High and lonesome sound: Canada’s rural crisis

“Mike Hennessy was 10 years old when he jogged his first horse, and it tore flat-out across the farm track so fast he thought his father had pranked him. The speed, the smell of the stables, the thunder of hooves on the track and the mountain air whirling across the northern Rocky plains—Hennessy put his heels along the girth line and breathed it all in. In all its dust and glory, the horse-racing life was his, and he was hooked on the thrill of losing control and the chase of getting it back.”

 

Robbie Jeffrey – Eighteen Bridges – August 2018

A New Kind of Simakanis: Truth, Trust and Consequences on the Street

“The salt tracks on her brown cheeks shone in the light of a truck behind us that would not pass. She glanced back, and when she met my gaze there was no fear, no relief—just something closer to confusion. A scar followed the curve of her eye until it disappeared into her shoulder-length black hair. ‘I need to get away from those guys,’ she said,gesturing back towards the truck. Before I could respond, she walked around the front of my vehicle to the passenger door. This woman—possibly in danger, possibly high, and possibly about to rob me—was about to get into my car.”

 

Carissa Halton – Eighteen Bridges – June 2015

To Revive and not Revise

“There were about 150 people living in Fort Edmonton in 1859—HBC traders and staff, and their wives and children. Since there were no European women here, those wives and children were either First Nations or Métis. English was the official language of the HBC but, in 1859, you’d probably have been at least as likely to hear people speaking in French or Cree or Michif, the Métis language that blended French and Cree with some borrowings from other tongues. You might have heard smatterings of everything from Gaelic to German, too—this was a polyglot, multicultural place, even 158 years ago.”

Paula Simons – Eighteen Bridges – Fall 2017

Walmart in Whitehorse: searching for culture in a consumerist paradise

“When we pulled into the Wal-Mart, it was a warm and busy morning in the parking lot. The Whitehorse Wal-Mart is popular with RV campers, who can park for free overnight. Fifty or 60 RVs were in the lot, many parked, many coming and going. While this phenomenon is common for Wal-Mart locations in the United States – partly encouraged by the company itself – it is less common in Canada. In this case, Whitehorse’s location along the Alaska Highway has made it an ideal place for international travellers to stop and stock up. It’s become a kind of modern-day hardware and provision store along the old gold rush route.”

Kit Dobson – Eighteen Bridges – May 2017

Glorious and Free. Mostly.

“I had been hatching plans all winter to leave Edmonton and move back to Texas. Becoming Canadian had been a strategy to hedge my bets against the cruel realities of the American job market, not the fulfillment of a sentimental dream. But here I was, in front of these people, moved by their emotion, their genuine happiness, moved to tears myself by their faith in the abstract promise of ‘Canada.’ I couldn’t look at my wife.”

Russell Cobb – Eighteen Bridges – December 2012

‘God Knows What Canada Is’: What It’s Really Like to Be a Refugee

“It was never particularly complicated. All Mohammad El Hindawi wanted for his family was a reprieve from the bed bugs afflicting his children. In the summer of 2015, while dealing with the vermin in their new home of Edmonton, he’d learned through a social worker that Canadians apparently loved camping, and so, as a new Canadian, he thought that perhaps this was something he should try.”

Omar Mouallem – Eighteen Bridges – May 2017