December 6, 1989

I was 18 years old. I remember coming home and hearing the news on CBC radio playing in the kitchen. If it happened today, it would have unfolded live on CNN, but this was before cell phones and before the 24 hour news cycle.

I remember my mom looking very worried and maybe hugging me just a little bit tighter that night. Montreal seemed very close on that dark winter's evening. One year later I would be away at university myself, away from home for the first time. These women were my peers, they could have been my friends. They could have been me.

I come from a line of educated women. Women who valued education and the right to have one. My grandmother was a nurse who kept working even after the war ended because she enjoyed what she did and was good at it. My mother was among the brightest people I have ever met - she could quote at length from the great works of literature, had an amazing memory for history and never lost a game of Scrabble. Both would have risked anything to protect their children. The idea of these women, separated for their gender, likely shared these qualities, still to this day is haunting.

Every year throughout university I went to memorials, sometimes missing class to do so. Even now, 22 years later, I still pause on this day to remember those 14 young women. Because history remembered is less likely to be repeated.

Banff Project

As some of you know, I am in a period of job transition. So part of the new job is a site specific dance project that will be happening next August in Banff National Park. I went out there at the end of October for a first look at possible sites.

Banff National Park is an interesting place. It is Canada's oldest national park and it faces some unique challenges. Within the park is the town of Banff. There are 7000 year round residents of Banff (most not original) but in high season (winter), it expands to over 40,000 and with them come fast food restaurants, fudge stores and plaid. The environmental concerns of so many people within the park's ecosystem is foremost in the park's mind and so they are a little concerned with us dancing in strange places (there is talk of helicopters taking performers and crew to remote warden's cabins in addition to using more easily accessible locations).

Here are some first pics...

The neighbours...

This is part of the Banff Centre, our hosts this visit and co-presenter of the project. Not a bad breakfast view...

And the money shot from...the golf course

and lastly, the little red dot is some dude climbing down the cliff face. Yeah, I'm so never going to be doing that...

Adam and I went for a stroll through the neighbourhood last night (perambulated as he would say) on our way for gelato. My apartment is surrounded on all sides by gelato and taking a loop a few blocks out of the way seemed like a good plan and preventative measure.

My neighbourhood is mixed - it was Toronto's first Little Italy (Corso Italia) and it fell on some hard times - years of streetcar track construction didn't help local businesses. Now with real estate prices being what they are it is on it's way back up. So there are first time buyers, renters (of variable reputation) and some original home owners. (They are the ones with the amazing rose gardens.)

I'm used to strange things that people do in their garages. Barbeques, sitting on lawn chairs until the wee hours, beer pong. But I think this was a first for me. In a garage - thankfully detached from the house but attached to another garage - was a very large green oil drum sitting on top of a propane burner. On high. We could smell the propane from the middle of the street (where we moved). I can't think of what the old Italian man whose garage it was (he was standing in front of it with his dog) was making. I mean you don't heat up wine or beer like that. Moonshine?

10 years on

I feel today very similarly to how I feel every year during the Toronto Air Show. When the fighter jets practicing for people's entertainment buzz low over my midtown neighbourhood, I'm always reminded to be thankful that we live, in general, in a peaceful country, because in many places around the world that one plane and the body shaking sound that comes with it would be hundreds of planes, and they wouldn't be there so a crowd could oooh and aaaaah at their power.

9/11 changed the way we live. But as much as the security and travel challenges are now commonplace, I am just grateful events like those don't happen more often and how lucky we are for that. How in general, in the West, in the "first world", we are removed from mass violence, war and terrorism. The horror of 10 years ago cannot be changed and we all have been changed and scarred by those events, but while we remember and reflect we should also find some room to be thankful. May we never see the likes of them again in our lifetime.

A couple more pics...

Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater

This place makes everyone look like an expert photographer...

and yes, that is a staircase that goes from the river directly in to the living room...

Covered bridge in Woodstock, VT.  I believe this one weathered Hurricane Irene.  A couple of the others in the area weren't so lucky.  All the news coverage was on New York and New Jersey and what didn't end up happening, while huge devastation was felt in Vermont.   I believe Woodstock and the surrounding area were hit particularly badly.  My friend lives in nearby White River but fortunately is up a hill and so was spared.  I believe she didn't even lose power.

Okay so 9 days turned into 12 and 7 states into 10 (partly because the GPS took us to West Virginia more or less by accident and I'd forgotten about New Hampshire...) but we made it and lived to tell the tale!

I will share a few shots here over the next little while as I sort through them.

First, this is how I like to camp...

Road Trip!

For the first time in my adult life, I have taken two weeks off in a row. This may prove to be a life changing plan. I have usually been one of those workaholic types that don't use all their vacation (though I have always taken some vacation - I'm not completely insane).

Perhaps I've just gotten smarter, or age makes me more tired, but I decided that nothing at work or anywhere else was that important and I was closin' up.

This decision allowed Adam and I to hatch Road Trip 2011. I haven't done a long multi-day road trip since I was a kid and traveled across Canada and the US with my family. It must have been challenging planning those trips before the age of the internet and GPS, so kudos to my parents for figuring out the timing. The timing is the hard part.

You may not realize this, but I'm also quite Type A. (it's called sarcasm people! work with me here) This means that not having every detailed planned ahead of time is hard for me. I'm going with the assumption that this is also quite good for me as it allows for ...spontaneity. Crazy.

So roughly the plan involves 9 days, 7 states and 2 countries. And Dolly Parton. Everything in between is up for negotiation.