(From left to right) Cooper Bibaud, Danny McDougall and Jeremy Bibaud at the premiere of Love/Hate. Photograph by David Baron

EDMONTON — As the sold-out Garneau theatre became silent, Cooper Bibaud, 25, and Danny McDougall, 26, took to the stage to introduce something that had been three years in the making — the pair’s first feature film, Love/Hate.

“It was pretty disgusting, it was exhausting,” Bibaud said of the days leading up to the premiere. “It was extremely emotional. I was just feeling sick. Thinking about being on stage and introducing the movie. I’d almost break down in tears at random parts of the day. It was a big part of our lives for three years, so the whole thing was pretty emotional.”

And the two had a reason to be worried. The writer/director duo had spent $40,000 producing the feature, and they almost didn’t even get to show it.

“No one knows this,” McDougall said. “But the movie wasn’t even complete until five days before the premiere. We had sold out the movie. We were afraid we’d have to refund everyone’s tickets.”

Despite this, the premiere went off without a hitch. It was well-received by the audience and it garnered quite a bit of attention for Bibaud and McDougall. SuperChannel showed interest in the film and they are currently working on a distribution deal.

The night was like a dream for all involved. Bibaud’s father Gerry recounted the night with near delirious glee. “It couldn’t have been more than 20 minutes into the movie when all of a sudden it hit me… this was his movie!” he said.

Amazingly, the Bibaud and McDougall were able to break even on the project financially.

This is not something that is easy to do. In 2006, Global Market Insite reported that Hollywood studios as a whole lost $1.9 billion. And while the Canadian film industry’s model is more secure, generating $822 million in revenue in 2006, this model is created to help those who are a part of the Canadian film industry, not those who tackle productions independently.

That is why there is something so rare about Bibaud and McDougall. Huddled up in their apartments where they currently reside in Vancouver, they are doing what so few have the chance to do, live the dream of making money while making movies.

Now, their days are occupied by meetings with producers and interviewers, all so that they can get to work on their second feature film.

“It’s great out here right now,” Bibaud said from his apartment in Vancouver. “We’re looking at the mountains and the water right now.”

The vistas of Vancouver are long way from the Jasper Place high school drama room where the two met, and where their shared love for film was fostered.

Having an eclectic love for Wes Anderson, Larry David, Steven Spielberg and Kevin Smith, Bibaud and McDougall were armed with a gamut of inspiration that led them to occupy their free time after graduation writing plays and making short films.

“It was a good way to meet people,” Bibaud said of his earlier days making shorts. “You get your feet wet. It was really all we could do at the time.”

Before the romantic comedy Love/Hate, Bibaud and McDougall had a play at the Fringe festival as well as producing, writing and directing Life in Deathtown, a sci-fi comedy with a $100 budget.

Eventually though, making shorts just wasn’t enough. The two decided that they wanted to create something bigger.

“We just decided, ‘Would you ever go to a store and rent a short?’ ” McDougall said. “We thought about a web series, little episodic things, but really a feature is all we really wanted to do.”

So the two set out on the difficult task of making a full-length feature film, expanding their 30-minute run time and polishing it so that it would have appeal outside of just art-house movie-goers. Making it something that people would actually enjoy watching, something that has become a difficult for Canadian films in general to do.

“Canadians have this terrible habit of hating Canadian things and us putting local film out there really gives some validation,” said Maggie Hardy, a manager at the Metro Cinema (formerly the Garneau). “Local cinema really is what drives us. It’s so important to get that out there and to have a venue like ours in which to showcase it.”

So the two embarked on the difficult task of creating their debut feature. They had an idea of what they wanted to do and that idea was a sci-fi film. That one’s still in the bank the two joked. Then Love/Hate was born. Its a comedy that focuses on three couples at very different stages of their relationships.

Unlike some debut films, this film was not based on an idea that had been festering in the mind of either Bibaud or McDougall. Rather, the two had based the script on concepts and jokes they had come up with together while working at Toys R’ Us.

Once the script was done, the two set out on the difficult task of finding a cast and crew.

Most of these duties were picked up by friends and family, but for some key positions the two were able to snag some film school grads, something that was appreciated given the pair’s lack of formal training.

“If the script wasn’t so good I don’t think we would have had so many people who wanted to work on it,” McDougall said. “The script was Step 1.”

They dove in, and while their approach didn’t hurt them in the long run, there was a time when it seemed like just diving in might have cost them their dream.

“There were so many movie-ending moments,” McDougall said, reminiscing about the challenges the production team faced on the set of the ultra-low-budget film. “It was a struggle just to get granola bars to feed the crew,” Bibaud added

With this success, Bibaud and McDougall decided to relocate to Vancouver to pursue their careers in the film industry.

“Producers we’ve talked to in Vancouver are impressed with what we’ve done,” Bibaud said. “Apparently we had a lot of noteworthy successes that we were unaware of.”

Vancouver has been good for the duo. They were able to book an interview on Electric Playground, a show that covers TV, video games, comic books, gadgets and movies. More importantly both are fans of the show. They have also begun working on their second film.

“We are currently working on something that is different from Love/Hate,” McDougall said, unable to shed any more light on the plot or subject of their sophomore effort.

This time around though, their location will allow the two to be more creative with their script.

“Here you walk 10 minutes you have a mountain, another 10 you have an ocean, and another 10 you have a desert,” McDougall said, musing about the possible shooting locations that a city like Vancouver affords them. “We always write with shooting in mind, that’s probably why we haven’t written some grand sci-fi opera yet.”

Jokingly the two said that perhaps there should be a change of scenery for each new project.

“It almost feels like a new city for every film. We talk about going to Japan for our next one,” McDougall said.

With the expanding film industry in Edmonton, it may not be out of the question to speculate that they may some day return home. With producer Avi Federgreen (One Week, Score: A Hockey Musical) opening River Valley Films, Alberta has doubled its production capacities.

But regardless of where the pair end up, what is important to them is what is happening now: the fulfillment of a dream.

EDMONTON — With so many false starts, completion of a new velodrome in Edmonton’s west end has been in doubt, but a new strategy may finally help get the project underway.

Last fall, city council scratched funding for the $116-million design of a new velodrome cycling track and a sports complex at Coronation Park. But an idea to split the project into two phases could mean the velodrome design would be started in early June.

It was suggested that the stakeholders of the Coronation park project confirm that the project could be split into two parts, said Coun. Bryan Anderson. This initial phase includes the velodrome and its connection to a pool and running track.

Taking Anderson’s proposal, the Argyll Velodrome Association, the Edmonton Triathlon Academy and community services are simplifying the velodrome’s design to push the project forward. Plans for the rest of the complex will have to wait.

Coronation Park site plan, courtesy of the City of Edmonton website. April 21, 2012.

This new approach came as a solution to the frustration of the AVA and ETA that after two years of talks, a world-class track was no closer to completion.

The AVA has been looking to build a new world-class indoor velodrome with spectator seating, because of a decision to scrap the aging outdoor track at Argyll. The hope is that a new velodrome would attract world-class cycling events to Edmonton and provide a year-round facility where Canadian cyclists could train.

Because the velodrome did not receive funding last fall from the current three-year capital budget cycle by the deadline, construction won’t start until at least 2015. However, funding to go forward with the velodrome design can still be funded with this year’s supplementary capital budget.

Not everyone is as enthusiastic about changing plans to develop the Coronation site.

“What we would like to see is the entire rec centre developed with the velodrome in it,” said Rachel Dumont, project co-ordinator with Community Facility Services. “We need to go back out to the community. This is a shift in the original intent and we need to see how they feel about it.”

Two years ago, city council had commissioned a feasibility study to determine how a velodrome might be incorporated into existing plans of building a facility on site.

As a result, the AVA, ETA and community services hatched a plan to include the addition of the velodrome into the earlier design of the recreation centre by removing the aging arena that exists on site. With the extra costs, council said no to funding the project last fall. The new approach now favours the velodrome while the recreation centre takes a back seat.

The ETA suggests that council may not have approved funding due to a change in its funding policy rather than council’s belief the projected cost was overestimated.

“In the budget sessions council decided that they were not going into any major recreation facilities,” said Brian Hetherington with the Edmonton Triathlon Academy.  “They had done a number in the last few years and there were a couple of them that were still underway.”

The city has spent a total of $720 million building large multi-use sports complexes over the last six to seven years and according to Anderson, council’s policy is to only approve funding for multi-use recreation centres.

By connecting the Velodrome to the pool and track and the future replacement of the arena with the Phase 2 multiplex, the idea is for council to stretch funding to provide as many recreational needs to the community as possible.

Anderson said council simply felt the original design was far too elaborate. “The mayor went crazy,” said Anderson. “So what we decided to do was to bring back a report on what pieces could be considered for a rec centre including a velodrome and I suggested we try and bring it in two phases.”

This two-pronged approach calls for leaving the aging arena where it stands until Phase 2 begins. This provides a temporary solution that ensures the community has continued access to ice, which has always been a concern for surrounding residents and Ross Sheppard High School.

“For the immediate term anyways, [the arena] will continue as the ‘Shep’ and community arena,” said Hetherington. “The arena was possibly going to close and there would be others built in the area, but nothing’s been built as yet.”

