The Packet at 50

I got tagged by my former editor Barbara Dean-Simmons a few weeks ago. The Packet's 50th anniversary was coming up on March 28 and would I, and some other former staffers, like to write a brief note about our experiences with the paper.

I laughed because my writing at The Packet could be described as many things, but rarely was it brief. So Anyway, my... ahem... award-winning column normally clocked in around 1,000 words. The travel pieces I've been writing for Barb the last few years normally coming in around the same length despite her frequently pleading that 300 words or so is more than enough.

I like writing long when I write for Barb. What can I say.

But then some numbers started jumping out at me. If it's The Packet's 50th anniversary, that makes it Barb's 38th year of working with the paper. Which is a feat as remarkable as it is marginally masochistic. It means she's been editor of the paper for 28 years, which honest to god probably has to be a record for journalism in Newfoundland and Labrador and might be up there across Canada.

It occurred to me to send Barb a friendly mocking note about these numbers when it dawned on me that it means this year marks the 20th anniversary of when I joined the paper.

Ahhhahahahaha.....oh god.

I ended up writing 300 words for Barb and spent about an hour cutting and crafting to get it just right. And 300 words is nothing. In the depths of my hard drive is a failed attempt at a first novel. Its fictional but anyone who spent time with me at The Muse or The Packet would certainly have no problem recognizing people or events. And before it died about three-quarters of the way through that first draft was 120,000 words long.

So yeah, I can write a little bit about my time there.

I'm not saying The Packet saved my life, but it certainly changed it significantly for the better. My 20s were a mixed bag. As awesome as my time with The Muse was, I probably stayed a year longer than I should of (glad I did, I would have missed some amazing people), then I struggled at King's (15 stitches in your lip, strep throat, the flu and almost having to have emergency dental surgery in the space of 6 weeks will wreck some serious havoc on your academics),  followed by unemployment, short term contracts, a mildly disastrous attempt at being an English teach in South Korea....

By the time I was 28 things were grim. Journalism wasn't working out and I was considering going back to school....law school. Gah.

So the offer from The Packet was a big deal. Well, as big a deal as making $18,200 a year can be. As horrifying as that number is, it could have been much worse. Community newspaper reporters in the prairies were making less than $15,000 a year and expected to have their own car and camera. The Packet had a work mini-van and cameras (the glorious Pentax K-1000s. I was nearly murdered by one. More later.)

I have limited photos of Barb. This is the one least likely
to get me murdered.

I'm sure I was a cocky townie and came out with attitude. Barb, to her credit, didn't kill me, but did set me straight. I have many Packet stories, but perhaps the most important one came early when I went to take a picture of five women for a story. She hated it. I shot them from too far away (pre-digital, remember). So I had to call them, ask them to gather again and retake the picture. Barb still hated it and made me call the same five women and take another picture. They, quite rightly, thought I was an idiot. I was furious at the time.

But Barb was right. The photos were lazy and shit. You can be assured they got better after that.

And that's where things shifted with me. I hate to say I grew up, but I stopped being....complacent. I think I've always had some writing talent, but I was lazy with it. Talent is nothing if you don't develop the discipline to utilize it. At that point in time, I needed more structure. And I got it. I was a much better person and reporter when I left the paper in 2001 then when I joined in 1998.

As for Packet stories....

1. Barb and office manager Roz Smith "ambushing" me in the interview with the hardball question if I would mind using the Packet van to drop off papers on Mondays. It's a community newspaper. It's all hands on board. In turns out the Clarenville to Southern Harbour and all stops between run was one of my favourite things.

2. Going to use the only washroom in the paper's office to discover a metal sign that said "Women" and underneath, a sticky note that read, "And Craig". Just so I knew my place.

3. Tea breaks at 10:30. Religiously. Jokes and horrific puns included.

4. After my lamenting the quality of drivers in Clarenville (they're awful) and baymen in general, our ad agent Bonnie Goodyear responded with a venomous "you...miserable...townie... bastard." I recall not being able to breathe from laughing so hard. And so, a minor legend was born.

