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Browsing All Posts filed under »idiosyncracy & autobiography«
Aleck’s Last Playlist, Vol. 3 – The City Blues
One time Aleck and I heard about a beer festival coming around town. Our information was vague. We had a notion that it was happening on Davie, but no. We were on the wrong trail, but there must have been some connection, because the people at the place we went looking at knew where to […]
Aleck’s Last Playlist, Vol. 2: The Country Blues
May 11, 2021
Beginning that Thursday night in April in 1984, most of the time for the next two decades, Aleck and I roommated together. He wasn’t always around, mind, but he had a way of moving in and out without fuss (he so rarely had possessions to move with him) that I have a hard time hanging […]
Aleck’s Last Playlist: Vol. One – Professor Longhair
May 4, 2021
My brother Aleck re-entered my life one Thursday, it seems to me a sunny Thursday afternoon, April 25th, 1984. The phone rang. “Is this Ted?” “Yes.” “It’s Aleck.” I couldn’t at that moment remember knowing an Aleck. “Aleck. Aleck, your brother. You know, Tommy.” Oh, that Aleck. Now, the last time I’d seen my brother […]
My Murderer
July 23, 2014
Butcher, baker, candlestick maker. Is there a rhyme that includes “murderer”? Perhaps not. But I knew a murderer once, maybe the most reviled and notorious murderer in the community of Canadian letters, Roy Lowther. He beat his wife—the poet Pat Lowther—to death with a hammer in the summer of 1975, and dumped her body in […]
An Ambiguous Death
September 15, 2013
My friend Jo died near the end of last month. She was the best friend I had while that role was still possible for her. Long before that she was my wife, and the mother of my daughter Haisla. She was also my collaborator in a pair of Aboriginal studies courses which we wrote for […]
To My Granddaughter
February 3, 2013
Welcome, little one. What’s your name? Maybe Malaika, but you don’t know yet? 5 weeks early! Well, well. Haisla said to the doctor, that’s too early. But you were going to come regardless, and here you are. You weighed 3.3 kilos, more than seven pounds, which was at the 97th percentile for little folk like […]
How I Wrote a Story With Tennessee Williams
July 2, 2012
I don’t know about all artists, but some seem only to thrive within an intimate audience. After Mark Twain’s wife died, he never finished another book. The number of art school students who surrendered art abruptly upon leaving school is significant, which I connect to this loss of audience. I’ve heard some explain that they […]
The Pony-Rider by Mark Twain
March 27, 2012
In 1861, in the course of a stagecoach ride to Nevada with his brother, Mark Twain has a brief encounter with a rider from the already-legendary Pony Express. In a little while all interest was taken up in stretching our necks and watching for the “pony-rider”—the fleet messenger who sped across the continent from St. […]
Smokin’ Joe Frazier, The Great Nemesis, 1944-2011
November 9, 2011
A great champion demands a great nemesis. George Foreman gave Ali his greatest victory, a victory of tactics over power, but it was Joe Frazier who fought the champion’s defining battles. Famously, Frazier was the first to hand Ali a defeat. To be a great nemesis, the possibility of victory must always be there. Smokin’ […]
Hacking the Briefcase
August 11, 2011
I have an old leather briefcase which has been lurking about for a decade, unopened. It has dual combination locks, one of those sorts where you can set the combinations yourself, but those numbers mysterious, lost long ago. I really don’t have much use for a briefcase anymore, but I didn’t like to throw it […]
Grandpa Theo
With Malaika
Klick This Pic
An Informal Chronology of the Aboriginal Land Question in BC
Father Theo's Blog 
September 21, 2021
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