Happy Misunderstanding Remembrance Day Week

poppies remembrance day

Halloween is tragically over and Christmas is mercifully still a ways away. We’re now entering a roughly week-long season that I like to call “Misunderstanding Remembrance Day Week.” It begins as November begins and peters out a few days before November 11th, when the internet and mainstream media loses momentum and interest. It’s a week of chaos and pettiness on social media, of op-eds in newspapers, of blog posts (oh look, here’s one now), of call-in shows and image macros and think-pieces and hot takes and the politicization of an…

Shake off your writer’s block with 6 fall-themed prompts

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about writer’s block lately. I have the opposite problem: way too many ideas rumbling around and not nearly enough time to develop them. Fall is the worst – with so much change happening, I’m noticing little things that get my creative juices flowing, and yet I’m so busy with work, Halloween costumes, and wedding stuff, I’m not spending almost any time writing. So let’s help each other out, shall we? Here are six short-story prompts to get you started writing that I’ve thought…

BHCA All-Candidates Debate

Beacon Hill All-Candidates Debate by Spencer Van Dyk

A big thanks to Jeff and the whole Beacon Hill Community Association Executive for putting on the debate.  It was excellently moderated and it was a pleasure to see candidates from six parties onstage. Candidates in attendance: Mauril Belanger (Liberal, incumbent) Coreen Corcoran (Libertarian) Nira Dookeran (Green) Christian Legeais (Marxist-Leninist) David Piccini (Conservative) Emilie Taman (NDP) Featured image by Spencer Van Dyk, who also liveblogged the debate here.

Kids’ Sabine Wren costume, part 2: Blasters

Read Part One, in which we make most of the upper-body armour. One of my favourite techniques as a classroom teacher is project-based learning. As it turns out, it’s becoming one of my favourite things about being a parent, as well. Tonight, Little Fish and I began work on patterning Sabine’s blasters while NJ prototyped Whistler’s Jennifire makeup. Our main job was scaling the design to fit her tiny hands. We started by measuring Sabine’s hand in a screen capture. As it turned out, her hand, measured across the knuckles,…

Kids’ Sabine Wren costume, part 1

sabine wren armour pattern

My Little Fish announced her Halloween plans for this year with much the same gusto as last year’s Quorra costumes: she wanted to be Sabine Wren, one of the main characters in last year’s new Disney cartoon, Star Wars Rebels. The Mandalorian armour worn by Sabine means that I will need to learn at least two new skills for the build (foam fabrication, fibreglassing) and much better develop a third (sculpting) and a fourth (mold making). It’s a little daunting, but I’m all in on it. And we’re buckling and…

What do they CALL you?

The question always comes the same way. There’s a lean across the table, as the questioner literally positions him or herself on the edge of their seat. There’s a narrowing of the eyes, a pursing of the lips, a creasing of the brow. Concentration pinches their features, they summon up their boldness, and they ask: “So – what do they call you?” They’re asking about my kids. My stepkids, which is why the question is asked. Unless you’re actively chewing vegan granola on the roof of your biodiesel-fueled classic VW…

The True Benefit of Science Fiction

nessus ringworld larry niven alien

En route to a county fair last weekend, we stopped at the Martintown Grist Mill, both to explore the restored mill and to poke around the farmer’s market that sprouted up around it. While the mill itself was a charming piece of restoration, the real win of the day was in a battered cardboard box, placed carelessly on a picnic table with the word Free Sharpied across its sides. In it, I found a copy of Larry Niven’s Ringworld, which I understand to be a seminal piece of SF writing. I had never…

Happy Birthday, Little Fish

love make share family

Four years ago, I had no children. Today is my daughter’s eighth birthday. Today is my daughter’s eighth birthday. I still can’t quite believe it when I see those words on the page. It’s still surreal to me that I have gone from no family and no inclination to having one in my 20’s to being a father. Even that word conjures up a little bit of imposter syndrome, even though I know it makes sense. Step-father, autocorrects my brain. But that word is broken, too. That step- has got so many connotations. It’s Cinderella, it’s drunks,…

Directions to the Cottage

cottage dock adirondack chairs

Hey! We’re psyched that you’re coming out to the cottage. It’s up the Valley a ways in small-town Ontario– it’s not hard to get to town, you just follow the highway, but you’ll need directions to get from town to the cottage. Don’t worry, there are only really four turns. Simple. Once you get into town, drive through towards the back way ‘round. Start looking for the turn after you pass the gas station that usually isn’t a gas station. It’s not easy to see, so get ready for it…

Building the UES Trillium model starship

I love Star Trek. I really, really do. I love it in the way I love pizza or computers. In and of itself, it’s fantastic, but it’s also a platform for creativity, iteration, innovation, and personal vision. I have had a particular model starship build in development for a while, for a capital ship and several support craft that would push the design and story of Star Trek beyond its current canonical endpoint at the end of Voyager. Thing is, it will be a massive undertaking, both from the design…

Interview with Trekyards’ Stuart Foley and Samuel Cockings

Trekyards Indiegogo campaign

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been aching for new Star Trek on TV for something like a decade now. Craving it, even. If you’re a lot like me, you’ve been going to a lot of less-than reputable sources for a fix. Fan films, podcasts, Star Trek Online, poring over Ex Astris Scientia and Memory Alpha and the Starfleet Museum, all to try and throw back to that heady, indulgent mid-90s deluge of new Star Trek content. None of it really did much for me. And then I found Trekyards,…