the city on the edge of forever, : Victoria, part three,

Okay, so I clearly had too many adventures in Victoria, British Columbia [see part one here; see part two here]. I thought I could contain it all in one post, so there you go.

Saturday, April 25: My final morning in Victoria, with a noon check-out, so I had to get my bags figured out. My high school pal Jennifer (who originally collected me from the airport on day one of this trip) arrived for the sake of my many bags, and we headed out to get coffee and sandwiches. There were rowboats in the water. The sky was an incredible blue. We drove out for sandwiches to a place she likes, realizing we were parking right by that art gallery that was closed on Thursday, when I wandered that same way, able to go into the "multi-media debut solo exhibition by Mila Rio," You Do Not Have to Be Good (again, a line from this Mary Oliver poem). Rio is layering animal imagery in a really interesting way, from paintings to works of felt across frames, stitching ideas together that intrigue and slightly trouble the imagination. I hadn't realized until after that we had actually met the artist, sitting in the space, so that was pretty cool. I think Rio is doing some interesting work. If you are in Victoria, you have until May 28th to see this small show, and I would recommend it.

Sandwiches by the water, the low American hills in Washington State across the bay. Sandwiches, as we talked about who we still knew from high school (Glengarry District High School, class of 1989), and where they might be. Who we still spoke to. Where has everyone gone? A handful still around home, while others (that we know of) scattered across Ottawa, Germany, Lethbridge, Texas, etcetera. The long arm of Glengarry wanderings.

Mile Zero, where I think I might even have visited with Joe Blades, back in the spring of 1998 (we attended that year's League of Canadian Poets AGM, and launched a five-poet anthology we were in, that he edited/published). A photo, most likely. I wonder where that might be? Mile Zero: the end of a poem by Robert Kroetsch, naturally. Or is this the beginning?

Afterwards, Jen offered to keep my bags in her car until the evening event, and she dropped me at Miniature World, a museum near enough to the reading venue that I knew I could catch this, sit somewhere, and then head off to the event fairly easily. This place is magnificent and everyone who goes to Victoria must go there immediately. When I looked on a map, it seemed close enough and intriguing enough, and I thought, why not?

Some of the battlesites were pretty cool, as were the occasional trains, but the best part had to be a wrap-around single train-line heading from Canada's west coast through to the east, catching most of the main stops along the way across the period of some of the original founding of our country's national rail. Victoria, Calgary, Regina, Toronto. Although it jumped immediately from there to Quebec City and a generic "The Maritimes," which I thought a bit nonsense (I wanted to complain, but the end of the tour leads one to the street, and not back to the front desk). It was a remarkable display, either way. But I wanted to see my house!

And then the lights went low! And the train lights went on, and the train whistled through! And then it was daylight again, the sunlight lifting up across the whole stretch of country.

There were historic European and American battlesites, fairy tale settings, circus city-scenes and a whole room of dollhouses. A stretch of buildings and totem poles reminiscent of the Great Hall in Gatineau's Museum of History (formerly the Museum of Civilization, which is a better name, despite what former Prime Minister Stephen Harper thinks).

No gift shop, which was admittedly a surprise (and disappointing; I would have picked up something, at least). From there, I wandered slightly, collecting postcards (and a block further, stamps to accompany), before landing at the Sticky Wicket, "Vancouver Island's biggest pub" (it's not always about size, fella), attached to the city's Strathcona Hotel (very different than, say, the Edmonton namesake, which had been a perpetual favourite of myself and pals such as Andy Weaver, Paul Pearson, etc circa 2000). I sat with pint, wrote postcards and read further from The Paris Review for a couple of hours, catching my breath. Why didn't I take any pictures? The pub was fine (and there was a woman across from me reading, also, so it felt the right place), although there was an artwork, a drawing, along one wall I found confusing, and didn't know the reference, something about "preparing the troops for Sevastopol," a sketch of the army that I realized, upon looking it up, was a reference to the Crimean War (1854-56). Why would a pub in Victoria, British Columbia be holding a sketch referring to the Crimean War?

