Rumbling sledge 2010: Going for paralympic gold

by Rob Howatson

Introduction

In Sweden, in the 1960s, a group of paraplegic hockey fans decided they weren’t ready to hang up their skates, so they sat on them — and the sport of sledge hockey was born.

Players in this fast, hard-hitting, low-to-the-ice game sit on metal frame sleds, which are in turn mounted atop two hockey skate blades. The athletes hold mini hockey sticks in each hand, using the metal-tipped, butt-end of the shafts to propel themselves across the ice.

Surprisingly, Canada has been late in achieving dominance in this sport. Paralympic gold did not come our way until Torino in 2006, when North Vancouver-born sledger Greg Westlake and his team blanked Norway 3-0. Now the 23-year-old right-winger and his squad will attempt to defend their title at the 2010 Games. Westlake, currently living in Mississauga, Ontario, took time out from training to explain why B.C.’ers should check out the sledge-hammering at UBC Thunderbird Arena this March.

The Interview

WW: Why were your legs amputated when you were 18 months old?

GW: It was a birth defect. My feet didn’t form properly.

WW:How did you get into sledge hockey?

GW: As a kid, I played stand-up hockey on prosthetic legs. I couldn’t skate as fast as the other kids, so I was relegated to goalie. Then, at 16, I switched to sledge hockey, which allowed me to do what I’d always wanted: to join the rush. I’m an energetic guy, an aggressive guy. Playing forward suits my personality. And not only can I do that in sledge hockey, but I can do it on a level playing field with other athletes who are lower-limb disabled. That’s a rush.

WW: What was your most frustrating moment when learning to skate with your hands?

GW: Being worse than everyone else. Since I was coming from a stand-up hockey background, I thought I’d just jump right in and be a great player. In reality, I had to learn to skate all over again.

WW: How do the rules of sledge differ from stand-up hockey?

GW: They’re similar, but in sledge the refs don’t allow “Teeing,” so you can’t use your sled to ram an opponent’s at right angles. No T-boning.

WW: Which still leaves room for devastating, clean hits?

GW: For sure. Unlike stand-up hockey, in which players hit the boards high, where the “glass” flexes, we slam into the boards low, where there’s no “glass” and no flex. It’s like hitting a cement wall.

WW: What can first-time sledge viewers expect in terms of puck-handling and shots? ?

WW:The stickwork is every bit as impressive as in the upright game. Players can dribble the puck so that it crosses beneath their sled — a great way to confuse goalies. As for shots, some of our guys blast pucks that travel 60 to 70 mph.

WW: How did people react to sledge hockey at the 2006 Torino games?

GW: The crowds were surprisingly good. Early on, organizers had to bus school kids in to fill out the stands, but as things progressed, the sport grew in popularity. I like to think our team’s gritty determination had something to do with that. And our gold-medal game ended up being broadcast live in Torino’s town square, where the thousands who couldn’t get tickets to the sold-out final jammed the plaza to watch the event. I hope it’s like that in Vancouver for these Paralympic games. The larger the attendance, the more pumped we get, the harder we play and the more exciting the sport.

by James Glave

“If you’re extra lucky, you’ll get yourselves invited to a kitchen party,” Terri Shea told Elle and me in the days leading up to our Newfoundland vacation. “Friends and neighbours get together and play instruments and sing and tell stories and drink. That’s the real deal out there.”

Shea, a close friend who hails from “the Rock” but now lives just down the street from our home on Bowen Island, B.C., had just “Screeched in” the two of us in her living room. As per Newfoundland custom, the wife and I had each downed a shot of cheap rum and kissed a frozen salmon. The coho was a West Coast stand-in for the cod that Newfoundlanders traditionally pull out of the fridge for the ceremony that awards honourary citizenship to those who, like us, “come from aways.”

So we’d necked with a fish. We’d been made titular locals and had the certificates to prove it – direct from the Internet via inkjet printer. But we both knew we were Newfoundlanders on paper only. We wanted the real deal.

Little did we know that on the last night of our future trip, we’d not only track down a bona fide kitchen party – complete with an old guy crooning fishermen’s ballads out of a ragged coil-bound notebook – we’d do ourselves even better. We’d actually host it. But then, we had a little help from Ken Sooley.

[Newfoundland Kitchen Party]

Porch party at the Mouland house / courtesy James Glave

“We’re providing a brand-new concept in experiential travel,” the 48-year-old president of CapeRace Cultural Adventures had said of his new venture, which was just wrapping up its first full season. “We’ve designed a way for people to become integrated into three local communities, and each has a different take on the Newfoundland lifestyle.” In other words, Sooley’s company could offer what Shea’s gag certificates could not – admission to the inner circle of a variety of small outport communities up and down Newfoundland’s eastern shores, complete with meaningful and spontaneous interactions between visitors and locals. Indeed, the CapeRace experience remains unique in North America, delivering an uncanned and authentic sense of place and its people. So much so, in fact, that National Geographic Traveler magazine last year declared it “one of the Top 50 tours of a lifetime.”

The appeal? Sooley connects his clients with “fixers,” the kind of on-the-ground contacts a journalist might hire to establish local sources and get the inside scoop while on assignment in a far-off country. Want to try squid jigging in a working fishboat? Just call Jerry or Elizabeth. They’ll pop over, introduce you to the neighbours – here’s hoping you can understand a word they are saying – and suggest whom you might call and what you might offer to pay.

Hi-fi at E.J. Sooley house / courtesy James Glave

And so, for 10 days in mid-July, Sooley’s company would “embed” Elle and me in a couple of remote fishing villages, some of which look much as they did in the 19th century when the salted cod trade was at its peak. We’d bunk down in heritage homes that Sooley had purchased and restored over a period of several years, one in the historic Battery neighbourhood in St. John’s, the others in the village of Heart’s Delight and the town of Bonavista – houses as authentic as the communities they stand in.

The E.J. Sooley house in Heart’s Delight, for example, belongs to Sooley’s grandfather. It still contains the original enamel appliances and fixtures, right down to the squeaky cast-iron beds and bare-bulb kitchen light we’d switch on and off via a dangling string. Meanwhile, up in Bonavista, the marvellously quirky Thomas Mouland house once belonged to a man involved in the great sealing disaster of 1914 – a dark chapter of the province’s history in which 78 sealers were inadvertently abandoned on the ice floes to perish in a blizzard.

