I used to shave on Saturdays. Today I met a friend on the street at Westfest. She said I looked good. “You’ve lost your gordon face.” I’m glad. I do feel better. A month after leaving my job at gordongroup marketing and communications, I’m beginning to see that two years as Director of Writing in perspective. My biggest regret about leaving is that there was a time when I thought I should stay longer. More soon.

Last October, a week before the Porchlight launch, I called Stephen Harper’s office. I said I wanted to take a photo of The Leader holding a compact fluorescent bulb. “Everyone’s doing it,” I said. I thought my request would be a long shot, or at least lead me to the foot of some weeks-long queue. Just a few minutes later, the call was returned. “Mr. Harper will be arriving on the Hill in a few minutes. Can you come right now?” Luckily, I’d brought my camera to work that day. I ran out of the office, up Metcalfe and across the lawn of Parliament Hill, to the base of the…

I don’t use that word very often. In fact, I’m not sure it’s spelled correctly. My reluctance on righteous probably stems from my shadowy religious upbringing. If I close my eyes and concentrate I can still smell communion juice (never wine, always Welches), and pew stiffness quickly creeps into my back. It’s also odd to have become an evangelist, despite no longer believing in Noah. I’ve spent the past two months going church to mosque to Sai centre addressing congregations about hope and light-bulbs. It’s fun. Compact fluorescents are universally good. Porchlight is working with Faith and the Common Good. Kristina drives a Smart Car; it can hold 400 CFLs…

“Emerging Social Entrepreneur” I like it.

Twenty years ago, after one year of university at Carleton, I decided I’d had enough of Ottawa — a familiar feeling. On my way into the library to study I happened upon a poster that said, “Study in France.” So off I went, to Universite canadienne en France, a branch of Laurentian University that was set up on a low mountain overlooking the aquamarine Mediterranean and the gritty Riviera resort town of Nice. I took with me one suitcase, a bike that was too big (built for Rod, my 6’4″ stepdad), and no clue what I was doing. I was 19. It was a riotous year of travel and wine…

Alaska is four hours behind Eastern Time. Since getting home last Thursday, this fact has made midnight productive but mornings a mess. I tookJasper to school this morning in a fog on a clear day. Then I headed into town to my first day in my new office and didn’t know where it was. Project Porchlight is now renting space from Vrtucar on MacLaren St. just around the corner from a Bridgehead with free wireless Internet and expensive fair trade coffee. Which is Virtuous with an i. Alaska has me thinking about what kind of life I want, and more confident that I could have whatever life I choose. It’s…

It’s 12:30AM Anchorage time. I have a wake-up call in 3.5 hours for a 6AM flight to a 10AM Starbucks Tall Bold in Seattle, and dinner in Chicago and a snooze en route to Ottawa to (hopefully) a nice hug and kiss from sweet Mme Siouxie. 15 hours of travel. I’m beat. I would call this trip: Planes, Trains and Automobiles if it didn’t also include boats, glaciers, kayaks, crampons, mine shafts and whale pods. Today I spent 7 hours on a 20-passenger yacht on Prince William Sound en route from Valdez to Whittier writing a Porchlight funding proposal. I’d write a bit, then dash to the bow to watch…

The Shoup Glacier toe (the part that reaches the water) is over 300′ tall. You just can’t tell from photos. When bits crack and fall off (many pieces as big as bungalows), the sound starts like a grumbling stomach followed by a thunderous crack and a splash.

It’s a good tired. Since my last post, I flew in a wee De Haviland Beaver over the Chugha mountain range to the interior of Wrangell Elias National Park. We stayed at America’s last frontier town and former copper mining community of McCarthy, a dusty strip of road with an original brothel/lodge (where we stayed) and saloon. The horses were replaced with ATVs, and I really doubt that the original settlers in 1910 had saffron-infused shrimp skewers on the menu. Yummy. We hiked on a glacier with crampons (definitely required) and drank from the crystal-blue runoff. Today we drove to Valdez, arriving just in time for a quick trip to…

It’s been hot here. My face is tingly from the sun. I’m just a little south of Whitehorse. This is Alaska. Since arriving here Wednesday, I’ve been on three small bush planes flying over 10,000-ft mountains, cruised to towering glaciers on silty teal-green fjords, flown on a float plane over the Baker ice field and landed in a remote glacier bay, seen bears, mountain goats, sea lions, humpback whales. I’ve been nearly tossed overboard on 12′ seas in a tiny fishing boat, and eaten more salmon than I have in the past year. When I close my eyes, I can feel rolling. It’s either the turbulence or the rough seas.…

I’m in Juneau tonight, but tomorrow we head back to the woods for 2 days. Lack of TV, radio or Internet in the wilderness would make a great excuse for awesome star gazing if the sun actually set.

Glaciers are made of snow that is compressed over centuries by even more snow into ice that is so dense that it twists light so that only the blue of the spectrum escapes. It’s robins egg blue, and is brightest when the sun isn’t shining. A thunderous crack announces the calving of the glacial front, hundreds of feet of sheer ice undercut by the melting at the water below. Glaciers calve like the World Trade Centre fell. Straight down. Puffins travel in pairs and rarely stray far from each other, kicking little bright orange webbed feet in the 9C teal-green glacial water. They’re crazy little birds with Einstein tufts of…

Jasper was up all night throwing up. Suzy says it was eight times. I lost track. Then in the morning while Suzy was at the gym, Simon has two creamy butt-to-ankle poos — in one hour. Just before my 15-hour trip. Jasper was still sick, by this time asleep, so I raced to the airport in a cab for the noon flight and sat on the Ottawa tarmac for an hour. Early observations of the Alaska Odyssey: Chicago O’Hare was incredibly busy. There’s a McDonald’s every 100m in that airport; everybody’s eating burgers and huge fries. Between Chicago and Seattle the guy next to me saw that I was reading…

The link is right at the top of the page. “Got a Problem?” Yeah, I think I killed Jasper’s sea monkeys. Suzy, Jasper, Simon and I went to Kingston this week for an overnight stay at the Ambassador hotel. The Ambassador reminded me of the Moncton Keddy’s Motor Inn I frequented with busloads of other homesick kids on band trips in the 1980s. The hotel was fine, basic. Empty bar fridges. We picked it for the waterslide. And spent some time in the park by the Lake Ontario waterfront. The apple trees were resplendent. I went to Kingston to make a brief presentation about Project Porchlight with energy efficiency guru…

The crisis is over. Gordongroup a rapidly fading memory. The Sponsor is paying to redevelop the light bulb plan. My sidewalk is dusted with apple blossoms. All’s well. I’m a bag of nerves. Maybe I need crisis. Maybe this is just the wave receding. I went for a run yesterday and nearly croaked at 3k. And next week I’m going to be paddling a sea kayak in Glacier Bay. Right. I hope there’s no wind. The Alaska Tourist Authority has invited me on a press trip, my first since Wales in ’04. I’ll be spending 6 days in national parks that skirt the southern shore from Prince William Sound past…