#harley rustad

[walrusmagazine]

The Wheel of Time: Why It's So Hard to Accept Adaptations of Our Favourite Books

The challenge for Robert Jordan fans is to avoid nitpicking the flashy new Amazon series

The real world grows up around us, but the make-believe worlds that exist in black ink on white pages are ours, and ours alone, to colour in. What readers imagine is unique, fiercely held, and impossible to replicate. Adaptations destroy these individually created pictures by forcing new images on us—ones that become virtually impossible to unsee.

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Illustration by Nimit Malavia (nimitmalavia.com/).

[walrusmagazine]

The Women’s National Team Taught Canada How to Be a Soccer Country

The men’s team has made it to the FIFA World Cup. But it was the women’s team that helped them get there

I’ll never forget 2002. That summer, Canada hosted the FIFA U-19 Women’s World Championship, a tournament that some say “changed Canadian soccer forever.” (While teams are formally categorized as “men’s” and “women’s,” not every player identifies as either gender.) On the afternoon of September 1, Canada played the US for the trophy in front of nearly 50,000 fans. It was the second most attended soccer game, of either men’s or women’s, in Canada ever and, according to FIFA, still holds the record for the most fans ever to watch one of its youth women’s games anywhere. Despite losing the final, these teenagers, including my sister, some of whom were still in high school, hooked a country and never let go.

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Photo by Frank Gunn / the Canadian Press

[walrusmagazine]

How to Teach Kids about Impending Doom

Award-winning children's book author Jon Klassen on trusting four-year-olds with difficult realities

Coming to terms with uncertainty is a running theme throughout The Rock from the Sky. Rocks are falling. More rocks may fall. They could hit us. Life may change dramatically at any moment. “I was interested in finding ways of talking about potential problems that you are never going to understand—and maybe there’s no reason for them,” Klassen says. “That rock doesn’t have an agenda, we don’t know what set it on its course, we don’t know where it’s from, but now it’s part of your day. I think that’s how kids feel a lot: they have to function in a world where they understand that they don’t understand.”

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Illustration by Jon Klassen, image courtesy of Candlewick Press

[walrusmagazine]

Photography by Vicky Lam (vickylam.com).

Love Letters from the Battlefield

How words kept my grandparents connected during the second world war

Harry wrote to Jacquie: “When I think that even now I could be calling upon you, taking you to a dance, going to a show and doing those things normal people could be doing I feel personally one of the greatest horrors of war—the separation of men from those they love. However, I suppose that if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m in the service it might have taken ­longer for me to realize just how lucky I am. I hope for the best, darling, no matter which way things turn out.”

He signed the bottom of the page, folded the sheet, and slipped it into an envelope and carefully wrote a Vancouver address. Now he waited, not knowing what would come first: death or a reply.

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[walrusmagazine]

Photography by Vicky Lam (vickylam.com).

Love Letters from the Battlefield

How words kept my grandparents connected during the second world war

On October 10, 1941, Harry Macdonald enlisted ­into the Canadian Active Service Force, one of more than 1.1 million Canadians and Newfoundlanders who would take part in the war. He filled in the attestation paper with the particulars of his young life to date: full name, address, religion, trade or calling, and next of kin. He said goodbye to his mother, his father, and his three younger sisters as he prepared to leave for training in Ontario. The evening before his departure, under the stars and drooping branches of a willow tree at the end of Jacquie’s family’s driveway, the young couple said good­bye. On a sign under the tree was an address—4545 Langara Avenue—that would come to represent not just home but hope.

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[walrusmagazine]

Photography by Vicky Lam (vickylam.com).

Love Letters from the Battlefield

How words kept my grandparents connected during the second world war

On March 9, 1944, Harry wrote to Jacquie: “Everything depends upon two big ‘if’s’. If you agree, and, if I come out of this show alive. No matter what happens, darling, I think you are a grand person and I’m very much in love with you. Whichever way you and fate dictate as the course I shall follow will be accepted as my just due. I have memories of you and of our willow tree that I cherish beyond all else. I love you, Jacquie, more than I can say. Will you marry me?”

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[walrusmagazine]

Photography by Vicky Lam (vickylam.com).

Love Letters from the Battlefield

How words kept my grandparents connected during the second world war

Harry Mac­donald, a Canadian soldier, had sent Jacquelyn Robinson dozens of letters, spanning several years—letters written in spidery cursive by candlelight as rain ­pounded down on corrugated rooftops or amid the blasts of nearby shelling. His letters were often rushed or cut short, with some started and finished with hours or even days in between. He ­frequently apologized for his messy handwriting, hoping his words would be legible. One letter, sent five days before, written in haste, contained a question for which he anxiously awaited a reply. The letter had begun with a familiar two words, “Dear Jacquie,” and ended with a ­question: “Will you marry me?”

Read more at at thewalrus.ca.