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Featured Authors Steve Abbott Matthew Robinson Laurence Ammann-Lanthier Ron Romanowski Bob Armstrong Jim Ross Robert Beveridge Sandra Schmidtke Gabriella Brand Korellia Schneider Diane Driedger Moneca Sinclaire Emma Durand-Wood Karen Solomon Holly Ferrier Lamont Kevin Strong Anthology Berhe Gebrihet Vincent Ternida Glenn Green Carol VandenEngel Anthology John Grey Donald R. Vogel Izzeddin Hawamda Laura White Janell Henry Nancy Wick Tricia Knoll Yvonne Kyle Foreword Jenean McBrearty Leigh Anne Parry Brendan McKay and Anders Swanson Laura McMaster Introduction Alex Merrill Sharon Chisvin Eva Morrison Cath Nichols Binh Pham Byron Rempel-Burkholder Nicole Roach Edited by Sharon Chisvin The WriteToMove anthology was created through the Winnipeg Arts Council’s WITH ART Edited by community public art program and is part of the Sharon Chisvin City of Winnipeg’s Public Art Collection. A Winnipeg Arts Council WITH ART project in partnership with the Winnipeg Trails Association WriteToMove An anthology © Winnipeg Arts Council, 2021 All rights reserved. The authors retain copyright to their own contributions. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the editor. The WriteToMove anthology was created through the Winnipeg Arts Council’s WITH ART community public art program and is part of the City of Winnipeg’s Public Art Collection. WriteToMove logo designed by Anders Swanson. With special thanks to: Marshall Carroll, Niri Carroll, Andrea Davis and Paul Doyle. ISBN 978-1-7775184-0-0 FIC003000 Fiction Anthologies (Multiple Authors) FIC019000 Fiction, Literary LCO010000 Literary Collections, Essays Printed in Canada by Hignell Book Printing TABLE OF CONTENTS 5. Foreword - Leigh Anne Parry and Anders Swanson 9. Introduction - Sharon Chisvin 13. Meeting Ernesto - Alex Merrill 20. In French Class - Diane Driedger 21. Right to Meander - Moneca Sinclaire 23. Centurion - Sandra Schmidtke 27. Wednesday Commute - Cath Nichols 29. Tracks - Byron Rempel-Burkholder 33. Movement - Jenean McBrearty 36. Henderson Hwy Blues - Emma Durand-Wood 42. The Dancer - Laura White 43. Double Blades?…Well Maybe - Yvonne Kyle 48. Imagine - Izzeddin Hawamda 50. The Climb - Kevin Strong 57. Walking - Laura McMaster 58. Pilgrim on a Freedom Machine - Bob Armstrong 67. Senior Strength Class - Tricia Knoll 68. Through a Child’s Eyes - Binh Pham 78. Transplant - Steve Abbott 79. The High Pass - Brendan McKay 90. From Birth to War, from Army to Prison Camp, from Music to Canada, from Marriage to Israel, from Romania to Kaddish - Ron Romanowski 91. The Battalion - Donald Vogel 99. self, in motion - Korellia Schneider 102. Invisible Disabilities - Jim Ross 106. My Mother’s Bike - Karen Solomon 108. Independence - Robert Beveridge 109. Southeast by Southwest - Vincent Ternida 115. Legends from the Trails: Shelby Encounters the Memegesi - Janell Henry 117. La texture de l’écorce - Laurence Ammann-Lanthier 119. The Accidental Walker - Nancy Wick 124. Paddle on Paddlers - Carol VandenEngel and Glenn Green 130. Your Movement, My Moment - Holly Ferrier Lamont 131. Roncevaux Roncevalles - Gabriella Brand 135. Cycling While Female: Barriers to Women’s Transportation Independence - Nicole Roach 140. Desperate for a Seat - Cath Nichols 142. Reflections on Finding Yourself Abroad - Matthew Robinson 146. I Have a Home - Berhe Gebrihet 151. Crossing The Border - John Grey 152. Interpreting Desire Lines - Eva Morrison 157. Author Biographies Foreword Leigh Anne Parry and Anders Swanson We’re too late. To move is now different. Oh how we wish we had wrapped this little introduction up before March 2020 so we could look back, smiling to ourselves, marvelling at how cute we all were in our innocence. From this code red perch, talking about going where you want to is strange. How do you write a foreword about the right to move in a pandemic, without seeming like one of those camo bedecked guys in a trucker hat without a mask, yelling at some horrified nurse that they really do deserve a haircut? We meant well. What we’re after is serious and true in any era. And, you can easily argue that the right to move became even more important lately. Especially if you are reading this from one of those postal codes with a 60% transit ridership that watched your city hall walk away from you. After all, we all have a right to the space between the houses. That bike boom left shrapnel all over the place. And that space between the houses suddenly became very important when it was the only space we could use. And it became really, really, really important when everyone suddenly needed a new way to get to work and there just isn’t enough money or space or good air for more