suspensions and noise dampening on the trains has left the coach cars much quieter.  But the rocking motion and hum of rails still pulls me back to half dreams and memory; takes me to my time in Katimavik, a time of mountains and love and excitement.; that beautiful time before goodbye.

If you’ve never been to the west coast of Canada, you haven’t seen nature as the designer intended; seemingly endless forests of impossible trees, there to remind us human that we are miniature and powerless in their ancient presence. The mountains hold dominion on the world as they loom over the land, like slumbering gods. Ocean beats incessant against rugged shores, providing transportation and livelihood to those who respect her, and mortal danger to those who don’t. It was against this backdrop, on one rainy night, that a surprising moment led to a relationship that would define the rest of our experience in the program.

We were up late. Talking. The rest had packed in for the night. Some of us had to be off to the national park we worked at in the morning, others had to be up to start their duties as house manager, keeping the house clean with food on the table.

Amanda told me about the intricacies and symbolism of a series of Pink Floyd songs she played. I don’t know music, but I’m a sucker for a good story well-told. To this day I’m not sure what changed that one night.  Maybe the stars were aligned.  Or maybe we just finally worked up the nerve.  In one second, just friends.  In the next, our eyes locked, then our lips.  I don’t remember either of us saying anything.  We both just knew.

These were the good times.  From then on we were simply ‘together’.  I loved her from the beginning, possibly longer.  That young, powerful love that feels – for lack of better words – inevitable.

When possible, we’d adjust the group work schedule so Amanda and I would have the same assignments. At the time, we were doing Predator/Prey surveys in the park. We’d hike the back trails of the Pacific Rim National Park looking for fresh kill sites or other signs (scat, lots of scat) of the wolves and bears in the area. The collected data was fed into a database of all the large predators in the region, along with their eating habits. I was a team leader by the end of the rotation and got to pick my team. Not exactly a romantic day at the office, trekking back roads and trails looking for death and feces. But it was challenging, and we were good at it. It meant we got to spend time together. And in a situation like this, where you know you’re getting on different planes in different directions in five to six months, time together… it’s worth everything.

There were adventures. More than I have time to write or even remember. Out in the woods on surveys. or zodiacing around the Broken Group Islands. Once we accidentally got too close to a bear (and I may have bear maced myself slightly). Days and days on beautiful beaches that stretched miles into the sunset, waking up at four in the morning to work in a bakery before it opened, preparing fresh pastries and breads. But maybe the best were the days we worked as house managers together, occasionally spending whole afternoons just lazing around on the patio reading and sipping tea. Not doing anything, just being… together.

Our relationship continued right through our stay in B.C., and on to our final location, Fort Albany in northern Ontario. We were sad to leave such a beautiful land, but worse for me was knowing that as we boarded that tiny plane to the coast of James Bay, we would only have a final three months together.

Time was barrelling ever forward as the world streaked by around us. A train in the darkness. Towards its final destination, and the end of the trip.

clickitey-clack

clickitey-clack.

I’ve never liked endings.

This is where I’m at.

It’s a Wednesday night.  I’m back at my pub, drinking my drink, writing more stories.  This time though it’s not about me, it’s about my friends.  I’ve been thinking a lot about friends lately.  Likely brought on by the latest diaspora.

Which brings me to this little project.  My friends are cast far and wide cross the face of this world.  But that wasn’t the death sentence it once might have been.  Communication flows, stories are shared, troubles talked through, success celebrated.  It’ll never be the same as really being there.  Humans don’t work that way.  But connections are still valuable.

So the call went out on Twitter.  Send your pics of #WhereImAt on this day!

Hardly any of us are in the same city, let alone the same country or continent. So, just for a second, I wanted us to share a glimpse into the lives of each other. I hoped we might know a little bit more across the group, and strengthen those bonds.  Fight entropy, if only for one rainy afternoon.

The sun never sets on my friends.

From Steph’s commute on Vancouver’s skytrain to Lauren’s surprise firework display that evening in London, England.  7588 km separate  them.  I looked it up. That’s a 9 hour flight on the fastest available passenger jet.  It costs $1300.  The time zone difference is 8 hours.  But here they were next to each other in my newsfeed.

As if that wasn’t far enough, pictures from Amanda’s new apartment in China where she’s teaching.  China.  So far from the campus she called home for four years.  The campus Julia was on that same day.

Because the scattering isn’t just geography.  It’s in our lives. Careers are starting, our priorities are shifting.  Where once our goals were all dictated and the same, do the work, don’t fail, graduate school.  Now we’re in a weird place where we can choose our own paths, our own things to strive or ignore.

For better or worse.

Want to throw yourself headlong into your career?  That’s up to you.  Want to work for the paycheque so you can pursue your true passion?  No one has any right to blame you for that either.  We’re young (though admittedly, less and less).  We have a strange and beautiful civilization that in another 20 years will be unrecognizable to us now.  It’s a terrible, beautiful prospect.

So many of my friends are entering the workforce.  It’s not just journalism like Shane and Laura’s submissions below.  Medicine, tourism, marketing, government, law, education.  It’s fast becoming our turn to take the reigns of this society.  It won’t last long, but it’s still vastly important what we do with it.

It’s not going to be a flawless process.  What is?  We’re going to make terrible, horrendous mistakes.  We’re going to ruin things, have our hearts broken, and have days where we don’t want to get up in the morning.

But we’ll get up.

Because here’s the thing I know about the people I’ve come to know:  Whether they are old ones from growing up in Halifax, or any of the new, varied groups that sprang up in university. These people are amazing.  They are smart and capable and ready for all these challenges spread before them as they go forward, moving to maybe a new part of the province, or even across the continent.

And we’ll be spread out.  But that isn’t all bad.

Because this world is too big.

We’ll never experience it all.  So we must count on each other.  We must each go out and experience all we can, see sights, do things, gather stories.  And don’t think because you’re not going to Zanzibar your experiences are any less valid.  I’ve spent the last year traversing New Brunswick from shore to shore and I’ve met more amazing people and learned more from them than I ever expected.

There are sights to be seen anywhere and everywhere if you know how to look at the world with a sense of wonder.

So do this thing.  Visit new places.  Talk with the locals.  Eat their food and raise a glass in celebration of … well of anything.  You don’t need a reason.

And when you come back with your stories of the world, share them with your friends.  Tell your tales of sights and adventures, of triumph and shame.  Take time to listen to the stories of the others.  Because though we are apart, these stories, these windows into each other’s worlds, are what will hold these bonds strong.

And together we can fight entropy.

If only for one rainy afternoon.

//From notes taken at the pub.  Found in my notebook a day later. Edited for clarity.//

The night is Thursday. August.  I’d call it a ‘dog day of summer’ if I was sure what it really meant.  Slow night for this pub.  No tradition of students hunting cheap apps, drink deals, or gender-specific specials ever grew up around this particular night of the week. The place is pretty much empty save for a few older couples holed up in booths. Groups of tourists in ones and twos, enjoying the AC on this warm, muggy Fredericton evening.  No real community of regulars streaming in to greetings from the staff.

“Hey Alex. Double or single?” asks Phil as a fresh tumbler dives into the ice bin.

Ok, so maybe *one* of the regulars is here.  I hold up two fingers as he goes for the Kraken black rum.  My spirit of choice lately.  The cheap bar rail rum seems immature and rough after moving to the 94-Proof embrace of the Kraken.  Plus, it doesn’t hurt that one of the attractive young ladies that works at this particular establishment refers to it as a ‘dark and dirty’ with a grin whenever I order it.  I’m a sucker for a pretty smile.

I post up at the bar. Alone.  I’d feel silly taking up an entire booth, plus I enjoy talking with the barkeep and occasionally the other patrons.  A few months ago I had a night where I partied with the cast and crew of Fiddler on the Roof as they rolled through town.  Another night I met a woman from Toronto who moved to Fredericton for school and was excited at the possibility of living in a houseboat on the ocean.  You know… cause that’s something we do here.

Tonight though it looked like it was just me.  The length of the bar was barren except for a half-eaten caesar salad keeping a bottle of Keith’s company, owner nowhere to be found.  I pull up a stool and grab my notebook and pencil from my bag.  If I have no one to talk to, I may as well write, right?

I don’t mind hanging out at the bar alone though.  As mentioned, sometimes you meet the most interesting people.  Other times it’s nice to spend time with your own thoughts.  After graduation I took the month of June and traveled across Canada by train, alone.  Except for two stops along the way I knew no one for the whole 7000km, 21 day journey.  Sometimes I’d go for 2-3 days without even hearing my own voice since there was just no one to talk to.  After my trip I took a job where I work alone, travelling this province from end to end.  I’ve lost count of the hotels, the hours on the road.  Travelling the way I have for the last 15 months, you learn to get comfortable inside your own head.

It’s not like I don’t have friends.  I’ve got plenty great ones across half the country that I’m in touch with and can trust with anything.  But the ones here in town, on this Thursday night,  are all busy tending to their own affairs.  I’m sure there’s some campfire or movie or drunkening, but I find myself unable to keep up.  Almost everyone I’ve been hanging out with recently graduated not four months ago.  They’ve entered that transitional summer.  Not a student, not yet not a student.  Treat that awkward wording as a metaphor for how confusing this time is.  The real grown up world is right around the corner.  And it’s not so much that it looks Scary or Difficult.  I think the main worry is that it’s just so… Different. Change is scary.

People deal with interstitial awkwardness in different ways.  Some seek purgatorian reprieve granted by summer ‘student’ internships of varying satisfaction.  Others are unable to leave the academic/campus lifestyle and sign up for a few more years by either paying for a Master’s degree, or by getting paid for a campus job.

The real transition never comes when you expect it.  It’s not when exams are done.  It’s not when you get your grades.  It’s not at graduation, despite what the parade of presidents, valedictorians, and honoured guests harped on about for hours at convocation.  That’s not when the real world hits you dead on.  Instead, the real world circles around behind Summer and t-bones you at an intersection in Autumn.

I’ve been through it.  I watched people go through it in the year before my graduation, and  again with my graduating class.  I’m watching this new group of friends go through it now.  September 1st hits like a ton of bricks.  Either because you’re doing something like moving or starting a new job, or because you’re specifically _not_ doing something like going back to school.  It just feels off.  I imagine it’s worse for those who didn’t take a year off between high school and university (like everyone should IMHO).  Sixteen straight years of schooling, suddenly not happening anymore.  All those touchstones, like grades and cafeterias and tests, that you and a group of your peers could experience and commiserate and bond over.  Now unavailable as a marker buoy in your life.  What do you do with yourself?  Heck, now grad school doesn’t seem like such a bad out.

The way I’ve seen it , the thing that’s kept me and people I know sane is that you have two main options before you at any point in time.

1. You can curl up in ball and mope.

2. You can just not do that, and go own it.

Cause here’s a fun thing about finally entering that adult world.  Just like the transition to being a parent, stupider people than you pull it off everyday.  You just that have to remember that this whole ‘real world living’ thing is immensely doable.  Look around.  See all those other adult-shaped things who seem to have it all together, ducks in a row?   They didn’t shoot out into the light of the world that way.  They were blindly entering the workforce once.  They tried a few different things out before figuring out what works.  Many of them have done far, far dumber things than you’ve ever conceived of.

I loved the teachers I had in life that told me I would screw up.  Cause it’s true.  You’re going to have terrible stupid moments.  Sorry.  That’s how this works.  But you WILL get better at it.  And you’ll fail less.  Then one day, you won’t be failing much at all.  And some generation of young graduates will look up to you with admiration and terror and say to themselves ‘How do I deal with this world?! I wish I had it all together like THEY do.’  And then they’ll go play with their holograms or ask their android friends if they _really_ dream of electric sheep, damn future-kids.

//Notes for the night ended there.  I’m going to assume we can blame the Kraken//

It was midnight in the province of Quebec. My train east was barreling forward, ever forward. I peered out the window into the warm summer night as we passed La Pocatiere, a town I lived in for three months. Memories from that old time, from that old me, reached through the dark and across time. I was drifting in and out of consciousness for hours. The train car was dimly-lit and rocking gently on the old steel rails as yellow cast incandescent lights sped past the windows.  I was in that strange and beautiful limbo between departure and arrival.  Body neither here nor there, mind wandering through my old stories.  The following is the one that came to mind that night.

We wouldn’t look back.  That was the deal.  I can’t remember when we made the decision, or who brought it up first.   It’s possible it was neither of us, and that we never actually talked about it.  Like so much of our short relationship, maybe we just knew all along what had to be done.  However it happened, as we stood there in the airport, holding each other for the last time, we knew that when we finally let go, it would be for the last time.

Our relationship was marked with an expiration date from the moment it started on that warm spring night in British Columbia so many years ago.  It was during my time with the Katimavik program, a nine month program that sends young people across Canada to do volunteer work in communities and get the life skills to be productive members of Canadian society.  My group of nine others and I lived in three communities for three months each, starting in Quebec at the same town that was passing by my train window.

La Pocatiere is near Riviere-du-Loup, along the St. Lawrence River.  Fall was ending as we began the program.  Winter was just moving into the small town, and it intended a long and harsh stay.  The cold in La Poc, on the shores of the storied river was something I, being from a more temperate coastal area, wasn’t ready for.  On windy days dry daggers of winter wind sliced easily through layers.  At night the fresh fallen snow would crystallize on the sidewalks and make a glittery path littered with diamonds sparkling in the streetlights.  I’d try to appreciate it for the 10 or 15 minutes before my face went numb.

Those same streetlights could be seen from the train as we pushed forward.  The train’s haunting whistle bellowed in the dark as we picked up speed and left La Pocatiere behind us.  I find train travel an apt metaphor for our lives.  You have a great view of what’s happening right now, in the moment, outside the window as the world flashes past.  You can remember what’s gone past, where you’ve come from.  But there are no forward facing windows for the lowly coach passenger.  You know where you’re supposed to be going. You know there is a track to be followed.  You can plan and schedule, and you can occasionally take peaks up the rails on long turns.  But the future is generally out of sight. It can be frustrating, or you can accept you’ve done all you can, and it’s now you’re in the hands of the Conductor.

In the train, I looked back to La Pocatiere.

I think it was against the frigid backdrop of that winter that I started to fall for Amanda.  It began as it always does for me, with complete ignorance that it was happening.  I remember my roommate at one point asking if I had a thing for her.  I flatly denied it, thinking I didn’t.  We all like to believe we have so much control over our emotions.  She was just a friend.  And then a good friend.  Suddenly someone we were opening up to, sharing things, even discovering things, about ourselves we hadn’t known before.  I found her easy to talk to.  She was funny and quick witted.  She was passionate about the things she believed in but would accept a well-argued point. She was cute and happy and could lighten my day with her mere presence.  I enjoyed her company and would occasionally  nudge group dynamics so we would spend time together.

But a couple?  Nah that’s crazy, as we’d tell others in the group.  Impossible.  Strictly speaking we weren’t even allowed.  The program had rules against any kind of ‘exclusive relationships’ within the group dynamic.  It makes a mess of things.  Think back to any group of friends you’ve had and what happens when two start dating. Generally the result is similar to an old adage involving a fan and some fecal matter. We knew this, we were trained in it.  And heaven knows the best way to keep young people from doing something is to forbid it outright.  Right?  I put any possibility of romance out of my head for the good of the group.

