Elections Canada and Apathy is Boring are holding an Art of Democracy National Youth Challenge that invites young Canadians aged 14–30 to answer the question "What does your democracy mean to you?" Here is my response:

For me, democracy is a responsibility and an obligation; a responsibility to engage oneself in civic discourse and an obligation to seek out and understand the actors and stories that shape our communities. Democracy is far more than having, and acting upon, the right to vote. Unfortunately many young people under the age of majority do not perceive democracy this way, and as such feel powerless. The term ‘leaders of tomorrow’ is often used when describing the potential young people possess for evoking change in their community. This implies that youth are incapable of providing a leadership role in their current state, and that at some undefined moment in their life they are granted the ability to be leaders. This attitude that leadership and influence are not earned through ability or effort, but granted at a particular stage in life is purely authoritarian. Having a voice in civic discourse is not a privilege to be earned, but a right available to all Canadians, regardless of whether they are of voting age. Cultural, economic, and technological forces will ensure that the world young people inherit as adults will be much different than today.

As globalism and technological innovations increasingly bridge cultural and economic gaps, it becomes ever more important that young people are raised to think globally and see themselves as global citizens. However, before this is can be accomplished, before youth are able conceive of how they may play an active role on the global stage, they must understand their own communities. The term “think globally, act locally” was first coined by philosopher René Dubos to illustrate how local actions could have broad global effects. Young people must recognize the importance of understanding and involving themselves in local affairs so they may apply these learnings to national and international issues.

The past twenty years has seen a decline in youth participation in Canadian elections, encompassing federal, provincial, and municipal levels of government. In the most recent Canadian federal elections, youth turnout ranged from 37 percent in 2004, up to 43.8 percent in 2006, and back down to 37.4 percent in 2008. (www.elections.ca/res/rec/part/estim/estimation40_e.pdf) Of all age groups, the youth demographic turnout was the lowest for all three of these elections. Age-based results from the 2011 election have yet to be released, but the trend so far has been discouraging. It is evident that it is absolutely important to civically engage young people before they are eligible to vote, so that once they enter the age of majority, the right to vote will be acted upon. However, as important as voting is, it is but one component of civic competence. Youth have the potential to become active and influential within their communities long before they are eligible to vote, but they must be engaged in dialog about the role they may play. It requires a collaborative effort with techniques that ensure that knowledge is shared and transformed.

Creating democratically minded young citizens who are active, creative, and engaged requires families, neighbourhoods, community organizations, local businesses, and governments to participate in dialog with youth. Dialog must be established so that youth are able to fully understand how and why they may contribute, and so that adults may understand how they can enhance the existing flow of knowledge. This must be authentic dialog, with an eventual goal of transforming the knowledge that shapes our communities. This involves developing relationships between youth and their community that are mutually beneficial. The traditional concept of the teacher-student relationship must be abandoned; the teacher must teach their students, but learn from them as well. At the end of the day, youth, adults, and democracy as a whole should benefit from this learning relationship.

Random annual blog post time!

When I first started this blog waaaay back in 2003, I was a part time employee at the Horizon location of Blockbuster Video. I stopped working there at the end of 2004, so I think I was only there for about two years. Those were two very important years of my life. Not only did they mark the conclusion of my undergrad degree, but it's where I met my wife. I still remember when she walked into the store and dropped her resume off with the manager. After the manager went into the back and pinned it to a cork board (great HR practice there) I snuck back to learn more about her. She started soon after, and I thought she was really obnoxious. And she thought I was gay. Somehow it was meant to be and we became good friends, and then one night she just never left. She's still there!

After leaving Blockbuster it became a whirlwind of changes, tragedy, and triumph. Everything from graduating from university, a new career, the death of my mother, pregnancy, a new child, a move to a new city, and another job change. That all happened in 2005/2006, so the time of my life I spent at Blockbuster seemed to pale in comparison. However, looking back now they were a couple of the best years of my life that just happened to precede some of the most tumultuous. I realize that now as I reflect back on my time there.

The reason for this reflection, and this blog post, is that Blockbuster Canada has been placed into receivership and is closing 1/3 of their stores across Canada. The Horizon location is one of those. None of the great people I met there work for Blockbuster anymore, and have moved on to greater careers and/or post-secondary education. Still, I am sad to see the location of so many great memories fade away.

