EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

Sneaking Out the Back Door

Outside the back door of the Crooked 9, to its left and a little above it, is a light, a certain kind of light. Unequipped with a timer, a motion sensor and prison break searchlight wattage, it’s still rather fancy. A carriage or coach light of black metal with four panes and an ornamental peaked cap. It’s not terribly bright, dimmer than me. About a month ago a female robin began building her nest in the sheltered space between it and the wall, up under the eaves.

Robins are migratory members of the thrush family. Once the days have lengthened and Ann or I spot one on the property, hopping and bopping yet haughty, beak up, we are confident furious winter has exhausted itself: “Guess what I just saw!” The timing of our nest suggests a second clutch of three to five pale blue eggs. A second brood requires a second nest and so who knows where the first batch maybe hatched sometime in May? Not us who took the common, everyday convenience of a back door for granted until we did our best to avoid using it.

We’ve been taking detours to the patio and garden when possible, using the front door to go around the back. Although we understand we cannot alter nature’s way we’ve no wish to disrupt it nor corrupt it. Ann has removed the screen from the side window of our den. If she hunches down on the love seat just so, she can peer into the nest, get a close up through our binoculars. She can see three hatchlings whose gaping craws are larger than their fuzzy heads. In another week or so the trio will be evicted from the nest, grounded fledglings that must learn to feed themselves and learn to fly in a hurry.

Should Ann or I use our back door and if the male isn’t otherwise occupied elsewhere gathering food, he will not swoop us. Instead, he attempts to lure us away from the nest. It’s thought that robins live for about two or three years. They are prey during every stage of their development. There are nest raiders, crows, magpies, blue jays and even squirrels. Cats and snakes have the ground covered. Raptors fill the air, owls, falcons, hawks.

Somehow this American songbird survives and thrives. According to Merlin Bird ID, an app courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the robin population is an estimated 370-million. Ann and I are sharing short-term accommodation with just five. There’s a bookshelf just inside our back door, literally inches from the robins’ nest. There, five North American bird reference books nestle alongside our many cookbooks. They are as well-thumbed as the two editions of The Joy of Cooking and the yellow three-ring binder of Ann's recipe clippings. Not only have we learned about our temporary neighbours, we have learned how to be good neighbours too. In the heat of the summer there’s an extra spring in our step even as we take the long way round.   

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source nature writing since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format.

SAINTS PRESERVE US

That’s a Wrap

Weekly grocery flyers have been a home economics staple ever since your mother can remember – though she was born a long, long time ago. Save-On-Foods, a western Canadian grocer with more than 175 locations, last week announced it was stopping production of its printed flyer starting July 14. So, the stop starts now.

The SAVERS’ SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! comprised an entire wraparound enveloping the chain’s final, standard flyer. A “wrap” is always trimmed to a different size to better stand out; emphasize the special nature and importance of its message – think Valentine roses, Easter hams and Christmas turkeys. Its primary graphic featured Save-On’s mascot, its president Darrell Jones. Branding a company with the face of an executive is fraught. Loblaw nailed it with Dave Nichol’s suite of President’s Choice house brands. Lee Iacocca forever remains the face of Chrysler. I can’t remember the name of the guy who loved Remington electric shavers so much he bought the company. I hope Sleep Country Canada’s Christine Magee dies in her sleep. Darrell presents as a stout, folksy figure. He loves Dad jokes (“Lick up frozen treats at this price!”), groceries (guessing big boned or five squares a day), but Darrell loves savings most of all (Darrell looks out for me and my family)! His wrap portrait shows “a low-tech guy” like him attempting to navigate a cell phone’s touch screen. The corners of his moustache are reaching for his earlobes; this new-fangled stuff is fun!

Darrell says the environmental impact of his decision is a no-brainer, eight million annual pounds of flyers now out of circulation, no longer tossed into blue bins or blue bags. Paper is deceptively sold by weight. If I have a ton of flyer-grade paper, barely opaque, and you have a ton of thicker archival quality paper, sheets suitable for books or prints, I’ve got way more paper. All paper comes with a grain which holds it together and dictates how a sheet best folds – always with, never against. All flyers are now delivered with the triple arrow recycled content logo. That symbol is something of a feel-good con. De-inking and re-pulping used paper requires a lot of chemicals and extra energy. The resulting hybrid sheet isn’t as white and the grain is shorter which affects its performance on press. Should you factor in everything involved in the process from tree to DARRELL’S DEALS for a Save-On customer, a virgin sheet is actually more economical, more environmentally friendly and, naturally, more attractive. To Darrell’s point, the only sustainable way to produce a physical flyer is not to.