Until British Columbia. It was the next stop on our trip.  A respite from the chill of winter.

The train whistle blasted again.  Announcing its presence to the world.  ”I am.” it screams into the night, “I move” “I will soon be there”.  A warning and a promise.  The train pushed east to my home, as my memories drifted westward towards the sea and the past. Towards the place I’d fall in love.

Part 2 of 3 is here.
Part 3 of 3 will be posted on eventually.

“Why are you here?”

Conversational cacophony. Impossible to focus on any single one.  The deck is awash with waves of sound.  Yelling, punctuated percussively as pints and pitchers pound plastic patio tabletops. Every once in a while the sea of sound parts, and pub anthems drift outside from the cover band.  They are from Moncton. Or Halifax, or somewhere.  They play the same songs the band from last week played, which easily could have been the band from the week before, for all anyone who is dancing cares.  ’These guys are actually pretty good!’ Someone is always yelling into the ear of their friend, week after week.  ’Yeah!’ (full beat) ‘What are their names again!?’ The friend will yell back. ‘I dunno!’  Conversation fizzles out as they look in different directions and take a sip of their beer.  Their beverages a cool respite from the awkwardness of a pause in conversation.

“Hey”

Young ladies and men are engaged in a full fledged mating dance.  Both genders well-groomed, sexual-adeptness attributes on full display.  The place is a visual smörgåsbord of human plumage. An all-you-can-ogle buffet.  I start imagining a snooty Parisian waiter’s accent. Zhe main course to-niiiight is a choice of graphic tees, served with well-muscled arms and sagging pants with a ballcap garnish, or a tight serving of mini-dress (both leg and breast meat available) served over heels and well marinated with sugary cocktails.  For an appetizer may I suggest our proto-Hipster sampler plate for just a taste of the lifestyle (you can really taste the glasses).  The soup-de-jour is as always, creme de Gagetown.  For a drink pairing may be recommend a nice Wingman Pinot Noir, or a sweet Girls-Night-Out Riesling.   Bon Appetit Sir.

“Why are you still here?”

*Click*  I zone back in.  He’s talking to me.  We’ve been sitting alone at a table together for a few minutes now.  The others have gone inside to use the bathroom, or find more drinks or something, I just nodded as they left.  I should have realized he was talking to me.  I roll back the mental tape a few minutes, hoping I caught some kind of context to the question.  No such luck.  Time for Plan B.  Here we go.

“Huh?” says I.

He leans in a bit on his green plastic patio chair.  Drinks litter the table.  Some full, most empty.  A massive pitcher sits in the middle.

“Why are you here?”

I assume he meant ‘why am I out at this bar’.  I wasn’t really drinking.  In fact, when they called me at 930pm to go out, I turned them down, stayed in.  I was in the middle of laundry, I have some important office work to do in the morning, and I had already had a long day.  Plus, well… when no one mentions anything until around 9pm you start to seriously consider sleeping at a normal human time. But here I am, 2am.  Unmistakably, undeniably not home.  I showed up at 130am to their surprise.  Turned down drinks, I was driving that night.  I guess it looked confusing.

I play at watching an attractive young lady walk by as I think about a way to answer the question.  Well, I mean, I DO watch her walk by.  She’s great, and didn’t wear what she was wearing to not get glanced at.  I may not be interested in dating, but I’m not dead.  But  my heart isn’t really in it.  It only gives me a chance to pause and gather my thoughts for an answer while the question hangs out there.

I have no drink to sip.

‘Uhm…’

At first I think it’s too complex of an answer to share.  Or maybe I wish it was complex, because that would mean that I was complex, and everyone always likes to feel like they’re special.

I try to break it down.

I am not there to pick up.  The ladies are undeniably attractive.  But I’ve actually just gotten over a series of ill-timed crushes, that were preceded by one of the hardest break-ups of my life.  Left me messed up for well over a year.  I have just gotten back to a very stable place, and am planning to just focus on work this summer.

I’m not there to drink.  I could have taken a cab, or walked.  I live close enough.  But I had driven down.  I had already gone out the night before (with several of tonight’s crowd) and I had work in the morning.  So it wasn’t the best night for it.  Plus at this particular bar they insist on buying very large (gallon) pitchers of less-than-delicious beer.  Near the end when it gets warm it gets a little unpleasant. Also I was showing up 30min before last call.  So drinking was never in the cards.

I had been sitting at home for an hour, finally convincing myself to go out.  I had said at the time it was so I could drive people home at the end of the night.  I’d show up randomly and be useful.  Yay me!  I wasn’t proud of doing something just so people might praise me a little, but hey, we’d both get something out of it, so it wasn’t all bad, right?

But sitting there at the bar, question asked, I realize I came up with that admittedly lame reason only AFTER deciding I would go out.  The higher processing end of the human brain is really good at justifying things that happen outside of its control.  It’s one of those weird quirks of cognitive psychology that gets creepier the more you know.  Essentially we are amazing at lying to ourselves, and saying we’ve decided things that lower levels of our brain just do on impulse.  I had already decided to go before I ever had a reason.  The driving thing was just the excuse I came up with to let it happen. Something much more fundamental had drawn me out.

“….well…”

Stripped of all my other answers, I have only the boring truth.  I am there because they are there.  Sounds silly at first.  Needy even.  But maybe there’s nothing wrong with that.  Maybe it’s good enough that I want to be around people.

We have been designed by millions of years of evolution to be an interactive animal at our core.  We need others around us.  Lovers, family, friends, etc.  We need someone to say things to, have them give a shit, and say things back to us.  We need hugs and highfives and shoulder pats, and a physical proximity that the even my beloved digital world still can’t come close to replicating.  We’re social animals.  And without that socialization, we lose the basest sense of community, of society, and of ourselves.  I could get into the psychology of it, but from a very young age we literally need that interaction with others or we flat out die.

I look around one more time.  All around me, there aren’t just bodies moving to music, but an important emotional/psychological/cultural dance that our species has engaged in since time immemorial.  One that sustains our very soul.

So I answer the question.

“I’m here, because where else would I be?”

The others finally return to the table, I turn to one and ask,

“Hey, what’s the name of this band?”

A year can be a surprisingly long time.

One year ago I was graduating with a journalism degree from a small university.  I had no job lined up after graduation.  I’d applied at some newspapers, marketing firms, even with random companies in Halifax like FedEx (who still email me with openings from time to time).

It had been 6 years since I graduated high school.  In that time I had studied marketing, human psychology, four mediums of journalism (nearly inventing a fifth), geology, political science, philosophy, and written three papers on what it means to be a human in an age of unprecedented technological growth.  I was, by any reasonable measure, an educated man of this 21st century.

And I couldn’t get hired to even work in a warehouse.

So, when faced with this impending pressure to stay ‘on society’s track’ I did the only thing I could come up with.  I ran away.

A great, elaborate run it was.  But an escape nonetheless.  I decided to pull the trigger on this idea for a grand trip across the country that I’d been considering for years.  A train ride from sea to shining sea, totaling over 7000 kilometers.

I’d been across the country once before, on a similar type of escape.  After high school I was confused by my options of universities.  I didn’t know what I wanted to study, or why I would choose one place over the other to do it.  I read academic calendars, and flipped through viewbooks.  But the course listings were all Greek to me (except the Greek courses, which were Latin), and I knew enough about marketing to know viewbook imagery is about as truthful as fast food ads.  Unable to pick a university, or even decide why I would pick one, I signed up for the Katimavik program instead. Putting off my decision for at least a year.

Over 9 months on the Katimavik program I traveled to B.C., Quebec, and even a remote Northern community on James Bay.  I was a different, better person when I returned.  When I was back, I had more focus and was ready to make some mature decisions about my life.

Maybe this second, post-grad train trip was an attempt to recreate that.  Or maybe I just wanted to put off the decision again.

This time instead of 9 months, it would be 1.  But instead of 3 towns, along the way I would visit 8 major cities from coast to coast.  The route was Halifax > Toronto > Ottawa > Montreal > Winnipeg > Jasper > Vancouver > Victoria, then a flight back to Halifax.  I’d leave on June 12th and return on July 6th, just 3 days before my birthday.

When I left I had a plan to post everyday.  But this being the very definition of a whirlwind trip, I quickly ran out of time.  I decided to post about it when I returned, but as they say ‘no plan survives first contact with reality’.

I ran into even more problems a month later when I discovered I couldn’t find the hundreds of photos I’d taken during the trip.  I’d seen so much.  An entire country’s worth of content, missing.  Dejected doesn’t begin to describe it.

That is, until last week.

Last week I discovered my entire camera card unload.  It was sitting in a poorly labeled folder on the desktop of a computer I haven’t used in months (a hazard of my lifestyle).  Everything was there.

This fortuitous discovery has occurred at a coincidence-filled time.  This weekend is the date of my university’s graduation ceremonies.  My roommate and many of my friends will be leaving St. Thomas University behind just as I did 1 year ago.  We’re approaching the the 1 year anniversary of my trip, and (spoilers) the 1 year anniversary of my current job that I’ve just re-signed my contract for.  It’s a job I wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for my trip, and the people I shared the journey with.

But that, is all part of the story that comes next.  Starting on the the exact anniversary of my train leaving the Halifax station, I’ll be sharing my trip in realtime, just time-shifted 1 year later.  The tale is a good one; of new destinations, some great drinking stories, and decisions that would affect my whole life; and I hope it’s a story that I do justice.

I look forward to publishing it starting June 12th, 2012.

This morning we (in Canada at least) woke up to OS 2.0 available for the Blackberry Playbook.  My device is updating now and I’ll have more info after the installation is complete.

This awaited version of operating system is expect to bring native email, contact and messaging clients to the Playbook devices.  Formerly those apps required a Bluetooth tethered Blackberry phone.

There’s also high expectations for the Android App Player, which should allow the use of pre-packaged Android apps on the BB platform.  This would dramatically improve the catalogue of available applications for Blackberry.

In honour of Adam Wright owning a more powerful Android device than the one I currently own, I’m providing my top Android app picks.

This is assuming you are not going to root your phone or run custom ROMs (like a boss).  If you really want to go down that path and unlock even more power, some research on your part will be required at the links provided.

I’m also going to skip the obvious social ones.  Native Twitter, native Facebook, native 4Square etc. I use native ones for personal accounts, and a 3rd party like Hootsuite or Seesmic for my work accounts.

All following links are Market links. Let’s get to it.

Basics

Stuff you absolutely need.

• Flash Player
• PDF reader
• DropBox – You need to be using this online storage tool.
• Google Goggles – Fun and a great barcode reader.
• LauncherPro – replaces the main homescreen system.  Very worth it as it provides more customization and control.  Also known to give performance boosts.  ADWLauncher is very similar.
• WeatherBug – My fave weather app. Quick info in the alert pane, and push notifications of emergency weather alerts.
• Astro File Manager – Just good to have.

Upgrades to basic functions

• Alarm Clock Plus - Awesome upgrade to the basic alarm function.  Fully integrates to OS.
• Chrome to Phone – Sends what you’re looking at in Chrome to your phone’s browser.
• MX Video Player – Just a better video player than the stock one.
• gReader Pro – RSS reader.  Offline reading, podcast support (meh), night mode, awesome widgets, dark/light themes.  It’s just the best one so far.
• Swype Keyboard – If not preloaded, you should get it.  It’s one of those Android features that make iFones silly in comparison.

Just plain awesome extras

• Netflix - Nuff said.
• Google Listen - My favourite PodCatcher, if only because it connects to browser rss links and stores them in Google Reader.
• Any.DO ToDo lists – classiest and most functional to-do manager I’ve found.  Also some sexy widgets.
• DroidAnalytics – Haven’t used this in a few months, but very useful for keeping track your traffic
• WordPress - Run your site from anywhere. Recently updated.
• iSyncr - Syncs iTunes to Droid.  Quick, easy, playlist selective.  Highly recommended.
• Google Docs 

I don’t really enjoy a lot of songs by Dan Mangan. Just not my shtick.

But clicking around on a recommendation from some of my friends I spotted one called ‘Robots’ I’m a sucker for robots. And I found with an good pace and lyrics that spoke to something I could understand.  Here’s Dan Mangan performing Robots live at a concert recorded by CBC Radio.

I enjoyed it, thought you might too. Have a good Monday everyone.

For many reasons I’m not getting into, I had a long, exhausting week between work and my own personal projects.  But one I will mention is because this weekend I’m taking some vacation time, so for work I’ve been trying to get all my content in order and copy written for when I’m away.

So anyway, I log on late to do my final scan of our social channels and post the absolute last piece of content on our Facebook page before I’m officially on vacation.  Should be quick, and I’m looking forward to going to bed without an alarm set.  Run into a small snag. As I’m double checking the content we’re linking to I notice some events are now sold out, so I drop them.  For another one their entire website was crashed… hard (looked like an SQL error for what it’s worth).  But that kind of thing happens, so I clean them up and get ready to post.

We post to English and French separately because of the audience.  English one goes out relatively fine.  Art is good, copy is solid, links are all there and working, locations are tagged, audience targeting is set up.  Click POST…. nothing.  That’s ok, Facebook server gets hiccupy sometimes.
Refresh page.
Check all the reqs again,
POST.
It goes out cleanly.

Then trouble. French one … doesn’t. Just loads and loads and loads.  10 min, 12 min.  Refresh.  Try again.  Try 5 more times.  Error, error.  Consistent error.

Head, desk. Then, Troubleshoot Mode. Just like my mother taught me.  Well, I don’t know if she so much ‘taught’ me or if I picked it up via osmosis.  My brother’s actually better at it than I, but no one really spends as much time around computers as us without this latent talent developing.

Here we go.

Prioritize likely error vectors,
most likely causes down to crazy ones,
deduction through experimentation.
Start by replicating failure.  Remove factors until one is locked down.
Data points needed to triangulate.
Single elements first.
Try posting art alone. Rolls out fine.  Not the image.
Reset.
Test copy, no embedded tagging, no links.  Rolls fine.
Reset.
Too many links? I know EdgeRank doesn’t approve, but would it kick out an error?
Test pile of links.  ERROR.
Failure is good, failure is data.
Refocus. Target in links.  Basic divisive search pattern.
Test first half links.  Rolls fine.
Reset.
Test second half links.
Error.
Refocus.
Cut in half again. (repeat).
Single failing link.  A shortened one.  We always use those.
Test in a sterile environment. Incognito Browser.  Prevents cookies or plugins from affecting the action of links.
Goes to… tada a spammy Mexican site about levitra.
It seems I nicked a letter off the end of the shortened url when copy pasting, which, by pure chance, made it the shorted link that someone else made to a serious spam hub.
Re-dropped a newly shortened link into original post.
French post rolls out fine.

Now for those keeping track.  The chances of those exact circumstances coming together to cause that post to fail are insane.  That my one letter mistake would make it the EXACT same address as a spammy site that Facebook had already blocked is mind blowing.

To have it happen on the evening where it would probably annoy me the most?
Actually, kind of expected.

I can only conclude the universe is effing with me.

Luckily,logic was able to un-eff it.

I am the uneffer.

