Wren Brian was just 10 years old when the first X-Men movie came out in 2000. The film’s opening scene, set in the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, triggered a fascination with the Nazi Holocaust that remains with her today. Until a single one-hour history lesson in Grade 12, however, the Whitehorse-born playwright had …
This month, Yukon Pride: 24 Hours of Gaylight is happening for the sixth year in a row—and it just gets bigger every year.
Didoo’s Trunk That’s where she kept her knife. That’s where she kept her awl. That’s where she kept her file. That’s where she kept her hatchet. That’s where she kept her snares. That’s where she kept her thimble. That’s where she kept her needles. That’s where she kept her pipe. That’s where she kept her …
It’s the age-old debate about the chicken and the egg. Sometimes, we simply don’t know what is cause and what is effect. This is especially true when it comes to matters that touch on personal feeling. As a for-instance, do you love cream of broccoli soup because your Grandma used to make it? Or do …
Until very recently, I had never heard the expression “hitchhiker’s thumb”. Oh sure, there was that weird guy in Grade 9 named Pete Moss, who had double-jointed thumbs. He also had a habit of turning his eyelids inside-out, a truly gory sight that the girls in the class generally found disgusting, but the boys considered …
One of my favourite pastimes is exploring the origins and meanings of common English words and expressions. Our language is such a hodge-podge (dare one say “hotchpotch”?) of thefts, borrowings and adaptations from others, that an etymologist can go haring down many a rabbit hole trying to plumb the depths of a simple phrase. English …
Thoughts of Hitchhiking Sometimes Follow Strange Trails Read More »
Which brings me to one of Canada’s neatest little music festivals. To protect my sources, I won’t identify it, except to say it has been an annual event in southeastern Ontario for more than four decades. But this year, the festival’s very existence may hang in the balance. Not because of financial irregularities. Not because …
It was a strange encounter that still has my brain abuzz. I was walking home from the grocery store in my current city of residence southeast of Whitehorse. My route took me past the site where small men and large machines have been toiling for months to build a massive parking garage. As the work …
Getting a medal isn’t the point. “We’re there to have fun,” says Gaetan, captain of Yukon’s Special Olympics soccer team. “doing your best.”
It’s that time of the year again, the bears are out and we need a refresher on bear spray. It isn’t magic – and definitely not the solution to all bear problems – but with a little know-how it will keep you safe in most bear encounter situations. Bear spray is a tool to help …
Reclaiming Male Role Models is a podcast created by Bob Schwenkler. I discovered it in 2014 when I became dissatisfied with my options for men modeling healthy masculinity in our culture and began actively seeking men I could look up to and even follow their example. Schwenkler himself was in a similar place. Embarking on …
I want you to imagine your favourite pie – apple, blueberry, rhubarb or a rebel mix of all three. I want you to picture yourself eating this freshly baked, perfectly flakey pie, one beautiful bite at a time. In math class, you may have learned to associate pies as a metaphor to illustrate fractions. If …
Breasts, boobs, tits, tatas. Mind the title, because, yes, this really is a story about tits, but it’s also, oh! so much more than that. Because, what are breasts to women? I won’t overstep boundaries and assume to know everyone’s relationship with their own; however, whether we have them or we don’t, and no matter …
I was five-years-old when I broke my first tooth. I was skidooing with my dad on our faithful, yellow Tundra. I was sitting up front, my small body tucked (somewhat safely) between the handles and my much larger dad. When we careened over an unexpected bump, my face flew forward, my teeth connecting with the …
I’m from Ontario, but boy let me tell you I would much rather be out here. Where I come from the only outdoor activities families engage in are taking the bus, and burying their heads in technology. You know that the next generation is going to be smarter than you when you’re watching a baby …
Growing up is hard. And the microcosm of high school — with its changing expectations and responsibilities and the push-pull of social dynamics, while, at the same time, you’re trying to establish emotional coping mechanisms and, above all, dealing with the omnipresent questions about the rest of life…? Phew. It’s exhausting just reading that, nevermind …
In today’s world, it can be hard to feel comfortable in our own skin. This is, in part, due to a growing plague of diet and fitness advertisements hinting that our happiness stems from a leaner version of ourselves. These advertisements have accumulated to the point where body-confidence is an issue in our society. I …
When I decided to remove my mask last summer I had to face how lonely I was, how isolated I had become. In a desperate need to present only my best self at work, on social occasions and even at home, I had withdrawn, hiding the not-so-great parts of myself from everyone. I was deeply …
Leonardo da Vinci said the “human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art,” which it is. The foot has with a complex network of 26 bones, 37 joints, more than 100 ligaments, some 20 muscles, thousands of nerve endings, tendons and tissues uniquely designed to withstand pounds of pressure and stress. …
It’s (hopefully) coming to the last wintery blows before the ice breaks; the spring will soon rush in and soon after we can cast our mittens aside for a season. Enjoy the longer nights – while they last – by burying yourself in one (or all) of these books, based around the “Three R’s” of …
“We imagined ourselves free of the hassles and troubles we’d accumulated in Toronto. We imagined a life without rushing, without the subway, without neighbours at each other’s throats, without the noise and frustration of daily commutes. Life with space. Life without the massacre of endless winter, frozen pipes, cracking plaster and mountains of snow to …
The Grass is Greener Wherever Convenience Resides Read More »
