I guess it was more me that felt weird doing it – going through a series of tourist gestures, taking photos of the buildings and murals which beg to be looked at and captured.

I’ve always had trouble with the notion of “stand on spot A, take photo of thing B. Congrats, you know have experienced the place and can now move on to Location C.”

I’m not here to be a tourist, and here I was aping them, minus the clip-on sunglasses and fanny pack. Did I get anything out of this little trip?
To answer the question, yes I did. These actions raised questions, and I returned back to the office with those in mind. I spent about 10 minutes just writing these thoughts down on my phone, lest I forget them.
As quick as I’m used to dismiss these touristy shots, claiming them as cliche and derivative, I’m glad I took them and will share them here.

They’ll act as my starting point, evidence of it being my first week of my internship. The more time I spend here, the more people I meet, it will all factor in to the next round of photos I take.

This is what I wrote into my phone as it struck me, a digital napkin and a golf pencil, if you will:

I take photos when I feel like I have something to say, and need to express it visually. In journalistic sense, I need to look at something, try to capture it, and have it say something to me, and others. Can I look at something, capture it and have it tell me something, to then revisit it when I have something of a reply?

Thanks, past me, for writing down a question. I guess I have to reference the even more past me for context. I got a degree in Fine Arts- Art Studio before taking the journalism program. I found that artists enjoy the exploration and interpretations of ideas, letting their work pose a question for the viewer to answer themselves. It’s no use in being didactic about things, or using overly pretentious words, or being ironic. If I were involved in hard-news journalism, I could imagine a short-lived career as the news host that constantly stroked his beard and raised an eyebrow every story.

But, here I be, in a more feature-based magazine, where ideas are consistently generated and it’s been good to exercise my creative muscles again. Five more weeks in this environment, I’m excited to see what I’ll see.

