The Point

Friday, July 11, 2008

Frère fier

I'm a proud big brother today.

My dear friend Aurélie, whom I think I may rightly consider a sister at heart, is from Québec - Québec, the city with the Plains of Abraham and the world's best poutine (Chez Ashton, anybody?), that is. If I recall, my entire experience of the Plains of Abraham, the place where one of the most important battles in Canadian history happened, was watching a few kids toboggan down it and get a facefull of snow at full speed. If I recall correctly.

This month, of course, was the city's 400th anniversary, marking exactly four centuries since Samuel de Champlain (who, incidentally, made his way up the waterways all the way to Peterborough as well) stuck a sharp thing in the dirt and declared it the property of France. I'd say they've come a long way since sharp things in the dirt. And I just wanted everybody to see that Auré represented us Canada World Youthers in the classiest way possible at a ceremony CWY-JCM hosted to mark the occasion with the coolest woman in Canada in attendance, Michaëlle Jean.

That's right, guess who's ear is in that picture. Jealous? Thought so.

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posted by Christopher at 11:41 p.m. | link | 0 comments

Thursday, December 14, 2006

East

Photo credit: Sarah Lemmon

In case you've been wondering about the Downtown East redevelopment project the city's been talking up this year, so was I. If you are interested, I would kindly direct you to this week's issue of Vue Weekly or, for my French Polynesian and Latvian readers, you can check out my article here.

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posted by Christopher at 2:34 a.m. | link | 0 comments

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Some bright ideas

I wonder where I'm going to end up in the next ten years. I made a list the other night of all of the half-way things I've been or aspired to be in the past year or so. They have included: a poll clerk, a tutor, a youth educator actor sort of person, an amateur journo, a poet, a support worker, a dreamer of places and ideas, and a recluse. Among other things.

One thing I have dreamed deeply about is my city. Being away from it for a while gave me some fresh perspective when I came back this year, and I have learned to love the place I'm from in all its slushy white and brown glory. I know cities are much maligned these days as alienating places, sometimes dangerous, sometimes incubators of poverty, sometimes cruel. These things are true. But there are also strange accidental beauties to this small place that I am from, and reading a bit of Jane Jacobs this fall has given me some hope.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities was published in 1961, while Jacobs was living and learning New York (and much before she became a Torontonian of the best kind in my favourite 416 neighbourhood, the Annex). Many of the ideas in the book seemed at once new and obvious to me, as if these were things I should have intuitively known about how big North American cities work if only I'd been more observant. And yes, while it is about American cities, every one of these ideas resonates with me here in Edmonton, land of the Mill Woods sprawl.

She talks about the conditions that create diversity, which she considers the great bringer of life and health to communities. Jacobs was a great admirer of spontaneity, of the casual meetings of neighbours and strangers on sidewalks and in cafes that lend great cities their ability to be hosts and midwives to the birth and growth of new ideas and fresh perspectives. For her, these things couldn't be planned, only allowed room to grow and to change and to fold over and into one another. I am learning, I guess, that the strength of a community cannot be legislated, although it can be legislated out of existence.

Walking through my now chilly south side neighbourhood, I walk past tall apartment towers mingled with low-rise condos and old, inviting homes with what my friends Norm and Joanne have called 'public rooms,' those kind of porches you can sit and have coffee on and say hello to your neighbours from, watch your kids play from, participate in the life of a street from, and I wonder how she could have known so much about what makes my neighbourhood great 45 years before this moment. She had great admiration for the role of streets in cultivating relationships, in allowing new and creative uses and experiences to emerge. I would truly have liked to have taken her around Strathcona and shown her our cafes, our restaurants, our sidewalks (and lack thereof, in places). What would she have said?

I guess it's immaterial. What makes this city great is not just the river valley, or the bridges, or the Listen birds, or the pyramids being put up and torn down. It is the people. And the people here are a strange wondrous bunch.

I'm going to get to know them better, friends.

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posted by Christopher at 1:28 a.m. | link | 0 comments
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