The cold North Atlantic is just a stone’s throw from the front porch of the Thomas Mouland house, but the closest we’ve come to it so far is the “bergy bit” that Sooley has stashed in the freezer. He recovered the microwave-oven-sized piece of ice off the beach some months prior. On our first of three nights in Bonavista, it has become my routine to chip a few chunks off the salvaged berg and drop them in my tumbler of “Screech” rum, which I’m enjoying on the porch this evening with Lloyd – our designated local contact and Sooley’s sole contractor.

“You know, when we was fixing this place up,” says Lloyd, “there were 13 layers of linoleum on the kitchen floor. When one piece wore out, the old guy just laid himself a fresh piece right on top. It took two weeks to get it all up.” Lloyd decided to pay homage to the Mouland’s century-long chronicle of renovations. And so, each step of the building’s narrow staircase now showcases a different pattern of flooring, one for each decade it lay hidden underfoot.

After a few minutes, Lloyd and I are joined by Dorman,* a neighbour from across the street who owns a nearby convenience store. As the three of us shoot the breeze, a grey whale follows suit in the background, blowing plumes of salt spray into the sky a quarter-mile offshore.

Dorman, 57, explains how it used to be around here. “With the winter starms we get these days, you can har the floor of the ocean rumbling and groaning-like.” He wears dress slacks with a starched shirt the colour of Dijon mustard, his hair Brylcreemed back. “It’s like the whole bottom of the sea is roaring and heavin’. Mam said you never used to har that. It’s changin’.”

Bonavista's Thomas Mouland house / courtesy James Glave

The sea isn’t the only thing in flux here on the brink of the North Atlantic. Lloyd and Dorman and I look out across the fields of swaying long grass, past the “flakes” – spindly replica cod drying racks the local historic society has installed for the benefit of tourists – and toward the houses scattered here and there along the gravel waterfront road that passes in front of us.

“This whole field used to be full of houses, see?” says Dorman, waving his arm at the emptiness.

“What happened to them all?” I ask.

“The people died or moved. Thar houses all either fell down or was knocked down.”

About 3,700 hardy souls call Bonavista home today, but like many other towns across Newfoundland, its population has been shrinking since 1992. That was the year the federal government placed a moratorium on cod fishing in an effort to protect those few fish that remained. With the stroke of a pen, a resource and an industry already beyond the point of exhaustion was legally pronounced dead. Tens of thousands lost their jobs. The province’s economy had become so dependent on the sea that many were forced to pack up and leave, an out-migration that continues to this day. Some 5,000 Newfoundlanders still move “aways” each year, including many of the younger generation, like our neighbour back home, Terri Shea. The remaining population is greying quickly; children represent only 15 per cent of the island’s overall head count.

“It was so different when I was nine or 10,” says Dorman. “This here main road was jammed with people, all of them takin’ in the catch, splittin’ it, houses and stores and sheds all over. And this road here back of us was a railroad track. They’d bring in coal on the ships and load it up on rail cars and deliver it around the neighbourhood, see?”

I almost can, though the tracks are long gone. The lane in question – well above the level of the surrounding fields – is more roadbed than road.

“And that old wharf?” The crumbling pier is just over the fence beyond the front yard. “My brother’s best friend drowned right thar,” says Dorman. “Mam says he was eatin’ a molasses sandwich and jumping ’tween the dories. Went right in. And he was gan. Just like ’dat.”

“He couldn’t swim?” I ask, incredulous.

“None of us could,” he replies, then reflects. “There’s a lot of history thar.”

Indeed there is. And without Ken Sooley and Lloyd making the introductions, I wouldn’t have heard the half of it.

CapeRace appeals to a fairly specific kind of traveller, the sort who doesn’t mind venturing outside his or her comfort zone once in awhile. (The folks who were across the street from us in Heart’s Delight, for example, have a habit of setting up lawn chairs to watch the new arrivals. Evidently, there’s not a lot else to do.) But then, the public’s appetite for such raw experiences is on the rise.

“Ever since 9/11, people have been searching for something deeper,” says Patty Morgan, executive director of the Travel and Tourism Research Association, an industry trade group based in Boise, Idaho. “They don’t want the Holiday Inn with the pool and the continental breakfast.” And though he has not heard of anything else quite like CapeRace in North America, says Peter Yesawich, whose firm Ypartnership tracks emerging travel trends, “the appeal of this kind of deep authenticity has certainly grown. And I only see it increasing,” he adds, “particularly among the Millenniums – sub-boomer travellers in their late twenties and early thirties.”

The key to Sooley’s operation is his self-published Traveller’s Diary guidebook, available only to CapeRace clients. It’s a compilation of local lore and essential info specific to the towns on the CapeRace loop – such as the rules of the classic Newfoundland card game 120s – plus the home numbers of Sooley’s local contacts. “The neighbours are an interesting bunch and may drop by,” he notes in one chapter. “Tell Harv I sent you and ask him about the unusual bingo games he hosts on Monday nights.” (Apparently, with help from Sooley, the wiley pub owner came up with an ingenious scheme to bring in the town’s women, many of whom have husbands working aways in the Alberta oil patch: he doles out adult novelties as prizes.)

Sooley has certainly picked the right place to launch his new-era travel experiment. This trip is my first foray into Newfoundland, and I’ve never felt so much a foreigner inside my own country. Our youngest province is a region apart – a time warp to a more innocent age, largely untouched by the soul-draining crush of mass tourism. It’s a place where the culture has evolved in isolation from the rest of Canada, the result of small outport communities that for centuries were effectively cut off from one another by fierce winters.

As for the Newfoundland dialect, it can be as impenetrable as the province’s harsh interior landscape: the thousands of kilometres of scrub and ponds known simply as the Barrens. Then there are the mannerisms. Newfoundland men greet each other with a quick left-to-right sideways nod, and I know I’m starting to fit in when I experience the tradition first-hand outside the Bonavista Foodland grocery. Considering Newfoundland’s relative accessibility today, it remains one of the most unpackaged and unpretentious places on the continent. Yet for all its distinctive charms, it is refreshingly open to outsiders. That reality was only underscored on 9/11, when the small town of Gander opened its doors to the 6,500 unscheduled guests who found themselves stranded here when U.S.-bound flights were diverted by the closure of American airspace.