By Pat Fream

Photos by Neville Palmer

Jason with a portrait of his great grandfather Tom Lauder

There was a time when Jason Glass was outside from sunup till sundown, tending to his 40-strong herd of Thoroughbred horses and training them for chuckwagon racing. In those days he derived all his pleasure from his animals and his sport, and for a couple of decades, that’s all he needed.
Today, the fourth generation World Champion Chuckwagon Driver has expanded his purpose to make room for marriage and for his most rewarding achievements yet – a son and a daughter. And while the long time cowboy bachelor welcomes the change with unabashed pride, it is clear that chuckwagon is in his blood, a staple in his character. Only now he has a new title and his home team is four-strong.
“For years I thought of nothing but the horses, I put them ahead of everything,” says Jason, who explains that this is what it took to get to where he is today – a three-time world champion. “Now I look at things differently. I still love spending time with the horses (he calls ‘the boys’), but I love being with my family too, so I try to set things up more efficiently outside so I can get back inside where my wife and kids are.”
Getting to this day in Jason’s life has a lot to do with guts, grit and fiery family roots. Born in Calgary in 1970, Jason inherited his grandmother’s get-it-done attitude and an indomitable appetite for wagon racing from his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather.
“Ya, it’s a natural for me,” says Jason, pausing to point out faded portraits on the walls surrounded by a whole slew of elaborate bronze wagons, more exquisite art than trophy.
“My great grandfather Tom Lauder started chuckwagon racing in the Calgary Stampede in 1924. His daughter, my grandmother (Iris), married Ronnie Glass and he won the world championship four times. My dad Tom Glass was a three-time world champion.” He grins sheepishly and implies the obvious – he pretty much has to carry on winning.
“As far back as I can remember I was either in a wagon or on a horse,” says Jason. “When I was a little kid I’d climb in the back of the wagon and try to grab the lines from my dad.”
If there’s such thing as genetic ambition this family makes a case for it with champion drivers and outriders in every generation descending from Tom Lauder. While the sport has mostly brought gratification and triumph to this long line of tenacious horsemen, it has also claimed lives from the 50-year chuckwagon family dynasty. Tom Lauder’s grandson Rod Glass was tragically killed at age 18 while driving chuckwagon in 1971. Two decades later Richard Cosgrave, married to Tom Lauder’s granddaughter, was also killed in a chuckwagon race.
Having lost two uncles to the sport, no one knows better than Jason what can go wrong in the high-speed adrenaline-charged atmosphere of chuckwagon racing. But that doesn’t seem to faze him, he accepts risk like it’s his birthright. And while tipping his hat to predecessors he clearly admires, Jason does what it takes to earn his own place on the family wall of trophies. Beginning with meticulous care of ‘the boys’.
“It’s all about the horses, you can’t win without them,” says Jason. “It’s not like race car driving where after the race you put the car away and forget about it.” For Jason, training and caring for his Thoroughbreds is a rigorous year-round commitment.
“Every day I go outside and feed the horses their oats individually, so I look at every inch of every one of them – make sure they’re all healthy and happy.” From September to March he spends hours with seven or eight new Thoroughbreds, immersing them in the herd and doing a variety of exercises to help them adjust to pulling a wagon.
“You can’t take a Thoroughbred off the race track and hook it to a wagon, that would stress him,” he explains. “It’s a long process to get them where they need to be. Some take two or three years, but once in a while you get one that takes to it in a couple of weeks.”
Come March, with the rodeo season just two months away, Jason ramps up the conditioning of his thirty-some other horses, already chuckwagon trained but in need of strength and endurance training to reach peak racing form. These horses get daily stints of trotting in an Equisizer, a motorized exercise pen that Jason and his cousin (chuckwagon driver and World Champion Outrider, Chad Cosgrave) constructed using some innovation and some market-made parts. The slick equi-invention can accommodate four horses at a time and is computer generated so Jason can set the speed, direction and duration of the sessions.
“The horses love it!” He says, with giddy enthusiasm. “Turn it on and they come running; they’ll run you over trying to get in there!”
When May rolls around it’s off to the races. Jason and his wife Brienne load up their twin toddlers, Steele and Brodie, along with 16 horses (four full chuckwagon outfits) and a crew of workers and outriders. The Glass ‘checkered wagon’ team takes four big rigs down the highway hitting every major rodeo in the province.
“We love being on the road,” says Jason, explaining how his travelling accommodations have gone from truck and camper as a boy to his current bus-sized coach complete with four slides and bunk beds for the twins. “We basically go from town to town for four solid months, 10 rodeos in all, it’s a blast.”
The Calgary Stampede, with over $1 million in prize money up for grabs in chuckwagon, is the crown jewel for most drivers, especially the Glasses whose family legacy began there.
“My family has been a part of the Calgary Stampede since 1923 and I’ve been going to it for all of my 41 years. It’s the most important 10 days of the year,” he says earnestly. Potential winnings aside Jason has high praise for event organizers and volunteers. “The work that goes in to the Calgary Stampede is astounding; I think it’s absolutely amazing they’ve kept it going, and made it better every year for 100 years.”
Asked the obvious question… can a person make a living in the sport of chuckwagon? Jason explains that sponsorship is everything in this business. “I’ve been fortunate to have three or four good sized company sponsors stay with me over the years. My main sponsor – Shaw GMC is great. I’ve had them for 22 years.”
Between winning races and having excellent sponsorship Jason says many in his family have been able to make a living at chuckwagon. But this is not the only family business Jason is heir to; the tenacious line of Lauder descendants have carved out a second unconventional career niche doing stunt work and small acting roles in movies.
“My family has been in the movie industry since 1970, my grandpa was in Buffalo Bill and the Indians,” he says. “Dad and grandpa saw people getting paid to fall off their horses and they said ‘why can’t we do that?’ So they got themselves into it.”
Jason started doing stunt work when he was 16 and has since performed in more than 150 movies, shows and commercials. His older sister (Corry Glass) is a full-time stuntwoman in Vancouver and his dad (Tom Glass) has been in more than 200 movies and has also performed stunt coordinator duties for some productions.
“Mostly I get hired for western scenes but I also do car racing, or I hang on a wire… basically anything they need,” says Jason. “The movie business has been great to me and my family over the years.” But there’s no doubt that chuckwagon is this man’s greatest passion, and his aim is to put more bronze on his walls. “You can compete at the Stampede until you’re 64, so as long as I’m healthy, I’m going to keep going for it.