Most of my friends at Blockbuster left within a few months of me, and with a couple exceptions (including the one who sleeps in my bed) I didn't do a very good job of keeping in contact with them. However, Facebook (the death knell of this blog) allowed me to keep tabs on them now and then, and vice versa. When I heard that Horizon would be closing I posted a simple status update lamenting the development, and the next thing I knew we were planning a reunion.

Before the reunion, Kayla and I stopped by the old store for one last visit. The store was only a couple days from closing and everything had been reduced to 70% off. The site was absolutely depressing. The walls were bare and picked clean, and what was left was being furiously flipped thorough by bargain hunters. I felt sad to see it like this. In addition to being a place of work myself and others, it felt like an important part of a greater lively community. It was the only video store in that area of Calgary and we always had a lot of great traffic go through there. Everything from guys who paid with wads of cash from brown paper bags, to the guy from the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra who wouldn't let me touch his violin. It was a vibrant and eclectic place, and would be no more. But I digress...

The actual reunion was a blast and it felt natural to be with these people again. We started off talking about the old days, but soon enough we were talking about everything in our lives since then. I have no idea why we all stopped hanging out because it was obvious to me that we were friends not because we worked together, but because we all meshed so well. It was a really enjoyable evening, and I hope it will become a regular thing.

As far as the company itself goes, I think the days of big franchise video rental stores are nearing their end. As long as movies are still being released on physical media we'll still see some smaller mom & pop stores, but that's it. I suppose that's fitting considering Blockbuster put so many of those places out of business in the 90s.

Netflix, VOD, and piracy is convenient and I admit to partaking in it all. However, I still like walking into a store so that I can browse the shelves of movies old & new. I like talking to the staff and soliciting their opinions, even if they're wearing a Twilight or Bieber button. To me it provides a sense of community that isn't as tangible in the online realm. But then again, I'm old fashioned. I still buy the occasional CD, and I dread the day when I can't buy my favorite game or movie on a disk.

My local Blockbuster is still open, and I hope will continue to be for a while. When it does close, those employees will get better jobs, people will find other avenues to rent their movies, and life will continue on. I'm just happy I got to be part of it.

What’s this now, a blog post?! It seems I have been reduced to one lackluster annual post. I do not see this changing anytime soon, at least until I finish my masters. You may recall that two years ago I started my MA in the Athabasca University MAIS program. It’s going well, and I am more or less half way done. I’d love to do it faster, but one course a semester is more than a handful. Actually, I’m sort of taking a second course this semester. It’s called Social Media Tools and Supporting Your Professional Learning, and it’s a non-credit course being offered by the AUGSA. As part of this course I have started Tweeting and now I have to do a blog post! What am I supposed to blog about?

Week 3 Topic:
What do you think the value of opinion-writing or reflective-thought writing may have for your professional learning?

Although I did not realize it at the time, I think that my blogging during my undergrad years was largely beneficial to my overall educational experience. I very rarely blogged about specific topics related to my studies, unless it was complaining about how behind I was on assignments and such. No, for the most part this blog has been about random musings and happenings in my life. Reflective thought, if you will. So, how was this beneficial? I think it provided me with an outlet to sort out the various thoughts floating around in my head, thereby allowing me to focus on the topic at hand when I sat down to write assignments. (Not that it prevented me from procrastinating).

I also feel that blogging improved my overall writing style. I do not claim to have perfect grammar or sentence structure, but allowing myself to differentiate two different writing styles (casual vs. academic) resulted in greater clarity in my academic work. I also think it allowed me to add a bit of personality to my writing both inside and outside of school.

Week 4 Topic:
Blog about your thoughts of how you think blogging could be used to support your own learning in your university courses and possibly even include a recommendation to a blog that you like.

For those not familiar with how classes work at Athabasca University, they are done online with an application called Moodle, which stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. Fancy name aside, Moodle is more or less just a message board application. You, your professor, and your fellow students can start and engage in discussions relevant to the course. The course professor sets out the general layout of each course page, usually creating different sections and boards for units in the course. Students respond to the relevant topics, engage in some good discussion, and proceed to do so throughout the course. While this largely works, it lacks a certain personal touch. Sometimes a prof will create an off topic area where students can post about whatever they’d like. This is a good first step, but I think blogging by both the prof and students would be incredibly useful.

