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The Saskatchewan Book Awards Are Tonight

The Riders aren't the only ones in Saskatchewan hoping to win a big prize this weekend – it's also time for the annual Saskatchewan Book Awards. 

Except for last year when I was in Ontario for school, I've attended every Gala since 1997.  I served on their board for three years…


(one of these people is not like the other!)

…designed and maintained their web site for almost a decade before finally handing over the reigns last year to someone who's already made improvements (book covers to go with the list of nominated titles – why wasn't I less lazy more creative in doing something like that?)

Okay, I admit the site was never great in terms of its look but I did get a few compliments because of the way I organized and built the information year after year. 

I still pull out one of the compliments every once in awhile, especially now that I'm in the library world.  (I like to think that it shows I was thinking like a librarian, even when I wasn't one!)

“You have the best – most informative – Web site for your book awards of any that I have seen. And, I have seen quite a few as we are compiling a listing of winners of Canadian literary awards (1923-2000) which will be published by the Canadian Library Association. – Suzanne Sexty, Information Services, Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University of Newfoundland” 

On top of all that, the Book Awards are also responsible for the single scariest winter drive of my entire life coming back from a shortlist brunch reading in Saskatoon about seven years ago or so. A blizzard blew in that day and coming home was like driving on a curling rink (if it a curling rink that had a raging blizzard happening in it)  I saw cars pulled over the whole trip, semis (“transports” for the Ontario readers) in the ditch and still, my little 1985 Tempo (and the even littler brain in my head that even decided to even try to make it) guided me home safely. 

I used to get the embargoed list of award winners in advance most years so they were ready to go up on the web site that night or the next day.  But since I'm no longer doing the web site, I think I'll play the game people often play at the table during the Gala by trying to pick the winners – most of the people not having read many if any of the nominated books (as is the case for me this year) but going on hunches based on what we know of the book, its subject, the authors and their past luck at the Gala (do they always win?  Have they never won but are due?), even just what the book cover looks like. 

My picks in red, I'll come back later and put the winners in blue – which is bad usability because everyone will think they're links and they won't be!  Okay, I'll use gold.  Oh, and I guess I'll change the ones I picked right to orange.)
Anyhew…

BOOK OF THE YEAR — 2007

Sheri Benning, Thin Moon Psalm (Brick Books)

Rebecca L. Grambo, photographs by Branimir Gjetvaj, The Great Sand Hills: A Prairie Oasis (Nature Saskatchewan)

Harold Johnson, Two Families:  Treaties and Government (Purich Publishing)

Dave Margoshes, Bix's Trumpet and other stories (NeWest Press)

Michael Trussler, Accidental Animals, (Hagios Press)

Seán Virgo, Begging Questions (Exile Editions)

 

FICTION — 2007

Bernice Friesen, The Book of Beasts (Coteau Books)

Sean Johnston, All This Town Remembers (Gaspereau Press)

Dave Margoshes, Bix's Trumpet and other stories (NeWest Press)

R.P. MacIntyre, Feeding at Nine (Thistledown Press)

Seán Virgo, Begging Questions (Exile Editions)

 

NON-FICTION — 2007

Lawrence Barkwell, Leah Dorion, Audreen Hourie, editors, Metis Legacy II:  Michif Culture, Heritage and Folkways, (Gabriel Dumont Institute)

Rebecca L. Grambo, The Great Sand Hills: A Prairie Oasis  (Nature Saskatchewan)

Mary-Ann Kirkby, I Am Hutterite (Polka Dot Press)

Pat Krause, Acts of Love: A Memoir (Coteau Books)

Bill Waiser, Everett Baker's Saskatchewan (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)

Garrett Wilson, Frontier Farewell:  The 1870s and the End of the Old West (Canadian Plains Research Center)

 

FIRST BOOK — 2007

Shirley Harris, Forgotten Gardens, Abandoned Landscapes & Remarkable Restorations
(Your Nickel's Worth Publishing)

Mary-Ann Kirkby, I Am Hutterite (Polka Dot Press)

Alice Kuipers, Life on the Refrigerator Door (Harper Collins Canada)

Barb Pacholik and Jana G. Pruden, Sour Milk and Other Saskatchewan Crime Stories (Canadian Plains Research Center)

Anne Patton and Wilfred Burton, Michif translation by Norman Fleury, illustrated by Sherry Farrell
Racette, Fiddle Dancer (Gabriel Dumont Institute)

Joanne Weber, The Pear Orchard (Hagios Press)

 

CHILDREN’S — 2007

Beverley Brenna, The Moon Children (Red Deer Press) 

Glenda Goertzen, City Dogs (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)

R.P. MacIntyre, Feeding at Nine (Thistledown Press)