Writer’s Note
Remarkably humble in spite of several noteworthy accomplishments, Jason names a whole crew of uncles, cousins, friends and hired hands, who have contributed to his success along the way. At the top of his list of mentors he names his grandmother, Iris Glass, who passed away in 2008. “She was the matriarch of wagons, always there in the barns, at the races, a very important person to all of us,” he pauses to gather his emotions, picks up his daughter and gives her a squeeze.

-30-

Chuckwagon Basics:
Each chuckwagon is pulled by four horses (an outfit), and is accompanied by two outriders. There are four wagons in each race (heat). When the horn sounds, one outrider throws the barrel (stove) in the back of the chuckwagon while the other steadies the horses, then both riders jump on their horses and the wagons are off. Each wagon and its outriders must cut a figure 8 pattern around their respective barrels. They then proceed to race around the track. A chuckwagon’s running time ends when the nose of its first horse crosses the finish line. Each outrider must finish within 150 feet of its wagon or the driver will be penalized. Final times are tabulated based on running times plus any penalties incurred during the race (i.e. 1 second penalty for a false start, 5 seconds for knocking over a barrel). In this sport, penalty seconds can cost drivers thousands of dollars, and in some cases, championships.

Stars and Stunts:
Jason has worked with dozens of famous Hollywood stars, including Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and Owen Wilson. The biggest production he’s ever worked on was the 2011 release of Mission Impossible 4 – Ghost Protocol. In this movie he’s the stuntman driving the car during a race scene where Tom Cruise is hit by the car and ends up clinging to the roof, fighting with the driver through the window.

I am not from around here, and I’ll be honest, more often than not, places like High River, Okotoks and Longview have been places I’ve travelled to on my to another place. Lately that other place has been Lethbridge where I’ve been for the last six years getting an Art degree and more recently,  a Print Journalism diploma.

But please, don’t take offense that I’ve just driven by all this time. I’m originally from Bassano, AB, the “just passing by” capital of Alberta.

I’m happy to now have this area as my destination. There is just so much for me to do and see. I admit I consistently break the Distracted Driver law whenever I take Highway 22. I love how prevalent the arts and other types of culture are here. I’ve only met a few people so far, but find an overall warmth and friendliness.

I hope to take advantage of opportunities to meet and visit with people who call this area home. I’d love to hear your stories and what this place means to you. After all, this is a chance for me to make each day never feel like work, while discovering what it is that you all do.

-Mike

By David and Heather Meszaros

Many people find that purchasing life insurance can be stressful and confusing. It’s important to have an advisor you trust to help you navigate through the maze and avoid the following mistakes:

The Wrong Amount – Buying too much insurance is as bad as buying too little. The right amount of life insurance should cover the following basic areas: Funeral costs, elimination of debt, funds for children’s post-secondary education, replacement of lost income or value of care provided, and taxation at death.

The Wrong Type – Today there are many types of insurance policies, designed to suit different situations in a changing world.  Speak to your advisor to find those that best fit your situation and your pocket book.

The Wrong Reason – Have you even bought a policy to get a salesman off your back? Or to help out a friend in the insurance business? Do you know why you bought each of your policies? Ask yourself if your reasons for existing policies are still valid.

Not reviewing your present policies – Term life insurance policy rates have decreased over the past few years. If you are still healthy, you can apply for a new policy at reduced rates and/or increased coverage. Or you may be able to do an insurance consolidation. (Roll all insurance policies from all companies into one policy, one cost.)

Ignoring Other Assets – Life insurance provides cash at death. The more cash that is available from other assets, the less life insurance is needed. For example, if business interests are converted to cash at death by means of properly funded buy-sell agreements, this reduces the amount of personal life insurance a business owner may require.

