A Winter Morning Walk Through The Cemetery

It was fairly warm at -7°C, and sunny, I pulled into the parking lot, I was the only one there. I walked around. The sun was reflecting off the hoarfrost and everything was glittering. I started, it seems, with the newest graves, I wandered around, looking around, wondering what stories were hidden behind the head-stones.

I found one cross, the dates showing she was 24. On it was a piece of paper, obviously something done in class for mother's day, it said "Thank you mom for loving me and caring me. I wish you were here with me. Please take me up to heaven", I wonder how that little child is doing.

I continued on, past the graves of veterans, and found the older graves. These were unkept, buried under the snow, nearly impossible to spot. I wonder how many I accidentally stepped on. Many of them simply wooden crosses that were slowly falling apart. Those that had proper headstones were hard to read, though none were particularly old. Mostly from the 1960s and 70s. This town is young, founded in 1957.

I found one headstone that claimed that the man was the last permanent resident of Moak Lake. Apparently there are people living there now, I wonder what the story is...

I continued on and found the graves of several children all lined up beside each other. Some had died at a few days, some a few months, some a few years, so many stories hidden, I wonder where I could find them.

My hands were cold, and I couldn't feel my toes anymore, so I returned to the car.

Ohhhh Boy

So this weekend I was in Calgary for the Oval Invitational. It's a long-track speed skating competition, and I was really happy with my results. But that's not what this post is about.

No, on Friday I got a phone call from Thompson Manitoba.


I was in Winnipeg two weeks ago doing a job interview with a small(ish) airline, and Friday I was offered a position at their base in Thompson, Manitoba.

That was three days ago, I move in two days, to Manitoba, on my own, for the first time.

Let the crazy begin.

A New Chapter

August 17th, 2013: I moved into Prairie Bible Institute, I was 17 and eager to learn about the Bible and about aviation. I walked into my room, the small bed was bare, and the white walls as well. It wasn't long though before I moved in. I put posters and maps up on the walls, I had beding on the bed, books on the shelves, and my computer set up on the desk. Over time more and more books found their way onto my shelves, I aquired more posters, and I upgraded my computer gear.

That room became my home, the people around me became my family.

And today, two years, one month and two days later, I'm leaving. Last week I completed my flight training, and in just a couple hours my parents will arrive and we will drive back to Kamloops.

This chapter of my life is coming to a close.

The other day I was looking through my journals, and I found the entry from that first day here at Prairie, I wrote, "I'm nervous about college, but I know God will get me through". He certainly did, and I know He'll get me through this new chapter.

Why The Young Adults Didn't Vote: From A Young Adult Who Didn't Vote

So federal elections are fast approaching here in Canada. And after they count the votes and declare the composition of the new government, the media will start analyzing all the statistics from the election. And of course one of the things they'll say is "youth and young adults had a low-turnout".  Again.

And then they'll start coming up with all these explanations about why: Apathy, lack of political education, you name it. And these reasons are accurate, but they don't tell the whole story: as John Green said, "the truth resists simplicity". So disclaimer: I'm not going to cover all the reasons why young people don't vote, but I'm going to explain why I and certain others didn't.

It's simple really: Where do we vote?

I've studied full-time for the last two years in Alberta, so I think that I could have voted in the provincial elections they had here in April or May? But not one of my pieces of identification say I live in Alberta, not even my pilot's license (which I got here), They all say that I live in B.C.! So, I could have voted in the municipal elections they had recently? Well, I genuinely don't know (see lack of education mentioned above). I mean, I'm in B.C. for maybe a total of  month annually. I don't really consider myself as "living" there, even if all my papers say I do.

And that brings us to another reason, one that I mentioned earlier, apathy. Not in the sense that I don't care about politics (I genuinely do), but I'm leaving Alberta in a month or so (I hope), so I didn't care about their elections, and I'm never in B.C., so why would I care about who the Mayor of my hometown is?

So, I guess that the media is correct. We don't vote because of apathy and a lack of education.

Just maybe not exactly in the way they were originally thinking...