Catered "Light House" picnic / courtesy James Glave

We caught our first taste of this legendary hospitality in Heart’s Delight – almost halfway through our 10-day sojourn, after three days traipsing the cathedrals, back streets and hilltop cannon batteries of St. John’s. Elizabeth and Jerry, our designated local contacts, were still travelling back from Nova Scotia when we arrived at the charming oceanfront E.J. Sooley cottage. We’d feared we’d be on our own in this blip-sized outport, with no TV, radio or board games, not even a pub or coffee shop to show up at, and rain in the forecast to boot. The only available source of diversion: a pre-stereo record player tucked away in a cabinet and a copy of Reels and Jigs of Newfoundland – one of a clutch of profoundly scratched-up old LPs, the novelty of which wore thin after just a few cacophonous minutes. But then Donna Reid knocked on the door and introduced herself as Sooley’s cousin.

“Say, you know, the capelin are supposed to star’ rollin’ any day now. Would you like to go out tammara morning to see if we can see ’em?”

The capelin are a needle-thin fish, relatives of the freshwater smelt. For much of its life, the species lives in deep water, but in June and July its numbers “roll” up on Newfoundland’s beaches to spawn by the tens of thousands. The locals show up to watch and pull them out of the surf in buckets, either to smoke and eat or dig into their gardens as fertilizer. The roll is apparently quite a spectacle – a frenzied oceanic orgy attended by hungry gulls, seals and sometimes whales – and certainly one of the highlights of the year for the people of Heart’s Delight, population 663. And, said Reid, as luck would have it, the procreation party might well kick off tomorrow morning.

The dawn was just breaking as Reid drove us down a rutted, unmarked dirt road to a bluff overlooking a quiet cove. We peered out through the wet windshield.

Though Reid assured us that conditions were perfect for getting it on capelin-style – it’s raining, she said, and a frigid north wind was blowing down from Labrador – evidently the fish weren’t feeling particularly frisky that morning.

A neighbour pulled up alongside and rolled down the window. “Hey, Donna,” he said, “see anyting out thar?”

“I think I can see ’em offshore, the water looks dark, but they’re not comin’ in,” our host replied.

“Funny that, you’d think they would.”

“Yeash, we’ve got the narth wind,” she noted.

“Yeash,” the friend answered with a chuckle. “The wind we don’t wont don’t even bring the capelin in.”

The following morning, we were about to motor out of the driveway for the long haul up the Bonavista Peninsula when Jerry and Elizabeth – who is another of Sooley’s cousins – stopped by. They’d just returned from their vacation and were hoping to catch us to say hello before we left. We chatted for a bit, and though we’d had a great time in their village, doing not much of anything except wandering the bluffs, picking wild strawberries and taking the odd day trip, they felt bad for mostly missing us. They wanted to send us off properly.

“Can we talk you into taking some moose sausages with you?” Jerry offered. “They’re really, really good ones.”

If there were such a thing as an official protein census of Newfoundland freezers, moose would doubtless come out in the count way ahead of hamburger. The beasts have thrived here since the first pair was introduced from Nova Scotia more than a century back, and hunting them is for many a way of life. The population is now so healthy that the province’s long-haul truckers weld heavy steel-tube grills – called “moose cages” – to the business end of their rigs to minimize the damage of inevitable collisions.

“That would be lovely,” I told Jerry. “If you can spare one or two links, we can probably tuck ’em into the top of the cooler.”

“Great, I’ll just run over and get ’em.”

Days later, having consumed over the preceding 72 hours somewhere between eight and 10 pounds of moose sausage, moose steak and moose burgers, I am sitting out on the porch in Bonavista watching the light fade. I sip on my Screech and listen to the wind blow through the tall grass that surrounds our tiny house and the pop and crack of the ice in my glass that was last liquid around 11,000 years back.

My cellphone breaks the peace. It’s Lloyd on the line: “How you gettin’ on over thar this evenin’?” he asks.

“Very well, thanks.”

“Good. Say, a group of us boys was thinkin’ of comin’ by tammara night to play a little music thar. D’y think that’d be alright?”

“I think that would be just fine with us, Lloyd,” I say. “Just fine.”

Author James Glave

In addition to being a “titular Newfie,” James Glave is also a former Outside magazine senior editor and the author of Almost Green: How I Built an Eco-Shed, Ditched My SUV, Alienated the Inlaws, and Changed My Life (Greystone Books, 2008; $22).

An interview with author James Glave and an excerpt from his recent book can be enjoyed at MyWestworld.com/jamesglave

Listen in on more “embedded vacation” Maritimes hilarity (a little lobster fishing, “tonging” for oysters or moonshine making, anyone?). MyWestworld.com/podcasts.

the rock-onnoitre experts

CapeRace Cultural Adventures offers 10-day, nine-night packages, including rental car, exclusive use of three coastal homes and a custom guidebook. Circuits begin in St. John’s and conclude in Bonavista, departing every four days between April and October. U.S. $1,495 per person based on four-person occupancy; U.S. $2,600 based on two-person occupancy. Kids under 16 travel free. mail@caperace.com

See also: Bowen Island: One Man’s Eco Quest.

Lead photo courtesy Ken Sooley

So what does it feel like to carry the torch? Expectations exceeded – vastly

by Bernice Paul

I was eager to sit down with Jessica Langelaan to hear about her Olympic Torch-bearing experience this past December. Throughout the holidays, I had caught bits of wall comments and photos on Facebook, even a video that her uncle posted. And there were many expressions of encouragement and congratulations. But these were followed by words of condolence and sorrow . . . I soon found out why.

On December 18, 2009, the day before Langelaan was to carry the torch in Oakville, Ontario, her grandfather, Keith Acton, passed away. Age 81, he had succumbed to complications associated with kidney failure. But it was his attitude toward life that kept Langelaan from unravelling. As she told me when we at last connected: He often said, “There are two days in every week that we have no control over –  yesterday and tomorrow. Today is the only day we can change.”

Langelaan was buoyed by the swell of support and emotion throughout her 300-metre journey – which, surprisingly, felt “decently long.”

So on the day of the relay, Langelaan concentrated on making every moment meaningful. Cheered on by the hundreds of onlookers lining the street, and surrounded by friends and family, including her great-aunt Jeanette Acton (her grandfather’s sister,  who travelled from Port Perry, Ontario, for the occasion), Langelaan was buoyed by the swell of support and emotion throughout her 300-metre journey – which, surprisingly, felt “decently long.”