I fix things.

Goodnight.

Introduced to me years ago on the opening to a West Wing episode ”Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail,” which is a line from the song.  For some reason it’s stuck in my head this morning.

We’re going somewhere different today. Infinity Ink is a Italian/British duo that first formed playing rock inspired music on acoustic guitar.  In 2012 they reformed with a kind of house, indie dance sound.

The song Infinity is simple but gets stuck in your head, as evidenced by my nigh-abusive use of the replay button.  Enjoy.

This first song, Little Talks is great, even though my friends and I have played it out.

It gets a post today because of this video.  It’s dark and playful and beautiful.  If you haven’t yet, do yourself a favour and go fullscreen, 1080p and enjoy the whole thing.

And if you’ve already seen it, last month they also released their second video, for the song King and Lionheart. Same director: WeWereMonkeys. Same gloriously dark aesthetic.

What else would you expect from a group from Keflavík/Garðabær, Iceland.  Yes Iceland!

And to round it out, my favourite song of theirs, Mountain Sound.  Just a concert video from a year ago, but the music always puts me in a good mood.  And what more can you ask from music?

Today I’m planning my escape with the help of Another Pilot by Hey Rosetta!  (gods I hate that exclamation point).  Oldie but a goodie.

Just did the final check-over of my Montreal trip next weekend.  ViaRail up, AirCanada back. Seeing a Habs game, seeing some winter festival events, eating poutine.  I’d drink Tim’s too but I risk an OD on Canadian stereotypes.

Also this week the travel to Boston at the end of next month was locked down thanks to some reward point assistance from my parents.  Why Boston?  PAX East. Nuff said.

I’ll even be in Halifax for a few days before and after to hang out.  Parents will be away in Hawaii, so CRAZY RAGER AT MY PLACE!?  or, like… MarioKart and a few beer?  Let’s be honest, we’d all rather the latter.

See you on the road (/rails/plane etc etc)

I once heard a tale of a man who split himself in two. The one part never changed at all; the other grew and grew. The changeless part was always true, the growing part was always new, and I wondered, when the tale was through, which part was me, and which was you.

-Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card

Slept in.  First day of my vacation.  I had earned it.  Woke up at noon.  Turned on the TV bank in the living room.  Relaxed a bit as I watched the weather, news networks, and a rare good episode of Anderson, all at the same time.

Getting hungry.

Around 2pm I ordered a pizza for pick up.  Ten minutes later I left my apartment, keys in hand.  Scan the parking lot.

Van wasn’t there.

Hmm.

Oh that’s right, I left it downtown last night after a work supper at the Palate and an evening at the pub with Amanda, Melissa (and, for a brief time, a fetching young lass from Toronto I met at the pub.  And yes, I literally said “Come here often?”  The absurdity of the line was icebreaker enough).  The point is, I had several drinks.  There was no way I was going to drive home.  Melissa drove me to my apartment.

Then for kicks I jogged up to the 24-hr Walmart and picked up some gifts, then walked home.  -12 degree nights can be surprisingly sobering.  Crisp.  Stars sparked against the cold velvet of the night.  Streets were quiet.  Wafts of woodsmoke drifted through the sleepy neighborhoods.

Anyway.

Pizza waiting, van gone, now what?

I decided to call a cab to take downtown and pick up my wheels.

Didn’t check the weather situation.  It had been snowing, and freezing rain had just started.  I should have clued in when it took 7 rings for ABC Taxi to pick up the phone.

20 minutes later, I called again to make sure the car was still coming.

10 minutes later it rolled up my frozen driveway.

By the time I reached my car, it had been almost an hour since I ordered my pizza.   Due to my regular business at the establishment I’m a little surprised they didn’t call me back to make sure everything was ok.

I had parked my car on the street.  It should have been picked up before 10am. It very much was no longer 10am.  So of course, I have a $20 ticket.

Got to the pizza place.  They had already gotten rid of my pie due to the wait. I had to order another one.  Harumph.

Now, I’m not sure if it was the great night I had before, the amount of work and resources I expended acquiring this particular food item, or if it was just that I hadn’t eaten anything in almost 20 hours;
but that might have been the best damn pizza I’ve ever eaten.

Deliciousness is relative. Lesson learned.

What does Facebook have to do with Babylon and Australopithecus?
Well…

During my university experience I’d often try to have conversations with people who were smarter than I. One of those people was the under-published student Colin Hodd. He studied Journalism and was part of the school’s ‘Great Ideas’ program which was a mix of political philosophy, literature, history, philosophy, with sprinkles of anthropology and psychology.

The kid’s smart.

Anyway, we’d have talks. Some times long, occasionally combative talks. One of what I’m calling his ‘guiding principles’ seemed to be that, even with the future coming at what seems like a blistering pace, we aren’t changing that much. As much as we’ve ‘evolved’ since the time our fore-fathers first organized into city-states and became ‘civilized’, we’re fundamentally the same creatures with the same hopes and dreams, same fears and demons, as the ancient civilizations that came up settling disputes by slicing babies in half, and tried making a blind world one eye-for-an-eye at a time. He had reached this hypothesis after years of studying the works of the ancient philosophers and the world they lived in. He saw much of their worldview in ours and vice-versa.

It was something I could generally agree on, even though my perspective was borne of different evidence. In university my areas of study were wider than deep. They generally focused on human behavior. One of the classes that affected me deeply was evolutionary psychology. Something that always stuck in my mind from the class is how little time has passed since we came down from the trees and Prometheus gave us that pretty torch. And evolution is slow. Glacially slow (literally). On the scale required for an actual change to take place, all our iPads and cars and smelted metals and loincloths are a blip.  Seriously, if there is a creator of the universe that’s been around since the beginning it’s entirely possible it simply hasn’t noticed us yet.

For that reason alone I’ve always though we’re still, in many ways, that creature that evolved to be a hunter-gatherer and spread across the face of the planet in between some impressively long cold winters.  Evolutionary speaking, yesterday we were playing with mastodon carcasses for amusement.

So as much as I love these ‘social media’ sites (and really a new name needs to be created) I have a Hoddian view of them.  I don’t think it’s changed what we’re capable of or our social structure.  I think it just made it all more efficient and codified it.  It’s like when old Hammurabi codified the laws of the land (including the famous eye-for-an-eye mentioned above).  He was likely just writing down and making easy what was already the general practice at the time.  Facebook isn’t making us have friends and social connections to people and products, it’s just formalizing it.

I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-Yeats

The train car jolted as we crossed a switch.  I was shaken from my dreams of Quebec so long ago and woke to a still-dark train.  There was still far to go.   I smiled.

Walkway lights and a few reading lamps were the only lights around the coach of Via Rail’s Ocean line to the east coast.  My companion was dead asleep next to me. I did my best to avoid jostling her as I stretched and tried to settle back in.  Sleep is key in transit, though you’ll still be drained on arrival no matter your intentions.  There’s just something about the world blowing by you so fast; it’s exhausting.  I let the sounds of the train lull me back to the dark.

When I was young, young-er anyway, the train lines mumbled

clickitey-clack

clickitey-clack.

I remember long train rides to Montreal, then America to visit my grandparents.  I loved the train.  We’d get our seats and I’d rush to the observation dome car, amazed at the 360-degree glass roof.  We’d watch the countryside roll by for hours.   Then back to our sleeper-class cars where the staff would have converted our seats to bunk beds.

Falling asleep to that

clickitey-clack

clickitey-clack

clickitey-clack.

Those were some of my favourite sleeps. Disappointing when morning came and we approached our destination.  The adventure was over.

I’ve never liked endings.

Now, a decade later, the new suspensions and noise dampening on the trains has left the coach cars much quieter.  But the rocking motion and hum of rails still pulls me back to half dreams and memory; takes me to my time in Katimavik, a time of mountains and love and excitement.; that beautiful time before goodbye.

If you’ve never been to the west coast of Canada, you haven’t seen nature as the designer intended; seemingly endless forests of impossible trees, there to remind us human that we are miniature and powerless in their ancient presence. The mountains hold dominion on the world as they loom over the land, like slumbering gods. Ocean beats incessant against rugged shores, providing transportation and livelihood to those who respect her, and mortal danger to those who don’t. It was against this backdrop, on one rainy night, that a surprising moment led to a relationship that would define the rest of our experience in the program.

We were up late. Talking. The rest had packed in for the night. Some of us had to be off to the national park we worked at in the morning, others had to be up to start their duties as house manager, keeping the house clean with food on the table.

Amanda told me about the intricacies and symbolism of a series of Pink Floyd songs she played. I don’t know music, but I’m a sucker for a good story well-told. To this day I’m not sure what changed that one night.  Maybe the stars were aligned.  Or maybe we just finally worked up the nerve.  In one second, just friends.  In the next, our eyes locked, then our lips.  I don’t remember either of us saying anything.  We both just knew.

These were the good times.  From then on we were simply ‘together’.  I loved her from the beginning, possibly longer.  That young, powerful love that feels – for lack of better words – inevitable.

When possible, we’d adjust the group work schedule so Amanda and I would have the same assignments. At the time, we were doing Predator/Prey surveys in the park. We’d hike the back trails of the Pacific Rim National Park looking for fresh kill sites or other signs (scat, lots of scat) of the wolves and bears in the area. The collected data was fed into a database of all the large predators in the region, along with their eating habits. I was a team leader by the end of the rotation and got to pick my team. Not exactly a romantic day at the office, trekking back roads and trails looking for death and feces. But it was challenging, and we were good at it. It meant we got to spend time together. And in a situation like this, where you know you’re getting on different planes in different directions in five to six months, time together… it’s worth everything.

There were adventures. More than I have time to write or even remember. Out in the woods on surveys. or zodiacing around the Broken Group Islands. Once we accidentally got too close to a bear (and I may have bear maced myself slightly). Days and days on beautiful beaches that stretched miles into the sunset, waking up at four in the morning to work in a bakery before it opened, preparing fresh pastries and breads. But maybe the best were the days we worked as house managers together, occasionally spending whole afternoons just lazing around on the patio reading and sipping tea. Not doing anything, just being… together.

Our relationship continued right through our stay in B.C., and on to our final location, Fort Albany in northern Ontario. We were sad to leave such a beautiful land, but worse for me was knowing that as we boarded that tiny plane to the coast of James Bay, we would only have a final three months together.

Time was barrelling ever forward as the world streaked by around us. A train in the darkness. Towards its final destination, and the end of the trip.

clickitey-clack

clickitey-clack.

I’ve never liked endings.

It was midnight in the province of Quebec. My train east was barreling forward, ever forward. I peered out the window into the warm summer night as we passed La Pocatiere, a town I lived in for three months. Memories from that old time, from that old me, reached through the dark and across time. I was drifting in and out of consciousness for hours. The train car was dimly-lit and rocking gently on the old steel rails as yellow cast incandescent lights sped past the windows.  I was in that strange and beautiful limbo between departure and arrival.  Body neither here nor there, mind wandering through my old stories.  The following is the one that came to mind that night.

We wouldn’t look back.  That was the deal.  I can’t remember when we made the decision, or who brought it up first.   It’s possible it was neither of us, and that we never actually talked about it.  Like so much of our short relationship, maybe we just knew all along what had to be done.  However it happened, as we stood there in the airport, holding each other for the last time, we knew that when we finally let go, it would be for the last time.

Our relationship was marked with an expiration date from the moment it started on that warm spring night in British Columbia so many years ago.  It was during my time with the Katimavik program, a nine month program that sends young people across Canada to do volunteer work in communities and get the life skills to be productive members of Canadian society.  My group of nine others and I lived in three communities for three months each, starting in Quebec at the same town that was passing by my train window.

La Pocatiere is near Riviere-du-Loup, along the St. Lawrence River.  Fall was ending as we began the program.  Winter was just moving into the small town, and it intended a long and harsh stay.  The cold in La Poc, on the shores of the storied river was something I, being from a more temperate coastal area, wasn’t ready for.  On windy days dry daggers of winter wind sliced easily through layers.  At night the fresh fallen snow would crystallize on the sidewalks and make a glittery path littered with diamonds sparkling in the streetlights.  I’d try to appreciate it for the 10 or 15 minutes before my face went numb.

Those same streetlights could be seen from the train as we pushed forward.  The train’s haunting whistle bellowed in the dark as we picked up speed and left La Pocatiere behind us.  I find train travel an apt metaphor for our lives.  You have a great view of what’s happening right now, in the moment, outside the window as the world flashes past.  You can remember what’s gone past, where you’ve come from.  But there are no forward facing windows for the lowly coach passenger.  You know where you’re supposed to be going. You know there is a track to be followed.  You can plan and schedule, and you can occasionally take peaks up the rails on long turns.  But the future is generally out of sight. It can be frustrating, or you can accept you’ve done all you can, and it’s now you’re in the hands of the Conductor.

In the train, I looked back to La Pocatiere.

I think it was against the frigid backdrop of that winter that I started to fall for Amanda.  It began as it always does for me, with complete ignorance that it was happening.  I remember my roommate at one point asking if I had a thing for her.  I flatly denied it, thinking I didn’t.  We all like to believe we have so much control over our emotions.  She was just a friend.  And then a good friend.  Suddenly someone we were opening up to, sharing things, even discovering things, about ourselves we hadn’t known before.  I found her easy to talk to.  She was funny and quick witted.  She was passionate about the things she believed in but would accept a well-argued point. She was cute and happy and could lighten my day with her mere presence.  I enjoyed her company and would occasionally  nudge group dynamics so we would spend time together.

But a couple?  Nah that’s crazy, as we’d tell others in the group.  Impossible.  Strictly speaking we weren’t even allowed.  The program had rules against any kind of ‘exclusive relationships’ within the group dynamic.  It makes a mess of things.  Think back to any group of friends you’ve had and what happens when two start dating. Generally the result is similar to an old adage involving a fan and some fecal matter. We knew this, we were trained in it.  And heaven knows the best way to keep young people from doing something is to forbid it outright.  Right?  I put any possibility of romance out of my head for the good of the group.

Until British Columbia. It was the next stop on our trip.  A respite from the chill of winter.

The train whistle blasted again.  Announcing its presence to the world.  ”I am.” it screams into the night, “I move” “I will soon be there”.  A warning and a promise.  The train pushed east to my home, as my memories drifted westward towards the sea and the past. Towards the place I’d fall in love.

Part 2 of 3 is here.
Part 3 of 3 will be posted on eventually.

This post is part of the series: Time, Travel. It’s the story of my train trip across Canada.  I return them now, years later.

(Special Note: This is one of the few posts that was actually written on the road.  I enjoy it, so I present it here, unaltered from one year ago.)

It was a nice day in Toronto, so I decided it would be a good idea to walk from where I’m staying all the way down Yonge Street to downtown.

For those of you who don’t know Yonge Street, it’s long.  Super long.  Deceptively long. Brain-hurtingly long.  There’s an expression that states ‘All roads lead to Rome’ or something. Yonge Street just leads to more Yonge Street.  The worst part is how straight it is.  Which is great if you’re a city planner or some a fan of mathematical elegance.  But for someone walking on it, all this means is that you can see where you’re going for a long, long time.

