What the Heck is Tibb's Eve?

It's a tradition in Newfoundland to celebrate Tibb's Eve (some call it Tipp's Eve or Tipsy Eve) on the 23rd of December, to really officially kick off the Christmas Season. I've noticed that in other parts of Canada, at least in recent years, the Christmas Season seems to last the month (or two) leading up to December 25, and then Christmas is abruptly forgotten on the 26th. Back when I was growing up, the real holiday celebrations happened after Christmas Day, through New Years right up until "Old Christmas Day," or January 6th. For example, it wasn't uncommon when I was a kid to go to relatives' houses the weekend after New Year's for a "Christmas visit." If I showed up at someone's house in Ontario on January 5th asking for a drink and some cookies, I doubt they would even open the door.

"It's your sister and her idiot husband coming for a Christmas Visit!"

"What? It's nearly Spring! Turn off the lights and hide in the closet!"

But what exactly is Tibb's Eve? Newfoundland was a traditionally Christian area, and the Advent Season leading up to Christmas Day was a sober, religious time, when it was inappropriate to drink alcohol. (A month of abstinence before Christmas is probably also the reason for the two week-long party afterwards). At some point in the mid-twentieth century, folks decided they just couldn't wait until the 25th and decided they would start drinking on the 23rd instead, and used the Feast of St. Tibb as an excuse to celebrate.

They've got their own shirts and everything.

Who is St. Tibb? I'll let you in a little secret: she doesn't exist. St. Tibb was just a joke made up to go over children's heads. The word tib or tibb is an archaic slang word for a "promiscuous woman." The name "Tib" was popularly used in 17th century English plays for the prostitute character. So calling drinking day "Tibb's Eve" was just an excuse to make children think there was actually a holiday to excuse daddy's drunken foolishness.

Seriously though, more people would still go to church if we had more saints like this.

Fun fact: Until recently, there were still a lot of archaic English language floating around in rural parts of Newfoundland. It was a side effect of the population growing up in isolated pocket communities, where they had little outside contact for generations. I remember growing up my grandmother always called ants "emmets," but no one knew why. It wasn't until I went to university that I discovered "emmet" is actually an Old English word for ant, dating back to Shakespeare's time.

Tibb's Eve is also an old English/Irish word meaning never - in other words a day that will never come, as in, "He'll pay you back on Tibb's Eve." This gives the holiday yet another mischievous sort of feeling, a way to get around the Church rules and traditions, since it's not a "real" day.  The "Tipp's Eve" variant in some parts of the island probably comes from another old word, "to tipple," which means to drink heavily, or "a tipple," which is another word for alehouse.  "Tipsy Eve" is probably obvious from there.

Do you have any Labatt's Blue?

So if you're feeling in touch with your Newfoundland or Old English roots today, or if you're just feeling frisky or need a drink to calm your nerves after hours of shopping, then raise a glass to Saint Tibb! And maybe put on a mask a do a little mummering while you're at it, eh b'y?

Any Mummers 'llowed In?

The knock came again, fierce and aggressive.

"Who's that?" asked the old woman, rocking slowly by the fire. The lights were dimmed, while the tiny bulbs on the Christmas tree blinked in-and-out, reflecting against tin ornaments and throwing dancing, prismatic rainbows against the wall.

The boy peaked through the tattered curtains of the picture window and his eyes grew wide. "It's mummers, granny."

Out on the snowy lawn, a large group of masked individuals shuffled and stamped, demanding to be let in. With hoods and weird hats, dressed in mismatched, garish clothes, they were unidentifiable. Most carried sticks and clubs, and they showed no intention of leaving until they received an invitation inside.

They pounded on the door again.

"Any mummers 'llowed in?"

Seriously: When a gang of masked, unidentifiable hooligans show up at your house at night in the dead of winter, demanding booze and wielding strange sticks with nails sticking out of them, do you open the door?

In Newfoundland you do.

Mummering is a strange Christmas tradition practiced in Newfoundland, Canada (and remote areas of Ireland) where people show up at your home wearing masks and acting weird and demand to be let in. I am seriously not making this up.

"Traditional" (and I use that term only in the loosest sense of the word) mummering (also called mumming) involves a group of friends and relatives dressing up and visiting local homes during the Christmas season to perform songs, dance and jokes in exchange for food and drink. The mummers dress in outlandish outfits made from whatever they can find - oversized clothes, blankets, jackets stuffed with cushions, pillowcases for masks, whatever. Wearing underwear outside the clothes is popular, as is dressing in drag. Part of the game and performance involves the house inhabitants having to guess the mummers' identities, and the mummers doing their best to remain incognito by altering their mannerisms and speaking with funny voices.

Note the improvised weapons in their hands. Dubbed "Ugly Sticks," these ungodly contraptions are banged to make music. And also to warn you of your impending demise.