cars. Borders are weirder than ever too. Without getting into the intricacies of rainforest removal or bat physiology, everyone has this vague notion that all of this has got to be, somehow, our fault. Invisible borders both large and local—the pen strokes that hem us into our countries and ghettos on a good day start to really lose the rest of what shine they had when a pandemic rages and only some people can outrun them to their cottage. There are a lot of things around the right to move that we need to answer for. Not that the timing is wrong too. Now is probably just the right time to add to a discussion about being outside and connecting with other human beings—and our right to it. If ever there was a species that WriteToMove 5 needed a co-pilot to take the wheel or the handlebars and make a sharp right turn on its beeline to the cliff edge of global catastrophe, it is probably us humans right now. But the reality is, around the end of March last year, the meaning of “the right to move” suddenly changed and words mean things to writers. COVID-19 equalized us. What was a far off scare—something that happened to other people (as long as you weren’t trying to navigate a Winnipeg winter in a wheelchair or be a North African trying to make it to Italy of course) suddenly became the new norm for a whole new group of people. Most of the world can’t ever fly anyway, but one day, no one could either. And then your office building closed down. “It’s time to come home” said the new Justin a few days past needing a beard trim. You too are vulnerable. I too am vulnerable. We all are. So no one is going anywhere and that’s that. Even the suburbs are rolling their home office chairs off their plexiglass carpet protector, pumping up their tires for the first time in a while, and going for one more lap after a delivered dinner, seeing neighbours they’ve never seen and discovering cul-de-sac sneak throughs they forgot or didn’t know existed. Like polar bears digging themselves out from a long sleep to find the pesky snowmobilers that had annoyed them so much had vanished, more of us have started to move again than we have for decades because, well there was simply nothing else to do. Breath starts the bones rotating, our bodies slip into motion without decision. The muscles lengthen, our bodies swoop, slide, jostle, wiggle, step, jump, repeat, squat, sway, climb, roll, lean, balance, lunge, run, stretch, reach, bend, vibrate, freeze, shake, tip toe, slither, walk, fall, shuffle, break, hop, prance, spin, swivel. Forward. Backward. Toward. Away. Across. Through. Children learn to ride in front of their house. The risk is back to being skinned knees, not the neighbour’s tan sport utility crossover with the in-dash iPad and a moment’s inattention. Being outdoors are the only qualifications you need to be an expert in our environment, when you can hear, see and smell. The results of some of our mistakes should be pretty clear. Cars, in particular, have been devastating. They have 6 WriteToMove destroyed natural habitat, caused chronic illnesses, killed and injured massive amounts of people and animals, and created an economy reliant on the idea that it is the only way to move. We’ve trapped people into a metal box moving through neighbourhoods when humans need to interact with each other and the outdoors. That much is going to be clear to at least a few more people. Here is the thing: Every single one of these stories in this anthology was written pre-pandemic. No one knew what was coming. Sorry submitters. We didn’t know. Lockdown. Closure. Stay home. Now, how exactly do you write a foreword and publish a book during a pandemic to an anthology of writings written before a pandemic about something so intrinsically related to moving? It becomes a sudden retrospective. Is this an essential collection that serves the needs of our times appropriately? Do we have the right to throw our submitters’ thoughts out into the ether like this, knowing full well they had no idea what was coming and that their own vulnerability might inform what they would say now? Whatever. This is the right time for these stories. More than ever, this pandemic we’re in has made it clear that—whatever it is we thought before—this little first book clearly won’t remotely contain all of the stories that need to be told. It is clear that this anthology needs to lead to many. We need to hear from a lot more people. Freedom to move was considered by many writers who submitted to this anthology. Maybe it’s timeless. It should be. What resulted from the WriteToMove call for submissions is an array of stories that transcend any single interpretation of movement.

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