WORKING THE RANCH

A Photo Essay by George Webber.

Its official name is the Chinook Ranch, but if you call the 6,000-acre spread the Hughes place, people around Longview will know what you mean.
The land, which is about four miles south of Longview (if you say six kilometres, folks around here might not know what you mean), has been in the Hughes family since 1945. That’s when Jim Hughes Sr. bought it (he added to his holdings in the ’50s when the neighboring Bar U broke up). Jim Sr. was born in 1903 on a Hereford farm in Herefordshire, England and grew up to raise Herefords (sense a pattern here?). He came to Canada in 1928 (family lore says he left England with $2 in his pocket), docked in Halifax and got on a westbound train. Once settled, he and his wife Mary had six children, including Jim Jr., now 65, who is in the process of handing the management reins to his son Stephen, 40.
It was Stephen’s younger sister Janet Pliszka who first invited photographer George Webber out to the family spread. She took a darkroom course from Webber in 2000 and when she got married at the ranch three years later, Webber took the pictures.
The wedding took place August 16, three months after the United States banned beef imports from Canada as a result of mad-cow disease. That made for some tough times at the ranch, “I’m attracted to edgy things,” Webber says. “BSE and the border being closed was the hook for me to go back.” Without this turn of events, Webber would have considered the subject of working cowboys to be “if not a cliché, then certainly which intrigued the photographer. well-done.” Instead, as he discovered when he first went to branding day in June of 2004, he was drawn to document a way of life in southern Alberta that is in peril.
The threat has not really lessened with the 2005 reopening of the U.S. border to cattle 30-months-old and younger. Now the challenge is tied to the falling U.S. greenback and the rising Canadian dollar. “It’s hard to make a profit right now,” says Janet. “It’s worse now than in BSE times.”
It’s just another thing the family has to deal with. One of their responses has been to shift their focus and start selling directly to customers—Janet says the move to eat locally produced food has helped in this regard. To promote its products, the ranch is about to unveil that standard feature of modern marketing, a website (www.chinookranch.com), designed by Janet’s husband, Harold Pliszka.
It’s the least he could do. In an admission that still makes Janet shriek with laughter, she says that Harold is a vegan who, to her knowledge, has never been on a horse. That news went over better than you might think when she brought him home to meet the folks. “My parents are not judgmental,” Janet says.
That same quality worked in Webber’s favour when he started photographing life on the ranch. “I need to achieve that practical thing of getting people bored with me so they just get on with their work,” he says. As his photographs show, there is always plenty of work to be done around the Chinook Ranch. That is never truer than on branding day, one of the longest days of the year and the clearest expression of what life on the ranch is all about. By Bruce Weir.

WHAT TO WEAR TO THE WEDDING

written by Cynthia Cushing

Neither of my daughters is getting married soon, although one of them knows exactly what her wedding will be like when the day comes. She’s considered venues, time of day, dresses, shoes, registries, the cake and her attendants. She’s even given a certain amount of thought to the qualities that would be admirable in a groom. So I said to her one night at dinner, “What do you want me to wear to your wedding?”
“You? You can wear whatever you want. I don’t care,” she answered.
I asked my husband. “What do you think a mother of the bride should wear?”
“Is someone getting married? Who cares what you wear?” he said.
“That,” I said as I popped the cork back in the wine bottle and whisked it away just as he was about to pour a second glass, “is my point exactly. Who cares? Nobody but me.”
Well, me and every other woman with daughters of marrying age. We’ve been to our share of weddings and we’ve seen the horror that awaits she who does not care what she wears or, worse, she who thinks she shouldn’t care what she wears. This is the mother of the bride in the pale seafoam dress with the little chiffon capelet, the pearls, the rosebud corsage, the timid hat and the bone-coloured pumps with one-and-a-half-inch heels. We’ve seen her yet not seen her; she is the invisible woman. We never gave her a thought until our daughters’ friends started getting married. Now, we’re thinking that the mother- of-the-bride dress is one of the toughest looks to pull off. It’s tougher than the first day of Grade 8, tougher than prom night and much, much tougher than your own wedding. But is it impossible? Not at all. I’ve critiqued mothers’ clothes at weddings I’ve attended recently and asked every woman over 50 whom I know what she would wear. I have searched for role models in all areas of public life. I’ve come up with two mother-of-the-bride looks that almost anyone can wear and make her own, no matter how time-pressed or fashion-backward she might be.
First, you need to realize what you are up against. There are reasons for the ubiquity of the seafoam dress, the main one being fear of overhearing a guest at the wedding say, “Did you get a load of what the mother of the bride is wearing? Is she trying to look like she’s 20?”
Rule One for the mother of the bride? Never outshine the bride. That’s a rule to which most of us can adhere without trying. Rule Two? Never look as if you are trying to outshine the bride. Anything too clingy, too colourful, too ruffled or too revealing and the mother of the bride might as well have cards printed that say Desperately Trying to Hold On to My Youth Despite All Evidence to the Contrary and then hand them out in the receiving line. At least that’s what we imagine and it makes being invisible infinitely preferable.

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HELEN KOENTGES

by Chris Koentges
Illustrations by Julie McLaughlin

The key term in Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is multi-forme. (Please bear with me through the science of this.) Multiforme means that there are multiple forms of cancerous cells, glioblastoma means that these forms are exceedingly malignant. Consequently, GBM always evolves towards:

(a) its most malignant form—which is also:
(b) the form that makes it most difficult to destroy.