The custom dates back to England and Ireland, and the exact details vary from community to community. The reason I put "traditional" in quotes above is because the act of mummering we know today is actually due to a folk revival stemming from the popularity of "The Mummers' Song" by Newfoundland musical group Simani (the video is above) released in 1982. It's a selective and idealized conceptualization of a custom that hadn't really been practiced on the island for a hundred years.

Why had the custom fallen out of practice? Well, probably because it was illegal, since a group of mummers murdered a man named Isaac Mercer in Bay Roberts, Newfoundland on December 28, 1860. The local constables never found those responsible, thanks to their convenient disguises. As a result, the act of wearing a mask in public was banned in Newfoundland, a law that technically still stands to this day (don't tell that to cosplayers at the local comic con).

Of course Newfoundland has a comic con. Hell, they even have comic cons in Libya, but it doesn't go over well.

My cynicism aside, it's a fun and silly holiday pastime that the Island embraces wholeheartedly. Mummers have become a symbol of Newfoundland Christmas, moreso even than Santa or Rudolph. There's songs, books, toys, parades, decorations, you name it. I'm not even sure exactly how much people do "actual" mummering, but the idea of it, and what it represents, is ubiquitous.

So next week, after all the presents are opened, the food is cleared away, and you're bored and looking for something to do, maybe pull on a mask, a big wool coat and some over-sized boots and go pound on your neighbour's door.* You might be in for a grand ol' time.

*Disclaimer: Don't actually do this. In most parts of the world this will get you shot.

It's not just me, right? This picture is super creepy, right?

Art by Rod Hand

Shanawdithit, Last of the Beothuk

A few days ago I talked about the Mi'kmaq, an Indigenous group in Newfoundland that were actually "native" to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The Beothuk, however, were the true natives of the Island province, able to trace their arrival to Newfoundland about 2000 years ago. They encountered the vikings when they arrived in 1000 AD (in the Norse sagas they referred to them as "skraelings"). They hunted and fished, lived and died on the Island for nearly twenty centuries. Their numbers were never large, peaking at around 2000 individuals in the 1500s.

And then the Europeans showed up and ruined everything.

It's the same story from everywhere else in the Americas. The Europeans brought new diseases which the Beothuk had no defence against. They cut off their traditional hunting and fishing lands. In some cases they actively warred and fought against the natives, and the Beothuk could not compete with the numbers and the superior technology of the Colonials.

The unusual detail with the Beothuk however, is that it is one of the rare instances where we can pinpoint the exact moment of the extinction of an entire race.

Beothuk iron tools. The Beothuk did not trade much with European settlers, but instead scavenged and recycled discarded objects.

Shanawdithit was born in Newfoundland in 1801, and by that time her people's traditional way of life was already dying, and their numbers dwindling rapidly. Most of her family members died of illness and starvation while she was young, and in 1819 her aunt, Demasduit, was captured by the English and brought to "civilization" in hopes that she could become a bridge between the Beothuk and the English. She refused, claiming that her people would sacrifice her if she returned, which may have been true; by this time the Beothuk knew that contact with the English would bring them disease, and they could not take any more chances.

Desmaduit died of tuberculosis in 1820. At that time it is believed there were only 31 Beothuk left.

Beothuk birch bark canoe. The high sides may have been for stability in rough water.

Shanawdithit, her mother and her sister were taken by the British in 1823 after the death of her father. Her mother and sister died of tuberculosis shortly thereafter, but Shanawditit held on for several more years. She came to St. John's, the capital of the Island, and worked as a maid and even learned to speak English. The government continued to hold out hope that she could be used as a connection to the native people, a people who quietly died out while Shanawditit lived in captivity. After she finally passed away of tuberculosis on June 6, 1829, no other Beothuk were ever seen on the island again. She was, very literally, the last of her people.

In recent years genetic tests on the remains of Shanawdithit and Demasduit have indicated that while they have distant relationships to the Mi'kmaq, the Beothuk DNA is indeed unique and does not appear anywhere else. They are a separate and distinct line of the human race that we watched and documented - not to mention helped - driven to extinction in the 1800s.

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My A-to-Z Blogging Challenge theme for 2017 is Weird Canadian Facts and History. To see more blog posts, click here.

G - Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, Mother of the first European born in North America

For hundreds of years, it was generally accepted that Christopher Columbus "discovered" the Americas. This is of course blatantly false, since there were MILLIONS of people here before Columbus stumbled along and set into motion what was to become the near-genocide of an entire race of humans.

Can we even claim that Columbus was the first EUROPEAN to arrive in America? Nope. Not by a long shot. The first confirmed visit (and permanent settlement) in the Americas took place about FIVE HUNDRED YEARS before our bumbling Italian explorer was even born.

(There are many fascinating and believable theories that Europeans visited the Americas long before that as well, but I'll stick to the oldest that has been scientifically proven).