The city plans to partner with the Canadian Athletic Club to build a fourplex arena at a site north of the Coronation site.The velodrome and sporting complex will share the space of the Coronation site with an area reserved to expand the Telus World of Science. Although there’s no exact division between the two sites, both projects have been able to respect each other’s “footprint,” said Dumont.

After last month’s discussions, council will likely approve the velodrome design providing there are no unexpected additions to the plan — a goal the AVA has been working towards for a total of eight years.

A public information session on the Coronation rec centre, including future plans for the velodrome, will be held at the Central Lions Senior Centre (11113 113 St.) on May 16 at 6:30 p.m.

jagodzinskij@mymail.macewan.ca

EDMONTON — A web of string resembling an igloo stretches from one wall to the other in the west entrance of Grant MacEwan University’s arts campus. Jazz, rock and pop notes escape music rooms and wander the hallways. Lively dance music pulses from the dance studio where inside dancers jump, twirl and tap across the studio in unison. It’s impossible not to pause for a moment to watch the spectacle. The campus is in constant motion.

Inside the Centre for the Arts and Communications campus. Photograph by Tejay Gardiner, Wednesday April 17, 2012.

“It has a certain flavour to it. There is a certain feel when you go into the building,” said MacEwan president David Atkinson.

The big orange building at 100 Avenue and 156 Street, known today as the Centre for the Arts and Communications is a trademark of the Jasper Place community — you can’t miss it. Or can you?

As students, faculty and staff prepare to transfer to the downtown campus, they share memories and contemplate the building’s future. Ask students if they want to move downtown and the most common response is no. There is a deep sense of community at the arts campus, and many fear they will lose this once they move to the larger downtown campus.

“There’s a certain part of me that says it’s too bad to move out of that facility,” Atkinson said, “because it has a lot of history and a unique sense of community, but they’ve run out of space.”

The Centre for the Arts and Communications hosts several programs, many of which are expanding from two-year diploma programs to four-year bachelor degrees. Enrollment is also on the rise; the music program alone has grown from 40 students to 160, said Bob Gilligan, chair of the music department.

But that’s not the whole story. The University has plans to integrate all four satellite campuses into one downtown campus as part of the single sustainable campus initiative that was announced in 2009. A new Centre for the Arts and Communications building will be constructed for 2015.  On March 30, Atkinson announced the project was awarded to Vancouver firm Bing Thom Architects.

Recognizing the special sense of community of the west-end campus, Atkinson said he sought designers who were committed to designing a new building that could achieve the same feeling.

“There are several elements that are absolutely unassailable here, and the first one is the kind of community that exists there now has to exist here,” he told bidders.

Looking Back

Gilligan has a special attachment to the campus. He was one of the first to graduate from the Grant MacEwan music program in the early ‘70s and has worked as faculty ever since.

Back then, Grant MacEwan Community College had just opened and the campus was actually an old elementary school on the same plot of land just north of the current building.

“We used be called little Berklee,” said Gilligan.

That’s because MacEwan’s music program was similar to the cutting edge program offered at Berklee College of Music , which is one of the top American music schools. Where most schools focused on classical and jazz forms, MacEwan broke with tradition and offered contemporary music education in rock, pop and country.

“We pre-date places like Humber, Capilano and University of Toronto,” Gilligan said. “So we were one of the first of our kind in Canada.”

Flipping through MacEwan yearbooks, Gilligan points out familiar faces. The ‘70s MacEwan campus looks like a fun place. The black and white photographs tell a story of an active and connected student body. Themed ‘pub-nights’ seemed to be the pasttime of choice: Oktober Fest, Rocky Horror Night and the Jasper Place Hat Pub.

“We used to have great times in this program, we still do,” he said.

Room 182, also known as The Pit, is where today’s music students gather for jam sessions and coffeehouses.

The CFAC building is often mocked for being outdated, with an ’80s vibe, but Gilligan said that’s why they like it. “It’s an eccentric building for eccentric people,” Atkinson likes to joke.

Gilligan remembers moving into the new building, “This was a state of the art building at the time. It was purpose-built for music and performing and visual arts.”

Although there is some reluctance to leave the west end campus, Gilligan also sees the move as an opportunity to bring arts students closer to the action.

“It’s important to be close to the Winspear, the Citadel and the Art Gallery.”

Gilligan said he believes MacEwan’s programs are one of the reasons Edmonton’s arts scene has thrived.

Moving foward

While CFAC faculty and students prepare to move downtown, plans for the big orange building are undecided.

“The city is interested in taking over the building as a way of anchoring revitalization in that part of the city,” said Atkinson.

He believes the City of Edmonton will use the facility as a community centre with a focus on the arts, but Diane Kereluk, executive director of Stony Plain and Area Business Revitalization Zone has a different vision for the building.

“I do have a vision for the college and that is to turn it into a holistic urban market,” she said.

Kereluk believes in preventative health action and feels a holistic market would be a great benefit to the surrounding community. She envisions organic markets, holistic health education and yoga studios occupying the space.

But Kereluk isn’t sitting on CFAC’s doorstep waiting for students to leave. She has shared an important relationship with CFAC faculty and students over the last few years.

“It’s just like anything, just as you get to know something really well and appreciate it, then it’s gone,” Kereluk said.

She credits MacEwan fine arts instructor Agnieszka Matejko for establishing a relationship between her campus and the BRZ. Matejko and Kereluk have worked with arts students on a few different projects, the most recent being Community Week, where students brought their art onto Stony Plain Road and music into ATB Financial.

“I loved it,” said Kereluk of the art and music. “It was magic.”

“Had I known what I know now,” she continued, “I would have been knocking on Grant MacEwan’s door the first day I started this job.”

Kereluk and the surrounding community have a few more years to enjoy the students and their work. Programs are gradually being transitioned to the downtown campus; the communications students are on their way next fall.

As for the hesitation of students to embrace their new home…

“Everyone said the same thing about moving from the elementary school,” Gilligan said. “They said,’ We’ll lose the community, sense of connection and camaraderie.’

“And it did happen, but we still feel we are apart of something here — the arts.”

GardinerT3@mymail.macewan.ca

EDMONTON — Darrin Hagen sits huddled over a keyboard in his quiet, dimly lit studio. Headphones on, his concentration is razor-sharp as he works among the organized chaos that surrounds him.

Famed Alberta drag performer Darrin Hagen in a supplied photo.

Racks of elaborate costumes line the walls, while hoards of shoes take up residence in oversized bins. Wigs share shelf space with opulent headpieces, as an upturned throne sits tucked away in the corner. Papers are strewn about the tabletops, and posters of past performances adorn the walls in a nod to 25 years of blood, sweat and heels.

To Hagen, these are but a few gentle reminders of a life lived to the max, a life he increasingly feels ready to leave behind.

“Oh I didn’t see you there, come in, come in,” he calls out as he pulls off his headphones. His beaming smile and welcoming demeanour could put anyone at ease.

“Welcome to the dollhouse,” he says with a smirk.

None of this is out of the ordinary to the 48-year-old, who has spent his entire adult life shaking up Edmonton’s drag scene, first with his alter ego, Gloria Hole, then with his award-winning plays with theatrical company Guys in Disguise, which just celebrated a quarter century of artistic achievement.

After a quick tour of the chockablock space, Hagen settles into a chair with a rugged manliness you might not expect from  someone who has spent the better part of his adult life in makeup and women’s clothing. Now, in relaxed jeans and a forest green sweater, there are no visual cues pointing toward the six-foot-four glamazon’s love affair with drag culture.

“I was 18 when I saw my first drag show, and watching it I had this shock of recognition,” Hagen recalls. “I just knew it was what I had to be doing; it never occurred to me until I saw it live, and the impact it had on me was just huge.”

Fast-forward 30 years, and Hagen is starting to feel like the time has come to hang up his feather boa in favour of other artistic pursuits.

“I don’t like doing drag anymore; actually I can’t stand it,” he says with a hearty laugh. “It drives me crazy, it hurts, it’s exhausting, and it’s definitely the domain of the young. I love the art of drag, but I could easily leave it behind now and just be a writer and director who deals with drag themes and queer themes.”

Hagen’s first book, The Edmonton Queen, recounted his adventures as a young drag performer in the 1980s while telling the stories of friends who died of AIDS or some targeted act of violence. The tome to life as a drag queen in a rough-and-tumble city has been studied in queer literature and gender study classes across the country, a feat Hagen is particularly proud of.

“I get letters from students in those classes with the most incredible feedback,” he says.

“One girl wrote that she and the other girls in the class walked a little more proudly after one of my guest lectures, because it’s not only about bringing up gay issues, it’s about equalizing the playing field so that the straight guys in the room don’t think that it’s all about them anymore.”

Hagen’s passion for writing and research (Russian royal history is of particular interest to this queen) will be invaluable to his next passion project, an examination of Edmonton’s gay history that he hopes to release in the next couple of years.

“There’s so much about our city and its history that people don’t know or have forgotten, and I can talk about it with authority because I’ve been a part of that whole history.”

Born and raised in a trailer court in Rocky Mountain House, Hagen had a hard time growing up gay in small-town Alberta.

“It wasn’t easy being a queer kid in Rocky. I was just a young, femme boy who wanted to dress like a girl and didn’t quite know why,” he recalls

“At the time I thought I was going through hell, but as soon as I got out I realized that the hell other kids went through was much worse, so I was lucky. I didn’t feel that way at the time, but in retrospect I was.”

