Winter officially starts in about a month, but snow is everywhere in Calgary right now. The first snow of the year is so enchanting, but slowly and surely, with dirt and melting, the snow turns into a grey nasty slush that does nothing but gets your socks wet and cold. However, just after it first falls, and before it degrades, you can see footprints in the snow. Single footprints, many footprints, it doesn’t really matter to us. But these footprints mean something to the ones who made them. This poem is about those footprints.
Walking, waiting
Waking in the winter wind.
To a sight seen before.
Fresh snow on the ground.
Soft, smooth, sweetly soothing
Like a blanket, on the floor.
A gentle cold touch,
Drifting down from the sky,
Cast off from the heavens,
Flowing in the wind’s sigh.
Covering things we wish to cover
Sins that have been seen.
All the times we fell and failed.
Or faded to a dead brown, from a lush green.
Some patches of snow
Are marked with sets of footsteps
Some with many, some with one.
But even alone, steps tells a story.
A tragedy? A comedy?
Who knows which way this will run?
Some steps stand in solitude
Their partners long faded away.
Some are overrun by the feet of others.
Never to go as far as they.
Slow saddened steps,
A leaden brush, painting the snow
Center stage, with the tale of the broken.
Played out for all to know.
Struggling steps
Raging, fighting, racing against fate.
Finally at the finish line,
to be met with a closed gate.
Looking, longing, and at the places that rejected them.
The places they were never meant to go.
The places where the steps are happy.
Leaping through the snow.
Huge strides and bounds!
Easily reaching above the rest
So fast! So far!
Soaring above the winter drifts,
That bury the bodies of those who fall.
Or footprints that struggle,
But still, they seek.
Climbing higher and higher
Until they reach the peak.
Starting as one pair.
Joined by another.
There are hard times
Through it all, they stay together.
New little footprints
They run around and play.
Growing larger and larger.
Until they go their separate ways.
And, some patches of snow.
Have no footprints at all.
No story. No journey.
No rise. No fall.
No risk, and no reward.
Like thinking a sentence
Without saying a word.
The perfect snow may be beautiful.
No struggle or sadness to be found.
It is far more lovely
Than the sad steps.
Or even the happy steps.
But, the blank snow.
Is just that,
Nothing lost, and nothing gained.
But in the end
Why does perfection matter.
When all the snow melts away.
You can fight. You can struggle. You might fail. You might succeed. But first, you have to start. Every corpse of Mt. Everest was an extremely motivated person. That corpse made it infinitely closer to reaching the top than the living person who never even tried.
Fear of failure might stop you from start things, but that’s just one possibility. The other is succeeding.
Marcus Chung
When reading that small excerpt, one thing that nobody usually thinks about is the origins of the telephone – one of the great sources of Canadian pride. In 1873, Alexander Graham Bell disclosed the invention of the telephone for the first time – a massive innovation that would change the world as we know it.
Who would like to move to Yukon? Surprisingly, from 1896 to 1899, more than 100,000 people migrated to Yukon, which at the time was considered as an unprecedented amount of immigration. Why did all these people all of a sudden move to the Yukon Territory, I hear you ask? We know they have great potatoes, and a lot of cold weather, but what else do they have? Well, back then, they had a lot of something much more valuable than cold weather or potatoes – gold.
As we reflect on 150 years of Canadian history in the making, our country definitely has many successes, milestones, and famous individuals to celebrate. But, what we also have are many unique stories that maybe didn’t earn us global recognition or put us on the map. It is important that we take the time to learn about and commemorate the tales that impacted, sometimes devastated hundreds of ordinary, everyday Canadian citizens. The incidents that our country learned from, got through together and became more resilient from. Events like the Frank Slide.
Today, the town of Frank, Alberta, still lies in the shadow of the “Mountain the Walks.” (As an aside, Alberta didn’t become a Canadian province until 1905, almost two years after the incident, so at the time Frank was still classified as a community of the Northwest Territories). In 1985, the Frank Slide Interpretative Centre was built as a museum and tourist stop in order to document the Frank Slide and the region’s coal mining history. It still remains a popular destination receiving more than 100,000 visitors on an annual basis.
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