My journey started about 10 km from the waterfront.  Along the way I saw a wide range or shops and stores.  There are more items for purchase on that street, Horatio, than are drempt of in your philosophy.  Here’s a few of the things I came across.

There are corner stores and markets.  Churches and sex shops. Banks and nightclubs.  There was a Church of Scientology as well, almost indistinguishable on the outside from the English language school for Chinese people just up the street.  They are high-end antique shops and one place that advertised: “We make IDs. Holographic. Blue Light. Real IDs.” That same store also did tattoos apparently. I sampled neither.

One store I did patron was a ‘discount shop’ that never ended.  I went in what I thought was a small shop to buy a pen.  The aisles were small in an already narrow store.  They were filled with off brand CD players, alarm clocks, phone accessories, etc.  I went to the back where the store should end, and it kept going. Instead of a wall was an area the size of another small shop.  This one had blenders, tvs, and other small appliances.  The floors were different.  As if it had once been a different room and the shop had consumed it.  At it’s rear was again another space with a different floor.  It might had been my imagination but this one seemed wider.  Finally I found the pen I sought among a wall of office supplies.  The store kept going I think, but I didn’t want to be trapped there forever. I returned to the front of the store and paid my one dollar to a grumpy looking woman who was talking on a bluetooth earpiece in rapid-fire Chinese.

About mid-way, when I had passed my third subway stop I could have used, I started to wonder what had possessed me to decide to make the long walk.  It’s silly to tire yourself on the first day of any trip. But as mentioned previously, I could see my destination the whole way down the road. It was too tempting, and I just kept going.

Eventually I made it.  All the way to the water and the end (beginning) of the road.  They tell me there’s a plaque there that labels it as one of the longest roads in the world.  I can honestly say that I never saw that label, as I was too busy looking for a place to sit down and a cold drink.

What I ended up finding after my short rest was a massive fire drill, one of Canada’s most interesting breweries, some VIA Rail swag, and a taste of Chinese and Italian culture right in the heart of one of Canada’s most multicultural cities.

In all I walked over 16 kilometers, and I came across many stories. But those tales are for tomorrow.  For tonight I rest and recover, and try to convince my legs to forgive me for what I’ve done to them.

This post is part of the series: Time, Travel. It’s the story of my train trip across Canada.   I return them now, years later.

The routing of my trip is admittedly odd.  It came about from the restrictions of the events I wanted to hit up, and the rules of the ViaRail CanRailPass I was using.

The tickets.

First of all, this wouldn’t have been feasible without an awesome, underrated package from ViaRail.  The CanRailPass is modeled after the traditional EURAIL pass popular in Europe. The CanRailPass, at its base level gives you 7 one-way trips anywhere in the Via network as long as you use them in a 21 day period.  The cost was around $1000 for that package.  In comparison, a single one way ticket from Halifax to Vancouver at that time was also around $1000.

But I, being younger than 25 (and owning an ISIC card) received a discount, so my tickets were under $900.

For bonus points, if you’re traveling in the low-season (October-May) adult passes are $630, and youth are $570.

Pretty good deal if you want to explore this massive country, and have the time to do it properly.

The Routing.

The difficult part (or fun part depending on what you’re in to) is figuring out how to line up all these trips to different cities.  The trains don’t run on every line on every day.  Particularly across the prairies, where it only runs a few times a week.  I was left creating a massive spreadsheet of possible arrival and departure dates.  Iteration after iteration.

I also needed to line up with some events.  I had already bought Cirque du Soleil tickets in Montreal, and I wanted to meet up with my friend Lily Boisson, who would be living in Toronto at the beginning of my trip, and in Vancouver at the end of the trip (she has a pretty sweet job).

The original plan was go straight East to West.  Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg etc etc.  But I was forced to make it more confusing due to the timing. Instead it was straight to Toronto right away, before doubling back through Ottawa and Montreal, then heading West.

Then, Again.

So this time last year I was just settling into Toronto.  Which is a bit odd because I’m writing this from Toronto right now.  See, I’m in town for a conference, which just happens to line up exactly on the same dates I was here a year ago.  My job sent me here.  It’s a job I didn’t have on this day last year.  I wouldn’t have it for a few days.  I have it because of something that happened while I was here in Toronto.  Coincidences upon coincidences. Look forward to that story tomorrow evening.  In the morning I’ll tell you about the worst decision I made during the whole trip.

This post is part of the series: Time, Travel. It’s the story of my train trip across Canada.   I return them now, years later.

(Special Note: This is one of the few posts that was actually written on the road.  I enjoy it, so I present it here, unaltered from one year ago.)

“Here’s your ticket sir, you train will departing in…”

“Actually I’m going on a longer trip. Can I get my other tickets now? I have the booking reference numbers.”

“Sure, we can do that.  What’s you other number?”

“Actually, I have six.”

The ticket agent gave me a look.

“It’s a CanRailPass.”

He read off my destinations as the printer spat out the tickets.
“Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg…”
“Only two more.” I try to add helpfully.  There’s a line starting behind me.
“… Jasper and finally, Vancouver.  Well, enjoy your trip sir.”

A minute later a conductor called the stereotypical “All abooooaaard!” and the gates opened to the platform.  Passengers hugged their loved ones goodbye, porters and mechanics scurried about making last minutes checks, and staff waited at the steps to each of the cars directing passengers and checking their tickets. Coach passengers towards the front of the train, cabin passengers toward the rear.  It’s a scene that would look familiar to anyone traveling by train for the last hundred years.

That’s one of the great things about trains.  They’re timeless. This entire country was built on the back of the railroad so many years ago.  A thin steel ribbon binding the provinces together more than confederating documentation could hope to do alone.

And that’s one reason why I’m here,  on this train that is now speeding past the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, the traditional gateway to the continent’s interior.  I’m following the path of the Canadian Dream.  From sea to shining sea.  This morning I touched the Atlantic Ocean in Halifax (admittedly at the urging of my mother), in three weeks I’ll be at the Pacific.  Along the way I’ll be trying to figure out what holds this massive nation together; and how the train system, once the backbone of a nation, now seems to struggle in a world of super-highways and air travel.

The sun is setting as we continue to roll past the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Some passengers from the UK are sitting with a particularly talkative staff member as the water rolls by a few meters from the tracks. The Via Rail staffer has been wandering the cars for the last few hours looking for someone to engage him in conversation.

“There’s a beautiful spot coming up.  Sometimes we’ll see some seals sitting on the rocks or other things… Look. There.”

A large blue heron is lifting off from the water with a hurried grace only they seem capable of.

“He was spooked by the train,” says the conductor, and laughs and points to a house with a view looking out over the bay.  You can see clear to the mountains on the other side.

“That right there is my favourite house,” he says matter-of-factly.

The British couple seem confused.

“It has four sheds!  I could hide from my wife all day.  Just keep moving from shed to shed.”  You can tell he’s told this joke dozens of times, but he still laughs at it even if his audience doesn’t.  It’s more for him then them anyway.

The couple and the conductor don’t say much as else as they watch the rest of the sunset.

The train speeds on as darkness sets in.  Trees and towns and houses roll past the windows as the rumble of the rails lulls some passengers to sleep in the now darkened coach cars. Every once in a while you can hear the ghostly blast of the train’s main whistle cut through the night.

By morning we’ll be in Quebec.

A year can be a surprisingly long time.

One year ago I was graduating with a journalism degree from a small university.  I had no job lined up after graduation.  I’d applied at some newspapers, marketing firms, even with random companies in Halifax like FedEx (who still email me with openings from time to time).

It had been 6 years since I graduated high school.  In that time I had studied marketing, human psychology, four mediums of journalism (nearly inventing a fifth), geology, political science, philosophy, and written three papers on what it means to be a human in an age of unprecedented technological growth.  I was, by any reasonable measure, an educated man of this 21st century.

And I couldn’t get hired to even work in a warehouse.

So, when faced with this impending pressure to stay ‘on society’s track’ I did the only thing I could come up with.  I ran away.

A great, elaborate run it was.  But an escape nonetheless.  I decided to pull the trigger on this idea for a grand trip across the country that I’d been considering for years.  A train ride from sea to shining sea, totaling over 7000 kilometers.

I’d been across the country once before, on a similar type of escape.  After high school I was confused by my options of universities.  I didn’t know what I wanted to study, or why I would choose one place over the other to do it.  I read academic calendars, and flipped through viewbooks.  But the course listings were all Greek to me (except the Greek courses, which were Latin), and I knew enough about marketing to know viewbook imagery is about as truthful as fast food ads.  Unable to pick a university, or even decide why I would pick one, I signed up for the Katimavik program instead. Putting off my decision for at least a year.

Over 9 months on the Katimavik program I traveled to B.C., Quebec, and even a remote Northern community on James Bay.  I was a different, better person when I returned.  When I was back, I had more focus and was ready to make some mature decisions about my life.

Maybe this second, post-grad train trip was an attempt to recreate that.  Or maybe I just wanted to put off the decision again.

This time instead of 9 months, it would be 1.  But instead of 3 towns, along the way I would visit 8 major cities from coast to coast.  The route was Halifax > Toronto > Ottawa > Montreal > Winnipeg > Jasper > Vancouver > Victoria, then a flight back to Halifax.  I’d leave on June 12th and return on July 6th, just 3 days before my birthday.

When I left I had a plan to post everyday.  But this being the very definition of a whirlwind trip, I quickly ran out of time.  I decided to post about it when I returned, but as they say ‘no plan survives first contact with reality’.

I ran into even more problems a month later when I discovered I couldn’t find the hundreds of photos I’d taken during the trip.  I’d seen so much.  An entire country’s worth of content, missing.  Dejected doesn’t begin to describe it.

That is, until last week.

Last week I discovered my entire camera card unload.  It was sitting in a poorly labeled folder on the desktop of a computer I haven’t used in months (a hazard of my lifestyle).  Everything was there.

This fortuitous discovery has occurred at a coincidence-filled time.  This weekend is the date of my university’s graduation ceremonies.  My roommate and many of my friends will be leaving St. Thomas University behind just as I did 1 year ago.  We’re approaching the the 1 year anniversary of my trip, and (spoilers) the 1 year anniversary of my current job that I’ve just re-signed my contract for.  It’s a job I wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for my trip, and the people I shared the journey with.

But that, is all part of the story that comes next.  Starting on the the exact anniversary of my train leaving the Halifax station, I’ll be sharing my trip in realtime, just time-shifted 1 year later.  The tale is a good one; of new destinations, some great drinking stories, and decisions that would affect my whole life; and I hope it’s a story that I do justice.

I look forward to publishing it starting June 12th, 2012.

I’ve become obsessed with Ísland (or ‘Iceland’ as you call it) for some reason.  It might have something to do with the fact that my parents went there (without me) a little while ago.  It might have something to do with watching an episode of my favourite travel show where they visit the island nation.

If you’ve never heard of Iceland, well, what’s wrong with you?

The Land

It’s in the North Atlantic between the UK and Greenland.  It sits smack-dab on a tear in the surface of the planet’s crust.  Two continental plates have been ripping apart from each other for millions of years. Iceland is right in the middle of that rift.  The result is a land of volcanoes, glaciers, hot springs and icebergs.  Rugged beauty is the only phrasing that comes close to describing it.  It’s a true land of fire and ice.  The climate in winter isn’t even as bad as Canada’s for the most part.  Iceland sits on a massive sea current called the ‘thermal conveyor belt’.  It drives warm tropical water up the Atlantic Ocean.  It’s like the jet-stream but for the sea.  This current is what keeps European winters relatively mild compared to the freezing winds of the New World.  But where climate softens, the weather hardens.  Iceland is prone to drastic changes in weather as squalls sweep across the harsh landscape. Packing for any conditions is important.

The Country

The country has a population of around 300,000.  The language is Icelandic, but most people will understand and speak English. The currency is the Icelandic Krona or ‘ISK’ and converts about 1CAD – 120ISK. The economy, like many in the nearby EU has seen better days.  It’s unfortunate for them but makes it relatively cheap compared to travelling in North America or the EU.  Also, flights to Iceland are shorter (see:cheaper) for us on the East Coast than flying to Europe or even the western parts of Canada.  In the warmer seasons there are even direct flights from Halifax.

Inspired by Iceland

In a recent effort to boost the local tourism economy, especially after one of the volcanoes erupted, the government produced and released what I consider to be one of the best ad campaigns I’ve seen in a while.  It is titled ‘Inspired by Iceland’.  Part of the campaign was an event called ‘Iceland Hour’ where most of the country’s population took an hour out of their day to email and contact people they knew in other countries, and let them know why Iceland is awesome.  There was also a massive social media push where residents could write in and share why they are inspired by the island.  Here’s one of the impressive videos they produced combining people from the island and high-grade scenery footage.  Watch it now.

The trip

I’ve pretty much settled on visiting the island over New Year’s.  Now this does make it more expensive as there are no direct flights from Halifax, but Iceland -specifically Reykjavik – takes New Years pretty seriously.  You see there is an ancient tradition of having bonfires on New Year’s Eve. Mix that with no ban on personal fireworks, and you get quite the party throughout the northern-most capital in the world.  I’m hoping to combine that experience with ski-doos on the glacier, a visit to the volcano and lava tubes, and of course the hot springs that fuel the geysers and the famous Blue Lagoon.  I’m hoping for an adventure of a trip.

Unfortunately it’s September now, and I won’t have the time to get the financial and logistical things set up for this winter, so the planning is being done for New Years Eve.  I’m hoping this will mean I can make it as epic a trip as I feel the country deserves.

Anyway, if any of my friends are reading and have a vague interest in going, let me know over the next little while.  I’m not saying I’ll include you in my plans yet because so often I’ve had people back out on plans.  But we can still talk about concurrent trips as opposed to co-dependent trips.  The differences aren’t huge, but are important to me.

Anyway, that’s what’s up with me.

Side note. If you’ve never watched Departures, do it. Do it now.

Just finished editing my gallery from Grand Manan for the provincial tourism department.  Here’s one of my panoramas.  I’m starting to really enjoy them.

More pics at http://creatoralex.zenfolio.com/p972659801

My family took a trip up the largest mountain in the world to watch the sunset. It was great time, even though one of us blacked out from oxygen deprivation.

But I’ll start at the beginning.

You likely know by now that one of the basic characteristics of my family is the amount we travel.  If you need an introduction I recommend the piece Wanderlust I wrote a few years ago.  Somewhere early on in our group travels we collective fell for the islands of Hawaii.

The way my father explained it once, it has the atmosphere and climate of tropical paradise, but you can stop in at a Walmart if you really need to.  What he means is that it is an American state so there’s a certain familiarity. There are not safety or security issues that sadly plague many tropical locales.  We can use are normal ID and payment devices.  And there ‘usually’ isn’t a language divide.

That being said, it’s like no where in America I’ve ever been.  The Polynesian culture and outlook on life remains strong despite the fall of their kingdom.  There’s a relaxed atmosphere to daily life for the most part, even in the major cities.  Geographically the land is like Paradise… if Paradise was watched over by the fire god Pele in the form of the volcano.