This I-won’t-let-you-get-me-down attitude is precisely what got Hagen where he is today — enjoying award-winning writer/director status while being touted as Alberta’s most famous drag performer.

“I just think all the things that made me vulnerable in high school are the things that made me powerful as an adult,” he says. “All the things that made me stand out and made me an object of abuse are what gave me strength when I got out into the real world.”

Two weeks after his high school graduation, Hagen packed his bags and moved to Edmonton to work at Coles Books and pursue a career in music. One fateful night at the now defunct gay bar Flashback, however, changed everything.

“I remember it was Halloween, which is when most drag queens are born. That’s the day that everyone gets to try it if they want, and sometimes you don’t come back from that experience,” he says of his first time watching a drag show.

“It was at that very moment that I knew what I wanted to do with my life.”

A sudden knock at the door halts Hagen’s trip down memory lane, as a neighbour he hasn’t seen for some time pops in to catch up. Hagen greets her warmly with the air of an old friend before asking that the recorder be turned off so the two of them can “gossip.”

It seems as though this local celebrity is never too busy for a friend.

After several minutes of spirited chatter, the woman leaves and he settles back into interview mode. Hagen talks quickly and with conviction. His laugh is contagious.

He speaks about the old days at Flashback, and about how 25 years ago he and his friends got the idea of taking their show to the Fringe, a decision that changed their lives and put Guys in Disguise on the map.

“Guys in Disguise is a rare example of a drag troupe that turned into a bona fide theatre company, one with a specialty in creating original, new work,” says Edmonton Journal theatre writer Liz Nicholls.

“It’s a remarkable story; what they did was leap into the theatre community and find a home there for cheeky and challenging new forms of comedy, sometimes, but not always, with a political edge.”

During these early years, Hagen replaced his biological family with an adopted one, the matriarch of which was a drag queen named Lulu LaRude who nurtured him for over a decade. Hagen feels fortunate to have had them in his life during those years of self-exploration and growth, and encourages anyone who lacks that level of support at home to find it elsewhere.

“When a person comes out, they’ve had their whole lives to prepare for that moment; parents start at that moment because that’s probably not something they had pictured for their child,” he says. “In my case, I had 17 years to prepare for coming out, so I had to give my parents some time to catch up.”

His personal experiences and those of his close friends have led him to become something of an activist when it comes to bullying and homophobia, the scars of which he says run deep.

“Everyone thinks that homophobia affects gay people and that’s the end of it, but many straight people I know are deeply affected by homophobia as well.”

At that moment he jumps out of his chair and dashes over to grab a manila envelope filled with Guys in Disguise memorabilia that he’s gathering for Edmonton’s Gay Archives.  He speaks passionately about Michael Phair — the former Edmonton city councillor who was the first openly gay elected politician in Alberta’s history — and about how far Alberta has come as a province, as well as how far it has left to go.

“There are some amazingly dedicated queer people in the community that are all challenging assumptions,” he says. “The best antidote to homophobia is going out and just doing your job and showing people that [being gay] is not all you are. There’s this real tendency to reduce gay people to the sex act, which always makes me angry because I’ve contributed a lot to the community.”

This is precisely why Hagen believes it is important to write a book chronicling Edmonton’s gay history, which he hopes will open a lot of eyes.

“Time moves forward and leaves backward fools behind,” he says of the impact publications like this can make.

In light of the upcoming election, there is some question whether Alberta’s political environment will become less accepting of sexual diversity. Hagen shrugs this off with his signature they-can’t-get-us-down attitude.

“Politicians in Alberta have tried many times before to stop the equal rights of Alberta’s population of sexual minorities — and failed,” he says. “If there are any setbacks, they will be temporary.”

“Alberta hasn’t been an easy place to be gay or different, and people like Darrin have set about changing that,” Nicholls adds. “He’s brought the talents of the gay community a wider public, profile and place in the theatre community; he has an activist streak in him.”

Now — after decades of hard work, struggle and spotlights — Hagen says that his ego has been satiated through all the applause he’s received over the years, and he feels ready to pass the proverbial torch on to someone else.

“I feel like I really got my mileage out of being onstage at the most vital time of my life, and I’m really looking forward to letting that diminish a little now, although I would never be able to stay off the stage completely,” he says.

“I don’t think people realize how emotionally taxing acting is; to make it good you have to make it real, which means going into places that are dark and scary.”

And speaking of dark and scary, Hagen pulls out a pair of heels from the shoe bin that are so tall it’s unimaginable that he could wear them for two minutes let alone two hours during a performance.

“I can’t believe I’ve been wearing heels for 20 years — it just makes me angry to think that I’ve probably ruined my insteps.”

LaliotisV@mymail.macewan.ca 

Gamers playing a competitive team base game called League of Legends at OverKlocked, in Edmonton. Photo by Kjell Wickstrom

By Kjell Wickstrom

EDMONTON — The room is dark. All around is commotion and yelling. Each face in the room is lit by the blue glow of a computer monitor. The players’ fingers move with the urgency and purposefulness of a jazz pianist’s. But this isn’t a concert. This is a proving ground. This is the OverKlocked LAN (local area network) centre, at Kingsway and 119th Street in Edmonton. OverKlocked is where gamers can meet and compete on the centre’s series of networked computers.

“They all want to know how they stack up,” says Tim Cooper, the owner of OverKlocked.

Tom MacPherson is a fairly quiet, unassuming guy, the stoic one in the excitement that surrounds him. He’s at OverKlocked with his wife. They are both playing StarCraft 2, and Tom is patiently coaching.

MacPherson is a key member of this community. He is a master level StarCraft 2 player. MacPherson knows he isn’t going to be able to compete on the world’s biggest stages. Despite this, his love of the game and community still drives him to play and coach OverKlocked’s StarCraft 2 team.

StarCraft is a game that has been around since 1998. The most recent version, StarCraft 2, was released in 2010. The game is based around two players going head-to-head, managing resources, building armies and controlling those armies to destroy the other player. A person can think of it as a very elaborate version of chess, with different pieces and strategies all playing their role.

MacPherson is one of those people who needed to know where he stood. He has been playing StarCraft for five years. And when StarCraft 2 came out, he made the switch and caught the competitive bug.

A player's hands while playing a fast paced game of StarCraft 2. Photo by Kjell Wickstrom

Competitive StarCraft has traditionally been centred in South Korea, where players compete for sponsorships and play in live televised tournaments. Some players are able to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. In the past few years, since the release of StarCraft 2, this phenomenon has made its way to North America and Europe. The biggest tournaments — North American Star League, Major League Gaming and Global StarCraft II League  — have prize pools in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

MacPherson is a masters level player. That means that out of the roughly three million people who play Starcraft 2, he is in the top two per cent of players. That seems good, but to make it to the next level, the Grand Master, a player has to be in the top 200 in his or her server group. Server groups consist of all the players in a region, like east and west North America, Europe and Asia. It is a huge challenge to be able to make that jump. And even harder to break into the professional scene.

The first event MacPherson ever competed in was a LAN tournament in Edmonton called Fragapalooza. The event brought gamers from all over Alberta together to network their computers and compete.

“It was really mind-opening for me,” says MacPherson.

He began entering more tournaments. Over time, he developed a reputation as a player who could steal games from some of the top players in the tournaments. He would be able get a win off of them in what were typically best-of-three series. Defeating these top opponents is what drove him.

In one tournament, he got matched up with one of the top players. It was the first time he had ever played while people were watching.

“I won the series, and the energy from the people around me just got me so hyped,” says MacPherson.

The experience of having people support him in a video game, and seeing that they were excited about the game he was playing, affirmed his passion.

“That blew it up and I was like, ‘I can do this,’ ” he says.

He practiced hard. Along with a full-time job in construction, he played Starcraft an additional 16 to 20 hours per week. He competed in all the tournaments he could get to, traveling to Calgary and Vancouver. The tournaments usually had decent prize pools, some in the area of $2,000, but not enough for a person to live on.

This is one of the key hurdles for people that want to become Starcraft pros. Until a player can make it to the professional level, gaming is not something that can be relied on for a decent income.

Tim Cooper, owner of OverKlocked, a LAN centre were competitive or casual gamers from around Edmonton can get together to test their skills or even just have some fun. Photo by Kjell Wickstrom

The players have to constantly be practicing. “If you take a week off, you fall behind and you lose your edge,” says Cooper.

It took MacPherson six to eight more months to win his first event. He says he was losing to the same guys in the late stages of every event.

“I’d practice so hard because I wanted to beat these two guys,” says MacPherson. “That’s what kept me going.

“If I was winning everything I would have got bored.”

The competition drove him. He won a few more tournaments, winning two in a row at OverKlocked.

But now MacPherson feels he is past his peak as a player. He still loves the game, but now he is driven by the community. He wants to be able to give other players the same opportunities he had.

The community in any esport — as competitive gaming is known — is crucial to the players. It can help players deal with the challenges that come up when they are trying to become a competitive gamer.

“Video gaming is a social form of entertainment,” says Steven Jennings, a member of the Edmonton Gamers, who put on a number of tournaments throughout the city.

“Sitting beside someone playing is so much better than playing on your own.”

