That Sidelong Glance

I believe this was the Grade 9 Debate Club at Leduc Junior High School. In the front row we have Nevin Pottinger, Jason Hewitt, Mark Lede, David Ruel, and me, looking off-camera at something - I wonder what it may have been?

Michelle Wilson is standing at the far right in the back row, but I can't remember the names of the other women. Too much time has passed.

I believe this was the year I was named Top Speaker at the provincial debates. It came as quite a shock!

The Realm

In 1985, Keith Gylander, Mark Lede and I shared a communications class at Leduc Composite High. I believe it was called Communications 21a/21b, and covered film studies. One of our assignments was to write a script for a short film, but Mark, Keith and I decided to go one better and shoot our script.

Sadly, both title and film are lost to time. To my shame, I lost the only VHS copy shortly after graduating from University. It was pretty good, too - a 1984-esque tale of mental manipulation. I played the hero, a man rebelling against the system; Mark, I seem to recall, was in charge of torturing me. The film ended with me on a morgue slab, covered in a clear plastic sheet; you can see Mark and Keith posing on that set below.

Mark and Keith earned 95 percent, while I turned in a separate script that scored 98 - something about a man being led to execution. I was a little embarrassed that my unfilmed script scored higher than one that had produced an actual movie, and I don't believe I ever told Mark and Keith, or if I did it was with some degree of unworthiness.

I only remember one line, one of Mark's: "For if you give your mind to the Realm, you will be strengthened as the Realm is strengthened." If I'd kept my mind on the Realm, maybe I'd still have the tape.

Keith and Mark pose before the slab that was to hold my body.

Mark on Lead Guitar

Mark Lede played lead guitar for Sever, Leduc Composite High School's premier heavy metal garage band. While Keith Gylander and I lived in Leduc proper, Bev, Russell and Mark all lived on farms just outside town; they were the bus kids in our little group, though later on they all started driving their own vehicles to school. Mark and I - and Bev, for that matter - were all in the so-called "gifted" program in junior high. During a roleplaying exercise in which each of us had control of a nation, Mark noted that his country and Bev's neighbouring nation shared a river.

"Aha," Mark said, "Give in to my demands or I'll poison your water supply."

Our teacher pointed at the map and noted that Mark's country was downstream from Bev's; Mark's plan would have poisoned his own people. "Rivers don't run that way, Mark," was our teacher's wry comment.

If I remember correctly, Mark was also the group's chief songwriter, penning "Altered Logic." I still remember most of the words:

Ministries of truth
Ministries of love
Ministries of peace
Without a dove!


There is no turning back
Nowhere to hide the fact
Truth reveals to me 
Altered logic! 


There is no privacy no freedom no love...

Well, some of the words, anyway. I haven't seen Mark since the early 90s; sometime in the mid-90s, I spotted a newspaper clipping noting that he'd married and was pursuing a post-graduate degree in philosophy at, I think, McMaster University.

The Lost Worlds of Earl J. Woods

As I continue to sort through forty years' worth of photos, scrapbooks, records and memories, I stumble across reminders of lost works. Over the years, misadventure and carelessness have cost me a number of creative projects, now gone forever:

1) A short film made in high school with my friends Keith Gylander and Mark Lede. For a class project, this really hung together, with above-average scripting, music, editing and direction for its era and the age of its creators. Lost, along with about 90 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage, when I used the only videotape copy to apply for a job after university. The employer never called back, and I lost track of where I'd applied.

2) About half of the epic House Party role playing game rules meticulously crafted by Jeff Shyluk and me. What remains is still pretty amusing, but both of us were so heartbroken by the loss of the bulk of our work that we never returned to complete the project.

3) An entire notebook containing short story ideas and a detailed account of the University of Alberta Star Trek Club's 1992 voyage to Los Angeles.

4) A commercial for a fake soda pop, Ozone, directed by me for another high school project. Accidentally taped over, along with a bunch of footage of high school friends that I would have loved to review.

5) Most of my online work from the early days of the Internet, short stories, poems and essays posted on the various Edmonton-area BBSes.

Naturally most of this stuff means little to anyone but me and perhaps a small circle of friends and participants. I still regret the loss. Objectively speaking, none of the items listed above have cost the world much in terms of great cultural achievements (with apologies to the friends who helped me out with some of them), but those works were mine (or ours). Each story or video or fragmentary notion represented the imagination of a particular group of people at a particular point in space and time. I'm sorry they're gone.

The First Rule of Debate Club

The first rule of Debate Club is: you must talk about Debate Club. As if people didn't already realize that I'm a bit of a geek, the first rule of Debate Club compels me to reveal that I was a member back when I attended Leduc Junior High School. I surprised myself by discovering that I was, in fact, a pretty good debater, at least for our age group. That's me holding the statue after returning from our first debate team victory in Westlock. (Check out the corduroy pants - I think they were emerald green.) I don't remember who was on my team for that first tournament; it could have been David Ruel and Michelle Wilson, who are standing to my immediate right, or it might have been Jason Hewitt and Mark Lede, who are also to my right, but in the back row.

I do remember - quite vividly - the profound shock I felt when I was named top speaker of the tournament. I remember thinking that I'd performed poorly, but apparently the judges felt otherwise. Mark and Jason and I went on to compete in the provincials, narrowly missing a spot in the semi-finals to place fifth overall. I remember we felt pretty ripped off after losing one debate to a trio of pretty girls a year or two younger than we were. We felt we'd won the debate pretty handily, and that the judges awarded the victory to the other team out of sympathy. In hindsight, I'm sure the judges ruled correctly.

I don't recall which issues we debated, although I have a faint memory that nuclear disarmament may have been among them; on the other hand, that might have been a practise topic. It was certainly one of the biggest issues of the 80s, one that loomed large in the culture of the time.

I wonder if any of our provincial politicians participated in Debate Club when they were younger. I'd say that the NDP's Rachel Notley might have, or perhaps former Alberta Liberal Leader Kevin Taft; maybe our imported neocon Ted Morton was a member down in the States.

But then, if they were, surely the first rule would have already compelled them to talk about it.