Cal's Journal

It’s official, spring is here. Today at Big White we had every season of the year; except summer. according to the calendar, today was the first day of spring.  My friend told me how this was a sad day for him, the days were now longer and ski season was that much closer to being over. The change of season approaches faster and faster every year in which I live on this wondrous planet circling the sun. For my daughter, Read more…

The two ski buddies met at the bottom of the Ridge Rocket high-speed quad. Barrman and Cookster smiled beneath their masks as they pushed through the gates for another ski day. It wasn’t just any ski day it was a day to celebrate. Cookster was on his one-hundredth day and it was one day over a year since the mountain closed because of the pandemic. It was also St. Patrick’s Day. It was going to be a good day! Or Read more…

Barrman awoke to a feeling of anxiety and uncertainty. The world he was living in seemed to be crumbling around him. Time was running out and the world just entered a new vocabulary into everyday life. Social distancing was one of the new terms being used. It all seemed so weird. Pandemic. That’s what they kept saying. What the hell was going on? His wife K-Dee and a few of their friends went to watch Jon Bos the day before Read more…

It has been a year of Mondays. Every week has begun with another Monday in the coronaverse. You may ask yourself, why do I pick on Mondays?. Every time it’s a Monday I can’t help but sing the Boomtown Rats song in my head, “I don’t like Mondays.” Mondays can certainly be a drag, with having to go back to work after a weekend of fun and relaxation. Monday has its own degree of negativity; waiting for Monday to end Read more…

Time keeps on flying by in a flash; like a waking dream, life continues its journey onward. We lost an hour in the middle of the night.  It was time to spring forward once more. Our clocks are a representation of a myriad of calculations. On timepieces everywhere, the little hands tell us what our body only guesses at. The passage of time keeps moving on and we live our lives based on the spinning of wheels and gears. In Read more…

It happened quickly, the pain shot up my back. The agony pierced my body, it felt like a knife had been plunged into my muscle. Anyone who’s had a back injury or even a sore back knows the spot in the lower back. The pain held me in its grasp for a second and then released me. Only to grab me again as I let go of the platform I’d been holding. I know better than to push my limits. Read more…

Spring was in full bloom today. It started with a brisk chill in the air but as the sun warmed the earth the air felt fresh and new. A new season was in full bloom in our amazing Okanagan Valley. I stood at the top of the new thirty-six-story high-rise condominium building. I embraced the thrilling view from three hundred eighty-feet above the glistening Okanagan Lake. The brand new tower is in its finishing touches and the penthouse suite sits Read more…

“They cancelled Dr. Seuss,” so rang the battle cry. They are cancelling everything. Who is this infamous ‘they’? Why do ‘they’ want to run our lives? Or do they? Did ‘they’ even cancel Dr. Seuss in the first place? I thought I should find out exactly what was going on. It turns out this mysterious ‘they’ had very little to do with cancelling the beloved author of children’s books. Six lesser-known books by the famous writer have been taken out Read more…

Barrman’s brain fell deep into strange dreams of a world long past. He struggled to escape the days long ended, dreams of working in Calgary twenty-years-ago. Why, why, why was he haunted by dreams of cleaning windows in the city by the Bow River in Alberta? It was no longer his home. His eyes pushed their lids into the recess, he pushed his dream back into the depths of his mind. He remembered seeing fresh snow in the middle of Read more…