Forgetting Employment Benefits – Do you have life insurance through work? Are you aware of what your CPP death benefit will be? These are all factors to consider. One must also remember that when you leave your employment, that insurance is gone.

No Overall Plan – Many of us buy a policy here and a policy there until we have an insurance hodge-podge that is confusing and expensive. Your goal should be to keep it simple and consolidate policies where possible to ensure a seamless transition of assets at death.

PDF Routes March April Issue

Husband and wife team David and Heather Meszaros are licensed with Sun Life Financial and Sun Life Financial Investment Services (Canada) Inc. David, a Certified Financial Planner, has been with Sun Life for 19 years. Heather, a Certified Health Insurance Specialist, has been with Sun Life for six years. They will give you a clear understanding of your financial options, by educating you and keeping it simple.  For more info. call 403-652-3233.

David and Heather have been invited to present other timely financial insights at the High River Centennial Library every third Wednesday evening of each month. For more details contact the library.

By David and Heather Meszaros

Glenda, a 30-year-old mother of two living in Leduc, suffered a sudden severe stroke that left her a quadriplegic. Besides the trauma she and her family experienced the financial costs were enormous. The cost of a wheelchair ($4,500) and a specialized communication device ($9,000) were just the beginning. The family then had to renovate their home and purchase a custom vehicle.

While many people have some form of disability income insurance (e.g. from their employer), few realize that this insurance provides only the income needed to pay for daily expenses not the heavy costs of a critical illness such as Glenda’s. Further, it provides an income only if an injury or sickness prevents you from working, and only for as long as you are unable to work.

In Glenda’s case her community rallied around her and organized a “Walk, Run or Wheel” fundraiser to help pay for the special tools she needed just to be able to function. While we applaud this spirit of compassion in a crisis we know that Critical Illness Insurance allows you to maintain your dignity and is a better solution in the event of a catastrophic illness. Here are just some of the reasons why:

• 50,000 Canadians suffer strokes each year.
• Cancer has increased 31 per cent since 1970.
• One in nine Canadian women will develop breast cancer during their lifetime.
• 48 per cent of home foreclosures are due to serious illness or disability.
• $800 million in RRSPs were cashed in last year because of major illnesses.

People now live longer and often with a life-altering illness. Modern medicine can save the patient but can cause a huge financial drain on family resources.

If you are stricken with an illness covered in your Critical Illness Insurance policy, you receive a lump sum payout, tax-free (after surviving 30 days). Unlike disability income policies this insurance pays a benefit even if you are still able to work. If you don’t need it for new or unexpected expenses you may decide to invest the money for your future use. Most policies even offer a no regret clause, where if you die and have never made a claim, the entire premium paid is refunded.

PDF ROUTES MAY JUNE Finance

Husband and wife team David and Heather Meszaros are licensed with Sun Life Financial and Sun Life Financial Investment Services (Canada) Inc. David, a Certified Financial Planner, has been with Sun Life for 19 years. Heather, a Certified Health Insurance Specialist, has been with Sun Life for six years. They will give you a clear understanding of your financial options, by educating you and keeping it simple. For more information call 403-652-3233.

I have always loved word games like Scrabble, wordfind, crosswords, etc., a pastime endeared to me from my mother who loves games and engaged us in many on long summer road trips. No surprise that I’d end up having a job where words are a major part.

I particularly love the “fill in the blank” games and so when Pat submitted a sidebar on chuckwagon history for her Jason Glass article, I found myself finding words that would form a link between magazine publishing and chuckwagon racing. This is what I came up with:

Back in the dusty days of old, cowboys/magazine folk lived and cooked out of the back of their chuckwagons/desks. At the end of a long hard day on the range/office, when every man/ working woman was good and thirsty, they loaded up their wagons/laptops and raced to the saloon Gitter’s Pub and… you guessed it… the last one there had to buy the beer. (Some things never change!)

Although there are wonderful things on the internet, like good information and crazy videos, some things are just better on paper – like magazines and crossword puzzles!

