Jeff
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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 are aware that its superficial reality — what we actually engage with via sophisticated UX/UI — is radically not the same as its physical reality. I have often wondered whether…
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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 historical research. It’s fictional in the sense that I’m not sure whether Sarah Jane would have felt things in this way, but the facts reflect at least some of what…
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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 syringes. He starts by using a computer to transform an image — the Mona Lisa or a Van Gogh self-portrait — into a series of coloured dots. Once these dots 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 Carmel Bible College) for a long time. In 2018, I co-edited a history about the school written by former faculty member, Ted McKellar, called 50 Years of God’s Faithfulness. What I’m interested…
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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 driving recklessly through downtown with a passenger, Alfred Joseph “Dave” Gaucher. The accident led to Gaucher being thrown from the car and seriously injured, William being knocked unconscious and injured himself,…
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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 1. What was Frances Wem, his wife, up to during the years she lived in England with her children? In the course of researching this, though, I uncovered some truly…
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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 66th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces. He was 44 years old.
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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 the astonishing age of 103!), I thought I’d do a series of posts on these women and their family. This family experienced its share of adventures as well as tragedies,…
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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 in “the old country” that we emigrated from: namely, England. I remember my grandfather saying that he had heard we had roots in the area known as Kent, but there…
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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. Lewis Estate. I wrote a short reflection on Hooper back in 2020 when he passed and then posted it to a random blog I was trying to make happen at the time.…
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