canada

In a time like this, let us trust in God even more. To trust when life is easy is no trust.

- I believe in unlimited discovery and achievement.- I believe that dreams can become reality.- I believe in true love.- I believe in kindness and intelligence.- I trust life, regardless.

Tell yourselves whatever you__ like, but I__ afraid it doesn__ make it true,_ Mearth sighed, beginning to look impatient. __tep aside Mandy, I have to remediate him, otherwise you__l find yourself in a whole mess of trouble.___ou can__ do this, it__ wrong,_ Mandy insisted.__ou don__ have a choice, Mandy! Either you let his life compromise the lives of everybody else in the world, or you let me remediate him and get it over with,_ Mearth icily declared.__Do what she says, Mandy Valems_._ Alecto added, standing up and staring with glazed eyes at Mearth.__ can__,_ said Mandy.__Go away!_ Alecto shouted at her suddenly, glaring with narrowed eyes, speaking in a voice that hardly sounded like his own. __et out of here, Mandy Valems! I hate you, I want you to leave me alone! Go home and don__ ever come back here!____._ Mandy started, looking totally shocked.__ said I hate you, don__ you understand anything? Go away, get out of here!_ Alecto repeated menacingly, stepping forward in a threatening manner. He looked like a mad dog, shivering as he chased her away from his site. She tearfully took off running, seeming both shocked and horrified, and he watched her leave for a moment with a blank expression, his dark eyes hollow. He looked like he was going to black out, but Mearth walked quickly towards him, for once not smiling at all. If it weren__ for her eyes, she would__e looked like a person. __hat was very cruel of you to do, Sydney Tar Ponds. I thought you loved her,_ she disappointedly exclaimed.__ do love her, she__ my friend, and that__ why I said that stuff to her,_ Alecto replied forlornly. __one of it__ true, I don__ hate her at all_ but I know what__ going to happen and I don__ want her to see it, so I lied to her and told her I hated her_ can you explain to her after_ why I said all that to her?

It__ an immense night out there, wheeling and windy. The lights on the street and in the houses against the black wetness, little unilluminating glints that might be painted on it. The town seems huddled together, cowering on a high tiny perch, afraid to move lest it topple into the wind.

Kipster is a perfectly valid word,_ Wendy argued, about to write down her score on the little notepad that had come with the game. __kay, so what does it mean?_ Mandy wanted to know. Wendy struggled to come up with an answer, and finally just changed the subject with school gossip. Mandy found herself just ignoring it_ it always sounded the same, the same events, same rumors, same secrets, same affairs, but never anything of interest to her.__ell Sarah__ on drugs again and that__ why she did it in Mario__ backseat, but now she might be pregnant, oh, and that messed-up Seth kid__ been cutting himself again so he was sent away to Halifax last week, and there__ a festival in Wolfville but Kathy won__ go because Audrey-Rose is going to be there and they hate each other, and_.__andy had learned two years ago to detach herself from gossip; she__ learned it from Jud__ death. Wendy may have been eighteen years old but she could be immature on the best of days.

A rural Venus, Selah rises from thegold foliage of the Sixhiboux River, sweepspetals of water from her skin. At once,clouds begin to sob for such beauty.Clothing drops like leaves."No one makes poetry,my Mme.Butterfly, my Carmen, in Whylah,__ whisper. She smiles: __e__l shape it withour souls.__esire illuminates the dark manuscriptof our skin with beetles and butterflies.After the lightning and rain has ceased,after the lightning and rain of lovemakinghas ceased, Selah will dive again into thesunflower-open river.

We were poor back then. Not living in a cardboard carton poor, not __e might have to eat the dog_ poor, but still poor. Poor like, no insurance poor, and going to McDonald's was a really big excitement poor, wearing socks for gloves in the winter poor, and collecting nickels and dimes from the washing machine because she never got allowance, that kind of poor_ poor enough to be nostalgic about poverty. So, when my mom and dad took me here for my tenth birthday, it was a really big deal. They__ saved up for two months to take me to the photography store and they bought me a Kodak Instamatic film camera_ I really miss those days, because we were still a real family back then_ this mall doesn__ even have a film photography store anymore, just a cell phone and digital camera store, it__ depressing_

I might be the hazardous waste site that polluted it, but Cape Breton Island is still my home.

