It’s late May when James arrives in Rose-Marie, fresh from Antigonish, where he lives now. He shows up without fanfare. Without flourish. Without so much as a phone call to let me know he’s coming. He is simply, suddenly, standing before me in the grey light of a late...
Jack tilts back on his chair, balancing on two legs. A circle of smoke drifts up from a saucer beside him. “Need a big purple job,” he says. Kenny, your younger brother, slings a monster purple pill across the kitchen table. First Night Jack tilts back on his chair,...
The cyst behind Andy’s left knee is soft as an overripe pear, the veins and arteries blue and purple. She believes that the left side of the body is the feminine, dependent, side. The cyst behind Andy’s left knee is soft as an overripe pear, the veins and arteries...
Some sixty to seventy miners, mainly married men with families, went down into the underground workings at Pioneer Mine for the first mine ‘Sit-down’ in Canada. Some sixty to seventy miners, mainly married men with families, went down into the underground workings at...
I journey to nameless shores to wrestle glass balloons from other women. We eat potato salad and meaty gooseneck barnacles that slip out like socks from boots. We tease each other about love and lust and drink black coffee from steel thermoses. Along the beach there...
Do a dry run on the bus a week before you start, at the right time of day, carrying the right amount of stuff, in the stiff uncomfortable black shoes you can’t run in. If you don’t own such shoes, buy some. Don’t get paint on them. Do a dry run on the bus a week...
The island, thirty-five minutes by air off the coast of Belize, is too small for anything like a runway. The island, thirty-five minutes by air off the coast of Belize, is too small for anything like a runway. Instead it offers ‘a place to land’, a slice of cracked...
There is no point in describing a man who traverses Nova Scotia on a ten-speed bike with a concertina strapped to his back, is there? Let’s just say that Randy was resourceful, which is why he answered my ad in the first place. There is no point in describing a man...
One of the honourable mentions in our 2006 fiction contest. Christine wore her headphones all twelve hours of the flight to China. She didn’t want to tell her story to the stranger beside her, and she didn’t want to lie. She couldn’t say: “I’m going to China to meet a...
One of the honourable mentions for our fiction 2006 contest. The road is a series of twists and turns past parched fields and pine and the occasional scrawl of building. Three more hours at most, and we'll arrive at our destination on the Italian Mediterranean. “Are...