Academic blogging, when tied to a course, should be relevant to the course topics, but free from having to address specific queries. I could discuss how I feel about the assigned readings, how the course is relevant to my personal and professional life, or just ruminations about the course as a whole. The difference here is that it would be much more unstructured than the typical discussions that take place in Moodle.

While Moodle does have a blog function, I have never seen a professor or student use it. I don’t think most people know it’s there. Fortunately Athabasca now has something called The Landing (or just Landing, I’m not sure) which can be best described as Facebook for academics. It’s a great tool, but unfortunately very few in the MAIS program use it and those that do are exclusively students. I think there is great potential in the Landing, and I hope to see it gain momentum.

So, I guess now I’m supposed to recommend a blog. As I said earlier, I don’t follow any blogs that are related to my academic pursuits. I prefer the random and obscure. I’ll just leave it at that.

I must apologize - it was my intent to tell my Centennial stories in quick succession. Unfortunately the advent of school has reduced my ability to blog. Still, I saunter on and intend to complete these, but I suspect that these posts will be less detailed as time goes on. I digress...

The theme for September 11th, 2009 was youth, so we called it our Future Day. The day itself was really just two large events. The first being the Youth Performing Arts Showcase, and the second was supposed to be a Battle of the Bands for local youth bands. I was in charge of the Battle of the Bands, but for some reason I only ended up with two bands entering. As a result we turned it into a concert, and we were able to secure Seventh Rain as our headline band. This was arranged by Al Jones at Here's the Scoop, and I can't thank him enough!

Jumping back a little bit, the idea of having a youth performing arts showcase was conceived early in the planning process. We had two teachers on our committee that were going to work on it, but like many committee members do, they mysteriously vanished a few months after arriving. Even though I was heading up the planning of the youth day, I had no clue how to plan a showcase of various choirs and bands. So myself and another committee member put out a call to all the schools to attend a meeting about hosting such an event. We told all the teachers that attended that we would provide them with a venue and the staging, seating, etc. they would need as well as promote the event. We tasked them with actually organizing it, which is a ton of work. It didn't help that our event would occur during the first week of school, so all the planning would have to be done the previous school year.

It amazes me now that it all worked out. I only attended one meeting with the teachers, and then sort of sent them on their way. One of the teachers took on a leadership role and ensured everything got done. On my part it wasn't exactly the best model of community development, but I think it just goes to show that if people are passionate about something they will ensure it gets done and done well.

I arrived at the park Friday morning at about 7:00am and began setting up a few things that we'd need for the remaining days. We all thought Friday would be a pretty quiet day that would allow us to get some things ready for Saturday and Sunday. We were wrong. Very wrong. You see, we knew we were getting 600+ kids, but they were coming throughout the day. There weren't going to be more than 100 kids at a time, so no big deal, right? Well, a lot of the schools decided to make a field trip of it and stayed for most of the day. We also failed to consider that 600 kids equals about 1000 to 2000 parents/grandparents/relatives.





Due to this event taking place during a regular school/work day, we had a pretty limited pool of volunteers. Thankfully those we did have possessed superhuman volunteer skills. We managed the onslaught of people pretty well, but our parking was only being manned by one poor volunteer and it quickly fell into carmageddon with people parking wherever they felt like even if it meant blocking in an entire row of vehicles. It got pretty bad, but the volunteers pulled together and made it functional again.





I was in and out of the park quite a bit on this day running various errands. At one point I had to make a mad dash to Enterprise to rent a truck because my coworker's truck broke down at the gas station. It was a crazy day. The upshot was that I ended up with a big obnoxious truck that I was largely incapable of parking until Sunday. (By that point I was backing it up into parking stalls and everything. If you know me, vehicles + parking lots often result in disaster. Going in reverse is just a horrible multiplier.)

Due to my frequent absences I don't have a lot of pictures of the performances. I do have some of the George McDougall band though because I know a few of the kids in it, and I didn't want to miss them.





We had about a four hour break between the school performances and the concert starting. This gave us a nice window of time to catch our breath (and eat) and start setting up for the concert. There was a Centennial High School football game during this time, but none of us attended. Apparently Bert Church High School destroyed George McDougall High School. GMHS has a sweet band, though.

