Three Things from Edmonton podcast - Episode 114: resources, the East, the West

Happy end of the week, y’all. Besides the return of winter-weary crunchy ice, here are three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude this week.

                   

1. Resources 

Somehow, I’m finishing up teaching a strategic communications planning course at MacEwan University. I enjoy hanging out in the academy where inquiry is still a thing. In school, I’m still a fish hooked by the question mark. The students are clever, and I’ve had a strong supporting cast for this one-of-a-kind experience. The doc came by to talk about diagnosing things properly, either medical situations or communications challenges. Rely on your heuristics, your shortcuts, as you assess the nature of a problem, he said, but don’t let them become prejudices. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, but keep zebras in mind, he said. 

J-P reminded the students there is no such thing as the general public. Be specific, she said. Son shared a lesson in brand and brand models. Dig for insight, she said. Fitz fed me with articles. Take a look at this, he said. Laurie talked about Crave Cupcakes and Ted Lasso. Believe, she said.

Our textbook is Strategic Communication in Canada by Bernard Gauthier. It’s a guide through the fog others pump into the craft. Gauthier himself Zoomed in from Ottawa to underline how important it is for any professional communicator to honestly assess the strength of the team they rely on to get the word out. Like time, money and stories, people are resources. That’s a key takeaway for me, the start of my personal SWOT analysis of my time behind the lectern. Turns out it’s not all academic. I have talented friends who show up. That’s what I’ve learned teaching.

2. The East 

In a drawer in a cupboard in our living room, Shelagh found an old photograph of her mother as a young woman. Oblivious to the camera (maybe) Phyllis Dawson sits in an automobile, intently reading a Halifax newspaper. The obscured masthead ends with the letters L-D. She’s wearing a plaid jacket. She’s reading page 2, the continuation, I’m guessing, of the front page story. The headline is partially concealed by her left hand. Only the giant, upper-case lettered word ROYALTY and parts of the word DEMONSTRATION (maybe it’s DEMONSTRATION) are legible. The sub-headline reads “Their Majesties Given...” and has the word “War, or is it “Warm” in it, but that’s all I can make out. I thought the pic was from the mid-1940s, but Shelagh said 1939. 

My Twitter agreed with her. I posted the photo with an appeal for help tracking down the front page. It would be fun to read what she was reading, right? My online detective friends did their sleuthing. Jason put some dates and keywords into a newspaper search site. Lorne said the L-D meant the paper was the Halifax Herald. Karoline and the professor and my old newspaper buddy Terry, all three of them said Phyllis was reading coverage of the Royal Visit to Halifax in June 1939.  I followed their lead and emailed the pic to the Nova Scotia Archives, explaining that we would enjoy reading the article that had caught Phyll’s attention on that sunny day more than 80 years ago. Five hours later (quicker than Amazon Prime), I received an image of the front page of the The Halifax Herald, June 15, 1939, headlined:

NOVA SCOTIA WELCOMES ROYALTY
WITH COLORFUL DEMONSTRATION
Their Majesties 
Are Given Warm
Scots’ Greeting 

It was the glowing account of the visit to the Nova Scotian capital of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The Halifax stop wrapped up a cross-countries tour that also took the Royals to Washington, D.C. to discuss the state of the world with FDR. Looming war must have been there for 20-year-old Phyllis, too, there between the lines of the newspaper copy, itself constructed in military metaphor. 

“At Truro, where a ten minute stop is scheduled, large numbers had taken up positions last night and more would be moving to occupy vantage points at daybreak,” reads a page 1 sentence describing the effort of the crowd to get a view of the couple.

Two and a half months later, Germany would invade Poland, changing the trajectory of millions of lives, including newspaper-reading Phyllis Dawson from Central Bedeque, Prince Edward Island. She would work for the British Army in Washington, D.C. Was she reading the future? Did she see herself in it? Gotta say, she looks like she’s up to it and ready for the unknown. 

 That’s what I read.

3. The West 

In the first verse of Land of Shining Mountains, Ian Tyson places a go-cup in the hands of his lonely hero as he heads out for work in the morning. You know the song: boy meets girl, girl leaves boy and heads for the coast, boy goes to work in the oilfield. Pretty predictable stuff, until the wild second verse where we are unexpectedly carried high above the highway and told to look back down and consider the big picture. From this height it’s all topography and watersheds—the Great Divide, the rivers in a dry land that feed the cities of the plains. It’s not a perspective we often get in the news-weather-and-traffic-together-every-seven-minutes mediascape. 

Except last week, on CBC Radio, at the tail end of morning rush hour, when talk turned to the health of the North Saskatchewan River.  Most of it was over my head, but I kinda heard something when stormwater ponds and naturalized areas were likened to containers that slowly filter sediments and pollutants out of runoff water in urban areas. Liquid…containers…filters…coffee... in a go-cup. Turns out, that rig worker is holding the West in his hands. 

Thanks for being out there, friends.