The holidays are officially here.

When does the Christmas season really start? When the malls put up their decorations? When you hear the first Christmas carol of the season? Or when you have your first holiday drink from Starbucks?

For me, it started on Wednesday. I put up my first Christmas Tree of the season! I was with friends having wine, eating christmas baking, and of course listening to Christmas music.

Watch this classic holiday tune, I dare you to not be in the holiday spirit.

Review on Sanctuary Line by Jane Urquhart.

Sanctuary Line is Jane Urquhart’s seventh novel. Other works of fiction from this Ontario native include The Whirlpool, Changing Heaven, Away, The Underpainter, The Stone Carvers, and most recently, A Map of Glass. Her books typically explore family dynamics and tragedies from an unexpected angle. She has a way of taking you through a character’s experience and relating it directly to your own. Also, a trend covered in many of her works is war.

Urquhart’s novels have gotten critical acclaim, and have earned awards such as the 1994 Trillium Book Award for Away, the 1997 Governor General’s Award for The Underpainter, and the Giller Prize for The Stone Carvers just to name a few.

Sanctuary Line is a story of a life lived years ago told in the present day by Liz, an entomologist who studies the migratory patterns of the Monarch butterfly. It is a story about a developing first love, tragedy, abandonment, and family trials.

Chronologically, the story’s origin begins hundreds of years ago on the shores of Ireland with the Butler family. When they come to North America, two Butler brothers separate; one going to the Canadian side of Lake Erie to be an Orchard farmer, the other to the United States side to man lighthouses.

In the 1980’s, events take place at the Canadian Orchard farm one night that change the lives of all Butler family members. The head of the farm, Stan Butler, is married to Sadie and has three children; two boys and Mandy, who eventually ends up joining the Canadian Forces and is killed on a tour of duty while in Afghanistan. Mandy grows up without her dad, after he leaves the farm after that one fateful night never to return. Liz is Mandy’s city cousin who visits the farm with her mother in the summers, who has also had to grow up without a father.

Each summer at the farm, Mexican workers arrive to work on the Orchard. One of the workers’ children, the young boy named Tao, is pushed to play with the cousins by Stan throughout the years. He and Liz develop an attraction that she is unprepared for, but evolves into her first love.

The book is presented in a way so that we, the readers, know from early on that Stan had walked out on the family, but are left wondering what actions caused such an act until the end. In present day, Liz hasn’t seen or heard from her uncle in twenty years. In addition, we learn early on that Mandy has been dead for one year, due to unfriendly fire while in Kandahar. Also, as we read on, we discover that Liz is forty-years-old and is alone on the decaying farm, visiting her mother only occasionally at a nursing home. By the time the foreboding of Tao and Liz’s relationship begins, the reader may not want to read on, but the writing style impedes on the ability to stop. It is written in first person narrative in the style of a letter to a specific character of whom we have no idea. That alone is enough to compel you to read on, never mind the question of what were the events that led to such an undoing?

Urquhart’s writing is beautiful and intuitive. She uses the Monarch’s life cycle and migratory patterns as a metaphor for how she sees the events of her past. This is stated late in the book on page 218,

“And, even now I can only understand it in the way that I understand butterflies; I know what they do, but I am at a loss to explain why they do it. Perhaps we are drawn to the beauty of difficulty, the limited access to a sacred space, the arbitrariness of one species surviving while another vanishes overnight, a magnificently complicated relationship.”

She also brings the butterfly metaphor in to describe Liz’s view of Mandy and her highly secretive love affair overseas also on page 218, “I have never fully understood poetry. I have never been a soldier. I have never been a butterfly. I have never loved in the difficult way Mandy loved.”

Sanctuary Line gives us an opportunity to experience not only the events through Liz’s eyes, but also to experience her thought processes. When she herself comes upon an epiphany, you feel that familiar light-bulb moment as if you’d come up with it yourself. For example, on page 86, we get to experience how Liz has associated a meaning to a word. “I knew her moods, her romantic and poetic side, and something else in her that was a combination of pride and stubbornness, a recipe that would later evolve into what I saw as ambition.”