There is no escaping the volcanic nature of the island chain.  It’s the only reason the archipelago exists.  Even the nature of the volcano system is odd.  Most volcanoes exist at the edge of seismic plates, like say, the Ring of Fire around the Pacific Ocean.  Hawaii though is right at the center of a massive plate.  Scientists are pretty sure there’s a hellishly-hot spot right below the plate.  Every once in a while (think millions of years) that hot-spot burns right through the plate and starts spitting magma onto the ocean floor.  The magma cools, and more shoots out the top. It makes layers and layers that slowly grow from the ocean floor.  Eventually some of these undersea volcanoes rise right to the water’s surface. Tada, new island.

The cool part is the plate is moving.  So after the mountain volcano moves off the hot-spot, a new one starts growing next to it.  It will end up making a long string of islands like the one above.  The ones on the left are older and dormant.  The ones on the right are newer.  The one on the end is ‘The Big Island’ of Hawaii and has one of the most active volcanoes in the world.

It was up one of these dormant volcano mountains that we traveled. Mauna Kea is it’s name, and it’s the largest and tallest mountain on this planet.  Most people think that’s Everest, and if you’re only measuring the part above the water they would be right.  But Mauna Kea starts from the sea-floor.  It is 10,000 m (33,000 ft) from base to tip.  Everest is only around 9,000 m (30,000 ft).  In terms of size, Everest is jagged and was shoved upright when two continents collided.  Mauna Kea is a ‘shield volcano’ and grew slowly like a dome.  It’s much more massive than any other mountain.

Even though most of it is underwater, the summit still reaches 4,000m (13,000 ft) above sea-level.  That’s high.  That’s above the clouds high.  That’s take-a-rest-on-the-way-up high.  That’s there’s-not-enough-oxygen-for-living high.

The trip up takes most of the day.  We get picked up at a parking lot that’s almost literally at sea-level.  Then the bus starts it’s long trek up the switchbacks.  It hardly seems like you’re climbing at all.  Because of the dome shape of this class of volcano, it’s a very slight incline.

As the hours roll by the landscape shifts subtly.  Slowly the tropical rain forest is replaced by trees and grasslands.  Then scrub-land, then desert conditions as we start to reach areas above where rainfall happens.  The temperature also starts to drop the farther we go up.  It could be 25 degrees at the beach, but you’d need a spring windbreaker as the desert sets in.

Onward and upward.

Eventually even the scrub disappears.  It’s just an alien rock-scape.  It looks a bit like what the Moon or Mars must look like, which is convenient, because this is where they brought the rovers for testing on Earth.

Clouds that used to be above us are now at eye level.  In another hour they are below us.  And it’s still getting colder. The driver of the bus heads to the rear storage and returns with a set of parkas.  They literally might be the only parkas on the whole island that tourists will ever see.

Then things start getting really weird.

Ahead of the bus a set of sparkling white domes are arranged along the peak.  They’re the covers for the massive radio satellite dishes that are peering out into the stars.

Hawaii, and Mauna Kea especially, are an amazing spot for people with giant telescopes.  At this altitude we’re well above the cloud layer.  The access is relatively easy thanks to the shape. And we’re smack-dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, as far away from light and electromagnetic interference from cities as humanly possible.  That’s the reason there are almost a dozen of freakishly out-of-place massive white eyeballs on this alien mountain.

Out of the bus we pile, all Parka’d up.  It’s really, really cold up there, even for a canuck like myself.  Everything also seems a little… difficult.  We were high enough in the atmosphere that there simply wasn’t enough oxygen around for our bodies to work properly.  We weren’t planning on staying long, but we were high enough that if we’d stayed up there too long un-acclimatization there could have been serious brain problems.

It’s hard to explain what oxygen deprivation feels like.  Everyone I talked to said it was a little different.  Besides things being more of an effort, I also noticed that my body would be slow to react.  It was like my limbs were further away if that made any sense.  It was also hard to focus on anything.  I’d find myself drifting off a bit.  Which is fine if you’re just hanging out watching the beautiful sunset, but I wouldn’t want to be driving or anything. Before leaving the bus our guide warned us to just walk, and warn him if we felt faint at all.

So of course, about 10 minutes after that, my brother tries to run for some reason that still isn’t clear.  One of his steps doesn’t land correctly and he goes down…. hard.  I didn’t think anything of it, and I walked over to help him out.  He had scraped himself up pretty bad on the moon rock ground.  When he noticed he was bleeding, his body did what it was designed to do.  It tried to increase his respiratory system in preparation to deal with the perceived danger. Heart rate increases, breathing speeds up, and adrenaline floods the system for an energy boost.   Unfortunately my brother’s flight or fight response was designed for an oxygen rich environment.  As a result in about 5 seconds of me getting to him, he starts to black out.  I kept him from hitting the dirt again, and me and my family get him to the guide, who is opening up the O2 tank.  I really think that if I hadn’t been trained as a lifeguard for years for people passing out, the shock of seeing that would have sent me into a panic mode as well.  Luckily it was all instinct and I stayed relaxed until he was treated.  He came back to his full faculties a few seconds later and was rewarded with one of the extra brownies from lunch.

After all the excitement we settled in to watch the sun set at last.   It was beyond gorgeous.  There’s a certain beauty assigned to any amazing sunset.  This one was that and more.  Amplified by a simple thought:

‘Look at where I am.’

‘I’m at the edge of normal human survivable environment between our world and the cold vacuum of space above. Pinned against the heavens by the planet’s tallest mountain. Which, by the way, was built over millions of years in a process fueled by the very living fire that emanates from this world’s core.’

Sometimes it’s nice to travel somewhere and do something.  But at that moment it was enough to just BE somewhere.

Anyone familiar with real-president Kennedy, or fictional-president Bartlett, will recognize this little story.

“Frank O’Connor, the Irish writer, tells in one of his books how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to try and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off their hats and tossed them over the wall–and then they had no choice but to follow them.”

Now Kennedy was talking about the space-race, but the beauty of this story is that it can apply to anything.  Every trip has a moment like this.  But for different people it comes at different times. That point where you fully commit to a plan could be when you book your impossible-to-refund tickets.  It could be when it starts to sink in that you’re about to travel as you pack.  For some anxious (obnoxious) people, even the moment when the plane is taxiing away is still not too late to bail-out.

My ‘cap over the wall’ was when I bought a Cirque du Soleil ticket months ago.  While this cross country trip was something I’ve wanted to do for a while, things kept coming up, plans kept changing, and it kept getting pushed back.  Finally a narrow window opened up between my schooling ending, and careers beginning.  Another opportunity like this might not come by for years after I jump into the workforce proper.

I sat down in one six hour logistical planning session that would put some military operations to shame.  Every possible schedule for six train trips between seven cities spanning the width of a continent creates an astounding cascade of iterations.

Spreadsheets were involved, as well as a dozen or so digital calendars.  Slowly, as my mother taught me, I started pruning the plans that were impossible.  Sherlock Holmes’ system of deduction says: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” In the same way, once you eliminate every impossible routing, you’re left with your trip.

Unfortunately, I still had five options.  I needed something to nail it down to.  I chose the Cirque show as something that was required to see.  I pulled the trigger on a good seat for a show that night.  My cap was over the wall. That left only one travel option, everything else would be figured out because… well, it had to be.

Up until that first booking, everything was in flux.  The future path of my whole summer was thrown into a weird schrodinger-esque confusion. My trip was both dead and alive at the same time (It’s a quantum physics thing, look it up). But after ordering the show ticket everything finally started moving forward.

So that’s my advice.  If you’re on the edge of a decision, if you can can’t bring yourself to commit, if you’re having trouble doing something you really want to do; just put yourself in a position where you can’t help but continue.  You’ll either succeed beautifully, or you’ll fail.  And you’d be amazed how clear and easy things get once the possibility of real failure is on the table.
Yes, it can be scary, but that’s what good travel should be sometimes.  We do this for the unknown, for the excitement, and for the new things we’re forced to achieve and experience.

So throw your caps.

First of all, calling an academic program a ‘programme’ as a marketing technique is silly.

Stop it.

Anyway.  I used to be a student of the journalism program at St. Thomas University.  Well, I started off as just a student.  I’m a technophile.  An unfortunately rare breed at a small liberal arts university.  Even more rare within the ~30 student/year j-school.  As the lone techie in the crowd I ended up tasked the balance of the department’s web-based upgrades for the better part of three years.

It was fun.  I all but created the web presence for the student paper.  I got to rebuild their workflow for the print edition and gave them the tools to have a separate and powerful web edition of the publication.   The skillset I developed led to the creation of the NB-Beacon.  It exists as the primary news presentation site for all the in-class work done by the fourth-year students.  I managed other online sites for different classes and tried where I could to teach classmates some of the basics of this new sphere of journalism.

But, like any institution, universities are inherently averse to change.  New things are scary and must be approached with glacial caution.  Having grown up surrounded by kaos that is the interwebs, I didn’t take well to the set pace.

I’d made my slow changes.  Pushed them all at the pace I thought they could handle in a direction that hopefully was out of the analog caves.  But at some point you inevitably reach that Gandalf of stubbornness and you can proceed no further (Yes, I realize in that particular analogy I end up being the Balrog).

In December 2010 I was working a particularly dull shift at the j-school equipment room, checking cameras and recorders in and out for the students.  X-Mas break was starting, and most people were already gone.  To combat my boredom I decided to imagine what the web-presence for the journalism department would look like if I started entirely from scratch.   The pondering led to pacing and muttering. Pacing and muttering led to doodling.  Doodling led to a filling a 4×10 foot whiteboard.  By the end of the evening I stepped back and this is what I had come up with:

The basics

For anything to work, first we’d need a domain name where it all can live.  It would be something simple and generic like STU-Journalism.ca and/or STU-J.ca.

On that domain we build a WordPress Network. Now this is different than a normal wordpress installation.    When you install wordpress it creates one website and database that runs off one install of the wordpress files.   With a WordPress Network we can run a large number of different sites off that single set of wordpress files.  The reason for this becomes important later on when we get to how the students use it.

The sites:

3rd Year reporting sites

The current program(!) is structured so that students get an intro to everything in 2nd year, and in 3rd year they produce at least two kinds of content in either Print (text), Radio (audio), or TV (video).  Some students take all three courses full year courses, but it’s rare.  To that end we would have three distinct publication portals.  One for each of the classes.

The design of the websites would play to their respective media.  The Print site, Print.STU-J.ca, would be heavily texted based and use proper typography.  TV.STU-J.ca would focusing on embedded video clips.  Radio.STU-J.ca would use embedded audio players and also allow for subscriptions to the show via iTunes (long overdue).

And since these sites are living on the same WP Network. we can do a neat trick that will display the top news stories from the other sites somewhere on each of these sites.  It would allow a level of cross pollination for the students, and demonstrate the multi-media approach the school takes.

(Note: This would also make it easy to include a 4th site for Photojournalism, a discipline sadly ignored by the program lately)

Academic sites

The academic classes within the program can jump on board as well.   It’s a step the Reporting 2.0 class already does at a lower level.  All their assignments are posted on the site.  Online discussion and critiques are encouraged.  All the students have a chance to learn from the research and opinions of all the other students.

Why not bring that level of openness and knowledge sharing to the other classes as well.?

FreeSpeech.STU-J.ca could be where that 4th year seminar class publicly presents and discusses the major Free Speech issues facing our society.  Not only does it allow for new ways to present the info, but it can be used as a recruiting tool as the STU brand spreads across the web with the better posts.

Surely that’s a better use of the academic articles we’ve created, as opposed to gathering dust in some professor’s desk for decades.

The Beacon

The NB Beacon would stay relatively independent.  There’s a benefit to its brand being separated from the rest of the in-class work done in the rest of the program (just ask the students who were told this year by the Fredericton Police that they weren’t real reporters because they were writing for the Beacon).

The site would of course get a front- and back-end upgrade, as well as a system that would make it easier for the 4th year editors to easily pull (good) content from the 3rd year sites.  The Beacon would also incorporate some of the advanced features, including the ability to produce podcasts (of say, daily/weekly brief news updates).

We’d also run the full Google Apps suite on the Beacon domain.  Giving all the reporters, editors, and producers access to shared calendars, shared document storage, new ****@NBBeacon.ca email addresses, etc; all living in the cloud so students could work and keep in contact from anywhere.   It’s a system that’s tested and proven at the Aquinian already.  The new email addresses not only spread brand awareness across to anyone students contact, but add an air of legitimacy a @stu.ca email address lacks when you’re asking for an interview.

Portfolio sites

Every student in the program is expected to produce a portfolio site to help them get jobs when it’s over.   Why not let this system do the hard work for them?

Ok, so with the WP Network we can pull from across the network.   So change the portfolio themes (a group of them that we’d prebuild for the students, giving them some options) to automatically pull their posts in from across the ENTIRE network.  Then you have one-stop shopping for every TV, Print, Radio, Photo, Beacon story you’ve done in your time at the school.

And with the cross-network controls of the WP Network a single super-admin could take care of all the upgrading of plugins and themes.  The individual students would only need a base understanding of the back-end.  It makes it a lot easier for the non-techies.  It also makes it easier for technical support.  Instead of advising 30 students to make a change to the files, and watching many of them fail at it, the super-admin could change the theme file directly and every other site will get updated.

(Note: the coding for this section is technical and while doable, is just outside my reach right now.  This likely would be part of a second-stage release.)

Making it teachable

But what if students want more control, and want to gain those technical skills that will dramatically increase their employability?  We can do that too.

Managing a network this size would take a considerable amount of time and energy.  So the plan would be to pick two/three students from each class each semester and start giving them minor training on the tech side (“come to the tech side Luke”).   These students would end up being the admins for their respective classes.  It could count as an assignment or something.

In full-year courses these students would get rotated out at the Christmas break, allowing new students to get a chance.  Across the whole network there could be around 25-30 a year getting technical training.

The class admins would start the year with training in basic html fixes, CMS site monitoring, file management, how to access and interpret Analytics data, etc.  All the basic skills to allow them to function as a temporary webmaster.  As their fellow students find new and interesting ways to break things they will learn the systems in the best possible way: organically.  As the year went on, and depending on the groups and their interest, they could move to advanced html, style sheets, advanced WordPress tricks, themeing, mobile sites, etc.

Students get empowered and much more employable.  Super-Admin gets a smaller workload as they don’t have to deal with the small issues.  The program gets a bank of students with a basic level of tech skills (that it so desperately needs) so the system can keep running even after people move on.  Win-win-win.

Conclusion

That’s what I built in my head.  I don’t know how long it was sitting there in pieces, but it came out on the whiteboard almost fully formed a year ago.  There are other parts of it as well.  Single log-ins across the network, video podcasts to replicate real news shows, live-streams from mobile devices, technical tricks you can do with a Network.  But for now I think that 1600 wrd intro is enough.

I’m disappointed I never got to a point where it was reasonable to pitch it, let alone implement it.  Would have been fun.

Here’s the Aquinian student newspaper front pages for the first half of the 2010-2011 academic year.  This came after a pretty extensive redesign over the summer. Click here for a sample of the paper before the redesign.

Another, more minor redesign took place over the winter break after this semester.  I’ll link to those as soon as they are processed.

I finally got around to really customizing my dual monitor setup on the new desktop.

After a toolbar extender (UltraMon) and some some screen calibrations I really wanted a background that made use of the full 3200 pixels of horizontal space.

