I helped to make a colouring book for Calgary Reads! Take a look HERE to find out more about the project and the amazing artists who contributed to the book!

Just for fun (because I had some Crayola markers and 20 minutes), here's the story of how it all happened.

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!