The community for competitive games in Edmonton is growing. It gives people the support of having others to play with. It also supports friendships and rivalries, ways that people push each other to be better.

For those who truly want to be successful, having a community to support them is that much more important, because there is a lot of competition.

“You have to want to succeed more than you want to breathe,” says Jennings. “You have a goal and are committed to that goal.”

Jacqueline Geller, an esports blogger from Edmonton, agrees. “Everyone who does it, does it because they love it,” says Geller.

The community is also where players can start to make a name for themselves, as commentators, players, coaches, whatever it may be.

“To truly break into the scene, you have to have something that sets you apart,” says Gellar. “Be young, female, or even just loud and obnoxious.”

Esports are growing all over the world. The online community and the advent of streaming is a major driving force in this growth. In a Major League Gaming Tournament in late March, more than 100,000 people at a time were tuned into the Starcraft 2 matches on Twitch.tv.

Two bars in Edmonton had the Sunday matches playing all day in what is called “barcraft” by the community. At the Rack on Whyte, 120 to 150 people were in the bar to watch StarCraft. Only eight people were watching the Oilers game that was on at the same time.

Watching StarCraft is like watching any other sport. You can see the personalities, and how they clash. You can see the passion and excitement from a win, and the anger and drive to improve that comes from a loss.

This community is what MacPherson hopes to embrace and foster in Edmonton. He wants to get a few more players and introduce people to something they haven’t seen before.

“It’s a passion for something that is not mainstream,” says MacPherson. ”It’s fun helping people improve and watching them grow as players.”

Wickstromk2@mymail.macewan.ca 

EDMONTON  — It’s 9 p.m. on a Saturday night and it’s time for the main event of the evening. The PWA championship is on the line at the Prairie Wrestling Alliance 11^th anniversary show at the Century Casino showroom in Edmonton. The house lights are finally lowered and the hot lights above illuminate the ring below. The buzz is in the air as the 300 or more in attendance clamp down in their seats in anticipation. This is not the sold-out SunLife Stadium in Miami, Fla., for the WWE’s WrestleMania XXVIII, but for Mark Kinghorn, better known as M, it might as well be.

“A WrestleMania moment is the best moment of the best card of your life,” said Kinghorn. “Bigger things may come along for me in the future, but for me to be in the main event in this situation, this is my WrestleMania moment.”

M enters the ring at the PWA 11th Anniversary Event March 17, 2012, at the Century Casino Showroom in Edmonton, Alta. Photographs by Tyler Loutan

Kinghorn, born in Barrhead, Alta., and raised in southwest Edmonton, is a store manager five days a week. But on Saturday, March 17, he is M: the 12-year veteran as a professional wrestler and contender for the PWA championship. Kinghorn is 30 years old and one of the smaller wrestlers, weighing 170 pounds. It’s not likely that he will ever be in the WWE to perform at a WrestleMania, but every time he wrestles for the PWA, it’s his moment to shine.

“I’m there behind the curtains, waiting for my music to hit,” said Kinghorn. “I’ve got my black trench coat on, my Casey Jones mask and my blonde dreadlock wig on. All I can feel is 100-per-cent confidence. My entire life is put aside; it’s not about me in this moment. It’s all about entertaining the fans. This is what I live for. This is what I love. This is what M does.”

Lady Gaga’s Born This Way pounds through the speakers as the fans rise from their seats and begin to cheer, knowing it’s time for M. He steps through the black curtains of the entrance stage to the loud cheers of the crowd and walks boldly towards the ring. He steps through the ropes and climbs the corner turnbuckles, peering out into the audience as they give back a loud cheer that overpowers the speakers still playing his entrance music. M removes his wig to reveal his buzz-cut hair. He removes his coat to reveal his black pants with M logo on the back pockets. He removes his mask to reveal his face with black painted eyes and black painted lips in the style of the Joker from The Dark Knight. This is M revealed, as he stands in the ring firmly awaiting his opponent, the PWA champion and former WWE wrestler Harry Smith.

Smith comes from the most famous wrestling family in Canada: the Hart family. Smith’s grandfather, Stu Hart, founded Stampede Wrestling in 1948. It became the largest wrestling promotion in western Canada, spawning such star wrestlers as Smith’s uncles Bret (Hit Man) Hart, Owen Hart, Jim (The Anvil) Neidhart and Smith’s father Davey Boy Smith (The British Bulldog).

These wrestlers were trained in Stu Hart’s basement, famously known as the Dungeon, a sacred training ground in the wrestling world. Smith’s uncles, along with a few others who survived the Dungeon and thrived in Stampede Wrestling, went on to the WWE where they were met with more success. Bret Hart went on to be one of the most internationally famous and successful wrestlers in history of the WWE. Owen Hart, Jim Neidhart, and Davey Boy Smith were not far behind, winning numerous titles and main-eventing several major events for the WWE. Smith is one of the last members representing the Hart family in wrestling. The legacy of the Hart family follows Smith wherever he wrestles.

Smith is a PWA alumnus, along with his cousin Natalie (Natalya) Neidhart and TJ Wilson, aka Tyson Kidd, the last graduate of The Dungeon. They were all called up to the WWE where they were known as the Hart Dynasty. Wearing the pink and black attire made famous by Bret Hart and entering the ring with a tweaked version of Bret Hart’s entrance song, Smith and Wilson became the WWE Tag Team champions, with Natalya winning the WWE Divas championship in 2010.

Smith got his WrestleMania moment at WrestleMania XXVI when the Hart Dynasty helped Bret Hart defeat the owner of the WWE, Vince McMahon, to end a storied 12-year rivalry. Smith asked for his release from the WWE in the summer of 2011 based on creative differences, but didn’t leave the wrestling life. He currently takes bookings for the PWA and all over the world to earn a living as a professional wrestler.

Smith’s recognizable theme music begins to play. It’s the same song he’d enter to when he worked for the WWE. The tall and built 26-year-old walks to the ring to a cheer from the crowd even louder than what they gave M. Wearing his family’s famous pink and black trunks, Smith enters the ring proudly wearing the gold PWA championship belt. Smith looks a half foot taller than M and weighs at least 50 pounds more. The challenge looks insurmountable for M: a guaranteed 30 minutes of wrestling with a man who dwarfs him in every way.

“As one of the smaller guys in wrestling, I realized over time that it wouldn’t be realistic for me to get to the WWE,” said Kinghorn. “If I wanted to, I could do it, but I’d have to make wrestling my main job and I’d end up losing the fun in wrestling. I never want to lose the fun in wrestling. Travelling up and down the roads to shows all over the place and killing my body every night wasn’t the life for me. At the end of the day, I have no complaints with the life I live now.”

Kinghorn makes his living as the manager of the Source in West Edmonton Mall near Bourbon Street. He is a 2001 graduate of NAIT with a diploma in marketing, and uses those skills for his main job. It was at NAIT where Kinghorn learned the skills he needed for his main hobby.

“I didn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket, and my parents wanted something for me to fall back on, which is why I went to NAIT in the first place. But every chance I’d get, I’d go and train in the ring and learn to wrestle. I’d go to school and have an exam, and then run over to the hangars and train.”

Wrestling collided with his career path at NAIT when a friend sent an email about a local wrestling school. Kinghorn joined the wrestling school for Canadian Championship Wrestling at the airport hangars near the NAIT Kingsway campus.

“Mark was good technically, he had a real knack for wrestling,” said PWA promoter and co-owner Kurt Sorochan, who has seen Kinghorn’s entire career first-hand. “Mark was so good at learning and was just fearless.”

M gazes at the PWA championship before his main event match

Kinghorn went on to wrestle for Canadian Championship Wrestling, the revived Stampede Wrestling promotion and the PWA where he has been for all 11 years of the PWA’s existence.

The referee gives M a look at the belt, the championship that has eluded him his whole career in the PWA. M hands it back to the referee who hoists it in the air for the fans to see what’s at stake. The announcer informs the audience the stipulations of the iron-man match: whoever pins his opponent or forces him to submit the most in 30 minutes will win the championship. The bell finally rings and the match begins.

“We’ve never given M the belt because the timing never quite made sense,” said Sorochan. “M has never been a legit heavyweight, but he’s a great wrestler who has done extremely well in PWA, winning every title but the PWA heavyweight championship. It’ll be a special moment if he were to ever win the belt.”

The PWA is currently the longest running wrestling promotion in Alberta. The Hart family passed the torch to the PWA to continue the tradition. PWA features mostly local talent who are usually trained in Edmonton or Calgary. The wrestlers are there to learn the ins-and-outs of the wrestling business and use that knowledge to move on to bigger things. The Hart Dynasty’s members all wrestled for the PWA before going to the WWE, as did Tiger Raj Singh, who now wrestles as Jinder Mahal for the WWE.

“I feel a sense of pride when guys from PWA make it,” said Kinghorn. “I’ve wrestled with these guys and I’ve known them for years, so it’s like watching a sibling succeed when they make it big.”

M tries to escape the grip of Harry Smith

Both M and Smith are skillful wrestlers with a wide array of moves: suplexes, slams, throws, submissions, dropkicks, leg drops, pinning combinations, dives, reversals and tie-ups. M uses his agility and speed to his advantage while Smith uses his size and strength. Each time M throws a kick, the smack of his leg connecting with Smith’s beefy frame echoes throughout the room. Each time Smith slams M, the entire ring shakes violently with a shocking bang of his body to the mat, all of it amplified by the arena speakers.

