Category: Blog

Canada: Get Better or Get Over Yourself.

trevor

I’m seeing a fair bit of smugness and crowing from we Canadians following the UK’s same-sex marriage laws coming into effect. It’s unearned, and you need to stop. Yes, we’ve had this kind of legislation for a decade, but we’ve been stagnant on social justice for this government’s last two terms. We’re being outpaced by every other western power on social development and we have nothing to be smug about on this front. Even America, who we tend to look at as our backwards big brother, is making waves where…

Resurrected (Edited)

trevor

mea culpa I posted this earlier incorrectly stating that the restoration was done by Carrying Place Canoe and Boat Works up in Kleinburg, Ontario. Turns out I got some wires crossed while talking to the folks about it. Carrying Place came up in conversation as we were talking about paddlemaking, and I apparently retroactively applied that to the canoe restoration. While Carrying Place does beautiful work, the restoration was in fact done by Jim Spencer of Spencer Canoe Company in Muskoka, and the post has been updated to reflect this.…

What is this paddling thing I always say?

trevor

paddle your own canoe. I sign off like this often — it’s a mantra that guides a lot of what I do. It’s something my family’s said to me forever. On its surface, it means find your own course, do your own thing. Be independent. Don’t let someone else put you in a box and tell you where you’re supposed to go. But paddling isn’t just about driving yourself somewhere. The canoe as a mode of transportation isn’t as bruising as a motorboat, isn’t as clumsy and backwards as a…

The Longest Paddle: A Story of Woodworking and Carving Out a Family

trevor
paddlemaking tools

When I finished cleaning my tools and putting them away after finally finishing carving my 6-year-old’s stepdaughter’s first paddle today, I had to wonder why it had been so long since I worked on it. A little background. My family has deep ties in Algonquin Park, and a lot of my family’s history has to do with rangers and guiding and paddling. Through Omer Stringer, we have ties to most of the major camps in Algonquin Park and to Roots through the Beaver Canoe brand. This is no brag; it’s…

How Heroes are Made: a Kerbal Space Program Story

trevor

Orbital flight. Missions to the mountains. Experiments in the water. The Kerbal Science Centre had done everything they could think of short of producing a Kerbal-rated mission to the Mun. To land a Kerbal on the surface of the Mun and to return him safely to Kerbin — that was the goal, said the director, before we leave the office on Friday. Once the engineers picked their jaws up off the floor, they got to work. Progress was slow, mostly because Jebediah was so excited that he wouldn’t get out…

What This Year Was, And What The Next Will Be

trevor

This year was good to me. It was. I can look back at January and realize that I had just started working at a school that wasn’t quite yet a school, making peanuts and generally being totally unsure of where I was going and what I was doing. I’m still plenty unsure about where things are going, but I’m a lot more secure in my insecurities. I buried a lot of insecurities this year. I have a generally older peer group, and 2013 is the year in which I owned…

5 Reasons Why You Should Support Cardamom & Cloves’ Indiegogo Campaign

trevor

Cardamom & Cloves is an upcoming herbs & spices shop in Ottawa. It’s on track to open, and Jodi, the proprietress, is running an Indiegogo campaign to help launch the store with the appropriate level of pomp and awesome that the foodie community here in Ottawa deserves. Here are 5 reasons why you should support the campaign in its last 14 hours. 5. Ottawa is a frozen, blasted wasteland and we’ll turn to cannibalism without it. Don’t let the pretty lights fool you. Ottawa is the last bastion against the…