The way in which this novel is presented is very effective. Urquhart really gives the ending away in the first few chapters, but we feel like we don’t actually know what’s going to happen. In my opinion, it takes a masterfulness of leading a reader through a journey to achieve that.

Some research Urquhart did when writing this book include looking into Mexican migrant worker conditions in the 1980’s, fruit farming in southern Ontario, and also details from the royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, as stated in the acknowledgements section of the novel.

The audience for Sanctuary Line is very broad. Most people who enjoy the written word will love the way this book takes you through a journey of the past as well as the present. Also, if you’ve ever experienced a loss, this book will speak volumes to you. The narrative encourages the examination of your own thought processes. It’s a quick read, rich in language, thought, and experience.

One of my favourite aspects of this book was that you learn about Liz, the narrator, quite slowly. You get to know her through her actions and reactions, as well as her comments towards others. Every once and a while I pick up a book where I simply enjoy the act of reading, this is one of those books.

One of my worst fears.

I've decided I love public speaking. This is huge, because making a speech or giving an oral presentation to a room full of people has really been one of the greatest causes of stress in my life for years.

And trust me, I get it bad. Sweaty palms, shaky knees, dizziness, the works. What's made it even worse is that in the past when I've begun a speech, I've lost control of what comes out of my mouth. Really, I can barely remember what I've said once it's thankfully over.

So, you may be asking why I begun this post with such a contradictory statement. Well, so far in CreComm, I can't even count the number of times an assignment has called for me, alone or as part of a group, to be up in-front of a group of people to give a presentation. (each time being as nervous as ever)

But this past Thursday, we put on a mock news conference. I was a key speaker. I was in our school television studio with a spotlight, numerous eyes, and about seven cameras pointed directly at me. Nervous? Yes. Loved it? Also yes.

I guess the cliche, "practice makes perfect" carries a lot of weight. I thought my fear of public speaking was something I'd have forever. But now because of practice and an opportunity to really put that fear to the test, I feel not only prepared but excited.

Even though I'm pretty sure the next time I speak to an audience I'll have that familiar butterflies-in-my-tummy feeling, I'll also have a readiness I simply didn't have before. Bring it on.

Raise your glass... To speaking up.

Where do I start? First, who thinks this video is offensive, and who thinks it's eye-opening?

The video was directed by Dave Meyers, who just for your information has done many other controversial commercials and videos, if you'd like to take a look, check out his website. He's also vegan, which I am not, but I can still see the value in the shocking statement visual in this video when you see a row of blind-folded women being milked, and then their milk being fed to a cow. Let me tell you, that visual will be in my head the next time I have a glass of milk.

Other issues raised in this video include animal abuse, when pink goes to kill the matador execution style, bullying, same-sex marriage, and of course the ever-controvercial subject of religion.

I saw this video this morning, during a time when any other adult, teenager, or child could see it. Is this video too offensive to have on air at that time, especially since it's on a station that appeals to younger audiences? Or, is this video the perfect medium for provoking thought throughout youth?

In my opinion, these issues are ones that should be thought and talked about. I think conversations on these topics should happen more frequently. And youth especially should be able to have the opportunity to form their own opinion on whether or not these images or offensive or not, and also what the images and messages been thrown around today's commercials, advertisements, videos, etc. really mean to society in general, and also to them personally.

Warning - very random post.

The other day, I was watching Dr Oz, one of my new favourite shows, when I learned something that I was very excited about. Apparently, you burn at least 100 calories for every hour of critical thinking!

So, if you're a student who pays attention in class, and really thinks about what you're learning, this means that on a long school day, you could burn over 600 calories. And that doesn't include a day where you might go home and spend hours on homework - wow.

Can this really be true? I mean 600 calories is roughly the same amount you'd potentially burn in an hour-long cycle class. Also, if this is the case, why is the "freshman fifteen" such a popular phenomenon?

On the other hand, this could explain why we have the stereotype that most scientists are very skinny guys in white lab coats with black glasses on?

When did Halloween stop being scary?