I eventually met up with Jennifer, who had my mound of books, and went into the on-stage recording of The Poet Laureate Podcast, in which I interviewed Kyeren about her experience around being Victoria's (seventh!) poet laureate for the first half, with the second half focusing a bit more on me and my work, my thoughts around writing, etcetera. She kept saying throughout that we would have cake in-between, so the audience listening would have to imagine us eating cake. The third poem she read, leading into our break, was one that referenced Marie Antoinette. So, as I said, let us eat cake.

The crowd was grand! Rhona McAdam [my generous host], John Barton again [who later said I reminded him of the late Victoria poet Robin Skelton, which I would like him to explain, as I don't have enough direct knowledge of the man to speculate], and Terese Svoboda [I knew Donald Sutherland, she said, and you have his eyebrows!]. Allegra Kaplan. I was able to return Sara Cassidy her charger cord, which saved my computer while west. During the half-time, a familiar face came up to me (the woman on the couch) and reminded me that she was a waitress at The Royal Oak I frequented in the second half of the 1990s [ex-partner of my late pal Greg Kerr, also] and had been a therapist in Victoria for years, interested in the fact that I was doing an event, and came out, which was very cool. Kyeren had suggested I read three poems, so I read only my three poems from the new Coach House Books anthology On Occasion: Poems for the People, ed. Sina Queyras [see the write-up I did on the collection here]. Given I'd read healthily from my two University of Calgary Press collections, it seemed a good idea to read from the new collection, since it was brand new.

It was an engaging conversation, kind of all over the place, but one I quite enjoyed (worried slightly it was my usual rambling nonsense). I shall let you know when the audio lands online. After, Jen and Allegra [it was good to hang with her and get a sense of her, as I'd only caught her in passing at that first reading] and I caught a quick drink at a hotel (fancy) bar. I mentioned the artwork at the Sticky Wicket, and Allegra suggested it could just as easily be an interest in British-isms by whomever designed the space, and not any deeper or more specific connection between anything here and anything there. That makes the most sense, I think.

And then Jen drove me to the airport for my 11:30pm overnight flight, which left late, bumping my landing in Toronto enough to put me on a further flight back home. But home by noon, exhausted, pleased. Hopefully it won't be another two decades-plus before I land in Victoria again! (and hopefully next time Wayde Compton is actually in town, as well).

until the end of the world, : Victoria, part two,

Further to my adventures in Victoria, British Columbia [see part one here]:

Friday, April 24: I was to meet up with Steven Ross Smith for coffee around noonish, just prior to my early afternoon reading, so headed that way first thing to settle, read a bit, capture some notes. Coffee, naturally. Blossoms everywhere, again. Isn't it snowing in Calgary right now or something? The cafe was good enough to allow me to leave my large bag of books for the event in their space so I could walk the block or three over to the Emily Carr House, the birthplace and childhood home of the Canadian artist Emily Carr (1871-1945). My niece Emma is an artist, so I texted her a photo or two of the space [much as I had when we were in Owen Sound three years earlier, and saw Tom Thomson's grave]. I've long been intrigued by such spaces, and the stories of how well-known creators (writers, filmmakers, painters, actors) manage to get through those struggles of getting to the point of actually making. How does one make anything? Culture seems to want us to have created, but don't necessarily want to help get us there, so there's always that struggle, well beyond any specifics of family push-back, or any other hurdles that might exist. How do any of us get anywhere?

Interestingly, the house structure reminded me of the historic site Christine and I had caught a year-plus prior in Vancouver, the Roedde House Museum, "the restored 1893 home of Canada's first bookbinder," also I suspect that the Carr house lands more traffic.

There was a tour happening, started a few minutes before I arrived, so I tried to stay out of their way, work my own self-tour. One room held excerpts of a journal that Carr's father kept, some of which was quite a compelling read. When did folk stop keeping journals? I'd give anything to see further volumes of journals by Elizabeth Smart, certainly. Is this a nineteenth century hold-over, by the wealth class? I did peek into one of the rooms held by tour group, and who did I see but Ottawa poet (and relative Ottawa South neighbour) Susanne Fletcher? She won the 2025 John Newlove Poetry Award, if you might recall (so her chapbook as part of such will be out this fall). Apparently she and her husband were in town on holiday, unrelated to anything I was doing there. We talked for a bit around history just by the gift shop (where I'd already collected some postcards, naturally), where the Emily Carr House offers visitors a cup of tea (from their own house blend, a small box of which I did pick up for Christine). Apparently the Emily Carr House also offers painting classes; if you were interested in painting, I think that would be extremely cool, to be able to attend classes in her childhood home, akin to a writing class or residency in the former home of a well-known writer. Such as the Elizabeth Bishop House, for example (which we did wander by back in 2014).

