Most Post: The National's Ron Charles and Leanne Hazon

The Ryerson Review of Journalism has been doing a video series on the website called "The Most Tales." Corey Mintz, for example, talked about his most bizarre meal. Toronto Star food editor Jennifer Bain discussed her most dangerous moment in the kitchen

I went to CBC's Toronto headquarters to meet with The National's Leanne Hazon, assignment editor, and Ron Charles, reporter. They both told me about the most memorable story they ever worked on. Check it out on the RRJ web site.

CBC's New Drama, Arctic Air, Takes Flight [Review]

The following is a review I wrote for JRN 500- Journalism and the Arts.

Arctic Air, CBC Television's new series, is only a few episodes into its first season, but this cold-weather Canadian drama is quickly taking off. Based in Yellowknife, the show follows the lives of the workers at a small-time flying companying, both in the air and on the ground.

Bobby Martin (Adam Beach) returns to Yellowknife after years of living in “the south.” Upon his return, he encounters a lot of old friends with mixed feelings about his return. Bobby may be a charmer, with nice smiles and nice words, but when he gets punched in the face during the first five minutes of the show, it becomes apparent that he has some bad history.

Krista Iverson (Pascale Hutton) is an old school-mate of Bobby's, and her father Mel (Kevin McNulty) is actually Bobby's business partner at Arctic Air, simply because Bobby inherited shares. They have a relatively good relationship with Bobby, but that can't be said of Bobby's old love interest Petra Hossa (Lexa Doig) and her father Doc Hossa (Micheal Hogan).


While over-arching plot elements focus on Bobby's past and present personal and family issues, each episode also contains a mid-air flight fright, whether that be a woman in labour, an electrical storm, or a small-scale hijacking. The showy adventures are fun to watch, but the family issues and half-cooked romances seem much more real than those high flying dramatics. It's the day-to-day problems that keep you hooked.

The show also explores bigger social, racial, and political issues. Bobby is a native and a former oil prospector who spent a good chunk of time in the south. More than once, he encounters racial slurs, anger towards the oil industry, and backlash against his supposed northern abandonment.

There are a few cheap thrills and chills, but there are also a few deep-rooted issues and breathtaking scenes of Canada's north. For a born-and-and-bred Torontonian, Arctic Air is as exotic and different in subject matter as it is in northern Canadian scenery. (For the rest of unsheltered Canada, this series is probably just a good bit of entertainment.)

Photo Credit: From CBC Revenue Group, http://www.cbc.ca/revenuegroup/arctic-air.html

RRJ Blog Posts

I'm writing a series of posts with a friend for the Ryerson Review of Journalism's blog called "The Was Then, This is Now." It's a series of posts about the early career days of Canadian journalists.
Check out my first post about John Macfarlane, editor of the Walrus magazine and veteran writer and editor.

Appreciation: Jeanette Winterson

The following is an assignment I wrote for JRN 500: Journalism and the Arts. My instructor seemed to like it, and I enjoyed writing it.

During the fall of 2007, I borrowed “Oranges are Not the Only Fruit” by Jeanette Winterson from a friend who had never read it before. At the time, I had never heard of Winterson, nor had I read any of her other works. The moment I peeled open the pages of “Oranges,” I couldn't put it down. I discovered that each word in Winterson's novel is a delicious, juicy, succulent piece of a larger story.

Up until the age of 17, I thought that poetry and p
rose were completely different forms of writing. One was straightforward and used sensible language to weave a plot. The other was often chaotic, using flowery language to express abstract ideas.
Upon reading Winterson's autobiographically inspired novel, I found that prose and poetry could be one in the same. The phrases Winterson uses are prose in the sense that they build towards a larger plot, while the way she writes, weaves, and creates her story is more poetic than any poetic verses I've ever read.

In “Oranges,” Winterson explores her own upbringing, the realization of her love for literature, and her blossoming sexuality in a household that kept only the bible on its bookshelves. With flowing language she describes stuttering teenage times, and with comedic verses she delves into the sadness and confusion of her youth.
Shortly after reading “Oranges,” I began the lengthy and enjoyable process of devouring every book Winterson has ever written. “The Passion” and “Written on the Body” have climbed to the top of my own recommended reading list.

Each novel Winterson writes is just as poetic as the last. She has a way of using short, sort of surprising phrases next to long, rambling sentences full of commas, parentheses, and dashes. This fashion of forming her sentences is something I have longed- and tried- to replicate, but I will never achieve the poetic level of prose that Winterson has reached.

Furthermore, within all this poetic-like prose, Winterson is never too explicit. Even when writing about sex, death, and blood, she manages to create a soft image, a sideways reference, and a gentle reference with no rough explanations. While much of the poetry and prose created over the centuries has been about love, sex, and death, Winterson is able to describe a huge range of emotions and extremely subtle physical experience with a few well-placed words and simple adjectives.

For months after I read “Oranges,” I urged the friend from whom I borrowed the book to read its intriguing mixture of prose and poetry. I would repeat lines from that novel- and many of Winterson's other stories- to friends and family in order to bate them into reading my favourite novel. I even chose an “Oranges” quote as my high school graduation message: “If you want to keep your own teeth, make your own sandwiches.”
I am still repeating those same lines today.