5. Barb calling me and asking if I could pick her up some Mary Browns and bring it up to the hospital to her. You see, she'd just given birth and was putting the final touches on the paper's editorial that week and was hungry. Yeah.

The photo I won my award for. 

6. Winning journalism awards. Reporters get cynical and downplay them, but I remember getting so excited by them. I had produced content that was good enough to win an award. I was proud of the times my column won awards because I worked hard at it. I was proud of the business journalism award because it came with a $500 check that I really needed. And when I won a national journalism award for....sports photography...I think even Barb got a laugh out of that one.

I kept winning them for the Packet even after I left. In 2014 I won an award for the travel stories I was writing for the paper. Huge smile on my face. Felt as good as winning the first one.

7. My running war with then Mayor Fred Best. God that was fun. A tip of the hat to my friend Pat for coming up with the phrase "Fillergate" during a particularly epic run of stories involving the mayor using municipal equipment to work on his private property.

8. When I found writing a weekly column challenging, Barb came up with a fantastic solution - we'd alternate weeks. She'd write one; I'd write one. And we'd be constantly trying to top each other. It brought out the best in both of our writing.

   A. One week when both of us were driving back from the set of The Shipping News which was filming near Trouty I made a....poorly thought out remark concerning actress Julianne Moore and that it was hard to believe she was still that hot at 40, which was around Barb's age at the time. Barb told me later, "I thought about slamming on the brakes and just sending you through the windshield but you had your seatbelt on. Then I thought about beating you to death with camera (Pentax K1000!) but I love that camera and your thick skull might break it."

Instead she achieved her revenge by writing about the incident for her column in the paper. For months, every woman in the region over 30 shot me dirty looks or huffed as a walked by.

   B. A tea break debate over Coronation Street spilled out hilariously into our columns as I argued it was a British soap opera and Barb countered that it wasn't but was, in fact, a long running daytime British drama. Which was totally different. The amount of reaction we got to those columns was hilarious. I still maintain I won that one.

9. Our unofficial Letters to Santa Claus contest.

10. And dozens of more things. The mad dash on Fridays to get copy for deadline. Chatting with Kathy over the top of our cubicles. Getting to talk to people, interview, and tell their stories. Occasionally you got to help people with the stories you wrote. That is a feeling you always remember.

I left The Packet in 2001 and I still have some mixed reaction to that. On the very big upside I met Cathy three months after I moved back into St. John's. So that worked out well.

But the reason I was leaving was we simply couldn't get the publisher to give me a raise. There does come a point where you'd like to move up from sharing a basement apartment and running a dehumidifer 24/7 gets tiring. So a little more money would have been nice. What was more frustrating was The Express in St. John's was able to give me a job with the raise I needed and more. I know it bugged the crap out of Barb.

Plus my time with The Express never worked out right. It was a different atmosphere and environment there that never clicked with me. I liked Donnie, Westcott and Stephanie, but I was never comfortable. It was with relief I left the paper in 2005 and moved to Iqaluit. Also, a good dose of timing. The paper folded less than two years later.

I left in no small part, by the way, by having a conversation with Barb who told me I just needed to move on. Nothing wrong with recognizing it wasn't working. You're not a failure, you just need to do something different that you like. It was like a 10 tonne weight had been lifted off my chest when she said that.

Anyway, I have a lot of fond memories of The Packet. It's a great community newspaper. One of the best in Canada, I would argue, but I am biased. But I don't even know where they store all the journalism awards at this point. And Barb remains one of the best bosses I've ever had the pleasure to work with.

So here's to 50 more. Although, please God, retire by then will you, Barb?

