Voice

Since 2002, Vancouver-based Pacific Rim Mining Corporation has been exploring for gold and silver throughout El Salvador. In 2008, the company was denied a mining permit for the El Dorado mine in San Isidro Cabañas, due to increased opposition from local anti-mining and environmentalist organizations, residents, and Catholic Church leaders.

I spend about 4-6 hours a day on my laptop and it feels like an extension of myself and my relationships; however, I've learned that such a shift in a major part of one's life requires developing new guidelines for social etiquette, so I often ask my students to sign the following laptop usage contract:  "I wish to have the privilege of using my laptop in this class as a note-taking device, and I commit that the only window open on my laptop during class time will be the one used for note-taking."

Under no circumstances should laptops be permitted in class. Students cannot be trusted with such a distracting tool. The benefits of laptops, faster note taking, easy note-sharing between friends, and easily searchable notes, are after all minor in comparison with the benefits of a more attentive class for the professor.

10. I have never been to jail. If I had been to jail, it would have been spelled “gaol”, because I lived in Goderich. Fun fact: Steven Truscott narrowly eluded a death sentence while spending time in the Goderich Gaol.

5. Big Xtra

Working at McDonald’s was one of the worst experiences of my life, besides the free food. My worst weeks of acne and gut rot were peppered with delicious encounters with the Big Xtra, or as the Americans called it, the Big’n’Tasty. With an extra patty, double cheese, all the fix-uns, a tray of nuggets and a chocolate shake, I was wired for the rest of my shift.

4. Baconator

Please note: This is an entirely subjective list. Despite the fact that I may often be (deservedly) labeled a “music snob”, I am not claiming to be the sole authority on “good” music for the last decade. An attempt at something of that magnitude would be asinine (especially based on the fact that I was eleven years old when the decade commenced), if not entirely impossible. Instead, you'll find below a list of albums that happened to be the movers and shakers in my musical world over the past ten years.

Preface
I'm a little behind the times, so pardon the advances that don't technically fit in the last decade.

I’ve never experienced anything quite like an Avett Brother’s concert. It was September 30th and I had caught the Go Train from Aldershot into Union Station earlier that afternoon, making my way by foot to the Horseshoe tavern on Queen Street. Sitting outside the bar, reading up on some 19th century Victorian lit and enjoying a pre-concert fish and chips and a pint of Stella, my foot taps to the imagined beat of the genre-defying, neo-Americana Avett’s music playing over and over in my head.

A few members of the community have found the intensity and emotional outpouring at some of Redeemer’s sporting events to be in conflict with the loving, tender, and respectful lifestyle we are called to as Christians. A strong example of this was at the final men’s varsity volleyball game of last year. During the course of the game, the crowd exhibited its regular game rituals of chants, drums, signs, applauding, and rushing the court.