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The Parade to the Future
Tech criticism is seductive. Pessimism often is. The appeal of it has to do, I think, with the way these critics (people like Jacques Ellul,…
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Dante and My Wife’s Family
I’ve been slowly working through Dante’s Divine Comedy. This 14th-century Italian poem has been on my reading list for a long time. Little did I…
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Sailor, Barber, Insurance Salesman
One of the less bleak oral histories that has been told many times in my family is that of the truly unique New Brunswicker, Henry…
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Specificity and Difference
I’ve been “doing family history” for about fifteen years now. As I’ve written previously, I got into this hobby midway through my PhD studies, when…
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Groovy like a Drive-In Movie
Recently, one of my friends informed our group chat that he had discovered something very cool: his house had been constructed on the site of…
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Murdered Under Trust
I have a new research quest that I am pursuing. There is an old family story that my Papa Henderson, my mom’s dad, had Spanish…
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Leaving Facebook
Finally, after actually months of planning to do it, I deleted my Facebook account. For whatever reason, I was dragging my feet. I didn’t want…
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“Alone Against the North” by Adam Shoalts
I first heard about Adam Shoalts — Canada’s Indiana Jones, as one journalist dubbed him — from my wife’s uncle. I was preparing a series…
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Loyalists in the Family
One of the aspects of my family history that is not as familiar for me is my New Brunswick heritage. We have a handful of…
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“An Event, Perhaps” by Peter Salmon
I still remember the year Jacques Derrida died. I was taking a fourth-year continental philosophy class with some friends, and I don’t recall if we…
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The Radio Towers Down the Street
I have been interested in the history of the neighbourhood I live in for a long while. This subdivision, called “Meyonohk” (which means “an ideal…
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Misadventures with Malick
A couple years ago, my brother had the fun idea to try watching our way through the Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time…
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Uncle Colin and the Crofters’ War
Family history is full of surprises, yielding new insights even in areas that have been gone over many times. I’ve looked at my Henderson ancestry…
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Is Not This Thing in My Right Hand a Lie?
I made a video last year in 2023 after reading something in the book of Isaiah that felt weirdly prescient. After all, this was a…
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We All Wanna Be Rob Roy’s
One of the Scottish ancestors I have always been curious about is my great-grandmother, Maggie Roy. The rumour in our family was that she was…
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A Longing for the World
I work in a city. Every day, I travel along asphalt roads, past soaring, steel skyscrapers. Life under these peculiarly modern conditions often leaves me…
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The One Devices
When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone on January 9, 2007, he made a point of emphasizing that he was not presenting a phone or an…
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The Dry Thomsons
My great-grandfather David Thomson was quite the man, I’m told. He was born on the Isle of Skye in Scotland in 1895. Harold McCullagh wrote…
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Edmonton’s Gold Bar Neighbourhood
My family has had roots in the Gold Bar neighbourhood of Edmonton going back over fifty years. My grandparents lived in the area, and my…
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The Physical Internet
The question, “What is the Internet?”, has meaning because, despite our daily engagement with it, we often have no idea just what constitutes it. We…
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The Wave Rushes
The story of my great-great-grandmother, Sarah Jane Suddaby (nee McKague), born in 1868 in Guelph, and told from her perspective using real family stories and…
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Towards a Handmade Digital Artifact
How artists and designers are applying real world constraints to the digital in order to make something new Bradley Hart creates art with bubblewrap, paint, and…
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Mount Carmel Bible School
Mount Carmel Bible School is a one-year Christian training program located in Edmonton. I’ve wanted to write about the history of Mount Carmel (also called Mount…
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A “Bad Boy” Grows Up
A car accident occurred 95 years ago in 1929 in Edmonton. The car accident involved a young man named Angus William McCallum, who had been…
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One Too Many Wives
This post was originally going to be a tiny little section at the tail-end of the deep dive into William Wem’s experiences in World War…
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Private William Wem, 66th Battalion
On July 1, 1915, mere days after the biggest flood in Edmonton’s history swept over his family’s home, William Wem signed up to join the…
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The Wems Arrive in Edmonton
In honour of the 100-year anniversary of my grandmother Eileen’s birth (on April 26) and the very recent passing of her beloved sister, Kay (at…