In the 1960s, archaeological exploration at the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland uncovered Norse artifacts, suggesting that the vikings had visited the island sometime around 1000AD. Further investigation uncovered additional items and the ruins of at least 8 buildings - sod and wood huts that were used as dwellings and workshops, including an iron smithy. Carbon dating places the artifacts at somewhere between 990 and 1050 AD.

Rebuilt viking settlement, L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.

Photo credit: Fella.com

So not only did the vikings visit North America, but they actually set up shop here. Because the land around the settlement (now called "L'Anse aux Meadows," an anglicism of the French "L'anse aux méduses" or "Jellyfish Cove") was at the time covered in heavy forest, it would have served as excellent boat-building and repair material. Experts now believe that the site was the exploration base for the Norse people as they traveled west across the Western continent, a land they called "Vinland." In 2012, evidence of additional Norse outposts were discovered on several Canadian Arctic islands, indicating indeed that the viking presence may have been extensive. Further investigation is ongoing.

This random bit of rusty metal is a piece of a Norse spinning wheel. Along with needles and scissors that were found nearby, this is pretty conclusive proof that vikings not only visited Newfoundland but settled, at least long enough to bring their spinning wheels with them. Archaeologists wet themselves over this tiny lump of rust.

Photo credit: Daze End

But who is the titular Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir from today's post? Besides being my best way to shoe-horn in a "G," she was a viking who was married to Thorstein Erickson, the younger brother of Lief Erickson. Like many norsewomen of her time, she traveled and adventured with the norsemen, drinking and sailing and raiding all across the Northern Seas, including across the Atlantic to the fabled Vinland. After Thorstein's death, Gudrid was supposedly visited by his spirit who told her she would remarry and give birth to a child in the new world. Sure enough, she married a wealthy merchant named Thorfinn Karlsefni, and gave birth to a son, Snorri Thorinnsson in Vinland, the first European born in the Western Hemisphere. Forget Cortez, Ponce de Leon or Jamestown, the first white people to settle in the Americas was a badass woman with an axe in one hand and a baby in the other.

No seriously, here is an actual statue of Gudrid and Snorri from Glaumbær, Iceland.

Photo credit: Wikipedia.

Again, I can't stress enough that there were literally MILLIONS of people already over here, who by some accounts actually fought the vikings and drove them away, but it's still a pretty cool story.

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My A-to-Z Blogging Challenge theme for 2017 is Weird Canadian Facts and History. To see more blog posts, click here.

The Battle of Beaumont-Hamel

So... not all of my posts are funny and weird. Didn't think they would start out on a bummer on day 2, but I promise they'll be less bleak in the future.

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July 1st is Canada Day, the anniversary of the founding of the Dominion of Canada, and generally accepted as "Canada's Birthday." It is NOT the same as Canada's independence day, which is a major misconception that I'll probably get to in another post this month. While this year marks the 150th anniversary of the Dominion of Canada, the province of Newfoundland did not join the country until 1949, and before that year we remembered July 1st for a very different event that took place during the First World War.

WWI was a pointless war. Archaic alliances and posturing lead to mass conflict between old countries that had no idea how to use new weapons and military technology. This was not the battles of armoured knights of old, this was battle with heavy artillery, machine guns, chemical weapons, but the powers behind it didn't seem to know what they were getting into. The ruling governments of the day maneuvered themselves into a massive, continent-spanning war that no one could win. In four years, it left 17 million dead and more than 20 million injured.

At the time, Newfoundland was a separate colony of Great Britain, completely independent of Canada. Even though Newfoundland hadn't maintained a standing army in nearly 50 years, like many other countries, we were required to send troops to Europe to defend the British interests. One thousand men from the small island volunteered, enough to form a dedicated Newfoundland Regiment. After short stints in Egypt and Gallipoli, the Regiment was moved to the front lines in 1916, near the village of Beaumont-Hamel in the North of France at the head of the Allied offensive for the Battle of the Somme.

The Battle of the Somme was a massive joint British and French offensive designed to quickly push back the German Empire. It ended up lasting five months, killing or injuring over one million men, making it one of the bloodiest battles in history.

The Newfoundland trench, just before the attack on July 1, 1916.

Photo credit: http://www.heritage.nf.ca/first-world-war/assets/img/articles/road-support-trench.jpg

The offensive began on July 1st after Allied forces spent a week bombarding the German front lines to weaken their forces. Tunnels were dug beneath their emplacements and huge explosives were set to go off in conjunction with the assault to cause further damage and confusion. Everything was in place for a strong Allied advance. Then everything fell apart.

The first British troops advanced as planned, but met with far heavier resistance than expected. It seemed the heavy bombardment did little to weaken the German emplacements, and intelligence reports were inconclusive as to what ground, if any, the first wave gained.

