22 September

Fall Equinox 2023: Walking the River

  Last weekend I walked part of the Edmonton Camino, a five-day walk through the city’s North Saskatchewan River valley, from Devon (where the trail is still unfinished) to Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. The Cree have a name for this river, Kisiskâciwanisîpiy or Swift Flowing River and the trails that accompany it, Amisko Wacîw Mêskanaw, meaning […]

20 June

Summer Solstice 2023: Wild Fire

In early May when the smoke was so heavy over Edmonton, the air quality at 10 or 10+ for days, I was weighted by the reality. I stayed inside, used the gym, kept my windows closed. Waited for respite. Rains came but so did high temperatures. And then when wildfires gradually spread across the country […]

20 December

Winter Solstice 2022: Imagine

Winter Solstice 2022: Imagine

Lately I feel a little like I’ve been walking through the streets of Charles Dickens’s London, with waifs on every corner and debtor prisons in the form of credit cards and food banks, or perhaps the byways and highways of John M Synge’s Ireland in the late 1800s and his accounts of tenant farmers turned […]

20 December

Winter Solstice 2021: A Pot of Green Lentils

Posted in Books, Food, Nature, News

As I set out to write this midwinter reflection, I cook a pot of lentils. (This is our earth.) Cooking my way to clarity. Or as Montreal writing friend Kate Henderson said in her Christmas card to me the other day, “writing” these days “takes the form of thinking.” Thinking. Cooking. Reading. Listening. I’ve been […]

21 September

Autumn Equinox 2021: Living Tween

I have a friend who is living with a chronic and progressive illness. It is difficult to communicate at times, especially since the pandemic. The illness impairs speech and movement. The last time I phoned, I asked how he was doing. For a moment his words were surprisingly lucid: “It’s like I’m here, but I’m […]

19 March

Spring Equinox 2021: A doodle on the balance point

This week my yoga teacher said, Think about your relationship with time… and what occurred to me in these COVID times is to wonder at our relationship with place, how relationships need to meet in real place as much as real time, something the online meeting has yet to master, because as humans everything we […]

20 December

Winter Solstice 2020: A Deepening

Growing up I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of going to bed at night. I was afraid of going down into the corners of the basement in the middle of the day, where I would often get sent to fetch things. Mostly I was afraid of the unknown. What I might find […]

21 September

Fall Equinox 2020: The Birds Are Sentinels

The last couple of days walking by the river, I’ve run across a flock of robins, country robins, judging from the way they spook on seeing me. Maybe they’ll be there tomorrow; maybe they’ll be gone. It’s one of their migration strategies, to stop and refuel every so often. Most migrating birds fly at night. […]

19 June

Summer Solstice 2020: The Fullness

COVID-19. One word with so many contradictions: death, innovation, anger, selflessness, anxiety, adaptation, depression, creativity. The fullness of life! To date, at least 8,457,305 infections; 453,882 deaths. We hear the counts every night like reports from a war zone. We know it is not gone. The financial fall-out we haven’t begun to comprehend. The isolation […]

18 March

Spring Equinox 2020: Pregnant with Possibility

I did not go to Spain this spring. It wasn’t easy to make the decision; I left it till the 11th hour. The Canadian Government (as with most governments) was still giving a Level 1 travel advisory for most of Europe: “Travel and take precautions.” It wasn’t until the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, the […]

20 June

Midsummer 2019: Fire and Flower

Fire is the marker of summer. Fire and flower. All over Europe, people still light bonfires on the eve of Summer Solstice or the eve of St. John the Baptist’s feast: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Estonia, Ukraine, Croatia, Austria, Spain, Portugal and even here in Canada, in Quebec. St. John, Jean Baptiste, Jonsmessa (Jons mass), […]

19 March

Spring Equinox 2019: Mud, Water and Light

Every creation story I know starts with water and mud, spring no different. Slippery footing, sudden ponds, dirt in snow banks, grit in the street and a warm wind. The night freezes and the day thaws. For a couple of months it’s a see-saw, wild ride, back and forth, up and down the thermometer. It’s […]

22 September

Fall Equinox 2018: The Stillpoint

I walk to work every day, zig-zagging, cross-stepping as-the-crow-flies, in a beeline from my place in Boyle Street, on through downtown Edmonton. This year some of the route has changed as my own life has changed. Work has moved and my role with it; I have to walk a little farther than I used to. […]

20 June

Summer Solstice 2018: Consider the Lilies

One rainy day a couple of weeks ago, I was standing at the corner of 100th Street and 102nd Avenue with the usual students, professionals (me included) and “people without place” waiting for the light to change. I had my big umbrella with me, the one I like to use for heavy rain because it […]

19 March

Spring Equinox 2018: Here for good

Recently someone new to Alberta asked me, “When does the snow stop?” really meaning to ask, “When does spring come?” “It comes and it goes,” I replied. “And then suddenly it’s here for good.” My mom left a message on my phone a couple of weeks ago: “It’s running out there! You can hear the […]

21 September

Fall Equinox 2017: Music and Prophecies

I have an image of my child self that I often call to mind. I am probably 10 or 11 years old; it is the 1960s. I am sitting between our family kitchen and living room, my back against the door jamb, my knees pulled up in front of me, listening to the radio that […]

31 March

Truth and Reconciliation

Posted in News, Reflections

I spent part of my weekend at the Edmonton National Event for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I had heard about the commission but was skeptical about its purpose before I went. After an hour in a sharing circle, I realized I was witnessing a powerful historical event. First, second, and third generation survivors: Cree, […]