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The Paper-Making Kings
Until recently, the members of my particular Canadian branch of the extended King family did not know very much about the roots of our family…
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The Men Who Helped the Inklings
Reflections on two lives lived in humble service It’s been nearly four years since the passing of Walter Hooper, the longtime literary executor of the C.S.…
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“Live from New York, A History of SNL” by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
With Live from New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests, James Andrew Miller and Tom…
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“I Must Say” by Martin Short
Martin Short can make me laugh just by being on screen. Turns out, having listened to the audiobook recording of his 2014 memoir, I Must Say:…
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“Born Standing Up” by Steve Martin
Born Standing Up is Steve Martin’s 2007 autobiography tracing how he got his start in stand-up comedy and how he left it in the early 80s,…
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Little We See in Nature
On the built environment as sleep paralysis In René Descartes’s Third Meditation on the existence of God, he writes: I will now shut my eyes, stop my…
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On Plankton
Trying to Find the Edges of the Built World The thought that has occupied me on my commute lately is about the worlds that we…
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Old-School Movie Magic
Fetish or Sacrament? My kids and I have been watching Light and Magic, a docuseries on Disney+ all about the history of the special effects house,…
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Looking Backwards – Part 2
Having recently discovered (with the help of my brother-in-law) some of the earlier roots of the Brethren in Edmonton, I have been wondering about shifting…
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The 1907 Edmonton Conference
My brother-in-law recently gave me a copy of a slightly creased, but in relatively good quality, folded notice for an “Annual Conference of Christians Gathered…
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A.I., Bitcoin, and Cloud
An attempt at a theological ABC in memory of Frederick Buechner Frederick Buechner passed away last week at the age of 96. Arguably one of…
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Fake Plastic Earth
Attempting to uncover the creaturely roots of AstroTurf My wife was talking to our neighbour down the road. They had been working for about a…
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I, Pencil by Leonard Read
Two kinds of “wonder” I first came across the essay, “I, Pencil: My Family History as Told to Leonard E. Read,” via Thomas Thwaites’s Toaster Project website.…
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A Theology of Barcodes
Mark of the Beast, or Brilliant Human Innovation? (Or both?) I don’t think that I ever actually thought that barcodes were a tool of the Antichrist. When I…
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The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites
Seeking a path out of abstraction I’ve read Thomas Thwaites’s The Toaster Project twice and continue to get insights out of it—I’ll cut to the chase now…
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Looking Backwards – Part 1
This post was originally posted at my Brethren-focused website, O Brethren! I am not sure I currently agree with everything herein, but thought I’d repost here anyways…
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The Prophetic Interest of the Early Brethren
An aspect of Brethren history that has sometimes been overlooked by contemporary assemblies in my experience is its strong focus on questions surrounding prophecy. Specifically,…
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The Loneliness of Work
This post was originally posted at my short-lived website, Faith Working. I am not sure I currently agree with everything herein, but thought I’d repost here anyways…
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Meaning at Work: Part 2
Finding a Gateway to the Outside This post was originally posted at my short-lived website, Faith Working. I am not sure I currently agree with everything herein,…
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Meaning at Work: Part 1
What is meaning? Some people might describe it as a kind of feeling — of what? Depth? Appropriateness? Well-suitedness? Awe? Each of these descriptions involve…
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“Thank God It’s Monday” by Mark Greene
Mark Greene’s Thank God It’s Monday is an excellent introduction to the biblical theology of work, inviting the reader into a more evangelistic and openly…
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“The Fabric of This World” by Lee Hardy
A review of Lee Hardy’s 1990 book, The Fabric of This World.
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97th Street Gospel Hall
Today the site of the old 97th Street Gospel Hall is covered over by Edmonton’s new Royal Alberta Museum, which is booked to open next year.…
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“On Writing” by Stephen King
A review of “On Writing” by Stephen King.
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“Love Wins” by Rob Bell
A review of “Love Wins” by Rob Bell.
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“The Wisdom of Stability” by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
A review of Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s Wisdom of Stability.
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“Kant and Schiller” by Paul de Man
A summary of Paul de Man’s essay, “Kant and Schiller”.