When I was a kid, and used to go trick-or-treating with my dad, I would absolutely lose it if I lost sight of him for even a second. I had a lot of imagination when I was young, so I truly believed that on Halloween, in the dark, there really were zombies, vampires, mummies, and other monsters out and about just waiting for kids to walk away from their parents to eat them.

Flash forward to a few years later, when I was a young teen, and I went to small Halloween house parties that usually involved a bunch of R-rated movies that our parents didn't know we had our hands on. I spent these Halloweens pretty scared as well, I mean, I watched the movies with lots of people, but I had to go home and sleep alone... Let's just say I kept a few lights on.

Then came the phase at the end of high school, when my friends and I thought it was a good idea to look for haunted houses and graveyards. We actually tried to scare ourselves. Costumes were no longer cool, so we had to find other ways to celebrate. There is a church out in St.Andrews where there's an urban legend that says if you walk around this place in a row of 13, 13 times, by the end of the walk, one of you would be missing. We did a few of these ghost-chaser events throughout the years, but there was always that guy who decided he wanted to scare all of us girls, so he took it upon himself to make the myths come true. Because of this, I never saw anyone go missing for real, but that doesn't mean I didn't get scared out of my wits.

This is where Halloween began to lose its horror. The party stage. As soon as my friends and I were 18, suddenly Halloween didn't mean "let's get scared!" it meant, "let's party."Costumes had become cool again, and we went all out. Halloween represented one of the most fun nights of the year.

And now? I still love Halloween, but I miss the times where I would get scared to death. When I would see a black cat, and intentionally walk around it. I guess this is one reason horror movies are so huge this time of year. Maybe we're trying to re-create that feeling from when we were kids. Maybe it's the reason I'm gonna be Snow White this year?

In any case, I'll still go on celebrating. To be honest, it's nice to pretend that it's the goblins, ghosts, and vampires who are to be feared for a night.

IPP Presentations update.

Here is a picture of the Presentation Theatre in The Winnipeg Convention Centre where the 2011 Independent Professional Project Presentations will be held starting March 9 - 11.

Jasmine and I are the co-ordinators for this event, and are now right in the thick of the planning process. With planning a Trivia Night for November, a CreComm Christmas Social for December, getting sponsorships, securing the proper A/V equipment, meetings, writing reports, and co-ordinating, let me tell you, we're having a ball.

And, we're not even at the fun part yet; pulling the actual event off!

Stay tuned for more updates as we check our to dos off the list.

Rose petals, strawberries, and chocolate, oh my!

So this past Monday, I started my school day at The Pancake House for breakfast, then I got to hang-out at Polo Park mall for an assignment. I have to say, It's pretty awesome to have a class like that.

Being in the mall for me, however, is like dangling the carrot; I must spend money. This brought me to a store I've actually never been in before, DavidsTea. Now, I'm a coffee girl through and through, but this store had me falling in love. So much so that I had to buy Love Tea #7. The tea's label reads:

"Get Lucky. One sip of #7 and you'll find yourself head over heels. Mysteriously changed. Magically happy. Walking on air. How does it work? Frankly, we don't know. Our blender came up with it and then just ran off with the girl of his dreams. Maybe it's the chocolate bits that lower your inhibitions. Or the seductive strawberries. Or the romantic rose petals. Either way, this black tea is seriously lucky."

This seems to boast an unrealistic result from drinking tea, but let me tell you, one whiff of the dry tea, (never mind it brewed) had my heart fluttering, my eyes seeing little cartoon hearts, and my hands grabbing my wallet.

If you haven't yet been to this store, go. You'll be amazed by the exotic concoctions that send your senses into a frenzy. Who knows, maybe the label's true. Maybe a blend or rose petals, strawberries, and chocolate in a black tea is the recipe for falling in love.

Hmm, which one to try next? fountain of youth sounds good...

Happy reading.

Is it wrong that I like to read for fun? Sitting here at my desk, I'm looking as stacks of books I love; From J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (Yes I love them. Who could say no to a series that did so much for youth literacy?), to Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, to Nora Roberts' Bridal Quartet (Gotta love the chick-lit). I could read an entire series in a week's time. Reading fiction is one of my favourite hobbies.

