A tribute to the retirement of a community-made business.

I read recently that in 2020 during lockdowns and pandemic response, sales of alcohol have risen by a colossal forty percent. 

Turning Down the Volume of 2020

You peer out the blinds across the front yard.  Deep space darkness out there.  The car-starter has tried and tried, but your vehicle sits there, an overpriced ice cube. You have to run out there and plug it in.  You open the door and a puff of condensation bursts through…

Man, what we wouldn’t do to produce the best.  It’s at the very heart of most of our pursuits.  As artists, entrepreneurs, lovers, gardeners and creators we are in no simpler words looking for: perfect.  But that word doesn’t even touch the feeling.  That deep almost angst that resides far…

The theme of this particular issue of YMM is ‘Growing Local.’  As someone who has always had one hand on the plow in McMurray while the other was booking a ticket to explore the world, I felt conflicted on how true my commitment to our city actually was.  If I…

No one ever makes a movie about the boy with dreams, ideas and ambition to change the world, who ends up a failed, jaded, bitter man.  Or makes a romantic comedy about a girl with wide eyed hopes of love conquering the ugly forces that oppose it, only to try…

Merry Christmas!  My name is Thomas! You know me as ‘the baby ornament.’  I’m that small, wooden figure with your birthday written carefully in blue pen under my feet.  I remember your parents picking me out all those years ago. I was hanging on a tree in a tiny hobby…

One Word That Gives You All You’ve Ever Wanted One of my favourite quotes has always been from Thucydides, a Greek historian from the fourth century B.C.  He said, “The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and…

I think everyone understands the importance of taking a break.  Getting out of the city.  Breathing in some new scenery.  But have you ever gone on vacation and returned just as stressed as the day you left?  Is psychological respite more than simply unplugging from our physical location?