This Is A Picture Frame

This is a picture frame. An empty picture frame to be exact. But it can't have always been a rotten old empty picture frame. Once upon a time it would have been a beautifully ornate carved wooden frame that wonderfully complimented the picture (or painting) held within. (And enjoy that, that's about as poetic as I get)

But that picture is long gone. Taken by the owners of the old house I found it in, torn out by previous explorers, burned, who knows. But what was it? It was right next to the front door of a house, so probably a beautiful image, or something that was very close to the people who lived there.  Maybe a family portrait, maybe a valuable painting.

There's no way of knowing, we can only imagine. We have a sign that it was there, but it's up to us to project our imaginings into it. I love to do that, it gives an idea of who you are, the people who hung up this picture frame become you.


I suppose that's why I love to explore abandoned places.

This is the view down main street in a small town called Rowley. Back in the day, Rowley was a mining town, home to some 500 people. Not much, but still, it's something.

Now there's 12 people. Most of the town has been torn down, either by farmers who want to expand their field or by nature. The 12 folks of Rowley love their town and go to great lengths to keep it looking nice. It's a bit of a tourist attraction now.

This is inside the house with the picture frame. It's small, there's a mud room, a kitchen, one bedroom, one bathroom, and a living room.

It looked like it was once a pretty house, well kept.

Now it's run down, it's tilted over to the point where you feel like you're on a ship on the ocean, and it smells like rot.

This house wasn't in Rowley. It's in a coulee a few kilometers south of Three Hills. It stands alone, tilted and rotting. By far one of the biggest ghost homes I've ever visited, there were two floors and four bedrooms. A large living room, kitchen, mud room, and cellar.

This house evidently belonged to a rich family; the house was built of BC cedar, and the newspapers that were lying about were dated to before there was a reliable way to get across the mountains beyond the rails. It would have cost an arm and a leg to get all that wood across the mountains, but this family did it.

Now it stands abandoned; the family left their remarkable home. Why? Did they, like many country dwellers, find a better job in the city? Did they own a large ranch, and at some point the new generation decided they wanted something else? Or did they come to try their luck at the riches of Alberta, only to fail, returning to wherever they came from?

We know why Rowley was abandoned; it was a Coal town. When the world shifted over to oil, Rowley's economy failed and everyone left. Simple as that. There was nothing else in the town, and so it failed.

They say to learn from history or find yourself repeating it, and sometimes I worry that we are repeating it. We are building our Rowleys (Fort McMurray, I'm looking at you), our large estates, our pillars of strength as a society. When the world changes, and it will, what will happen to these places and things? Once they have been abandoned, will our pillars of strength remain? Or will they become pillars of foolishness to our descendants?

What will they project into our empty picture frame?

Insights Into the Life of a Pilot

So I'm sitting at the Calgary Flying Club; I had to fly one of our planes down to Springbank airport for an inspection, and I'll be flying it back to Three Hills once the inspection is done.

That gives me three hours (ish) to relax and wait for the plane. The problem, is that the weather is deteriorating. The wind has picked up, and there is a storm building to the west, headed right for us.

We make plans, but God doesn't always agree with them.

Days like this are stressful, I have to figure out a lot of things on the fly (no pun intended). Hopefully the weather will improve and I will be able to fly out, I might have to dodge around some storms, but that's not too difficult. On the other hand, if the wind is too strong, I won't be able to safely take-off. Or worse, land.

There is no easy answer to what I'm going to do. For now, I can just sit tight and wait to see what the weather looks like when the inspection is done, but if the weather is still questionable, then what? Where do I draw the line for acceptable risk with the weather? I have to take into account my skill, the performance of the aircraft, and the likelyhood that it will get worse after I take off.

What's more, how long do I wait to see if it'll clear? The aircraft isn't certified for night flight, and I'm not current, so I have to make it home before dark. But it still takes a bit of time to fly out there, and I need to give myself extra time for contingencies since the weather is interesting.

And what do I do if I decide that the weather isn't good enough? I have to call someone to drive down here (one hour each way) and pick me up, which doesn't sound pleasant. Hey man, can you drive for two full hours to pick me up despite your busy schedule? Thanks! And even then, now I have to get back to Springbank to get the plane. So I could spend the night at a cheap motel, but in Calgary, cheap is a relative term, and still pretty expensive. Also, there doesn't seem to be any motels around the airport, so how am I going to get to one without spending more money on a taxi or a rental car?