In previous columns in this space, I have offered various suggestions of ways to improve life for those who roam the earth on two legs, especially those of us who do so burdened by creeping senescence. The recent holidays provided an opportunity to put my brain in idle mode, where it often does its best …
“Were the gut solely responsible for transporting food and producing the occasional burp, such a sophisticated nervous system would be an odd waste of energy. Nobody would create such a neural network just to enable us to break wind. There must be more to it than that.” –an excerpt from Gut: The Inside Story of …
How to Survive in the North is a graphic novel where three northern tales — two historical and true, one fictional and set in present-day — are woven together in an artistic cartoon arrangement. While the title suggests the book may provide guidance through an icy winter, it’s more likely to urge you to consider …
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the United States of America. The wealthy and patrician New Yorker, whose New Deal policies helped pull the U.S. out of the Great Depression and laid the foundation for much of its existing social policy, was the guy in charge the year I was born. Roosevelt died …
That new guy next door is definitely one of a kind Read More »
The student population studying for finals are fascinating creatures. Next, there is a dietary shift in students, where once semi-nutritious meals are replaced by caffeine and variants of sugar. The date of the finals attack can be characterized by the temporary nocturnal ability students will gain 1-2 days before the exam. These extra hours are …
My dinner dishes don’t always get done after dinner. There is a chair in my living room that has a continuous pile of laundry to be folded. Sometimes I forget the kid’s helmet, or swimsuit, or permission slip for school. The dogs haven’t been bathed for two weeks. I try to be a calm and …
“There’s no ‘should’ or ‘should not’ when it comes to having feelings. They’re part of who we are and their origins are beyond our control. When we can believe that, we may find it easier to make constructive choices about what to do with those feelings.“ -Fred Rogers. From, The World According to Mister Rogers. …
Aislinn Cornett is an art therapist, writer, artist and adventurer born in Whitehorse, Yukon. She currently lives, writes and doodles on the beach in Mexico.
What makes you happy or gives you energy? It is easy to get carried away in everyday life and be around distractions that take you further away from knowing what gives you energy – and what takes it away. This is the time to tap into one of the sources of why you might have …
How to Have Enough Energy to do Things That Make You Happy Read More »
As humans we are obsessed with counting things. We keep track of the numbers in our lives. We are always keeping score, measuring, recording and counting. For some of us the first thing we do in the morning is check how our body mass relates to the law of gravity (hop on the scale). We …
Our mind has the power to take us places we don’t truly want to go. If we’ve had people in our lives telling us things about ourselves that are not true too many times, then we can start to believe it. This can happen when beliefs have been in our minds for so long they …
Peanut butter I have to remember to get peanut butter why did she wear that today what was she thinking did he pick up the dry cleaning who was that actor in that movie about the dry cleaner why did I wear this today what was I thinking… Sound familiar? That’s because it is. All …
I have mined to come up with activities that might make Valentines Day as awesome as any other day of the year, even if you’re flying solo.
Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic broke up in 2003 in Zagreb, Croatia. Like most post- relationship humans, they had ordinary objects kicking around their houses that sparked emotions, relating to the relationship, or the demise of it. The two artists joked about starting a museum. They asked their friends for their relationship remnants. They got …
I’m interested in enthymemes. An enthymeme is an argument in which at least one constituent part is not stated, but implied. When I use the word “argument” I am not denoting a spirited exchange of opinions; rather, I’m using it in a technical sense, meaning “a series of premises leading to a conclusion.” A simple …
I’m finally getting some good sleep these days. Recently, I was stage-managing the incredible Varietease show at the Guild: a cavalcade of comedy, song and, indeed, titillation. This basically amounted to many long evenings that blended into each other as we moved closer and closer to show time. By the time we were nearing the …
I had a dream last night that I was at a Yakov Smirnoff show with my mother. I sure hope this wasn’t forecasting any kind of future. Not that I wouldn’t love to go to a show with my mother, I’ve evolved well past the point where I can now be comfortably seen in public …
So I went on this website to see when I’d die. The Internet, being the general purveyor of naked people and random crotch shots, can also tell you how long you’ll have to live. You simply enter a little personal data. You type in your age, history of disease in your family and, generally, how …
Sometimes people stumble upon their passions accidentally; such is the case with Sophia Marnik. After studying to become a teacher at McGill University, she came North to the Yukon, in 1996, with an open-ended future in front of her. At approximately the same time, a local production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was …
Man, could I ever have used a Rendezvous this year. The past month was a particularly dark sinkhole of a time for yours truly, and unfortunately these flatlanders in the town they call “Toon”, only seem to get together and celebrate when the Riders are on the field. I’m not sure exactly how February got …
June was a bad month to be a human. First, we all watched with horror as Armando Galarraga’s perfect game was stolen from him, at the 27th out, by … human error. Then we had the disallowed goal in a FIFA World Cup game that resulted in a tie between the U.S. and Slovenia. Both …
The biggest problems experienced by amateur astronomers, who live in the Yukon and the northern limits of civilization, is the cold. The cold is brutal on the human element, and is capable of wreaking all kinds of havoc on astronomy gear — from poorly made eyepieces and telescope mounts, to laptop computers. One would think …