The ramifications of workplace violence can have a lingering effect on the organization for generations.

Tax is not a four-letter word; rather, it's the price we pay for the country we want.

We__e losing society to apathy, to digital technology, the people who care about nobody else but themselves. They share every little detail of their stupid lives online as if the world even gives a damn_ digital technology is getting smarter and society is getting dumber,_ Mandy whispered in a voice filled with disbelief. __ociety is_ it__ slipping away.

Alecto isn't a person! He's just something that society made and then threw away, a memory that refuses to die.

It's odd to imagine, of course: you pass a car on a lonely rural highway; you sit beside a man in a diner and share views with him; you wait behind a customer checking into a motel, a friendly man with a winning smile and twinkling hazel eyes, who's happy to fill you in on his life's story and wants you to like him - odd to think this man is cruising around with a loaded pistol, making up his mind about which bank he'll soon rob.' - Richard Ford, Canada

Mandy smiled cheerfully at an overweight kid in a gold sweater and pink skirt who was chasing her little brother around along the boardwalk. When she was that age, on sunny days she__ be out on the boardwalk with Jud and Wendy, buying rainbow sorbet from the ice cream shop and placing paper boats into the harbour. She felt like a ghost, drifting past the shell of her own childhood.

What are you doing?_ Alecto asked in surprise, stepping back. Laughing brightly, she dragged him towards the greenhouse, the shattered glass reflecting rainbows as brilliant as a million Kodak flashcubes, glittering as they were cascaded through the breeze. __ee, don__ be afraid of the glass, it can__ hurt us,_ Mandy laughed, spectacularly eccentric, her eyes reflecting the fallen glass.__ wasn__ afraid of the glass, but this isn__ a very secluded place that you just decided to vandalize,_ Alecto cautioned, smiling despite his words. Before Mandy could reply, she heard loud whispering in the air, behind the trees_ it sounded like a group of people, all whispering in unison_ __omebody__ out there,_ she exclaimed nervously.__eah, you__e right,_ Alecto replied. Suddenly a sharp new vibrancy seemed to fill his eyes and he smiled coldly, taking the tree branch from Mandy and rapidly smashing in all of Mrs. Matthias_ stained glass house windows with it. Blue, green, yellow, red, turquoise, purple and an array of other colors showered through the sky noisily, sounding like wind chimes and crashing waves. __hey__l go away,_ he told her, glancing up at the sky.__Alecto, do you like me?_ Mandy questioned, holding out her arms like a lopsided scarecrow as the glass fell through her dark red hair.__eah, sure,_ he answered.__ill you be my friend, then? A real friend, not just another person who feels sorry for me?_ Mandy asked.__Alright, Mandy Valems,_ Alecto agreed.

It 's the time of year when Canadians mate.

_Maybe I__l be watching super-8 home videos,_ Alecto told her, smiling bleakly. __ love my super-8 camera, it__ an Eastman Kodak one_ Kodak stopped manufacturing them, the world went digital and now Kodak has stopped making Kodachrome film and all kinds of traditional film products_ it__ sad._ __ell, uh_ well, have fun watching your home movies then,_ Mandy finished, but she didn__ have the slightest idea what he was talking about.

Everything has a past, a voice, existed at some point, even things as small and seemingly meaningless as a house in a huge suburb. It__ a house like every other house_ but at some point a family lived there, made it theirs, made it important. When people forget that history, that somebody at some point thought the house mattered, it just becomes an empty pile of nailed wood and brick and concrete that gets torn down for some strip mall or chain store to take its place_ and that__ what happens more and more now, everything is disposable, always replaced with no thought at all. That__ where things get lost, memories get lost, humanity slips through the cracks, because when we all fail to pay attention to the things that make up our lives, we__e no longer human at all, not really.