So why is that when I'm told to read a book for a class, for example The Englishman's Boy for Canadian Literature, I can't bring myself to even pick it up? Is is the child-like response of not wanting to do what your told? Maybe it's the subject matter I'm not really interested in. Or perhaps it's simply too boring for me to want to invest the time into it when it's cutting into one of my favourite things to do on my own time?

Well, it can't really be about the subject matter. I mean, one of my favourite books, The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson, is about a porn star turned porn movie producer who gets into an accident that causes him to have third degree burns on most of his body. The main character is burnt so badly that even his penis has been burnt off. The man goes through hell in the healing process, Davidson details quite graphically what doctors must do to get rid of the burnt flesh, which is to literally carve it off. I must say that this subject matter is not the most appealing to me, yet it's one of my favourites all the same.

I would argue that I don't want to read The Englishman's Boy because it's too boring, but the fact of the matter is that I haven't even started reading it, so how would I really know? This brings me to my last reason: that lovely, child-like response, which I'd like to say I've grown out of but here it is.

Does anyone else suffer from this? Maybe we are meant to hate the books assigned to us in school. Another life lesson learned: sometimes you must do things you don't want to do. I remember in university whenever we were assigned a new reading we'd all roll our eyes, and automatically hate the selection without even cracking the cover. I think we may be socially inclined to dismiss these books on principal.

Alright, now that I've been able to express this rather ridiculous rant, I feel much better prepared to pick up that crisp, untouched book and give it a chance. Happy reading!

Coffee and Chocolate.

I'm the kind of person who looks forward to school to begin in the fall. Actually, I don't only look forward to it, I get incredibly excited for it. I get caught up in the school supplies shopping, new clothes, and getting my hair done. I also get excited, if you can believe it, for homework. Yes, I'm a geek. But before you judge me as utterly ridiculous, just think of the satisfaction I'm sure you've felt once you had finished a huge assignment, made it beautiful, and handed it in. That stress release gives me an amazing high, so I look forward to it after each school break.

Now, fast forward to a month into school. The assignments are starting to pile up, the procrastination tendencies come to the surface, and that stress peaks its ugly head. (I know I've already said I like this part, but It's really only the after effects I enjoy. In the throes, I'm not exactly the happiest person alive.)

This is the point where coffee and chocolate become essential to my existence. You see, unlike some of my on-the-ball classmates who start assignment as soon as they're handed out, I like to take a few days (or weeks) to contemplate and brainstorm. So, by the time I actually get to writing, I sometimes don't have very long to complete the assignment, hence the stress.

Why do I do this to myself you may ask? Like so many others, I'm a bit addicted to drama. Not that I want to cause it, but the feeling of being completely stressed one day, and being calm the next is invigorating. And besides, as long as there's coffee and chocolate around, who could complain?

Starbucks has the best customers.

Working in the service industry, you can sometimes get caught up in the negative stories you’ve had with people. But recently, I’ve encountered a number of great customers who have reminded me just how easy it can be to improve someone’s day.

One group of customers we have is the biker guys. They come in later in the evening wearing head to toe leather, and hang out on our patio with their coffee. One of them, (who when I first met him had long, wavy, light brown hair, and has since cut off his mop in order to donate it to the cancer society), always looks out for us girls around closing time. Him and one of his friends usually help us put the patio away, but they also watch out for sketchy guys that may come in. The other night, he waited outside until one of those mentioned ‘sketchy ones’ left.

Another example is when the photographer who supplies our store with the photographs that hang on the walls came in and we started talking about his profession. We were talking shutter speeds, tripod position, camera brands, and how to make water maintain its flowing motion in a picture, which apparently has to do with the shutter speed. When I told him that I’d be taking photography next semester, he gave me his card and encouraged me to call him with any questions or advice.

My final example of meeting a great person (but not the last one I could talk about) is when one lady came in, got her coffee, and then a minute or so after she had left, came in and calmly said, “I’m sorry, but can I ask you a favour? I’ve just lost the diamond from my ring.” The diamond she had lost was a full carat in size. We immediately began to search. When we came to the garbage in the condiment bar, which is directly under where she had fixed up her coffee, there was no turning back. We put gloves on and searched. After she left I kept looking, but her diamond was never found. She showed up a few days later with a hand moisturizing kit for me, thanking me for something anyone would have done.

