Author Archive
Posts by Vivien Lougheed:
Sid Marty’s best poems tell stories about his job as a ranger in Yoho, Banff and Jasper National Parks (1966 – 1978). His job was in a captivating (beautiful and dangerous) place, and he had to do rare, exciting and / or interesting things like dangling from helicopters, repelling down cliffs, tracking rogue grizzlies who’d…
It’s common knowledge, in western democracies, that banning and burning books, and shaming, beating or burning those who read them, signals a nation’s descent into anarchy or tyranny. Book-burning was a common practice of the German Nazi party. Mao’s Red Guards featured it during the Cultural Revolution. And the Khmer Rouge destroyed just about every…
In the Foreword to The Answer to Everything, editor Rob Budde says he hopes that his selection of the poems of Ken Belford, “is chosen by future scholars as a representative introduction to his work.” Those future scholars might so choose, but not readers familiar with Belford’s work. This is because Budde and his co-editor…
It has been 15 years since I wrote about sex in the tent, a newspaper article that was printed across Canada except for a few places where editors claimed that “the local men wouldn’t like it.” Here may be the reason why some men wouldn’t like it. It is summer. You and your partner…
Cuevos de las Manos is a UNESCO protected archeological site bordering Francisco P Moreno National Park in Argentina’s Patagonia. To get there I caught a local bus that rambled along the dusty road from Puerto Moreno, an isolated village about a 150 kilometers in every direction from nowhere. During my three-hour trip, the only visual…
When Dave King arrived in Prince George in 1973 to work the for forestry service as a biologist, he had a pet Raven that he took everywhere. He took it to work where it squawked when Dave had to answer questions to those far less knowledgeable than himself about forestry in the region. It pecked…
Carellin is an urbanite, much happier in a pair of Miz Mooz New York City boots than any first-rate Murrell Hiking Runner even if Murrell offers modern glowing colours. But her nine-year-old daughter, Clover, isn’t aware of high fashion yet. She’s interested in everything including hiking, school and friends. Clover did her first hike…
I burned my purse with my bra back in the ’70s, replacing it with a daypack. I also shifted from high-heeled shoes and tight dresses to jeans and hiking boots. I had two kids at the time, one on the hip and the other in hand and trying to stick diapers, face cloth, toys, bottles,…
John and I were leaving the cemetery in Cienfuego, Cuba when the cemetery attendant told us that the 55-year-old trade embargo against the Cubans had just been buried by the Americans. The attendant rejoiced, as did many locals who dealt with tourists because tourists brought in the much-needed foreign currency. But many locals we came…
I first saw Charles sitting on his backpack, snuggled between a bunch of Nepalese peasants in the back of an old, beat up, Indian-made truck. He looked out of place with his creamy white skin and in his sparkling white shirt, his leopard-skin silk scarf, his designer, button-down jeans and his brown felt fedora. …