Anne Patton and Wilfred Burton, Michif translation by Norman Fleury, illustrated by Sherry Farrell
Racette, Fiddle Dancer (Gabriel Dumont Institute)

Arthur Slade, Invasion of the IQ Snatchers (Coteau Books for Kids)

Bill Waiser, Tommy Douglas (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)     

 

POETRY — 2007

Sheri Benning, Thin Moon Psalm (Brick Books)

Elizabeth Philips, Torch River (Brick Books)

Steven Ross Smith, fluttertongue 4:  adagio for the pressured surround  (NeWest Press)

 

REGINA — 2007

William Driedger, Jakob, Out of the Village (Your Nickel's Worth Publishing)

Pat Krause, Acts of Love: A Memoir (Coteau Books)     

Dave Margoshes, Bix's Trumpet and other stories (NeWest Press)

Anne Patton and Wilfred Burton, Michif translation by Norman Fleury, illustrated by Sherry Farrell
Racette, Fiddle Dancer (Gabriel Dumont Institute)

Michael Trussler, Accidental Animals, (Hagios Press)
Paul Wilson, Turning Mountain  (Wolsak & Wynn Publishers)

 

SASKATOON — 2007

Sheri Benning, Thin Moon Psalm (Brick Books)

Doug Cuthand, Askiwina:  A Cree World (Coteau Books)

Terry Fenton, Reta Summers Cowley (Mendel Art Gallery and University of Calgary Press)

Bernice Friesen, The Book of Beasts (Coteau Books)

Elizabeth Philips, Torch River (Brick Books)      

 

SCHOLARLY WRITING — 2007

Rebecca L. Grambo, The Great Sand Hills: A Prairie Oasis  (Nature Saskatchewan)

Dick Spencer, Singing the Blues: The Conservatives in Saskatchewan (Canadian Plains Research
Center) 

Blair Stonechild, The New Buffalo: The Struggle for Aboriginal Post-Secondary Education in Canada (University of Manitoba Press)

Bernard D. Thraves, Marilyn L. Lewry, Janis E. Dale, Hansgeorg Schlichtmann, editors, Saskatchewan:  Geographic Perspectives (Canadian Plains Research Center)

Garrett Wilson, Frontier Farewell:  The 1870s and the End of the Old West (Canadian Plains Research
Center) 

 

READERS’ CHOICE — 2007

Anthony Bidulka, Stain of the Berry (Insomniac Press)

Amanda Deitz, Longer than Life, Volume 2 (Amanda Deitz)

Deana Driver, Never Give Up:  Ted Jaleta's Inspiring Story (JDC Productions)

Michael P.J. Kennedy, Dogs on Ice: A History of Hockey at University of Saskatchewan,
(Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame and Museum and “Friends of the Huskies”)

Les Langager, Wild Justice (Your Nickel's Worth Publishing)

Brian Trainor, Stop Fraud (Red Deer Press)      

(This is a reader-voted award which used to be voted on during the Gala out of the entire shortlist.  It went “wide” this year via a ballot system organized by Regina Public Library and distributed to all public libraries in the province.  I have no idea who will win this and won't hazard a guess.)

 

PUBLISHING — 2007

Canadian Plains Research Center, Frontier Farewell:  The 1870s and the End of the Old West,
Garrett Wilson

Canadian Plains Research Center, Saskatchewan:  Geographic Perspectives, Bernard D. Thraves,
Marilyn L. Lewry, Janis E. Dale, Hansgeorg Schlichtmann, editors

Coteau Books, The Book of Beasts, Bernice Friesen

Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery, Vaughan Grayson:  Adventures of an Artist in the Canadian Rockies, Heather Smith (curator)

Nature Saskatchewan, The Great Sand Hills: A Prairie Oasis, Rebecca L. Grambo, photographs by Branimir Gjetvaj

Purich Publishing Ltd., Cree Narrative Memory: From Treaties to Contemporary Times, Neal McLeod

 

FIRST PEOPLES PUBLISHING — 2007

Native Law Centre, First Nations Jurisprudence and Aboriginal Rights: Defining the Just Society, James Youngblood Henderson

Purich Publishing Ltd, Two Families:  Treaties and Government, Harold Johnson

KAKWA Publishing, Niiwin – Four Ojibwa Critter Tales, Kathleen Coleclough  

 

PUBLISHING IN EDUCATION — 2007

Bernard D. Thraves, Marilyn L. Lewry, Janis E. Dale, Hansgeorg Schlichtmann, editors, Saskatchewan: Geographic Perspectives (Canadian Plains Research Center)

Coteau Books, Askiwina:  A Cree World, Doug Cuthand

The Gabriel Dumont Institute, Metis Legacy II:  Michif Culture, Heritage and Folkways, Leah Dorion,
Lawrence  Barkwell,  Audreen Hourie, editors