I got my start in advertising more than 30 years ago with Canada Safeway, another western Canadian grocer. We printed 1.2 million flyers per week to promote 110 stores (both of those numbers are fuzzy now, but the ratio, which included overruns for spoilage or what have you, is about right). Three flyers were always in various stages of production each week: one in layout, the second being finessed and finalized and the third readied for press. I looked after the photography and copywriting (“Pork Butt Whole” and “Master Bakers” – hey, that was me).

To this day I’m relieved that distribution wasn’t part of my remit. Safeway flyers were inserted into all the major dailies and they were the lifeblood of small town weeklies where budding journalists learned their trade – just as I was with advertising. Secondary distribution utilized a subsidiary company of a newspaper conglomerate which competed directly with Canada Post for unaddressed admail home delivery. Those were different times. Back then I suppose, across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, there was perhaps a single renegade NO FLYERS PLEASE sticker in existence, probably on a mailbox somewhere on Vancouver Island. If some penny-pinching soul didn’t receive their flyer on time they’d telephone SAFEWAY toll free (“Call us by name!” – that was me too).

We fretted about the Christmas – New Year’s flyer because its prices were in effect for two weeks, seven days beyond its best before date. But we’d hit the market again with our annual WHITE SALE - ultimately I stopped wondering how our competitors always seemed to know what we were up to – still, no flyer at all would’ve been commercial suicide; the very suggestion career suicide (which I managed rather eloquently anyway, informing a portly senior vice president in 1995 amongst a roomful of executives that the Beatles had broken up, I mean, c’mon, even his mother knew – never did learn to shut my mouth), macabre heresy in our weekly marketing meetings.

Economic news of late has been grim. Bear market with me. Inflation is “raging,” “soaring” or possibly “surging.” Margins in the grocery business have always run pretty close to the T-bone. Whilst working for The Great A&P in the seventies I was taught that one dented tin in a case negated the profit therein. If you shop the perimeter of your grocery store as I tend to, you’ve encountered stagflation: five wieners in a package, four instead of six scones from the master bakers and last fall’s crop of apples is too expensive for a teacher’s pet to present and too mealy to keep the doctor away.

Darrell’s digital decision is a gutsy move even as his wrap suggests 3 EASY WAYS to view the same great Save-On-Foods flyer. DOWNLOAD OUR APP. Still, his green spin is not wrong. Newspaper circulation and readership is down for the count. Many smaller centres are no longer served by local papers. Junk mail is viewed as a wasteful intrusion. And the people who lived and died with their weekly grocery flyers are dead – or in assisted living – they don’t matter anymore. The rest of us have meanwhile churned into a wired world without wires.

Freed of flyer production and distribution costs, Darrell promises even more savings for loyal Save-On shoppers. Apparently these newly unallocated monies will trickle down to store level somehow. Traditional grocery retailers have always exhibited a sort of “Simon Says” behaviour, a hive mentality. Every banner is pleased to offer its customers a loyalty program but beware the math when redeeming points for free or discounted goods. Every banner’s house brand is guaranteed premium quality while national brands pay grocers for premium shelf positioning. Every banner is okay with fixing the price of bread. Every banner has no compunction short-paying vendor invoices, shaving a couple of percentage points in the guise of handling fees. Every banner encourages customers to pack their own bags while nickel-and-diming them for the privilege.

Essentially, Darrell has granted his rivals tacit permission to amend the industry’s prime directive. And they will. It’s a brave new world and slightly greener at that – whatever the motive. 

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source marketing insights since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com to download your less expensive preferred paperless format. 

NONSENSE VERSE

Honky Tonk Holiday (live kitchen party version)

Well I bought a baseball cap on the west coast

I intend to pack it all the way to the east

Said I’m going to Prince Edward Island

Where existential dread hovers least

I’m worried ‘bout my flights’ cancellations

Air Canada just don’t seem to get ‘em right

Will all my luggage be lost at Pearson

It’s the last place I want to spend a night

How I miss that pub in Kensington

Twenty minutes from Lightfoot’s Summerside

God how I crave that shellfish sandwich

With Stompin’ Tom’s taters all deep fried

I don’t care for Lucy Maud Montgomery

You know Green Gables ain’t my style

But I want to dip my toes right in the ocean

Sit on the porch turn my mind off just a while

Well I could write ten more verses

Maybe a bridge and then a chorus too

But I think you catch my meaning

So I guess said I guess this song is through   

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source painfully derivative and obvious rhyming since 2013. Apologies to Mick and Keith. My novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com to find your preferred format and retailer. 

A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Why Not YYJ?

Well, gee, last week Ann and I travelled beyond Edmonton’s city limits signs for the first time since covid squeezed our world shut like a crammed suitcase. Greater Victoria isn’t exactly New York or even York but Vancouver Island’s airport is just 537 miles away, tolerable for our first masked flight and distant enough to change the backdrop from prairie to Pacific. Baby steps through the chaos of Canadian airports struggling with not-quite-post-pandemic pent-up demand.