Once done, I returned to the cafe, another coffee, my bag of books, and waited for Steven Ross Smith (I've since accepted work by him for the next issue of Touch the Donkey, by the way), who soon accompanied me across the street to the James Bay New Horizons Centre to where I'd be reading, via Planet Earth Poetry (a series now three decades old, you know). It was an interesting reading, with an open set, including a woman who said she used to live in Ottawa, and attended readings as part of The TREE Reading Series during the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, before relocating west. It suggests we were most likely at at least one or two of the same events, possibly. She hadn't written in moons, so she read one of the pieces she wrote during that particular era. Did a full half an hour reading, which gave my reading a bit of space to breathe. Opened with the book of smaller, moved into the book of sentences. A good event, overall, including meeting Allegra Kaplan (current Yolk editor, and copy editor of Misha Solomon's recent above/ground press title), a poet recently relocated from Montreal. A far way to meet a Montreal poet, but there you go.

After that, Steven Ross Smith was good enough to offer to hold onto my huge bag of books for the evening event, and dropped me off at the Royal BC Museum, a natural history museum comparable to Ottawa's Museum of Nature. It was interesting seeing some of the coastal BC exhibits of ecosystems and animals, plants and other things, so used to my eastern Ontario sense of landscape and geography, so attending the details of these landscapes were entirely new, and extremely engaging. Unfortunately, about a half-hour into my wander, I realized I hadn't actually had lunch or food of any sort yet (it was around 4:30pm by this point), so I realized, however much I wanted to explore the museum further, I really needed to deal with that.

So, I walked. It seemed to make the most sense to head closer to the evening's reading venue and find some food in that area, find a place to sit and just be for an hour or two. Lots of stuff to look at along the edge of the water, as well as a statue of Emily Carr, once more. Is she following me? Possibly.

Some food, a pint, a back issue of The Paris Review and a place to sit for a couple of hours. Mother-in-law did gift a subscription to the journal a couple of years back, but this issue lands prior to that. The interviews, really, are my favourite part of any issue, even if with authors I haven't heard of prior, and this issue is no exception.

A mostly-empty pub by the water, with a slow trickle of young people to an eventual thumpy-loud music and screen coming down for the hockey game. At least by that point, I was heading out to the reading venue.

The evening reading was at Russell Books, a store I realized I should have spent a couple of hours wandering before the reading began. There was no time, for which I am disappointed. It had a remarkable selection, although the store was technically closed during our event. Most of the lights were out, which made me presume the space most likely had at least one ghost.

Hosted by Kyeren Regehr, Victoria's seventh and current Poet Laureate (through Planet Earth Poetry), the crowd was stellar, and included Maleea Acker, Melanie Siebert, Chris Fink-Jensen [I did publish an essay by him, some six years ago, fyi], Sara Cassidy, Lorne Daniel, David Day, Patrick Friesen, Eve Joseph (I brought along my copy of her latest [see my review here], for her to sign), John Barton, Terese Svoboda, and a whole bunch of other folk. A really good crowd, and Anna Yin and Phoebe Wang gave good readings! Wang's mother was there as well, taking photos, which was quite charming (the one time my mother heard me read, as I launched my second poetry title back in April 1999, she actually heckled, if you can imagine, which delighted the audience; I was less pleased by it). After, I sold a bunch of books (and handed out chapbooks); the post-reading crowd lost a track of each other, with Anna Yin and Kyeren and I in one direction, for a drink, and others in another direction. After Anna and Kyeren retired, I did manage to figure out where Sara, Maleea [I've since published a poem by her, by the by], Chris and Melanie had landed, and hung out there for a bit. Into my (hosted) bed around 2am, so the days this way are long.

next up: Mile Zero, and podcasting with Kyeren,