JDC Productions, Never Give Up:  Ted Jaleta's Inspiring Story, Deana Driver

Native Law Centre, First Nations Jurisprudence and Aboriginal Rights:  Defining the Just Society,
James Youngblood Henderson 

Nature Saskatchewan, The Great Sand Hills: A Prairie Oasis, Rebecca L. Grambo, photographs by Branimir Gjetvaj

Posted 24 November 2007 § Main Page § PopCulture § Saskatchewan § Work ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Friday Fun Link – The Most Unusual Books In The World & 15 Word Illusions (Nov 23, 2007)

A couple fun visual sites…

The Most Unusual Books of the World

Fifteen Word Illusions

And a bonus deep thought for the day: “As a librarian, you can be idealistic.  As a manager, you must be pragmatic.”

Posted 24 November 2007 § FridayFunLink § Library § Main Page § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

"Paint The Whole World Green" – Jason Plumb & the Willing

Does anybody remember The Waltons?  One of the best CanRock bands of the early to mid-1990's and the pride of Regina.  Their lead singer, Jason Plumb, is back in Saskatchewan and a fixture in the local music scene.

(via Abandoned Stuff)

Posted 23 November 2007 § Main Page § PopCulture § Saskatchewan § Video ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged:

Best Book Covers of 2007

Some pretty amazing work here…

The Book Design Review

Posted 21 November 2007 § Main Page § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Happy Six Month Birthday Pace!

You hear it from everybody but there's still no way to prepare for how quickly the time flies.  Six months already.  Wow.  (Full disclosure – the picture on the right is from his THREE month birthday.  I don't have a current version of this shot but will get one next weekend.) 

 


Latest milestone – crawling! – which started two days ago.  I try not to be competitive and get into that “my baby can do this early, my baby can't do that yet” stuff since we pretty much all learn to walk and talk eventually, right? 

But I still take a measure of pride that he's on the early edge of the scale for crawling which happens somewhere between 6-10 months.

In completely unrelated news, this is pretty damn funny.

Posted 20 November 2007 § Baby § Humour § Main Page § Photo § Video ‡ Comments (4) °

Ready For The Big Game

Pace needs to work on his game face but he's young – it'll come.  (And no, that's not spilled beer on my leg.  And yes, it's baby drool.)

On a related note, we went to see Brent Butt at Casino Regina for my staff Christmas party Friday night.  I have a completely unprovable theory that Saskatchewan's current status as a “have” province with a booming economy, low unemployment and various other positive economic indicators is directly related to the debut of “Corner Gas” five years ago and the pride the show's success has instilled in this province since then. 

Should the Riders beat BC today to advance to an all-prairie Grey Cup against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, the team's success would be another indicator of the province's new optimism – natural resources and high dollar be damned! 

Posted 18 November 2007 § Baby § Main Page § Photo § Saskatchewan ‡ Comments (3) °

Five Controversial Things We Do In Raising Our Baby

Pace has a new cousin!  Almost six months to the day after he was born, Pace's cousin, Dennon Robert Thompson arrived in very similar circumstances – breech position requiring an unplanned c-section. 

It was a weird sense of deja vu for me all day – finding my way to the labour and delivery unit, sitting in the same waiting room, visiting the same Robin's Donuts to kill time.  Tallie (the new mother) was even put in the exact same mother and baby room as Shea had been.  Speaking of which, Shea enjoyed the day too as she got to see things from a different perspective including being part of many of the things she had to miss when she had a c-section of her own such as the baby getting its initial assessment and so on. 

For a break later in the afternoon, we went to visit the ward Shea works on and ended up having a conversation with one of her co-workers about the unsolicited “advice” you get from everyone and anyone when raising a child. 

“Use what makes sense to you, ignore what doesn't and say 'thank-you' to everyone who offers some nugget of wisdom.”

This was a timely conversation as this advice seems to be coming  more frequently lately as people comment on some of the decisions we've made on how we're raising Pace. 

In fact, I decided to write a list summarizing our most  “controversial” choices:

1. Co-Sleeping
Not to generalize but there are a lot of people who tend to be our parents' age (er, I didn't say “our parents…period”, did I? ) who can't understand our choice to have Pace sleep with us.  Comments range from “you'll never get him out of your bed once you let him in” to “he's more likely to die of SIDS if you do that!” – both of which are pretty much bunk as far as we're concerned.  We love the connection, the comfort and the convenience of having him between us every night and that's why we do it.  (Oh, and also because he's been nursing every two hours lately. )

2. Disposable Diapers
Shea and I were sure that we were going to use cloth diapers – either a service or laundering ourselves when Pace was born.  I think it was Quinn who passed along a Wired article late last year that changed my thinking on this.  It said that each type of diaper – cloth and disposable – was pretty much equal in terms of its environmental damage – they just occurred in different ways.  Plus, with us being on the road so much because of the job I ended up taking, disposable diapers were simply just so much easier. 