Each successive trip to a familiar place is a different experience. Why return otherwise? There are the constants: family, friends and landmarks. This excursion had a peculiar elapsed time quality because Ann and I had finally disembarked from the Crooked 9’s front porch and not just for a matinee movie or an off-hours meal out. After touch down I felt out of sync and out of place, as if I’d dozed off watching The Flintstones and woke up to The Jetsons.

Victoria, home of the Canadian navy’s Pacific Fleet, is actually an extremely quaint port, more cruise ships than freighters. Yet it is oozing beyond its natural confines near the tip of a hilly island. Ann remarked that there seemed to be too many cars, too many people. Barring traffic, Colwood a separate municipality where Ann’s older brother and his wife live, isn’t that far from Victoria proper anymore. Colwood’s few streets are lined with million-dollar homes thrown up within the past four years. They struck me as conventional starter homes, placeholders for young families with larger aspirations.

Bulldoze half a mountain, build a mall and the condominiums will come. Langford is exploding just beyond Colwood. The sheer retaining walls supporting the overlooking residential units reminded me of the deeply dug defensive fortifications surrounding the star-shaped citadels in Quebec City and Halifax. If the future suggests the past albeit in earthquake-proofed sub-divisions, present and delightful constants remain in the provincial capital.

I called on my longtime friend Peter who lives in an elegant and solid Victorian home in the Cook Street Village. We met in high school. He was a transferee to my semi-private Jesuit institution; his parents tired of his smoking up every morning break in the public system. We bonded over extramural football and music, alcohol and soft drugs too. This particular fine morning in Victoria last week we listened to the Rolling Stones and sipped craft beers. Peter, by virtue of a career which synced perfectly with his environmental activism has probably contributed more to society than he has taken. There remains unfinished business for him whereas I am the enemy Albertan, an ineffectual centrist dandruffed with Oreo crumbs following three decades-o-rama in advertising. But we can still talk about the Chicago Cubs, Chrissie Hynde, Miles Davis and growing up in Montreal.

Peter said, “Please excuse me for a moment.” He left the room and returned momentarily with a squat, shallow jar. I thought of Noxema, Vicks VapoRub or some sort of jellied exotic berry. He unscrewed the lid. I gazed at a marble of blonde hash. “Smell that. Does that not bring you back?”

“Oh, man. I love that smell. God, yeah, it takes me back. You can buy it here?”

“It’s just another form of THC.”

“Whoa. I haven’t smoked in years; I’d just turn into a giggling puddle of goo.”

“We can’t have that – it’s not even noon.” Peter smiled: stainless white teeth, no cigarettes. “I used to hide this stuff from my parents and now I hide it from daughter.” Plus ca change.

And there is always baseball somewhere in the summertime. The Father’s Day attendance at the Victoria HarbourCats game was announced as 3127. My guess the capacity of Royal Athletic Park would allow for just a few hundred more. The municipal facility was inaugurated in 1967. The diamond is 310 feet down the lines and 390 straightaway. If the outfield fence is moved, the grounds can be reconfigured for football, soccer and rugby. This accounted for an awkwardly situated grandstand beyond right field. To my delight, the concession and toilets underneath it became something like my personal fiefdom; my own private ballpark.

The HarbourCats play in the short season West Coast League, Edmonton is an expansion outlier. Their logo depicts some sort of critter resembling an annoyed seal. Just a guess. Still, it looks great on the cans of team branded lager brewed just up the Malahat highway in Duncan by Red Arrow. I was also charmed by a jury-rigged patio behind first base, a red double-decker, open-topped inner harbour tour bus. Various food trucks were parked behind it. Amenities down the third base line were equally as busy and enticing.

I was painfully aware that just a block from the downtown park’s gates were a safe injection site, a storefront outreach centre and a street ministry. However the atmosphere inside suggested a small town fair staged in a less dreadful era. The game itself had a storybook element too. Victoria’s starting pitcher was a hometown man, 35-years-old, a roster round up body. He pitched a complete game, the first one I’ve seen at any level since I played summer slo-pitch. The visiting Coquitlam Angels scored just one unearned run.

Victoria, Vancouver Island was something of a dress rehearsal. We’ve also conditionally booked a longer trip and a longer stay on Prince Edward Island in August. Neither Ann nor I are inclined to patiently navigate the Mobius strip maze of bureaucracy and disease that now constitutes Canadian air travel. Still, I happily paid too much for a HarbourCats cap at the ballpark because I felt good and I was thrilled to be there. I’m now utterly determined to pack it coast to coast, ocean to ocean. Hello, YYG! We hope.      

 meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of travel writing since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com to find your preferred format and retailer.