Instead of waiting for better intel, British Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Lovell Hadow ordered the second wave - which included the Newfoundland Regiment - to advance and take advantage of the actually non-existent gains of the first wave. The mine that was supposed to cover their advance detonated early and only succeeded in alerting the Germans of their impending assault. Still they were ordered to press on.

When the Regiment reached No-Man's Land, they found it devoid of cover, having been flattened by the earlier Allied bombardment. They were completely open to German machine gun fire. Worse, the battlefield was so littered with bodies from the first wave that they troops were tripping over the dead. Those few that made it any distance discovered the German barbwire - which earlier recon had pointed out was still intact but the officers chose to ignore - blocking their final advance.

It was a massacre. Out of some 780 men who went over the top that morning, only 68 were able to answer roll-call the next day. The Newfoundland Regiment was no more.

Some choose to remember that day as the valorous sacrifice of courageous soldiers. Others remember it as a senseless loss of human life, ordered by incompetent commanders that gained nothing for the war efforts. Either way, Newfoundland remembers. It was the first great conflict experienced by the dominion, and the losses were felt by an entire generation on the sparsely-populated island. The severe post-war depression only compounded the heavy toll.

In 1921, Newfoundland purchased the land where the failed attack took place and established a memorial site that continues to be maintained by the province and Canada to this day. It is one of only two National Historic Sites of Canada located outside of the country.

Further reading: http://www.heritage.nf.ca/first-world-war/articles/beaumont-hamel-en.php

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My A-to-Z Blogging Challenge theme for 2017 is Weird Canadian Facts and History. To see more blog posts, click here.

Ten Things Books Have Made Me Want To Do or Learn About After Reading Them

Have you ever read a book that made you go: "Huh, that's cool, I'd like to know more about that."  Maybe it's skydiving, maybe it's an ancient language, maybe it's just walking through the gawddang wilderness for months like in Lord of the Rings. Books are supposed to whisk you away to other worlds, to drop you into the drama and action, so of course in this imaginary world you could picture yourself doing different or interesting things. 

Here are a few of those things I wanted to try:

(Credit for the list idea goes to The Broke and the Bookish blog)

10. Sword smithing

The Complete Book of Swords by Fred Saberhagen

Now, this is a fantasy novel so I'm sure the depiction of smithing is way off. And the blacksmiths involved all end up suffering terrible, grim fates. And I know I couldn't actually forge a sword with god-like power. But damn, I still want to forge my own sword. You could also add Highlander 3 as an inspiration to bend melted metal into sharp shapes.

9. Apocalypse Prepping

The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks

Brooks is so logical and matter-of-fact about the whole thing, OF COURSE I should go out and stockpile weapons and food. It's not a matter of "IF" the zombies will rise, but "WHEN."

8. Visit England

Pillars of the Earth / World Without End by Ken Follett

I almost said "build a cathedral," but I would be content with just visiting them. I would be pretty happy to see just about any part of Europe, really. History in North America is great and all, but I want to see buildings that are a thousand years old. I imagine building a castle or cathedral would be really hard, anyway.

7. Brush up on my art history

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

I took a few art history courses in university, but I wish I could take more time and explore it more, particularly visiting some museums or even overseas (see item 8 above) to see first hand all the stuff we were talking about in those gawdawful boring lectures. I guess I could also see them in The Da Vinci Code movie, but I don't think I could look at Tom Hanks' terrible haircut for two hours.

6. Bookbinding

Bookbinding Materials and Techniques, 1700-1920 by Margaret Lock

This one's cheating a bit because I already wanted to learn more about bookbinding, that's the reason I read the book. I've always been fascinated with how books are made and have tried my hand a few times, but I've never had access to the full array of tools and equipment to do it properly. To be honest, I would probably just end up hurting myself, but I still gotta give it a go, you know?

5. Write a quasi-historical epic of Newfoundland

As Near to Heaven by Sea: A History of Newfoundland and Labrador by Kevin Major

Newfoundlanders are far more proud of their history than most Canadians. It's no surprise that when this series of provincial histories was released in the early 2000s, the Newfoundland edition sold 3-5 times as many copies as any other in the series, despite being one of the smallest provinces. I think there's definitely a place for a big fictional epic; I'm just torn on whether it should lean more to the historical side or the fantastic.

4. Punch Robert Jordan in the Balls

Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan

Not to speak ill of the dead, but to be fair Jordan was still alive when I read this book. I got through six volumes of the Wheel of Time and just had to give up. It's a cool world with lots of great ideas, but the books are just waaaaaay too long. Nothing happens for the first 400-500 pages of each book (besides summarizing the previous book). I blame the Wheel of Time (and Christopher Paolini) for my distaste of traditional fantasy fiction these days. 