 “I’ve done a lot of crazy matches before. Ladder matches, weapons matches, cage matches, etc.,” said Kinghorn. “Wrestling can be called a lot of things, but fake isn’t one of them. No, we aren’t fighting or killing each other every night and I hope parents are explaining to their kids that this is just a show, but to say that what we do isn’t athletic is ignorant. Wrestling is entertainment but it takes years off your life. It’s telling a story to the fans and working hard to get them lost in the story. But that’s the best feeling, when fans just get lost in the moment.”

Wrestling is a show. The outcomes are predetermined, the wrestlers work together, like a dance, to do the moves that they’ve learned how to deliver and receive in a safe yet believable way. But the creativity, strength, pain and risks of wrestling are all very real.

Kinghorn’s friend, Phoenix Taylor, a former tag team partner and wrestling school classmate of Kinghorn, suffered a career-ending injury in the ring during a match at the NAIT gym. Taylor attempted a diving stunt off of a basketball backboard to the opponent who was lying on a table below. Taylor broke his ankle as he landed because the table didn’t break. He has not wrestled since the accident.

“When it happened, [Taylor] didn’t know if he’d walk again,” said Kinghorn. “He’s lucky to be able to get around now.”

Wrestling can have more risks than broken bones. Harry Smith’s dad, Davey Boy Smith, died of a heart attack that was likely related to drug use.

The wrestling lifestyle can be fatal.

Kinghorn’s hero, Owen Hart, died in the ring at a WWE pay-per-view after falling almost 80 feet from the rafters of the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Miss.

“The risks are always there, but you could get hit by a bus tomorrow, so who knows?” said Kinghorn. “All you can do is be as safe as you can be in the ring.”

Harry Smith applies the Sharpshooter on M for the first score in the iron-man match

Smith locks in the sharpshooter, the move made famous by his uncle, Bret Hart, causing the fans to jump to their feet and shout in joy of seeing a Hart apply the move. As Smith wraps M’s legs tighter and leans back to apply pressure to the spine, M submits to the hold as fast as he can instead of using up time by struggling. M goes down 1-0, but continues on knowing he still has more time to draw the score even. Both men fight to the outside, back and forth, pummeling each other with punches and kicks. The referee counts to 10 as both men are counted out. The match is reset in the middle of the ring.

 Kinghorn started his career 12 years ago in the CCW. His first match took place on Dec. 9, 2001, in the gym of the MacEwan Mill Woods campus. He wore a CCW shirt, kneepads and a blue Mexican wrestling mask with a silver vine design. He was given the name Guy Levesque. As Kinghorn remembers it, it was the worst match ever.

“I was still training and wasn’t scheduled on the show, I was only there to watch,” said Kinghorn. “My trainer, Tex Gaines, came up to me and told me that I needed wrestle on the first match because someone couldn’t show up. On top of that, I’d have to call the match because the guy I was working with had even less training than I did. It was the worst piece of crap ever, people remembered how bad that was for months.”

Kinghorn continued to learn the hard way, much like many wrestlers who start on the bottom of the card, being the first match of the night and learning how to wrestle in front of an audience.

“I remember the first match I saw Mark in at the Shaw Conference Centre and it looked like it was half speed,” said Sorochan. “It’s funny how it looked then compared to now. When you see M wrestle now, he’s so fast and does all the high flying moves.”

Kinghorn moved up and down the card, learning his craft and developing his character. After ditching the mask and just being himself in the ring, Kinghorn used the musical influence of Eminem to create his first established character, Marky Mark. Marky Mark would enter the ring wearing jeans, freestyle rapping on the microphone and playing Good Vibrations by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. The white rapper gimmick went over well with the fans, as Kinghorn entertained the audience with his faux-Detroit accent and catch phrase “Now, can you feel THAT?”

“When John Cena first debuted the white rapper ‘Doctor of Thuganomics’ character in WWE after a year of me being Marky Mark, all the guys used to joke ‘Hey Mark, they stole your gimmick!’” said Kinghorn.

Kinghorn’s wrestling skills were noticed as well. In 2005 and 2006, Kinghorn was named the city’s wrestler of the year by the Edmonton Combative Sports Commission.

“That was a huge accomplishment for me,” said Kinghorn. “To be a smaller guy in wrestling and win the award in back-to-back years, it meant a lot to get that award.”

Marky Mark lasted seven years before Kinghorn thought the character became stale. Kinghorn decided that it was time for a change. During a PWA show at the NAIT gym, a new wrestling group known as the Disciples of Darkness, a gothic group, abducted Marky Mark and threw him in the back of a van before driving off. At the next show, a month later, the Disciples of Darkness revealed their newest member to be Kinghorn as a Goth named M. M was dressed in all black with his face painted white and black like a skull. The character was well-received by the fans as Kinghorn transitioned from hero to villain.

M trying a cross-body splash from the top rope to Harry Smith

M was supposed to eventually turn back into Marky Mark, but the M character had done well and too much time had passed for Marky Mark to be relevant. Kinghorn continued as M, breaking away from the Disciples of Darkness, and taking on a look similar to the Joker from The Dark Knight. M would come to the ring with Lady Gaga’s Poker Face, with the chorus removed and Kinghorn’s voice dubbed over saying, “my Joker face.” M is currently more humanized, closer in personality to the real-life Kinghorn, but M is still one of most recognizable characters in the PWA.

“M was completely Mark’s idea,” said Sorochan. “It’s a great character and it just shows how creative Mark is. In this business you need to be original, identifiable and have heart, which are all things Mark epitomizes.”

Time is running out as M tries again and again to pin Smith just once to even the score and perhaps push overtime. M is holding his own against Smith, keeping pace with him and completing more moves than Smith. The crowd is starting to get behind M, hoping he can win one fall. Each attempt by M to pin Smith is more elaborate than the next, rolling up, tangling and catching Smith by surprise. M tries one last pinning combination, but the clock expires as the referee calls for the bell to ring, ending the match. The crowd cheers loudly as both men collapse to the mat. Smith’s theme music plays and the referee hands the PWA championship belt over to him. The referee raises Smith’s arm in victory as the crowd gives a standing ovation in respect of the two wrestlers for the show they’ve put on. Smith has defeated M 1-0, but M took Smith to his very limit of endurance and strength.

 “Wrestling is the best thing that ever happened to me,” said Kinghorn. “Wrestling taught me how to adapt, how to improvise, how to be fearless. It gave me confidence in all aspects of my life like family, friends, relationships, my job, etc. I can do anything in the ring and I take that confidence with me in life.”

Time runs out as M loses 1-0 to Harry Smith

Kinghorn has come a long way from the boy who used to watch wrestling every week, idolizing Owen Hart and dreaming of the day he could be trained in the Dungeon like his heroes.

Kinghorn doesn’t watch wrestling every week like he used to, or buy the monthly magazines and collect the action figures, like he did when he was a kid. But Kinghorn never forgets the passion he had for wrestling that consumed his childhood.

“Some people are fans of Star Wars or Star Trek because something about those stories just connects with people,” said Kinghorn. “For me, wrestling seemed to just fill a hole in my life that nothing else could fill.”

Whether Kinghorn is climbing the company ladder towards a district manager promotion, or climbing a physical ladder towards the PWA championship, he has earned respect though his hard work and determination.

M and Harry Smith showing respect to each other at the end of match.

M's WrestleMania moment with Harry Smith

“Mark can do anything he puts his mind to,” said Sorochan. “He’s so well grounded, so respected and he’s a great friend.”

M makes it to his feet and looks over to Smith with a grin. Realizing the effort and hard work both men put into the match, they hug each other with respect and admiration of each other. As the crowd claps, whistles and cheers for the two wrestlers, Smith raises M’s hand in the air signaling the moral victory, establishing M’s WrestleMania moment.

LoutanT@mymail.macewan.ca

Coach Stuart McGrandle, of the West Edmonton Knights, talking to the blue fighter who he is coaching for the Yellowhead Inn boxing match on March 31, 2012. Photograph by Erin Cripps-Woods.

EDMONTON— The coach leans forward on one knee and yells out encouragement to his fighter as the crowd calls out words of advice and support. Red and blue uniforms are the only things that separate the two bodies jostling around in the ring at the Yellowhead Motor Inn. Blue goes in for a right hook before weaving left; narrowly avoiding Red’s jab to his now-exposed face.

Stuart McGrandle, a former boxer and the owner of the West Edmonton Knights Boxing Club, waits for his blue-clad fighter in his corner of the ring. McGrandle moves as close as he can to the side of the ring, coaching Blue as the final round ticks down to the last minute. After Red lands a hit to the ribs, McGrandle shouts, “Get back in there!” With a nod, his fighter hears McGrandle’s words.

He never gives up on anyone, win or lose. It’s about trying and learning to be a better person through boxing — a lesson that the club instills into its boxers.

The people who come to this place all have their story. One woman is a prison security guard and former body builder, and is about to get married in Jamaica. A younger member loves the atmosphere of the club and describes boxing as cool even though not a lot of her friends are in it. An MMA and Muay Thai fighter also comes to the club to teach classes for a few people each week. However, when they arrive they become a part of the history involved with being a West Edmonton Knight. Even kids who aren’t in an age category to compete yet come to train. Some boxers are too young to compete, but they still train hard.