I haven’t processed any photos from Hawaii that will work yet, and a search through stock images turned up nothing inspiring at that width.  So I turned to photoshop for an original creation.

I’ve made some abstracts before, years ago.  The system I use ensures that no two images will every be the same. In fact.  I often don’t have any idea what they will look like when I start, it’s a lot of random processes.

Here’s an old one I made back in highschool:

I really like the colour mixes in it, but it’s a little busy for late-night computing.

I limited myself of a base blue color and tweaked around from there.  The final product looks very ocean like to me.

Here’s the steps.

Click here for the fullrez image (1mb)

I used to live in the Holy Cross House residence on the STU campus.  That’s why I was happy to accept a contract to do the design for their campus dance party coming up soon.

Though the house is the smallest one on campus, this party they’ve run for the last 3 years is usually the biggest and most successful one run by any single house.  Years ago when I helped organize the first one, we not only paid to have cheaper drinks for everyone, and rented the biggest DJ in the city, but we walked away with hundreds of dollars in profit that we donated to charity.  By comparison, a lot of other houses lose money.

The theme is a graffiti party.  Essentially you wear a white shirt, people have markers, they write on your shirt.  The next morning you wake up and read all the craziness that went on and get to keep a memento.  There are great lights, and glowsticks on the ceiling, and banging beats.  It has a very ‘rave’ feel to it.  That’s what I wanted to capture in the poster design.

I started with a base photo from a Welcome Week concert I shot years ago.

Next I had to remove all the things on the stage.  Wouldn’t want to give the impression of a live band.  Magic Wand in PhotoShop let me pull the stage out, and then I just overexposed till everything went white.

Then I had to give myself more room for text on the bottom of the photo, so a simple black gradient bleeds into the picture from the bottom. Then a crop

The headline font is a downloaded one called Chiller.  It’s not listed anywhere as a graffiti font.  Rather, it’s supposed to look like blood streaks.  I used it because I thought the graffiti fonts all overdid it and were unreadable.

The colour needed to pop hard against both a black and white background. So it was into the neons I went.  I was just thinking any colour I’ve seen on safety gear.  It works for a reason.  Green just fit.  A goldish outerglow gives it even more pop.

The subhead text is all Bell Gothic Std on bold.  I’m a fan of its lines.  To me it feels professional but modern.  My client sent me a lot of copy for the body text, so I had to cut it down to the exact essentials.  Nothing turns people off more than text walls.  Big deal items (the DJ and the Bar) got my freakish green treatment

I was pretty much done at that point, but one thing was still bothering me.  It seems silly, but the layering on the text over the stage seemed unnatural.  So I went back and cut out the audience and stage items in 3 places and had them overlap the main headline text.  You can see two places that happened here:

After that I was happy and presented it to my client.  They approved after one copy change (always have 2 pairs eyes on your copy) and the posters were printed and distributed in less than 24 hours.

Here’s the final product:

I’ve been working on the Aquinian site for about 2 years now.

Today I wanted to check to see how the site is did during first semester, compared to last year at the same time.  Here is what I found out:

Even though I keep calling it “Linked for Literature” I managed to finally get another STU micro-site functional, if not terribly pretty.

Linked for Literacy is a website for one of the academic departments at STU that is setting up a series of  conferences this year focused on literacy.  Throughout the year they will also have High School students mentor Middle School students on literacy projects.

Functionality

The website needed to do three main things.

1. Tell people about the project.   Half the challenge of this endeavor is getting people (parents and educators) interested in it.  A few static pages give basic information on what Linked for Lit is and what the conferences are for.

2. Weekly content.  During the the course of the mentoring, the website will serve as a distribution point for readings, poems and other literature that the students will study and teach.  Wordpress is great at dynamic content because of its blogging routes.  The Linked 4 Lit manager can even set all the content up at once with different posting dates, and the content will appear automatically throughout the months.

3. Registration.  This was actually a late addition by the client.  They needed a registration system that would allow teachers to sign their classes up online.  Since we didn’t anticipate a huge number of classes taking part ( a few dozen I guessed) I decided to set up what is essentially an elaborate ’contact us’ page with the popular WordPress plugin ‘Contact Form 7′.  It’s wonderfully customizable and allows you to generate tags for anything from an email verification to a drop down box of options.  The whole thing gets emailed right to the manager.  It was really between this and a Google Docs Form that would keep a spreadsheet of all the entered information.  We didn’t go that way because this didn’t call for something so database-y.

Design

I didn’t get the approved design details from the university’s communication office when I soft-launched the site (the client was pushing for a quick delivery because the event is coming up fast), so I had to drop my own design elements in and hope for the best.

The site is built on the highly workable wordpress theme ‘Twenty-Ten’ which was designed by the wordpress guys to me very coder friendly and have all the new WordPress 3.0 features built in already.  This includes stuff like simple background and headers, and custom navbars.  It’s a great place to start for anyone just learning templating, or anyone who doesn’t want to put a lot work into the code.   I’m pretty sure I didn’t even touch the CSS sheets once during this project.  Everything was done through menus or the theme editor right in the wordpress admin pages.

Since this is a STU website, I wanted to keep a little bit of consistency with their site, so I included their pretty woodstain background.

Then I needed a custom header so I played with Photoshop for a while and some pictures of old books. I was looking for something that would kind of serve as  a link between the old-fashioned world of dead-tree books that literacy people love so much, and show the digitization of the medium.  I don’t know if that’s what I got, but I still think it looks pretty cool.

After that I was really just focused on setting up all the custom navbar stuff, putting some teasers in the sidebar, and cleaning out the footer.

Until I get some more design to play off of, this is what I’ve got.   It’s certainly not terrible, but no where near inspired…  yet.

St. Thomas University offers almost no courses in design, and certainly none in journalism related design.  Since I enjoy to present content, and not just produce it, I’ve had to turn to my own projects to learn anything valuable.

The first foray

It started with STU Info.  A small blog, hosted on WordPress.com, that had a very simple goal.  At the time, no one on campus was doing real breaking news.  An untapped market lay before me.

The student newspaper was a weekly publication, assignments on Monday, content in on Saturday, hits the news stands Tuesday.  The stories it told, save a few timeless entries, were days old at best and a week old at the worst.

The campus radio station did no better, as a source of news it was almost completely ignored by students of St. Thomas University.  Its small forays into social media were weak and lacked focus (something I’ll discuss more later).

No one was providing students at St. Thomas with information on what was currently happening.  Facebook streams were more useful for up to date content.

I wanted to change that.  I decided to buy the domain name www.stuinfo.ca and present to students that information.  The goal of the site was not hard-hitting investigative journalism (not at first).  In fact, I had no interest in even doing any kind of analysis.  Pure information was all I wanted.  Were classes cancelled that day, where is the exam schedule, what’s the special supper at the cafeteria?  All questions that people were asking, and I could answer.

Lesson: Answer the questions people are asking.

The site built up over time.  I started posting more content, more often.  The design of the site kept me constantly busy.  I taught myself HTML code for better links.  I learned how to implement Javascript for fancier page items.  I even started learning PHP and CSS code for deeper and more personal control over the site.

Most importantly I got to practise with deep social networking integration.  Keeping with the idea ‘meet you users where they are’, I leveraged Facebook whenever possible as a marketing/distribution tool.  It worked perfectly.  Around 50 per cent of my traffic came from Facebook redirections.  It was a skill very useful with my later projects.

Lesson: Present your content where
your readers are spending time.

While I worked away,I learned by seeing something I wanted to try, attempting it, breaking the site, doing research, and fixing it myself.  Every mistake was an opportunity that I (and my site) grew from.  Good old fashioned learning that seems forgotten in our university system.

Lesson: Find things you like,
learn how to do them (better)

In a few short months I had easily overtaken the student newspaper’s website in reader traffic.  By the end of the school year (I had only started STUInfo in January) 100-500 unique hits a day.  Not bad for a school of our size.  But I wanted more.

Towards the end of the year I started a complete redesign of the project.  Not just a coding redesign.  But a complete rebuild from concept to creation to control.  STUInfo was growing beyond what it was, and needed a more substantial framework to build itself on.

Over two days I did nothing else but sit, and think, and sketch organizational flowcharts. What came out the other end was affectionately known only as ‘The Blueprint’.  It was a map of a large network of users from all different areas of campus.  There would be resident students and student government, and even a place for the administration.  All would contribute information.  It was designed to be the information hub of the university.  It wouldn’t really be ‘in competition’ with the student newspaper, because I was simply playing on a different field.

Unfortunately two things happened that killed the project.  The first was that I had failed my first university class ever.  A Canadian Politics class.  I had been devoting too much of time to non-school related activities and had paid the price.

The second thing that happened was that the student newspaper I was poised to supplant hired me.

The Aquinian

It should be noted that when I started working for the Aquinian its online presence was not acceptable.  It had been at one time.  But the Internet grows up fast, and unless you have a web-designer constantly keeping pace, things get stale fast.

I decided right away to start from scratch.  I purchased some server space off-campus and started to line up my applications to start creating a shiny new website.

At first I almost didn’t use my tried-and-trusted WordPress.  The Canadian University Press was promoting their own online content management system at the time.  It was called HotInk.  They were pushing student newspapers (at least the larger ones) to adopt their new system.  After some research into the capabilities of HotInk, I decided that it was a neat program, but I was already past the level of hand-holding that they were offering.  Wordpress exceeds HotInk’s abilities in most cases, and has a massive community of users and plug-in designers.   I went with WordPress.

Lesson:Use the service for features what it can provide you,
not just the one that is ‘cool’  at the time

My next step was to buy some server space off campus (I take the meaning of ‘independent student newspaper’ literally), and prepped my self for a long day.

theAQ.net 1.0

In my first round of coding I sat down for about 14 hours straight.  From a blank server I did a complete install of the WordPress system, loaded a professionally designed theme I had purchased, and did a complete customization of all the features to fit our needs.  After a few days of testing the site was ready to go.  It just needed content.

I also took the time to do a little re-branding.  On the Internet, elegance is king.  While ‘The Wall Street Journal’ looks great in massive letters on a masthead, there is a reason they use online.wsj.com for their website.  In that same vein, I decided it would be best if we went with the simpler theAQ.net when discussing the online content.

Lesson: Elegance is king

The website header mirrors the logo and font faces used in the print edition.  As much as theAQ.net was a new entity, it was still trading on long term name of the Aquinian print edition.  It was very important to keep the branding consistent, yet dynamic enough to still be attractive in this new medium.

Lesson: Branding recognition is important.
But remember there’s still room for fun within familiarity.

This new website was an important step. It accomplished everything the old website could do and more.  We added new multimedia features.  theAQ.net was now capable of displaying video content, play audio stories, and presented a prominent position for good photojournalism.  The Google Analytics tracking system was installed, allowing us to better gauge who was viewing our content when.

The 1.0 edition of the website also added the ability to receive weekly email updates from theAQ.net, and and RSS feed that would keep feedreaders/aggregators constantly updated with our content.

We finally had the backbone of a functioning online journalism source.  We officialy were as capable as any HotInk powered website.  Next came the fun stuff.

theAQ.net 2.0

Most of the 2.0 upgrade came early in the 2009-2010 school year. The most important part of this next step was the addition of infection.

Consider this quote from Mashable’s Pete Cashmore in his CNN column called ‘How Facebook won the web’:

“Google dominated the web in the era of interlinked Web pages. Every link from one Web site to another counted as a vote, determining the most relevant pages for any search term. The result: An unbeatable search engine.

“Except that links between Web pages are no longer the most abundant source of relevant recommendations — instead, people are sharing links with friends on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Now Google is paying those sites for access to public updates, but it lacks key data that would allow true personalization of search results. Google doesn’t have a complete list of your friends, combined with a list of their interests. Facebook does.

This is also a major shift for news sites. With people are getting most of their daily content from things their friends recommend to them, the way news is marketed must change as well.

In a print edition of a newspaper, you get the whole paper, and you usually skim through the whole paper.  It’s all there in front of you.

With online journalism it’s so much easier to skip past stories that don’t catch your eye right away.  Readers online generally read 1-2 stories on a site.  It’s rarely more than 3.

What’s important for designers is to make it easy for users to share their content with their friends and family using any network of their choosing.

We have to make it as easy as possible for users to share what is on our site with the anyone and everyone.  Links to Share stories on Facebook, tweet them on Twitter, and email them to friends and family were added to every single story page.

Later the system would be adjusted to include Digg and StumbleUpon as sharing options.  The share buttons now float outside the story and scroll down with the reader, giving them the opportunity to share at any point in the story.

theAQ.net.2.5

Social networks can also be used as publishing tools, to push out content.

The 2.5 upgrade automated this practise.  Any time a story is published a tweet is automatically sent out on the Aquinian twitter account.  It requires no extra effort on the part of the editors.

A similar system was set up for Facebook at the time, with every post being shared on the Aquinian Facebook Fan Page.  Anyone who was a fan of the page would find the story appear in their news stream.   This became a problem when readers started to complain of the Aquinian Fan Page spamming their accounts.  When many udpates were posted at the same time, it would create a whole stream of automated posts.

Users of Twitter are used to such streams, Facebook users are not.

The automatic Facebook publishing has since been disabled.  Now stories are selected by the Web editor for publication on Facebook.

Lesson: Different Social networks are used for different things,
learn what works where, and tailor your publication strategy accordingly

This style of updating was eventually adopted by many other student newspapers in the region, including the Brunswickan at the end of the school year.

theAQ.net.2.7

This is one of two minor updates that have occurred just recently.  In an effort to facilitate discussion on the stories we produce, I upgraded the comment board system for every story.  Not users have the option of signing into our site with anyone of four different types of account.  This makes it easier for people to not only talk about what we’re writing about, but to move away from the ugly mask of anonymity.

The Disqus system used also allows readers to automatically share what they are commenting about on Twitter and Facebook as a bonus traffic source.

theAQ.net.2.9 (where we are now)

I’ve always been an information super-consumer.  I’ve never had a problems with lots of things going on at once.  So unfortunately I was blind for some time to a website killer that was creeping up on me: Clutter.

With all the new features I had added, the site itself was getting a bit hard on they eyes and the brain.  It took a few complaints for me to notice it, but now I do.  I’ve been working hard to reduce that clutter.  Here are a few main points.

• Overall font size shrunk to reduce all elements on the page
• On front page
  • Reduction of amount of stories on front page.
  • Clear section delineation on front page.
  • Number of widgets on front page cut by 50 per cent
• On story pages:
  • Bigger headlines,
  • More room for stories
  • Bigger/better pictures
  • removal of one of the sidebars
  • All ‘share’ buttons moved off the layout area to a floating bar.

Lesson: Clutter is bad, in writing and in design. Cut useless content/features mercilessly.

theAQ.net.3.X (Where we are going)

There are a few plans for next year.  Some big, some small.  If even half are completed we will cement our position as one of the most advanced student newspaper websites in the country.

I’ve already completed one task.  Switching the entire Aquinian Team over the Google Apps suite of applications, giving them there own email address (@theaq.net), a shared calendar system to plan stories, a shared document bank to allow multiple users to edit a story to speed production, and a shared address book so we can always find an access.  Oh and did I mention it exists ‘on the cloud’ so it can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection, and any time.