3. Write a better zombie RPG

Dead Reign RPG by Kevin Siembeida

There are lots of great zombie-themed RPGs out there, but Dead Reign was the first I bought, and I was hugely disappointed by cavernous gulf between the great premise of the idea and the godsmackingly-terrible execution of it. I had to completely rewrite the rules to make something playable out of it, not realizing at the time there were lots of other options available.

2. Become a professional wrestler

A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex by Chris Jericho

I kinda always wanted to be a professional wrestler, but next to everyone else's books, which are usually about drug abuse and failed marriages and suicide attempts, Jericho's first memoir makes wrestling seem like a joy. His stories are so fun and hilarious, it makes professional wrestling seem like a GREAT idea.

1. Learn more about Canadian History

Hell Comes to Hogtown by C.D. Gallant-King

Yes, this is a cheap plug for my own book. Yes, I think you should buy it and read it right away. And no, it doesn't really have anything to do with Canadian history. I did, however, have to look up a number of minor things as I was writing it to check some facts, and I found numerous stories I would love to know more about, and maybe even fictionalize some day. 

(Also, you should totally pick this one up.)

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish in June 2010. Check it out right here: http://www.brokeandbookish.com/p/top-ten-tuesday-other-features.html

Star Wars Composer John Williams's First Score Was a Newfoundland Film

I'm a proud Newfoundlander, born and raised. I'm also an unabashed Star Wars fan, a film which we all know would have been very different without the classic score by John Williams. So you can imagine my shock, wonder and merriment last week when I discovered that John Williams' first professional musical score was for a Newfoundland travelogue in the 1950s.

The full details are here at an article from the CBC, but here's the short version: Williams was serving in the U.S. army in 1952 and stationed at a base in St. John's, Newfoundland (the island being the location of several major bases during and after WWII, as it was an important staging point for transatlantic flights). Like many military musicians he served his time working with a service band, and performed for dances at both the American and Canadian bases in the area. This talented young musician caught the eye of a local film company who had been commissioned by the government to make a tourism video for the newest Canadian province (Newfoundland only became part of Canada in 1949) and they hired Williams to score their film. 

The music doesn't sound much like the theme to Star Wars or Superman, as the composer instead opted to borrow elements from popular local folk songs, but it's still a weird and fascinating bit of trivia. But I have to admit, the score itself is basically an afterthought compared to the sheer batshit insanity that is the rest of the film. Thankfully, it still exists today in all of its mind-blowing lunacy:

My first quick thoughts about the film:

1. The narrator is drunk. He is literally shitfaced. There are weird cuts in the opening shot because I think he was falling out of his chair, and in the final moments he's struggling to keep his eyes open. He never misses a line though, which is proof positive that radio personalities in the 1950s were wasted at work at all times. Probably still true today.

2. The film is loosely told from the point of view of the suitcase. A talking suitcase. To be honest I didn't mind the fact that the suitcase talked (the narrator is drunk, remember, so he may be hallucinating the whole thing) nearly so much as I minded that they pointed out the damn thing cost $65. Sixty-five bucks in 1952 was an entire week's salary at a decent job. Who the hell spends an entire week's salary on a suitcase?

3. They keep talking about the "modern amenities" but it all looks like a communist internment camp. The houses are tiny and utilitarian, most of which were obviously just built a few days ago and are in the middle of the goddamn woods. They show swimming pools and tennis courts that, again, are in the middle of the goddamn woods. Most of the roads they show outside of St. John's aren't even paved. And you know the best part? Sixty years later a lot of those places still look exactly the same. (Except the roads part, the roads are now paved... mostly)

4. Apparently the pulp and paper mill is worth mentioning as a tourist attraction? It's brought up toward the end of the film, so maybe they were running out of stuff to talk about and they just really wanted to hit that twenty-minute run time...

5. But do you want to know the best part? The absolute best part of the film? The main attraction trumpeted by the this government-sponsored travelogue is HOOKING UP WITH RANDOM STRANGERS. Seriously. The male lead shows up in Newfoundland, bumps into a random woman and then proceeds to travel all over the island with her staying in shifty hotels. Not to mention the 1950s bathing-beauties that apparently come free with your parks and recreation brochure. The thesis of the piece seems to be: "Newfoundland: Come for the Scenery, Stay for the Strange!" I thought Free Love wasn't a thing until the 60s???

In case you were wondering if this was just a sad attempt by filmmakers who didn't know what they were doing, I should point out that "the film [was] selected as 'one of the outstanding travelogues for 1954' during a premier showing in New York City." So... this was a regular thing in the 50s? What was the California travelogue? An ad for a drug orgy?

So, yeah. The question remains: Was this a historic low point for John Williams and the province of Newfoundland? Or an awesomely high one?

