The Other Notebook
by David Helwig

Conrad Black’s release from prison in July, on bail while parts of the case against him are reconsidered, quickly became news. It was the CBC that called my attention to the column he wrote about his release, and I was able to find it on the Internet. He still, obviously, regards himself as an innocent man railroaded by the feverish and rancorous assault of American prosecutors. After his release he drew attention by a sharp attack on the American justice system.

The Other Notebook
by David Helwig

It’s one of those long June evenings when the traces of light in the sky hang on and on as you drive home. Soon enough it will be the longest day of the year—as close as time comes to standing still.

We are driving back from John Hopkins’ screening of Timepiece, his almost-completed film about his mother, Hilda Woolnough. The film takes its name from the major installation on which she spent several years toward the end of her life. Hilda died in 2007, but there she was on the screen tonight, larger than life as she created the big prints for the work and discussed the origins of Timepiece and the techniques involved in its production.

The Other Notebook
by David Helwig

A cool April morning, and I am walking along Mission Street in San Francisco. Across the road I notice a woman, her feet and legs bare, making her way tentatively along the sidewalk, her drugged brain not too clear on why she is there half naked, half-dancing. On an afternoon a couple of days later, walking back from the drug store, I notice a small, sturdy woman in a very short skirt come out the narrow metal grill door of the Krishna Hotel to connect with a customer waiting on the pavement. It’s that kind of neighbourhood. As you walk up Mission Street, there are homeless men pushing shopping carts that hold their few possessions, but also families, mostly latino, out with their children. As you pass along, you can’t miss the painting on the walls.

The Other Notebook
by David Helwig

I don’t watch television much these days, the local news, live sports now and then, maybe one or two shows during the week. Our only connection to the outside world is rabbit ears, but even if we had a dozen channels I suspect I wouldn’t watch a lot more. But I have become a student of TV drama on the CBC since that’s all we get. I once worked in CBC TV drama, and I wrote a few scripts, years ago now.

The Other Notebook
by David Helwig

We were sitting in The Merchantman, seven of us. Dinner that evening was an occasion to welcome two poets who had arrived on the Island to give a reading at the public library. One of them, Sue Sinclair, had just explained that her career, when she wasn’t writing poetry, was graduate study in philosophy, and her field of research was aesthetics. Well, that set everybody going on the subject of beauty.

The Other Notebook
by David Helwig

But that’s where your soul lives!” she said.

I had just told her, this friend, a student from my early days as a university teacher, that, as I mentioned in an earlier column, I had sold the old house on Wolfe Island, opposite Kingston, Ontario — at the point where Lake Ontario flows into the St Lawrence River. Wolfe Island is a large outcropping of land, with many farms, a village, a large summer population. While my friend must have known the island from her days at Queen’s University, she had never seen the house. But she knew what I had written about it in my books and obviously had drawn conclusions about its place in my life.