The run

On the bus ride to the starting point of their leg, 15 torchbearers chatted in nervous anticipation. “I was unusually quiet,” says Langelaan. “I was thinking about my grandfather and at the same time I felt inspired by the group on the bus, which included a set of twins in their 80s who between them had missed two chances to complete in the Olympics (in ’44 due to the war and in ’48 due to injury).”

The orchestrated efficiency of the relay, from the vehicle convoy to the security team, left just enough room for a little creativity and individualism to come through during the official “torch kiss” – the passing off of the torch from one torchbearer to the next. Langelaan and her preceding bearer worked out a jaunty doe-see-doe high-five routine, as captured in this video shot by her uncle:

The 300 metres probably lasted just a minute or two, so Langelaan was surprised to feel tired by the end. I wager she was carrying a lot more than just the torch.

The fanfare

“Last time you and I talked, we focused on the ‘me and my opportunity’ aspect of carrying the torch,” Langelaan reflects. “I didn’t anticipate the impact of the experiences of others during those 300 metres.”

Oakville, Ontario celebrants: As Langelaan puts it, “For most Canadians, the torch relay is as close as they’ll get to the Olympic experience.”

It sounds cliché to say that the flame is the symbol of the Olympic spirit, but hearing it from Langelaan’s perspective and seeing it through her eyes, the symbol seems more real,  its spirit  alive and well. As Langelaan puts it: “For most Canadians, the torch relay is as close as they’ll get to the Olympic experience.”

“So many people wanted to take their picture with her, even if they didn’t know her,” notes Langelaan’s husband, Mark, “it was that special to be next to a torchbearer.”

At the end of the Oakville leg, the crowds then gathered at the local public library, where folks could finally interact more closely. “So I took my time taking pictures with people,” says Langelaan. “From the looks on their faces, you could tell they just wanted to hold the torch. I was literally spreading the spirit; sharing the Olympic experience.”

Passing of the torch

A coworker asked if she could purchase Langelaan’s torch as a gift for a close friend, Corrine Hunt, co-designer of the Olympic medals. That particular hand-off took place in early January.

So what became of Langelaan’s torch? All 12,000 of this year’s Olympic Games torchbearers are given the option to purchase their torches or return them to VANOC. But a third option was also presented to Langelaan. A coworker asked if she could purchase Langelaan’s torch as a gift for a close friend, Corrine Hunt, co-designer of the Olympic medals. And that particular hand-off took place in early January (more pictures can be found on Corrine Hunt’s website).

And now, as an employee of Offsetters, Langelaan is pounding the pavement pretty hard  on behalf of the Games. And as she and her husband have just purchased a home in Port Moody, where they’re moving at the end of March, I anticipate her next day off will be sometime in mid-May. Still, Langelaan is remarkably settled while telling me of the past several weeks, focused as she is on the task at hand. Her grandfather’s commitment to living in the present must run in the family.

>>Follow the full journey of the 2010 Olympic flame at:  Vancouver 2010 website

>>For more info about Corrine Hunt: website

Lead image, ‘Torch Kiss’, courtesty Jessica Langelaan

Although my Kootenay backyard, to which I am forever and irrevocably bonded, features some of the most diverse wildlife habitats in southern Canada, a staggering network of industrial roads and hydroelectric developments has irreparably dulled the sharp edge of wilderness here.  An estimated 50 to 60,000 kilometres of forestry and mine roads spread like veins across the Kootenay high country, and both of our major rivers – the Columbia and Kootenay, have been dammed. The last salmon runs reached the upper Columbia River in the early 1940s, their way blocked forever by Washington’s Grand Coulee dam. Yet as a wilderness lover I am drawn to areas without these impacts – places where entire drainages, hundreds of kilometres long, are still unroaded, and where rivers still flow freely.

Northern British Columbia is one of those places.

NORTHERN B.C. "As a wilderness lover I am drawn to areas without these impacts – places where entire drainages, hundreds of kilometres long, are still unroaded, and where rivers still flow freely." Photo courtesy Brian Huntingon/brianhuntington.com

A 2007 canoe trip on northern B.C.’s Stikine River, one of three waterways that rise from the Spatsizi Plateau to make their way to the Pacific Ocean, hooked me on the area. The Stikine, along with the Nass and Skeena rivers, are true ecosystem arteries – conduits for the timeless flow of nutrients to the oceans and the return of critical minerals and proteins in the countless bodies of salmon who return to these rivers and their tributaries to complete their life cycles.

I thought a 10-day canoe trip on a wild northern river was pretty hard-core. That is, until I heard of Ali Howard’s truly epic 28-day, 610-km swim of the Stikine’s big-sister-river, the Skeena. Yes, that’s right, swim.

Howard immersed herself in the frigid Skeena to raise awareness of the threats of Shell’s proposed coal-bed methane drilling in the Sacred Headwaters and Enbridge’s proposed tar- sands oil pipeline (Westworld magazine features the Stikine and CBM threats to the Sacred Headwaters in its Winter 2009 issue “Landmarks: The Last Wild River”). Ali Howard summed up a month of cold-water immersion, punishing rapids, inspiring community support, and above all, the story of the Skeena, in Vancouver on Thursday December 3 at UBC Robson Square.

STIKINE RIVER, B.C. Ali Howard immersed herself in the frigid Skeena to raise awareness of the threats of Shell’s proposed coal-bed methane drilling in the Sacred Headwaters and Enbridge’s proposed tar sands oil pipeline. Photo courtesy Brian Huntington/brianhuntington.com

With the efforts of people like Ali, and support from people like you, hopefully the Skeena will never join the much-diminished Columbia River on the shameful list of watersheds to which salmon no longer return.

Do you have an update on the Wade Davis and David Suziki fight to save B.C.’s “Sacred Headwaters”? Let us know!

Lead photo courtesy Brian Huntington/brianhuntington.com

Artists strive to capture the essence of a subject – to essentially freeze it in time to allow the rest of our less intuitive brains time to render the fat from the meat, to see it’s true spirit.

Some of us work with words.  We try to arrange this jumble of symbols you see before you in such a way as to kindle some inner fire if inspiration and understanding.

Award-winning Nelson photographer Kari Medig seeks unique perspectives that tell his subject's stories in compelling ways. Kari's work will be featured at KMC's Backyard Booty on December 11th.