When I'm not making fun of my mid-twentieth century tourism, I write books. My first, Ten Thousand Days, is now available at Amazon and many other booksellers worldwide. I'm also in the middle of crowdfunding a new book at Inkshares.com. Head over there to check it out. I'm thinking my third book will be about the wild party scene in Newfoundland in the mid-twentieth century.

St. Stephen's High MANIFESTO Issue 1 (November 12, 1996)

Last month I told a story about how I made my first money as a writer by ripping off my high school literary magazine. It was a low point in my academic and literary career, trust me. Thinking about the story made me go back and dig up my old copies of said magazine, which sent me hurtling on a trip down memory lane.

Today, I'm going to take you along with me on that trip. Buckle in.

First to set the stage: St. Stephen's High School was a Catholic high school in the town of Stephenville, Newfoundland. I was actually a member of the last graduating class before it switched to the public school system in 1998 and was renamed simply Stephenville High.

The school was mostly known for its sports teams and bands (the organized, orchestral kind). Other arts, literature and drama were deemed far less important activities - the concert band and the school drama club actually had an ongoing feud for a couple of years that I may have to write about some day. There was actually a reference to the school prizing Math and Science above Arts and Literature in the lead Editorial of this very issue, which was kind of the impetus for starting this magazine in the first place.

I should also point out that, despite the environment, there was not one but TWO student publications circulating the school halls in 1996-97, which explains the context of this little note on the bottom of page one:

The Spartan Corner was our "official" school newspaper which had a lot more teacher involvement and was tailored more to material that the administration wanted the students to hear about. So, basically government media manipulation.

We balked against that and started our own paper where we could say whatever we wanted. This caused some minor controversies in later issues, but they were just that, very minor. The most controversial things in our debut issue was our lead essayist (the illustrious Mr Lee) complaining about people getting in his way in the hall:

Actually that's a lie, the most controversial thing in the issue was probably hidden in the French essay (coincidentally also by Mr. Lee). On the surface it was an examination of how French Immersion was treated poorly in our school system and at risk of dying out, specifically referencing the falling numbers of students in the program every year. However, there was also a couple of digs at the quality and qualifications of the English teachers in the school, which - since they probably couldn't read French - they likely didn't pick up on. A crafty guy that Mr. Lee. Probably explains why he didn't make Valedictorian, despite having the top grades as well as taking part in lots of sports and other intramural activities: somebody must have translated the essay for the principal.

Random Fun Fact: I stole the the William Hazlitt quote on the first page from the Quotable Quotes section of my parents' Reader's Digest magazine. This was before I had ready and regular access to the Internet, where else was I going to find appropriate quotes?

You will notice that I only have scans of the interior text pages; unfortunately I'm missing the cover and the comic strip. If I recall correctly, the body of the magazine and the artwork pages were printed separately and then collated together - I suspect this is a copy that was left over after we ran out of the art pages. While do I miss the cover, I don't mind not having the comic. I drew it and it was spectacularly bad. You'll see what I'm talking about when I get to Issue #2.

That being said, if anyone who attended St. Stephen's High School in 1996 and has a copy of the cover or comic PLEASE scan it and send me a copy. I will be your best friend forever.

I would amiss if I didn't take a moment to comment on the absolutely atrocious formatting. I remember vividly the first issue being messed up; I had given the files to someone else to print and they printed like 50 copies without noticing that the font was wrong, the pages had all shifted and the page numbers were screwed up. I was so pissed that I took Draconian hold over the layout and wouldn't let anyone else touch the set up or printing for any of the future issues. It's a bit of a obsessive control streak I maintain to this day, and may have something to do with my choice to self-publish.

The white space was a not a design choice. The other half of the poem is on the next page. The table of contents also says it was supposed to be on page 7. Nineteen years later and this still makes my blood boil.

I guess I can't get away with talking about this issue without talking about the story I contributed to it. The Blade of Destiny: First Act is the first chapter of a serialized short novel/long story I had intended to publish in each issue of The Manifesto. It was supposed to be six parts but I think I only got through four during the Manifesto's run. It's about a poor young peasant boy who never knew his father and has strange dreams of a magic sword. In this part he meets a mysterious figure who says he has to claim the sword and face his fears in the dream in order to reclaim his destiny. He does of course, and somehow pulls the sword out of the dream along with him.

It's... not terrible. It's not good, either, but it's perfectly perfunctory. The prose is kind of awkward and definitely too wordy (twenty fucking years later and I'm still dealing with that), not to mention I used every single possible lazy fantasy trope I could think of (the sword is embedded in a stone, for crying out loud). It was also surprisingly dark. The boy's mother is a depressed drug addict and he discovers over the course of this chapter that's he's cursed because his father was a coward who abandoned his family. It's kind of depressing. This was during a time when I took my writing and my fantasy way too seriously, before I found that you can (and should) find humour in everything, even (and especially) tragedy.

Hopefully you didn't mind my little trip down memory lane. If you're interested in checking out my more recent (and slightly better) writing, my first book Ten Thousand Days is now available at Amazon and many other booksellers worldwide. I'm also in the middle of crowdfunding a new book at Inkshares.com. Head over there to check it out.

Five Facts About Me

About two weeks ago I was tagged by Liesel K. Hill in another one of these blog challenges, but then I went on vacation and forgot about it. But today I finally got around to finish it.

So here you go: Here are 5 random facts about me!

1. I married my high school sweetheart. Who says there's no such thing as true love? We've been together almost 18 years and have been married for 11, still going strong. Not sure if this will colour the relationships of characters in my writing, but I'm not going to complain about having a happy home life. :-)

2. I studied to be a theatre professional. I went to school to be an actor, but the fine folks at York University in Toronto beat that out of me. I am still a ham and love to perform, but I didn't want to be an "Actor" in the way that they taught. I completed my Bachelor of Fine Arts, but specializing instead in technical theatre, stagecraft and design. I was going to be a stage manager or a technical director, but when I graduated I felt I needed more supervisory experience and a regular paycheque, which leads me to...

3. I worked at Kinko's for 7.5 years. It was still "Kinko's" when I started. I was there for the FedEx buy-out and the transition to "FedEx Kinko's" and ultimately "FedEx Office." For those of you outside the USA, Kinko's was the ubiquitous copy shop on every street corner through the 90s and into the early 2000s. Any time you see a character in a movie or TV show go to a copy shop, it's a Kinko's or a parody of it. It's like the McDonalds of copy shops. The best thing about working there is that I have SO MANY stories about weird and interesting customers and experiences that I will have fodder for books for many years to come.

Also, in case you're wondering, I never went back to theatre.

4. I'm a big table-top gaming nerd. This should be obvious to anyone who has poked around my site (or especially my other site), but I love role-playing games (like Dungeons & Dragons) and board games (like this or this - Monopoly is not a game, it's an exercise in futility). I just need to clarify that "table-top" games are exactly that - games you play around a table with friends using pen-and-paper and game boards and dice. I'm not a video-gamer - I've hardly played video games in years.

I love and am fascinated by the design and structure of table-top games. How and why the rules work, how the interact with each other, the probability of die rolls and card draws. In another life I probably should have been a statistician or actuary, though honestly it would probably have only used my skills to be better at games.

5. Most people are surprised to discover I'm from Newfoundland. Newfoundland is the Eastern-most Canadian province and has a long and storied history. It was first visited by Europeans (the Vikings) some 500 years before Columbus, and was the site of some of the earliest "official" European exploration and settlement. My family lived there for many generations and I was born and raised there until I was 18.

The reason people are surprised to hear of my background is because I really don't fit the typical stereotype of a Newfoundlander. We "Newfies" come from a long line of hard-drinking fishermen with colourful accents. My family tree is full of them, on both my mother and father's side. Me? I hate fishing and boats, barely drink, and my accent is pretty non-existent (it's there, but quite faint). Why am I so different than the rest of my family? Who knows, but I'm still proud of my heritage and its history and would love to tell you some stories sometime.

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So that's 5 things you may or may not have known about me. I'm probably supposed to tag someone else on this but I'm not going to bug anyone right now. They're probably on vacation, too!

Characters You've Never Heard Of: SKOLVUS

"Of all the strange characters on this ship, it is the navigator who is the greatest mystery to me.  John Skolvus is perhaps not as mad at the Captain, but the bright glow of lunacy still flickers across his eyes like the sun on a still river.  Skolvus keeps the worst charts and notes I have ever seen.  I have read old texts in the tongue of the Arabian moors that make more sense to me than his scribbles.  His astrolabe is ancient, rusted and bent horribly out of alignment.  No man in their right mind would use it (I tried one day and it calculated true North being 3 degrees south of Iberia – and we were in Iceland at the time).  Yet both Pining and Corte-Real trust him without question.  He’s like a loyal dog for all the faith they put in him, and for the stench which wafts from him.  Skolvus is a little less bestial than the Germans, but barely.  If they are bears then he is some sort of wolf, a little smarter if smaller and less powerful, but possibly even more dangerous."

- from the unpublished short story "1473"

While is was generally accepted for a long time that Christopher Columbus was the first European to arrive in North America, that story was long ago proven to be full of shit. The vikings arrived on the shores of Newfoundland a full five hundred years before Columbus, which has been archeologically confirmed. There are also literally hundreds of stories (of varying degrees of plausibility) about other visitors to the "New World" pre-1492. Henry Sinclair, The Earl of Orkney is a popular one. The Scottish Baron supposedly visited North American a full hundred years before Columbus, which is claimed to be proven by the fact that he later built a chapel in Edinburgh that depicted maize (corn) in some of the carvings, a crop which should have been unknown in Europe at the time. There's the legend of Irish Saint Brendan, who crossed the Atlantic seeking Paradise in the 6th century, and tales back as far at the ancient Phoenicians visiting as early as 350 BC are floating around out there. It's quite possible that Columbus himself had traveled to the New World himself before 1492, which is how he convinced the Spanish government to fund his more famous expedition.

One particular tale that always caught my imagination was that of John Scolvus. Supposedly, in 1473 German privateers Didrik Pining and Hans Pothorst, along with with famed Portugese explorer Joao Vaz Corte-Real, sailed to the New World (probably Newfoundland) along with their navigator, John Scolvus. While there is no physical proof this journey took place, Pining, Porthost and Corte-Real are all real and famous people, and it's fascinating to imagine such a journey could have been possible. On the other hand, though he is mentioned in several texts, usually second- or third-hand and under contradictory names, there is no proof that a man named John Scolvus actually existed. Who is this mysterious and mythical figure that may have led famous sailors to a faraway land that (at the time) supposedly didn't exist?

In my fantastic-fiction version of the history of Newfoundland, a character named Skolvus very much exists, though he is equally mysterious and mercurial as his "real-world" namesake. He appears (so far) in one short story, a fictionalized re-telling of Pining and Corte-Real's 1473 journey that also features a few other famous faces. A great deal of mystery surrounds how he knows how to find the island (since he has obviously been there before) and where he goes after he reveals its location to others. He's not the main character in the piece, but he is important to the fictionalized history of the Isle and I suspect he will show his trickster face again.

Characters You've Never Heard Of: PIKE THE NAVIGATOR

Pike was not a man to be admired or remembered.  He was of only average height and intelligence, though his family’s moderate standing in his homeland allowed him better education than most.  He wasted it of course, as he did most of his opportunities, forever as he was plagued by the desire to want what he did not have, and to not appreciate that which he did.

A noted writer and scientist of little skill (as well as a notoriously failed womanizer), Pike relied on others to succeed, conveniently choosing to ride the coattails of those of low intelligence and ambitions but insipid good fortunes and untapped potential.  Following this line of reasoning proved faulty, however, when Pike signed up as navigator for Captain Easton.

Easton feigned ignorance much like Pike feigned competence.  Pike should have known better than to think he could use a man hired by the Queen herself as a privateer in the Royal Navy, but his common sense, much like his uncanny good luck, was unpredictably irregular.

They were only a few hours out to sea when Captain Easton asked Pike, quite straight-faced, “You’ve never been a navigator before, have you Pike?” The veteran officer cut a dashing figure, exuding confidence and charm.

“No, Sir.  I took a course in Astronomy in college.”  Pike replied, exuding oil from his porous face and sweat from his palms.

“Have you ever been on a ship before, Pike?”

“Yes, Sir.”  Pike exuded his lunch over the rail into the blue sea below.  “No, Sir.”

“Escorting fishing ships is not the most glamorous way to make your fortune, my boy, but sometimes it can lead to bigger and brighter things.  Like that Dutch frigate coming up over the horizon.”

Pike adjusted his spectacles.  He could barely make out the blurry outline of a boat, miles and miles away, let alone the colors of its flag.

“What do you plan to do?” Pike asked.

“Why, board the ship, of course.  See if there’s anything worth taking.”

“But we’re supposed to be escorting the fishing ships.  We’re not pirates.  And the last time I checked, the Dutch were not our enemies.”

“Aye, but they’re allies of the Spaniards and that’s close enough for me.  Let this be your first lesson in sailing, Pike.  When the Queen puts you to sea with a 30-gun warship, her lips may say ‘escort,’ but her heart says ‘sink the bastards.’”

- from the unpublished short story "The Emerald Princess"

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Pike is the bumbling, useless dolt from Nageira's story, the guy who somehow ends up marrying the princess and becoming King despite being a totally hopeless dipwad. He's based on a real person (or at least, a real "legendary" person) Gilbert Pike, who according to legend was the husband of Sheila Nageira. According to other stories his name could have been Nicholas Guy, but I think Pike is a way better name for a bumbling idiot.

Pike fits into my second-favourite character archetype after the "asshole who somehow does good." He's the wishy-washy, pathetic coward who has no special attributes and knows he's useless and runs away from danger more often than not, but in the end somehow still ends up saving the day. He's Rincewind, he's C-3P0. He's worse than Fitz, Fitz is just pathetically average. Pike has no obviously good qualities or even mediocre qualities. He's bad at literally everything he does, and yet somehow he still ends up saving the day and getting the girl.

Have you noticed yet that I'm not big on stereotypical heroes with big muscles, square chins and suave attitudes? Or even dark, brooding tortured characters? I like ordinary people, or even better less-than-ordinary people, stupid people and selfish people. They're way more interesting characters and it's much more satisfying when they do something right and good in the end.