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January 31, 2010The CN Tower
On September 21, 2009, as others may have celebrated Leonard Cohen’s 75th birthday, there was a ceremony at the CN Tower’s Horizons Restaurant, coinciding with the release of Guinness World Records ...
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June 13, 2016Dismantling Jane Jordan’s Library
Throughout the process of distributing ten bins of books, chapbooks and other literary materials once owned by Ottawa poet Jane Jordan (1926-2007), there’s a slight guilt attached to dismantling her ...
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April 26, 2010Canadians in New York: The Chelsea Hotel
Despite parboiling myself in the shower a few times I began to like the hotel, or at least some of the residents, or denizens as some liked to call themselves. You could get high in the elevators on the ...
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October 07, 2016How to keep a small chapbook press alive for twenty-three years (a primer)
By the time you read this, above/ground press will most likely be two or three items away from an accumulated eight hundred publications. How does that happen? Even I find it strange and remarkable that ...
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September 14, 2016Profile on Show and Tell Poetry Series, with a Few Questions
Show and Tell Poetry Series is a new reading series in Peterborough that features local emerging and established poets from Peterborough and beyond, held at Curated in the Charlotte Mews (203 Simcoe ...
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March 13, 2017My final two columns: Part One
After nearly a decade, my time as a columnist for Open Book comes to a close. According to my email folder, it was May 2009 when Amy Logan Holmes first approached me with the idea of submitting pieces ...
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October 24, 2013Writing Fatherhood
What do we know about pregnancy1.I shall begin, by speaking. Incubate, introduce a glossary. Just on the tongue. Unpaginated.2.Something is growing, inside. Occupant. Connects whole milk to healthy industry. ...
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November 28, 2017Tanya Talaga on the Title and Tragedy of Seven Fallen Feathers
The tragic story of 12-year-old Chanie Wenjack is a rightfully well known one now in Canada - how the young boy froze to death after running away from a residential school. What is less known is that ...
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December 12, 2018Beyond the Possible: On World Building
Sometimes, I think about what would have happened to Frodo and Sam if, during their journey across the land to Mordor, Frodo had fallen down a jagged slope of rocks and broken his leg.Would Frodo, delirious ...
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July 31, 2019Why you should re-read books
I am a big reader, but I am an even bigger re-reader. Yes, I have a mountainous stack of to be read books, but I believe that it’s important to my writing practice—and to my basic existence—to dive ...