Others break our fast-paced world into frozen, individual images. Photographers offer us our world one frame at a time, allowing us to explore the full range of human emotion, the power of landscape, the meaning of shape, tone and colour.

Painters and sculptors are limited only by the human imagination – their own and that of their audience. Their offerings are as much a glimpse into their own souls as a lens through which to view our surroundings.

For the last five years Nelson’s Mitchell Scott and Peter Moynes have bound a range of place-based art into the pages of a single publication, Kootenay Mountain Culture magazine (KMC). And for the past five years, KMC’s high-quality presentation, resonant content, and creative depth have had locals clamouring for the next edition of this biannual months before publication.

In addition to celebrating the local flavours in print,This years event launches on December 11 at Nelson’s Capitol Theatre. Showtime 7 p.m.

Courtesy Jeremy Down

Whether you’re an ingredient in the unique spice that is Kootenay Mountain Culture, or just a voyeur wanting a better peek at what’s on the other side of the powder curtain, Backyard Booty in Nelson is the place to be this month.

Links:

karimedigphoto.com
www.jeremydown.com
Mitchell Scott: adventurestorytelling.ca

Lead photo courtesy Jeremy Down

Local gal to carry the Olympic torch December 19

by Bernice Paul

The Olympic Torch Relay, which began locally on October 30 in Victoria and  is wending its way some 45,000 km across Canada,will be borne by a total of 12,000 torchbearers – athletes and civilians alike. Twelve thousand, each of whom will carry the torch for 300 metres before the final bearer enters the Games’ opening ceremonies and lights the Olympic flame. Not even I, a mild sports fan at best, can help but sprout goose bumps just reading about it.

One of the selected torchbearers is Jessica Langelaan, who has been associated with 2010 for some time now. In fact, last year she was given the enormous and never-been-done-before task of measuring the carbon footprint of the entire 2010 experience, including the torch relay. And apparently the relay accounts for about 3,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases – approximately one per cent of the total footprint of the Games. Because the relay is on foot, its emissions all come from the travel associated with the support teams, security and medical assistance. Oh, and the flame? “It’s butane or propane… and a very, very tiny part of the footprint,” according to Langelaan, who now works as a consultant for Offsetters, the official carbon-offset supplier for the Games.

As for her bid to carry the torch, it goes something like this:

“I auditioned to be in the opening ceremonies,” explains Langelaan,  “and made the mistake of telling my grandmother”  – who became convinced – and very excited – about dear Jessica being on television. Unfortunately, the opening ceremonies didn’t call back and Langelaan couldn’t break the news to Grandma. “So I had to be a torchbearer – for my grandmother.”

Needless to say it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And it strikes me that Lanelaan is more proud of being a torchbearer than of having calculated its carbon footprint. And of course, most of her family will be descending upon Oakville, Ontario, to watch her carry the torch, including her best friend from Thunder Bay. (Her aunt has purchased red scarves for the whole family to wear so that they’ll stand out amongst the red-mittened crowd.)

“I don’t want to build it up too much – it’s only 300 metres!” says Langelaan. “No one’s ever come to watch me do anything and suddenly the world will show up to watch these 300 metres!” True, and a tedious leg it will be, too. It has already snowed in Ontario, so graceful trotting could prove challenging.

Langelaan takes the torch on December 19 at 3 pm EST – her very own red carpet moment. Here’s hoping it’s the longest and happiest 300 metres in her life.

You can follow Jessica or the entire Torch Relay on Twitter.

Part Two to follow

Lead photo courtesy Jessica Langelaan

by Tyee Bridge

In his 2004 travel memoir The Last Heathen, Charles Montgomery followed the trail of his great-grandfather, a 19th-century Anglican missionary, to the Melanesian Islands of the South Pacific. (Praised by critics at the New York Times and the Globe & Mail, among many other publications, the book won the 2005 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.) Five years later, in talking about his current projects, Montgomery recounts one of the book’s early scenes: “There was this village of grass huts at the base of a volcano on the island of Tanna, where I arrived at sunset, alone, not knowing anybody. Some young men saw me and led me to a clearing in the woods, their sacred kava drinking grounds, and greeted me by letting me take part in their kava ritual.”

The generosity of the locals on Tanna Island led to Montgomery's latest project: a 2010 Olympic Games program benefitting both travellers to Vancouver and the city's homeless population.

After he was pleasantly drunk – the root of a local pepper plant, kava has relaxant and anaesthetic properties – the villagers then escorted him, head spinning, to a hut for a plate of steaming root vegetables and a warm bed. It was a pivotal moment. “I was amazed and impressed that these people would be so generous to a stranger,” says Montgomery. And though The Last Heathen includes far more bizarre experiences, it’s that generosity and hospitality that are most on his mind these days. In fact, the villagers’ open-heartedness is what has led Montgomery to his most recent initiatives: a book in progress, tentatively titled Happy City, and a 2010 Olympic Games program benefiting both travellers to Vancouver and the city’s homeless population.

Montgomery grew up in Vancouver Island’s North Cowichan, on a hobby farm with chickens, turkeys and a few cows.  “Looking back, I suppose that was my introduction to the culture of exchange. The rule was, when you come to the farm, you work. But that wasn’t a bad thing. My relatives loved it. They’d fix fences, clear Scotch broom from the fields and till the garden in spring.”

After journalism school and an internship at B.C.’s regional Lillooet Bridge River News, Montgomery then followed a long line of Canadian journalists to a Hong Kong expatriate community where he reported on stories in Southeast Asia from 1996 to 1998. Travelling abroad led to inevitable comparisons with his own culture, and by the time he was writing The Last Heathen four years later, a clear question had emerged. “When I came back to Vancouver I wanted to know, what makes people around the world so generous and trusting, and what stops many of us in North America from being that way?”

“We want folks across Canada to know

they’ve got a place to stay for the Games, and

that just by coming and having a great time,

they’ll be helping Vancouver deal with homelessness.”

–Charles Montgomery

In 2006, Montgomery discovered a group of UBC economists and psychologists, led by professor emeritus of economics John Helliwell, who were studying the nature of happiness and the economics of trust. “The single most powerful correlate of human happiness, they said, is the quality and number of trusting relationships we have with others. So the best way to be happy is to be generous – not just with money, but by giving of yourself, by being open to other people.”