We had three bands lined up for the Centennial Youth Concert. Local bands 'Storm', and 'Autumn Arson' would open for 'Seventh Rain'. All three bands started to show up at around 5:30pm to setup all the equipment. I offered to help, but there was about ten of them and they all knew what they were doing. Me? Not so much… So I just sort of hung out and was generally useless. At least I got pictures.





To be completely honest, I was really concerned about turnout for this event. I’ve run a number of youth events in Airdrie that were very poorly attended. There were only 68 people who confirmed on the Facebook event page, and I honestly would have been happy with that number. :P Teenagers started arriving as early as 6:00, many of them attending the sound check the bands were doing. And then they kept coming and coming. Once the football game was done a new flood of youth swarmed the park. It was wonderful! If I had to guess, I’d say we easily had 1500 people there, possibly more.





Working with young people is what I do, so I do not hold the typical stereotypes about them that many people do. Despite having many, many youth in the park most of them were being very well behaved. We had a few minor incidents, but nothing to really get worried about. Still, I’ve done this type of work long enough that if you get a whole lot of teenagers in one spot, especially on a Friday night, you should be prepared for all possible outcomes. As such, I called the RCMP just to give them a heads-up that we would have a large gathering of people that would be there until at least 10pm. The security that we hired for the weekend asked if they could bring on an additional officer. Initially I said no, but as more and more kids started coming and we had more incidents of alcohol possession, I agreed to have another officer come out. In the end the company donated the extra officer, so that was really nice.



The performances themselves were awesome! We started with Storm, a local band that I’ve had come out to a few of my events now. Storm consists of two brothers who play guitar, bass, piano, and sing., as well as a friend of theirs who is the drummer. The drummer didn’t make this show (as well as some previous ones) and I got the feeling he might not be their drummer for much longer! The two brothers in the band are very down to earth and some of the nicest kids I’ve ever met. They have amazing support in their parents that come out to all their gigs and usually setup their equipment and film the whole thing. Let me tell you, these are model parents. I love them! I also love the fact that every time I ask them to perform (always for free) the whole family is incredibly grateful and thankful. Anyway, they did an excellent job and really got the crowd going.







Next up was Autumn Arson. I hadn’t heard these guys before aside from their submission for the Battle of the Bands. I had actually met a couple of the members before as part of something I was doing in the schools, but I didn’t know they had a band. I listened to their first couple songs and was quite impressed with what I heard. The crowd was going crazy with these guys. Unfortunately I was running errands around the park (mostly picking up garbage and shooing kids out of tents) so I missed a lot of their stuff. Still managed to snap some pics though:







Rounding out the evening was Seventh Rain. Once these guys hit the stage a lot of the kids roaming about made their way to the entertainment tent. Seventh Rain isn’t a hugely popular band, but they’re quite well known in Calgary and area. They actually opened for Sloan a few months back, but I missed that concert. They played all original stuff except for one cover of ‘I Gotta Feeling’, which was pretty epic. These guys even had quite a few groupies swarming over them and doing the whole ‘scream when he looks at me’ thing. Not that that’s the only sign of a good concert, but it was a pretty good seal of approval. Once again, pictures:







Once the concert was done a lot of people left the park, but there were still plenty of youth mingling around. Technically the park closes at 10pm, so I just let the security people see that everyone left. They might have been lingering but there were no problems, so I seemed harmless enough. Where we did have a problem was trying to get all the girls off the stage and out of the tent once Seventh Rain was done. At one point one of the members of the band asked us to get them all off stage because he didn’t want to do it and look like a jerk. :) Some of them remained until well after the concert and didn’t leave until the bands left. In the end I was very, very satisfied with how everything went and really impressed with the youth in this community not only for coming out but also for behaving really well. I can easily say that this day is probably the highlight of my youth-serving career so far.

Well, Centennial has come and gone and I should probably blog about it before it slips my memory. The four days have kind of blurred together and I have a pretty nasty cold now, so I do no promise complete chronological accuracy. I will do this one day at a time since there’s no way I have the patience to blog about the whole four days at once.

When I left you last, we had set up many of the tents for the weekend and were getting ready for volunteer orientation. Orientation went as expected and we had about 50 people on hand. We could have easily used 200 volunteers throughout, but those that we had were AMAZING! We also had many drop-in volunteers during the weekend, but I’ll get to that later.