And so you already see the paradox: by treating GBM—if you choose to treat it—you are, by definition, creating a stronger, more resistant mutation with each attempt. Craniotomies. Radiation. Temodol beyond the bounds of the clinic’s established protocol. Experimental virus therapy. Green tea, fresh dandelion, a poisonous cocktail of intravenous Carboplatin mixed with the maximum dose of Tamoxifen—the shock-and-awe that almost wipes GBM out one day only creates an increasingly awesome mutation of it the next. On and on until you’re left with something indestructible growing inside your brain, until one day, there is no space left inside your brain for it to grow.

The alternative? Well, researchers have witnessed the mass of an untreated GBM tumour double in a week, then double again, and again and again until—well, GBM very seldom fails. And there’s something to be said on GBM’s behalf for that. It is efficient. We are a culture that respects efficiency above all else. Such is the calibre of GBM’s efficiency, in fact, that it is scientifically quantified by the prognosis: “six months (give or take).”
Cancer can receive no higher compliment than “six months give or take.” And that will be the last it gets from us today.

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THE FESTIVALS ARE COMING TO TOWN.

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Illustration: Genevieve Simms

He’s dealt with floods, windstorms and snow in July but it’s not the weather that gives Calgary Folk Festival general manager les siemieniuk nightmares. It’s trees. What you, the blissfully ignorant audience member, probably never realized is that the placement of the festival’s six side-stages in the existing groves at Prince’s Island Park leaves little room for new plantings. So when siemieniuk (yes, he’s an e.e. cummings acolyte) showed up at the park to find a crew about to plant a cart full of trees, it took a series of “frantic phone calls” to avoid having to redraw the festival site map. Ever since, siemieniuk’s had nightmares about waking up on opening day to find a forest growing in front of his mainstage, and a bitter audience who can’t see the headliner for the trees.
What’s really scary (particularly for anyone out there who is considering entering the circus that is festival production and planning) is that there are still random factors, such as over-enthusiastic arborists, that can throw a seasoned ringmaster like siemieniuk for a loop. Over its storied 29-year history, the Folk Fest is a bit of a Boy Scout in the sense that it has learned how to be prepared for anything. Organizers fortify themselves with a volunteer corps that exceeds 1,300. Top-guns siemieniuk and artistic director Kerry Clarke have 42 years of experience between them and have seen each other through the agony of soggy grounds, toppling stereo towers, “complex” artistic personalities, spaghetti avalanches (a catering thing, one of the reasons they now cook for volunteers on site) and having the lone truck-accessible causeway to the festival site washed out by the floods of 2005. Then there’s the annual paper trail of permits (after three decades, the festival still cannot “pass Go”—each go-round, they must undertake the same application process as a newbie event). Not to mention the plate-spinning routine of satisfying all the various city departments (bylaws, health, fire, police, et al). Oh yeah, and did we mention that around here it’s been known to snow in July?

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STAGE MOM

All About Elinor
By Mieko Ouchi
Photography: Marc Rimmer
Dramas, comedies, musicals - you name it, Elinor Holt can play it. The versatile actor also juggles three kids and a musician husband, leading her friends in the local arts community to marvel: How does she do it.

That’s what eight-year-old Ava tells the babysitters when they ask where her parents are going for the evening. Mommy is Elinor Holt, whose work as an actor, singer and comedienne has been seen on virtually every stage in Calgary. Daddy is musician Spider Bishop, who plays upright string bass with Tim Hus and the Rocky Mountain Two. With three little ones ranging from two to eight, theirs is a home full of scripts, music, toys and a whole lotta love. Last week, the duo cele-brated their ninth wedding anniversary.
And this week is no different—and no less hectic—than any other. Spider’s about to hit the road, while my old friend Elinor is poised to debut as the title character in Urban Curvz’ Helen’s Necklace, which opens at the Pumphouse Theatre on May 8. When I think about all that she has accomplished since we first met as drama students at the University of Alberta 20 years ago, I find myself asking the same question everyone in the local arts community asks, with exactly the same note of wonder and awe: “How does she do it?”

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BRUCE McCULLOCH.

The Maddening Art of Television Comedy
By Kevin Brooker.

You haven’t toured Universal Studios until you do it on the back of a golf cart driven by Bruce McCulloch.
“You hicks love this stuff,” he shouts back at his buddies from Calgary, careening around the corner from South Spielberg Drive onto Psycho Pass, just below the Bates Motel and across from the Jaws pond where the breaching-shark gag, more than a little tatty, is frightening yet another busload of tourists.
But what the hicks really love is seeing authentic stars, and as we overtake the studio tour’s canopied people-mover, all eyes strain to see which Hollywood eminences might be riding in the back of the golf cart. Feeling their stares, I wonder for whom I might be mistaken. Is Wally Cox still acting?
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A Red-Nosed Kid In The Hall.
Illustrations by: Matt Luckhurst

These drawing were a little challenging: capturing the likeness of a group of aging comedians is not the easiest task. McCulloch's distinct chin line and permanently youthful allowed me to paint at will, while finding a balance between Foley's old swooped hair and his new died spiky look complete with goatee, was a little trickier. In the end I painted from photos of all of the Kids In The Hall, applied a healthy dose of the 'Luckhurst Rudolph Nose Style' and viola!; finished illustrations.

Bruce McCulloch

Bruce to the Bike Tire Thief