That premise is the core of Happy City, which is set in Colombia, Paris and Mexico City. In Montgomery’s words, the book “explores the intersection of the design of cities and the design of our minds . . . and how cities can make or break happiness.” His encounter with Helliwell also led Montgomery to launch Home for the Games, a project that opens Vancouver homes to Olympic visitors while raising money to combat homelessness in the city.

“At the time I was asking these questions, everyone in Vancouver was talking about the Olympics. So I asked Helliwell, ‘Will the Olympics make Vancouver happy?’ He said the most powerful effect the Games could have on happiness is if they fostered a culture of engagement and generosity. That got me thinking.”

Later, at his kitchen table, Montgomery and a few friends took two related problems – Vancouver’s growing homeless population and the lack of hotel rooms for thousands of 2010 Olympic visitors – and cracked them together like a pair of walnuts. The resulting project, Home for the Games, will enable residents to share their homes in return for modest compensation, with more than half the proceeds donated to two local charities focused on homelessness (Covenant House and Streetohome Foundation). The payoff? Not just money saved and donated, but the chance for visitors and hosts to celebrate together – and get happy.

Get Mobilized for the Games – and Homelessness

Launched in August 2009, the Home for the Games website lists everything needed to register (free for homeowners and visitors) and get connected — whether you’re a Vancouver home-owner or an Olympic visitor.

For more information see: “Lodge in the Heart.”

Lead image courtesy Charles Montgomery

courtesy Loving Earth; flickr.com

The long-dead gunslinger is also a big tourist draw in New Mexico, the state where he spent most of his life. Each year, New Mexico stages a Billy the Kid Pageant in Lincoln from August 7 to 9. And to meet the needs of Wild West aficionados who can’t make the trip, the New Mexico Tourism Department recently created a new website, (www.newmexico.org/billythekid) featuring biographical information and maps and tours of Billy the Kid territory that allow visitors to retrace his history.

Judging by the only authenticated photo of him, Billy the Kid did not resemble Paul Newman, Val Kilmer, Kris Kristofferson or any of the other actors who have portrayed him in the movies. That photo, a two-by-three-inch ferrotype or tintype, taken outside Beaver Smith’s Saloon in Fort Sumner, in late 1879 or early 1880, depicts the Kid at age 20. An earlier version published in 1907 in the first volume of G. B. Anderson’s History of New Mexico: Its Resources & People, remains unaccounted for; speculation endures that it may have been lost in a fire.

Billy the Kid; courtesy wikimedia.org

The image reveals, as the Las Vegas Gazette reported on December 28, 1880, “… a young man about five feet eight or nine inches tall, slightly built and lithe, weighing about 140; a frank and open countenance, looking like a school boy, with the traditional silky fuzz on his upper lip; clear, blue eyes, with a roguish snap about them; light hair and complexion. He is, in all, quite a handsome looking fellow, the only imperfection being two prominent front teeth slightly protruding like squirrel’s teeth.” 

Tintypes are reverse images. Unfortunately, publisher after publisher of countless books, magazines and newspapers over the decades produced copies of the halftone from the Anderson book without telling readers that they were seeing a reverse image. As publication of the reversed image multiplied, it created the myth of the Kid as a left-handed gun. That fallacy is only one of many about Billy the Kid. 

According to the popular legend, Billy was a homicidal maniac who killed 21 men, one for each of his 21 years. In truth, he shot four by himself and perhaps five others in concert with others, and each of his killings was either committed in self-defence or as an act of war. Rather than a cold-blooded killer, he seems to have been a product of his times. New Mexico was a violent place in 1880: the state’s murder rate was 47 times higher than the national average.

He was also not named Billy, though he did assume the alias of William H. Bonney. His real name was Henry McCarty and he was born in 1859 in New York City, the son of  Irish immigrants. His father vanished from his life at an early age and Henry moved west with his mother, first to Indiana, then to New Mexico, where she remarried and died of tuberculosis in 1874. Abandoned by his stepfather, the teen drifted into petty crime before moving to Arizona and getting involved in cattle rustling. 

The saga of Billy the Kid emerged from the debris of the Lincoln County War, a complex and bloody feud that erupted in New Mexico in 1878, pitting the area’s ranchers against the town merchants. Billy fought on the side of the ranchers, who lost the conflict, and was later charged with murdering Lincoln County sheriff William Brady, even though Brady died in a hail of bullets fired by numerous gunmen. Many found it strange that the Kid was the only one tried for the murder, and most agree it was a crooked trial. In fact, the Kid was the only person successfully charged with a crime as a result of the Lincoln County War. 

Lincoln County jail; courtesy wikimedia.org

Billy was eventually captured by Sheriff Pat Garrett and jailed in the town of Mesilla. His trial was held in a building that still stands at 2385 Calle de Guadalupe, and is now called the Billy the Kid Gift Shop. Here, on April 9, 1881, Billy was found guilty of murder and  sentenced to death by hanging. But on April 28, 1881, after being returned to the Lincoln County jail, he escaped custody by slipping out of his handcuffs and shooting two of Garrett’s deputies. A few months later, Garrett tracked down his nemesis and killed him, ambushing Billy at a ranch near Fort Sumner on July 14, 1881.

Pat Garrett; courtesy wikimedia.org

Ironically, Billy the Kid was not a well-known figure during his life. He was catapulted to legendary status after his death by the publication of a rash of dime-store novels and Pat Garrett’s own sensational book, The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid: The Noted Desperado of the Southwest, Whose Deeds of Daring and Blood Have Made His Name a Terror in New Mexico, Arizona, and Northern New Mexico by Pat F. Garrett, Sheriff of Lincoln County, N. Mex. By whom He was Finally Hunted Down and Captured by Killing Him.

His legend got another boost in 1926, when author Walter N. Burns published his bestselling novel The Saga of Billy the Kid, heralding the rebirth of the boy as America’s own Robin Hood. Adding further weight to the renaissance was the emergence of several old men claiming to be the real Kid, having survived Garrett’s bullets. The controversy would ultimately result in a 2004 court battle to exhume the remains of Billy and his mother to extract DNA to compare with that taken from the corpses of two of the men who purported to be Billy. This challenge was successfully opposed by the mayors of Fort Sumner and Silver City, who realized that the result had the potential to dry up a major source of tourism revenue.

Maybe the Kid can now finally rest in peace, wherever he is buried.