Thursday, September 10th started out as any other day at the office would, although I had to be here at 7:30am to make sure the trailer (which we were using for our stage) was parked in the correct spot. It’s arrived promptly at 7:35 and afterwards I went to check my email and do other office-like routines. At about 10:00 volunteers arrived to start decorating the stage and building operations removed the fencing around the Legacy Art Project and covered it in a tarp.



I don’t remember exactly what I was doing that morning, but I recall I was out of the office and missed most of the decorating. Regardless, the volunteers turned an ugly old trailer into a very nice looking stage.



Shortly after they were done, one of the fellows at work set up the audio system we were using for the evening. I was to be in charge of A/V that night, but I had someone more competent set it up! The audio worked great, but after it was done I had to figure out the visual part on my own. This was all outside and it presented some unique challenges. I hooked up the City laptop and projector and everything on that end worked fine. It was far too bright out to see anything the projector was showing, but we knew it was going to be dark when we showed our video. My main challenge, and this was unexpected, was the screen. The city owns a large collapsible screen, so I figured that would serve us well. Unfortunately it was extremely windy out, so the screen was like a giant sail. Even after I tried to weigh it down, it would still blow over. We tried plan ‘B’ which was to use two big pieces of cloroplast with a wooden base. However the wind was still a problem. I tried putting them against a wall of city hall, but that didn’t work. What must have been plan ‘E’ was proposed by one of our building operations managers. We could borrow one of the large metal fences that previously concealed the art project and then tie the cloroplast to it with zip ties. After a frantic drive to a construction site to retrieve the fencing, we brought it back and it worked perfectly! I was honestly about to give up on the whole thing, but a few persistent people with clever minds came through for me!

Before the public portion of the evening started, we had a private reception for our dignitaries. They included our MP - Blake Richards, our MLA - Rob Anderson, Minister of Culture and Community Spirit - Lindsay Blackett, Lieutenant Governor - Norman Kwong, Provost of Airdrie Scotland - Tum Curley, and en entire delegation from our sister city of Gwacheon, South Korea, including Mayor Yeo.



I felt rather awkward during this part of the evening, and for the most part stayed away, ran some last minute errands and tested out the sound system with the MC, Deputy Mayor, Shawn Howard. We were just about ready to start off the ceremonies at 7:00pm when we found out that it was decided to show the dignitaries the Airdrie Centennial DVD inside before heading outside. This was fine, but it put our whole agenda behind schedule by about 15 minutes.



We finally got going at 7:15 and the dignitaries went onto the stage complete with bagpipe accompaniment. There were lots of great speeches, gift giving, and general comradery amongst our guests. Despite the very formal procedures surrounding the Lieutenant Governor, his speech was very informal and quite funny. He made fun of his wife, who was on stage, more than once! Unfortunately there were some hang-ups with the evening. Of course the audio decided to be finicky. Several times a large amount of feedback came from the speakers and everyone shot me looks when it happened. I don’t know what was going on! Actually, I think it was because we had a monitor speaker facing the dignitaries. The monitor was for the singer we were having later, so I really should have had it facing away until he went up. Anyway, someone eventually did move it, so it was okay after that. The other problem was that because we were behind schedule, it started to get dark while people were still speaking. This wasn’t supposed to happen until after the art was unveiled. :/

Anyway, the art was unveiled successfully by our volunteers and I think everyone liked it. It was commission by the City of Airdrie and the Centennial Committee and was done by artist Honsun Chu out of Cochrane. If you’re curious what it all means, here’s the description:



“The big sphere represents Airdrie, and each ring represents ten years since its inception in 1909. The three square beams represent three elements; time, space, and people. These elements support and were influenced by the growth and development of Airdrie over the past 100 years. These three beams represent the essence of the city; they are interrelated. If we study their movement, time advances in a linear direction, space expands three dimensionally, and people are the most dynamic force that move freely. Time advances in a linear direction, therefore we always have past, present, and future. People represents the residents, the communities, the businesses, the government and all the activities. People are the creator, the force that makes a location into a city. Space represents expansion and growth.”



After unveiling the art, we immediately showed our Centennial DVD. I wish I had an online version I could imbed as it’s absolutely amazing, but we are trying to sell copies (only $5!). As soon as the video was done (which went off without a hitch) the fireworks were set off, everyone had free birthday cake, and the evening was done. A tremendous success!