At last, I get to post some news about the 3rd of my Three Things for Canada (see here for Things 1 and 2)! This one's a project I've been working on for a while, with the help of some really great collaborators!

This story starts with local charity Calgary Reads.

In June, Calgary Reads will be launching their Children's Reading Place in Inglewood. I don't need to describe it any further, because there's already a great description of the project here (read on):

So what does this have to do with me? Well, with the help of Calgary Reads and a grant from the Community Fund for Canada's 150th, I've been assembling my 3rd Thing for Canada: a little colouring book celebrating the themes of CANADA and LITERACY. The book will be available to the children who participate in literacy programming at the Children's Reading Place throughout 2017.

Here's the lovely cover of the colouring book, created by Calgary artist Chris Pecora.

I want to give a big shout out to the wonderful artists from around Alberta who have contributed to this project! I'm really grateful to these folks who shared their talents, their book recommendations (yes!) and their thoughts about celebrating literacy on Canada's 150th birthday.

Presenting... the colouring book artists! These are the artist headshots that will be appearing in the book. Hover over the pictures for names, and click on the pictures for links to their own sites.

By the way, not all of these artists had cartoony headshots, so I drew three of these pictures myself (for Laura, Ryan, and Karen), based on photos they sent me.

That's all for now, everybody. I have to get ready for the Panel One Comic Creators' Festival! But stay tuned, pictures of the book, and more about the Children's Reading Place, coming soon!

So, I wrote about what I'd be bringing to this year's Calgary Expo, but I saved my favourite thing for last. Every year the Expo produces a limited edition Artbook filled with work by a whole bunch of awesome contributors. Most people draw (beautiful) splash pages, but you know me, I just can't draw pictures unless there's a story. So I'm the one who always draws those weird autobiographical text-filled strips about my real-life adventures.

Last year, the Artbook theme was "Fairy Tales and Classic Monsters," which inspired me to write a strip about my experience with post-partum depression. I felt like that was going to be a tricky subject to follow up. Imagine my surprise when, this year, the theme was (again!??) ""Fairy Tales and Classic Monters!" (Why, Calgary Expo??) Anyway, this year I took that theme and picked a new focus.

It's Canada's sesquicentennial - our 150th birthday! That's the theme I'm excited about this year! So, I decided to draw some storytellers who are shaping the fairy tales, stories, and legends of this country. This was a random sampling of people I ran into in my neighbourhood, along with a few famous folks and a couple of tall tale tellers into the mix.

- Stuart McLean, revered Canadian storyteller;

- Northrop Frye, revered Canadian unscrambler of what stories are and how they're told;

- Ken Cameron, local storyteller whom I (luckily) ran into at Caffe Rosso just before I wrote this, and who gave me some ideas about what to write! (Another local storyteller, Barb Pederson, was there too, actually. Sorry Barb, I didn't draw you, but I appreciated hearing your ideas!)

- Pat Kelly and Peter Oldring, Canadian story-distorters (and yes, Pat really lived 3 doors down from me, long ago)

- The iconic Baba, CKUA's master storyteller, whose friendly voice has been spinning tales for so many Albertans through the radio waves for many years...

- Polarman, a recently-retired real-life superhero whom I met in Iqaluit long ago, and who's the recent subject of SESQUI, another sesquicentennial project.

- I'm honoured that my neighbour Nolene, whose inspiring story I recently wrote about in my Ramsay comic strip, gave me permission to include her on this list of storytellers. It's been a privilege for me to hear from her a little bit about her experience of discovering her Indigenous roots. The stories she's been telling me, and the ancient learnings she's been absorbing from her cultural community, are by no means "fairy tales," or "tall tales," by the way. These are real stories that are a necessary part of the story of Canada's 150th, despite the fact that some of them are sad stories. I wanted to include Nolene in here, because learning about stories like hers has been important to me in understanding what Canada really means, and could mean in the future.

Ok, that's all for now - time to go!
I'm going to post this without any links because I'm out of time, but I'll add them in soon! See you at the Expo!

So here's the 1st of my 3 Things for Canada: I pitched a panel about independent Canadian comics to the Calgary Comics Expo, and it's happening!

