Uninhabited Spaces

So, I’m no David Clark , but I’ve put pen to paper over the years. In 1988, my Grade 10 English teacher Ms Hunt, without my knowledge, submitted a piece of fiction I wrote into our graduation yearbook. It made the cut (thanks Rachel Welch O'Connor !) and I was incredibly touched. I kept writing into my CEGEP years, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, writing for Heritage College“ The Mushroom”. At Queen’s, I had op-eds published in the Queen’s Journal, and I actually came out in an op-ed in the Queen’s Gazette (more on that in a post to come). I later published some poems in a couple of anthologies, and was chuffed to be accepted, through peer review, into the Queen’s Anti Racism Review and Queen’s Undergraduate Review. A few years later, another peer review jury accepted my paper on philanthropy in the higher education education sector. Oh, and the Kingston Arts Council seemed to love a short story I submitted to their contest in 1997. I also ended up co-writing a fun trivia bo...

On October 22, 1984, I became “Stacy Kelly”. By the stroke of some pens in a judge’s office in Hull, Quebec, my late dad, Richard Kelly, adopted me. Prior to that day I had my mom’s surname, Hodgins. My mom had married my then step-dad, and my sister Angela came along in 1980, followed by my sister Marsha in 1982. I think it was important, both legally and symbolically, to have me join the fold properly and share my last name with my new dad and sisters. When I arrived back at my school, and a teacher announced my last name had changed, a fellow student asked me if I had gotten married (I did not know the term “unpack” then but, yes, lots to unpack there). To borrow from Johnny Cash, it has always been challenging to be “A Boy Named Stacy”. My mom can better regale you with my boisterous efforts as a youngster to correct those who assumed I was a girl, but I do recall saying to someone, “I am a boy, so my name is a boy’s name”. It was not until I joined The 519 in 2017, when I learn...

In 1997, the Arts & Science Undergraduate Society (ASUS) at Queen’s posted a call for someone to create, build, and launch a new arts day camp for youth. They kindly picked yours truly (during my misguided Tilley hat years) as the inaugural director, and I strove to quickly build a team. How lucky was I to find the brilliant Louise Lannan as assistant director, and amazing and passionate counsellors David Stewart and Hilary Sirman Allalemdjian . Louise led the design of our curriculum (with assist from David and Hilary), and I focused on fundraising, marketing, and outreach. Our home base was the ASUS house, but we spent a lot of hours at Agnes Etherington Art Centre , and other spots on campus. We called the day camp “Arts Adventure”, and we built a social sciences stream week and a fine arts/drama stream week, featuring a field trip to select cultural sites in Ottawa each Wednesday. We gratefully managed to secure seed funding from the Faculty of Arts and Science and the Queen...

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...