The Brown Knowser

It's been a few years since I've held a photo walk. The last one was in July, 2015, and was a late-night walk of the Byward Market, including Major's Hill Park and the National Gallery. Five photogs came out for the four-hour walk, from 10pm until 2am, and we only lost one (actually, he had another engagement and left after almost two hours). We took a lot of great photos and had a great time. The weather was great and we learned a lot of photo tips from one another. Late-night BKPW: (top) view of the National Gallery from Major's Hill Park; (bottom) photog James Peltzer captures Maman . I'd like to do that again. I'm planning another Brown Knowser Photo Walk (BKPW) for Friday, June 8. Like my last BKPW, I plan to start in the Byward Market. This time, however, we won't start late. I'm proposing that we start about an hour or so before sunset (7:30) and that the walk be limited to about two hours. And this time, we'll cover more ground....

 

It's been about two-and-a-half years since I had last stepped into the Tooth and Nail Brewing Company , and that surprises me. I really liked the coziness of their tasting area, with a bar, tables, and window seating, looking out onto the corner of Irving and Wellington, in the upcoming neighbourhood of Hintonburg. Then again, with that first visit, I did review six of the brews they had on offer, so they were well-represented at Beer O'Clock . So, about two-and-a-half years later, I found myself sitting on one of the stools, at the long table at the front window, looking out onto Irving and Wellington, trying new beer. I sipped their strong, hoppy saison, Agraria, marvelling at the mix of fruit and bitterness. I was pleased to see that they had added a menu that offered light fare, and I enjoyed a pastrami sandwich on a pretzel bun with my brew, as I wrote a new passage for my upcoming novel. Expect a character, named Irving Wellington, in the book. My stay was short, ...

Less than 72 hours before the horror, and only 13 kilometres further south, on Yonge Street, my family and I were marvelling at the beautiful, sunny, spring day. At Young and College streets, I stood on the corner, watching the bustle of cars, bicycles, and pedestrians that negotiated the busy intersection, while DW and the girls went into the Shoppers Drug Mart. It was a wonder that so much traffic could move so swiftly, avoiding one another, I thought. As we continued up Yonge, towards Bloor, I would stop every once and a while to capture the life of the city with my camera. The warm climate that we had been denied for so long seemed to bring out the masses. Only 13 kilometres away, along the same street, and fewer than 72 hours earlier. Later that evening, we were back on Yonge Street, seeking out a dumpling restaurant. On a Friday evening, after a long week that started out with freezing rain and snow, the crowds seemed eager to be out on the town. Moments earlier, around...

I get it: it's Canada. I get it: it's April. In Canada, we get snow in April. But in Ottawa, in the second half of April, after nearly a month of spring, the worst is usually over. The terms "snow storm" and "freezing rain" are almost never uttered. By this time of the year, my summer tires are on my car, the winter tires safely stored until November. Most of the road salt has been washed off the roads and we don't fear ice. Already, my winter coat and snow pants, and my big boots are packed in the basement. A spring jacket is all that I need. This is bullshit. I am NOT pulling my winter coat from storage.  

I mean, we're going back more than 30 years, here. Roland Axam was not the first fictional character that I created, but he is, by far, my most enduring. I wish I had the paperwork to prove it. When I lived at my family home and was studying journalism, at Algonquin College, I was devouring fiction: mostly, science fiction and fantasy, but there were a great deal of spy novels, too. My favourite author was Len Deighton : I loved how his spies were average, fallible men who stood as much a chance of failing at a mission as succeeding. When I started working on my own fiction, I wanted to write a spy trilogy. I had already written a short fiction about a nameless spy who had amnesia, was being chased by people he didn't know for reasons equally unknown. He pieced things together as he fled, finally recovering his memory in time to avoid his own demise and kill all of the bad guys (and gal). This character would eventually become Roland Axam. I have explained the origin of...

With all the crap that came out, over the past month, about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica , it made me re-examine my footprint on social media and how much of myself I have given away over the years. Not that I think I'm a target (although, I guess we all are), nor do I fear that my identity will be stolen (although, that's happened before), but I do feel that, like millions of other people, I give my information away so freely through all of the social-media apps that I use. Over the years, I've only used Facebook to keep in touch with family and those friends who I feel are as close as family. I've tried to refrain from clicking links that are unrelated to those family members and friends, and I don't get sucked into those quizzes that try to determine what kind of dipping sauce I am or which celebrity I look like the most. I don't need to do the latter: when I lived in Korea, some of my students told me I look like Tom Cruise. Or Brad Pitt. Or Clin...

A few weeks ago, when I was in Montreal with the family, I did something that I've been meaning to do, for years, but never seemed to get around to: I went to a brew pub. I know, I know... that's no surprise. Neither is it a first for me. I've been to a few brew pubs in my home city, including a couple of visits to my favourite Quebec brewery, McAuslan . But my second-favourite brewery also has a location in Montreal. It's location has typically been a bit too far of the downtown core or the old port, where I usually hang out, but because DW and I had taken the kids to a cat café for coffee, tea, and a light snack, and weren't that far away, we made one final stop before heading back home. Located in Montreal's Mile End neighbourhood (home of the famous St-Viateur Bagel Shop ), this small, satellite brewery to Dieu du Ciel! 's main St.Jérôme site is cosy and has the feel as though it's been a part of the city for decades, with its simple decor...

Towards the end of March, I stepped back from writing on The Brown Knowser . It wasn't because I was feeling lazy—though a flu, last week, didn't help. It wasn't because my family and I were sad at the passing of our 13-year-old cat, though again, it didn't help. There are two other activities that occupied my time. These things I love to do but for the past couple of years, I haven't spent any time doing. These things are reading and writing fiction. For decades, as part of my own year-end tradition, I would make a list of books that I planned to read over the following year. My list would start at about a dozen or so novels, but as the year went on I would find that the list would grow—sometimes, double by the end of that year, in time for me to create a new list for the next year. I find that in reading fiction, my own creative juices begin to flow. And if you've read some of my blog posts over the past few months, you can see that those juices have c...

You like Blues music, right? No? Hmm... I don't know if we can be friends. My first introduction to Blues came, inadvertently, when I was maybe nine years old, through a Rock band. I've told this story before : when I was eight, in 1973, my father took me to Sam the Record Man. He was looking for Cat Stevens' latest album, and he let me roam the store to look for a record of my own. He thought I would head to the children's music section but instead, I stayed with him at the front of the store, at the stack of new releases. I was mesmerized by an orange cover that appeared to have naked girls climbing over strange rocks. There was no writing on the cover, so I couldn't immediately determine who the band was or the name of the album (it was written on the spine, but at the time I didn't think to look there). I chose that album—my father asked me if I was sure, and I was—and the purchase was made. The album was Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy . ...