This Moraine's Terminal

  The Browning-Off of Christmas - Faith in Jasper Booster Article   “Within a lodge of broken bark, the tiny Babe was found.” The Huron Carol   Went to Hinton with the kids again this year. Paid $5 at the Mohawk station for a permit to cut down some trees for Christmas. Scrawny, yes, but real!   “Mountain pine beetles don't gobble up whole trees. They carry the spores of a blue stain fungus. When other kinds of beetles attempt to bore through the bark of a healthy lodgepole pine, the tree will produce copious amounts of resin as a defense. But fungus colonizes the sapwood and circumvents the natural defensive response of the trees.”   Always enjoyed going to the W.’s for Christmas Eve. Every year they would have a lovely tree brought in from B.C., 15ft high, ever so full and deep, deep green! And, oh, the shortbread!   “It's a symbiotic relationship. The fungus catches a ride with the beetle while the beetle benefits as the fungus bloc...

  FAITH IN JASPER Article THE TWO SIDES OF BEING FACE DOWN “There are many ways to hit the ground/ not many answers to be found/ we’re faced with mysteries profound/ but this is one of the best ones.” I quote Bruce Cockburn. From memory. The significance of this is that I recently was hospitalized for a concussion and I don’t remember hardly any of it. Selective amnesia? I don’t know, but there are 2 hours of my life that I have absolutely no memory of, despite being conscious.   We hit the ground, my son and I, launched over the handlebars of my bike, face down on Bonhomme. (I have no recollection.) My son was howling, nose bleeding, needing attention. (I have no recollection.) Some people came running, an ambulance arrived, questions were asked, my cheek and hands were torn. (I have no recollection.) We were driven to Seton, my son on a backboard, x-rays ensued, a dozen times I ask “Noah, what happened?” (I have no recollection.) Eventually my wife comes, I be...

  Faith in Jasper Piece for The Booster: “This is Easter”     The English journalist, Steve Turner, wrote this piece called “Chance”:   If chance be/ the Father of all flesh/ disaster is his rainbow in the sky, and when you hear State of Emergency!/ Sniper Kills Ten!/ Troops on Rampage! Whites go Looting!/ Bomb Blasts School! It is but the sound of man/ worshipping his maker.   Go to the woods behind town. Saw down two lodgepole pine. Strip them of branches, notch them and fashion a cross. Set it up by the Park Info centre.   In an article entitled “The Meaning of Life” in Life magazine, Professor Stephen Jay Gould wrote: “We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures...We may yearn for a “higher” answer - but none exists. This explanation, though superficially troubling, if not terrifying, is ultimately liberating and exhilarating.”   Nex...

  TWO CONTENTIONS   A Reasoned Response to HIV West Yellowhead       It was Socrates that advocated learning through dialogue. To that end I am glad to read of HIV West Yellowhead’s invitation to discourse (consider it accepted); in this we are on the same wavelength and saves me a phone call. So, although there are many other pressing matters I would rather turn my attention to than modern sexual mores (not a pre-occupation of mine), since this issue had generated so much heat from numerous replies, as well as verbal commendations from people on the street, may I attempt another fumbling exposition of the 2 reasons that I find the secular stance of Harm Reduction deficient?   After reading numerous articles printed over the last few years by various HIV West Yellowhead staff and volunteers (who I am sure are sincere and well-meaning folk - I am speaking against a philosophy, not a person), there are two repeated sub-texts in every piece, ...

  Happy Easter, from Albania   Faith in Jasper Article   Shortly before the war in Kosovo erupted, I and the girl who would become my wife were in neighbouring Albania, poorest of all European countries. The town we were stationed in was at the end of the road, high in the dusty hills where two rivers joined: one cold and clear from a spring somewhere deep and the other muddy and warm, eroding the land. 80% of the population was unemployed, living in Communist-built apartment blocks, sending sons to work illegally in Greece and Italy.   This farming village had been built up with a few dummy factories to divert attention from the fact that the town an hour away had an underground armaments manufacturing plant. Now the charade was over, now the factories were gutted, now the communist dictator was dead, now the doors to the world were open, but what attraction did Albania have for the world?   For hundreds of years the Ottoman Turks had dominated the ...

  Interior Designer – Faith in Jasper Booster Article     The boy’s away. So, too, are the girls and my fantastic wife.   “Paint the room”, she says. “When we get back let’s have it ready. Then the boy can have his own room and we’ll bunk the girls together.” Wives relax better at the cottage if the husbands that stay behind are given a project or, better still, a list of projects.   So. I am en-listed. Home Hardware and the Lumber Yard get used to my face - to my debit card, also.   It could have been an easy project, a simple task: two walls blue. But I had been enlisted to make changes, to do a little interior design work, to transform a small corner of the universe for a small boy. In short, I had an opportunity to bless my son with something special, just for him.   My wife’s expectations were not too high. My boy’s expectations were not too high - he’s only turning 6, afterall. But I love my boy. I love to create. I love t...