Urbane Adventurer
I’m passionate about cycling, urban design, Aboriginal issues, Metis history, and the environment.
Recent Blog Posts
Ghosts

I live with a ghost. Lately it has been hitting my bed at night, waking me up. I know you can explain away my experience as an hypnagogic jerk. Or the waning remnants of sleep paralysis. Both of which are things I have experienced my whole life and know the contours of intimately. You can… ...
Published at Urbane Adventurer

I live with a ghost. Lately it has been hitting my bed at night, waking me up. I know you can explain away my experience as an hypnagogic jerk. Or the waning remnants of sleep paralysis. Both of which are things I have experienced my whole life and know the contours of intimately. You can… ...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
Weaponized Fossil Kin and the Alberta economy

The following working paper is a piece I have been working on over the last number of years thinking through the concept of ‘weaponized fossil kin’ and the Alberta resource extractive economy. A version of it was submitted to a special issue last fall, however in light of the urgency ...
Published at Urbane Adventurer

The following working paper is a piece I have been working on over the last number of years thinking through the concept of ‘weaponized fossil kin’ and the Alberta resource extractive economy. A version of it was submitted to a special issue last fall, however in light of the urgency ...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
Ice/winter

Stepping over roots, sliding as my feet struggle to find their grounding over rocks and moss and ice. I pause to steady myself against a tree trunk, pausing for a moment to thank it for holding me, apologizing to the bark and lichen for the pressure of my hands against them. Gratitude for their s...
Published at Urbane Adventurer

Stepping over roots, sliding as my feet struggle to find their grounding over rocks and moss and ice. I pause to steady myself against a tree trunk, pausing for a moment to thank it for holding me, apologizing to the bark and lichen for the pressure of my hands against them. Gratitude for their s...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
ancestors
I dreamt of my grandma the other night. We were in a cafeteria and she bought me pasta: meatballs, rigatoni, and cheese. She bought herself a similar dish. She insisted on paying for it: $8.00. I have been thinking about my relatives a lot lately, in the aftermath of recovering from COVID. They s...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
I dreamt of my grandma the other night. We were in a cafeteria and she bought me pasta: meatballs, rigatoni, and cheese. She bought herself a similar dish. She insisted on paying for it: $8.00. I have been thinking about my relatives a lot lately, in the aftermath of recovering from COVID. They s...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
torrential
In November, I spontaneously blurt out to a friend that if I die in Ottawa, they cannot bury me here. “Send me home,” I insist. They seem a bit uncomfortable and confused at this. I am 36 and seemingly healthy. But I insist. “Do not bury me here,” I plead. As the words tum...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
In November, I spontaneously blurt out to a friend that if I die in Ottawa, they cannot bury me here. “Send me home,” I insist. They seem a bit uncomfortable and confused at this. I am 36 and seemingly healthy. But I insist. “Do not bury me here,” I plead. As the words tum...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
timelines
It starts the day after my birthday in January. I wake up, queasy. Within days, my world shrinks from the tender lines of care I have traced across half a continent to the 450 square feet of my attic apartment. I cross a threshold so slowly, so incrementally, with such aching traces, that months...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
It starts the day after my birthday in January. I wake up, queasy. Within days, my world shrinks from the tender lines of care I have traced across half a continent to the 450 square feet of my attic apartment. I cross a threshold so slowly, so incrementally, with such aching traces, that months...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
Soft

Your softness matters so much right now. The soft quiet critters and creatures that forage and breathe and swim and slither around this earth have been sustaining us for so long. And the soft, the loving, the mad dreamers who kept insisting we have other ways of doing things — their worlds are me...
Published at Urbane Adventurer

Your softness matters so much right now. The soft quiet critters and creatures that forage and breathe and swim and slither around this earth have been sustaining us for so long. And the soft, the loving, the mad dreamers who kept insisting we have other ways of doing things — their worlds are me...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
(Alberta*)

(Alberta*) haunts me. It envelops me. I wake up, feverish, and I pull myself from ancient murky sea worlds that loom large in my dreams. When my grandmother died, I dreamt of her as a fish, gliding through those prairie waters. I am consumed by home, by (Alberta*), the prairies, the boreal forest...
Published at Urbane Adventurer

(Alberta*) haunts me. It envelops me. I wake up, feverish, and I pull myself from ancient murky sea worlds that loom large in my dreams. When my grandmother died, I dreamt of her as a fish, gliding through those prairie waters. I am consumed by home, by (Alberta*), the prairies, the boreal forest...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
pressure= force / area

My job is making me go blind. This is not metaphor. This is bleak truth, written in the blind spots encroaching in both eyeballs. I was diagnosed with a chronic condition making me go blind in March 2018. Since then I’ve undergone extensive testing and monitoring of the condition, and it...
Published at Urbane Adventurer

My job is making me go blind. This is not metaphor. This is bleak truth, written in the blind spots encroaching in both eyeballs. I was diagnosed with a chronic condition making me go blind in March 2018. Since then I’ve undergone extensive testing and monitoring of the condition, and it...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
Three Acts
May with gratitude to the pacific The train is cresting the mountains — the edges of continents and plates that collided, colluded, eons ago — and I am suddenly filled with a kind of buoyant inescapable joy-sadness. The weight and heft of time rising up out of these stones and earth, the ...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
May with gratitude to the pacific The train is cresting the mountains — the edges of continents and plates that collided, colluded, eons ago — and I am suddenly filled with a kind of buoyant inescapable joy-sadness. The weight and heft of time rising up out of these stones and earth, the ...
Published at Urbane Adventurer