I'm really interested in comics that are being created and published right here in Canada, and even more if they're about Canadian stories. Right here in Calgary, there's a growing independent scene, ranging from old-timers like Damian Willcox (sorry, Damian! Guess I should probably say "creators of long-standing status" or something more dignified...) to new movements like Panel One, an independent creators' collective established in 2016.

I've been thinking a lot about contemporary comics in Canada (and in Calgary in particular), since I read back in 2016 that the Canadian Society for the Study of Comics had put out a call for papers on "The Young Canadians." They were asking, "What's happened in Canadian comics in recent years?"

I'm definitely not an expert on this subject, but I'm interested in how my own local scene has been evolving. And I thought the Calgary Expo seemed like the perfect place to have a discussion about this. So, that's part of the reason why I thought this panel might be a good idea. I am looking forward to listening and learning!

If you're coming to the Expo this year, I really hope you'll come out to hear this conversation. Right now, the Expo website still hasn't posted its programming info, but when it does, this is where you'll be able to find it. In the meantime, here's some information about our panel!

Comics scholars Sean Carleton & Julia Smith, Winnipeg-based Bedside Press publisher and Prairie Comics Festival organizer Hope Nicholson, and indie comics creators Sam Hester & Eric Dyck, will discuss comics about real life historical & contemporary Canadian stories.

Why should you come and listen to this panel? Well, obviously, if you’re one of those few people who’s interested in the Canadian independent comics scene, you’ll know there are only a handful of opportunities every year to find people from the field congregating to talk about this cool subject. so you won’t want to miss this.

And if you’re in the category of folks who had no idea that this was even a thing, well, then clearly this is the place you need to be, to find out more! Either way, we hope you’ll come!

And now remember: putting this panel together has been the first of my 3 Things for Canada. Stay tuned for the next two, coming soon!

I've written a little bit already about  Mayor Nenshi's 3 Things for Canada - the idea that all Canadians could use the occasion of Canada's sesquicentennial year to offer three acts of service to the country in 2017.

I've already seen a few pretty great projects happening, and even more exciting, I've been watching this initiative spread across the country! Here are a few examples I found online, that I really liked. You can see many more by taking a look on Twitter at #3ThingsforCanada or following @3ThingsCanada.

You have to scroll through these ones, to get to mine, at the bottom!

So, what about me - what are my three things for Canada?

You know what, I really thought I was going to be able to fit these all into one blog post, but I just couldn't do it. So after all that, I'm still not going to tell you the whole story.

Instead, here are three pictures to give you three hints.

I'll post THING #1 soon - later today, in fact! Stay tuned!

There is this cool organization in my city called Calgary Arts Development, which describes itself as follows:

We are a connector, facilitator, collaborator, champion, supporter, amplifier, investor, catalyst and opportunity-maker.

From that description you can guess that their work doesn't just involve traditional support of the arts, but an active endeavour to share Calgary's creative offerings with people from all walks of life. And that's how I got to be involved in this story, as part of Calgary Arts Development's "Storytelling Project," in which local writer Stephen Hunt talked to a range of creative Calgarians about their personal versions of Calgary's arts development strategy, Living a Creative Life. The story is featured here on the Calgary Arts Development site.

I really like the idea that the city's strategy has room not only for the fine arts, but for regular folks who explore and celebrate their creativity in their own unique ways. That notion struck a chord with me, so when I was invited to draw a picture to go along with the story, that's what I drew.

And by the way, for anyone who's interested, I thought I'd include here the "annotated version." After I drew the picture, I realized I'd put in a really random gathering of creative people (mostly my own family and friends, along with a few others who just happened to cross my mind). Just for fun, I wrote down their names, so here they are! Needless to say, it's not really an accurate cross-section of Calgary's creative population, but it'll do for a start... and I'd love to see your version of this story, too!

These days things are always busy and I never find time to post things to my blog. Here's a rare moment of free time in which I can take a few of these images crowding up my desktop and put them up here to share with others!

Tonight is the Inglewood Night Market, brought to you once again by that superior team of local creative types, find it. And - the weather forecast is stormy. Why does this seem to happen to us every time? I had to write this little comic strip about how ridiculous this is getting.