So go now, take your magazine, your book or your crossword puzzle out on the back deck and enjoy some sunshine… and don’t forget your routes…

Portrait photo by Shelley Whitehead

When Neel De Wit-Wibaut talks about her life she recalls the friends, the music and the painting, everything else falls away. There is little talk of her Dutch heritage that includes witnessing and surviving war and liberation in the early 1940s. She does not draw attention to her career, marriage or immigration to Canada. Few are privy to her 1970s life chapter when peace, love and nature were freely and generously expressed at her remote Millarville property. For Neel, the focus today is on making art and music… as much as she can for as long as she can.

By Karen Gimbel

Art photos by Edith VanderKloot

 Interview with Neel by Shelley Whitehead

Global News Calgary, April 30, 2012

Millarville artist Neel De Wit-Wibaut has experienced a wide array of life adventures on her way to arriving in a skin she is most comfortable in. “Art and music are the only things I am suitable for,” says Neel, who at the accomplished age of 97 is set to have her first ever solo exhibition at Bluerock Gallery in Black Diamond.

Neel was one of the original viola players in the formative years (50s and 60s) of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. She began painting after going back to school to obtain a fine arts degree at age 60.

Neel was born and raised in Amsterdam and was working as a social worker in the Netherlands when the war broke out. She married during the war, and was in the hospital getting ready to give birth to her first child the day her town was liberated by Canadian soldiers.[1] She and her family immigrated to Canada in 1946.

When Neel and her husband parted ways in the 60s, he got the house in the city; she got the land with the rustic cabin near Millarville. For many years now Neel has spent her weekdays in an apartment in Calgary but every weekend she escapes to her country retreat with the great Alberta foothills right outside her front door.

Many of Neel’s interests are more urban (concerts, museums), but spending weekends, year round, in her tiny remote studio deeply and essentially nourishes her soul. “My joy and pleasure is to just be here, to see the sky, and the trees waving about, what you don’t have in the city, and all for free!”

Neel’s painting is a creative process born of her skill as a musician. She loves to describe how, just as her viola bow is drawn across the strings with varying pressures to make a range of sounds, so she approaches her paintbrush with varying amounts of paint and pressures to achieve lighter or heavier lines, or different effects.

While painting is her main creative outlet, music is its own reward for Neel. She still holds to the world where playing music together, not performing, is the main event. Although she still sight reads music weekly playing in a quartet, and organizes an annual music weekend for friends to come together and play, she doesn’t play music for audiences these days.

“Music and art are the activities that one can continue doing all through a long life – as long as you keep it simple,”  she says. “My eyes never stop seeing things – I am always looking for light, shadows, and color combinations that someone else might not see.”

Writer’s Note:

Neel De Wit-Wibaut is an inspiration to all of us artists who are late-bloomers. When she talks about her art, our hearts resonate. We are in love with Alberta light. We track its movement through every hour, noticing ever-changing nuances in passing days, dawn to dusk, and season to season. We are awed by the great presence of a Chinook arch, the subtlety of moon shadow, how sunlight filters through bare trees in winter.

Although Neel De-Wibaut has had annual art shows for her friends, this will be her first solo show in a commercial gallery. The retrospective show will highlight many works from the past as well as recent paintings. Her paintings include sweeping Alberta skies, seasonal light playing on local landscapes, familiar farm animals – all old friends in new light.

Neel will be at Bluerock Gallery for an artist reception from 2 -5 pm. Fittingly, the show launches on May 5, Dutch Liberation Day.

[1] Read more about Neel’s life and other stories of Dutch–Canadians about life during WW II in the book Hope in the Colour of Orange, compiled by Marika d’Ailly.

Excerpt:

“At night, in the presumed safety of the hospital, I could hear the constant artillery fire surrounding us. A few candles sent their shadows over the many mothers like me. We were all lying in between the rows of the seats of an amphitheatre and lecture hall on the main floor. Babies were crying. The next day as I stood in front of a window waiting for the first signs of labour a tank adorned with a Canadian flag came into view. This sight engraved itself in my psyche and I later sketched a picture of this incredible event. Our daughter, Sonja Mathilde, was born on April 17.”