This place is not just somewhere to train. Anyone who walks through the swinging door embellished with a picture of a knight becomes part of an extended family; with Sonia and Stuart McGrandle are the parents. The atmosphere is warm and welcoming. Just like coming home.

When walking down the rather intimidating street at nightfall, opening the door and going down the well-worn stairs, a person can hear dance music and laughter. Walking around the corner Sonia comes over for a hug with a huge smile. Coach says, “Hey bud, good to see ya.” Cesar and Michael run over to see who has arrived. Everyone says hello and asks about any news about each other’s life while they get ready to box.

The West Edmonton Knights Boxing Club runs five days a week from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Almost all the walls of the gym at 10074 151 Street are covered with photos, newspaper clippings and a tally of all the matches where boxers from the club have competed. Win or lose, everyone is up on the wall.

Coach Stuart, 41, opened the club five years ago with his wife Sonia, 42. They have been married for 15 years. Their children Cesar, 9, and Michael, 13, both train at the gym. Cesar loves boxing and is quick on his feet. Michael prefers soccer but still trains alongside his brother.

The people who train at the boxing club usually refer to Stuart as “Coach” as a sign of respect for what he has done for the many youth, adults and families in the west Edmonton area.

McGrandle works as a boilermaker five days a week from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. He works all day, has supper with his family and then heads over to coach boxing. His wife says he won’t take credit for how well the boxers do.

“One kid said to Stuart after a fight, “It’s because of you that I won,” and he would say, ‘No, you did it. You did what I asked you to do and you put 100 per cent into it [the fight].’

Photo of Coach Stuart McGrandle and two of his boxers after a boxing match. Photo by Erin Cripps-Woods

McGrandle brushes off questions about his extraordinary commitment.

“To be honest with you I don’t really think about it. I have a responsibility that I kind of have to answer to every day,” he says. “Come here and keep things going forward. One day turns into a week, turns into a month, turns into five years. I don’t really think about it on the other end.”

McGrandle started with karate at Panther Gym, but then one day he heard people on the other side of his karate club doing boxing. He went over to watch and said, “I can do that.”

His grandfather was a boxer and trainer in the 1930s while his father, Billy McGrandle, was the youngest Canadian selected to represent Canada in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. McGrandle found something about boxing that he liked more than karate. With a history of boxing in his family, he was a natural at the sport.

McGrandle met Sonia awhile after he had stopped boxing and they started a family together. He tried to keep with boxing by training boxers at other gyms but he never really found a place that was right for his style of coaching. So, with three days to prepare, he opened the Knights boxing club and began to train boxers the way he wanted to all along.

While Coach went to go chat with some of the boxers Sonia commented on how humble he is.

“He doesn’t take credit for anything,” Sonia McGrandle says while her husband chats with some boxers. “The kids are where they are because of him.”

McGrandle does this because he wants to help kids achieve things they never thought they could look forward to before. He doesn’t ask for much back besides respect for everyone that comes to the gym and him.

As McGrandle talks about his fighters’ accomplishments, he smiles and his gaze becomes distant as the memories replay in his mind. “It was nice when Robbie Cusine won the Golden Boy a few years back in March 2009 and Cody Gates won four fights in a tournament in Quebec with three being by knockout.”

His hands form loose fists as he mimics the fights. He seems at ease with the motions and his body flows with each punch as he tells the stories of those fights. The boys did well, he says, and he was proud of them.

Coach Stuart McGrandle helps a boxer put his hand wraps on properly before training. Photo by Erin Cripps-Woods

“The West Edmonton Knights Boxing Club has been a safe haven for many youth,” says Sonia. The environment is encouraging and the kids that continue to come become more than good boxers, but also have better attitudes at school and home.

The West Edmonton Knights chose to set up in the west end of Edmonton because the McGrandles saw a need for a place for kids to go. Getting them off the streets and into a set of boots, hand-wraps and gloves is part of what it takes to turn a rambunctious kid into a determined person with goals and dreams. As an organization based largely on donations and sponsorship, the club has been able to help many youth become great.

Sometimes the kids come into the gym with attitude issues, says the coach’s wife.  They won’t listen to their parents and don’t want to do anything besides play video games. But, their attitude changes after a few times at the club, she says.

In February, the Knights taught the basics of boxing to some of the students from St. Edmund school. The class learned about the fundamentals of an extracurricular sport, and gained knowledge about what it means to be an athlete surrounded by a supportive group of people.

The feeling of family is what drives the Knights to stay strong and have their doors always open, even during tough times. When tough economic times hit, the Knights kept together and went throughout Edmonton asking for sponsorship for the club. Sonia McGrandle continues to campaign to potential sponsors almost every day.

The McGrandles built not only a gym, but also a place for people to call home for a few short hours where they can be themselves and be accepted.

“Everyone here is so loving and caring for each other. It’s worth every penny. We wouldn’t change a thing,” said Sonia. “It’s tough, but it’s worth it because you see all these kids doing so good in school. It’s nice to see the difference we’re making in the kids’ lives.”

“If you can make the difference in one kid’s life, it’s worth it. Money is money and if you don’t have it, well, deal with it.”

Back at the Yellowhead Motor Inn, only a few seconds remain in the final round. Blue goes in and, using the last of his energy, he tries to land a hit. His fist connects squarely with the side of Red’s helmet.

In the next instant, the bell rings McGrandle launches into the ring to give Blue some water. He tells him he did great.

Outside of the ring, the Knights family waits to hear the result of the fight.

Blue wins, the Knights cheer. Coach pats Blue on the back, cracking a smile.

As Blue accepts his medal, McGrandle stands in the corner and looks on with pride as another boxer achieves his goals.

crippswoodse@mymail.macewan.ca

EDMONTON — When Terry and Patti Purich put a pair of skates on four-year-old Natasha’s feet, the last thing they expected her to do was glide away on the ice like it was second nature at that year’s Christmas skate at Hawrelak Park.

At first, Terry thought his daughter was just imitating the motions she had seen while watching her brother’s hockey games. But it was what she did a short time later that made him realize that his daughter had talent.

“About 30 minutes later she was skating backwards,” he said. “I taught millions of kids [to skate] with chairs and everything.” Skating backwards is just not that sort of skill beginners master right away.

Little did he know that 12 years later, he would be watching his daughter skate on international television as she competed at the NHK Trophy in Sapporo, Japan, as one half of the only Canadian team in the pairs division.

One of the high-level skaters currently skating at Ice Palace Figure Skating Club, Purich differs from the typical teen. She takes her dedication to her sport to a completely different level that demands strength, precision and the passion to pursue what she loves.

Standing at four feet and 10 inches, Purich’s petite stature might mislead someone into thinking that she’s dainty. However, she’ll prove you wrong the second she steps out onto the ice.

Being a former gymnast and Ukrainian dancer, Purich is an athlete with a natural ability to perform that marks her as a powerhouse among the junior skaters.

“She is very strong and powerful,” said coach Ravi Walia. “She has a quickness to her that is really good for jumps. We call it ‘fast twitch muscles’ and that’s what makes her really explosive and her jumping really good.”

Even as she tried other sports at a young age, Purich was often reminded by others about how her size would be perfect for figure skating.

“Everybody always told me I had the right size to skate, but I never thought of it,” she said.  “I wanted to do hockey, but my mom wouldn’t let me because she said I was too small.”

Watching Olympic champions Jamie Salé and David Pelletier in the 2002 Olympic Winter Games held in Salt Lake City flipped the switch for Purich’s interest in competitive skating.

She began to skate at the Sherwood Park Figure Skating Club.  She quickly made progress in the physically and artistically demanding sport, and soon her parents sought a coach.

Natasha Purich is one of many skaters from the Ice Palace Figure Skating Club who compete nationally and internationally. Supplied photo.

While other locations such as the Royal Glenora Club have reputations for training high-level Olympic skaters, Purich’s search brought her to the Ice Palace Figure Skating Club in West Edmonton Mall to be coached by Walia.  Walia, a three-time national medalist and an ISU Technical Specialist for Canada, had taught her briefly in Sherwood Park for a few classes.

“Ravi Walia is a junior Canadian champion,” said Patti, Purich’s mother. “He’s skated with all the Olympic skaters, so I don’t think there was any question about whether it was the Royal Glenora or the Ice Palace.”

The Royal Glenora Club, which is a private club, would have required the Purich family to buy a membership.  For the family, who lives in Sherwood Park, this seemed unnecessary when the Ice Palace already had someone who had taught her before.

As she continued to train at West Edmonton Mall’s Ice Palace, Purich soon began to compete both nationally and internationally in competitions such as the Canadian Figure Skating Championships, the NHK Trophy and the Junior Grand Prix for single and pairs skating.

Her achievements include an eighth place win at the 2011-12 Canadian Figure Skating Championships for her pairs and single skating, and the 2011 Canadian Junior champion alongside pairs partner Raymond Schultz.

But success doesn’t come without its price.

While Purich does her best to lead a normal teenage life, she has had to make sacrifices to get to where she is now.

As a student in a sport school, Purich found herself missing many classes to compete at major competitions. Teachers would take note of her many absences.  Now, in order to balance her training with her school, she is completing her academics through correspondence courses.