Last Five
1. Don't answer me - The Alan Parsons Project*
2. Travellin' - Matt Mays and El Torpedo
3. Squeeze Box - The Who
4. Songs of love - Ben Folds
5. New Years Day (live) - U2

Five graphic novels to read

Occasionally I'm asked what graphic novels I would recommend to people. I try to keep in mind not everyone is in the mood to deal with decades of bizarro-land continuity. So the recommendations below are not from Marvel or DC and are (mostly) not super heroes. I also like making them reasonably kid friendly.

So here are some highlights for you to read.

1 Giant Days (Allison, various artists) - I am going to keep telling all of you to read Giant Days until you actually listen to me. Three young women facing university in England and all the craziness that goes on with trying to figure out your place in the world. Esther is a goth with a catastrophic drama field; Daisy is dealing with university after being homeschooled most of her life and realizing she might prefer girls over boys; and Susan, the "grown up" except for when it comes to an ex her life that makes her slightly insane.

I can't emphasize enough how funny this book is. But none of the leads are perfect. They do stupid things because they're 19 and that's what you do when you're 19. I love this series as much as anything being published right now. Volume 7 is being published next week, but it's an easy series to get caught up with. Trust me, you'll burn through the books.

2. Delilah Dirk - Written and magnificently illustrated by Tony Cliff, it's the kind of book you would hand to a pre-teen girl, and they would come back in an hour and demand all the books. Sadly, there's only two - Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant and Delilah Dirk and the King's Shilling. The good news is the third book ...and the Pillars of Hercules comes out in August.

Delilah is, in no particular order and adventurer, expert swordswoman, thief, hero, petulent, stubborn and sometimes a little too self centred. She's accompanied by Mr. Selim, who she kind of rescued after getting him in trouble in the first place. He's still finding his adventure feet, tends to get himself in trouble, but his heart is in the right place and he makes really excellent tea.

It's old fashion, massively over the top adventure set in early 19th century Europe. Indiana Jones is sometimes cited, but it's more of a weird buddy book as well. Perhaps a bit of Tintin in there as well. I'd actually be massively disappointed in Delilah and Mr. Salim hook up. Their friendship, for all the frustrations with the other, is much more fun. I will cite this one complain - First Second, the publisher, is doing Cliff's art a massive disservice putting it in a smaller, digest format book. I really hope at some point they reprint them in an oversized format to give his art a chance to shine. It's also been optioned for a movie.

3. Goldie Vance (Larson, Ball, Haynes) - Goldie is a 16-year-old who is supposed to be a car valet at the hotel her father manages in South Florida during the 1950s. But she's clever, nosey and has aspirations of being a detective, which tends to get her in trouble.

Goldie, like the previous women mentioned above, are not perfect characters. I'm actually sensing a theme as a write it. Goldie's certainly smart and trying to do the right thing. But that drive often gets her, and people she cares about, in a lot of trouble. It works out in the end (it's still an all ages book), but it's interesting to see how her she tries to learn from her mistakes.

The other really interesting thing is the setting and the characters. It's 1950s South Florida and its an ethically diverse supporting cast. No one makes a big deal. Goldie has a girlfriend. Nobody bats an eye at it. Sometimes the biggest win is just showing different non-white, non-straight characters in normal settings and no one acts like this is revolutionary.

The first three volumes are out now. The fourth is out in May. It's also been optioned for a movie.

4. Injection (Ellis, Shalvey) - My token Warren Ellis, but oh so good Warren Ellis. To my knowledge it hasn't been optioned to be made into a TV show or movie, but like most things Ellis, it's tailor-made to make the leap. Injection is when five very clever people in England came up with a terrible idea to stop the future from becoming boring and then implementing it. After all, what could go wrong with developing an alien AI, infusing it with magic, and injecting it into the internet to see what happens.

The series is them trying to contain the fallout. But it's also Ellis playing with tropes and digging into weird English folklore. Book one is Dana Scully going not so quietly mad with guilt. Book two is Cumberbatch's Sherlock, except he's black, a bigger asshole, knows what human flesh tastes like and is omnisexual. Book three is Dr. Who except she's black from Ireland and says fuck a lot. There are still two books left to come.