To see some photos of our volunteers (most of whom have braved the elements on numerous occasions to make this super cool event happen), take a look here. Don't let the pictures fool you. I chose the sunniest pictures to trick people into thinking that coming out to volunteer for us would be a warm walk in the park. In fact, it is a really great event with wonderful people, but let's just face it, you're going to get rained on, hailed on, swept away by a windstorm, or something like that, at least once. So why pretend otherwise? Hence this little comic strip so that folks will find out the real truth about volunteering at the Night Market.

If this tale of adventure whets your appetite for danger and excitement, feel free to show up early (say anytime starting around 3 PM) and lend a hand to the volunteers who are getting things set up. Chances are they may need extra bodies to keep the tents from blowing away. Chocolate is always good too. Or better yet, send them a note at volunteers@finditcalgary.ca and check to see if you can help out. The more umbrellas, the merrier.

In case you're wondering, the market is still on - rain or shine! So be brave! Come out. We'll see you there!


By the way - I put an asterisk next to "derring-do" because I thought I'd write a little explanation at the bottom for folks who aren't familiar with that quaintest of terms. But I forgot, so those of you who don't know what derring-do means will just have to come down to the market and find out!

I'm just going to post a few pictures of a utility box I painted back in 2012, to show some folks an example of a comic-strip alphabet mural. These pictures are of a painted utility box on Elbow Drive in Calgary. Each of the panels is pretty small (a few inches in width/height), so there isn't room for more than a single phrase and image. Bigger panels would allow for a bit more than this.

I was delighted to attend the second annual Mayor's Lunch for Arts Champions last week.

This celebration of the arts in Calgary happened for the first time in February 2013 (I went with the find it team - some amazing volunteers from Inglewood & Ramsay who are currently hard at work getting ready for the 2014 Inglewood Night Markets). Here's my post about last year's Lunch.

The Mayor's Lunch happens at the BMO Centre on the Calgary Stampede grounds. Before the lunch began, everyone mingled around in the lobby enjoying performances by a bunch of youthful Calgary artists.

By 2013, with the help of some great community partners and a few amazing arts grants, our team of five or six unpaid volunteers had put together some great events.

Credit for this amazing photo goes to Cat Laine. Click here to see her website.

But what has to happen to make the Night Markets happen? They don't just run themselves.

Stringing up lights: You need lights at a Night Market, and that means someone has to put them up. Here's Meg walking the walk - she doesn't just dream up creative artsy pop-up events, she also does more than her share of the heavy lifting!

Unloading supplies and putting up signs: We do that too. And this all has to happen on the afternoon of the market. Even if it's raining. So time is of the essence!

Operating heavy machinery: This is a portable light tower that gets set up at each market to shine some light on the street. It has to be assembled and taken down at each market!!!

Decorating: Banners, chalk drawing, sandwich boards. Even if you're five years old, we'd be happy to have you come out and help us decorate!

Manning the information tent: This job is always fun. So many nice folks show up to keep us company at the find it tent. This could be you!

The Perks: We have to take everything down at the end of the night, too. That can be hard work, after a long evening. But last time we did this, a Mexican mariachi band stuck around to play for us while we took down the tents and cleaned up the street! Is there anywhere else in Calgary where you could enjoy something like this? (If there is, please tell me about it!)

So, now that you know what we need, I know you'll want to send us a note right away to volunteers@finditcalgary.ca and sign up to come lend a hand on Friday, September 12th. But don't stop there. I hope you might also want to help us make the market happen again in 2015 and beyond. We've had an overwhelmingly positive response to the event - Calgarians love it! And we'd love to keep it going past this year. But this volunteer in particular isn't sure she'll be able to keep this up. With a job and two little kids, I just don't have the time to contribute to our team (and I haven't actually even been doing a whole lot, beyond making the find it website, doing some promotions, and helping on the day of the market).

When we started find it, we were dreaming of doing all sorts of different cool artsy creative events. This summer, we've spent most of our time running the Night Market. We did it, and we loved doing it... but, at least on a volunteer basis, we can't keep doing this forever. Would you like to help? You would? Let us know! Come talk to us at the find it tent on Friday, at what we hope won't be the last Inglewood Night Market. We need you!