(Lead image by Shanissinha; flickr.com)

The bizarre dance craze originated completely by accident. In 2003, Harding had just quit his job as a video game designer and was backpacking around Southeast Asia with some friends. One day in Vietnam they were videotaping each other when one of his companions suggested he do his “geeky dance.” Harding continued to do the jig in various Southeast Asian countries that he visited on the trip. The videos were uploaded to his website for friends and family to enjoy. Later, Harding edited together 15 dance scenes, all with him in centre frame, and added some background music–a world music song entitled Sweet Lullaby by Deep Forest. Harding first posted himself online in January 2005. The video was passed around by e-mail and by various bloggers and eventually became viral, with his server getting 20,000 or more hits a day as it was discovered. “It got picked up by somethingawful.com and sites like that,” Harding recalled. “Usually, what they showed was people getting hurt or doing something really stupid, so I was bracing myself for abuse, but everyone seemed to like it.”

Bemused by his antics and impressed by the following he was amassing, the makers of Stride Gum contacted Harding and asked him if he would be interested in making another video for them for the debut of their chewing gum, which was slated for June 2006. With Stride’s sponsorship money, Harding journeyed to 39 countries on seven continents, including Antarctica, Egypt, Italy, Turkey and Easter Island, stopping to film himself busting a move at each destination. From these wanderings, he created a second video called “Dancing 2006.”

In an interview with the Washington Post, Harding admitted that the most difficult dance he did took place on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. “I spent nine hours climbing up to the peak, I vomited eight times on the way up and I just had nothing left by the time I got up there.” The most complicated video was shot underwater in Micronesia in front of the propeller of a Japanese shipwreck that was sunk in World War II. The most terrifying two-step was on the Kjeragbolten rock in Norway. “It’s just a tiny rock wedged between two faces of a chasm 3,000 feet up and only a few feet across. Dancing on that rock, yeah, I came very close to killing myself.”

Although there is no discernable connection between chewing gum and bad dancing, Stride offered to sponsor Harding strutting his stuff around the world again in 2007 and 2008. Amazingly, in this era of shameless commercial tie-ins, he was not obliged to wear a Stride T-shirt or deliver a little pitch for the product. Harding released his third dancing video on June 20, 2008, the product of 14 months of travelling in 42 countries. In his early videos, Harding dances alone, but in his third video he is usually in the company of others: South African street children in Soweto, painted tribesman in New Guinea, Bollywood dancers in India, waitresses clad in French maid costumes in Tokyo, all copying, or trying to, his spastic gyrations. Harding’s girlfriend, Melissa Nixon, helped to produce the video. Nixon organized the 40 or so dancing events, culled from a list of more than 20,000 invitations from fans around the world to come boogie with them in their hometowns. The esoteric background music, a piece called ”Praan,” was composed by Gary Schyman specifically for the video. The vocals were supplied by a 17-year-old Bengali singer named Palbasha Siddique, with lyrics adapted from the poem “Stream of Life,” by Rabindranath Tagore.

Today, Harding estimates that his online dance videos, which appear on YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo and on his own website: www.wherethehellismatt.com, have been viewed more than 20 million times. The miracle of Internet fame has transformed his life. Harding was recently recruited by Visa to star in its “Travel Happy” advertising campaign, and has hired a publicist to help him field interview requests. He is also in demand as a public speaker, an amazing development considering he never utters a word in any of his videos. As for the message he hopes to convey through his globe-stomping antics, Harding says: “A wildly exaggerated view of the natural joyfulness and goodwill of our species. I make humanist propaganda. I try to trick people into thinking the world is wonderful so they will act accordingly.”

Photo Credits:

#1: smh.com.au

#2: gamespot.com

#3: brandrepublic.asia

It is the destiny of great cities to possess one landmark structure that personifies the place’s spirit and identity. In London, it is Big Ben; in Paris, it is the Eiffel Tower. Barcleona’s cultural icon is called Templo de la Sagrada Familia (Temple of the Holy Family). This strange and unforgettable landmark was conceived as nothing short of a Bible in stone. Of the millions of tourists who visit the city annually, more than a third come specifically to view this extraordinary basilica, which remains half-finished after more than a century of construction. Whether one prefers to view it as a ruin or a work-in-progress, its visual impact is undimished, inspiring a mixture of awe and astonishment.

The cathedral’s size alone is startling. Eight spires rise like celestial billiard cues to a height of more than 90 metres. The massive stone walls are pimpled, creased and curled like the contours of some great mutant sandcastle. The main façade, dedicated to the theme of the nativity, is riddled with biblical sculptures life-cast from pelicans. tortoises, still-born children, and the rag and bone merchants of Barcelona’s slums. At night, illuminated by banks of pale blue lights, the entire structure appears to be melting.

La Sagrada Familia is the masterpiece of architect Antonio Gaudi, one of the most creative and enigmatic artists the world has ever seen. Revered by the Spanish as a combination of wizard and a saint, Gaudi was a frail, rheumatic man who never married and lived most of his life with his father and orphaned niece. His most striking features were a pair of piercing blue eyes and what one contemporary described as a “luminous half-laugh.” Disdainful of wealth or publicity, Gaudi never gave a single lecture or wrote an article or book. Three beliefs sustained his life–a belief in architecture, in a Christian god and in Catalonia, the region of Spain where he was born in 1852 and from which he scarcely stirred during his 74 years on the planet.

Virtually all of Gaudi’s major works can be found in Barcelona, offering tourists a compact record of a career characterized by boundless creative energy. Much of Gaudi’s early career was spent designing opulent and eclectic homes for wealthy patrons. With its fretted facade of rubble stone and pink brick, floral ceramic tiles and spiky iron-cast railings, Casa Vicens affords visitors a good introduction to the Gaudi’s talent for joining the sensuous and organic to the cool, disciplined logic of geometry.

Casa Battlo and Casda Mila, two residences located with in a few blocks of one another on Paseo de Gracia, showcase Gaudi’s secular styling at its most accomplished. Casa Battlo, built for a wealthy textile manufacturer, is nothing short of jewelry on a grand scale. The iridescent blue tiles of the faced resemble the bubbly surface of a wave breaking over a beach. Casa Mila, is a very peculiar-looking six-storey apartment whose hammered and pitted stone facade lends it the appearance of a liquefied mountain. Know to locals as La Pedreda (the Quarry), its undulating roll of individual floors has been likened to everything from cave dwellings to hornets’ nests.