I have a deep and abiding love of Ellis, simply because he has so many clever ideas, but his characters simply work. A few lines and you know who they are. It also helps to have an artist as good as Declan Shalvey who illustrates the madness with flair. Unlike the previous three, maybe you don't give this one to your kid.

5. The Wicked + The Divine (Gillen, McKelvie) - You know you're on to something when the blurbs on the back have fellow creators cursing you for coming up with the concept. Every 88 years Gods return to the Earth. They merge with teenagers and then become incredibly famous and incredibly powerful. In this case, they're all music stars.

Oh, and you're dead in two years. Guaranteed.

There's a lot unpack here. The Gods tend to look like popular musicians. Lucifer looks like 80s Bowie. Amaterasu looks like Florence Welch. Woden like Daft Punk. There are questions about exactly how much are you willing to sacrifice to be famous. Are you willing to die at 19 knowing that for two glorious years you're famous and will become culturally immortal?

Plus, they're gods. So there's sex, drugs, in-fighting and death. Imagine Fleetwood Mac but you gave them super powers. What could go wrong?

All of the books here are well drawn, either cartoon-style like Goldie Vance and Giant Days, or more "serious" art like Cliff and Shelvey. But it's worth saying that McKelvie (and Matthew Wilson on colours) are what make or break the series. The books are gorgeous and it's possibly the best colouring of any comic on the market.

There are six volumes out, with two more (at least) to come. Be warned, Gillen is a bastard at cliffhangers. The one at the end of volume 6 had people screaming at him for weeks afterwards.

Last Five
1. Spring haze (live) - Tori Amos
2. Sailing to Philadelphia - Mark Knopfler*
3. PrimeTime - Janelle Monae
4. Daughters - Lissie
5. Night drive - Tom Petty

How to fix the Brier

For a lot of years I gave Brad Gushue crap. He was undoubtedly a fantastic curler, but his ability to make the Brier play-offs but being unable to close the deal was frustrating. Even winning the Olympic gold medal....there was an element of luck there and I think he's admitted that himself. Having Russ Howard there to help guide the team over the finish line was always going to be an element to that win. I thought he was going to be one of those players who could never get it done. There are plenty of athletes who, as great as they were, never won championships. Gushue was feeling like that.

But two Briers in a row? No, that cements your ticket into the Hall of Fame. They looked absolutely in control every game I watched. Even the last couple of ends of the Final, when they let Alberta back into it, they didn't crack. Five years ago they would have found a way to choke on it. So congrats to him and his team. It's a hell of an accomplishment.

But the other thing Gushue did last week was express his displeasure at the format change this year. Instead of the standard round robin where you play every team, there were two pools, and then a crossover playdown, then playoffs. A lot of curlers grumbled about it but it was devised so that every province and territory could compete. And to balance things out, a Team WildCard was created. And the old standards of Northern Ontario and Team Canada. So 16 teams overall.

Gushue didn't like the format, didn't like Team WildCard, didn't like Team Canada (even if he was Team Canada) and wasn't exactly subtle in expressing his annoyance about the quality of competition. This was a not so thinly veiled shot at teams from Yukon and, more particularly, Nunavut.

I can't link to them because they're behind a paywall, but News North didn't like Gushue's comments. No less than two opinion pieces politely told Gushue to shove it. That Nunavut has the right to be at a national championship along with every other province and territory. And that the only way Nunavut curling will improve is to go to these events and get better.

Also probably riling them up was curling reporter Terry Jones of PostMedia taking shots at Nunavut being at national events. I mean, every single piece he wrote leading up to and during the Scotties and the Brier contained a shot about Nunavut being undeserving of being there. I'd get annoyed too.

(How can I possibly know this? Because part of my job involves putting together a news scan. Take a guess at how much I love doing this during the Scotties and the Brier when the number of stories featuring keywords like Yukon, NWT, and Nunavut effectively doubles. Also, I fucking hate the band the Arctic Monkeys.)