“I do correspondence now for school just because last year I was away so much,” said Purich.  “The teachers, even though I was at a sport school, didn’t really appreciate it, so I kind of had to.”

Her daily routine is demanding — especially if you repeat it from Monday through Friday.

Purich does her school work for three and half hours in the morning followed by an hour of training or ballet.  After an hour to herself, she then spends about four and a half hours at the Ice Palace.

Luckily, school doesn’t get too repetitive for the Grade 11 student.

“You’re always trying to learn something new,” said Purich.

However, Purich is like any other teenager when it comes to keeping on top of homework during the week to leave her weekends free.

“You need to have fun still with your friends,” she said.  “I like to hang out with my parents too.”

“I try to be like just an average kid.”

While the sport has demanded a lot from her, it does give back in more ways than one.

When Purich decided to try pairs skating with partner Raymond Schultz last year, Purich was given the chance to be coached by Walia alongside one figure skater who made a lasting impression — Olympic champion David Pelletier.

“He ended up being my coach and that was icing on the cake,” she said.

Since Walia hadn’t coached pairs before, the collaboration between the coaches allowed Purich to gain more experience while working with her partner on the ice. Purich was able to work on her synchronization, body awareness on the ice and mastering difficult movements like the split-twist.

Yet with Grade 12 just around the corner, Purich decided to take a break from pairs skating in order to give her more time for school next year.  However, she hopes to try it against in the future.

As an athlete in a physically and artistically demanding sport, Purich has been faced with many challenges in figure skating over the years.  The greatest challenges sometimes come from within herself.

As a competitive figure skater who identifies herself as a perfectionist, she has to keep in mind that her attitude can make all the difference when she is skating.

“The most challenging thing for skating is definitely just not getting disappointed in yourself when you make mistakes,” she said. “Knowing that even when you get older, you never stop learning and keep improving.”

Sometimes the challenges aren’t always from within.

While the Ice Palace skaters also practice at Terwillegar Community Rec Centre, Callingwood Recreational Centre and sometimes the Kinsmen Sports Centre, most of Purich’s practices are at the West Edmonton Mall rink.

As one of the club’s 1,150 skaters, of which only 100 compete, Purich is exposed to the many challenges that the mall can offer — particularly when you always have an audience.

With the rink nestled near the heart of the 5.3 million-square-foot mall and over 30.8 million visitors a year, the skaters run through their simulations and practices under the watchful eye of the general public.

“Sometimes it can be distracting,” said Purich. “Like today I got a piece of a crumpled-up napkin thrown at me and I looked up at the lady and she flipped me off.  I just said ‘OK, whatever.’ But it’s good because you have people shout at you sometimes and you have to zone them out.”

The most popular name she seems to get called is “Ginger” because of her red hair.

“You get used to not caring what people think,” she said.

Despite the frustrating distractions that the mall sometimes offers, most of the skaters welcome the audience as they learn to practice focusing more on their routines than on those watching.

But the most notable challenge that any athlete must overcome is the ever-increasing level of difficulty in a sport.

With harder jumps and a demand for better flexibility, Purich maintains her training regimen to allow her to perform her best when she competes.

“I think what she’ll be working on is trying to develop more of a technical side of skating,” said Walia. “For her [that would be] learning more triple jumps and more difficult triples… that’s required on a more international level.”

For Purich, flexibility is one thing that she is working on after skating pairs with Schultz.

“I wasn’t too flexible [in pairs skating],” she said, “and I’m still no Gumby, but I’m working on it.”

While Purich has achieved many great accomplishments in the past few years, her future goals include representing Canada in the Olympics.  Though the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi are too soon, she has her eye on the next ones.

For now, Purich’s focus is on competing at Worlds while continuing to skate for her passion for the sport.  Sharing her experiences with those around her, she follows the best advice that her coach and choreographer have given her.

“Do it because you love it. No matter what, just try to put on a great face and things will eventually get better.”

zoernigc2@mymail.macewan.ca

EDMONTON — Bells hang from the front door. Old records fill the entrance on the right side. The wall on the left is covered in multicoloured guitars, one an unexpected bright azure. Further into the aisle there are hand-held video games and PlayStations in a locked cabinet. At the end there is a counter where Dan Tarrabain usually stands when a customer arrives.

The wall behind him is covered in knickknacks, cards, handmade drawings, newspaper clippings and old photos. Further into the shop a couch faces a big screen TV where Tarrabain sometimes plays music or watches movies. Today a video of Adele plays in the background. Her morose tones fill the already stuffed room. A bear rug stares down from the ceiling above that, but it hardly seems out of place with all of the other things around. Watches, chainsaws, bicycles, lamps, movies and tools fill the room in every direction.

The bear on the ceiling of Dan's Pawnshop. Photo by Elizabeth Walters.

The inside of Dan’s Pawnshop at 153rd Street and Stony Plain Road may look cluttered and confusing, but it is maintained. Tarrabain sweeps the room and picks up abandoned litter outside the shop.

Pawnshops are often cited as a source for seediness along Stony Plain Road, but for Tarrabain, they are an essential part of the local economy and nothing to be ashamed of.

“There’s apartments all around, and those are the types of people that need pawnshops. Put one in Riverbend, those people don’t need pawnshops, they go to Best Buy, Visions, Future Shop, you know, they have garage sales. But here, Johnny needs to pawn his Xbox for $80, for lunch money or bus tickets, so he’ll bring his Xbox down here,” Tarrabain says. “It’s just kind of a poorer area. You know, people need pawnshops here.”

Tarrabain’s father named the pawnshop after him when he was just a kid.

“I said, ‘What are you gonna call it?’ He said, ‘Well, how about Dan’s?’ I said, ‘Well, let’s call it Tracy’s,’ after my sister. ‘No I’m gonna call it Dan’s Pawnshop,’ and that was 34 years ago,” he adds thoughtfully. “He named it after me when I was nine years old.”

Tarrabain’s dad got into the pawning business because he wasn’t making money as a barber in the 1970s

“When people started to wear their hair longer in the ‘70s, there wasn’t a requirement for barbers any more, so he took half of his barber school and made a pawnshop,” Tarrabain said.

Dan’s Pawnshop was originally across the street from the courthouse on 97th Street.

When Tarrabain was younger, this is where he spent most of his time after school hanging out.

“I’d ride my bike downtown to my dad’s pawnshop and I’d hang around with the guys and got to know the business and he gave me a key to the door when I was like 14 years old, 12 years old,” Tarrabain smiles.

“So you know Friday night, I was 12 years old, 14 years old, I had a key to my dad’s pawnshop and the alarm code and I would go there with my buddies and I would turn on the tunes.”

“Then when I was around 17, my dad said to me, ‘What do you want to do?’ and I said, ‘I’d like to do what you do, Dad. I want a pawnshop.”

It would still be a few years before Tarrabain would start working in the pawn business though. “You know, I was a dishwasher, a waiter, bus boy, bartender, I framed houses and then when I was 21 years old, I got my own pawnshop on Whyte Avenue.”

Dan’s Pawnshop was on Whyte Avenue for five and half years, but eventually Tarrabain got sick of renting and wanted to buy a space. Eventually buying a building on 124th Street and 107th Avenue. The shop spent 12 years at that location.

“Then the area got pretty fancy, it started to get art galleries and fancy coffee shops, and fancy bakery pastries.”

When Tarrabain first settled in that location “you could get a three-bedroom apartment for $550 back then. There were a lot of families that needed a pawnshop,” he says.

“It honestly got too fancy of an area for me, too artsy fartsy.”

He moved to Stony Plain Road seven years ago.

“I’m helping a lot of people too, there’s a lot of good people in this neighbourhood. I got a Valentines Day card from one customer. ‘Hope you’re my friend forever and ever.’ ” Tarrabain picks up the pink and red card.

Tarrabain’s dad owns the building complex. He worked in the pawnshop until he was 76 years old.

Tarrabain feels pawnshops help families get through the week. He needs the pawnshop too. He’s a family man, and the shop is his livelihood.

Dan Tarrabain from Dan's Pawnshop. Photo by Elizabeth Walters.

“I’ve been going on with my wife 20 years, and we’ve been married 10, and we have a nine-year-old son.” Tarrabain’s wife’s name is Terry and their son is Aydan.

Tarrabain met Terry in the pawnshop. “She was a friend of one of my friends, and she came into my pawnshop, and I really liked her,” he adds. “It took me six months to ask her on a date.”

‘I can’t really complain about my business because I have a business,” Tarrabain adds. “You can always want more, but you got a be happy with what you have.”

He pretends to write his name on a $20 bill. “Some people say they don’t like pawnshops, but if I was to write Dan’s, you should see how many businesses get my money in this neighbourhood,”

Jamie Post, a blogger and volunteer for the Stony Plain Road Business Revitalization Zone, has a different opinion of pawnshops. “I think it would be hard to describe it as positive,” he says. “I’m quite a subscriber to the belief that an influx of predatory businesses such as pawnshops, such as payday loan shops, are an indicator of the decline of a neighbourhood.”

Post says these “predatory businesses” tend to cluster in areas such as Stony Plain Road or 118th Avenue, and create a negative impression.