3. Exclusive (and Extended) Breastfeeding
It's unreal that this is even considered a controversial idea in our society but the fact that Shea has chosen to breastfeed exclusively for the first five months of Pace's life and intends to breastfeed for at least a year and possibly two is exactly that – controversial to many people.  So very very sad.  (Shea's so militant that she even refuses to pump breast milk to be given to Pace by bottle – “I want to be able to say that my baby has never eaten from a bottle.” is something I've heard more than once)  On a semi-related note, Shea also loves to breastfeed in public and enjoys any shocked reactions she gets. 

4. Eating Everything (including meat! )
Traditionally, the way you introduce food is, at six months, you give your baby rice cereal.  For a month.  Then you introduce a bland vegetable.  For a week.  Then another one.  For a week.  Then another one.  For a week.  Then, after a month or so has passed,  you try a fruit (veggies are first since they're less sweet so the thinking was that a baby who got fruit first would never grow to like veggies.)  Meat was reserved for nine months at the earliest.  So the news that we've introducing a variety of foods in rapid succession, including pureed meats (or a large piece of steak to suck on ), gets a fairly negative reaction from quite a few people including our family doctor (who is otherwise a great guy and in fact, won the Saskatchewan Physician of the Year award a few years back.)  But various medical professionals are increasingly saying that meat can be introduced as early as six months, especially in exclusively breastfed babies, to give them sufficient iron (see question 7 on this linked page) and also because of the theory that meat is simply another food that humans eat and babies are, after all, human.  (I should note that we're not completely stupid and are not giving Pace nuts, strawberries, wheat, dairy or any other common allergens.) 

5. NHL Training Starts Early
Jason has put Pace on a training routine including pretend skating on the slippery kitchen counter, “bodychecking” pillows stacked on the couch and regular watching in-depth analysis of Saturday night hockey games.  Occasionally, Shea has to point out that shouting “if you don't make the NHL, daddy doesn't love you!” is probably counter-productive.  Then she hands Jason a Youth Soccer pamphlet. 

Anyhow, here's a pic of Pace napping with his new cousin (who is only a couple hours old). 

They don't look like it now but I can pretty much guarantee they're going to be hell on wheels in about ten years. 

Posted 18 November 2007 § Baby § List § Main Page § Photo ‡ Comments (4) °

Friday Fun Link – Canadian Police No Longer Targeting File Sharing For Personal Use (Nov 16, 2007)

“The Canadian police announced that it will stop targeting people who
download copyrighted material for personal use. Their priority will be
to focus on organized crime and copyright theft that affects the health
and safety of consumers instead of the cash flow of large corporations.“

My French isn't good enough to know if a Le Devoir article linked from this TorrentFreak post is saying that this is a national policy of the GRC (er, RCMP) or one that only applies in Quebec.  But either way, this is a pretty rational stance from the police and it makes me happy to hear that I can download to my heart's content exercise greater freedom in my choice of online activities. 

On a semi-related note, the Writers Guild of America is on strike with appropriate compensation for sales from electronic media being one of the major issues.  (Writers in Canada dealt with a similar situation a few years back – as new technology that no one foresaw when initial contracts were written came into being, corporations tried to put up works (reviews, essays, articles, etc.) without additional compensation.  Needless to say, writers wanted to be compensated for the reproduction of their work, no matter the form it appeared in.  I can't remember how this resolved itself – anybody?  Bueller?  Bueller?)

Anyhow, if you're missing “The Daily Show, one of show's writers did this update from the picket lines:

Posted 16 November 2007 § FridayFunLink § Humour § Internet § Main Page § PopCulture § United States § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Make Your Friends/While You're Still Young/Before You Can't See Through/Anyone

As a follow-up to yesterday's post about Pace's first black eye, here's a great song about a parent's ever-present fear about their child coming into harm. 

If I remember correctly, Gord Downie wrote it after watching a young woman barrel racing at the Calgary Stampede and wondered how he would feel about his own daughter pursuing a similar hobby? 

Posted 16 November 2007 § Baby § Main Page § PopCulture § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

First Shiner

It had to happen sometime and the first of many to come, I'm sure.  (I'm just glad it was his mom who let him do the face plant into his exersaucer instead of me!  But then again, is it wrong that I took a photo of it?)

Posted 15 November 2007 § Baby § Main Page § Photo ‡ Comments (0) °