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Miscellany Archive

Mud and Butterflies

by MARK MANN Why do Swallowtails and Sulphurs swarm Alberta’s oil rigs?


Photo by Emily Wampler

MUD

The first and most abiding experience of working on an Alberta oil rig is the feel of thick, wet mud on your bare skin. When I arrived at the tool house, a small room bedecked with cable, wrench and screw, one of the nightshifters thrust a muddy chain into my hands and told me to …

Shoot it Harder, Lads!

by DAVE BIDINI At a soccer tournament in Melbourne, a recovering drug addict and ex-soldier taught Dave Bidini that when you love the beautiful game, talent is optional.

TEAM CANADA’S FIRST DAY of competition in the 2008 Homeless World Cup began atop a hill overlooking Birrarung Marr, Melbourne’s major park. Australian organizers had assembled an inflatable red practice pitch that looked like a child’s jumping castle. The players—homeless, refugees and street paper vendors—leapt over its fat borders to find a mesh bag of …

Old Gays

by JEAN-YVES GIRARD The generation that launched the queer-rights movement is entering its golden years. Some are still in no hurry to step out of the closet. Translated by Valerie Howes.

Even when Montreal’s Gay Pride week, Divers/Cité, is in full swing, you barely notice them: a gay granddad makes less noise than a harried cross-dresser running late for some party. They prefer the shadows to the bright lights—old habits die hard. But they’re out there. I found a nice bunch.

They are a gang of forty …

The Big Freak-Out

by ANITA LAHEY Roller coasters and the thrill-seekers who ride them.

A MAN WEARING A MICKEY MOUSE T-SHIRT is pedalling a bike furiously inside a large fibreglass track. Success is defined as a full-circle upside-down loop. An attendant in a white lab coat eggs on the crowd. At last, to hoots and applause, the rider whirrs up the side wall and over—then again and again. A giant g-force “scale” lights …

The Game of our Lives

by KEN DRYDEN Reflections on money, fans and the future of sports

TRAVEL BACK TO 1979. Find a hockey fan and ask him about money. “Money,” he’ll say. “Isn’t it outrageous what these guys are making? They play this little boys’ game that they’ve played all their lives for nothing, now they get all this money, and they’re complainin’. ‘We wanna play where we wanna play. We’re …

Why Don’t We Hunt Anymore?

by KEVIN PATTERSON The decline of hunting in North America has limited our relationship to the food we eat—and eliminated a crucial rural tradition.

My father learned to hunt from his father, who died several years ago at the age of ninety. He hurt his back the winter before shoveling snow off his roof. My grandfather raised his family in northern Alberta in the forties and fifties. It sounded like his only enjoyable hours, as a young man, were in the bush hunting deer …

Summer

ISSUE 36 Summer 2010

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