“They obviously serve a purpose to some extent and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any large-scale business area that didn’t have them,” Post says. “I think the issue becomes when you got a large concentration within a very tight geographic area.”
When you’re obviously trying to recruit more family-friendly businesses to the area, they may be more leery about locating to what’s in that type of concentration.”

Many pawnshops belong to the Stony Plain Road and Area Business Association, “and we try to work with them,” says executive director Diane Kereluk.

“I don’t think it’s only the poor that use cash shops and pawnshops, I think that there’s a lot of different situations where it may require people to resort to quick cash services, and I think that whatever means that they have to utilize those services in times of desperation, that’s what they’ll do,” Kereluk says.

“I’m of the belief that diversity is healthy. Too much of anything is not a good thing, but a little bit of everything poses a healthy community, because then it has room for everybody.”

A sign below the counter says that “In God we trust, all others pay cash.”

In the pawn business there are a lot of rules. When a new item comes in, Tarrabain puts the serial number into a database so police can check for stolen goods. Then the item must be held for 45 days. A customer has 30 days to pick up the item on loan and pay back with 25 per cent interest for its return. If the customer chooses to leave the item, he or she can keep the money and it is considered pawned.

In comparison, payday loan charges 23 per cent interest, but if the money is not paid in full on or before the scheduled due date, the customer can also be charged with a $25 fee.

If an item is reported stolen, Tarrabain must hand it over to the police without compensation.

“Lots of people just sell stuff, you know, you ask them, ‘Are you coming back for it? ‘Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.’ Sometimes you know damn well they’re not coming back for it,” Tarrabain adds. “That’s what I’m here for: buy sell, trade, pawn.”

An older tanned, blond police officer comes in to look for a stolen Stihl chainsaw. Tarrabain pulls out a bright orange, black and white one, but neither the police officer nor Tarrabain can find the serial number.

The police officer explains that some of the serial numbers are pretty tricky to find, but he can go look up where the serial number should be and come back to find it. He also tells Tarrabain that starting next week he will have to come in and start doing random inspections of the 30-day holds.

“The heat is on,” Tarrabain jokes.

Tarrabain lets the police officer know he is closed on Mondays.

“My son, he made me for Christmas, he gave me new business hours. ‘Dad, I want you to close Mondays and come pick me up at 3:30.’ ”

The police officer listens, laughs with Tarrabain and tells him to have a good day as he leaves.

“I think it depends on who you’re talking to, I do know that a pawnshop owner does have a strict regiment and there is a certain element of risk when they do accept goods because if those goods are proven to be stolen then it’s the pawnshop owner that’s out of pocket so they have a pretty high criteria from the police services to maintain that the goods are legit,” Kereluk says.

Nine-year-old Aydan is in Grade 4 and wants to be a teacher when he grows up. He visits his dad at work, but doesn’t stick around too long because Tarrabain doesn’t want him exposed to some of the more aggressive characters who wander in. Aydan has the day off of school and waits for his grandpa to pick him up at the pawnshop.

Tarrabain calls his son Little Buddy and makes him a grilled cheese sandwich as Aydan watches a show about life in the ocean. Tarrabain sweeps the shop.

Aydan Tarrabain eating a grilled cheese sandwich with his father in the Pawnshop. Photo by Elizabeth Walters.

“What do I like least about it? Some of the scary people, that are drunk or on drugs, and they demand money from you, and if you don’t give it to them, then they go irate and start smashing things. You know, calling you names and boot slamming your door open. But if you give them money, they’ll be back the next day.”

“I’m just here to try and make a living and go home to my family, I didn’t come here to fight,” Tarrabain says.

“So that’s the thing, you know, but that’s a small percentage, maybe five out of 100 are bad customers.”

One bad customer who had an impact on Tarrabain was Trevor Grimolfson, 38, who died in Tarrabain’s shop after being tasered by police on Oct. 29, 2008.

“He was high on drugs. He just wouldn’t leave the store. The autopsy revealed he was high on ecstasy and ketamine. He assaulted my dad. He slapped him to the ground and punched out my window, and then he came to attack me. So you know, I just got to safety and he started smashing up my store and the police came to arrest him and he wouldn’t respond to their demands of being arrested and he went berserk in here,” Tarrabain points to the ground. “Next thing you know they tasered him and he died right there on the floor actually, his heart stopped from excited delirium, I guess.”

Tarrabain feels at home in the neighbourhood, but not after dark.

“In the summer time I don’t mind staying until six, when it’s light out, but in the winter…” Tarrabain adds. “I don’t like much being here by myself.”

“I like my job, I look forward to coming here every day, because every day’s different, it’s never the same.”

Tarrabain has two dogs that hang out in the back of the pawnshop. This is also what he likes about owning the pawnshop. “What do I like most about it, the freedom, I can come in, in the morning and I can watch Adele, read the newspaper, I can have a coffee.”

“This is Rocky, Rocky the Rocket,” Tarrabain points at a thin German Pinscher. “This ones Ben, he likes girls,” the Cane Corso wags his tail as he ambles over. “He’s very sheepish.”

The door rings with bells when a customer enters the shop.

A young woman comes in and attempts to sell a beer fridge and a TV stand then argues because she wants $100 for the fridge and $50 for the TV stand.

“Those are the kind of people, they don’t have a clue.” Tarrabain says. “You got a $125 fridge brand new and she wants $100 for it.” Tarrabain can usually only get half price for the items he sells.

Tarrabain will give out more money for loans when someone has a record of picking up loaned stuff.

“Everything in here, they’re all coming back for it. I make my living off of people not coming back. They promise you the world, you know, and then you see them, ‘How come you didn’t pick up your guitar like you said?’ ‘Well I had to pay my rent,’ or ‘I had to pay my cable or I was gonna get cut off,’ ‘I had to pay my cellphone bill,’ that’s more important to them. I say ‘Yeah, but when you didn’t come back and pay, how am I gonna pay my rent? And my cellphone bill? You didn’t care about me, so why should I care about you?’

“There’s some funny people in the neighbourhood, they’re just happy to make three dollars or five dollars, you know, they’re kinda comical because the next guy comes in and he’s all serious, he wants $500, and he storms out of here, and the other guy was happy, he just found something in the garbage, and he made five dollars for it, and I sell it for seven dollars and we have a good laugh about it.”

A woman comes back to pick up a guitar that she loaned to Tarrabain so that she would have enough money for her son’s birthday, She leaves a white cowboy hat that was a part of the original deal.

“So then she comes in just for the guitar, and then she’s gonna stick me with the cowboy hat,” he says. “I don’t want a white cowboy hat. Black cowboy hat, we’ll talk.”

“She’s got her guitar back. I made $30 bucks, and she got her birthday party, but you know, she obviously didn’t have a credit card, no money in the bank, so without that $120 on her guitar, there wouldn’t have been a birthday party. So that’s what I like about the pawn business.”

“I had one guy come in here, and he says, ‘Tarrabain I’ve got a deal for you. I’ve got 500 cowboy hats for sale, four dollars each, but they’re all pink.” Tarrabain laughs. He didn’t take the deal.

WaltersE5@mymail.macewan.ca

EDMONTON — A west Edmonton bistro is serving St-Viateur bagels shipped fresh from Montreal.

Dahlia's Mediterranean Bistro at 10235 124 St. in Edmonton. Photograph by Heather Rastas

Dahlia’s Mediterranean Bistro at 10235 124 St. is one of the few restaurants in Edmonton that sells St-Viateur bagels.

At the St-Viateur bakery in Montreal, Que., each bagel is made by hand, first boiling the dough in water and then cooking it in a wood-fire oven. They are truly homemade and do not contain any preservatives.

Fadi Smaidi, the owner and creator of Dahlia’s, admits that when he first started ordering the bagels, it wasn’t for the business.
“Well, it started off as a thing for me,” says Smaidi. “I was buying bagels for myself.”  He then started letting some of his customers try them, and they loved them.

It wasn’t until after a trip to visit family in Montreal, where Smaidi was born and raised, that he decided to start shipping St-Viateur bagels to Edmonton for customers.

Dahlia’s initially ordered nine dozen bagels per shipment.  The order gradually rose to 60 dozen per shipment, which come in weekly.
As soon as the bagels arrive, the staff flash-freeze them. They then thaw them out as needed.

Smaidi admits it isn’t cheap to order the bagels from Montreal, and it really doesn’t bring in a lot of money. “We really just do it to be able to give a service for the customer,” says Smaidi.

Dahlia’s bagels are gaining popularity in Edmonton.

“Bagels aren’t big in Australia at all,” says Australian native Shane Hughes, the manager of Dahlia’s.  “And I’ve tried a few since I’ve been here and they are the best I’ve ever had. People know quality.”

The reason that Dahlia’s is not able to make the bagels in Edmonton is that St-Viateur keeps the recipe closely guarded. Also, the difference in altitude in Edmonton would result in the bagels cooking differently than in Montreal, Smaidi says.

“The water in Montreal is slightly polluted, which gives it a nice little kick to the flavour,” he adds jokingly.

The bagels cost $7.50 for 6 and $13.50 for a dozen. Dahlia’s also gets smoked Montreal meats, and flies in some Montreal beer as well.

Dahlia’s is named after Smaidi’s daughter and serves Lebanese, Syrian, Italian and Greek cuisine.

rastash@mymail.macewan.ca