Some ideas include:

• Improve readability
• Train editors in online writing and formatting to aid in the creation of online exclusive multimedia content.
• A weekly video rundown of the top stories, or a podcast of the same topic.
• Using new Facebook tools to suggest to our readers stories based on the kind of stories their friends have read and liked.
• Partnering with local musician groups, theatre companies, movie theatres, galleries etc to provide a self-updating Events Listing for the Arts & Entertainment section.
• Providing an online restaurant menu catalogue to drive users to our site.
• Live video streaming of university sporting events (especially those not covered regularly.)

But the biggest addition I’d like to make is on that started me on this whole journey in the first place: More, smaller content.  We need reasons why people will not only visit, but visit day after day.  We need to provide the information people need on campus.  Sometimes that means large newspaper article length pieces of good writing.  But we have to understand that sometimes that means a quick 50 word briefs about how a fire alarm has gone off (again) in Rigby, or what changes Residence Life is making to the move-out policy, or the latest deals for students at the movie theatres.

It may not be as hard-hitting or prestigious, but it’s still part of the role I feel we should be playing on campus.

With that in mind I will likely be spearheading a new project with theAQ called theAQ.NOW.

I’m still in the middle setting up the infrastructure, but in the end I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up going back to ‘The Blueprint’ for ideas.

Lesson: Never throw out ideas

Lesson: Evolve. Always.

In 2009 my family and I visited Australia, this is the story of my visit to Uluru in the middle of the Australian Outback.

Driving up to Uluru takes about 45 minutes, but you can see it the whole way.

It’s hard to explain how much nothing there really is in the Australian Outback. It’s an amazing amount of nothing. Like, if there was that much ‘something’ you’d look at it and think “There’s no way there should be that much something.” It’s that empty.

Only the most generous people would call the area ‘scrubland.’ Small bushes and grasses exist in patches dotting the hard, sand-swept landscape. The air is so warm and dry during the day it would feel like a blast furnace if there was ever any wind. But there is no wind. Weather is rare around Uluru. Once we asked a local when the rainy season was. He laughed and asked, “What year?”

It’s that backdrop of desolation that makes Uluru so impressive. In a land that’s so devoid of anything, the monolithic Uluru rock formation stands over 1,000 feet (almost 100 stories tall). It’s like a mountainous island in a sea of sand. You can see its massive red sides from miles away.

As we pulled into the parking lot, I remember thinking it was no wonder that the first humans, thousands of years ago, thought it was the work of the gods. There’s something about its existence that seems ridiculous and magical at the same time.

The rock isn’t the only thing out there these days. The rock and its surroundings have been converted into a national park. There’s a toll booth to enter the area. Roads and parking lots surround Uluru, so that tourists can get a view of the rock from all angles. There’s even a walking path that climbs the rock itself.

Climbing Uluru, or ‘Ayer’s Rock’ as the white-folk named it (Australia had a white-only immigration policy until the 1970′s), has become a major tourist trap. Some people put it on the same list as going behind Niagara Falls, or seeing the Grand Canyon, as something they have to do in life.

The Aboriginals (or as my father insisted on calling them ‘the Originals’) have a completely different view of the purpose and importance of Uluru.

Our tour guide on the day we visited Uluru was an Aborigine woman, a descendant of the people that used call the caves of Uluru their home.

The heat didn’t seem to bother her; she wore an old fleece sweater and a raggedy toque. She spoke no English at all; only her ancient native-tongue.

We had a young white man as an interpreter for our tour around the rock. It wouldn’t be right to call him a translator. We quickly learned that there were concepts in the Aborigine culture that were so foreign to us that it took almost 10 minutes to explain something they have one word for.

To the Aborigine people Uluru is a home and sacred ground.

Every cave and curve in the rock has a meaning or story behind it. Some caves were the homes of the young men and women. Some were teaching areas where hundreds of lessons and stories could still be seen in hieroglyphs etched into the wall.

Our guide showed us one area that we were forbidden to take pictures of, as it would be considered ‘stealing the knowledge’ of the area. We had not learned the introductory lessons and customs of their people, so we had no right to the more advanced teachings that existed in the sacred areas.

Someone asked our guide how the Aborigine felt about people walking on Uluru.

She explained, through the interpreter, that in her culture it was considered sacrilege. Even the elders and religious leaders would only venture up to the top of Uluru for special religious events.

Thanks to a questionable contract signing between the Aborigine and the government decades ago, thousands of tourists now climb the rock every year. It’s not an easy climb. There’s only one guide rope leading up the steep, slippery side. It’s a 45 climb to the flat surface on top.

On top there are no facilities, no safety equipment, no anything. The sides of Uluru are very steep in places, leading to a very sudden 1,000 foot drop to your death.

And people do die; about one person a year on average. Some fall to their death, other die of heart-attack from the strenuous activity in the desert heat.

I was amazed to learn that the Aborigine people aren’t angry about the blatant sacrilege, nor the needless waste of human life.

Our interpreter explained the general feeling isn’t anger, but sadness. The Aborigine aren’t sad for the people who die. Those people were given the information and made their choice. They’re sad for the families and loved ones that have to feel the pain of losing someone they love, for nothing.

That is a major part of the culture there. They will not tell people what to do. They don’t feel they have the right. They will only present the information and let people make their own choices in life.

To that end, right in front of the path that leads from the parking lot to Uluru is a sign. It urges people not to climb the rock. It tells them their death is a possibility, and what they are doing is considered wrong by people who lived there for almost 10,000 years.

That day I watched a few dozen people walk past that sign without a second glance. Some of them event had young children in tow.

Our tour guide wouldn’t even look at them.

This piece originally appeared in The Aquinian in early 2009.

I know the streets of downtown Waikiki as well as I know Fredericton, better even.  I have vivid childhood memories playing with toy cars in at a chateau in southern France.  Sometimes I feel more at home in airports than I ever do in my house.  For the last 20 years of my life I’ve been a traveler.  It’s something I’ve always been, and hopefully will always be.

I didn’t grow up like most people I know.  My parents took me on an international trip for the first time before my first birthday.  They haven’t let up since then.

My parents were travelers long before they even considered my existence.  My father, a student at the prestigious M.I.T., left his school and his country to live and learn in France.  Why France?  To this day I’m not sure, though I suspect it has something to do with the quality of their food and their wine.

It was in France he met my mother, a gifted Computer Sciences student at UNB.  She once claimed she used to help with people’s calculus homework in exchange for drinks at the bar.  I have no proof of this, but no reasonable reason to be able to deny it.

They were both enrolled in classes at a school there.  Apparently they hit it off right away.

“Who knew Canadian girls could be so much fun?” my father now jokes.

They wandered together for years.  All around Europe, across Canada and the United States (in a van), and other trips I’m sure I’ve never heard of.  My father mentioned off-hand one day that they once slept for the night in a phone booth in Eastern Europe.

These were the people I, and later my brother, were born to.  We only slowed them down a little bit.  We’ve made family trips all around this continent, Europe, the Bahamas, and the Hawaiian Islands several times.  We’ve travelled in everything from cramped station wagons, dozens of planes, ferries, and of course the train.

Air travel has always been a personal favourite.  Not so much the rushing around and panicking that goes on in any airport, but the moment after you pull away from the gate and switch to on-board power.  That’s the moment when it all stops being your problem.  You’ve made it on the plane, and for the next 30 minutes, or 10 hours, it’s up to the pilots and the aircrew to do the work.  That’s something I learned from my father:  How to just relax and enjoy the trip.

I wouldn’t miss a take-off for the world.  While taxiing you can hear and almost feel the pilots running through their checklist.  Winches tighten shut to seal the plane.  Pneumatics throughout the great aluminum-alloy beast whir and hum as it literally stretches its wings in anticipation.

Then all things go quiet as the plane lines up on the three mile runway.  The flight crew has finished their spiel and everyone is strapped in tight.  There’s an eerie silence from the passengers as we come to a complete stop.

The pilot cranks the throttle.

There’s something sickly thrilling about being shoved into your seat by 50,000 pounds of pure explosive force.  The G-force makes it difficult to lift your head as the plane accelerates quickly to over 200 kilometers an hour.  The noise and rumbling of the metal giant increases; until that gut-dropping moment when the laws of aerodynamics overthrow the rule of gravity and the aircraft is yanked skyward.   After a few seconds of hard ascent, the pressure on your chest lets up as the plane banks hard.  Outside one window is the earth; outside the other, pure sky.

Many people have journeyed with me over the years, to Montreal, Chicago, Vancouver, and most recently Florida.  Many times the people with me have been flying for the first time.  I love to see their faces during takeoff.  The fear and adrenaline makes them giddy with anticipation.  They fiddle and fidget and go through the contents of the magazine pouch over and over.  It’s less noticeable with the guys because they are usually busy trying to act so cool, but you can still see their smiles.

I smile too during take-off, but not because of any fear.  I smile because I feels like I’m coming home.

My favorites are the long-haul flights that chase the sun, stretching and twisting our internal clocks. When you take off you’re not just leaving a place.  It’s like you’re leaving time behind time as well.   What do hours matter when you cross half a dozen time zones?  What do days matter when they disappear in one direction, but stretch longer the other?  Your watch can only tell you what time it was where you left.  You won’t have a real time again until you land.

The long nights are the best.  The cabin is darkened and the passengers are usually asleep, draped in their issued wool blankets and resting on too-thin pillows.

Inside, the cabin is relaxed and almost comfortable.  Headphones rest upon most heads, as passengers lose themselves in canned music or the featured movie.  They are interrupted only occasionally by the ghostly flight crew that drift through the cabin, appearing to offer you small snacks and much needed refreshments, then they are gone again.  The atmosphere envelopes you like a blanket.  Hours come and go like wisps as you drift in and out.  You forget the roar of the engines and the comforting rumbling lulls you to sleep.

Outside the window, the pinpoints lights of the heavens shine bright in the thin air.  On clear nights the cities and lights of Man twinkle and glisten below.  And there I am between the two; temporarily not really part of either world; speeding towards my destination at speeds that race sound itself.  In some ways this is the real vacation for me, detached from everything.

Then I land.

It’s somewhere new every time.  Toronto, Vancouver, San Diego, Paris, Honolulu… so many new cities, so many new experiences I never would have had without this wanderlust I’ve inherited.  I thank my parents for it, even as the next trips are planned; Montreal, San Francisco, Australia.

Soon I’ll be packing my bags for another trip.  Leaving again… coming home again.

Recently I updated my profile picture across all my online accounts. I switched to a more professional headshot done by theAQ’s Tom Bateman. It was a picture done for the paper originally, but I liked it so much I put it everywhere from Facebook to Twitter to my Google account.

It’s nice using it.  I find when I’m posting places, I feel that the professional look adds an air of respectability and gravitas to the things I’m saying (for better or worse).  I’m proud of it.

So it was strange to me the other day when I posted something I thought was interesting, and a dog responded.

It wasn’t actually a dog.  So far as I know, dogs haven’t evolved the digits required to manipulate keyboards or digital cameras, nor have they developed a sufficient interest in what Mashable editor Pete Cashmore (…ladies?) was saying about the future of social news distribution.  No, it was a friend of mine who decided to make their profile picture a picture of their dog.

The next three posts came from a baby, a crowd of green-shirted people, and an creepy cartoon of something called Popsicle Pete who reminds me a bit of Herbert from Family Guy. Poof goes the gravitas. Suddenly I feel awkwardly digitally over-dressed.

But this is me.  This little image on my profile and attached to all my comments, posts, images, likes, notes, and conversations is my face unto the world.  It’s the tag people I know will use to quickly recognize me, and the one people I don’t know will use to make an initial judgement of me.  It’s important in this networked world that’s growing up around us that we be recognized.

So what kind of person wants to be a flower? Or a pumpkin? Or a cat?

What does it say about their view of themselves that they don’t like to present who they are in meat-space (you call it real-life) as their persona on the Nets?  It’s an interesting set of questions I’m sure the psychology, philosophy, and Great Ideas students will ponder for years with no useful conclusion.

The part that really confuses me are the people who have a group as their display picture, or at least more than one person (presumably themselves).  Are these people defined by the company they keep?  Are they more comfortable in a crowd?  Do they need to prove to the world that they have a group they ‘belong’ to?

Or conversely, are those of us that feel we’re important enough to stand on our own image just being cocky or self-centered?

I imagine the truth is a little bit of everything (as it often is).

The study

So I decided to do my own informal, very un-scientific study to get more information on this.  I spent just over an hour pulling 100 display pictures from my friends list (which, by the way, is down to 150 after some pruning).

I went to every page, copy and pasted every active profile picture, cropped all of them down to size, and set them all together on one page.  The final image was interesting in it’s own right, so I’ll share it.

Visually interesting, but lets look at some hard facts from those pictures.  Time to dive the data.

I calculated a lot of different things from many different variables. But this set of data caught my attention.  Less than half of my little study have profile pictures of just themselves.

47% of profile pictures included just one person, presumably the person who owns the account, but I couldn’t confirm them all.

Of that group, only 68% had pictures that were framed close of enough to them to allow me to recognize facial features, others were two far away, too artsy, and in one there back was turned.

That means 32% of people used their recognizable face…. On Facebook.

But of course, you’re wondering what all those other pictures were.  Here’s the breakdown.

36% had pictures of themselves and many other people (as described above).

6% had animals.  Cats, lots of dogs, and some horses.

4% had landscape shots.  Interestingly, all these people were from rural areas.

2% were cartoons. Some anime and the ever sketchy Popsicle Pete made an appearance.

2% had no picture.  These were generally folks of an older generation.

2% didn’t fit in any category, and I’m still not sure what they were.

1% (my brother) had a surprisingly accurate mock-up of him as a his Wii avatar (or Mii).

The last one is amusing because here is someone that is choosing to represent his meat-space person with a digital representation of his meat-space appearance.  He’s OK with projecting a false persona onto the Nets, but still feels a connection to his actual appearance.

Here’s one other fun fact.

6% had babies in the pictures. 1 of them was the baby by itself.

Face, the truth.

As humans we’re built to recognize faces. From infancy we can recognize our parents (specifically our mothers) facial features at a glance.  We’re just wired that way after buckets of evolution.

It’s one of the reasons we give robots faces, and have the same distinguishing shapes on car grilles.  It humanizes them, and our brain seizes on to that.  If you don’t believe me, go to http://thingsthatlooklikefaces.com/ and watch your brain make ridiculous assumptions about the ‘mood’ of inanimate pieces of matter.

So why are only 1/3 of us not using our obvious god(s)-given visual calling card?

In my mind, not using your face (or a reasonable approximation) only hinders real social connections from forming.  And it’s those connections that make this medium such a powerful force in the first place.

I can trust a person.  I will never trust Popsicle Pete.