So yeah, that's a small insight into my life as a pilot, and I want to remind you that these questions don't go away when you get into the big leagues, so next time your pilot delays the flight for weather, don't get mad at him, he wants to fly just as bad as you do, and he spent a lot of time thinking about his decision.


Update: I made it home on time, though I had to divert around this storm system (the weather guy called it a Super Cell!), making my flight considerably longer.

On Graduation and the Illusion of Completion

I graduated from college yesterday... and I've been thinking.

When I graduated from highschool, our commnnencement ceremony was in the middle of a school week. That made it a bit of a joke because they were telling us that we had graduated, but we had to go to school the next day...

My college graduation is similar. Because of the nature of my program, I have to continue my flight training through the summer. I do get a week off, but it was hard to take them seriously when I knew that I was going bak to class in a few days to work on my classes for this degree that they said I had just completed.

Now to be clear, I am happy about my graduation, and I am proud of my achievements, but I find it funny when they tell me I'm done when I know that I'm not. It also makes me think about the illusion of completion.

Of how many things can we truly say ''I'm done''? Sure, I'm done a road trip, but when am I done my education? These days our global knowledge doubles regularly, in a few years it is believed that it will double daily. Now I don't know if that will really happen, but up to today, the rate of the doubling of our knowledge is growing exponentionaly. I suppose we will have to wait and see.

So if we don't complete education, what do we complete? A job? When the contract for my last job came to an end, I said ''I'm done'' at least three times, my boss kept asking me to do one more odd job. Of course, some people can mark diffinitive ends to their jobs, but I would argue that even just thinking about the job means that it's not actually over.

So neither education nor employment have a diffinitive completion, but couldn't we say that life does have a completion? Again, I would argue that even the line that marks the end of life is blurred. I distinctly remember when I was talking to some friends of mine about death. One of them was a firefighter and the other a nurse. The nurse defined death as the moment when mind activity and the heart stops. The firefighter defined death as ''when the doctor says he's dead''. Both are right in their own fields, yet both are very different. The nurse's definition can have occured, but as far as the firefighter is concerned, the man is still alive. So who's right? what's more, with modern medicine we can bring people back to life! (Albeit, only sometimes) So someone's dead, and then they're alive again. So this person's life is done, then their back! again, we've encountered the illusion of completion.

So the idea of completing something is just an illusion, most any author I've ever met will agree with me in regards to their writting, but I think I've shown that it expands even farther.

If you disagree with me, let me know, I'd love to talk, I'm not sure I agree with myself either.

Five Years!

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.

In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was one only.

This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints, so I said to the Lord,

“You promised me Lord,

that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?”

The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”

-Mary Stevenson

Five years ago tonight, I made a conscious decision to follow Christ. January 22nd 2010.

Some people, when they talk about their salvation experience describe a light-bulb moment, where suddenly they could see, suddenly they understood. Mine was similar, but it wasn’t an incandescent light bulb that suddenly illuminates.

Rather for me, it was more akin to one of those light bulbs that slowly brightens.

You see, I grew up in a Christian family, but I never made a full commitment to faith. I didn't really understand Christianity. I’m not going to go into detail here, but over the course of the six or seven months preceding that day, I slowly, slowly started to understand. Slowly, ever so slowly, the lights came on, I started to understand who God is and just how much He loves me.

Finally, that night I realized that the lights were bright enough that I could see. If you’ve ever been in a workshop with those kind of lights, you know that the moment when you realize you can see is not the very initial moment that you can see, but rather you realize that you’ve been able to see for a while, and now it’s time to act.

So I prayed. I didn’t know the “proper” prayer that people are supposed to make at times like this, so I made it up.

Five years… wow have they been crazy awesome years! I’ve been reflecting on them, and it humbles me to see the times that I was stupid enough to think that I was alone, when in reality God was right there.

That poem I shared, Footprints In The Sand, is so true. There are so many hard times that God has carried me through, and so many victories that God has celebrated with me.

So here is to five years gone, and an eternity to go.