I have always loved word games like Scrabble, wordfind, crosswords, etc., a pastime endeared to me from my mother who loves games and engaged us in many on long summer road trips. No surprise that I’d end up having a job where words are a major part.

I particularly love the “fill in the blank” games and so when Pat submitted a sidebar on chuckwagon history for her Jason Glass article, I found myself finding words that would form a link between magazine publishing and chuckwagon racing. This is what I came up with:

Back in the dusty days of old, cowboys/magazine folk lived and cooked out of the back of their chuckwagons/desks. At the end of a long hard day on the range/office, when every man/ working woman was good and thirsty, they loaded up their wagons/laptops and raced to the saloon Gitter’s Pub and… you guessed it… the last one there had to buy the beer. (Some things never change!)

Although there are wonderful things on the internet, like good information and crazy videos, some things are just better on paper – like magazines and crossword puzzles!

So go now, take your magazine, your book or your crossword puzzle out on the back deck and enjoy some sunshine… and don’t forget your routes…

Photo by Neville Palmer at Wales Theatre High River

Starring (in order of appearance): Bailey Kerluke (as himself), Zoe Slusar (as herself) and Peter Worden (as the interviewer and voiceover/narrator)

Setting: A short-film set, at night, in the treasure-like –and so tiny one might overlook it –Town of Black Diamond. The scene opens at a place called The Stop, a cultural hotspot bustling with what appears to be every man, woman and child from town streaming through the door; a full house.

[Camera: eye-level; pans the crowd entering the quaint venue, now filled with 100 or so. A beer bottle jangles on the floor. A child cries. There’s the hiss of a steaming latté. The chatter fades to shushes and then silence as the room grows dark. The first film begins.]

 Narrator (in baritone voiceover): Amateur – word that can be complimentary and demoralizing. The word, from the Latinamator or ‘lover,’ conjures the noble idea of one pursuing his or her practice unpaid. But what does it mean to be an amateur filmmaker in this age, in this part of the country?

[Camera: fades to black. Opens again in the same room, now mostly empty minus a few friends, family and stragglers. There’s the clanging of cleanup. Zoe and Bailey, the stars, move tables, projection equipment and unsold DVDs to the car. A local reporter catches up with the two.]

Voice of interviewer: Good show, you guys. If it’s alright, I’d like to video record an interview; a poetic change of pace from a regular interview.

Bailey: We can do that – my camera is in the car.

Zoe: Should we do the interview here? My place? The bar next door?

Narrator: Sometimes it’s movie magic; other times just the luring possibility of Thursday night drink specials. Whatever it was that fateful night, Zoe, 23, and Bailey, 25, friends and co-filmmakers since Oilfields High School, choose the cinematic Black Diamond Hotel bar.

[Camera: tabletop-level; frames the two in front of piping fire, sitting side-by-side in big, cozy chairs. Bailey adjusts tripod. Zoe instinctively holds up the interviewer’s notepad to check white-balance.]

Zoe: We rolling?

 Bailey: We’re rolling.

 Interviewer: OK. Take one: Untitled Productions’ Zoe Slusar and Bailey Kerluke after “A Year Through The Lens” – their sixth annual free screening of film shorts. Black Diamond Hotel, December 29. Action.

Interviewer: This must be a tremendous amount of work you two do every year.

 Bailey: I don’t think you can count the number of hours that go into it. I’d like to. But I’d be frightened how much time I put into making a puppet move or to get a shot just right.

 Interviewer: Last night in Calgary Zoe, your mom went to get chocolate bars to hand out to guests and apologized for the late-start (although, nobody seemed too bothered). And Bailey, I understand your mom made the puppet featured in the film ‘Extended Play.’ [Camera: cuts to shot of “burlap sack baby” puppet.] Are both your parents in the picture – so to speak?

Bailey: It’s a full family production.

Zoe: We bring them in for acting. We bring them in for costume design. Maybe they like it a little bit themselves, too.

