In Prince George thousands reveled, raged, and paraded since the most Honourable Gordon Campbell, apparent Premier-superstar for B.C, gave a gazillion dollars to the UNBC for building the Northern Sports Centre.
An eco-spec university set amid autumnal pines on the side of a mountain, with green banners waved by gorgeous Aboriginal athletes to usher in the 2010 Winter Olympics, and enough lumpfish and ice-wine to sink a yacht of Monte Carlo's most affluent; Holy frick, I thought, how unlike gritty ole Winnipeg...
Yet how different we are here is why I love here - what trite vodka-maxims from a red-eye flight. For if we are anything in Winnipeg we are a community of artists and our venues.
I was reminded of this fact when seeing none other than the esteemed David Bergen sharing passage homeward in economy class (likely even a Giller can't take the bargainer out of a Winnipegger!)
And it's not just the writers at this year's festival that have me so horny, but the venues: the metal ribs of the Millennium Library for freaky sci-fi guy William Gibson: the narrow alleys with boarded-up warehouses in the Exchange for writing workshops: plus enough midnight slam poetry for the peeps and gangsta-girlz in the hood to keep amped....
How relevant internationally our festival has grown in a sense overwhelms; while waiting for my luggage to clunk down the airport shoot I've a good mind to walk over to David Bergen and ask him if he's attending this year's Thin Hair Festival.
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J.S. is a propagandist and pamphleteer for over sixty-six Crown and Association publications. He has been both staff and contributing writer for weekly newspapers such as the Selkirk Journal, the Gimli Spectator, and the Midnight Sun, in Dawson City, Yukon. His poems and prose have appeared in the Golden Buzz (now the Force Gazette), Tart Magazine, and as low, low, low-run chapbooks. He is also founding member of the now defunct rap-futurist collective, Xenophane Six.
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