I rode a quick lap of No Err the other morning. It was 10 days since the Nimby Fifty bike race had sent 230 riders that way, and I assume that four of those racers were responsible for the discarded energy gel packets I picked up along my ride. A few scraps of litter doesn’t…
Zero Waste meets bee-love in Squamish-based khala cloths
When Asa McKee goes to work in his home studio in Squamish making khala cloths, the plastic-free food wraps he invented with wife Tamar, he cranks the tunes (Grateful Dead, live concerts only) and starts cooking down beeswax, sourced from bee-first apiaries. “The whole house gets super warm and floral-smelling,” says Tamar. It’s planet-friendly, kid-friendly,…
What winning the lottery really means
When the $2.2 million cheque arrived from the BC Children’s Hospital Lottery Foundation on Thursday May 11, it was one week since Lana McKenzie discovered she had bought the winning ticket. She had $33 in her bank account. The 44 year old former receptionist at the Village of Pemberton, and her husband, “Dumpy” Shanon Dumbleton,…
If you don’t have Rules to Live By, steal these
A newly single friend has gone on a bit of a tinder-bender lately. I’m talking a globe-trotting sex tour connecting with openly available people on an intimacy bullet-train – swipe right, doors open, go rapidly and directly to your destination. I’ve thought a few times about asking him the secrets of a successful and satisfying…
Garlic Independence Day
I have not bought garlic at the store for at least 5 years. Not so much as a single bulb. I have achieved Garlic Independence. I don’t say this to brag. I’m proud of it, sure. But I also deeply suspect that the minute you announce publicly “I am an amazing garlic grower”, your just-now-reaching-for-the-sun…
Brave Face
Her name was Kellie Daanen. We were seven, eight years old. She was one of my best friends. We sat together at lunch every day. One day, she said, “I’m an Aborigine.” “No, you’re not,” I told her. “How could you be? You have blue eyes.” She had incredible blue eyes, as arresting as the…
The meaner you get, the meaner you get: pushing back on my scarcity mindset with a little help from Brene Brown and some primitive skills experts
I’m sitting up until midnight to try and register my kid for the last remaining spot in pre-school swimming lessons at Meadow Park. I’m a non-resident, so I have to wait until all Whistler residents get their pick of the spring programs, and I’ve watched as the spots slowly filled up with a vague sense…
Boomerang Bags launch in Pemberton
On Friday, March 10, at 10:30am, a new black box appeared in the entry to the Pemberton Valley Supermarket. It had a boomerang stenciled on the front, and more than 400 reusable cloth grocery bags dropped inside until it was almost overflowing. A minute later, a woman was grabbing a small bag of groceries at…
Geography Lessons
15 years ago, the fella and I cut loose from an entry-level mainstream life (starter house in the burbs, grown-up jobs), to live out of 1987 Toyota Tercel and drive around North America, dirt bagging our way through the best rock climbing destinations we could find. I kept an angst-ridden journal, (“what is the purpose…
Despair, Trump, and What I Learned in the Birthing Room About What Lies Ahead
I have neutralized my despair since the inauguration of Donald Trump with this single thought: we are at the beginning of creating a better world. The dream of it has been brewing for some time — inequity, greed, climate disaster, ecological collapse — the balance is tilted so far out, that we’ve been propelled to…
Let the revolution be colourful and full of song
I’ve only ever had two magazine stories killed – one of my very first, and one last year. It was just a sidebar. The magazine paid me for it. They ran something else in its place – something that fit alongside my feature story better. It made sense, on an editorial level. I wasn’t mad….
Counting birds, wrangling hawks: how Pemberton’s go-to bird guy help me find my way home
If a cold and hungry hawk is going to get itself entangled in the netting of your chicken coop, attempting to source itself a nice New Year’s Day dinner, the best possible scenario is to be John Tschopp’s neighbour. The 40-year Pemberton resident unwittingly designated himself as my go-to guy for any bird-related questions, when…
