Thank you Russell Bowers, CBC Daybreak Alberta, for the interview about my book, Tapping the West!

First just let me say, if you ever have a chance to be interviewed by Russell Bowers, just say yes. He is one nice dude. Whatever you have to say, he’ll make you feel like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever heard.

Next let me say that I’ve never listened to this interview he did about my book, Tapping the West: How Alberta’s Craft Beer Industry Bubbled Out of an Economy Gone Flat, and about an award it won.

Maybe one day I’ll get over my aversion to hear myself when I don’t have to (listening to words come stumbling out of my mouth in real time is bad enough), but that day is not today – not even with a dude as nice as Bowers!

But my publicist tells me it’s pretty good, and actually think she’d tell me if it wasn’t. So thanks, Russell!

Thank you Culinaire magazine for kind words about my new book, Tapping the West

The July/August issue of Culinaire, a respected Alberta food and drink magazine, came with a snack-size review of my new book, Tapping the West: How Alberta’s Craft Beer Industry Bubbled Out of an Economy Gone Flat.

If you like, you can read it online, where the entire issue is posted. The review is on page 48. It’s short but sweet, and kindly recognizes that the book is about more than just some dude trying to pass off brewery-hopping as research. Not that I didn’t. Just not for 300-plus pages. Maybe only 30 pages.

In any case, I am very grateful that the editors made space for me in the issue, and that they enjoyed the book.

Thank you, Doug Dirks! Tapping the West hits the Homestretch on CBC radio, Calgary

After getting word that my book, Tapping the West: How Alberta’s Craft Beer Industry Bubbled Out of an Economy Gone Flat, was the recent recipient of a national writing award, Doug Dirks was kind enough to have me on CBC’s The Homestretch.

This was the book’s first radio appearance in Calgary, where Alberta craft beer was born (and now absolutely thrives). Doug was fantastic and enthusiastic, and I’m grateful for the coverage.

That said, I still can’t bear the thought of listening to my own voice so that I can give you a sense of what I said, so feel free to have a listen by clicking the image above!

Thank you, Ryan Jespersen: Tapping the West and the Alberta craft beer boom

“He kind of sounded like he was shouting at you,” said one friend who listened to this recent interview. He was joking, but the observation speaks to the enthusiasm with which Ryan Jespersen approaches pretty much any topic he covers – including Alberta craft beer. I think it’s great.

Many thanks to him for having me on the show in early May to talk about my book, Tapping the West, and about some of the factors that went into making the province’s craft beer industry possible. And awesome.

Definitely something worth shouting about, I’d say.

Thank you, CBC Edmonton AM: Tapping the West and the state of Alberta’s craft beer industry

Not to make excuses for myself, but I’m about to make excuses for myself. This one was done at 6:40 in the morning, long after I’d switched over to keeping work-from-home pandemic hours. How does Mark Connolly and his team do it everyday? Cheers to them!

I’m grateful for the interview, no matter what I might have said. (I can’t bring myself to go back and listen – something to do with the idea of having to listen to my own voice, perhaps.)

Thank you, Canadian Beer News: Announcing the release of Tapping the West

I’m very grateful to Canadian Beer News, an online voice for beer industry developments across the country, for sharing news of the upcoming release of my new book, Tapping the West.

The book officially launches May 5, and is available at local bookstores (like Audreys in Edmonton, which offers curbside pickup) and online at Amazon and Indigo.

Homebrewing in the time of COVID-19

With a book coming out, and no chance of a launch anytime soon thanks to the pandemic, I was asked by my publisher to pull back the curtain on what I was up to at home these days. Here’s the big reveal.

This blog post doesn’t have a lot to do with Tapping the West: How Alberta’s Craft Beer Industry Bubbled Out of an Economy Gone Flat (now available for pre-order!). Writing it, however, got me thinking about the potential for COVID-19 to teach us something about ourselves. If this thing doesn’t kill us, it might indeed make us stronger somehow.

And if the proof doesn’t turn up in the pudding, maybe it will in the homebrew.

Why a blanket exercise made me disappointed, uncomfortable and angry

As participants in the blanket exercise that was to come, we were told that we’d likely need the boxes of tissues being set out for us. It was a way of being told we weren’t ready to hear the things we were about to learn. Colonialism, our facilitator said, was “a brutal history.”

I’m ashamed to say that I really had no idea. This exercise helped me learn. Please read more at techlifetoday.ca.

The sweet oblivion of float therapy

My discovery of the true meaning of REST: Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy

float therapy modern gravity scott messenger
Photo by Blaise van Malsen

Salt can hold a certain kind of salvation. All you have to do is dissolve 1,000 pounds of it in a shallow, 34-degree bath. And then you just lie down and drift.

I discovered this at Modern Gravity, a float facility in central Edmonton. Owners Matt Smith and Jamie Phillips hope to establish the practice as a recognized therapy for relieving clients of many of the stresses of modern life.

The challenge: relieve floating of its reputation for being, as the owners put it, “hippy woo-woo science.”

Read more at techlifetoday.ca.

A knight’s quest to restore pro wrestling’s honour in Alberta

The Gothic Knight brings Pure Power Wrestling to Lethbridge

gothic knight, wrestler, lethbridge, photo by Blaise van Malsen
Photo by Blaise van Malsen

When I heard that a graduate of NAIT, the polytechnic where I’m a comms guy, was a professional wrestler, it was like a bell had rung. As a writer – and a former 10-year-old wrestling super-fan – this was the matchup I’d been waiting for.

The Gothic Knight, a.k.a. Edward Gatzky, finished a diploma in dietary technology in the 1980s before hitting the wrestling circuit, coming ever so close to a career in the WWE. But life had a few surprise moves of its own, and Gothic (as he’s called) ended up in settling down in Lethbridge, the area of the province he’s from, where he started Pure Power Wrestling.

On the eve of his retirement in fall 2016, I visited Gothic to talk about life in the square circle, what it meant to leave it behind, and his dream to bring wrestling back to its heyday in my youth, when the reality was that pro wrestling ruled.

Read the story at techlifetoday.ca.