Narrator: Zoe and Bailey have been a complementary combo since Day One. Zoe preferred to act and direct; Bailey to film. While she attended workshops at the Attic in Dublin, he studied new-media production and design at SAIT. The two continue to cinematically combine and expand.

Bailey: I think there are some pros to how we do things, definitely. You can look at the limitations of, “it’s not a big studio,” but we don’t have anyone to please except for us and we have great community. People support us because they know it’s just us. Looking back at competitions, a movie will play that has 80 people working on it and received eight grants and then there’s just “Zoe and Bailey.” It’s pretty cool that it’s just the two of us and we’re winning.

Interviewer: Can we talk inspiration? Why do you do this and who do you emulate – actors, directors?

Zoe: For me it’s the feel of a movie – movies like Garden State, 500 Days of Summer or Juno, that have an independent feel but are done big-scale. You can really connect with the characters, their simple ideas and life observations. That’s what I want to do; make films that make people laugh, think about the world around them and say “that was an hour-and-a-half well-spent.” That’s what inspires me.

Bailey: That’s a good answer. Mine is mostly names. I’m going to list a couple. Um, horribly depressing: Aronofsky – beautiful shot, great direction. Also great – different but great – Spike Lee. And of course Christopher Nolan. He’s a legend, but especially his oldest movie Following because it was extremely low budget. He had to film it on Saturdays for two hours a day and made the actors rehearse their scenes 80 times because they could only afford to shoot once. It’s mind-blowing what they could do when they didn’t have a budget. That’s what we strive for.

 Narrator: It seems [pausing for effect] there’s a funny thing about independent film: the more a filmmaker does with less, the less viewers expect more.

[Camera: Cuts to clip of event at The Stop, with ‘Black Coffee’­– a 2010 first-place winner for CBC’s Calgary Short Films. In it, Bailey and Zoe are standing before a percolating coffee machine. Zoe: “Black coffee is such a metaphor for our society.” Bailey (with black nail polish): “Its darkness represents the bitterness of the world. But people try to cover it up. With cream and sugar.” Zoe: “Cream and sugar: man’s escape.” The two produce notepads, jotting something. The scene fades out and back in again. Zoe: “What did this inspire for you?” Bailey: “A poem; a quatrain.” Zoe: “I drew a self-portrait of me drowning in the darkness.” The audience laughs. The film ends. Hearty applause. Another begins.]

 Interviewer: This year you screened ‘1,100 kms and Back’ – 25 minutes and 25 seconds of clips from your road trip discussions from Black Diamond to Victoria and back. [Camera: Cuts to Bailey and Zoe in a car, Bailey at the wheel. Zoe: “What do you think of when you think of pears?” Bailey: “Pears.”] And my personal favourite in that film is you, Zoe, returning at long last to Black Diamond. [Cut to clip in car. Zoe, stretching: “Ah. A four-way stop. All you need.”]

Zoe: If people watching say, “wow, they did the same level of professionalism with just the two of them,” I think that sets us ahead. We know our limitations but we don’t think limited. You learn by doing, which is what’s great about independent film. It’s why we’re getting to a point of bigger and bigger success and international festivals; we’re taking what we learned from our past films and striving to make it more professional like it’s a funded rather than independent movie.

Bailey: Worst comes to worse, we’ll just be doing these screenings in 40 years.

Zoe: A cult following is acceptable.

Interviewer: Here’s to that and here’s to 2012 – another long year of short films. [The actors raise their glasses and cheers.] I think that’s a wrap.

[Camera: Slowly pans the bar and then out onto main street. Outside is a quiet, black night. The sound of passing traffic is heard as the scene grows darker and fades to black. Fin.]

-30-

Peter currently lives in Calgary, attending an illustrious, one-off writer-in-residence program at Crown Army Surplus. Last summer he was admitted to their prestigious Yard of Military Detritus in his 1969 Airstream. He also writes a “semi-occasional” miniature newspaper in Nanton. His only feature films to-date are cooking lessons for the trailer-dwelling individual, which can be viewed on Youtube.

Click to read about getting the shot with Neville Palmer.