Unfortunately, both Casa Battlo and Casa Mila are private residences, and many of their most intriguing features—curling staircases, vertical courtyards and Alice in Wonderland rooftops—remain hidden from public view. Lack of accessibility, however, is not a problem with Park Guell, Gaudi’s most ambitious undertaking after La Sagarda Familia. The park, which is located at the north end of town, was originally conceived as a suburban real estate development by its financier, Count Eusebio Guell, who hired Gaudi to design a garden city for 60 families. But only two of the houses sold, one of which Gaudi bought. After Guell’s death, the property passed to the city and has since become a successful public park.

Gaudi’s intention here was to be bizarre and playful on one hand, while producing architecture that could serve as a compliment to nature. The result is a hallucinatory expression of the imagination with giant decorative lizards and a tilting Hall of Columns. One Spanish writer described it as “at once a fun fair, a pertrified forest and the great temple of Amun at Karnak, itself drunk and reeling in an eccentric earthquake.” The park pavilions, which were designed by Gaudí, seem to be taken out of Hansel and Gretel, with curved roofs covered with brightly coloured tiles and ornamented spires. The staircase at the entrance of the park is also designed by Gaudí. The dragon-like lizard at the centre of the ceramic-decorated staircase is the best known symbol of the park, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1984. A connecting flight of stairs leads to another famous feature of the park: the Gran Placa Circular. Originally intended as a market place for the residents, this plaza is bordered by what is known as the largest bench in the world. The colourful ceramic serpentine bench twists around the plaza. The view from the plaza is spectacular; one can see as far as the Mediterranean Sea. The whole platform is supported by 86 huge columns, creating a hall beneath the plaza.

As Gaudi aged, he became increasingly eccentric and religious. In 1914, in retreat from the world, he chose to devote himself completely to La Sagrada Familia, living on the site in a simple workman’s hut. His work on the cathedral had actually begun 31 years earlier and had continued sporadically, dependent upon the public donations that financed its construction and on other architectural commitments. Gaudi never intended the project to be finished in his lifetime. Like the medieval cathedrals, it was to be the work of generations. “My client is in no rush,” he once said. After Gaudi’s death in a street car accident in 1926, work proceeded under a group of close collaborators, people who could be trusted to faithfully translate the master’s ideas. However, construction was halted at the onset of the Spanish Civil War in 1935.  During the conflict, fire gutted the building and the models and blueprints in Gaudi’s studio were destroyed. This has made it very difficult for workers to complete the cathedral in the same fashion as Gaudi most likely would have wished.

Today, the construction continues amid much controversy. Some contend that a new generation of craftsmen, unacquainted with Gaudi’s spirit, cannot possibly hope to do justice to his original vision, and that the work should be stopped. Others feel that the rather than being confined to a facsimile of what Gaudi might have done, the design ought to be widened to include modern flourishes. The debate continues to rage, even as city officials have targeted a completion date of 2026 for the cathedral, which will mark the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death.

Photo Credits:

#1: barcelonapictures.blogspot.com

#2: gaudidesigner.com

#3: spanishjourneys.com

#4: baldheretic.com

#5: coined-spain.org 

Sandbank on the coast of Whitsunday Island, Queensland, Austrialia.

Arthus-Bertrand stumbled into his artistic vocation. In 1976, at age 30, he left France and moved to Kenya with his wife Anne and two children to study lions in the Maasai Mara Reserve. At the time he was a journalist dabbling in photography, but in Kenya he began to focus more intently on his camera, snapping shots of the animals while his wife concentrated on the writing. To pay the bills, he began guiding tourists around in a hotel’s hot-air balloon, which he realized was a unique vantage point from which to capture the beauty of the natural world. The aerial perspective became his calling card.

In the 1990s, under the patronage of UNESCO, Arthus-Bertrand began creating an image bank of earth seen from above. These were to be more than just photographs; they were to be a visual record of the world’s environment for the current generation and the many more to come. In 1999, these pictures came together in the form of a book entitled The Earth from Above. It became one of the best-selling illustrated books in the world, with more than three million copies sold, and was translated into 24 languages. Although just a single-volume edition, it soon became a travelling exhibition seen by more than 120 million people in 110 cities.

Tuareg tribesman with camels in Niger’s Tenere Desert.

Arthus-Bernard’s intent with the book was simple. “With Earth from Above, I simply want people to see the earth as it is today, as faithfully as possible,” he said. “What motivates me is the impact a photograph can make within the framework of environmental preservation. The great novelty of our time is that mankind has the power to change its environment and I want my photos to testify to this fact so people can realize this.”

In 2000, the Frenchman mounted another ambitious show entitled Earth from the Air: A Photographic Portrait of Our Planet. The exhibition of 160 images took 10 years of research and fieldwork to produce, during which time Arthus-Bertrand took more than 100,000 shots and clocked up more than 3,000 flying hours, travelling across 76 countries.

Flamingos on Kenya’s Lake Nakuru.

Today, in addition to photography, Arthus-Bertrand is involved in non-profit projects for different organizations. In 2005, he created GoodPlanet.org, a non-profit organization that is dedicated to the promotion of sustainable development, a common theme throughout all his different ventures. Well aware of the impact his own photographic activities have in generating greenhouse gases, he has decided to finance projects that promote renewable energies, are more energy efficient and encourage reforestation. Arthus-Bertrand is also the chairman of GoodPlanet, a non-profit organization in France that has decided in partnership with ADEME (French environment and energy management agency) to combat climate change.

Alberta’s oil sands.

In the meantime, if you happen to be in New York this spring you can catch a new travelling exhibition of Arthus-Bertrand’s remarkable aerial photography: Earth from Above will be on display from May 1 to June 28, 2009, at the World Financial Center Plaza. In 2010, San Francisco and Los Angeles will host the exhibit of 150 large-format images, which has previously been seen in more than 120 cities around the world.

Discharge from a gold mine in Mindanao, Philippines.

As always, his goal with this latest exhibit is to get people to change their lives, leaving smaller footprints and a more sustainable future. As Arthus-Bertrand noted in a recent interview: “We want everything faster. We cut the trees faster than the trees grow. We take the fish faster than they can reproduce. We send CO2 into the sky faster than the CO2 can be absorbed. If we don’t change, nature is going to force us to change.”

Photo Credits:

#1,2,3,4,5,6: Yann Arthus-Bertrand