Good people are everywhere. I sometimes forget that. These stories are the vary reason I love working with people. It’s true that many times I’ve been disappointed by someone who is unbelievably rude, but for myself, I think it’s better to focus on the great experiences I have.  With this shift, the world seems a little bit brighter.

Not for the squeamish.

from The Winnipeg Free Press website

This Friday, Winnipeg will host the travelling exhibition, Bodies...The Exhibition. It's like an art gallery but instead of canvases and sculptures, there are real human bodies and body parts. All the skin is removed so you can really see what lies beneath the surface.

As stated on the Winnipeg Free Press article,"The Exhibition consists of 13 full, skinless corpses in lifelike poses and nearly 200 additional organs and body parts, preserved and solidified through a process commonly called plastination." 


This is a picture of the corpse they have appropriately named the conductor. I can't decide whether i'm creeped out, intrigued, mesmerized, or just plain scared.


I once sliced my hand while washing dishes. When I looked down and noticed the blood, I froze. Then, when I finally soaked up the blood with a washcloth I looked into the wound and saw white tissue. I almost fainted. To be honest, I didn't get very much better while the doctor at the walk-in clinic stitched me up. Although that could be due to the fact that he said, "hmm, I haven't done this in a while," which would of course inspire trust in his abilities.

Heart with pulmonary veins
from The Winnipeg Free Press website

My small introduction into what lies "beneath the skin" was traumatizing enough, I'm not sure how I'd handle standing a foot away from a skinless body. Yet I couldn't help but stare at this picture trying to decipher what exactly I was looking at.

The exhibit will be here until January 9, 2011. And being that we're only the 5th Canadian city to show Bodies... The Exhibition you may not want to miss your chance to view these cadavers. I can't think of a creepier thing to do on Halloween, can you?


Whenever such a shocking attraction visits a city, controversy is bound to pop up. This exhibit has been banned in other cities because documentation is not available for where the bodies and body parts actually come from. They are said to be unclaimed bodies of men and women from China. The controversy comes in because accusations have been made that some may have come from Chinese prisons.


For more on this exhibit, see the Winnipeg Free Press article. I think the controversy has only just begun.

Macmillan App

Strategy in an advertising and/or public relations campaign has never been more important than it is now. In a distant past, for example 2005, you could run an ad during a prime time show that has a high viewership and project that you would hit a huge number of people.

Flash forward to current day, 2010, and we are faced with fragmentation. Gone are the days when posting an ad in a stationary position would hit your target audience. With so many people having the ability to take their lives with them, due to the capabilities of their mobile devices, it's no real surprise that companies have now found a way for people to take ads with them every day.

A lot of us use apps on a daily basis. What's the weather like today? How do I get there? I have to facebook that! What's my bank balance? What does this word mean? The fact that finding this information is so easy with the use of apps is, in my opinion, the driving force behind companies putting their names on apps that provide a service for us, with the hope of advertising directly to us without making us feel like we've been intruded upon.

Macmillan has an app called Macmillan Dictionary. And I don't know about you, but I hate being caught unaware of what a word means and how it's spelled. This app allows you to check spelling, look up word meanings,  look up common words, test your vocabulary, and listen to the pronunciation of the word.

Someone who would find this app appealing and beneficial would most likely be a person who reads, and possibly buy books. And what better website to make your purchases on than the one that carries the trusted name of the company that checks your spelling, vocabulary, and pronunciation every day?

I think apps like this one are a great idea and opportunity for all parties involved. First, the company who sponsors the app is getting their name out to the public in an intimate and unobtrusive way. Secondly, the people who use this app are getting smarter by the second.

What will this blog be about?

Well, this blog will be about more than just me. It will be about how I interpret things I see, hear about, and experience.

I think we should all have a voice and a platform from where we can discuss and analyze issues and concepts.

Writing helps me to better organize my thoughts, and it also helps reveal opinions I didn't know I had. I look forward to what revelations will inevitably come from documenting being me.