Uninhabited Spaces

A letter can change your life. This one changed mine. 32 years ago this month a letter arrived from Queen's University that offered me admission. If I recall accurately, my mom called me at my summer job at my dad’s car lot to let me know the envelope had arrived. I was the detailer- the kid who cleaned every inch of the car, inside and out, to get it ready for sale (My closest friends would tell you that was a rather appropriate job for me). I left my home in Aylmer, Quebec, and arrived at Queen’s, at the tender age of 17, in August 1989. Like Bilbo, I went on an adventure and I fell instantly in love with my new school and city. I came to age at Queen’s and experienced some of the worst and greatest moments of my life. What has forever bonded me to that endurable collection of limestone edifices on Lake Ontario is the people who were always in my corner, of which there were so many. From the embarrassment of riches that were my professors in the extraordinary department of Philo...

So it’s May 1993 and I am on the STO bus between Aylmer (Quebec) and Ottawa. I see a friend from Philemon Wright high school named Stephanie Turner . We get to talking, and by the time we reach our respective stops, Aylmer Youth Theatre is born. We somehow wrangled in Dave Shoebridge and Mathieu Astieu and we had the founding directors of an amateur theatre company. Our mission was to provide a gathering place for Francophone and Anglophone youth in the Outaouais region to come together through live theatre. It appeared we helped to fill a vacuum, as we ended up engaging over 60 youth from 6 high schools as talent and production staff (waving to folks like Scarlett Hawthorne , Josh Turner, Geordan Turner , Karen Mackay, Mw Cb , Joelle Lefebvre , and Michel Bailey ). Our debut show “Resurgam” was dedicated to Wendy Glover , and featured a play from our junior company, “The Knight Before Glasses”, and a play from our senior company, “Sisters” ( David Curtin might recall an infamously ...

My love of writing and the free press started back in high school as part of the team that produced the Philemon Wright H.S. “PW Flash” (yours truly is front right in the black and white photo, circa 1987) alongside some wonderful peers like Stephanie Turner, Andrew Low, Kariann Picard, Lars Roberts and others. I have vivid memories of the smell of the mimeograph. When I went to Cegep Heritage College , I and my brilliant classmates Andrew Low, Tracy Hutton , Heather Bilkes , David Clark , and many more contributed to “The Mushroom Magazine (this cover from the November 1988 issue). Upon arriving at Queen’s, I continued to write, providing op-eds for Queen’s Journal and Queen’s Gazette, and publishing essays in the peer-reviewed Queen’s Anti-Racism Review and Queen’s Undergraduate Review. After I graduated, I was on the board of Kingston’s Progressive Independent Community Press, where I met the awesome Damian T. Lloyd , Gord Campbell , and Renée Stephen . I later won a short story co...

I once got into an argument with a colleague who patronizingly scoffed at my assertion that theatre was analogous to team sports. He dismissed me completely when I tried to explain that a company of actors, technicians, artists, and musicians have to come together under pressure and time limits to perform at their highest level possible. He laughed at me and said, “But there’s no competition.” I replied that you have to compete against your previous performance and the changing audience. He was not convinced. I demurred to keep the peace, but was hurt at the disrespect for the physical and emotional effort that is live theatre. This memory takes me back further, to 1986, where yours truly is in “Oliver”. My memories of high school are largely associated with the incredible group of people I met through drama class and musical theatre, under the wonderful guidance of the amazing Wendy Glover . The second photo is from 1988 and our production of “Grease”. I think this image captures m...

Without a doubt, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were largely responsible for the architecture of my childhood imagination. So when LEGO Space came along, it was a match made in, well, outer space. This scene is yours truly with one of the original classic sets. It was either me in my bedroom with my LEGO, or you could find me running through the tall ferns of the forest pretending it was the moon of Endor. The sands of shoreline by our home was Tatooine. The marsh in front was Dagoba. As I grew older, I realized that the best sci fi is not really about space and aliens, but rather about us very messy and especially complicated humans on Earth. My imagination was always a constant companion as a child. I have tried to nurture it and to dream up better worlds.