So, a couple of things to unpack here.

First, good on Gushue for actually having an opinion. He's one the premiere curlers in the country and the world right now. It's easy to be quiet and just take the endorsement money, but he doesn't like the format and has no problem letting people know it. I'm sure Curling Canada would prefer he shut up about it, but he's speaking his mind. I rarely have a problem with athletes speaking their mind intelligently on a subject.

As for Nunavut being at events like the Brier and Scotties...

Look, this sounds a touch egotistical, but if I hadn't gone into semi-retirement from curling a few years (that's another story) I might have been good enough to have been on that team. I was, by Iqaluit standards, pretty good. Teams I skipped won league finals, I won bonspiels, I shot second stones on the first men's team to compete at a national level event - The Dominion (a national championship for "rec league" curlers) and we finished 3-3.

So yeah. Maybe I could have gone to the Brier. That would have been cool. But getting whipped almost every single game (they did almost beat Yukon)? Getting outscored 80-28 over the course of the Brier? I'm not sure how much fun that would be.

I know one of the guys on the team. I really must remember to ask him what the experience was like. Maybe it was a blast and he can't wait to go back next year.

Going to the Brier or Scotties annually is never significantly going to improve teams from Nunavut. The skill gap is simply too vast. There are plenty of logistical challenges for developing curling in Nunavut that I'm not going to get into here. Perhaps they're underway. As I said, I'm semi-retired from it.

But the way you get good is regularly facing high level competition. It's why teams from Europe and Asia come over and play in Canada for six months. Because they get higher levels of competition. They get better by playing better teams on a regular basis.

So how does Nunavut get good? Four players, out of the territory, who travel a lot and play a lot of Ontario and prairie bonspiels. For several years. If you do that, then maybe you get a team that can win a few games and pull off a surprise.

But I can't see that ever happening because I can't even imagine the financial commitment that will take. Your team winning $5,000 at a cashspiel isn't really going to cut it. We're talking, ballpark, $100,000 for four players for a season (and that's probably low). Travel, accommodations, meals, time away from work. And it's not like Nunavut is a cheap place to travel from and live in.

So no, I can't ever see it happening. And I can't see how much benefit Nunavut curlers get from having your ass kicked. And watching adults get whipped isn't exactly inspiring the next generation.

So my suggestions:
1. Nunavut should absolutely send curlers to national events. But they should be the juniors, mixed, seniors and similar championships. That's a good experience and there's less pressure and spotlight at these events than at the Brier and Scotties.

2. If the Brier is interested in my opinion (they're not)....there's a territorial playdown between NWT, Yukon and Nunavut. Winner goes to the Brier. There was a version of this before, but Curling Canada never did enough to support Nunavut teams to go the event, or the other teams were unwilling to go to Nunavut. Help support it financially.

3. Curling suffers a real outreach problem in Indigenous communities. They're trying with their commercials to get more, well, non-white people involved. But a bunch of communities in Nunavut had curling rinks and they were closed due to lack of interest. The ship has probably sailed, but if you're serious about growing the sport, you have to be serious about improving outreach in the North. A Nunavut team of all Inuit players gets more Inuit interested in the sport. Right now it's barely on the radar.

4. At best nobody minded the Scotties and Brier format this year. But nobody loved it. So a Territories team is fine. But as long as we're pruning, get rid of Team Canada. It's always been a terrible idea and they rarely defend the title. Gushue defending this year is an anomaly. Team WildCard actively annoyed me. And, while we're at it, get rid of Northern Ontario. If Nunavut getting a team is annoying to some in Southern Canada, Ontario getting two teams is annoying to most Canadians.

Do that and you're back to an 11-team bonspiel. Delightful.

There you go. I have solved the curling crisis in Canada.

Last Five
1. Behind blue eyes - The Who
2. Arnie's song - Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies
3. Working on the highway (live) - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band*
4. Dance hall days - Wang Chung
5. No jokes-fact - Hot Hot Heat