107 days ago, I started teaching yoga, at the ripe old age of 49 2/3. I had not planned on doing this. In fact, when I was doing yoga teacher training, I was vehement: I’m not doing this to become a teacher. I loved the teacher, and I wanted to do more than a drop-in…
Community on the Rise: Jen Park’s Bread Warehouse is proof of a new beginning
In Station Eleven, the apocalyptic post-pandemic novel by Canadian writer Emily St Mandel, one of the signs that the survivors were starting to rebuild community was when people started baking bread again. When Jen Park opened the Bread Warehouse in the Pemberton Industrial Park, it, too, signalled a rising sense of optimism. “I don’t feel…
Get Engaged
I had a flash of cold clarity: is this the phone call that changes the rest of my life?
Monarchy is weird (pls god save us from any more kings)
As historians of authoritarianism and brave journalists are telling us—your joy matters, community matters, refusing to obey in advance matters, vigilance matters. God save us from kings and king wannabes. Go find true majesty and ordinary courage and proclaim it.
Her crowning moment: a Q+A with artist Asta Kovanen and her Travellers series, now showing at the Ferry Building Gallery
On Thursday, I got to attend the opening for a new art exhibit at the Ferry Building Gallery in West Vancouver, featuring my friend, Whistler-based artist, Asta Kovanen. Asta was paired by the jury with Marlene Lowden, a painter, and the two artists’ works juxtapose beautifully, as a way of pondering our relationship and roles…
Long live the stories, long live the niches
I have a horror for monoculture and monopoly. (I believe that diversity seeds resilience.) Professionally, I have loved being able to lift up the kind of people who make my little piece of the world better – quirky, flavoursome, interesting, unique, richer. Yesterday, Craft MTN, a sweet little zine from the team at Freehub, wound…
When you have to write a love song to your community and you don’t recognize it anymore
I got asked to write a little lovesong to Pemberton – to make the thousand word case why it’s the best community to live in, in the Sea to Sky – and I still don’t really understand why I found it so hard. (I shared the final piece earlier this week.) Ten years ago, even…
Royal Rumble: Pemberton
In the spring issue of Mountain Life, Coast Mountains, the communities of the corridor flex on their unique attributes. I got to speak for Pemberton. via https://www.mountainlifemedia.ca/2024/03/royal-rumble-pemberton/ Wayne Andrew, Líl̓wat horseman and a legendary rodeo rider in his prime, told me recently how Pemberton got its name. A story his grandfather told him. Passed on…
Sea to Sky gets its own Edible magazine = Yum.
In the fall I got a call from Terra Gaddes – she was starting a food magazine and someone she knows in the Meadows suggested I might be able to recommend some contributors. She’s worked for 27 years as a child and youth care counsellor. Buying into the Edible magazine franchise, to launch Edible Sea…
The Art of Farming
The Art of Farming ran in the debut issue of Edible Sea to Sky magazine. Photos by Brenda Bakker. At Laughing Crow Organics, the empty spring field is Kerry McCann’s blank canvas Every year, the impossible goal to provision 600 households starts with the same blank canvas: bare earth, covered in snow, and a new…
Lisa Richardson Bylines 