/end

Glossary:

• Meat-space: Where your meat lives while you’re online.  Also known as the ‘real world’, by meat-space snobs.
• the Nets: The wide range of social and digital networks. Includes social mediums like the Twitter net and Facebook, website forums, email, text messaging, video conferencing, and blogging.
• theAQ: The Aquinian. Campus newspaper at St. Thomas University in Fredericton.
• Mashable: preeminent social media blog.  Like the New York Times for the denizens of the Nets.
• Dive (the data): Not a grammar error. From the anime Ghost in the Shell. The term diving comes from ‘brain-diving’ wherein someone would enter the digital world and gain access to another person’s brain.  To dive something is to enter it. Normally electronically.
• Mii: A digital persona created for the Nintendo Wii series of games.  The characters have a wide range of definable attributes from hair colour and shape, height and weight, and even glasses.  The created character then represents the player in a wide range of games.

John Solak comes home with with two friends in tow. They’re loaded down with snacks and drinks from the convenience store around the corner. Energy to keep them alert well into the night. With a short ‘Hey’ to whoever’s sitting in the living room, he heads straight for the door to the basement, and towards his video games.

The room in the basement was built around entertainment. A 50 inch high-definition television sits at one end, a comfortable couch at the other. In between, thousands of dollars of video gaming equipment is tucked neatly away.

The XBox 360 takes center stage, right below the television. Beside the XBox, the Nintendo Wii pulses with a soft blue glow. On the other side sits the sleek Sony Playstation 3. Wireless and wired controllers are strewn about the room, wherever they were put down last. Electronic guitars from various games hang on the wall next to voice headsets for online games. The whole system is connected to a 5.1 surround sound stereo system. It’s never been turned up all the way, for good reason.

SIDEBAR: The Gamer Classes (courtesy Wikipedia)

Casual gamer: Someone who plays games designed for ease of game play (such as Tetris) and doesn’t spend much time playing more involved games. The genres that casual gamers play vary, and they might not own a specific video game console to play their games.

Hardcore gamer: The hardcore gamer plays more often than the casual gamer and tends to play more difficult games. They are also usually marked by participation in gaming culture. They tend to play games that require larger amounts of time to complete or master. There are many subtypes of hardcore gamers based on the style of game, gameplay preference, hardware platform, and other preferences.

Pro gamer: A Professional gamer plays video games for money. (The term electronic sports is used to describe the play of video games as a professional sport.) Whether a professional gamer is a subtype of the hardcore gamer largely depends on the degree to which a professional gamer is financially dependent upon the income derived from gaming. So far as a professional gamer is financially dependent upon gaming, the time spent playing is no longer “leisure” time. In countries of Asia, particularly South Korea and Japan, professional gamers are sponsored by large companies and can earn more than $100,000USD a year, in addition to the cult following that some obtain.

Newbie: This is gamer slang for a player who is new or inexperienced. Two derived terms are “newb”, a beginner who is willing to learn; and “noob”, a very derogatory name.

John is a Gamer. There’s little question of that. When he’s not at Dalhousie University studying computer science, or working part-time at the drug store down the street, or with his friends at the movie theaters, he can likely be found in the basement. He estimates that he is engaged in video games about 30 hours a week in some form or another.

John sees video games as just a way to spend his downtime, just as other would watch TV or read books. But instead of just following along and peaking into the main characters’ minds, good video games allow the player to be a real part of the story.

“The difference is that there are choices,” said John. “There are thousands of stories to be told from any one game.”

Just don’t ask him what his favourite game is. There are too many different styles of video games for that question to make sense.

“It’s like, ‘PONG’ is a video game; ‘Scribblenauts’ is a video game; ‘Call of Duty’ is a video game. They are all so varied and different that you can’t really compare them. I can’t pick one and call it my favourite.”

The name ‘video game’ does encompass a wide variety of creations. Where originally it meant a game that could be displayed on a television-like screen only, it has since grown to include computer games, console games, arcade games, games played on handheld devices, and even applications on mobile phones or iPods.

But regardless of the class of video game, there’s a certain stigma attached to playing them.

“There’s this common idea that these ‘games’ are just for kids,” said John. “But with so many major titles being released rated M… how can you say they are only for children?”

An ‘M-rated’ video game will not be sold to anyone under the age of 17. Many major titles in the last decade have been rated M or higher.

There has been a large discussion in the last few years about games like the popular ‘Mass Effect’, which included a love scene in one of the storylines. Critics complained about sexual content in a ‘children’s game,’ despite the fact it wasn’t rated for anyone under 17 to play.

John says it’s no different then having sexual content in any movie or book.

“These games have deep and engaging storylines and [sexual content] happens to be part of that.”

These ain’t your dad’s video games.

The video game industry is a young one. The first successful commercial video game was PONG, released in 1972. It was a simple game by any standards. Move your electronic cursor up and down, bounce the animated ball back towards your opponent, rinse and repeat. It was released first as an arcade game, to sit beside pinball machines and the like in bars.

After its launch, Atari could barely keep up with demand for the product. People started coming to bars specifically to play PONG. A few years later Atari released the home version of the game. They sold 150,000 in the first year. The video game industry as we know it was born.

These early video games were literally games. At the level of technology available to them, game designers could produce little beyond a few simple geometric patterns bouncing around on a coloured screen. There were basic objectives, a pinch of strategy, and some repetitive 8-bit music. Compared to other entertainment sources at the time it was simple and childish.

But in 40 years, video games have evolved at a frightening pace. They’ve gone from an abstract version of ping-pong to 100+ hour, masterfully scripted, beautifully animated works of entertainment.

Each major title is now the result of hundreds of people, usually working for a few years on one product. The story lines played out are broad and deep. It’s often the same level of storycrafting you’d find in a primetime television series, except the video game is often funnier, edgier and willing to take more risks. The story arcs are also much longer than in most other forms of entertainment. An average movie is around two hours. An average video game is 12 hours for the main story arc, with some reaching as long as 60 hours. MMO games (massively multi-player online) like World of Warcraft and Eve Online literally have no end. Some people have played them for years.

Visually, games are approaching realism. As computers get more powerful, it should only take a few years for games to be released that are indistinguishable from reality. That is, when a game wants to look real. The ability to escape from reality for a short time remains one of the draws of video games.

All of this has come about in the last 40 years. Think of what the other entertainment mediums have accomplished in the same time period.

In the 70′s, Star Wars was released. It was an amazing success, partly due to its radical new technology with computer-generated images and animatronics. But when you watch the movie now, it still looks passable as a current movie.

There have been a few niche advances over the years. The Matrix had it’s ‘bullet-time’, and Avatar added a new type of 3D viewing experience (3D made its first appearance in the 1950′s, but we forgot about it for a while), and Pixar and Dreamworks make better cartoons (using technology borrowed from video games). But other than that, the industry is the same. It’s nothing like the revolutionary growth of video games.

Where movies, books, music and so on have had decades and even centuries since their inception, video games as an entertainment genre may have already surpassed them in just 40 short years.

Nothing exemplifies their success more than the story of Modern Warfare 2.

The game’s full name is ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′, and is actually the sixth game released in the “Call of Duty” franchise. It follows the very successful ‘Modern Warfare’.

The marketing campaign leading up to its release was massive. There were television commercials, press conferences, presentations at major video game events, and extensive use of online advertising. Gamers were worked up into a veritable frenzy by the release date.

In the first 24 hours, gamers in the U.S. and U.K. bought over 4.7 million copies of the game. The revenue from that one day was $310 million. It was the single largest entertainment launch in history. In five days, the game earned $550 million. In two months, it crossed the magical $1 billion mark. The only other game to make that much money is World of Warcraft, which is said to make around $1 billion a year in subscription fees.

When is the entertainment too good?

Any mention of the game World of Warcraft opens an entirely new discussion about video games. Are they addictive and can they be detrimental to your health?

There is a common view of gamers held by those who aren’t involved, specifically, that they are mind-numbed zombies whose sole drive in life is to play more video games. In some cases, there is no doubt that this is true.

Here are some horror stories that were sent in:

Danie Pitre:

I used to play Everquest 2 like religiously. I got into it because of an ex-boyfriend and played for like 3 years. In second year of university I just had a freak out and quit the game. I even sold my account for $400 to make sure I wouldn’t go back to it.

Holly Patterson:

(My boyfriend) started playing WoW in our second year. He never really turned into a zombie, but he did play it a lot.

The reason he had the second monitor was so that he could MSN/write essays and play WoW at the same time. I never really found it to be a huge issue. Most of the time it was just to pass time, for something to do, blow off some steam. He never really took it all too seriously.

He even got me to play for a couple of months, but it was mostly for that class I was taking.

It was all good until he decided to start raiding with guys from the West Coast at 11 our time and was up until 1 or 2 am or even later. It was at that time he said that I gave him ‘the smackdown’ haha. I was not going to have his WoW time interfere with our sleep time.

Truth be told though, it gave him an outlet to blow off steam after a long day, and I didn’t mind that part so much haha.

Ashley Charlton:

Bill (pseudonym) was dating my best friend at the time. He was an outgoing young man who played guitar, sang in his own band, went to university and loved to party with friends. He was your typical smooth-talking country boy, and we generally enjoyed his company when he visited.

After two years, he dropped out of university (I don’t attribute this to gaming, because I don’t think he had really started then). It was after that, though, that we began to notice a difference in Bill. When he came to visit my friend, he would spend all of his time conversing with his brother over the internet while involved in a game of WoW. Rarely did he want to spend time with us anymore, and preferred to closet himself away in my friend’s room to play his “game.”

He was a completely changed person from the one we had known even just the year before. It certainly had a toll on their relationship, and his brief visits (he lived six hours away) became rather strained. Between gaming and other important differences, they broke up within a few months.

Clearly some people don’t mix well with the siren call of video gaming. Some cases get so bad they may even qualify as a mental disorder.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) recently recommended that so-called ‘video game addiction’ be added to the upcoming edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM is a manual commonly used by mental health professionals that categorizes psychiatric diagnoses for all mental illnesses. It’s like the bible of diagnosing mental problems. Video game addiction is not listed in the current edition.

Chair of AACAP’s TV and Media Committee, Dr. Michael Brody, said, “This is a type of media where players become a part of the game. However, there is not enough research on whether or not video games are addictive. For many children and adolescents, playing video games is integrated into their lives in a balanced, healthy manner. For others, it displaces physical activity and time spent on studies, with friends, and even with family.”

The AACAP warns that exposure to violent video games can elevate aggressive feelings and thoughts, especially in children and adolescents.

In addition, spending large amounts of time playing these games can create problems and lead to poor social skills, time away from family, school-work, and other hobbies, lower grades and reading less and, finally, lack of exercise and obesity.

“The world of gaming is Darwinian and lacking compassion as many games are violent with the players winning by killing. The games are often sexist and racist,” said Dr. Brody. “The AACAP recommends that the rating of these games be more reliable and the raters be independent of the gaming industry.”

But even if the rating system changes, it’s unlikely to change much. Even games that are currently rated as as ‘Mature’ or ‘Adults-Only’ often fall into the hands of younger people, just as they often have no problem getting into R-Rated movies. Just like smoking cigarettes, in the end, real change is more likely to come from social pressures, not legislation.

The Gamer Generation

For his part, John hasn’t experienced many detriments resulting from his life as a gamer. He has a group of friends he can rely on, many of whom are gamers themselves. He performs well enough at work to pay for his gaming equipment and to see country music concerts in the summer. And he’s excelling in university at Dalhousie’s computer science program.

He doesn’t feel that time spent gaming is particularly anti-social or lonely, particularly in this age of online gaming. Whether he’s playing Modern Warfare or Eve Online or League of Legends, he’s playing with a group of other people online.

It’s not so easy to just turn off the game at any random moment. For John, and other gamers, it would be the equivalent of playing a board game with a dozen people together in a room, and mid-game, deciding to get up and walk away. It wouldn’t be acceptable in real-life, so why would it be acceptable online?

“These are people that have committed a half and hour to an hour of their day to get together and have fun doing something. To leave halfway through, especially if you’re an important member of the group, would just ruin it for them,” said John. “Some people think that because you might not know the people in real life, it’s ok to waste their time like that. But these are real people we are playing with, and we should respect that.”

With this technology so young, John is part of the very first generation with access to well-crafted video games throughout their whole lives. It may be possible that video games will lose the stigma of “children’s plaything” that they still hold, and be accepted as the art form they have become.

Feature story on the STU Revue concert at St. Thomas University.

Reporter/Editor: Alex Solak

Special thanks to Adam Wright for assistance shooting and writing.

Alex Solak

St. Thomas University Journalism

At the Moncton bus terminal on Friday, Dec. 11, dozens of university students waited for the bus to take them home to their families for the holidays. At the beginning and end of each semester it’s the same story. Hundreds of cash-strapped students rely on the bus services to ferry them to and from school, all around the Maritimes. With such a limited rail system, and flights being so expensive, the bus is their only real option.

Ashley Charlton is one of those students heading home. Just finished exams, she’s on her way back to the Annapolis Valley to be with her family for Christmas. But instead of being able to relax and enjoy the holiday season, she’s worrying how long she’ll be able to keep making the trip on the bus.

Acadian Coach Lines, the main bus service provider in the Maritimes, has announced a plan to reduce service to rural areas of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

The plan includes cutting the Kentville-Digby route that connects the Annapolis Valley, and Charlton’s home, to the rest of the province.

“The bus is the last means of public transportation to what has become the main centers.” said Ashley Charlton, “If the routes do get cut, that means we’re even more isolated.”

Charlton echoes a viewpoint held by many in rural areas of the Maritimes. It’s a kind of ‘us-versus-them’ mentality between the urban centers of Halifax, Moncton and Fredericton against the rural areas.

The cutting of rural services is nothing new for this part of Canada, it’s a theme that is playing itself out over and over.

It was around two decades ago that a similar story took place with train service in the Maritimes. As profits started drying up on rural routes, the rail companies kept cutting back service and selling their lines. In 1989 Via Rail cut passenger service by 50% across the country. Then in 1993 they had to cut service again. A major Maritime route, ‘The Atlantic’ connecting Quebec, Maine, Fredericton and St. John was lost entirely.

Cuts continued until we reached a point where, in a country that was built on the back of its railroad, the trains now barely serve rural areas, and don’t even reach Fredericton, a provincial capital.

Some are starting to worry the process is starting all over again, but this time with the last available form of public transportation.

In New Brunswick, John Foran, the MLA for Miramichi Centre, is worried about the people he represents. Acadian Lines is planning to cut the route between Fredericton and Miramichi.

Anyone living in Miramichi will have to take the bus to Acadian Lines’ main terminal in Moncton, then from there to Fredericton. But for anyone between Miramichi and Fredericton service will stop entirely.

“It’s gonna effect Renous, Blackville, Doaktown, and Boistown, and all the spots in between. That gonna effect all those people’s ability to travel back and forth to the capital.” said Foran. “This is not acceptable whatsoever.”

Representatives from Acadian Coach Lines willing to talk about the cuts could not be reached for comment, but stated in press release that, “We do not take changes to our service lightly and we wish to work within the New Brunswick regulatory framework to ensure changes, if any, are done after full discussion with the regulatory body.”

That regulatory bodies that have to approve any changes are the Energy Utilities Board in New Brunswick, and the Nova Scotia Utility Review Board.

In documents provided by the New Brunswick agency, Acadian Lines has claimed they’ve lost over $1.6 million in the last six years in the Maritimes.

The applications will be decided by both boards some time early in the new year. Hopefully, for students sake, some time after they’ve all made it back to school for the next semester.