The Brown Knowser

Saturday is usually a day where the family gets up early, packs our ski gear into the SUV, and cruises up to Mont Ste-Marie for a day on the slopes. The girls have lessons, while DW and I try to relive the days when skiing was easy and not jarring on our bones and joints. Last Saturday, however, saw temperatures hovering around –29°C: with the wind, it was a skin-destroying –45°C. It was a day to give the ski slopes a pass and, instead, we had a leisurely morning of staying under the covers a little longer, and enjoying a relaxing breakfast of home-made waffles and omelettes. CBC Radio One was playing, as it always does in our house, and we were listening to Day 6 host, Brent Bambury, speak with Texas journalist, Diana Washington Valedez, about Pope Francis' visit, this week, to Mexico: specifically, his visit to the city of Juarez, once known as the murder capital of that country. Ms. Valedez' name, as we heard, was pronounced "Val-deez." Our eldest daughter h...

Shortly after I finished my first photo project, on Bate Island, I wanted to choose another site in the city and take photos over the span of a year, but I found that something like my Bate Island Project took too much time. I stopped on the island every time I crossed the Champlain Bridge, which was usually twice a day, four times a week. It was a huge commitment, took lots of time, in all sorts of weather, and had me encountering all kinds of people (some good, but mostly, weird ). I wasn't sure about where I wanted to go to repeat a similar project. It had to be somewhere that wasn't out of my way and was easily accessible, year-round. For the Bate Island Project, during the winter months, half of the roadway wasn't plowed, which meant that I had to blaze a trail through the snow (and we had a lot of snow over those two winters) and the cold (it was freezing both winters, too). I didn't want to take a photograph every time I passed this spot. I wanted the opti...